Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

Point Reyes is a prominent cape and popular Northern California tourist destination on the Pacific coast of northern California. It is located in Marin County approximately 30 miles (50 km) west-northwest of San Francisco. The term is often applied to the Point Reyes Peninsula, the region bounded by Tomales Bay on the northeast and Bolinas Lagoon on the southeast. The headland is protected as part of Point Reyes National Seashore.

The cape protects Drakes Bay on its southern side. The headland is largely drained by Drakes Estero. Drakes Bay and Drake's Estero are named after English seafarer Sir Francis Drake who possibly hauled his ship, the Golden Hinde, up onto the beach for repairs in June 1579. Inverness Ridge runs along the peninsula's northwest-southeast spine, with forested peaks around 430 meters (1,400 ft). West of the ridge, the land flattens out and the vegetation turns to scrub. The Mount Vision fire in 1995 burned part of Inverness Ridge. Point Reyes lends its name to the town of Point Reyes Station, California.

The point may once have been known as Lobes Lighthouse by the sailors of clipper ships on the meat trade. (more...)

Willie Lewis Brown, Jr. (born March 20, 1934) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served over 30 years in the California State Assembly, spending 15 years as its speaker, and later served as the 41st mayor of San Francisco, the first African American to do so. Under the current California term-limits law, no Speaker of the California State Assembly will be permitted to have a longer tenure than Brown's. The San Francisco Chronicle called Brown “one of San Francisco’s most notable mayors” who had “celebrity beyond the city’s boundaries.”

Brown was born in Mineola, Texas and attended a segregated high school. He moved to San Francisco in 1951, attending San Francisco State University and graduating in 1955 with a degree in liberal studies. Brown earned a J.D. from University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1958. He spent several years in private practice before gaining election in his second attempt to the California Assembly in 1964. Brown became the Democrats' whip in 1969 and speaker in 1980. He was known for his ability to manage people and maintain party discipline. According to The New York Times, Brown became one of the country's most powerful state legislators. His long tenure and powerful position were used as a focal point of California's initiative campaign to limit the terms of state legislators, which passed in 1990. During the last of his three allowed post-initiative terms, Brown maintained control of the Assembly despite a slim Republican majority by gaining the vote of several Republicans. Near the end of his final term, Brown left the legislature to become mayor of San Francisco. (more...)

Rodeo /roʊˈdeɪ.oʊ/ is a census-designated place (CDP) located in Contra Costa County, California on the shore of San Pablo Bay. The population was 8,679 at the 2010 census. The town is named for the livestock roundups common in the late 19th century. Cattle from the surrounding hills were regularly driven down through the old town to a loading dock on the shoreline of San Pablo Bay for shipment to slaughterhouses, a practice which continued through the early 20th century. The town of Rodeo is served by the Interstate 80 freeway and State Route 4. The Southern Pacific Railroad main line passes through Rodeo. Rodeo has not been a stop on the railroad since the 1950s. (more...)

• In the last minute of a football game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets, Oakland scores two touchdowns to overcome a 32–29 New York lead, just as the NBC Television Network breaks away from the game, with the Jets still winning, to air the television film Heidi
• Japan Airlines Flight 2 flying from Tokyo International Airport to San Francisco International Airport lands in the shallow waters of San Francisco Bay, two and a half miles short of the runway, with no injuries
• Douglas Englebart presents a demonstration of potential new computer technology (prototype based on the demo pictured) at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco
• The Lawrence Hall of Science (pictured) is established in Berkeley
• KSFR, 94.9 FM, changes to call letters KSAN, and switches formats from classical music to freeform rock
• Luis Walter Alvarez at the University of California, Berkeley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics

• ... 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 Chinatown, San Francisco's waiter Edsel Ford Fong is fondly remembered for calling patrons "retarded" and "fat", slamming food on tables, groping female patrons, telling patrons to "sit down and shut up" and clearing tables before diners were finished?
• ... that two people died outside of San Francisco's Pier 26 during the 1934 Bloody Thursday Riots?
• ... that the stray dogs Bummer and Lazarus (pictured) were so popular with the people of San Francisco in the 1860s that they were given special exemption from the leash laws?

July - September 2007

The San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade is an annual event held in San Francisco. Held approximately two weeks after the first day of the Chinese New Year, it combines elements of the Chinese Lantern Festival with a typical American parade. First held in 1858, it is the oldest and largest event of its kind outside of Asia, and the largest Asian cultural event in North America. The parade route begins on Market Street and terminates in Chinatown.

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