It’s been a while since I’ve done one of my famous travelogues, but last week Patty and I had a very fine trip to the Bay Area, and it offered some good photo opps.
The reason for our trip was business. As some of you know, Patty owns and operates a company called WomenSpirit, which designs and manufactures robes, blouses, stoles and other items for women ministers. (There’s also a men’s line, called AbidingSpirit. For more on WomenSpirit and AbidingSpirit, visit the website, http://www.womenspirit.com,)
There are three Protestant seminaries in Berkeley, and Patty and I spent one day at each seminary, displaying and selling robes and other garments to seminarians and seminary staff members.
It was not only a good trip from the business standpoint, but also from the sightseeing and touring standpoints. Combined, San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland have about everything a person could ask for in terms of quality of life. Individually, they are fascinating and distinctive cities.
If you’ve been to Berkeley, you know everything revolves around “Cal,” that is, the University of California, Berkley, with an undergraduate and graduate enrollment of more than 35,000.
The school, which sits halfway up a big hill a couple of miles from the waterfront, generates a nearly round-the-clock flow of foot and bike traffic, which makes for a lively environment.
We also spent an afternoon in San Francisco, but having explored San Francisco in depth several years ago, I wanted to get a good look at Oakland this time.
In some ways, Oakland is similar to Kansas City. For example:
:: Oakland has about 390,000 residents; Kansas City about 460,000
:: Oakland’s downtown is making a comeback, just as Kansas City’s is
:: Both cities have high crime rates
:: Kansas City lays fleeting claim to Ernest Hemingway; Oakland prides itself on being the one-time home of Jack London (“The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang,” among other works)
In some ways, the two cities are very different:
:: Oakland has the San Francisco Bay; Kansas City, the Missouri River
:: Kansas City has the renovated Truman Sports Complex; Oakland, the stark, unattractive Oakland Coliseum
:: Oakland covers 78 square miles; Kansas City, 314
:: Oakland has an average of 260 sunny days a year; Kansas City, 120
With that lengthy lead-in, then, here are some images from the Bay Area.
San Francisco Bay, with the Bay Bridge in the background
Happy travelers from Kansas City
A popular restaurant inside the San Francisco Ferry Building
The Brewed Awakening, a Berkeley coffee shop where we started each day
…we and a lot of other people
Sproul Plaza on the Cal campus
Cal isn’t exactly a conservative campus
Alice Waters’ famous restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley (It is closed until about June 1 because of a recent fire. We had reservations, which were canceled after the fire.)
An entrance to Jack London Square, Oakland waterfront
Jack London: He went to high school in Oakland and spent time there before heading to the Yukon Territory in 1897 for the Gold Rush
Oakland City Center
City Hall
Taking a break in downtown Oakland
Not quite as active as the Brewed Awakening
The Art-Deco style Paramount Theatre in Oakland. (It opened in 1931.)
Like Kansas City’s Folly Theatre, the Paramount was renovated after decades of neglect. Once again it is a major performing-arts venue.
The Cathedral Building, the centerpiece of Latham Square
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Fitz, the Oakland Coliseum _ or whatever it’s called nowadays_ was a nice-looking stadium until Al Davis had it enclosed to accommodate the Raiders when they moved back to Oakland in the mid-90s. I attended an A’s game there in 1995 and liked the scenic view beyond the outfield. Today, however, it looks like a pitiful place to watch a ball game.
It’s just a concrete bowl…No exterior colors, nothing. They might as well open it up on Sundays to the wacko Raider fans and let them go at each other like gladiators. No football necessary.
Jim:
What interesting comments and fun pictures of Oakland. Feel like I was there.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Laura
Thanks, Laura…Oakland was a pleasant surprise, other than the Coliseum.
As San Francisco and Berkeley have grown — and become almost prohibitively expensive for middle-income folks, Oakland has grown as a residential alternative. Also, Berkeley segues into Oakland almost unnoticeably except for signs that say you’re entering Oakland. A major thoroughfare, Telegraph Avenue, starts at the south side of the Cal campus and continues down through the rest of Berkeley, straight into Oakland, and ends at historic Latham Square downtown. (I’ve added a photo of the Cathedral Building at Latham Square.)
Did you go to Monterey?
No…not enough time.
Fitz,
The A’s Raiders and Warriors are getting new stadiums and an arena. Three separate facilities. The sites fighting for the stadiums and arena range from Oakland, to Fremont (27 miles south of Oakland) to San Jose. One thing is definite: The Coliseum is “history.”
I hope you’re right, Larry, although from what I’ve read, Oakland officials are not going to go down without a fight. And they shouldn’t.
I programmed video arcade games back in the late 70s and took my first “holy shit look at how much they’re paying me!” gig in The City.
However, even though they were paying me a ton, and added in a buncha perks -Audi 5, anyone? – I wouldn’t pay the outlandish rates to live where I wanted in The City; in ’79 a one-bedroom apartment was already going for a cool grand a month.
So I retreated across the bay and found wonderful digs across from Lake Merritt, right around the corner from the old Grand Lake Theater.
A memorable three years, that was.
A good friend of Patty’s, an administrator at one of the seminaries in Berkeley, lives near Lake Merritt, which, for the readers’ edification, is just about a mile east of downtown. Very unusual — to have a major lake that close to downtown. But that’s another benefit of living in a bay city.
P.S. Love that tag…”The City.”
It’s how the denizens refer to their quaint burg: The City
Understandable, really; the whole of SF is ineffable at a level unattainable by NY or Chicago…too much physicality in the City of Big Shoulders, too much ndefinitive past in NY.
Do you mean “indefinite past” when you refer to New York, Will?
Sorry; “…too much of a definitive past…”
Sure that was the dang keyboreard and neither my fingers or brain.
Give it a couple of shots of WD-40.
Editor’s note: I just received a comment from Brian Corteville, one of Patty’s many cousins. Brian posted it on the “About Me” page, where it won’t be seen by most people reading this post, so I’m repeating it here.
Regarding my reference to Kansas City laying brief claim to Ernest Hemingway, Brian cited a quotation of Hemnigway’s that writer A.E. Hotchner included in his 1966 biography of Hemingway, titled “Papa Hemingway.”
Here’s the Hemingway quote:
“My first job on the Kansas City Star was to find the labor reporter in one of several drinking haunts, get him sobered in a Turkish bath, and get him to a typewriter. So if the professors really want to know what I learned on The Star, that’s what I learned. How to sober up rummies.”
***
Thanks, Brian…And welcome to the Comments Dept.
Nice story Fitz! Great pics too!
First of all, in my not so humble opinion, California is the most beautiful state in our great country. I visit at least three times a year on business and am always in awe at the raw beauty and majesty of it.
Despite my right wing fascist inclinations, I find nothing more enjoyable than people watching on campus at UC Berkeley and on the boardwalk in Venice Beach. While on most days I would gladly shoot 7 out of 10, I also get an intellectual erection and marvel at how our democracy continues to exist on some primal level despite the duplicity of man, woman and the ultimate duplicitant, the transgendered.
Favorite SF story. Back in the 80s I was visiting an attorney friend who at the time was quite well known nationally for a recent judgment and settlement he obtained for a client. Our visit was interrupted by an attractive young woman, dressed in a sharp Brooks Brothers suit and carrying a sample case. After introductions and pleasantries, she opened her case to reveal two dozen jars of high (no pun intended) grade marijuana.
Business was conducted, order placed with delivery following within the hour via another “courier.” Back then, according to my friend she was knocking down over $250K a year.
Only in California? Probably not. But the execution and ritual were distinctly Californian.
Good story, Smartman. Very unique sales presentation, considering the commodity.
“…despite the duplicity of man, woman and the ultimate duplicitant, the transgendered”
You’re always seething a bit under the surface — no, right on the surface — aren’t you, Smartman? It often makes for funny, if extremely politically incorrect, observations…And some of the words you commenters create, i.e., duplicitant, are entertainingly descriptiful.
Fitz, always my pleasure to enhance the flavor of your bouillabaisse with some new ingredients from my jar of jargon.
And yes, if I’m not seething, I’m not breathing. Considering primal scream therapy as another outlet.