Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

San Quentin State Prison is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men located in unincorporated San Quentin, Marin County, California, United States. Opened in July 1852, it is the oldest prison in the state. California's only death row for male inmates, the largest in the United States, is located at the prison. It has a gas chamber, but since 1996, executions at the prison have been carried out by lethal injection. The prison has been featured on film, video, and television; is the subject of many books; has hosted concerts; and has housed many notorious inmates. (more...)

Joshua Abraham Norton (c. 1819 – January 8, 1880), the self-proclaimed Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I, was a celebrated citizen of San Francisco, California, who in 1859 proclaimed himself "Emperor of these United States" and subsequently "Protector of Mexico".

Born in England, Norton spent most of his early life in South Africa. He immigrated to San Francisco in 1849 after receiving a bequest of $40,000 from his father's estate, arriving aboard the steam yacht Hurlothrumbo. Norton initially made a living as a businessman, but he lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice.

After losing a lawsuit in which he tried to void his rice contract, Norton left San Francisco. He returned a few years later, laying claim to the position of Emperor of the United States. Although he had no political power, and his influence extended only so far as he was humoured by those around him, he was treated deferentially in San Francisco, and currency issued in his name was honoured in the establishments he frequented. (more...)

The town of Los Gatos is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 29,413 at the 2010 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area at the southwest corner of San Jose in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Los Gatos is an established neighborhood in Silicon Valley. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Los Gatos ranks 33rd in affluence in the United States.

The name Los Gatos is Spanish, meaning the cats. The name derives from the 1839 Alta California land-grant that encompassed the area, which was called La Rinconada de Los Gatos, ("Cat's Corner"), where "the cats" refers to the mountain lions and bobcats that are indigenous to the foothills in which the town is located. The name has been anglicized to /lɔːs ˈɡætəs/ lawss-GAT-əs, although one also hears pronunciations truer to the original Spanish, /loʊsˈɡɑːtoʊs/ lohss-GAH-tohss. (more...)

 • The 2013 America's Cup (Oracle Team USA yacht pictured) is held in San Francisco Bay
 • Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashes while landing at San Francisco International Airport
 • An unofficial death certificate is issued for Jahi McMath by the Alameda County coroner
 • Andy Lopez is shot and killed by a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy
 • Warren Hall (pictured), at California State University, East Bay, is demolished by implosion
 • Graton Resort & Casino opens in Rohnert Park
 • The Russell City Energy Center goes online in Hayward
 • SFJAZZ Center (pictured) opens in San Francisco
 • The new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opens
 • Solar Impulse begins a cross-US flight, taking off from Moffett Field in Mountain View
 • The Tom Lantos Tunnels (pictured), at Devil's Slide near Pacifica, open
 • Gilead Sciences' drug Sovaldi, for the treatment of hepatitis C, is approved by the FDA
 • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicist Carl Haber is awarded a MacArthur "Genius Grant"
 • San Francisco Bay is designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance
 • Cancer patient Miles Scott becomes Batkid for a day in San Francisco, turning it into Gotham City, with Mayor Ed Lee and others participating in the Make-A-Wish project

• ... that the vivid colors of the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds (pictured), ranging from magenta to blue-green, come from the brine shrimp and microorganisms that thrive in the water?
• ... that the Laguna Creek watershed debouches into the San Francisco Bay near the site of the ghost town of Drawbridge?
• ... that the chase scene from the 1968 Steve McQueen film Bullitt starts on Cesar Chavez Street (then Army Street) before continuing through San Francisco?
• ... that the title of There There, a 2018 novel about urban Indians in Oakland, California, mirrors Gertrude Stein's quip about the city that "There is no there there"?

• ... that David A. Shirley was the first chemist to become the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory?
  
• ... that architect Howard Backen is credited with being a large influence on the architectural aesthetic of Napa? (Backen designed restaurant pictured)
  
• ... that the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard unsuccessfully tried to decontaminate the aircraft carrier USS Independence, (pictured) then packed the ship full of nuclear waste and scuttled it near the Farallon Islands in 1951?
• ... that Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeffrey F. Rosen stated that "the punishment does not fit the crime" in the sentencing of Brock Turner by judge Aaron Persky to six months of jail and three years of probation?
  
• ... that the unfinished Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit fleet will consist of nine two-car Nippon Sharyo DMU trainsets? (set pictured)
  
• ... that Girls of the Golden West, an opera based on the letters of California Gold Rush writer Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe, with music by John Adams (pictured) and a libretto by Peter Sellars, was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera, jointly with Dallas Opera, the Dutch National Opera (De Nationale Opera) and Teatro La Fenice, Venice?
• ... that on the 1999 passing of University of California, Berkeley historian Woodrow Borah, it was said “[There] disappears the last great figure in the generation that presided over the vast expansion of the Latin American scholarly field in the United States during the years following World War II.”

June 2016

The Cotati Jazz Festival is an annual free music festival held in Cotati since 1980. It typically takes place on Father's Day weekend in mid-June. (the Susan Comstock Quintet pictured)

• more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

You are invited to participate in the San Francisco Bay Area task force, a task force dedicated to developing and improving articles about the San Francisco Bay Area.

*Write an article on a Bay Area-related subject
*Propose new material or features for this portal
*Add new selected articles
*Add new selected biographies
*Add new selected cities
*Add new selected images
*Add new selected historical images
*Add new selected events
*Add new selected multimedia files
*Add new quotes
*Add new historical events
*Add new selected panoramas