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Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

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The San Francisco Bay Area Portal

California Bay Area county map
California Bay Area county map

The San Francisco Bay Area (referred to locally as the Bay Area) is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.68 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels, and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world with 8.80 million people.

The Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 companies in the United States, after the New York metropolitan area, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The area ranks second in highest density of college graduates, after the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and performs above the state median household income in the 2010 census; it includes the five highest California counties by per capita income and two of the top 25 wealthiest counties in the United States. Based on a 2013 population report from the California Department of Finance, the Bay Area is the only region in California where the rate of people migrating in from other areas in the United States is greater than the rate of those leaving the region, led by Alameda and Contra Costa counties. (more...)

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Flower Drum Song was the eighth musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. It was based on the 1957 novel, The Flower Drum Song, by Chinese-American author C. Y. Lee. The piece opened in 1958 on Broadway and was afterwards presented in the West End and on tour. It was subsequently made into a 1961 musical film.After their extraordinary early successes, beginning with Oklahoma! in 1943, Rodgers and Hammerstein had written two musicals in the 1950s that did not do well and sought a new hit to revive their fortunes. Lee's novel focuses on a father, Wang Chi-yang, a wealthy refugee from China, who clings to traditional values in San Francisco's Chinatown. Rodgers and Hammerstein shifted the focus of the musical to his son, Wang Ta, who is torn between his Chinese roots and assimilation into American culture. The team hired Gene Kelly to make his debut as a stage director with the musical and scoured the country for a suitable Asian – or at least, plausibly Asian-looking – cast. The musical, much more light-hearted than Lee's novel, was profitable on Broadway and was followed by a national tour. (more...)

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Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000), nicknamed Sparky, was an American cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Peanuts (which featured the characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown, among others). He is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists of all time, cited as a major influence by many later cartoonists. Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson wrote in 2007: "Peanuts pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it's hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale—in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow." (more...)

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East Palo Alto is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of East Palo Alto was 28,155. It is situated on the San Francisco Peninsula, roughly halfway between the cities of San Francisco and San Jose. To the north and east is the San Francisco Bay, to the west is the city of Menlo Park, and to the south the city of Palo Alto. Despite being called "East" Palo Alto, this is a misnomer, as the city is precisely due north of Palo Alto. While widely assumed to be part of the city of Palo Alto, East Palo Alto has always been a separate entity, being located in a different county since its founding as an unincorporated community (Palo Alto is in Santa Clara County) and until recently having an entirely different demographic makeup. The two cities are separated only by San Francisquito Creek and, largely, the Bayshore Freeway (the vast majority of East Palo Alto is northeast of the freeway, while all of the residential part of Palo Alto is southwest of the freeway). The revitalization projects in 2000, and the surge of high income high-tech professionals moving into the new developments (including employees from Google and Facebook), have begun to eliminate the cultural and economic differences between the two cities. (more...)

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The Bay Area by year

1954
The Redwood Grove Trail (old-growth loop) in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park
The Redwood Grove Trail (old-growth loop) in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park

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Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

Previous Did you know...

 • ... that Ina Coolbrith (pictured), the first woman granted honorary membership in the Bohemian Club, was also the first California Poet Laureate?
 • ... that the California-based donut shop Psycho Donuts has generated controversy for its mental health-themed products, such as the "Manic Malt" and "Bipolar"?
 • ... that Horace Barker was awarded the National Medal of Science for discovering the coenzyme of vitamin B12, which Barker had isolated from mud taken from San Francisco Bay?
 • ... that England-born American composer Wallace Arthur Sabin was the first dean of the San Francisco chapter of the American Guild of Organists? (painting of work presented at the Bohemian Grove pictured)
 • ... that the Cremation of Care ceremony (pictured) is performed on the first night of the Bohemian Club's annual summer encampment at the Bohemian Grove?

July 2009

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Police Officer on duty at the fair
Police Officer on duty at the fair

The Castro Street Fair is a San Francisco lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender LGBT street festival and fair usually held on the first Sunday in October in the Castro neighborhood, the main LGBT neighborhood in the city. The fair was founded by Harvey Milk, and the group he led, the Castro Valley Association, in 1974. (San Francisco Police Officer on duty pictured)

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~ Juan Bautista de Anza

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Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

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