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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Radar generated 3-D view of the San Andreas Fault, at Crystal Springs Reservoir near San Mateo
Radar generated 3-D view of the San Andreas Fault, at Crystal Springs Reservoir near San Mateo
The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly 810 miles (1,300 km) through California in the United States. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal). The fault divides into three segments, each with different characteristics, and a different degree of earthquake risk. Although the most significant (Southern) segment only dates back about 5 million years, the oldest sections were formed by the subduction of a spreading ridge 30 million years ago.

The fault was first identified in 1895 by Professor of geology Andrew Lawson from UC Berkeley who discovered the northern zone. It is named after a small lake which was formed in a valley between the two plates. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Lawson concluded that the fault extended all the way into southern California. In 1953, geologist Thomas Dibblee astounded the scientific establishment with his conclusion that hundreds of miles of lateral movement could occur along the San Andreas Fault.

A project called the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) is drilling into the fault to improve prediction and recording of future quakes. (more...)

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Melvin Mouron Belli (July 29, 1907 – July 9, 1996) was a prominent American lawyer known as "The King of Torts" and by detractors as 'Melvin Bellicose'. He had many celebrity clients, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Errol Flynn, Chuck Berry, Muhammad Ali, the Rolling Stones, Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker, Martha Mitchell, Lana Turner, Tony Curtis, and Mae West. He won over USD $600,000,000 in judgments during his legal career. He was also the attorney of Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Belli was born in the California Gold Rush town of Sonora, California in the Sierra foothills. His parents were of Italian ancestry from Switzerland. His grandmother Anna Mouron was the first female pharmacist in California. By the 1920s, the family had moved to the city of Stockton, California where Belli attended Stockton High School.

After winning a court case, Belli would raise a Jolly Roger flag over his Montgomery Street office building in the Barbary Coast district of San Francisco (which Belli claimed had been a Gold Rush-era brothel) and fire a cannon, mounted on his office roof, to announce the victory and the impending party. (more...)

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Milpitas /mɪlˈptəs/ is a city in Santa Clara County, California. It is located with San Jose to its south and Fremont to its north, at the eastern end of State Route 237 and generally between Interstates 680 and 880 which run roughly north/south through the city. With Alameda County bordering directly on the north, Milpitas sits in the extreme northeast section of the South Bay, bordering the East Bay and Fremont. Milpitas is also located within the Silicon Valley. The corporate headquarters of Maxtor, LSI Corporation, Flextronics, Adaptec, Intersil, FireEye, Cisco Systems, JDSU, KLA-Tencor, and SanDisk sit within the industrial zones of Milpitas. The population was 66,790 at the 2010 census. (more...)

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The Bay Area by year

1983
SF Mayor Dianne Feinstein
SF Mayor Dianne Feinstein

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Chinese funerary customs, San Francisco, c. 1870s
image credit: public domain

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San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

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July - September 2012

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The San Francisco International Film Festival is among the longest running film festivals in the Americas. Organized by the San Francisco Film Society, it is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries annually.

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~ John Steinbeck,
*more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

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