Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

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The San Francisco Bay Area Portal

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...)

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Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan, are a Native American people of the central and northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of languages, the Ohlone languages, belonging to the Costanoan sub-family of the Utian language family, which itself belongs to the proposed Penutian language phylum. The term "Ohlone" has been used in place of "Costanoan" since the 1970s by some descendant groups and by most ethnographers, historians, and writers of popular literature. In pre-colonial times, the Ohlone lived in more than 50 distinct landholding groups, and did not view themselves as a distinct group. They lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering, in the typical ethnographic California pattern. The members of these various bands interacted freely with one another as they built friendships and marriages, traded tools and other necessities, and partook in cultural practices. The Ohlone people practiced the Kuksu religion. Before the Spanish came, the northern California region was one of the most densely populated regions north of Mexico. However in the years 1769 to 1833, the Spanish missions in California had a devastating effect on Ohlone culture. The Ohlone population declined steeply during this period.(more...)

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Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000), nicknamed Sparky, was an American cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Peanuts (which featured the characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown, among others). He is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists of all time, cited as a major influence by many later cartoonists. Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson wrote in 2007: "Peanuts pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it's hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale—in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow." (more...)

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Alameda is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is located on Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island, and is adjacent to and west of Oakland and in eastern San Francisco Bay across from San Francisco and South San Francisco, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bay Farm Island, a portion of which is also known as "Harbor Bay Isle", is not actually an island, and is part of the mainland adjacent to the Oakland International Airport. In 2014 the city had a total population of 75,467. Alameda is a charter city, rather than a general law city, allowing the city to provide for any form of government. Alameda became a charter city and adopted a council–manager government in 1916, which it retains to the present. (more...)

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San Francisco Police Department officer, with boyfriend, San Francisco Pride 2005

image credit: Odedee

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The Bay Area by year

1988

A sculpture of Ashurbanipal (pictured) is installed at the Civic Center, San Francisco
The Niles Canyon Railway is reopened in the East Bay
The Oakland East Bay Symphony is established
Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance poet Robert Duncan dies

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Mt. St. Helena, c. 1870s

image credit: public domain

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Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

... 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"?

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Previous Did you know...

... that Josiah Belden (pictured) was a member of the first party to use the California Trail, and the first mayor of San Jose?
... that Zentatsu Richard Baker was an influential American Zen priest who played a leading role in founding Tassajara, the first Buddhist training monastery outside of Asia?
... that Elmer Robinson was the 33rd mayor of San Francisco?
... the callsign of KFRC in San Francisco, California in the U.S. stood for "Known For Radio Clearness"? In fact, when the AM radio station signed on with 50 watts in 1924, it was heard as far away as New Zealand, far exceeding anyone's expectations.

January - June 2005

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San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a film festival first held in 1996 and presented every July at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. It is the largest silent film festival in the United States. In 2012, The festival presented, in association with American Zoetrope, The Film Preserve, Photoplay Productions, and the British Film Institute, a restored version of Abel Gance's Napoléon. (Albert Dieudonné as Napoléon pictured)

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Quote

“

When the lights go down in the City
And the sun shines on the bay
Ooh, I wanna be there in my City

”

~ Journey, Lights (1977)

more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

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Scheherazade', Opus 35, first movement, Rimsky-Korsakov, as performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pierre Monteux

credit: San Francisco Symphony Orchestra

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Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

Regions

East Bay

North Bay

Peninsula

Santa Clara Valley

Silicon Valley

Wine Country

West Marin

Geographic features

San Francisco Bay

San Pablo Bay

Suisun Bay

Islands of the Bay

Marin Headlands

Diablo Range

Berkeley Hills

Santa Cruz Mountains

Protected areas

Golden Gate Recreation Area

Farallones Marine Sanctuary

Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge

Point Reyes Seashore

Mount Tamalpais State Park

Henry Coe State Park

Midpeninsula Open Space

East Bay Regional Parks

Related Portals

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