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A BAY AREA NEWS GROUP PREMIUM EDITION
FASCINATE YOUR FRIENDS WITH 50 FACTS ABOUT OUR BAY AREA
Bay Area News Group $4.95
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Quick sips
Bytes across the bay
Visual surprises
Treat yourself
These 32 fast factoids — which range from musical to mystical, artsy to athletic, and tragic to technological — will quench your thirst for regional knowledge with stories that include large lasers, a political pooch and a peculiar post office or two.
Dig into data about each of our nine distinctive Bay Area counties. Check out the flesh-eating flora in Sonoma County, get a taste of history in San Francisco, and learn about Contra Costa County’s connection to James Bond’s cocktail of choice.
Feast your eyes on stunning representations of seven fascinating facts — from our local literary links to our sinuous streets and the beloved San Francisco Bay itself — as well as the best place to soak in all of our area’s splendor.
Savor these two long reads about the interesting and offbeat: Take a tour of several curious architectural creations across the Bay Area, and check out some perplexing places that seem to fly in the face of physics.
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Opposite: A seagull takes flight from its perch on the Municipal Pier at Aquatic Park in San Francisco. OPPOSITE: PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM GENSHEIMER; ABOVE: PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY DOUG DURAN
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W E LC O M E
Our patchwork Bay Area BY TO R H AU G A N
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ven before I made my westward relocation three years ago, I knew a little about the Bay Area. I could tell you that Levi’s and Wells Fargo, among the high-water marks of American consumerism and capitalism, are headquartered here. But the first interesting bit of trivia I learned had to do with “Star Wars.” To my delight, a friend told me that the cranes that stand at the Oakland shoreline inspired George Lucas to create the AT-AT Walkers, which first appeared in “The Empire Strikes Back,” the second film of the original trilogy. (If you don’t know that “Star Wars” reference, you may be one of the four people who haven’t watched the original trilogy. Do yourself a favor, and check it out. You can thank me later.) That tidbit satisfied me on such a deep level — not only could I share that knowledge with visiting family members and friends from out of town, but it gave me an odd sense of pride in the region I had just embraced as my new home. It seemed plausible, too. Lucas has long lived in the Bay Area. Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic, the effects studio founded by him, are headquartered in San Francisco. But as I amassed more knowledge, I learned that the “Star Wars” “fact” was just as fictional as the storyline of the space epic franchise itself. Other tidbits I picked up early on — including that Mark Twain said his coldest winter was a summer in San Francisco
Artist Vik Muniz created the work at right by cutting up postcards and assembling them into an iconic image. This piece, titled “Golden Gate Bridge,” is part of Muniz’s “Postcards from Nowhere” series, which features notable cities and structures from around the world.
— turned out to be equally false (Twain never said that), however much I wanted to believe in them. Happily, what I have learned about this area since then has more than made up for that early disappointment. Turns out the cliche about truth being stranger than fiction is no fiction at all. This is a place where superlatives such as “first” and “biggest” are commonly used — and accurately so. A place where whimsy is built into our homes. A place where the impossible — such as water flowing uphill — seems to happen regularly. It is, in short, a place brimming with hidden mysteries and little-known facts. That gutter in the park? That’s made from old headstones. That crack in the roadway? It was commissioned as a piece of art. The picturesque bay you’ve looked at hundreds of times? It’s, on average, only about as deep as a swimming pool. The truth is, there are so many interesting tidbits about the Bay Area that we ended up culling from more than triple the 50 major factoids you’ll see here. And they’re true — every last one. Pretty soon (as soon as you flip the page — faster than you can say “Sunol dog mayor”) you’ll be knee deep in fascinating material about this region. And the more you learn, the more you’ll appreciate this wonderful patchwork of culture, technology and natural beauty we call home. Curious? Keep reading. We hope you enjoy.
VIK MUNIZ, POSTCARDS FROM NOWHERE, “GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE” 2015, DIGITAL C-PRINT, EDITION OF 6, 110 X 72 INCHES, COURTESY OF RENA BRANSTEN PROJECTS, SAN FRANCISCO ART © VIK MUNIZ/LICENSED BY VAGA, NEW YORK, NY
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BRAIN GAMES
There are 12 images hidden in this illustration. Each represents a curious fact about the Bay Area. Can you spot them? Answers, Page 82 I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y S T U D I O 2 & 3 6
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Man on fire Imagine a postapocalyptic desert full of retro-futuristic dieselpunk creations and a cast of characters outfitted in a kaleidoscopic combination of fringes, feathers and, sometimes, next to nothing at all. What kind of world is this, you ask? (Hint: It’s not the dystopian Outback in George Miller’s “Mad Max.”) It’s Burning Man, the yearly collective outburst of expression in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, which got its start in (where else?) the Bay Area. On June 22, 1986, at what has been referred to as the first Burning Man, Larry Harvey and Jerry James took their wooden effigy of a man to San Francisco’s Baker Beach and ignited it, sparking an annual tradition that continued in San Francisco for the next few years. Eventually, however, police intervened and said the namesake effigy could not be burned, given the potential fire hazard. A change in venue was needed, so the first Burning Man in Black Rock Desert kicked off in 1990 — and the rest is flame-filled, mutant car-packed history. (Bonus: Themed temples, which have artistic as well as spiritual significance for attendees, have become a Burning Man tradition, and 2015’s Temple of Promise was built by the Dreamers Guild in Alameda. Final construction took place on location. As with the man, the temples are burned each year.)
One town under dog
The fault in our park
Lamb you, autocorrect
Let’s face it: Some politicians are all bark and no bite. In 1981, Bosco, a black Labrador mix, was elected honorary mayor of Sunol, an unincorporated town in Alameda County with fewer than 1,000 residents. Bosco beat two (non-canine) candidates to win the election. The political pooch — who ran as a “Re-pup-lican” — drew his share of media attention, even on the other side of the world. Years after Bosco was elected, a Chinese Communist newspaper, the People’s Daily, apparently not realizing the jocular premise, cited his rise to political office as an example of the failure of democratic elections. Bosco served until his death in 1994, but in Sunol, he lives on in spirit. Since 2008, a statue of him stands in front of the town’s post office.
If stepping on a crack will break your mother’s back, we’d hate to find out what stepping on a work of art would do. Walking on this piece, featured by the website Atlas Obscura, might not be quite the same as leaving footprints on the “Mona Lisa.” In fact, Golden Gate Park visitors might not even realize that there’s an artistic creation underfoot. If you look down at the ground outside the de Young Museum in San Francisco, you can see “Drawn Stone,” which looks like a long, continuous crack. The work, by English artist Andy Goldsworthy, runs from the road outside the museum through the courtyard and to the front door; it was inspired by the state’s tectonic topography. The crack fractures off into smaller fissures and slabs, made of stone from the artist’s homeland, for visitors to sit on. And some people have the nerve to say modern art is useless.
Do you ever get the sense that technology is not cooperating with you? Well, you’re not alone. One such problem in our digital age is the ubiquitous phenomenon of spell-checkers miscorrecting a word. This erroneous autocorrection has a name: It’s called the Cupertino effect. After 1997’s Microsoft Word rolled out, European Union translators began seeing the name of the South Bay city — the home of Apple headquarters — come up in their documents. As it turned out, the unhyphenated “cooperation” had been correcting to “Cupertino,” according to a New York Times article. The factoid-packed Mental Floss magazine notes some good examples of the Cupertino effect in action — including an Italian recipe that instructs cooks to “Stir in prostitute, provolone, pine nuts” and other ingredients. And we thought prosciutto was expensive.
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A matter of time Here’s a story — recounted in the Vallejo Times-Herald — that should stand the test of time: A public timepiece at 316 Georgia St. in that city got the peculiar name “The Alibi Clock” because of its role in the case of two labor radicals accused of setting off a bomb during the 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day Parade. The parade, in which tens of thousands of people participated, was organized to inspire support for the United States’ entry into World War I and was a target of radicals. In a photograph that came up in trial, the time on the clock, which originally stood at Market Street in San Francisco, as well as the location, made it clear that the man in the photo — Thomas Mooney, who was seen watching the parade on a roof with his wife — was nowhere near the site of the explosion, which killed 10 and injured 40. Nevertheless, Mooney, as well as Warren Billings — a fellow labor leader also accused in the bombing — were convicted on testimony later proved to be perjured, according to the ACLU, and the two were sentenced to be hanged. The two — first Mooney, then later Billings — eventually were pardoned. Billings, while serving time in Folsom Prison, learned skills to become — get this — a watchmaker, which he pursued once he attained freedom. To this day, the mystery of who set off the bomb lives on.
Fan frugality
History lives next door
Mystical mail
Can’t afford a ticket to the game? Put on your hiking boots. Cheapskate fans have had a free view of Cal football games from Tightwad Hill, overlooking the east rim of Memorial Stadium, since the stadium was built in 1923. What to wear? Earplugs. Tightwad Hill is home to the California Victory Cannon, which fires after each Bears score. (On one occasion, a 1991 game against Pacific in which Cal scored 12 touchdowns, the cannon ran out of ammo.) What not to wear? Red, the color of rival Stanford Cardinal. While you’re up there straddling the Hayward Fault, check out the Bay Area views, which could impress even the most jaded Bears fans, who are lamenting the team’s 56-year Rose Bowl drought. (Bonus: Originally, the mascots that appeared at Cal’s football games were real, live bears. In 1940, it was decided to go with a costumed mascot instead, according to Cal. Good call.)
San Francisco’s Fillmore is brimming with cultural significance — one look at the massive collection of photos and posters on the walls within the venue will make that clear — but passers-by may not know the historical significance of the site of the Geary Boulevard post office next door. The spot once was the location of a synagogue, but the building was vacant by the 1970s. Then it was taken over by a charismatic preacher (Jim Jones — heard of him?), according to “San Francisco’s Fillmore District” by Robert F. Oaks. Jones’ following grew, he relocated to Guyana, and the rest — including the infamous batch of grape punch — is history, as they say. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the building used by Jones was torn down, making way for the post office that stands there today.
Going to the post office has never been so adorable. Since December 2013, a knothole in a tree on the Curran Trail in Tilden Park in the Berkeley hills has been home to a fairy post office, complete with appropriately proportioned furniture. Think the soap doll tree from “To Kill a Mockingbird” — but much cuter. The minuscule post office, as recounted by the website Atlas Obscura, was installed by Leafcutter Designs, a creative studio and online shop based in Berkeley. As of a June dispatch on the Leafcutter Designs website, the post office is intact and still in business. Although some items have disappeared, hikers have added their own touches, including a tiny stuffed horse, a miniature coat hanger and plenty of fan mail. It may not have its own postal code, but it does have its own hashtag — visitors are asked to tag their photos with #tildenpo. What makes this better than the actual post office? No lines.
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Let’s get small Ah, the Bay Area — where the only things as ubiquitous as yoga mats and plumes of pot smoke are complaints about skyhigh housing prices. If you think high costs have forced you into tiny quarters, consider the folks whose digs are made from shipping containers, the metal boxes that line the bayside landscape. “It’s kind of a blank space,” says Luke Iseman, who lives in an East Bay warehouse among other shipping containers and their inhabitants. “You can do what you want with it.” Iseman left San Francisco and moved to a West Oakland lot, which became the first Bay Area location for his shipping-container dwelling. His is similar to a studio apartment. He has an induction burner and convection oven, a sink with hot water, a refrigerator and a shower, and the warehouse has a flush toilet. Containers are a mere 160 square feet and cost $2,300, delivered to Oakland. He put about $10,000 into converting it, including a solar system and “a lot of learning mistakes.” Through his company, Boxouse, Iseman helps people wishing to experience the shipping-container life. Iseman says his way of living has put things in perspective. In his original location, he had to move a tank of his own water with a forklift. “Having to physically move the water — even with machinery — gave me a sense of the amount of water we actually use.”
Smooth operator
No ‘H’? No problem
Freedom March, Bay Area-style
Move over, George Washington Carver. It’s time to shine a light on Joseph L. Rosefield, the father of innovations that have spread throughout the peanut butter industry and have stuck around to this day. In the early 1920s, Rosefield, whose family business, Rosefield Packing, was based in Alameda, filed a patent for the partial hydrogenation process to make modern, nonseparating peanut butter, according to “Creamy and Crunchy,” a history of peanut butter. And his process of churning, rather than grinding, peanuts gave his peanut butter a smoother texture. He also began using wide-mouth jars, now the industry standard. As if that weren’t enough, he invented chunky peanut butter. Rosefield Packing was ahead of its time — it was making a chocolate-andpeanut-butter confection as early as 1918, years before the Reese’s cup came out. A monument at Webster Street and Atlantic Avenue marks the former location of Rosefield Packing, which also originated Skippy, still popular today.
What’s in a name? In the case of the East Contra Costa city of Pittsburg, quite a lot, it turns out. Pittsburg, the town of 60,000-plus residents at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, has a history of changing its name. The town was called New York of the Pacific, possibly because the man who laid out the town was a New York native, and was renamed Black Diamond after coal was discovered nearby. A vote in 1911 established the moniker used today. According to the city, Pittsburg was named after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a place with which it shares a history of steel manufacturing — Columbia Geneva Steel opened in Pittsburg in 1906. The “H” was removed to simplify the spelling.
Before the Black Power salute seen around the world, San Jose State Spartan (and 1968 200-meter Olympic gold medalist) Tommie Smith was involved in activism in the Bay Area. According to his autobiography, he joined other SJSU students and athletes in a 60-mile march, which took place March 13-14, 1965, from the campus to San Francisco. Like any world-class athlete would do, Smith set off to join the other marchers — who were supporting the efforts of the people fighting for civil rights in the South — only after participating in a track meet. Although the end of the march was somewhat anticlimactic — the politician who was supposed to meet them didn’t show up — it was important for Smith. In his words, “It signified for me, for the first time, that being one of the best in the world in any activity obligated you to contribute.”
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Making waves In the world of sports and beyond, “The Wave” has made a splash. What has been called the first recorded Wave occurred Oct. 15, 1981, in Oakland at an A’s playoff game against the New York Yankees, and was led by cheerleader Krazy George Henderson, a San Jose State alum. As the San Francisco Examiner’s Bucky Walter later wrote: “A study of the NBC videotape verifies Krazy George’s claim. In the fifth, seventh and ninth innings, a rolling wave occurred. It was unmistakably, indisputably the inception of the Fan Wave.” Henderson has led cheers for more acronymic sports organizations — including the NBA, MLB and NHL — than you can shake a drumstick at (he’s known for leading cheers with his trusty hand drum). These days, the Wave happens at events around the world. One place where the Wave hasn’t caught on? AT&T Park. Although the Wave is not banned there, many Giants fans frown upon it. Recently, as a contestant in the 10th season of “America’s Got Talent,” Henderson led the audience in a Wave but was quickly buzzed by the judges, who gave him a wave of their own — waving him goodbye. But it’s clear Henderson has made an imprint, and he’s still going strong. As Henderson himself says in the title of his own book, he’s “still krazy after all these cheers.”
United Nations — in Moraga Valley?
Pixar touch
The (first and) last emperor
The Bay Area is a virtual United Nations of sorts — a hotbed of diversity. But the region has an early link to the history of the actual United Nations. In 1945, a meeting of nations was held at the San Francisco Memorial Opera House, at which a charter was produced that went on to establish the U.N. Interest in Contra Costa County as a location for U.N. headquarters was reported as early as March 1945. The Contra Costa Board of Supervisors endorsed the notion of placing U.N. HQ in Moraga Valley, and the area was touted for its land and the ease of access from San Francisco, according to “Capital of the World” by Charlene Mires. Site inspectors, however, rejected the idea in favor of a site closer to San Francisco. Since 1952, a complex in Manhattan has served as the U.N. headquarters.
We all know that Emeryville is home to Pixar. But casual viewers of the studio’s flicks may not know how many Bay Area touches make it into the movies. Emeryville gets some love in films such as “Cars” and “Toy Story 3” (an application for a college located in Emeryville is seen on Andy’s bulletin board). For 2007’s “Ratatouille,” producer Brad Lewis interned at Yountville’s famed French Laundry. Local favorite Fentons Creamery in Oakland is in 2009’s “Up.” “Inside Out,” released this past summer, is set in San Francisco and features numerous Fog City landmarks. And Richmond’s Hidden City Cafe (now closed) is seen in “Monsters, Inc.” The cafe is said to be the site where Pixar filmmakers spawned the ideas for “A Bug’s Life,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Finding Nemo” and “WALL-E” — in one meeting. Not bad for a day’s work.
San Francisco is full of highsociety types nowadays. But did you know it also was home to an emperor? In 1859, Joshua Norton, an English-born businessman who lost his fortune, pronounced himself the “Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico” in the San Francisco Bulletin, according to the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society. San Francisco residents embraced the self-proclaimed emperor, and the eccentric Norton — who, among other “official” functions, issued proclamations, had his own currency printed and attended sessions of government — became something of a local celebrity. He rode free on public transit and was immortalized by one of the American literary greats: Mark Twain, who moved to San Francisco while Norton was emperor, revealed that the character of the King in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was based on Norton.
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Resting among the best Mill among millionaires and other interesting figures at Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery. Along with its stunning views, the cemetery is known as the final resting place of business tycoons, politicians, Civil War veterans and even the victim of a notorious, unsolved murder. Among those laid to rest at the cemetery, located at the end of Piedmont Avenue, are architect Julia Morgan, who designed hundreds of buildings, including Hearst Castle; Bernard Maybeck, who mentored Morgan and designed San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts; physician and former Oakland Mayor Samuel Merritt (and Merritt College and Lake Merritt namesake); Ina Coolbrith, the state’s first poet laureate; multiple California governors; and Elizabeth Short, “The Black Dahlia,” whose 1947 murder in Los Angeles remains a mystery. James A. Folger, of coffee company fame, Domingo Ghirardelli — yes, that Ghirardelli — and mining magnate Francis Marion “Borax” Smith also rest at the historic cemetery, designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose prolific career included designing New York’s Central Park and the Stanford University campus. (Bonus: They may not be considered Wonders of the World, but the cemetery’s pyramid-shaped mausoleums are sights to behold — provided you can spot them.)
Cafe of cats
Gay, not-so-gay by the bay
History laid bear
Who knew that cats and caffeine pair so nicely? To experience this curious combination, look no further than Oakland’s Cat Town Cafe, at 2869 Broadway, which became the nation’s first permanent cat cafe when it opened in October 2014. Cat cafes offer patrons the chance to grab a bite and interact with feline friends in a single venue, but to satisfy health regulations, Cat Town Cafe is split into two: It has a cafe, which offers coffee and baked goods, and the Cat Zone, with free-roaming felines awaiting adoption. The Cat Town Cafe, which helps empty cages at the shelter, is an extension of the efforts of Cat Town, a nonprofit cat rescue organization. But the concept of cat cafes is nothing new — they are popular in Japan, and since Cat Town Cafe opened, other cat cafes have appeared in various locations across the country. To make a donation or a Cat Zone reservation, go to http://cattowncafe.com.
Yes, San Francisco is something of a Promised Land for gay folks. It has the Castro, the Pride Parade, and more gay bars and rainbow flags than you can shake a stick at. It may come as no surprise, then, that the results of a Gallup survey released in March of the 50 biggest metropolitan areas in the nation showed the San Francisco area (including Oakland and Hayward) has the highest concentration of LGBT-identified residents in the nation, at 6.2 percent. Nothing shocking there. In fact, it’d be kind of shocking if that weren’t true. On the other hand, the San Jose area (including Santa Clara and Sunnyvale) ranked as having among the lowest concentrations, at 3.2 percent. Note: If you’re keeping track, it was the Birmingham, Alabama, area that came in as having the lowest rate — 2.6 percent — of LGBT-identified residents.
Seen a bear in California lately? If you’ve been to a zoo, Folsom Street Fair or Bear Pride lately — whoops, wrong kind of bear — the odds are quite high. But we’re talking wild grizzlies, which have been wiped out in California. So how did the grizzly get on the state flag? Despite what a gag Snopes.com entry says, the bear was not included on the flag because someone misread the word “pear” — “Pear Flag Republic” just doesn’t sound right, anyway. To learn the real answer, we have to go back to the Bear Flag Revolt. In 1846, a group of Americans captured the city of Sonoma from the Mexican government. California was declared independent, and a flag was raised. The banner included a star and a bear, an animal that was fairly common back then. That flag served as the basis of the California flag we see all over the state today.
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A bigger beam It might not be attached to the head of a shark, but we think it’s still pretty darn cool. Lawrence Livermore Lab’s National Ignition Facility is home to the largest and highest-energy laser system in the world, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. NIF’s 192 beams, housed in a 10-story building, can emit nearly 2 million joules of ultraviolet laser energy in billionth-of-a-second pulses onto a target about the size of a pencil’s eraser. Last year, the laser system made news because of a new study in which scientists subjected diamonds to the laser system to get a sense of what happens in the cores of huge planets. (Using diamonds in the name of research? What’s next? A chinchilla coat and Cristal?) Those planetary cores, much like frantic rush-hour commutes across the bay, can be high-pressure situations — which is why the laser came in handy. If you’re a Trekkie — if you’ve read this much about lasers, the odds are not low — then you might already know that NIF was seen in J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek Into Darkness,” where it played the Enterprise’s warp core. We’re hoping the facility and the lab’s helpful innovations live long and prosper. Side note: There are no known plans for Abrams to use the NIF in any upcoming movies. But a fanboy can dream.
Fatal attraction
If walls could talk ...
Where the buffalo roam
The Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge: Aside from being tourism hot spots, all of these places are also known as “suicide magnets.” In 1995, as the number of Golden Gate Bridge jumpers approached 1,000, a radio DJ offered a free case of Snapple for the family of the 1,000th jumper. In June of that year, to discourage record breakers, the California Highway Patrol stopped the official suicide count at 997, according to news reports. The unofficial 1,000th jumper — a 25-year-old man — leapt from the bridge the next month. Last year, the Golden Gate Bridge board approved funding and a design for a suicide barrier on the bridge, meant to deter would-be jumpers from making the plunge of more than 200 feet.
The former site of what was referred to as the “Great Asylum for the Insane” now is occupied by one of Silicon Valley’s hottest tech companies. Agnews in Santa Clara, which was established in the late 1800s as a facility for the mentally ill, probably is best-known as the place where more than 100 people were killed in 1906 after the San Francisco earthquake; it’s said to be the greatest loss of life in Santa Clara County. Since 1997, Agnews has been on the National Register of Historic Places. So who now owns the historic spot that has drawn interest from everyone from history buffs to self-styled ghost hunters? Oracle, which uses it for R&D and as a conference center. (Bonus: Green Day, the hugely successful pop-punk outfit from the East Bay, filmed the music video for “Basket Case,” a single from their landmark “Dookie” album, at the location.)
“What a zoo!” is an expression usually reserved for places such as Pier 39 and similar tourist traps within San Francisco. But did you know that Golden Gate Park once was the site of an actual free-range zoo? It included goats, elk, caribou, zebras, peacocks, quails, kangaroos, bison and even a bear pit. In the late 1920s, Park Superintendent John McLaren suggested that the city find a better locale for a zoo, and the animals became a part of the San Francisco Zoological Gardens. Today, near Spreckels Lake in the park, furry reminders of the park’s zoological past roam the landscape. The bison are the last remaining vestiges of the park’s menagerie of animals. They were moved from the eastern part of the park to the meadow they currently inhabit, and they’re cared for by San Francisco Zoo staff members.
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Simply groundbreaking The San Jose Earthquakes have shaken things up with their new stadium. Before Avaya Stadium even existed, the structure’s groundbreaking was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest in terms of participants. There were 6,256 people on hand for the October 2012 event, and the Earthquakes provided 6,000 shovels for fans to break ground. To make it official, everyone had to pitch in for two minutes. Since the participants outnumbered the shovels provided, some people used their own shovels, and some were more creative. “Some kids brought a Tonka truck with a little scooper on it,” says Jed Mettee, vice president of marketing and communications. Apart from the groundbreaking, the stadium holds some distinctions of its own. It is the first cloud-enabled stadium in Major League Soccer, and its robust network makes it easier to add new technologies in the future. If you’re a techie, you might have noticed that a pattern of colored seats in sections 117 and 118 spell out a secret message — “GO EQ” — in binary code. And what better place for a seismograph than Earthquakes HQ? The U.S. Geological Survey has installed one in the Earthquakes offices to detect ground movement, and it’s sensitive enough to record vibrations of roaring fans. (Bonus: The Earthquakes were San Jose’s first major professional sports team.)
There’s a light
Straight from the ‘Heart’
The story about morning glory
The Livermore area has seen a lot of lightbulb moments — some in its labs, some at its vineyards. But what happens when a lightbulb moment lasts for more than a century? That’s exactly what’s happening at Fire Station No. 6, home of the Livermore Centennial Light Bulb, which has been burning, albeit not continuously, since it was installed in 1901. The bulb has been burning 24 hours a day to illuminate the fire engines, but it has been moved a few times, most recently in 1976 to its current location. The hand-blown bulb with a carbon filament originally glowed at 60 watts but now burns at 4 watts, and it has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the longest-burning lightbulb. Sound familiar? You might have seen it on “Mythbusters.”
Tony Bennett, who has been introduced to a whole new audience through his duets with Lady Gaga, is a time-tested crooner of the highest caliber. And we’ve all heard “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” his signature song, yet many people may be unfamiliar with its origin story. The song was written in the early 1950s by a gay couple, lyricist Douglass Cross and composer George Cory, who lived in the Bay Area but relocated to New York. Cross grew up in Oakland and Cory in San Francisco and Mill Valley, according to reports, and the two came back to California in the ’60s — in time for them to see their famous work be named San Francisco’s official song. On Valentine’s Day 2012, San Francisco celebrated the 50th anniversary of Bennett’s signature song, and Mayor Ed Lee declared the occasion “Tony Bennett Day.”
What a drain! The Morning Glory Spillway near Napa County’s Monticello Dam, which dams Lake Berryessa, generally is known as the largest drain hole — a type of spillway shaped like a gigantic cement funnel — in the world, according to a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation official. Cheekily referred to by locals as the “The Glory Hole,” it is 72 feet across and allows water to bypass the dam when the lake reaches its capacity of 1,602,000 acre-feet. The hole, which is written about at the website Atlas Obscura, was constructed in the 1950s and can be seen by lake visitors and on Google Maps. Some skateboarders and BMX bikers have been known to use the exit pipe — a full pipe — as a spot to shred. But if you think “The Glory Hole” beckons you, think again. In 1997, a Davis woman died when she was sucked down the spillway.
RESE ARCH AND WRITING BY TOR HAUG AN
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QUICK SIPS
Fab Four’s ‘Hello, Goodbye’ Here’s some Beatles trivia that you can’t get by playing one of their records backward. Although the Beatles — and Beatlemania — spanned the globe, the venue they played on their first North American tour date and the location where they performed their final scheduled concert were within miles of each other. Although they had performed shows in the U.S., the Fab Four kicked off their first proper North American tour Aug. 19, 1964, at Daly City’s Cow Palace. And it was adjacent San Francisco that served as the backdrop for the end of a chapter for the Beatles. Their final announced concert took place Aug. 29, 1966, at Candlestick Park, although the famous, unplanned rooftop concert in London occurred in January 1969, marking the band’s final public performance. In a full-circle moment, in August 2014, Sir Paul McCartney returned to Candlestick for a predemolition show at the stadium. (Bonus: How did the Cow Palace get its name? The livestock portion of the 1915 Pan-Pacific International Exposition proved popular, prompting business leaders to come up with an idea for a permanent venue for an animal expo. During the Great Depression, the idea of using public money for the site during a period of such great struggle caught flak, leading one newspaper writer to question the idea of funding a “palace for cows.”)
Wind it up
A different kind of #PizzaRat
No place like gnome
Where is the largest wind tunnel in the world, you ask? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. Actually, the answer is Mountain View’s NASA Ames Research Center. The National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex, or NFAC, located at Ames, is home to a 40-by-80-foot test section and an 80-by-120-foot test section, the latter of which is capable of testing a full-size Boeing 737. These two test sections are the second-largest and largest wind tunnels in the world, and according to NASA, nearly every model of major commercial American aircraft built in the past quarter-century or so has been tested at NFAC. The larger of the two test sections can provide test velocities of as much as 100 knots, or 115 mph, and the smaller can blow you away at speeds of as much as 300 knots, or 345 mph.
Long before #PizzaRat was dragging New York slices across subway floors (YouTube it if you don’t understand), another pizza rat was looming large in San Jose. The statue, said to be the largest rat in the world, resides at a Chuck E. Cheese’s outpost near Highway 101 and Tully Road in San Jose. Who came up with the idea for the larger-than-life rodent? Nolan Bushnell, the cofounder of Atari and founder of Chuck E. Cheese’s. The building had a very large window, and Bushnell “felt the best use would be to fill it with the rat.” Bushnell also is the reason for a rat being the poster critter for the establishment in the first place — but it was through a happy accident, when he bought what he thought was a coyote costume at a trade show. (Bonus: The first Chuck E. Cheese’s was at Town and Country Shopping Center on Winchester Boulevard in San Jose and was an immediate success.)
A few years ago, in the neighborhoods near Lake Merritt, little fellows with pointy hats and beards began popping up in large numbers. No, we’re not talking about hipsters (though there are plenty of those, too). We’re talking about gnomes. The inches-tall painted figures are seen on pieces of wood affixed to telephone poles, at sidewalk level. They have pleased many passersby, whose days are made a little more magical by their presence. But Pacific Gas & Electric at first said the mystical creatures were compromising its equipment, and the utility wanted them removed. PG&E, however, later reversed course after an outpouring of support for the little guys, and declared the utility poles “gnomeman’s land.” (Bonus: The gnomes tend to live near Lake Merritt, which holds a distinction of its own. Designated in 1870, Lake Merritt is the oldest official wildlife refuge in the nation.)
RESE ARCH AND WRITING BY TOR HAUG AN
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BRAIN GAMES
For this Bay Area-themed puzzle, enter the solutions to the clues below. Then unscramble the highlighted letters to solve for the following: Scenes from this Oscar winner were shot at San Francisco’s Pier 45. 1 The world’s largest temporary corn maze, verified by Guinness World Records, was made in this northeastern Bay Area location. 2 This tower is the third-tallest bell and clock tower in the world. 3 This famed familial duo of funnymen attended San Jose State. 4 A distillery in this city was the first in the nation to release American-made absinthe after the ban was lifted in 2007. 5 This castlelike structure in Richmond, now abandoned, once was known as the world’s largest winery. 6 Seabiscuit trained for his comeback at a facility in this city. 7 This iconic writer ran for Oakland mayor on the Socialist ticket.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 F I N D T H E A N S W E R O N PA G E 8 2
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BYTES ACROSS THE BAY A TALE FOR EACH OF OUR NINE COUNTIES
INVENTED HERE
In the late 1960s, a San Josebased team of IBM engineers, working under David L. Noble, came up with a flexible Mylar disk coated with magnetic material that could be spun. The first floppies were 8 inches and uncovered, and thus open to contaminants. The team then put them in sturdy envelopes, protecting them from dust, thereby giving us an important piece of technology that, along with typewriters and eight tracks (and, eventually, one hopes, e-cigarettes and selfie sticks) can be counted among the victims of the lightning-fast pace of technological innovation.
P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y D O U G D U R A N
BY T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
A taste of history in every bite SAN FRANCISCO COUNT Y
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rom a railing just above Boudin Bakery’s bustling workplace, Fernando Padilla signals for one of his fellow bakers to toss him a chunk of dough. The softball-sized glob settles softly into Padilla’s hands, and he pulls it apart and holds it to his nose for a deep inhale. “I love that smell,” he says. This is the special stuff, the historic stuff. It’s a piece of the so-called mother dough, the wild yeast starter that has gone into every of loaf of sourdough bread baked by Boudin since 1849. Padilla is Boudin’s master baker, and it’s his job to make sure the mother dough endures. “This is like Coit Tower, the cable cars, the Golden Gate Bridge,” Padilla says, rolling the dough in his hand. “Boudin sourdough right here at the Fisherman’s Wharf is iconic. It’s San Francisco history. If we run out of it, we shut the doors.” To Boudin, this dough is the greatest invention since before sliced bread (which came along in 1928). The bakery was born in 1849, when an immigrant named Isidore Boudin, who hailed from a family of master bakers in Burgundy, France, kneaded a hardy dough and formed it into the shape of a traditional French loaf. Even after the introduction of commercial yeast in 1868, Boudin Bakery continued to make bread the way bakers had done for centuries. They set aside a portion of the previous day’s dough to provide the natural yeast for leavening the next batch. To this day, there’s a trace of the Gold Rush era in each bite. Boudin’s mother dough even survived the great earthquake of 1906. When the quake struck at 5:12 a.m. that April 18, setting off fires across San Francisco, Louise Boudin tossed some mother dough into a wooden bucket and fled the scene just before the bakery
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burned to the ground. Padilla understands that, in case of emergency, he’d be called upon to do the same. He apprenticed under former Boudin owner “Papa Steve” Giraudo. And late in Giraudo’s life, he handed the reins to Padilla. “He sat me down and told me all the things he wanted me to take care of, especially the mother dough,” says Padilla, who is in his 36th year at the bakery. “He said to me, ‘Don’t worry about the ups and downs of the business. But if you take care of the bread and the mother dough, they will take care of you.’ And it’s true.” Padilla now passes down such lessons to his underlings. He teaches classes for Boudin employees — they call it Sourdough University. Bakers also learn the science behind why San Francisco sourdough tastes different (and better) than anywhere else on earth. The quick version: San Francisco’s foggy weather creates an ideal environment for the wild yeast and the lactobacilli in sourdough. The ingredients thrive in what Padilla called “a symbiotic colony,” and things work especially well close to San Francisco Bay. The taste simply can’t be replicated in other parts of the country. Padilla now oversees the operation that has locations all over California. Between the third and fourth week of each month, Padilla will ship a container of 30 or 40 pounds of mother dough from the flagship. When it arrives, the other bakeries are instructed to bake the old dough (thus destroying it) and “start a whole new batch so that they have a strong injection of the San Francisco starter,” Padilla says. In all, the Fisherman’s Wharf location pumps out 20,000 pounds of dough a day. “Being able to keep this alive and healthy, it’s amazing,” Padilla says. “It’s history. It’s part of San Francisco.”
Clockwise from top left: A bas-relief shows Isidore Boudin, the founder of Boudin Bakery; a locked box contains Boudin’s mother dough; Victor Gutierrez shapes sourdough rolls; rounds are scored before they are baked. At right: Master baker Fernando Padilla can talk like a professor, with his references to bacteria, fermentation, and pH levels. But when he talks about the mother dough, he sounds more often like a doting uncle: “You need to keep the mother healthy so she can keep having babies and babies and babies.”
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BY T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
‘Ghostly’ reminder of World War II S A N M AT E O C O U N T Y
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he old military bunker, once buried in a nest of rock, now rests atop a coastal bluff like a partially excavated fossil. With its metal-and-concrete shell exposed to the ocean air and covered by graffiti, the World War II observation post off Highway 1 is San Mateo County’s most evocative reminder of a largely forgotten era — a time more than 70 years ago when the U.S. military and Bay Area civilians prepared feverishly for an enemy assault that never came. The bunker, the centerpiece of Little Devils Slide Military Reservation, was one of five “fire control stations” built by the Army at Devils Slide, between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay. Men in these stations kept a lookout for attacking Japanese ships. Their job was to telephone the enemy’s coordinates to massive gun batteries in the Marin Headlands and at Fort Funston. Just a few miles down the coast, the Army also built an outpost with a radar tower and anti-aircraft machine guns along Pillar Point Bluff (now the Pillar Point Air Force Station) and a mile-long airstrip (now Half Moon Bay Airport). These measures were part of a sprawling defensive system the Army began constructing in the 1930s around the mouth of the Golden Gate. The work took on new urgency in 1941 after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The buildup reflected the strategic importance of San Francisco Bay, not only a vital transportation hub, but also home to Mare Island and Hunters Point naval shipyards, among other military installations. The Army suspended hundreds of mines in the ocean outside the bay and strung a submarine net across the inside. “San Francisco’s harbor defens-
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es were the No. 1 priority for the Corps of Engineers on the Pacific Coast,” said Stephen Haller, a historian with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The agency now owns most of the old coastal fortifications. Amid this vast mobilization, San Mateo County’s slightly more than 110,000 residents threw themselves into civilian defense initiatives and salvage drives. The archives of the county history museum preserve much of their effort on the Peninsula. The Three Cities Defense Council, representing San Mateo, Hillsborough and Burlingame, reported in August 1942 that its salvage campaign had gathered 75 tons of scrap metal and 500,000 pounds of rubber, along with various amounts of keys, rags and grease. All this effort may not have mattered much in the outcome of the war, but it proved essential for public morale, said Mitch Postel, president of the San Mateo County Historical Association. And the Bay Area’s seacoast defense network, though never tested by the Japanese, served as an effective deterrent. The fire control stations at Devils Slide have faded into semi-obscurity. Public access is restricted because of the precarious terrain. The Little Devils Slide bunker acquired its peculiar appearance after a Montara man bought the land from the military and dug away much of the bluff, only to abandon his plan to develop the property. Few people know the odd-looking building is an important part of the region’s military history. “It’s a kind of a lonely, ghostly structure,” Postel said. “I think people pass by and say, ‘Gee, I wonder what the heck that is,’ and then never give it another thought.”
San Mateo County’s Little Devils Slide Bunker, a triangulation and observation station from the World War II era, is perched precariously atop Devils Peak, appearing as if it will slide off at any moment. Graffiti covers many interior spaces within the structure.
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BY T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
Palo Alto’s most lovable ass
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ome celebrities are known to be complete asses. None of them, however, wears the label as well as Perry, a miniature donkey who resides in Palo Alto’s Barron Park neighborhood. Perry’s claim to fame? He served as the model for the happy-go-lucky Donkey — voiced by Eddie Murphy — who stole scenes and hearts in the wildly popular computer-animated “Shrek” films. “You can look at those movies and really tell that it’s him,” says Don Anderson, one of the two dozen or so volunteers who tend to the animal. “They shortened his legs a bit and mixed traces of Eddie Murphy’s face in with his, but he’s still Perry.” Born in 1994 and as photogenic as ever, Perry — short for Pericles — lives with fellow donkey Miner Forty-Niner (known as Niner) behind Bol Park. They are the most recent in a long line of donkeys who have hung out here since the early 1930s, when their turf was part of a pasture owned by the late Stanford physicist and gentleman farmer Cornelis Bol. The tradition continues, thanks to the generosity of current landowner James Witt and the volunteers who oversee the feeding and welfare of the donkeys. Every Sunday, Perry and Niner are trotted out to meet visitors young and old. On occasion, they will make appearances at local grade schools and kids’ parties. “It’s hard to describe why it’s a thing, but it is,” Anderson says of the attachment he and others have to the donkeys. “It’s really a quaint and distinctive neighborhood tradition — something that sets the neighborhood apart.” Inge Harding-Barlow, another donkey handler, has been at it long enough to recollect how Hollywood came calling in the late 1990s. That’s when artists from
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DreamWorks Animation — then headquartered in Redwood City — visited Barron Park to sketch and shoot video. “Niner didn’t have a good rapport with one of the artists. He kept trying to eat his very expensive boots,” she says. “So Perry got the role, mostly because he behaved himself and Niner didn’t.” The rest is showbiz history. “Shrek” went on to win the first Academy Award for best animated feature and grossed close to $500 million in worldwide box-office receipts before spawning three sequels. Perry? Well, his handlers were paid a measly $75 by DreamWorks for two lengthy modeling sessions. That, and no royalties to speak of. Apparently, he didn’t have a great agent. Not that Perry is bitter. Harding-Barlow describes him as a “little sweetie” who adores being petted and loves kids, dogs and posing for photos. “He treats his public very well,” she says. In return, he and Niner are treated pretty well by the Barron Park volunteers who feed them — mainly alfalfa pellets — twice a day, walk them and take care of their veterinarian bills and insurance. The group relies on tax-deductible donations that generally cover what they need. But as the donkeys get older, their health bills and other associated costs are rising, and Harding-Barlow worries that the volunteers may not be able to keep up. “A lot of people think the city takes care of them, but that’s not the case,” she says. “We really work hard to maintain the tradition because it draws the neighborhood together, and it’s a focal point for the kids.” Fans of Perry and Niner can support their care and welfare by making PayPal donations at www. barronparkdonkeys.org.
At left: Volunteer Angelica Martin feeds Perry, who served as the model for the Donkey — voiced by Eddie Murphy — in the “Shrek” films. Visitors can leave items for the caretakers in a mailbox by the pen. At right: Perry, left, and Niner are the most recent in a long line of donkeys who have lived in Palo Alto’s Barron Park since the early 1930s.
“SHREK 2” PHOTO COURTESY OF DREAMWORKS PICTURES
S A N TA C L A R A C O U N T Y
BY T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
Astronomical arbors AL AMEDA COUNT Y
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tuart Roosa spent more than 33 solitary hours orbiting the moon in the winter of 1971 but believed his pioneering journey and the awesome sights he witnessed did not alter him — not physically, spiritually or otherwise. “Space changes nobody,” the Apollo 14 astronaut told author Andrew Chaikin in 1990. “You bring back from space what you bring into space.” His theory was tested not just on himself, but on the embryo “moon trees” he carried there and back. Hundreds of seeds filled a metal canister in his personal travel kit for NASA’s third mission to land on the moon. Two of them grew into coast redwoods that now tower atop the Berkeley hills. Mostly forgotten, except by park rangers and the occasional space-buff tourist, they stand on opposite ends of Tilden Regional Park. Roosa’s tree stunt was meant to promote the U.S. Forest Service, which once employed him as a firefighting smokejumper. He also hoped to find out how the seeds would survive zero gravity, radiation and other perils of traveling beyond Earth. Mission accomplished. “Yep, they germinated,” says Bart O’Brien, manager of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden, where one of the trees is located. “Clearly, by looking at the tree, there was no effect, which doesn’t surprise me at all.” Far more challenged by California’s drought than by its lunar voyage nearly 45 years ago, the tree is nestled deep inside the garden, maintained by the East Bay Regional Park District. “The seed from which this tree sprang was taken to the moon,” says a sign near the base of its trunk.
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The other moon tree — about 2 miles north — is unmarked and harder to find. Just 4 feet tall when it was relocated from a Forest Service nursery to the Berkeley park in 1976, it now overlooks a meadow near Tilden’s Environmental Education Center. Roosa’s trees are healthy, O’Brien says. They’re nourished by fog drip absorbed through the needles, and park rangers have supplemented them with extra water during the drought. Roosa, who died in 1994, would have been pleased by the condition of the Berkeley redwoods that will likely outlive all of the surviving Apollo explorers. Surrounding the garden’s moon tree is the same vibrant green undergrowth that dots redwood forests along California’s North Coast: giant chain ferns, leatherleaf ferns, sword ferns, large-leaved lupine, wood rose, Humboldt larkspur, salmonberry, Chamisso’s hedge nettle. Its taller neighbors include a Douglas fir and an older redwood grove planted in the 1940s. Although no formal list was kept, moon trees are scattered across the United States — from Oregon to Florida — and even as far as Brazil and Switzerland. In California, moon trees were planted at Humboldt State, in Arcata; Mission Plaza in San Luis Obispo; Friendly Plaza in Monterey; Capitol Park in Sacramento; and several other locations. Not all of Roosa’s seeds — which included redwoods, firs, sycamores and sweetgums — fared so well as they were gifted to parks and set roots around the United States. A loblolly pine planted at the White House no longer stands, and Idaho volunteers this fall were fighting to save a heat-stressed and bug-infested pine in Boise.
At left: Visitors tour the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden. Center, clockwise from top: A moon tree, the redwood second from left, stands tall as a supermoon lunar eclipse peeks between the branches of another tree at Tilden Regional Park; in this long-exposure photo, the moon illuminates thick fog as deer roam the park; a new branch sprouts from the roots of a redwood tree; a plaque identifies a moon tree.
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A moon tree, the redwood at center, stands next to the main entrance of the Environmental Education Center at Tilden Regional Park.
BY T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
The Martinez Special C O N T R A C O S TA C O U N T Y
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an walks into a bar. From there, the story gets fuzzy. Make that “stories.” There are multiple theories on where the martini, that elegant cocktail of dry-witted sophisticates, was born. Italy. New York. San Francisco. Martinez, the county seat of Contra Costa, has the most credible claim. Make that “claims.” They all begin circa 1870, with a gold miner fresh from the foothills and clutching a bag of gold nuggets walking into the Richelieu Hotel and asking bartender Julio Richelieu for something special. Richelieu made what he called a Martinez Special — a potent blend of gin, vermouth, a dash of bitters and an olive. The gold miner loved it. “The name was changed because after you had a few, it came out ‘martini,’ ” says Angelo Costanza, a Martinez-based attorney whose parents were restaurateurs in the city for nearly half a century. “Martinez became known as the home of the martini.” In some versions, the Richelieu was located at 414 Ferry St., where the Royal Thai restaurant now stands. In others, the Richelieu was at the corner of Alhambra Avenue and Masonic Street, where a plaque identifies the site as “Birthplace of the Martini.” In some versions, the gold miner asks Richelieu for Champagne, only to be told none is available. In others he asks for whiskey, which he chases with Richelieu’s improvisational genius. What’s indisputable is how the drink became part of the city’s fabric — in September, Martinez expanded its annual Martini Festival into a Martini Month. “In the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, there was the Martini Navy,” says Tom Greerty, an attorney and Martinez city historian. “There were no
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ships. But they had a flag, admirals, certificates. Richard Nixon was an admiral. This was a way for politicians to laugh and enjoy stories about the martini and also to focus on the need for a new bridge across the Carquinez Strait. It was a social club. But it was serious.” Greerty says the Martini Navy occasionally would set sail for Sacramento bearing “copious amounts of gin and vermouth” to lobby for the span. More recently, it is said that important courts-related business was conducted at Amato’s Restaurant, which also was located at 414 Ferry St., with the aid of the cocktail’s soothing influence. The biggest challenge to what Martinez residents consider their rightful heritage came from San Francisco and was fueled by Chronicle columnist and martini enthusiast Herb Caen. In 1983, the San Francisco Court of Historical Review held a mock trial, which ruled that the drink originated in the city. Shortly thereafter, a Martinez mock court, setting up shop in the City Council chamber, overturned the San Francisco ruling. Colorful local attorney Bill Glass represented Martinez. “Bill was particularly persuasive,” Costanza says. “He called on the ghost of Julio Richelieu. He established the case through Julio himself. Needless to say, Martinez won the trial.” As in the San Francisco proceeding, martinis were served. “I know the judge did drink one … or more,” says Russ Yarrow, who covered the event for the Contra Costa Times. Caen was unmoved. “The preposterous tale that the birth of the martini had something to do with Martinez,” he wrote, “lives on like a strong hangover.”
Bartender Eugene Atkinson makes a martini at Nu-Rays bar in Martinez. Rebuffing San Francisco’s claim to the cocktail, seen at right, Martinez cites a gold miner as the first to taste a Martinez Special — a potent blend of gin, vermouth, a dash of bitters and an olive. In some versions of the tale, the drink was made at the corner of Alhambra Avenue and Masonic Street, where a plaque, at bottom left, identifies the site as “Birthplace of the Martini.” Other stories cite 414 Ferry St., where the Royal Thai restaurant, at bottom right, now stands.
BY T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
Marin’s little Switzerland MARIN COUNTY
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harles Martin’s name has all but vanished among the pastoral, straw-colored valleys of West Marin. But the man who emigrated from a forsaken Swiss village in the 1850s as a teenager has left a lasting legacy. Squint hard enough as golden rays slice through heavenly Chileno Valley on an autumn morning, and it’s possible to imagine the ghost of Martin (nee Carlo Martinoia) roaming the landscape like a prowling cougar. Marin County was a primary destination for Martin and other Swiss-Italian immigrants from the small canton of Ticino, where about 27,000 fled Europe for Australia, South America and, eventually, California. These Swiss forebears have passed down to their offspring a farming tradition that flourishes today with big-city appetites for organic and farm-to-table food. The Bay Area’s agricultural heart pulsates through this land of Pacific breezes and cottony puffs of morning fog that still is worked by the families that originated from the craggy Alpine valleys of southern Switzerland. As a Peace Corps volunteer in her early 20s, Sally Gale had romantic notions about taking her own place among those faraway blond hills where her multitude of cousins worked the land. “You would go over a hill, and they were everywhere,” says Gale, a fifth-generation Martin. “I was fascinated by them.” In 1993, Gale returned to the ranch of her great-great grandfather, who had Anglicized his name as Charles Martin. The Martin name has disappeared from these parts because the men in the line eventually didn’t pass it along. Instead, names such as Dolcini and Lafranchi have endured through the marriage of Martin women. Gale, 73, and husband Mike
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operate one of 15 Martin family ranches still in existence in the arresting, oak-dotted hillsides from Tomales to Petaluma to Novato. They are but one extended Swiss family whose origins are traced to Ticino. Others from neighboring Alpine villages also settled here, including the Grossis, whose holdings include four ranches within Point Reyes National Seashore. The Gales are typical of the latest generation of caretakers. They inherited Chileno Valley Ranch, near Petaluma, where Martin settled in 1862. When the Gales arrived 22 years ago, the once-grand house was dilapidated. It took five years of labor and all of their money to restore the 1883 Romantic Italianate home where Martin lived with his wife and seven children. The Gales operated a bed-andbreakfast to generate income. Then they bought six cows and launched a grass-fed cattle business. Ralph Grossi, 66, grows pinot noir grapes on his estate in Novato, next door to the family dairy. He left the dairy business in the 1980s to become the face of the American movement to preserve farmland. He helped start the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, which has worked to save 48,000 acres of farmland owned mostly by Swiss-Italian heirs. “You inherit this land, but you also inherit an obligation to make it last and to pass it on to the next generation,” Grossi says. Sally Gale also is an active member of the land trust, which helped her restore the ranch nestled in a picturesque valley named for Chilean cowboys who worked here when these homesteads were part of Mexican land grants. The Gales have three kids who could someday make a fortune by selling the ranch. “But what’s money?” Sally Gale asks. “Money is paper. Land is forever.”
At left: Sally Gale, posing for a portrait, looks out the window of her two-story home at Chileno Valley Ranch in Petaluma. Center, clockwise from top left: Leaves rustle in Chileno Valley; a young Black Angus roams the hills; Gale cares for her mother, Anita Dolcini Googins, 98; the Gales have 400 organic apple trees; a string of lights hangs in a historic dairy barn; an animal skull decorates a fence post; a rusty license plate from a Ford Model T is nailed to a barn wall; a barn door hinge shows its age.
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As her husband, Mike, drives, Sally Gale tosses hay out the back of their pickup truck to feed cattle at Chileno Valley Ranch near Petaluma.
BY T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
Bloodthirsty botanicals SONOMA COUNTY
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n the gardening world, it’s rare for customers to walk into a greenhouse with a Broadway show on their minds. Then again, this nursery in the Sonoma County town of Sebastopol is highly unusual. “Where’s Audrey?” visitors ask in jest, even as they’re scanning the otherworldly plants at California Carnivores for a genetic relative of the largest and most famous carnivorous plant of all — the bloodthirsty, boyfriend-eating Venus’ flytrap from the enduring musical “Little Shop of Horrors.” Oh, owner Peter D’Amato has plenty of Venus’ flytraps, for sure, but none with Audrey’s girth or, for that matter, her appetite. But thanks to his playfully dark sense of humor, Audrey’s kin do have names — ones that reflect their penchant for trapping and devouring flies, gnats, moths and beetles. One showy plant he cultivated is called Abandoned Hope; another is named Splatter Pattern. He will patiently explain to shoppers that these plants don’t hunger for human flesh and won’t snare the curiosity-seekers or gardeners who find this nursery along the Old Gravenstein Highway. Turns out those signs urging visitors not to touch the Venus’ flytraps are for the plants’ protection, not yours. It’s the first of many myth-busting answers that D’Amato and his staff will deliver on any given day. If you are interested in the fascinating world of carnivorous plants, this noted horticulturalist’s sanctuary is the place to go. California Carnivores is the largest such nursery in the United States, perhaps the world, with D’Amato cultivating and raising plants here since 1989. Tens of thousands of plants change hands — safely! — every year. A small flytrap costs $10; rare, colorful, large or older cultivars start at
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$15 and run as much as $60. He’s been an aficionado since he was a youngster, having grown up in one of the cradles of carnivorous plantdom. That would be … the Carolinas. See? Another myth busted. Venus’ flytraps are native to only one place in the world, and it’s not an exotic tropical locale. It’s the grassy wetlands within a 75-mile radius of Wilmington, North Carolina. Back then, carnivorous plant hobbyists tended to be a rare, mostly male species — scientists, professors, boys who sent away for 99-cent plants advertised in comic books. In recent years, the Internet and global tourism have helped spread the gospel of pitcher plants, bladderworts and sundews. Fans of botanicals go on world expeditions to find new species, and women have joined the club in big numbers. “Half of our customers these days are women,” D’Amato says. “It’s been one of the most dramatic changes I’ve seen.” What’s the appeal? “It’s really the way the plants look, their beauty,” D’Amato says, amid a backdrop of burgundy-rimmed leaves, celadon-colored flutes, dark purple pouches, translucent white flounces and bright green spikes. Once hooked on carnivores, however, customers are “rather flabbergasted by the volume of insects they can catch outdoors,” he says. In fact, that’s why most of the female shoppers — who outnumber the men this particular afternoon — are here. Right outside the nursery, the insects are active. An orange butterfly alights on a leafy plant. It will be safe; carnivores rarely catch them. That pesky fly buzzing around the parking lot? Depends. It needs to head away now, lest it become Abandoned Hope’s dinner.
Clockwise from top left: Air plants usually grow attached to other plants, without soil; Venus’ flytraps are sensitive to touch and require their would-be victims to stimulate two trigger hairs before they clamp shut; Emily Felch, left, and Jordan Clark, both of Reno, investigate air plants; pitcher plants hold a nectar that intoxicates insects, easing the long slide down to a certain death; sundews use their glands to digest insects. At right: Sundews have thin, hairy leaves that curl up like fiddlehead ferns to capture tiny prey.
BY T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
When Old Faithful turns faithless N A PA C O U N T Y
T
he loveliest earthquake detector in California lives in the plainest of places: a hole in the ground. For five to 55 minutes, you ponder a small rocky fracture — then suddenly thrill to the spectacle of Calistoga’s Old Faithful Geyser, spouting a graceful veil of steam and hot water 20 to 80 feet into the air. But if Old Faithful turns fickle — say, your wait drags on an hour or more — there could be trouble brewing in its underground plumbing system. Here in earthquake country, that’s never a good sign. Such mysteries have long entranced visitors of this scenic little town at the north end of Napa Valley. The Wappo Indians journeyed here to ease aches and pains in its warm, mineral-rich waters. When businessman and promoter Sam Brannan arrived in Calistoga in the 1850s, he envisioned a Saratoga Hot Springs of the West. Long before it became famed for wine, the region was known for such mysterious geology. “The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena is full of sulphur and of boiling springs, … and Calistoga itself seems to repose on a mere film above a boiling, subterranean lake,” marveled novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson, in his book “The Silverado Squatters.” Old Faithful traces its creation to that era, when an ill-fated well driller in the 1880s happened to strike a deep magma-heated reservoir. (But its eruptions are all-natural, driven by escaped pressure in its underground hydrothermal chambers. There are plenty of geysers in the world, but only three — Yellowstone’s Old Faithful and the Pohuto Geyser in New Zealand are the others — have the “Old Faithful” designation due to their regularity.) Other earthquake-detection systems rely on technology, such as sensors to feel seismic waves
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and computers to transmit data to an “alert center” for messaging to phones. Old Faithful, in contrast, offers a vista of Mount St. Helena and a rugged, mile-long volcanic wall, Palisades. Over time, the 6-acre park, beloved mostly for its roadside kitsch, fell into disrepair. But Old Faithful is in new hands. (Yes, you can buy a geyser.) Tech-savvy owner Koray Sanli, creator of the trip-planning Internet portals Destination Intelligence, bought the property in 2013 and has committed the site to science. It now features a small geology museum that describes not only geysers, but other aspects of our roiling earth, such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. It’s hung on to a few of its Barnum & Bailey-like oddities: Tennessee “fainting goats,” born with a hereditary disorder that causes muscles to stiffen when startled, and Jacob four-horn sheep, which sport horns out of the sides of their heads. But it’s the creepy stuff we can’t see that deserves full attention. Geologists worry about stresses that cause deformation in the Earth’s crust, easing pressure inside the geyser’s reservoir and delaying the time between eruptions. Research shows that Old Faithful’s eruptions lengthened significantly a day or so before three large earthquakes in Northern California: the magnitude-7.1 Loma Prieta temblor in 1989, a 5.7 Oroville quake in 1975, and the 6.1 Morgan Hill quake in 1984. (It’s not perfect: Sometimes eruptions slow when earthquakes don’t occur.) It took more than an hour to erupt in August 2014 — the day before the major 6.0 Napa quake — “so we knew it was something strange,” Sanli told TV reporters. When Old Faithful grows faithless, it’s time to cork the wine, fold up the picnic blanket and head home.
At left: Calistoga’s Old Faithful usually spouts every five to 55 minutes, depending on the season. Center, clockwise from top: Luna Huckabee, of Los Angeles, feeds a goat; Leanne Skudrna, of San Francisco, and Paul Bartolotta, of Vallejo, watch an eruption; a dragonfly hovers above the water; the hills behind the attraction are bathed in sun and shadows.
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BY T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
The secrets behind the sweets SOLANO COUNTY
T
he number of jelly beans — 15 billion! — gobbled up in any given year would circle the Earth 5½times. Clearly, most of us have zero control when it comes to the kryptonite of the candy world. But how many of us know where the jelly bean comes from? If you want to consider yourself a true connoisseur of the confection, you can take a crash course at one of the candy’s meccas — the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield. There, you’ll learn that jelly beans have an ancient pedigree. Experts think they may be a mashup of two candies, Turkish delight, with its chewy fruit center, and Jordan almonds, with their crunchy sugar shells. Put them together, and you have a treat addictive enough that Boston candymaker William Schrafft urged all good Americans to send them to the Union soldiers fighting in the Civil War. By the 19th century, jelly beans were widely considered a classic penny candy. In the early 20th century, “jelly bean” was a slang term for a snazzily dressed man with an eye for the ladies. Not until the 1930s did these brightly colored balls of sugar become associated with Easter, perhaps because they resemble eggs, which are symbols of fertility meant to evoke the promise of spring. Five billion Jelly Bellys (which come in 133 flavors) are sold at Easter alone. But in the 1960s, the beans really entered the limelight when California Gov. Ronald Reagan made the candies cool in pop culture. He got hooked on jelly beans when he quit smoking; by the time he became president, he was a full-blown fanatic. Indeed, Reagan was so in love with Jelly Bellys that he made them the first jelly beans in space by sending them along on a space shuttle Challenger mission in 1983. The Gipper’s love for the candy is so
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legendary that there’s even a Jelly Belly collage, involving no fewer than 17,000 beans, of his kisser on display at the factory. Indeed, a special flavor (blueberry) was minted in honor of his presidential inauguration — 40 million beans were nibbled at the celebration — so they would be able to make a red, white and blue Jelly Belly flag. Certainly, there’s a science to cooking up the perfect jelly bean, which takes about seven to 14 days from start to finish. The Jelly Belly company, which has been plying its trade since 1898, has a lot of trivia to share as you stroll along the quarter-mile long conveyor belt for its famous tour. The factory, which operates 24 hours a day, five days a week, is a colossal candy beehive humming with workers, robots and machines turning sugar, fruit and other ingredients into jelly bean bliss. The process is complex, with top-secret recipes involved, but the magic of it all is coating a gooey gob of goodness with a perfect sugary shell through a technique known as panning. About 1,680 beans are produced per second. Almost 362,880 pounds of jelly beans are produced per day (that’s as heavy as 24 elephants), but the company is a still a stickler for consistency. If a bean is too small, too large or not perfectly coated, it is rejected from the assembly line. These flawed beans find their way into the discounted Belly Flops product line. If all that trivia makes you peckish, rest assured there are also several chances to sample the goods while you gawk at the tiny candy gems. But beware the gag flavors, such as barf and boogers. For those who worry about overindulging, take heart in the sweetest fact of all: The average Jelly Belly has only four calories.
An estimated 600,000 jelly bean devotees take the Jelly Belly factory tour every year to bone up on bean trivia while frolicking in a brightly colored wonderland of decadence. At left: The candy drops from a conveyor belt, is assembled into a portrait of Ronald Reagan and lies in trays, as part of the curing process. At right: Barry De Silva, of Fairfield, makes grape sodaflavored beans.
BRAIN GAMES
It’s no longer a place for skating, splashing or seeing amazing artifacts. Where are you? Here’s a clue to get you started: The facility, developed by a self-made millionaire and built in the 1800s, was destroyed in a fire. It now is part of a national recreation area.
F I N D T H E A N S W E R O N PA G E 8 2 PHOTOGRAPH FROM GOOGLE EARTH
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VISUAL SURPRISES SEVEN NOVEL GRAPHICS
HE
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e , th ie ary cook v ts e to IN e un un ed cco s fort oduc 0. Th a r h 2 u t n e n 19 ug to ho qui s i ut e be f Alt -ubi ly wa abo hav ice o ret y b co ct w ec no roba ncis s ma pra ng s 00s. p Fra ion the ssi e 13 t y h n pa Sa onfec red b iers s in t c spi old ke in ese s in ca s in Ch ssage me N VE
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Setting the record straight
I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C I A R A P H E L A N
Everyone has seen the famously winding Lombard Street in San Francisco, which is the city’s most crooked street — right? Wrong. Lombard Street between Hyde and Leavenworth is the prettier, ritzier cousin of Vermont Street, which holds the distinction of being the actual crookedest street, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Works, which cites the steeper grade, tighter turning radius and fewer turns (Lombard has eight, while Vermont has seven). The brickpaved Lombard Street may get all the attention (have you ever not seen a horde of people there?), but the dubious distinction in question is held by Vermont Street between 20th and 22nd streets.
Vallejo Novato
Benicia Concord Pittsburg
V I S UA L S U R P R I S E S Richmond
What lies beneath
Tiburon
“How shallow!” is an expression that can come up a lot when living in the Bay Area, but in no instance is it more appropriate than when talking about the beloved San Francisco Bay. The average depth of the bay is about the same as that of a big swimming pool — an average of 14 feet deep, according to The Bay Institute. Underwater channels are dredged to help prevent large vessels from running aground. Not all of the bay is so shallow, though. Near the Golden Gate Bridge, the waters have depths of more than 300 feet, for example.
Oakland
San Francisco
Alameda
Hayward
Depth of the bay
Union City
0-10 feet deep
10-30 feet deep
Deeper than 30 feet
San Mateo
GR APHIC BY DOUG GRISWOLD
Newark
PHOTOGRAPH BY RAY CHAVEZ SOURCES: NOAA, U.S COAST GUARD, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
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How dredging works
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A hydro-survey is conducted to determine how much silt and sediment shoaling has occurred and impedes into the channel.
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Dredges remove the material. A hopper dredge employs a trailing suction pipe; a clamshell dredge picks up material with a clamshell bucket.
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Dredged matter is tested for hazardous materials. Many hazardous substances are naturally occurring, and others come from water runoff.
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The nonhazardous dredged material is transported and disposed of at several sites around the bay or at a deep ocean site.
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A new hydro-survey is conducted to verify the channel is clear of silt and sediment and the waterway is navigable.
V I S UA L S U R P R I S E S
A view from the top With a summit 3,849 feet above sea level, Mount Diablo stands like a sentinel watching over the Bay Area. The views from the top are arresting — in fact, on a clear day, you can see parts of a whopping 35 of 58 California counties from the summit, according to Dan Stefanisko, supervising ranger at Mt. Diablo State Park. When the conditions are ideal (the best time for viewing is in the winter or early spring after a storm has cleared the skies), you can see nearly 200 miles. To check out the landmarks, head to the observation platform of the Summit Building, and look west toward the parking lot and communication tower. During prime visibility, the landmarks that can be seen include Lassen Peak, in Shasta County; Half Dome, in Mariposa County; and the Farallon Islands, part of the City and County of San Francisco. Although you can’t see Mount Shasta directly, you might be able to see part of the peak, refracted by the atmosphere. I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y D AV E J O H N S O N
Mount Shasta 240 miles Elev. 14,151 ft.
Mount Lassen 165 miles Elev. 10,466 ft.
Mount St. Helena 67 miles Elev. 4,344 ft.
Mount Tamalpais 43 miles Elev. 2,601 ft.
The Delta 20 miles
Mount Diablo
Elev. 3,849 ft. Farallon Islands 60 miles Yosemite Valley and Half Dome 135 miles Elev. 8,839 ft.
Mount Hamilton 40 miles Elev. 4,200 ft.
Loma Prieta 58 miles Elev. 3,791 ft.
SOURCES: MT. DIABLO STATE PARK, CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS
V I S UA L S U R P R I S E S
Off the wall The Easter Island statues. Stonehenge. Berkeley Mystery Walls? The general public might not know much about the walls that stop and start across the landscape in the Bay Area and are the subject of tons of speculation. Were they made by aliens? Are they relics from survivors of a lost continent? It turns out, they’re not much of a mystery, according to Beverly Ortiz, cultural services coordinator with the East Bay Regional Park District. “We just call them rock walls,” she says. Analysis places them in the early American era — the one pictured at left dates back to as early as 1851 — when European settlers are said to have built the walls using the labor of marginalized groups, such as the Chinese and Native Americans. The walls were used mainly to clear land of scattered rocks to facilitate the movement of grazing livestock, such as cattle, and, at times, to guide the movement of the animals or to corral them. So take off your tinfoil hats: Even though the walls don’t, in fact, have otherworldly origins, they provide a snapshot of the Bay Area’s rural past.
“Mystery Walls” haunt Bay Area parks, including an East Bay regional park, left, and Ed Levin County Park, in Santa Clara County, above.
PHOTO GR APHS BY DAI SUG ANO
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Them bones Forget about skeletons in the closet — San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences has skeletons on its roof. That’s right: The living roof, mostly covered with 2.5 acres of hills and native California plants, also is home to whale bones, which are placed there for degreasing via natural forces such as wind, rain and sunlight. This is just one method that academy researchers use to clean and prepare bones before they become part of scientific collections or exhibits. This process also allows researchers to study a specimen’s life history, including its diet and age. The location of these bones on the roof can vary, but visitors usually can see some of the larger bones from the main roof observation deck. The jawbones of a 49-foot sperm whale took residence on the roof after the animal washed up in Pacifica in April. Here’s a look at how the academy’s process works:
I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y J E F F D U R H A M
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The bones are transferred from the beach. The two sperm whale jawbones, together weighing 700 pounds, were carried up the beach in a tarp by a team of 17. The mandibles then rode on a truck up the highway and in the academy’s freight elevator before they were hauled up two flights of stairs (by hand!) to the roof.
The bones are buried under a large mound of soil to let bacteria and bugs naturally compost the muscle and gum. The museum’s landscape team then places native plants on top. The decomposition process cleans the bones and helps the plants grow. Bones generally are buried from six months to a year.
Once the tissue has completely decomposed and the bones are clean, they are excavated. The academy excavates the bones carefully — just like at an archaeological dig site — so that the teeth are not lost. The process generally takes several hours and a handful of people, but it can vary, depending on the specimen.
Researchers remove the teeth, cut them in half and examine the layers to determine the whale’s age. They study tiny samples of dentin, a component of the teeth, to understand the animal’s diet. Once removed, teeth are stored in the research collection, making it easier for researchers to study them in further detail.
The bones are left on the roof for degreasing and bleaching by the sun. Oil can leach to the surface of bones over a period of time. The natural elements — the sun, wind and rain — that the bones are exposed to on the roof are parts of the overall cleaning process and help move the grease out of the bone.
The bones usually will join the academy’s scientific collection. The museum sometimes leaves bones on the roof for public display. The number of specimens on display on the roof varies, but at the time of this writing, the academy had six sets of bones, including the sperm whale.
SOURCE INFORMATION AND IMAGES: CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ALL MARINE MAMMAL STRANDING ACTIVITIES WERE CONDUCTED UNDER AUTHORIZATION BY THE NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE THROUGH A STRANDING AGREEMENT ISSUED TO THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND MMPA/ESA PERMIT NO. 932-1905/MA-009526
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City of Souls Walking in San Francisco’s Buena Vista Park, you may overlook the drain gutters. If you catch a glimpse, you may spot a figure imprinted on the surface — a number or a letter here and there. “They’re hard to see, but they’re there,” says filmmaker Trina Lopez. These markings reveal the gutters’ original incarnation: They were tombstones. “Through laws and referenda, San Francisco has basically banned the dead from its borders,” says Lopez, whose documentary “A Second Final Rest” explores the topic. San Francisco had forbidden burials already when residents “voted the dead out of the city.” Remains at the Big Four cemeteries — Odd Fellows, Masonic, Laurel Hill and Cavalry — were removed in the ’30s and ’40s and transported to Colma, which has fewer than 2,000 living residents and about 2 million deceased. In addition to being used in gutters, leftover headstones have found new life in Aquatic Park’s seawall.
Reused tombstones line the pathway gutters at Buena Vista Park in San Francisco, and the name Reid can be seen on the seawall at the Aquatic Park.
PHOTOGR APHS BY JIM GENSHEIMER
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Literary landscape From Hammett to Hosseini, Twain to Tan, and Stein to Stevenson, many literary luminaries have Bay Area ties. Bookworms from the Bay Area and beyond may be interested in these local landmarks, including the ruins of Jack London’s dream home; a property in St. Helena where Ambrose Bierce’s family lived (it’s now a bed-and-breakfast; the author, preferring to be in a different location from his family, stayed at a nearby mountain retreat); the Here/There statues that recall Gertrude Stein’s famous quote; and 826 Valencia, a nonprofit founded by Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari that helps underresourced students with their writing skills. And educational institutions in the area have boasted famous students and staff members including Michael Cunningham, Tobias Wolff and John Steinbeck (Stanford); Maxine Hong Kingston, Ishmael Reed and Robert Hass (UC Berkeley); and Amy Tan and Edwin Markham (San Jose State). I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y J A KO B H I N R I C H S
FAMOUS HOMES
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
Jack London’s Wolf House (historic park at 2400 London Ranch Road, Glen Ellen); Philip K. Dick’s “Hermit House” (707 Hacienda Way, San Rafael); Dashiell Hammett (891 Post St., San Francisco); Robert Louis Stevenson (plaque at 608 Bush St., San Francisco); Hunter S. Thompson (318 Parnassus Ave., San Francisco); Allen Ginsberg (1010 Montgomery St., San Francisco); Ken Kesey (7940 La Honda Road, La Honda); Eugene O’Neill’s Tao House (historic site at 1000 Kuss Road, Danville); Edwin Markham (1650 Senter Road, San Jose)
Ambrose Bierce House (1515 Main St., St. Helena); City Lights Booksellers & Publishers (261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco); UC Berkeley (visitor center at 101 Sproul Hall, Barrow Lane, Berkeley); Here/There statues (Martin Luther King Jr. Way at Adeline Street, Berkeley/Oakland); Jack London’s cabin (Jack London Square, Oakland); 826 Valencia (826 Valencia St., San Francisco); Stanford University (450 Serra Mall, Stanford); San Jose State (1 Washington Square, San Jose)
BRAIN GAMES
Bendy straws, floppy disks, fortune cookies and ice pops — these aren’t the only things to have Bay Area origin stories. Many innovations and inventions were born in locations across the region, from Silicon Valley garages to San Francisco workshops to the hilly land of the North Bay to eating establishments in the East Bay. See if you can identify which five of the nine items below were invented or introduced in the Bay Area.
Eggo waffle
Toilet paper
Mountain bike
Snowboard
Television
Irish coffee
Mouse
Slinky
Potato chips
F I N D T H E A N S W E R O N PA G E 8 2 PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THINKSTOCK
TREAT YOURSELF TWO GOOD READS
INVENTED HERE
If you think your child is inventive, check out this kid: At age 11, Frank W. Epperson reportedly invented the ice pop (better known as the trademarked “Popsicle�) on a cold night in San Francisco in 1905 by putting a stick in a glass of powdered soda and water, then leaving it on his porch (by morning it was frozen, according to his Associated Press obituary). But records show it did not get cold in enough in San Francisco for that to happen, leading some people to believe that the beloved summertime treat was born in Oakland, the city where it was patented.
P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y D O U G D U R A N
Y DEF ING GRAVITY WATER FLOWS — AND CARS ROLL — UPHILL AT PECULIAR SPOTS SCATTERED ACROSS THE BAY AREA
S TO RY BY A N G E L A H I L L PHOTOGR APHS BY LIPO CHING U S I N G T H E H I P S TA M AT I C I P H O N E A P P
THERE ARE PLACES
IN THIS WORLD WHERE SEEING IS DECEIVING, WHERE LOGIC’S LEFT HANGING, AND SUREFOOTED SENSES ARE NOT ALWAYS ON THE LEVEL.
This does not merely refer to the sensation one feels when observing Bay Area real estate prices. Rather, we’re talking about gravity hills. Sometimes called mystery roads or magnetic hills, such spots exist around the globe and right here at home — eerie locales where cars seem to roll up a downslope on a stretch of country lane, or water appears to flow uphill, flying in the face of gravity, causing double takes and a reflexive “What the …?” These sites often are accompanied by urban legends — wild theories of magnetic vortices, alien navigational devices embedded underground or even ghost stories that frequently involve crashed busloads of schoolchildren. Scientists, though, say these socalled anomalies actually are just plain-old optical illusions, with a convergence of landscape cues conspiring to fool the senses. Whether phantasm or phantom, the feeling at these places often is fantastic. So get ready to explore far-flung Bay Area spots where gravity gets some serious pushback. If Sir Isaac Newton were alive, this would probably kill him. LET’S START WITH A CLASSIC.
If you’ve been in the Bay Area any stretch of time, you’ve likely felt the pull of the famed and quirky Santa Cruz Mystery Spot, an enigma wrapped in a riddle and packaged in a 45-minute tour. As the story goes, builders back in 1939 surveyed a small patch of woodland north of town, logged unusual readings on their instruments, then felt dizzy and off-balance. Naturally, they turned it into a tourist attraction. They Tour guide Skyler Williams demonstrates the 17-degree lean at Santa Cruz’s Mystery Spot. Previous page: A car appears to roll uphill on Lichau Road in Penngrove.
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designed an off-kilter cabin with tilted walls, angled floors and ceilings and dubbed it a “gravitational anomaly.” Now, nearly eight decades and a zillion bumper stickers later, the topsy-turvy cabin is more popular than ever. Visitors book tickets weeks in advance or wait in line for hours — all to watch a billiard ball roll up a down-sloped shelf and gawk slack-jawed as companions seem to change height when standing at different points on the property. “I personally don’t believe it’s just optical illusion,” says Rachel Miller, tour guide supervisor at the Mystery Spot. “There are so many different aspects where we haven’t been able to pinpoint reasons for what’s happening. Like, when you’re in the cabin, not only are the walls at different angles, but you can feel like you’re being pulled by some kind of force as well.” Guides posit various theories: metal cones buried as guidance systems for alien spacecraft, carbon dioxide seeping from the ground, a magma vortex or “dielectric biocosmic radiation,” whatever that may be. “Or it could be that somewhere above us is a hole in the ozone layer that bends light and causes illusions, like a straw in a glass of water,” Miller says. Maybe you can blame the big hair of the ’80s for that, too. To be sure, the Santa Cruz site involves showmanship and magnified mystery. But what about outlying aberrations and unexplained propulsion on the random rural road? Take the so-called uphill stream in Golden Gate Park. It runs alongside a footpath on John F. Kennedy Drive near Lloyd Lake in San Francisco. If you head toward the ocean on JFK, just beyond the Park Presidio overpass, pause by a tall pine tree, and look to your right. You’ll see a gentle green stream trickling along steadily, and tricking the eye. It really does look like the water is flowing uphill! It can’t be, you say, and you use the “level tool” app on your smartphone, placing it on the bank of the
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stream, then on the nearby path. Reason, and your phone, say these sections of ground both lean downhill — the path more so than the stream, making the stream appear to go up — but, well, wow. EVEN MORE ASTONISHING
are the spots that involve a gravitational sensation for motorists, when you stop at what you think is the bottom of a hill, put your car in neutral and — as if by magic or spooky spectral boost — the car seems to roll back up. There’s said to be such a site on Empire Mine Road in Antioch, famed for its traditional tale of schoolchildren killed when their bus skidded off the rain-slicked lane, their spirits forever remaining to help stranded drivers get back on their way. Even more of a tragedy: That stretch of Empire Mine has been closed for some time (perhaps to give the ghost kids a rest?), so you can’t try this one by car. But there’s nothing to stop you from an experiment with a ball or a skateboard. Another gravity road is said to be on Lake Herman Road, in a remote area between Vallejo and Benicia. Just off Columbus Parkway, it’s at the bottom of the first hill where the road merges into single lanes. This site has been linked to the ghost of a victim of the infamous Zodiac Killer. Yet another is on Patterson Pass Road in Livermore, either at mile marker 1.57 or 7.52, depending on the story you read. (Word is, marker 1.57 has been stolen, making it even trickier to find.) This, too, incorporates a version of the school-bus tale — the bus got stuck, kids got out to push, the bus rolled back … you get the grisly picture. A definitely doable gravity-hill experience is on Lichau Road, in the rolling countryside above Penngrove in Sonoma County. Take Roberts Road to Lichau, winding around past a couple Water appears to flow uphill in a stream along John F. Kennedy Drive at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Opposite: A sign greets visitors at the Mystery Spot.
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‘BASICALLY, WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU THINK YOU SEE.’ Paul Doherty, senior scientist at San Francisco’s Exploratorium
of vineyards, across a rumble of cattle guards and up through oaks and golden brush. Pass Cannon Road, then reach a crest marked by an iron arch reading “Gracias Santiago.” Proceed down the hill to what seems to be a dip between two upward slopes, put your car in neutral, take your foot off the brake (watch for oncoming cars, of course), and let anti-gravity do the work. It really feels freaky. You’d swear you’re coasting back up the hill! Susan Panttaja, now a perfectly logical geology instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College, used to go to the spot back in her high school days. “My friends and I would all drive up to Lichau Road in a Datsun 2000 Roadster. When we got there, we’d play Dan Fogelberg tapes,” Panttaja told Bohemian. com a few years ago, and recently recalled the experience for this magazine. The science-minded friends also performed various experiments — rolling balls and other round items — to test the socalled gravitational forces that seemed to make the Datsun roll uphill. And rather than citing a crashed school bus as the source, Panttaja and her pals knew it was “an accident of topography.” “The lines of the hills — and the fact that you have been driving uphill — give you the impression, once the grade becomes gentler, that you are now on a
The “Portals of the Past” portico adorns the shore of Lloyd Lake, which is fed by a stream at Golden Gate Park that appears to flow uphill.
downhill grade,” she says. LEAVE IT TO SCIENTISTS
to drag us back down to earth. “These are all optical illusions,” says Paul Doherty, senior scientist at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. “Your eyes and brain use clues from the landscape to determine your perception of the slope of a hill. But your eyes and brain can be misled.” He explains that all of these places — from the stream in Golden Gate Park to the so-called gravitational effect on Lichau Road — have no distant reference points. The true horizon is shield-
section appears uphill, when it is indeed downhill, because you’re comparing it to what’s around it.” In fact, the Exploratorium plays this trick on visitors on a daily basis. In the Vision section, find the Ames Room, originally designed by ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames to demonstrate this optical phenomenon. The room is built with distorted walls and flooring so that marbles appear to roll uphill, and a person walking into it seems to grow into a giant at one end, then shrinks down to the size of a child at the other. But it’s all a ruse on the retina. “There are a hundred million sensors on your retina,” Doherty says. “So the first thing your retina does is throw away 99 percent of that information, then sends the remaining 1 percent to your brain to make up the rest of the story. Basically, what you see is what you think you see.” This visual bluff often happens to mountain climbers and skiers standing at the bottom of a slope — it always looks steeper than it really is. To counteract this perceptual error, one method is to bend over and look at the slope through your legs, which changes your normal reference points enough so you can begin to discern the reality. “We call it mooning the slope,” Doherty jokes. “You could try at the Mystery Spot. Then you could be part of the attraction.”
ed, whether by trees or nearby hills. In the case of the Santa Cruz cabin, the sensations occur inside a tilted building with no visible true horizon. As to the outdoor sites, researchers exploring this phenomenon have made scale models of gravity hills, Doherty says. “The model will have a miniature road that has three different sections to it, all at different slopes — a steep downhill slope, then a less downhill slope, and then another steep downhill slope. “To people looking at it — even just at the model — the center
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A hiker walks up the gravity hill on Lichau Road. in Penngrove. “The lines of the hills — and the fact that you have been driving uphill — give you the impression, once the grade becomes gentler, that you are now on a downhill grade,” explains Susan Panttaja, a geology instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College.
Bay Area abodes stun even when their masters remain mum
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME (LITERALLY)
S TO R Y B Y DAV I D E . E A R LY PHOTOG R APHS BY DAI SUG ANO
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hey’re iconic houses, so unique that they live rich, full and fascinating lives on their own — without much assistance from owners, gabby tour guides or real estate agents. These Bay Area locales quietly thrill visitors every day. Many pilgrims come to these surprising houses to gawk and touch familiar memories and emotions from films and television. The most popular “house” destination by tourists to San Francisco is the “Mrs. Doubtfire” house from the 1993 film staring the late Robin Williams. Today, the stoop is the somber scene of numerous handwritten notes to the comedian, who died in August 2014. The second most popular house in the city? The “Full House” house, despite the ABC comedy show being off the air for two full decades. But without any assists from pop/media culture, other special structures attract unofficial visitors daily with architecture that ranges from stately to stark-raving mad. From the wilds of the Santa Cruz Mountains to Alameda Island and on to a staid residential neighborhood in Berkeley, here are three houses with knockout physical offerings that entertain on their own, even when their masters remain mum. And, no, you won’t find the overexposed Flintstone House of Hillsborough here. Recently put up for sale — the asking price is $4.2 million — it already has enough international lookie-loo exposure. Too bad the seller, a high-tech executive who reportedly had a “yabba-dabba-do time” living there alone for 20 years, refuses to share a single word about that unique experience. The trio of houses here may not be as well-known as the Fred-andWilma one just off the Eugene A. Doran Bridge on Interstate 280, but they are just as fascinating on their own.
THE SPITE HOUSE IN ALAMEDA
shouts out fascinating tales of
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The Spite House in Alameda, above left, is 9 feet wide and 60 feet long. An extremely narrow space, shown at right, separates the house from its neighbor. Previous page: The Submarine House in the Santa Cruz Mountains is built out of a silo.
rage, revenge, self-destruction and human spitefulness. Or not. Daily curiosity-seekers and schoolkids on an annual field trip head to Alameda to take in the snarling backstory that fuels fascination with the mean-spirited Spite House. Well … kinda. The prickly stories began with a big, beautiful, Queen Anne house built in 1880 near the corner of today’s Broadway and Crist Street. Back then, it belonged to Annette Westerdahl, whose wanderlusting hubby had been gone for so long, the poor woman made ends meet by renting out rooms. So why do folks come by every day, staring and studying? Because alongside the Westerdahl place is another house with stunning details: It’s only 9 feet wide and is sitting so (spitefully?) close to the first house, a sugar cube can’t squeeze between them. It is from that creepy crevice that Spite House lore explodes into a number of versions that no one is sure are truth or just plain poppycock. The smaller house, plain to see, is ultra-narrow but also is 60 feet long and two stories tall — with the upstairs width expanding to 12 feet. So why, back in 1908, did the builder of the tiny house — Charles Froling, a carpenter — construct a lovely, well-built, Colonial Revival residence on such a narrow slip of land? And how could he do such a “spiteful” thing,
as his house rudely wiped out all the sunlight on the north side of the big house, driving Westerdahl’s very upset tenants to move out and leave her in financial peril? Over the years, speculation has flown like shrapnel. Froling was angry at the city, goes one version, for physically carving Crist Street into existence, leaving only a ribbon of soil behind for him to build upon. Another story: When Froling was out of town, his conniving brother sold land they shared to the city. When he returned, only a gash of dirt remained. And yet another tale had Froling in a feud with Westerdahl so toxic he intended to plunge her into dark madness out of pure spite. Alameda historian Woody Minor says no one is sure which of the many stories are true, but even 107 years ago, they marveled at the construction of such a beautiful, odd house. “An October 1908 San Francisco Chronicle story praised the completion of the house,” Minor says. “But three weeks later, the Alameda Daily Argus wrote a front-page story about the distraught Mrs. Westerdahl committing suicide.” The Argus story questioned if she had been deeply distraught about her long-separated husband and, perhaps, by the new (Spite) house, which had darkened her home, including the downstairs bedroom where Westerdahl’s body was found. Oddly, according to Minor, it wasn’t until the 1960s that the legendary chatter about “spite” really started. Plenty of rumors also spread about both houses being haunted and the scenes of several exorcisms to rid them of evil spirits. Today, the most interesting fact might be that the current owners of each house get along swimmingly and mostly dismiss the negative nattering. “I don’t believe any of it,” scoffed Robin Coffee, a retired French professor who has lived in the bigger house for six years. She happily
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sleeps in what would be the haunted, final Westerdahl bedroom. “We heard all that stuff when we moved in,” Coffee says about the legends. Even with one side lightblocked, the bigger house today is still bathed in a beatific glow. Coffee has no problem with her house being one of a number of homes allegedly drenched in spite. “Look online, and you’ll see spite houses all over the place,” says Coffee, clacking the computer in her office, lit by the window on the front of her house. She rattled off spite houses in Alexandria, Virginia; Marblehead, Massachusetts; Virginia City, Nevada; Frederick, Maryland; and others. Looking at the screen, she says, frowning, “There’s my house,” as she points to the Google picture of the matching green structures. “I still think it’s mostly a lot of bad fairy tales.” Next door, in the house of infamy, Jennifer Jacobson also declares, “I don’t believe all that stuff,” even after 18 years of passers-by checking out the place, and noting the Spite House stained-glass window installed in 1970 — over her front door, at 2528 Crist St. “A lot of people love this house,” Jacobson says, “and a lot are assholes about it.” When people come to gawk, Jacobson says, her friends sometimes go out and entertain them with more tales, made up on the spot — thus adding to the encyclopedic lore. “I have met descendants from the Froling family,” Jacobson says, “and they say he simply built the house he could afford ($2,000). They say he loved this house dearly.” For her part, Jacobson believes the unusually tight placement did lead to a clash with Westerdahl. However, Jacobson posits that Westerdahl’s long-term marital problems and other psychological stresses had more to do with her suicide than Froling’s folly.
“My Spite House is both petite and grand,” Jacobson says proudly of the 1,135-square-foot mini-palace with an impressive center staircase that goes up to the second floor. “People are surprised it is not a toolshed or the size of a one-car garage. In fact, my house is a pretty cool little house.” THE SUBMARINE HOUSE,
perched along twisty, one-lane Mountain Charlie Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains, is another silent puzzle: Why did an inspired sculptor work so hard to construct a visual monstrosity of delight and then refuse to talk about it? How difficult it must have been for Harry Neal III to build and develop his subterranean house, over many years, into a giant purple/blue submarine in a setting reminiscent of the 1972 film “Deliverance.” To this day, drivers, bikers, joggers and hikers guffaw when they suddenly find themselves passing 25015 Mountain Charlie Road in Los Gatos, where a massive submarine erupts into view, as if rising from an earthen sea through “waves” of soil. It delivers a wallop of visual surprise. According to Atlas Obscura — the website that catalogs geographic exotica — in 1973 Neal conscripted a friend to help him dismantle and tow from San Jose to the mountains a silo once used for storing hops at Falstaff Brewing. This bit of info came from a one-and-only interview Neal did with the Los Gatos Weekly Times. “Over the ensuing years, Neal turned the silo into his own unique home with circular rooms and a second metal tube with bay windows that protrude from the master bedroom, making the silo even more ‘submarine-like,’ ” reads the website, by way of the Weekly Times. “Surrounding the home are a koi pond, a hot tub, and a studio for his bronze sculpture.”
Berkeley’s Fish House was designed to mimic the tardigrade, the most indestructible micro-animal in nature. It became known as the Fish House due to its circular features.
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Today, the house has a new owner, but a high fence remains that keeps onlookers at a distance and gives off a foreboding “we don’t want you here” vibe. And, if that’s not enough, a big, rude, white dog comes to the fence and barks so harshly that getting the hell out of there becomes the only sensible move. “That dog is one of the most aggressive animals I’ve ever dealt with up here,” says a FedEx driver, preferring to remain anonymous, as one who specializes in rural, mountain deliveries. Although he sees the big blue sub (and that scary dog) almost daily, when he has deliveries at the unique looking house, “I just leave things at the fence.” THE FISH HOUSE IN BERKELEY
might be the craziest, most visually stunning, iconic Bay Area house of them all — and there are plenty of folks who love to discuss the joys of its undulating architecture. The three young men who currently live and work inside the Fish House, hatching what might become a hot, new mobile app, say the home inspires creativity. “I think the light, the aesthetics and even the swooping walls make this place so interesting,” says Mark Paddon, CEO of Guidekick, an application that becomes an interactive, 3-D directive to be used at locations ranging from museums to state parks. “This place is highly conducive to having group brainstorms,” says Paddon, standing in the soaring, whirlpool center of the silvery white house, which looks like some giant, mythic sea creature. “And it is serene and perfect for programming, writing or designing. It serves as a cocoon that insulates us from the outside noise.” When architect Eugene Tsui (pronounced: Sway) came out of UC Berkeley in 1989, his first major job was to design and build an indestructible, easy-to-live-in house for his parents. On a city lot at 2747 Mathews St., Tsui came up with a fireproof, flood-proof, quake-resistant, self-heating and -cooling,
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The Fish House, above and at right, was built to be a fireproof, flood-proof, quake-resistant, self-heating and -cooling structure.
A trio of peculiar houses THE FISH HOUSE: 2747 Mathews St., Berkeley; three beds; three baths; 1,948 square feet; estimated value is $1,098,010 THE SUBMARINE HOUSE: 25015 Mountain Charlie Road, Los Gatos; two beds; two baths; 1,562 square feet; estimated value is $847,204 THE SPITE HOUSE: 2528 Crist St., Alameda; two beds; 1½ baths; 1,135 square feet; estimated value is $671,470 SOURCE: ZILLOW
cavelike design. Tsui called the house — based on the appearance of the tardigrade, the most indestructible micro-animal in nature — Ojo del Sol (the sun’s eye). But as soon as outraged neighbors saw the plans — a big, silvery, finny creature with bulbous, domed-window eyes — they dubbed it the Fish House, a name that stuck. “We had a horrible time that first year of putting out the plans,” Tsui says of what became a local and national controversy over building rights. “There were public hearings till 3 in the morning filled with very angry neighbors screaming about not wanting to see this giant fish.” But, somehow, the city approved the wacky plans, and the otherworldly beast, with hardly a right angle anywhere, became home for Tsui’s parents for nearly 20 years. And, to this day, their son, with a headquarters in Emeryville, continues to bolster his wild man reputation for inventive, eco-conscious architecture. In 2014, the Guidekick crew moved in. Now, all day long, they say, passing cars screech to a halt upon seeing the house that looks like something from the scariest depths of the nearby sea. They say Tsui is so in love with what they’re creating, the architect is giving them a significant break on the kind of backbreaking rents rampant in the Bay Area right now. Meanwhile, the tenants say it’s way-cool to be hugged by an interior where a coiling ramp replaces stairs, tentacles are fire escapes, bathrooms suggest phone booths, shelves float, drawers have wobbly edges, and kitchen counters glide. Sunlight bathes an organic inner space that inspires both deep thoughts and cozy comfort. “Today, people say they seek out this neighborhood because of the Fish House,” Tsui says. “Now, they believe that if a neighborhood has that kind of a house, the people around here must be very interesting. Yes, we now draw a very different crowd.”
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BRAIN GAMES ANSWERS
A N S W E R F R O M PA G E 6
A N S W E R F R O M PA G E 2 4
DIXON SATHER TOWER SMOTHERS BROTHERS ALAMEDA W I N E H AV E N SAN BRUNO JACK LONDON FINAL ANSWER: TITANIC A N S W E R F R O M PA G E 4 8
There are 12 hidden pictures in this illustration, each representing one fact in this magazine. Gnome: Page 23 Grizzly bear: Page 16 Bison: Page 19 Jelly beans: Page 46 Popsicle: Page 65 Tombstone: Pages 16, 60
Redwood: Page 32 Martini: Page 36 Fairy: Page 11 Football: Page 11 Lightbulb: Page 20 Cat: Page 16
The facility pictured here is San Francisco’s Sutro Baths.
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The Eggo waffle, mountain bike, television, Irish coffee and mouse were all invented or introduced in the Bay Area. Toilet paper, the snowboard, the Slinky and potato chips were born elsewhere.
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ADDITIONAL SOURCES
Art director: Tiffany Grandstaff Lead researcher, writer: Tor Haugan Director of Photography: Jami Smith Copy editors: Kristen Crowe, Jaime Welton Story editors: Karen Casto, Mark Conley, Mike Frankel, Sandra Gonzales, Simar Khanna, Darryl Matsuda, James Robinson, Lisa Wrenn
7x7; ACLU; American Film Institute; AmazingList.net; Atlas Obscura; Bay Area News Group; Boxouse; Burning Man; Business Insider; “Calculating the Sinuosity of Lombard and Vermont Streets,” Ron Lancaster, senior lecturer, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto; California Beat; California Department of Developmental Services; “Capital of the World” by Charlene Mires; Cat Town Cafe; City of Pittsburg; Collectors Weekly; Cow Palace; “Creamy & Crunchy” by Jon Krampner; Daily Mail; de Young Museum; East Bay Regional Park District; FoundSF; Gallup; Golden Gate Park; Guinness World Records; History Channel; IBM; Lake Merritt Institute; Livermore's Centennial Light Bulb; KQED; “Krazy George: Still Krazy After All These Cheers” by Krazy George Henderson and Patricia Timberg; Lawrence Livermore Lab’s National Ignition Facility & Photon Science; Leafcutter Designs; Los Angeles Times; Mental Floss; Mountain View Cemetery; Mt. Diablo State Park; MTV News; Museum of the City of San Francisco; NASA Ames Research Center; National Park Service; NBC; NPR; Queerty; Rolling Stone; San Jose Earthquakes; San Jose Public Library; “San Francisco Curiosities” by Saul Rubin; San Francisco Examiner; San Francisco Museum and Historical Society; San Francisco Public Works; “San Francisco’s Fillmore District” by Robert F. Oaks; San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department; “Silent Gesture” by Tommie Smith and David Steele; Snopes.com; Temple of Promise; The Associated Press; The Atlantic; The Bay Institute; The Beatles Bible; The New Fillmore; The New Yorker; The New York Times; Travel Channel; United Nations; University of California Athletic Communications Office; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign English Department; USA Today; U.S. Department of Energy; Weird California
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“I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions.” Maxine Hong Kingston
As the sun rises, ground fog covers the Chileno Valley. PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM GENSHEIMER
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Make wishes come true for those in need this holiday season. Look for Wishbook 2015 starting Thanksgiving Day in the Mercury News & Share the Spirit in the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Daily-Review & Argus. To donate online visit: Wishbook.MercuryNews.com or bitly.com/DonateSTS
MAKING SENSE OF YOUR WORLD