Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

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The San Francisco Bay Area Portal

California Bay Area county map
California Bay Area county map

The San Francisco Bay Area (referred to locally as the Bay Area) is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.68 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels, and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world with 8.80 million people.

The Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 companies in the United States, after the New York metropolitan area, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The area ranks second in highest density of college graduates, after the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and performs above the state median household income in the 2010 census; it includes the five highest California counties by per capita income and two of the top 25 wealthiest counties in the United States. Based on a 2013 population report from the California Department of Finance, the Bay Area is the only region in California where the rate of people migrating in from other areas in the United States is greater than the rate of those leaving the region, led by Alameda and Contra Costa counties. (more...)

Selected article

An 1880s lithograph of the original California State Normal School campus in San Jose
An 1880s lithograph of the original California State Normal School campus in San Jose
San Jose State University (often abbreviated San Jose State or SJSU) is a comprehensive public university located in San Jose, California, United States. It is the founding school of the 23 campus California State University (CSU) system, and holds the distinction of being the oldest public institution of higher education on the West Coast of the United States.

Located in downtown San Jose, the SJSU main campus is situated on 154 acres (62 ha), or roughly 19 square blocks. SJSU offers 134 bachelor's and master's degrees with 110 concentrations and five credential programs with 19 concentrations. The university also offers three joint doctoral degree programs and will launch its first independent doctoral program in 2014. SJSU is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). (more...)

Selected biography

Emilio Gino Segrè (30 January 1905 – 22 April 1989) was an Italian physicist and Nobel laureate who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton, a sub-atomic antiparticle, for which he was awarded the in Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959.

Born in Tivoli, near Rome, Segrè studied engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza before taking up physics in 1927. Segrè was appointed assistant professor of physics at the University of Rome in 1932 and worked there until 1936, becoming one of the Via Panisperna boys. From 1936 to 1938 he was Director of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Palermo. After a visit to Ernest O. Lawrence's Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, he was sent a molybdenum strip from the laboratory's cyclotron deflector in 1937 which was emitting anomalous forms of radioactivity. After careful chemical and theoretical analysis, Segrè was able to prove that some of the radiation was being produced by a previously unknown element, dubbed technetium, which was the first artificially synthesized chemical element which does not occur in nature. (more...)

Selected city

The town of Los Gatos is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 29,413 at the 2010 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area at the southwest corner of San Jose in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Los Gatos is an established neighborhood in Silicon Valley. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Los Gatos ranks 33rd in affluence in the United States.

The name Los Gatos is Spanish, meaning the cats. The name derives from the 1839 Alta California land-grant that encompassed the area, which was called La Rinconada de Los Gatos, ("Cat's Corner"), where "the cats" refers to the mountain lions and bobcats that are indigenous to the foothills in which the town is located. The name has been anglicized to /lɔːs ˈɡætəs/ lawss-GAT-əs, although one also hears pronunciations truer to the original Spanish, /lsˈɡɑːts/ lohss-GAH-tohss. (more...)

Selected image

Grace Quan, a traditional Chinese junk at China Camp State Park, San Rafael
image credit: Cullen328


The Bay Area by year

1892
Le Petit Trianon
Le Petit Trianon
John Muir, 1880
John Muir, 1880

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Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

Previous Did you know...

Avaya Stadium
Avaya Stadium
  • ... that the Newby Island landfill is an island surrounded by a levee, which keeps its runoff from directly entering San Francisco Bay, and the water that drains from it is treated in the dump's own treatment plant?
  • ... that the 2012 groundbreaking ceremony for Avaya Stadium (pictured) had 6,256 participants, setting a new world record?

January 2015

Selected periodic event

Bay to Breakers is an annual footrace in San Francisco on the third Sunday of May. The name reflects the fact that the race starts at the The Embarcadero adjacent to San Francisco Bay and finishes at the Great Highway adjacent to Ocean Beach and its "breaking waves". It is well known for many participants wearing costumes, and a few engaging in public nudity. The event was officially the world's largest footrace from 1986 (with 110,000 participants) until it was surpassed in 2010 by City2Surf in Sydney, Australia.

Quote

File:Gertrude Stein by Alvin Langdon Coburn.jpg
~ Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1937, p. 289)

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Edited views of San Francisco, taken from a Philip Greene film produced by Richard Moore and Zev Putterman for KQED in 1973
credit: Philip Greene

Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

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