Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

Mount Diablo is a mountain in Contra Costa County, California in the San Francisco Bay Area, located south of Clayton and northeast of Danville. It is an isolated upthrust peak of 3,864 feet (1,178 m), visible from most of the San Francisco Bay Area and much of northern California. Mount Diablo appears from many angles to be a double pyramid and includes many subsidiary peaks, the largest and closest of which is the other half of the double pyramid, North Peak, nearly as high in elevation at 3,557 feet (1,084 m) and about one mile northeast of the main summit.

The peak is the centerpiece of Mount Diablo State Park, a state park of about 20,000 acres (8,000 ha) in area. The park was the first public open space of a complex—according to Save Mount Diablo—now including 38 preserves, including nearby city open spaces, regional parks, watersheds, etc., buffered in some areas with private lands protected with conservation easements. Preserved lands on and around Mount Diablo total more than 90,000 acres (36,000 ha). (more...)

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He also explored human consciousness, in the essay "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. His legacy has been kept alive by his son, Mark Watts, and many of his recorded talks and lectures are available on the Internet. According to the critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity." (more...)

San Mateo (/ˌsæn məˈteɪ.oʊ/ SAN mə-TAY-oh; Spanish for "Saint Matthew") is a city in San Mateo County, California in the high-tech enclave of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a population of 97,207 as of the 2010 census, it is one of the larger suburbs on the San Francisco Peninsula, located between Burlingame to the north, Foster City to the east, Belmont to the south, and Highlands-Baywood Park and Hillsborough to the west. San Mateo was incorporated in 1894. (more...)

• The Conservatory of Flowers (pictured) in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco is completed
• Mark Hopkin's mansion (pictured) in San Francisco is completed
• The California Street Cable Railroad, a cable car company, is founded in San Francisco by Leland Stanford
• Austin Herbert Hills and R. W. Hills begin selling coffee and tea from a market stall in San Francisco

• ... 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 an early incarnation of Bimbo's 365 Club (pictured) in San Francisco included Dolfina, a nude woman who appeared to swim inside a large aquarium over the bar?
• ... that the Council on Religion and the Homosexual once held a fundraiser dance despite intimidation from San Francisco police?
• ... that William C. McInnes, one of the first Jesuits to study business administration, simultaneously served as the president of both Fairfield University and the University of San Francisco for four months?
• ... that eclectic and non-traditional Quartet San Francisco has been nominated five times for Grammy Awards, most recently for QSF Plays Brubeck, the first all-Dave Brubeck string quartet recording?
• ... that the Bolinas, California-based unconventional winemaker Sean Thackrey was previously an art dealer?

January - March - 2010

FanimeCon is an annual anime convention. It is the largest anime convention in Northern California and the 5th largest North American anime convention as of 2013. It has been held at the San Jose Convention Center since 2004. (Zack Fair and Aerith Gainsborough cosplayers pictured)

*more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

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