The San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay area is known primarily for being probably the most important center in the world of the computer industry. Like Los Angeles and San Diego, far to the south, San Francisco began with the founding of a Spanish mission in the Eighteenth Century.

In 1849, there was a gold rush to the area. That is why today San Francisco's professional football team is known as the Forty-Niners, named for the people who arrived during the gold rush. This gold rush also led to the founding of Wells Fargo Bank, as a place to deposit newfound wealth. William Fargo was once the mayor of nearby Buffalo.

In 1906, the city was devastated by an earthquake. That led to another bank, the Bank of America, providing loans for rebuilding. Another interesting thing about San Francisco's banks is that, in the economic crash of 1929, not a single one of the city's banks failed.

In 1989 I was working in a factory. There was a portable television nearby with a baseball game on. The ground on the television suddenly began to shake. It was the Loma Prieta Earthquake which, while nowhere near as devastating as the one 83 years earlier, still did a lot of damage.

San Francisco is built on a peninsula. While that may make it very scenic, it also means that land is at a premium. As the city grows, the price of land finds it's way into everything else and that is why it is one of the most expensive cities in the world. The following image is from Google Earth. The city to the right across the bay is Oakland.

 
It may seem a mystery as to why San Francisco was a focal point in sometimes testy relations between the U.S. and Russia. There were makeshift wooden shacks on the roof of the Russian consulate there, believed to be concealing all manner of secret antennas. The FBI was reported to have dug a tunnel under the consulate, in an effort to determine if espionage is going on in there, before Donald Trump simply ordered it closed.

San Francisco is not a center of political power but this is explained by the forces of history. San Francisco was once a Russian colony.

One of the best-known views of San Francisco is from Alamo Square, toward downtown, looking past the row of houses known as the "Painted Ladies". The pyramid-shaped building downtown is the Transamerica Pyramid. The first of the following images is from Google Street View, the second is from Google Earth.

 
There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

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One of the best-known street intersections in the world gives it's name to the surrounding district. Haight-Ashbury is not only the name of a district in San Francisco, it is also the name of an era. This was the focal point of the Hippies of the late 1960s. The 1967 hit song by Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco", reminded those on their way there to be sure to remember to wear flowers in their hair. 

The spirit of bringing about a better world was certainly there in those days, and the Monterrey Pop Festival was the predecessor of Woodstock, on the other side of the country. The oak wood for the hardwood floors in the homes all around was harvested just across San Francisco Bay, and gave it's name to the city of Oakland.

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The inlet to San Francisco Bay, from the Pacific Ocean, is known as the Golden Gate. The bridge across it by that name is one of the hallmarks of San Francisco. The first image is from Google Street View.

 

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Moving south from San Francisco, along the western shore of San Francisco Bay, we come to the city of Palo Alto. Northern California is known for it's towering redwood trees, and the name of Palo Alto means "the tall stick". The southern end of San Francisco Bay is otherwise known as Silicon Valley. So much of the developments in modern computers originated in PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center. Also nearby is Google, where I presume that the servers that host this blog are located.

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At Palo Alto is Stanford University, which is known as the "University of Silicon Valley".

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At the southern end of San Francisco Bay is San Jose, considered as the "capital of Silicon Valley". It is actually the largest city in the San Francisco Bay area.

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San Jose is a wealthy city. This is a residential neighborhood.

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Across the bay from San Francisco is Oakland. It got it's name, as stated above, by providing oak wood to build the flooring in San Francisco homes. The 1906 earthquake that devastated San Francisco brought people to Oakland. San Francisco Bay is a natural harbor and Oakland is the port. The first image of Oakland is from Google Earth.

 

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Another famous university is the University of California at Berkeley. It is known for it's many discoveries involving elements and atoms and also for the student protests during the Vietnam War.

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A visit to San Francisco wouldn't be complete without Alcatraz. This is the island in San Francisco Bay that was used first as a fort, and then as a prison. It housed prisoners that were particularly notorious. The first three images are from Google Earth and Street View.

 

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In June of 1962 three prisoners escaped from Alcatraz, two of which were brothers. A fourth prisoner was supposed to join them but had to be left behind. The escape was elaborately planned, using a utility corridor behind the cells. Chiseling into the wall was done while music was being played, to hide the noise. The prisoners crafted life-like dummies to put in their cots. They sewed raincoats into an inflatable raft.

No one knows for certain what became of the three. A raft was reportedly found. Some believe that the tide into San Francisco Bay was the deciding factor. if the tide was on the way out when the escape took place during the night, the time of night isn't exactly known, they would have been swept out to sea and would have been unlikely to survive. But if the tide was on the way in they could have landed somewhere on shore and made their escape.

But there are many stories that their families have received communications from them, such as Christmas cards.

53 years after the escape from Alcatraz, another prison escape took place. It was on the other side of the country, in a northern New York State town called Dannemora. The escape, of two inmates, from the Clinton Correctional Facility was remarkably similar to the escape from Alcatraz. It didn't involve water but the escapees used the utility corridor behind their cells to eventually access a tunnel through which steam was piped, for heat during the winter, from an external steam plant. They accessed a manhole cover in an intersection a block away from the prison, and made their escape into the dense forest of the Adirondacks. In the following image, from Google Street View, the manhole cover is in the foreground and the prison wall in the background.

 
The country was enthralled with the escape for the month of June, 2015. The two escapees eventually split up, one being shot and killed and the other later shot and captured. Would this escape have happened as it did without the fame of the escape at Alcatraz?