A WALK IN THE PARK? : BYPASSING SAN DIEGO'S MOST FAMOUS LANDMARK CAN SEEM LIKE A ZOO, TOO.

Byline: Jeremy Bagott Daily News Staff Writer

In some ways, San Diego is a victim of its own boosterism. We ``northerners'' have been blitzed by Mission Bay and San Diego Zoo commercials for so many years that for many Angelenos the name San Diego is synonymous with dingoes, dolphins and something called Skyfari.

Manage to get past the Shamu-ville stereotype and you risk buying into two of the city's other great myths: that the place is nothing but a giant Navy yard, replete with crew-cut lawns, polished doorknobs and cranky retired admirals. Or, that it's a giant, laid-back beach town, full of paunchy longboarders and the hormone-addled high school kids who emulate them - Slacker City USA.

But chill out, L.A. It's way different. More or less.

Shattering the San Diego stereotypes is Balboa Park, the city's cultural and spiritual center. That is, the portion of the park that's not the San Diego Zoo.

It sits on 1,400 acres of prime real estate nearly in the center of the city. After the Smithsonian, it is the world's largest conglomeration of museums.

Balboa Park is Mission Bay's foil, its nemesis, the triumph of quiet contemplation over raucous recreation.

A word here is in order for the uninitiated: This is no park park, as in basketball courts, barbecues and T-ball diamonds, although those are certainly here ... somewhere.

This is a park in the grand style of London's Hyde Park, Vancouver's Stanley Park or Boston's Public Gardens. By L.A. standards, it's the Huntington Library, the L.A. County Arboretum, the Rose Bowl, the L.A. Zoo and the Getty Museum all plopped down in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area.

A great truth about museum hopping is the general rule that the smaller and more intimate the museum, the more prodigious will be the buffs, docents, curators and volunteers milling about in wait, all of whom will want to stick to you like bad wallpaper, making the experience less contemplative, less personal. Worse yet, the added scrutiny makes it harder to short the ``suggested donation'' box as you leave.

The San Diego Model Railroad Museum, situated on the lower floor of the Casa de Balboa building, proved a pleasant exception to the rule. By the way, the museum contains a chilling model of the steep, twisty track configuration through the Tehachapi Pass, an area known for its frequent derailments. We gladly forked out the full $3 apiece, but vowed never again to take the train.

Most of the park's museums, plazas, pavilions and gardens were built in connection with the two great expositions the city has hosted this century: the Panama-California International Exposition of 1915-16 and the California-Pacific International Exposition of 1935-36.

Walking the park, it's not difficult to feel you're on a giant university campus. But the only time Balboa Park has had any such unity of purpose was during World War II, when the Naval Hospital expanded into the rest of the park and wounded were treated and hospital administration housed in the museum buildings.

The architecture of the structures here - like many others in San Diego - is listed in the guidebooks as Early California or Spanish Colonial Revival. But the oldest specimens exude a certain Gilded Age optimism that no Spaniard ever envisioned. It's Seville a la Grover Cleveland - California Gothic with a touch of Black Forest cuckoo clock.

Besides the Model Railroad Museum, the park is home to a museum of local history, a photographic museum, a municipal gymnasium, a puppet theater, a space theater and science center, an aerospace museum, a sports hall of champions, a museum of art, an anthropology museum, a natural history museum of art. And, of course, there's the zoo. ...

Begun when a small menagerie brought here for the 1915-16 Panama-California International Exposition caught the eye of a local physician and animal buff, the San Diego Zoo is today one of the world's foremost zoos, containing such rare species as the Mongolian Przewalski horse and the long-billed kiwi.

If you must spend the day at the zoo, remember that the zoo sits on only 100 acres of the park's 1,400. So keep it in perspective.

And unlike a certain sprawling park in the San Fernando Valley bearing the same name, this Balboa Park is policed by a sufficient number of real rangers mounted on real horses who provide a real visible deterrent to any would-be miscreant. In other words, the uniformed presence here consists of more than a guy with limited English skills atop a Briggs & Stratton.

Balboa Park's lushness is an assault on the senses. Its trees alone make it worth the visit. We picnic in a droopy cluster of hanging Australian willows ... or are they weeping albizias? No matter.

Within view, and barely within earshot, is a man on a stepladder holding forth on God - or is it atheism? I can't tell - to a few curious passers-by. ``It is not the apple Adam and Eve should have eaten,'' the man bellows. ``They should have eaten the serpent, more protein!'' Several in the crowd laugh.

Nearby, a juggler works three bolo knives to a much larger crowd, members of which are throwing dollar bills into his collection basket faster than he can nod in acknowledgment.

Only when the machetes are swapped for flaming torches does the mother of a small child come forward to move the tot who, up to this point, has been sitting practically underneath the knives. I have my first pangs of remorse about not visiting the zoo.

After lengthy but leisurely walkabouts at the Museum of Photographic Arts and the Museum of San Diego History and a stroll through the Botanical Building, where our feet told us we had viewed all 500 species of plants in its collection, we headed to Alcazar Garden off El Prado (The Promenade) near the Museum of Man.

The garden, its tiled fountains and hedges said to recall the gardens of the Spain's Alcazar Castle, was first planted in preparation for the Panama-California Exposition.

Somewhere off Pan American Plaza, a flaxen-haired man in his 20s dressed in a kilt was playing a bagpipe while another kilt-clad man practiced some type of Gaelic dance.

As if re-enacting a scene from the film ``Braveheart,'' the dancing Mel Gibson-wanna-be would stop periodically, look to the south and yell incomprehensibly, waving his fist over his head as onlookers cheered.

After one yelling fit, the faint cry of a long-tailed macaque could be heard in the distance, possibly from the zoo.

Balboa Park's museums multitudinous and varied The following museums are part of the Balboa Park complex:

Balboa Park Carousel and Miniature Railroad, El Prado, just north of the Spanish Village Art Center; Carousel: [phone]; open 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekends; $1.25 per ride. Railroad: [phone]; open 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekends and school holidays; $1.25 per ride.

Botanical Building and Lily Pond, El Prado. Open daily; free.

Centro Cultural de la Raza, Pan American Plaza, featuring exhibits and art relating to Latinos and American Indians; [phone]. Open noon to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday; free.

Municipal Gymnasium, Pan American Plaza; [phone]. The Palace of Electricity and Varied Industries during the 1935-36 World's Fair, the building now houses basketball and volleyball courts.

Museum of Photographic Arts, El Prado; [phone]. Museum is one of its kind in the United States, dedicated to historic and contemporary photographic art. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; $3.50 for adults and children over 12.

Museum of San Diego History, El Prado; [phone]. Open 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily; $4 for adults and children over 13.

Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theater, Pan American Plaza; [phone]. Two to three shows daily, Wednesday through Sunday; call for times. Admission is $2, $1.50 for children.

Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center, El Prado, featuring dome theater, OMNIMAX films, plenty of ``please touch'' science exhibits; [phone]. Science Center is open 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekends. Call for theater show times and admission prices.

San Diego Aerospace Museum, Pan American Plaza, housing a replica of Lindbergh's ``Spirit of St. Louis,'' a Soviet MiG-17 and 64 other aircraft; [phone]. Open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily; $5 for adults, $4.50 for seniors and $1 for children.

San Diego Automotive Museum, Pan American Plaza; [phone]. Open 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily; $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $2 for children.

San Diego Hall of Champions, El Prado; [phone]. Such San Diego-area sons as Ted Williams, Marcus Allen and Bill Walton are celebrated. Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily; free.

San Diego Model Railroad Museum, El Prado; [phone]. Open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends; $3 for adults, children under 15 free.

San Diego Museum of Art, El Prado, featuring works from the Italian Renaissance, Baroque period and an outdoor sculpture garden. Home of Cotan's ``Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber''; [phone], Ext. 173. Open 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; $7 for adults, $5 for seniors, $2 for children.

San Diego Museum of Man, El Prado. [phone]. Call for hours and admission.

San Diego Natural History Museum, El Prado. [phone]. Open 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. Admission is $6 for adults, seniors $5, youngster 6-17$3.

San Diego Zoo, north end of park. [phone]. Open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Admission is $15, children 3-11 $6.

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Photo, Box

Photo: A proud warrior stands guard in front of the Mu seum of Man in San Diego's Balboa Park.

Carol Bidwell/Daily News

Box: Balboa Park's museums multitudinous and varied (See Text)