Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

The Richmond–San Rafael Bridge (officially, the John F. McCarthy Memorial Bridge) is the northernmost of the east–west crossings of the San Francisco Bay in California, USA, connecting Richmond on the east to San Rafael on the west end. It opened in 1956, replacing ferry service by the Richmond–San Rafael Ferry Company. The bridge—including approaches—measures 5.5 miles (29,040 feet / 8,851.39 m / 8.9 km) long. At the time it was built, it was one of the world's longest bridges. The bridge spans two principal ship channels and has two separate major spans, each of the cantilever type. To save money, both main cantilever sections were designed identically, including the angles, necessitating the "dip" in the central section, giving the bridge a "roller coaster" appearance and also the nickname "roller coaster span". This appearance has also been referred to as a "bent coat hanger". After it was completed, many were disappointed by the aesthetics of the low budget bridge, especially when compared to the engineering and historical marvels of the neighboring Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. (more...)

Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson (born December 25, 1958) is a retired American baseball outfielder who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for nine teams from 1979 to 2003, including four stints with his original team, the Oakland Athletics. Nicknamed "The Man of Steal", he is widely regarded as the sport's greatest leadoff hitter and baserunner. He holds the major league records for career stolen bases, runs scored, unintentional walks and leadoff home runs. At the time of his last major league game in 2003, the ten-time American League (AL) All-Star ranked among the sport's top 100 all-time home run hitters and was its all-time leader in base on balls. In 2009, he was inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first ballot appearance.

Henderson also holds the single-season record for stolen bases (130 in 1982) and is the only player in AL history to steal 100 bases in a season, having done so three times. His 1,406 career steals is 50% higher than the previous record of 938 by Lou Brock. Henderson is the all-time stolen base leader for the Oakland A's and previously held the New York Yankees' franchise record from 1988 to 2011. He was among the league's top ten base stealers in 21 different seasons. (more...)

South San Francisco is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, located on the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 63,632 at the 2010 census.

South San Francisco lies north of San Bruno and San Francisco International Airport in a small valley south of Daly City, Colma, Brisbane, and San Bruno Mountain, east of Pacifica and the hills of the Coast Range, and west of the waters of San Francisco Bay. Locals often refer to the town as "South City," in much the same way that San Francisco is called "The City." People unfamiliar with the area often mistake "South San Francisco" as the southern part of the city of San Francisco. In fact, the city of South San Francisco is not even contiguous with the city of San Francisco, due to the city of Brisbane being between them. (more...)

• Marine World (pictured) opens in Redwood Shores
• Ramparts, a left-wing political and literary magazine, is founded in Menlo Park
• The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (pictured) is established in Menlo Park
• Sproul Plaza is completed at the University of California, Berkeley
• General Motors' Fremont Assembly plant opens

• ... that the vivid colors of the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds (pictured), ranging from magenta to blue-green, come from the brine shrimp and microorganisms that thrive in the water?
• ... that the Laguna Creek watershed debouches into the San Francisco Bay near the site of the ghost town of Drawbridge?
• ... that the chase scene from the 1968 Steve McQueen film Bullitt starts on Cesar Chavez Street (then Army Street) before continuing through San Francisco?
• ... that the title of There There, a 2018 novel about urban Indians in Oakland, California, mirrors Gertrude Stein's quip about the city that "There is no there there"?

• ... that Fountaingrove Lake (pictured) in Santa Rosa, California, is a habitat for the threatened Western pond turtle, and is surrounded by a championship golf course?
• ... that Room 307, Gilman Hall on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, where the element plutonium was discovered, is a United States National Historic Landmark?
• ... that the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, was home to the short-lived U.S. Camel Corps?
• ... that Tolay Lake has yielded thousands of charmstones thrown into the lake by prehistoric peoples to invoke health and high crop yields?

March 2007

Litquake is a literary festival in San Francisco, first held in 1999. It has been described as "Literature as Carnival". In 2012, Litquake featured a total of 860 authors over the course of the 9 day festival. The festival closes with a “Lit Crawl,” a literary pub crawl that includes bars, cafes, bookstores, theaters, galleries, clothing boutiques, furniture showrooms, parking lots, a laundromat and even a bee-keeping store. (local author and attendee Zarina Zabrisky pictured)

“

B Street station was nothing more than a little shed. There was no ticket office, nothing but a couple of whittled and carven benches. It was built close to the railroad tracks, just across which was the dirty, muddy shore of San Francisco Bay. About a quarter of a mile back from the station was the edge of the town of Oakland. Between the station and the first houses of the town lay immense salt flats, here and there broken by winding streams of black water. They were covered with a growth of wiry grass, strangely discolored in places by enormous stains of orange yellow. Near the station a bit of fence painted with a cigar advertisement reeled over into the mud, while under its lee lay an abandoned gravel wagon with dished wheels. The station was connected with the town by the extension of B Street, which struck across the flats geometrically straight, a file of tall poles with intervening wires marching along with it. At the station these were headed by an iron electric-light pole that, with its supports and outriggers, looked for all the world like an immense grasshopper on its hind legs. Across the flats, at the fringe of the town, were the dump heaps, the figures of a few Chinese rag-pickers moving over them. Far to the left the view was shut off by the immense red-brown drum of the gas-works; to the right it was bounded by the chimneys and workshops of an iron foundry. Across the railroad tracks, to seaward, one saw the long stretch of black mud bank left bare by the tide, which was far out, nearly half a mile. Clouds of sea-gulls were forever rising and settling upon this mud bank; a wrecked and abandoned wharf crawled over it on tottering legs; close in an old sailboat lay canted on her bilge. But farther on, across the yellow waters of the bay, beyond Goat Island, lay San Francisco, a blue line of hills, rugged with roofs and spires. Far to the westward opened the Golden Gate, a bleak cutting in the sand-hills, through which one caught a glimpse of the open Pacific. The station at B Street was solitary; no trains passed at this hour; except the distant rag-pickers, not a soul was in sight. The wind blew strong, carrying with it the mingled smell of salt, of tar, of dead seaweed, and of bilge. The sky hung low and brown; at long intervals a few drops of rain fell.

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