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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 Countys
connection to James Bonds
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
areas 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.
PA G E 7
PA G E 2 5
PA G E 4 9
PA G E 6 5
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
C O V E R I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y A N D R E W B A N N E C K E R
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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W E LC O M E
Our patchwork
Bay Area
B Y TO R H AU G A N
ven before I made my westward relocation three years

ago, I knew a little about
the Bay Area. I could tell you that
Levis 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 dont know that Star
Wars reference, you may be one
of the four people who havent
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 Munizs
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? Thats
made from old headstones. That
crack in the roadway? It was
commissioned as a piece of art.
The picturesque bay youve looked
at hundreds of times? Its, 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 youll see here. And
theyre true every last one.
Pretty soon (as soon as you flip
the page faster than you can
say Sunol dog mayor) youll be
knee deep in fascinating material
about this region. And the more
you learn, the more youll 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
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BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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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
QUICK SIPS
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: Its not the dystopian Outback in George Millers Mad Max.) Its Burning Man, the yearly collective outburst of
expression in Nevadas 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
Franciscos 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 2015s 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
Lets 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 Peoples 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 towns post office.
If stepping on a crack will break

your mothers back, wed 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 theres 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 states tectonic
topography. The crack fractures
off into smaller fissures and slabs,
made of stone from the artists
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, youre 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: Its
called the Cupertino effect. After
1997s 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.
RESE ARCH AND WRITING BY TOR HAUG AN
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A matter of time
Heres 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
Cant 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
youre 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 teams
56-year Rose Bowl drought.
(Bonus: Originally, the mascots
that appeared at Cals football
games were real, live bears. In
1940, it was decided to go with
a costumed mascot instead,
according to Cal. Good call.)
San Franciscos 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 Franciscos 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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11
QUICK SIPS
Lets 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. Its 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. Its 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 werent 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 Reeses 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.
Whats 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 didnt 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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QUICK SIPS
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 As playoff game against the New York Yankees, and was led by cheerleader
Krazy George Henderson, a San Jose State alum. As the San Francisco Examiners Bucky Walter later wrote: A study
of the NBC videotape verifies Krazy Georges 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 (hes known for leading
cheers with his trusty hand drum). These days, the Wave happens at events around the world. One place where the Wave
hasnt 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 Americas 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 its clear Henderson has made an imprint,
and hes still going strong. As Henderson himself says in the title of his own book, hes 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 studios 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
Andys bulletin board). For 2007s
Ratatouille, producer Brad
Lewis interned at Yountvilles
famed French Laundry. Local
favorite Fentons Creamery in
Oakland is in 2009s Up. Inside
Out, released this past summer, is
set in San Francisco and features
numerous Fog City landmarks.
And Richmonds 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 Bugs Life,
Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo
and WALL-E in one meeting.
Not bad for a days 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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QUICK SIPS
Resting among the best

Mill among millionaires and other interesting figures at Oaklands 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 Franciscos Palace of Fine Arts; physician and former Oakland Mayor Samuel Merritt (and
Merritt College and Lake Merritt namesake); Ina Coolbrith, the states 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 Yorks Central Park and the Stanford University campus. (Bonus: They may not be considered Wonders
of the World, but the cemeterys 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 Oaklands Cat
Town Cafe, at 2869 Broadway,
which became the nations 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, itd be
kind of shocking if that werent
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 youre 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 youve been to a zoo, Folsom
Street Fair or Bear Pride lately
whoops, wrong kind of bear the
odds are quite high. But were
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 doesnt 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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QUICK SIPS
A bigger beam
It might not be attached to the head of a shark, but we think its still pretty darn cool. Lawrence Livermore Labs
National Ignition Facility is home to the largest and highest-energy laser system in the world, according to the U.S.
Department of Energy. NIFs 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 pencils 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? Whats 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 youre a Trekkie if youve 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 Enterprises warp core. Were hoping the facility and the labs 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 Valleys 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; its 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 parks zoological past roam
the landscape. The bison are the
last remaining vestiges of the
parks menagerie of animals.
They were moved from the
eastern part of the park to the
meadow they currently inhabit,
and theyre cared for by San
Francisco Zoo staff members.
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BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
AHA!
19
QUICK SIPS
Simply groundbreaking
The San Jose Earthquakes have shaken things up with their new stadium. Before Avaya Stadium even existed, the structures
groundbreaking was recognized by Guinness World Records as the worlds 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 youre 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 its sensitive
enough to record vibrations of roaring fans. (Bonus: The Earthquakes were San Joses first major professional sports team.)
Theres
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? Thats exactly whats
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 weve 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 Franciscos official song.
On Valentines Day 2012, San
Francisco celebrated the 50th
anniversary of Bennetts
signature song, and Mayor
Ed Lee declared the occasion
Tony Bennett Day.
What a drain! The Morning Glory

Spillway near Napa Countys
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.
20
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BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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QUICK SIPS
Fab Fours Hello, Goodbye

Heres some Beatles trivia that you cant 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 Citys 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 bands 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
Views 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
dont 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. Cheeses 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. Cheeses. 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. Cheeses 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, were not
talking about hipsters (though
there are plenty of those, too).
Were 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 gnomemans 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.)
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BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
AHA!
23
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 Franciscos Pier 45.
1 The worlds 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 worlds 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
24
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BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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.
B Y T E S AC R O S S T H E BAY
A taste of history in every bite

SAN FRANCISCO COUNT Y
rom a railing just above

Boudin Bakerys 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 Padillas 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. Its 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 Boudins master baker, and its
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 Fishermans Wharf is
iconic. Its 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 days dough to provide the
natural yeast for leavening the next
batch. To this day, theres a trace of
the Gold Rush era in each bite.
Boudins 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
26
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BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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S TORY BY DANIEL B ROWN
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PHOTOGR APHS BY JIM GENSHEIMER
burned to the ground.

Padilla understands that, in case
of emergency, hed be called upon
to do the same. He apprenticed
under former Boudin owner Papa
Steve Giraudo. And late in Giraudos 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, Dont 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 its 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 Franciscos
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
cant 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 Fishermans Wharf location pumps out
20,000 pounds of dough a day.
Being able to keep this alive
and healthy, its amazing, Padilla
says. Its history. Its part of San
Francisco.
Clockwise
from top left: A
bas-relief shows
Isidore Boudin,
the founder
of Boudin
Bakery; a locked
box contains
Boudins 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.
27
Ghostly reminder of World War II

S A N M AT E O C O U N T Y
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 Countys 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 enemys
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 Franciscos harbor defens-
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STORY BY A ARON KINNE Y
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P H O T O G R A P H S B Y PAT R I C K T E H A N
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 Countys 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 Areas 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 regions military
history.
Its 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
Countys 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.
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
AHA!
29
Palo Altos most lovable ass
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 Altos
Barron Park neighborhood.
Perrys 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 its 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 Murphys face in with his,
but hes 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.
Its hard to describe why its
a thing, but it is, Anderson says
of the attachment he and others
have to the donkeys. Its 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. Thats when artists from
30
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STORY BY CHUCK BARNE Y
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PHOTOGR APHS BY LIPO CHING
DreamWorks Animation then

headquartered in Redwood City
visited Barron Park to sketch and
shoot video.
Niner didnt 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 didnt.
The rest is showbiz history.
Shrek went on to win the first
Academy Award for best animated feature and grossed close
to $500million 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 didnt 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 thats not
the case, she says. We really
work hard to maintain the tradition because it draws the neighborhood together, and its 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
Altos 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
Astronomical arbors
AL AMEDA COUNT Y
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 NASAs 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.
Roosas 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 OBrien, 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
doesnt surprise me at all.
Far more challenged by Californias 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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S T O R Y B Y M AT T O B R I E N
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P H O T O G R A P H S B Y R AY C H AV E Z
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 Tildens Environmental Education Center.
Roosas trees are healthy,
OBrien says. Theyre 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 gardens
moon tree is the same vibrant
green undergrowth that dots
redwood forests along Californias
North Coast: giant chain ferns,
leatherleaf ferns, sword ferns,
large-leaved lupine, wood rose,
Humboldt larkspur, salmonberry, Chamissos 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 Roosas 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.
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
AHA!
33
A moon tree,
the redwood at
center, stands
next to the main
entrance of the
Environmental
Education
Center at Tilden
Regional Park.
The Martinez Special

C O N T R A C O S TA C O U N T Y
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 Richelieus
improvisational genius. Whats
indisputable is how the drink
became part of the citys 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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STORY BY G ARY PETERSON
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PHOTOGR APHS BY DOUG DUR AN
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 Amatos Restaurant, which also was located at
414 Ferry St., with the aid of the
cocktails 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
Franciscos 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.
Marins little Switzerland

MARIN COUNTY
harles Martins 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
its 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 Areas
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 didnt 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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STORY BY ELLIOT T ALMOND
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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 whats 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.
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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39
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.
Bloodthirsty botanicals
SONOMA COUNTY
n the gardening world, its 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.
Wheres Audrey? visitors ask
in jest, even as theyre 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 DAmato has
plenty of Venus flytraps, for sure,
but none with Audreys girth
or, for that matter, her appetite.
But thanks to his playfully dark
sense of humor, Audreys 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 dont
hunger for human flesh and wont
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.
Its the first of many myth-busting answers that DAmato and his
staff will deliver on any given day. If
you are interested in the fascinating
world of carnivorous plants, this
noted horticulturalists sanctuary is
the place to go. California Carnivores is the largest such nursery
in the United States, perhaps the
world, with DAmato 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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S T O R Y B Y L I N D A Z AV O R A L
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P H O T O G R A P H S B Y R AY C H AV E Z
$15 and run as much as $60.

Hes 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 its not an exotic tropical locale. Its 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,
DAmato says. Its been one of the
most dramatic changes Ive seen.
Whats the appeal?
Its really the way the plants
look, their beauty, DAmato 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, thats 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 Hopes 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.
When Old Faithful turns faithless

N A PA C O U N T Y
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 Calistogas 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, thats 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 Yellowstones 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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STORY BY LISA KRIEGER
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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. Its
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 its the creepy stuff we cant
see that deserves full attention. Geologists worry about stresses that
cause deformation in the Earths
crust, easing pressure inside the
geysers reservoir and delaying the
time between eruptions.
Research shows that Old
Faithfuls 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. (Its not
perfect: Sometimes eruptions slow
when earthquakes dont 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, its time to cork the wine, fold
up the picnic blanket and head
home.
At left: Calistogas
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.
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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45
The secrets behind the sweets

SOLANO COUNTY
he number of jelly beans

15billion! gobbled up in
any given year would circle
the Earth 5times. 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 candys meccas
the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield.
There, youll 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
Gippers love for the candy is so
46
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STORY BY K AREN DSOUZ A
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legendary that theres 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
40million beans were nibbled at
the celebration so they would
be able to make a red, white and
blue Jelly Belly flag.
Certainly, theres 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 (thats
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
Its no longer a place for skating, splashing or seeing amazing artifacts.

Where are you? Heres 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.
PHOTOGRAPH FROM GOOGLE EARTH
48
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BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
VISUAL
SURPRISES
SEVEN NOVEL GRAPHICS
HE
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e
, th ie
ary cook
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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 citys 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
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
East
Palo
Alto
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How
dredging
works
A hydro-survey
is conducted
to determine
how much silt
and sediment
shoaling has
occurred and
impedes into
the channel.
Dredges remove
the material.
A hopper dredge
employs a
trailing suction
pipe; a clamshell
dredge picks up
material with a
clamshell bucket.
Dredged matter
is tested for hazardous materials.
Many hazardous
substances
are naturally
occurring, and
others come from
water runoff.
The nonhazardous
dredged material
is transported
and disposed
of at several
sites around the
bay or at a deep
ocean site.
A new
hydro-survey
is conducted
to verify the
channel is
clear of silt and
sediment and
the waterway
is navigable.
Mount St. Helena

67 miles
Elev. 4,344 ft.
Mount Shasta
240 miles
Elev. 14,151 ft.
I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y D AV E J O H N S O N
Mount Lassen
165 miles
Elev. 10,466 ft.
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 cant see Mount Shasta directly, you might be able to see part of the peak, refracted by the atmosphere.
A view from the top
Farallon Islands
60 miles
Mount Tamalpais
43 miles
Elev. 2,601 ft.
SOURCES: MT. DIABLO STATE PARK, CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS
Loma Prieta
58 miles
Elev. 3,791 ft.
Elev. 3,849 ft.
Mount
Diablo
Mount Hamilton
40 miles
Elev. 4,200 ft.
The Delta
20 miles
Yosemite Valley
and Half Dome
135 miles
Elev. 8,839 ft.
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, theyre 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 dont, in fact, have otherworldly origins,
they provide a snapshot of the Bay Areas 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 G R APHS BY DAI SUG ANO
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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57
Them bones
Forget about skeletons in the closet San Franciscos California Academy of Sciences has skeletons on its roof. Thats
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 specimens 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. Heres a look at how the academys 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
58
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BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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 academys 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
museums 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 whales age. They study tiny samples
of dentin, a component of the teeth, to understand the animals
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 academys 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
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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59
City
of Souls
Walking in San Franciscos 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.
Theyre hard to see, but theyre 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 Parks 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.
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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
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
Londons dream home; a property in St. Helena where Ambrose Bierces family lived (its 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 Steins famous quote; and 826 Valencia, a nonprofit founded by Dave Eggers and Nnive 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).
Literary landscape
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
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 Londons 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)
FAMOUS HOMES
Jack Londons Wolf House (historic park at 2400 London Ranch Road, Glen Ellen);
Philip K. Dicks 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 ONeills Tao House (historic site at 1000 Kuss Road, Danville);
Edwin Markham (1650 Senter Road, San Jose)
BRAIN GAMES
Bendy straws, floppy disks, fortune cookies and ice pops these arent 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
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.
Y
DEF ING
GRAVITY
WATER FLOWS AND CARS ROLL
UPHILL AT PECULIAR SPOTS
SCATTERED ACROSS THE BAY AREA
S TO R Y 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 LOGICS 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, were 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.
LETS START WITH A CLASSIC.
If youve been in the Bay Area any

stretch of time, youve 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 Cruzs 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 dont believe its
just optical illusion, says Rachel
Miller, tour guide supervisor at the
Mystery Spot. There are so many
different aspects where we havent
been able to pinpoint reasons for
whats happening. Like, when
youre in the cabin, not only are the
walls at different angles, but you
can feel like youre 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. Youll see a gentle green
stream trickling along steadily,
and tricking the eye.
It really does look like the
water is flowing uphill! It cant
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.
Theres 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 cant try this
one by car. But theres 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, its 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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71
BASICALLY, WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU THINK YOU SEE.

Paul Doherty, senior scientist at San Franciscos 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.
Youd swear youre 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, wed 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 Franciscos 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 youre
comparing it to whats 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 its 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 99percent
of that information, then sends
the remaining 1percent 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
Finding the gravity hills

4
160
80
17
Lloyd
Lake
J F K D r.
1
Black
Diamond
Mines
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680
205
Empire
Mine
Road
Benicia
780
Golden Gate Park,

San Francisco
Altamont
580
Santa Cruz
Mystery Spot,
Santa Cruz
Lake
Herman
Road
Empire Mine Road,

Antioch
Lake Herman Road,

Benicia
Rohnert
Park
101
Patterson Pass
Road
Patterson Pass Road,

Livermore
Lichau
Road
Lichau Road,
Penngrove
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
THERES
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
heyre 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 wont find the
overexposed Flintstone House of
Hillsborough here. Recently put
up for sale the asking price
is $4.2million 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
todays 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: Its only 9 feet
wide and is sitting so (spitefully?)
close to the first house, a sugar
cube cant 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 12feet.
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 Westerdahls
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 Westerdahls body
was found.
Oddly, according to Minor, it
wasnt 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 dont 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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77
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 youll 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, Theres my house, as
she points to the Google picture of
the matching green structures. I
still think its mostly a lot of bad
fairy tales.
Next door, in the house of infamy, Jennifer Jacobson also declares,
I dont 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
Westerdahls long-term marital
problems and other psychological
stresses had more to do with her
suicide than Frolings 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.
Berkeleys 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
dont want you here vibe. And,
if thats 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 Ive 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
UCBerkeley 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; 1 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 suns 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 Tsuis 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 theyre
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 its
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.
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
AHA!
81
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
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 Franciscos Sutro Baths.
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.
A B O U T A H A!
AHA! STAFF
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
Art director: Tiffany Grandstaff

Lead researcher, writer: Tor Haugan
Director of Photography: Jami Smith
Copy editors: Kristen Crowe, Jaime Welton
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 Labs 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 Franciscos 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
Story editors: Karen Casto, Mark Conley,

Mike Frankel, Sandra Gonzales, Simar Khanna,
Darryl Matsuda, James Robinson, Lisa Wrenn
82
AHA!
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
A H A!
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
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
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83
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

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A BAY AREA NEWS GROUP PREMIUM EDITION

Bay Area News Group $4.95

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