Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

The Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary or United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island (often just referred to as Alcatraz) was a maximum high security Federal prison on Alcatraz Island, off the coast of San Francisco, California, USA, which operated from 1934 to 1963.

The main prison building was built in 1910-12 during the time it was a United States Army military prison; Alcatraz was the site of a citadel from the 1860s. The United States Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz was acquired by the United States Department of Justice on October 12, 1933, and the island became a Federal Bureau of Prisons federal prison in August 1934, after the buildings were modernized to meet the requirements of a top-notch security prison. Given this high security and the location of Alcatraz in the cold waters and strong currents of San Francisco Bay, at least a mile off the coast, the prison operators believed Alcatraz to be inescapable and America's strongest prison. (more...)

Philip George Zimbardo (born March 23, 1933) is a psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He became known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment and has since authored various introductory psychology books, textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including The Lucifer Effect, The Time Paradox and the The Time Cure. He is also the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project. After the prison experiment, Zimbardo decided to look for ways he could use psychology to help people; this led to the founding of The Shyness Clinic in Menlo Park, California, which treats shy behavior in adults and children. Zimbardo's research on shyness resulted in several bestselling books on the topic. Other subjects he has researched include mind control and cultic behavior. (more...)

Emeryville is a small city in Alameda County, California, in the United States. It is located in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, extending to the shore of San Francisco Bay. Its proximity to San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, the University of California, Berkeley, and Silicon Valley has been a catalyst for recent economic growth. It is home to Pixar Animation Studios, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Jamba Juice and Clif Bar. In addition, several well known biotech and software companies have made their home in Emeryville: Electronic Arts' Maxis Software division, LeapFrog, Sendmail, MobiTV, Novartis (formerly Chiron before April 2006), and BigFix (now IBM). The population was 10,080 as of 2010, although it swells considerably on weekdays due to the city's position as a regional employment center. Emeryville has some features of an edge city; however, it is located within the inner urban core of the Oakland/greater East Bay and was heavily industrialized before the First World War. (more...)

• Wines & Vines, a journal devoted to the North American wine business (early Wine Country vintages pictured), begins publishing in Marin County
• Edward Howard Duncan Jr. is born in Oakland
• The 18th Amendment results in Bay Area vineyards uprooted and cellars destroyed, with some vineyards and wineries converting to table grape or grape juice production, or providing churches with sacramental wine

• ... 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 Hood Mountain in California has high canopy mixed oak forests, pygmy forests and expanses of rock outcrop, and also has a vulnerable plant species named for it?
• ... that the soldier in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy reunited with his family after six years in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp?
• ... that Acanthomintha duttonii is an endangered wildflower that is found only in a six mile long strip on the San Francisco Peninsula?
• ... that artists of the Mission School, a San Francisco-based contemporary art movement, often make artworks from materials such as house paint, spray paint, correction fluid, ballpoint pens, and scrapboard?
• ... that Santa Rosa Creek (pictured) was the scene of an 1827 baptism of a Pomo maiden, which event led to the naming of the creek and also the city of Santa Rosa, California?
• ... that Sonoma Coast State Beach (pictured) is one of California's longest beaches and has rocks that have evidence of rubbing by mammoths 40,000 years ago?
• ... that Annadel State Park (pictured) is considered by some biologists to have some of the best preserved northern oak woodlands in western North America?

October/November 2006

The Alternative Press Expo (guest speaker Daniel Clowes pictured) or APE, as it is more commonly known, is a comics convention, founded in 1994 by Dan Vado as an event for self-publishers, independent publishers and alternative cartoonists to showcase their books. APE is currently held in San Francisco.

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