Driving the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge
Wednesday, June 19, 2002
There is no shortage of writing that says the same thing I am about to say: are we lucky to live in the Bay Area, or what? There, I'm not so original. I'm feeling the same things as the masses. I am one with the people. The Bay Area is gorgeous.
This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I'm a native. I've lived here all my life. I've wanted to leave but I like it too much here.
The place isn't getting much better; really, it's getting worse. Overbuilt, overcrowded, too many cars, too expensive to live here. And in my lifetime, boy have I seen changes.
"Changes? You seen changes. Well ol' timer, tellme 'bout summa dose changes."
- The huge flower farms of South Hayward and Union City have disappeared. You know like you're driving 880 through Union City and on the right there's this huge multiplex movie house, like 25 screens or something? Ten years ago that was all farmland, and a huge piece of it was for flowers. In the spring there were acres of gladiolas growing. Driving out Mission Blvd. where Hayward turns into Union City, sort of out by Niles, there were also huge flower farms. Now it's mostly new relatively houses. Orchards! There used to be real orchards in south Alameda County. And tomato fields. For real. Now, there is so much less agriculture in California that the Hunts canning plant that was at 2nd and B St. in Hayward was closed a few years back.
- The fields along the shores of the East and South Bay where one could go fishing, hunting, scavenging and ride motorcycles have been covered with the concrete slabs of industrialization (though thankfully much of the shoreline has been preserved). This is where I learned to shoot a BB gun, ride motorcycles, find driftwood. You could walk along salt ponds under enormous power lines. Now all of that's mostly inaccessible.
- The canyons of Castro Valley have rapidly filled with houses. It's ugly and crowded.
- Emeryville seems determined to fill every square foot of city land with retail while contributing little or nothing to infrastructure that moves the shoppers in and out of Emeryville.
- There didn't used to be homeless, really, but now there are plenty, and the economics of this area are pretty threatening.
- Real estate prices are outtasite.
- No one ever really used to think much about living in Antioch or Pittsburgh, but now areas like these are sprawling
- Further out, agriculture is rapidly disappearing from the Central Valley. California is not really the fruit basket it used to be. California used to conjure visions of oranges and cornucopia. Now, except for small organic farms, God love 'em, most of our produce comes from "elsewhere."
Just to name a few.
However, for over the past year I have driven nearly every Monday afternoon and evening from Berkeley to Dominican University in San Rafael and then back home to Oakland. I am just "this" close to beginning to write my thesis. By December I should have this dang masters degree thing finished. Finally. I want it over. I just want those initials. And I want to stop writing checks to the school.
But here's the thing I don't want to end: over the past year I have driven nearly every Monday afternoon and evening across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
I have driven within the same period of time, between about 4:30 and 8:30, there and back, during all four seasons, in low and high sun, darkness, fog, overcast, sunset, rain, thunderstorm, long and short visibility.
And what I've gotten from this is a tremendous variety of driving and viewing conditions all from the same exact place, a bridge which must be one of the most beautiful perches from which to be in a car and to see Mt. Tam, up to Sonoma, the Napa Valley, Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland, the Bay Bridge, Yerba Buena, San Francisco, Angel Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, Tiburon, and Corte Madera, not to mention the bay, the ships, the sky, and, when you're driving in the left lane heading west, from the left side of the car you can look down on the rocks just under the bridge near Red Rock, the huge privately-owned red dusty dome sticking out of the water, and see sea lions basking in the sun.
Last night, as I drove home around 7:30, heading east on the bridge, the beauty I saw was greater than I could take in, and the quantity I took in is greater than I can describe. Visibility was spectacular. Everything stood out clear and sparkly. There were wisps of the lightest fog around the Golden Gate and the city for atmosphere. The air was vibrant. There was space, I could see and feel with my eyes the distance and roundness of the world.
I pulled off at Pt. Richmond, drove through the railway tunnel, and got one of the most spectaclar views of three bridges I've ever had. And I couldn't help it. No one much was around. The air smelled fresh and moist. I said to myself, "This is so beautiful, I am lucky to be here to see it."
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Working Class Hero
by Jerry Saltz
Ralph Fasanella, Mar. 1-July 14, 2002 at the New-York Historical Society, 2 West 77th Street, New York, N.Y. 10024
 Painting overtook Ralph Fasanella like stigmata. In 1944, at the age of 30, having never given art a second thought, he felt his hands begin to "tingle." "They were itchy," he said. "Something was wrong with them. They ached." Thinking it was arthritis, he went to a doctor, who gave him a shot. Six months later, this child of Italian immigrants, who grew up in a Sullivan Street tenement, worked with his father delivering ice, and spent time in reform school, where he was "used as a girl" by the priests -- this machinist, truck driver and union organizer, who would later be blacklisted during the McCarthy era -- began to paint. "I always felt embarrassed by the whole goddamn thing," he said, "but I had to do it."
Go into the Oakland Main Public Library at 14th and Oak. Walk straight from the front door through the main lobby down the very short hall towards the reference desk you can see from the main doors. As you exit the hall and before you reach the reference desk turn around and look up. You'll see a marvellous baseball stadium painting by Ralph Fasanella.
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Thanks, Laura. I intend to keep the mix. I'd been thinking about writing more again, but had been struggling with the what, how, and when, and then suddenly my fingers were typing...
BTW, I think you'd like Ralph Fasanella's paintings.
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Thanks, Karin, for pointing to Shifra's post about her marriage.
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Somebody at the International Atomic Energy Agency, apparently, seems to visit my weblog on a semi-irregular basis.
Say...
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