Jump to content

Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Portal:Bay Area)
WELCOME TO THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA   BAY AREA CITIES   RECOGNIZED BAY AREA CONTENT

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

Phoenix, on the San Francisco Bay
Phoenix, on the San Francisco Bay

Phoenix is a fireboat owned by State of California and operated by the city of San Francisco in the San Francisco Bay since 1955. Phoenix is known for helping to save Marina District buildings from further destruction by fire following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Her worthy assistance resulted in a second vintage fireboat obtained for the city. Both Guardian and Phoenix are based at Firehouse No. 35 at Pier 22½ of the Port of San Francisco. Phoenix often leads parades of ships, and takes part in welcoming ceremonies. (more...)

Selected biography

Installation of Hedrick's 1967 "War Room"
Installation of Hedrick's 1967 "War Room"
Wally Bill Hedrick (1928 in Pasadena, California – December 17, 2003 in Bodega Bay, California) was a seminal American artist in the 1950s California counterculture, gallerist, and educator who came to prominence in the early 1960s. Hedrick’s contributions to art include pioneering artworks in psychedelic light art, mechanical kinetic sculpture, junk/assemblage sculpture, Pop Art, and (California) Funk Art. Later in his life, he was a recognized forerunner in Happenings, Conceptual Art, Bad Painting, Neo-Expressionism, and image appropriation. Hedrick was also a key figure in the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation when he helped to organize the Six Gallery Reading, and created the first artistic denunciation of American foreign policy in Vietnam. Wally Hedrick was known as an “idea artist” long before the label “conceptual art” entered the art world, and experimented with innovative use of language in art. (more...)

Selected city

East Palo Alto is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of East Palo Alto was 28,155. It is situated on the San Francisco Peninsula, roughly halfway between the cities of San Francisco and San Jose. To the north and east is the San Francisco Bay, to the west is the city of Menlo Park, and to the south the city of Palo Alto. Despite being called "East" Palo Alto, this is a misnomer, as the city is precisely due north of Palo Alto. While widely assumed to be part of the city of Palo Alto, East Palo Alto has always been a separate entity, being located in a different county since its founding as an unincorporated community (Palo Alto is in Santa Clara County) and until recently having an entirely different demographic makeup. The two cities are separated only by San Francisquito Creek and, largely, the Bayshore Freeway (the vast majority of East Palo Alto is northeast of the freeway, while all of the residential part of Palo Alto is southwest of the freeway). The revitalization projects in 2000, and the surge of high income high-tech professionals moving into the new developments (including employees from Google and Facebook), have begun to eliminate the cultural and economic differences between the two cities. (more...)

Selected image


The Bay Area by year

1898
Wong Kim Ark
Wong Kim Ark
Early Ferry building stereoscope, prior to the 1906 earthquake
Early Ferry building stereoscope, prior to the 1906 earthquake
Neptune Society Columbarium
Neptune Society Columbarium
Baldwin Hotel
Baldwin Hotel

 • United States v. Wong Kim Ark is decided in favor of Wong Kim Ark (pictured, left), who is thus considered a U.S. citizen
 • The San Francisco Ferry Building (pictured, right), designed by A. Page Brown, opens
 • A columbarium (pictured, right) is built at Odd Fellows Cemetery in San Francisco by Bernard J. S. Cahill, to complement an earlier columbarium built by him
 • The Baldwin Hotel (pictured, right) in San Francisco, built in 1876, burns down
 • Francis K. Shattuck dies after being knocked down by a man exiting from a train that Shattuck was attempting to board on the eponymous Shattuck Avenue

Selected historical image

Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

Previous Did you know...

El Cid Campeador
El Cid Campeador
Kimpton Sir Francis Drake Hotel rooftop
Kimpton Sir Francis Drake Hotel rooftop
"Cheese Cake" by Sheana Davis
"Cheese Cake" by Sheana Davis

 • ... that Charlotte L. Brown was one of the first African Americans to legally challenge racial segregation in the United States, when she filed a lawsuit against a streetcar company in San Francisco in the 1860's, after she was forcibly removed from a segregated streetcar?
 • ... that Bay Area restaurateur Juanita Musson often argued with and insulted her staff and customers, and was involved in a number of physical altercations, but was despite this still well-liked?
 • ... that a copy of El Cid Campeador, a sculpture of El Cid by artist Anna Hyatt Huntington, is displayed at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco? (sculpture pictured)
 • ... that in 1969, artist Alfred Young helped create a public environmental art piece, using a non-toxic yellow dye to spell out the word "OIL" in large capital letters in the San Francisco Bay? (artist's sketch of later work pictured)
 • ... that San Francisco columnist Herb Caen dubbed the Persian Room at San Francisco's Sir Francis Drake Hotel “The Snake Pit” because, he wrote, “You never heard such hissing or saw such writhing"? (rooftop pictured)
 • ... that cheesemaker and restaurateur Sheana Davis produces her cheeses at a cooperative in Berkeley, and provides them to the French Laundry and Kendall-Jackson? (Cheese "Cake" by Davis pictured)

November 2016

Selected periodic event

The Jewish Community Center of Berkeley
The Jewish Community Center of Berkeley

The Jewish Music Festival is an annual festival of Jewish music held in Berkeley, hosted by the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay (pictured). It has been held for 25 years. Notable guests have included Ben Sidran in 2014, among others.

Quote

~ William Saroyan
*more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

Selected multimedia file

The San Francisco Giants win game one of the 2010 World Series

Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

WikiProject

You are invited to participate in the San Francisco Bay Area task force, a task force dedicated to developing and improving articles about the San Francisco Bay Area.

Things you can do

Selected panorama

San Francisco Bay Area categories


Full category tree
Select [►] to view the full category tree.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals

Purge server cache