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"title": "Why Do People Fish off Highway 101 Near Brisbane?",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3TDw90P\">\u003cem>Read the transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As you drive on Highway 101 between South San Francisco and Candlestick Park, there’s a stretch of road that gets very straight and runs right next to the bay. The road has a big shoulder in this section, including a wide section of dirt with “No Parking” signs placed every 50 feet or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Eyra Dordi drives this stretch of highway almost every day on her commute to work. She often sees cars parked along the side of the road, despite the signs and the hazardous conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousbug]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I realized there are people out there fishing really frequently,” Dordi said. “And I was really curious as to why anyone would decide that was the spot in the bay that they wanted to have a nice, relaxing fish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dordi also wondered why fishermen and women would risk getting a parking ticket to fish here. It’s illegal to park on the side of any freeway due to safety concerns. The fine starts at $238, but could be more for repeat offenses, according to the California Highway Patrol.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fishing ‘the tubes’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It turns out there’s a very good reason fisherfolk are willing to risk the hazards of traffic and CHP officers at this spot along 101 — the fishing can be \u003cem>great.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We call it \u003ca href=\"https://goo.gl/maps/aZUWvFzT5ct2jbC38\">the tubes\u003c/a>,” said Anthony Spears Sr., an avid fisherman who happens to also be the facility services supervisor at KQED. “For years we’ve fished there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the deal: There are two concrete viaducts — “the tubes” — that connect the bay to \u003ca href=\"https://goo.gl/maps/MuTVTBfL33vHQjbW8\">Brisbane Lagoon\u003c/a>, located on the inland side of the freeway. The tubes run under the freeway, allowing water to flow back and forth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As the tide’s coming up, the water is flowing into the small pond on the other side. And then as the tide is going out, that same flow is going out into the bay,” Spears said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11944378\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11944378 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698.jpeg\" alt=\"Two square tubes coming horizontally out of an embankment open up to the Brisbane Lagoon.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698.jpeg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698-800x450.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698-1020x574.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698-1536x864.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Water in ‘the tubes’ flows from Brisbane Lagoon, under an access road and Highway 101, before reaching the San Francisco Bay. \u003ccite>(Olivia Allen-Price/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Smaller fish, like herring, swim into the lagoon to spawn in quieter waters that are more protected. But when the tide flows out, they are washed back out into the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larger fish like halibut and striped bass, as well as stingrays, wait near the bayside opening of the tubes for an easy meal. And human fisherfolk wait there, too, eager to snag some delicious halibut or striped bass. It’s the whole food chain, concentrated in one spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the parking is illegal, people can still fish from boats, or walk to accessible points nearby legally. Or they can fish on the lagoon side of the tubes, where there’s a small park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spears remembers fishing the tubes as a kid with his dad, and then later with his best friend, Tony. They’re both still avid fishermen, although Spears lives further from the tubes now and so doesn’t stop to fish there as often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I only fish there once a year,” said Albert Chu, a fisherman I met along Ocean Beach. “That is when the herring are there. Usually around January or February. It’s a good eating fish. Very healthy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fishing around the Bay\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While some Bay Area residents, like Spears and Chu, have been fishing for a long time, others are just getting into it. Popular fishing YouTube channels like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC7WFw42VnywQRvewSq29eg\">Fisherman’s Life\u003c/a>, as well as Facebook groups dedicated to crabbing or fishing off the Pacifica pier, have made fishing feel more accessible. During the coronavirus pandemic when people were looking for socially distant activities, fishing suddenly became appealing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98y8FV7Pe20\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s water everywhere and it’s all different,” Spears said. “There’s freshwater, there’s brackish water, there’s saltwater, there’s the bay, there’s the ocean. There’s a great variety of fish and a great variety of styles of fishing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That may be why it’s easy to spot fisherfolk spaced out every 20 feet all along San Francisco’s Ocean Beach snaring for crabs. Snaring means they use a fishing pole with bait in a little wire box at the end of the line that has wire hooks coming off it. The fisher casts the line into the waves and hopes the bait will attract a crab that will then get caught in the loops. When the fisher sees the line strain, he hauls in the crab, measures it to make sure it’s big enough to keep and then stores it in a cooler with some seawater to keep it alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11944388\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11944388 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"A man, woman and child smiling for the camera on a beach. They are wearing waders for fishing.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-1920x1440.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">April Kennedy (center) on Ocean Beach with her husband and grandson, who were snaring crabs. Kennedy has been fishing for 30 years. \u003ccite>(Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Other people prefer to take crab pots out on kayaks, stand-up paddle boards or boats to try for a bigger haul. The important thing is to have a fishing license (unless you are fishing from a pier — then you don’t need one) and to be on the ocean side of the Golden Gate Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re interested in trying your hand at fishing, stop and talk to one of the many folks fishing around the Bay on any day. Most of them are very nice and willing to give pointers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3TDw90P\">\u003cem>Read the transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As you drive on Highway 101 between South San Francisco and Candlestick Park, there’s a stretch of road that gets very straight and runs right next to the bay. The road has a big shoulder in this section, including a wide section of dirt with “No Parking” signs placed every 50 feet or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Eyra Dordi drives this stretch of highway almost every day on her commute to work. She often sees cars parked along the side of the road, despite the signs and the hazardous conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n What do you wonder about the Bay Area, its culture or people that you want KQED to investigate?\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Ask Bay Curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I realized there are people out there fishing really frequently,” Dordi said. “And I was really curious as to why anyone would decide that was the spot in the bay that they wanted to have a nice, relaxing fish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dordi also wondered why fishermen and women would risk getting a parking ticket to fish here. It’s illegal to park on the side of any freeway due to safety concerns. The fine starts at $238, but could be more for repeat offenses, according to the California Highway Patrol.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fishing ‘the tubes’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It turns out there’s a very good reason fisherfolk are willing to risk the hazards of traffic and CHP officers at this spot along 101 — the fishing can be \u003cem>great.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We call it \u003ca href=\"https://goo.gl/maps/aZUWvFzT5ct2jbC38\">the tubes\u003c/a>,” said Anthony Spears Sr., an avid fisherman who happens to also be the facility services supervisor at KQED. “For years we’ve fished there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the deal: There are two concrete viaducts — “the tubes” — that connect the bay to \u003ca href=\"https://goo.gl/maps/MuTVTBfL33vHQjbW8\">Brisbane Lagoon\u003c/a>, located on the inland side of the freeway. The tubes run under the freeway, allowing water to flow back and forth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As the tide’s coming up, the water is flowing into the small pond on the other side. And then as the tide is going out, that same flow is going out into the bay,” Spears said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11944378\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11944378 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698.jpeg\" alt=\"Two square tubes coming horizontally out of an embankment open up to the Brisbane Lagoon.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698.jpeg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698-800x450.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698-1020x574.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_1698-1536x864.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Water in ‘the tubes’ flows from Brisbane Lagoon, under an access road and Highway 101, before reaching the San Francisco Bay. \u003ccite>(Olivia Allen-Price/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Smaller fish, like herring, swim into the lagoon to spawn in quieter waters that are more protected. But when the tide flows out, they are washed back out into the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larger fish like halibut and striped bass, as well as stingrays, wait near the bayside opening of the tubes for an easy meal. And human fisherfolk wait there, too, eager to snag some delicious halibut or striped bass. It’s the whole food chain, concentrated in one spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the parking is illegal, people can still fish from boats, or walk to accessible points nearby legally. Or they can fish on the lagoon side of the tubes, where there’s a small park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spears remembers fishing the tubes as a kid with his dad, and then later with his best friend, Tony. They’re both still avid fishermen, although Spears lives further from the tubes now and so doesn’t stop to fish there as often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I only fish there once a year,” said Albert Chu, a fisherman I met along Ocean Beach. “That is when the herring are there. Usually around January or February. It’s a good eating fish. Very healthy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fishing around the Bay\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While some Bay Area residents, like Spears and Chu, have been fishing for a long time, others are just getting into it. Popular fishing YouTube channels like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC7WFw42VnywQRvewSq29eg\">Fisherman’s Life\u003c/a>, as well as Facebook groups dedicated to crabbing or fishing off the Pacifica pier, have made fishing feel more accessible. During the coronavirus pandemic when people were looking for socially distant activities, fishing suddenly became appealing.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/98y8FV7Pe20'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/98y8FV7Pe20'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>“There’s water everywhere and it’s all different,” Spears said. “There’s freshwater, there’s brackish water, there’s saltwater, there’s the bay, there’s the ocean. There’s a great variety of fish and a great variety of styles of fishing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That may be why it’s easy to spot fisherfolk spaced out every 20 feet all along San Francisco’s Ocean Beach snaring for crabs. Snaring means they use a fishing pole with bait in a little wire box at the end of the line that has wire hooks coming off it. The fisher casts the line into the waves and hopes the bait will attract a crab that will then get caught in the loops. When the fisher sees the line strain, he hauls in the crab, measures it to make sure it’s big enough to keep and then stores it in a cooler with some seawater to keep it alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11944388\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11944388 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"A man, woman and child smiling for the camera on a beach. They are wearing waders for fishing.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/IMG_2482-1920x1440.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">April Kennedy (center) on Ocean Beach with her husband and grandson, who were snaring crabs. Kennedy has been fishing for 30 years. \u003ccite>(Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Other people prefer to take crab pots out on kayaks, stand-up paddle boards or boats to try for a bigger haul. The important thing is to have a fishing license (unless you are fishing from a pier — then you don’t need one) and to be on the ocean side of the Golden Gate Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re interested in trying your hand at fishing, stop and talk to one of the many folks fishing around the Bay on any day. Most of them are very nice and willing to give pointers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "bay-area-land-is-so-expensive-how-do-urban-farms-survive",
"title": "Bay Area Land Is So Expensive. How Do Urban Farms Survive?",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3Ltoxfg\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlos Urbina used to ride the San José light rail every day to work. As he looked out the train window, he’d pass by big buildings, busy intersections, offices and apartment complexes. But there was one part of his daily commute that always caught his attention. Amid all that urban infrastructure, the train would pass by a sprawling orange orchard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This orchard was striking. It took up a whole block with rows and rows of big, bushy orange trees. It looked like a green-and-orange haven amid the North San José suburban sprawl. People would often stop and take photos of the farm, wondering what it was doing in the middle of Silicon Valley. Carlos would spot tractors on the property and farmworkers tending to the trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was weird to me to see a farm in the middle of what seems like super-valuable real estate and, you know, like they’re just doing their farming stuff,” said Carlos. “I found it very curious.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The orchard struck Carlos for another reason. It reminded him of his favorite place to visit as a child: his grandma’s house. Carlos grew up in Mexico City, and his grandma lived in a small agricultural community in a neighboring state called Tlaxcala. With its bountiful fruit trees and mountains in the distance, the orange orchard bore a striking resemblance to that place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I got a little nostalgic for that,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Carlos also wondered how a scene like that could exist in the middle of Silicon Valley, with its notoriously high land prices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I’d like to know is, who owns it? What kind of products do they grow there? And, finally, how come they are still the owners of that piece of farm?” he asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The orchard\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The orange orchard is located in north San José, right across from the River Oaks light-rail station. It’s in a fairly suburban area, sitting amid a sea of tech company headquarters, school campuses and manufacturing facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After some sleuthing, we tracked down one of the current owners of the property: Alice Moitozo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moitozo is 93 years old and co-owns the orchard with her sister-in-law. She’s lived in a house in the middle of the orchard for 72 years. Her father-in-law, a Portuguese immigrant, bought the property in 1915 and established a dairy operation on-site. Eventually, with the influx of canneries in the region, the Moitozos switched to growing fruit, specifically pears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This whole area here, north San José, was all pear orchards,” said Moitozo. The canneries eventually all moved away, many to the San Joaquin Valley. “So my husband and his brother planted the orange trees.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was around the 1960s. At a time when property values in Santa Clara Valley were skyrocketing — convincing many farmers to sell their land — the Moitozos stayed and planted the orange trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11943645\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An orange tree with dozens of large oranges on its branches that look ready to be picked. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When canning was a larger industry in San José, pears were grown on this land. In the 1960s, as canneries were moving away, the owners turned it into an orange orchard. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Moitozo’s husband has since passed away, but their son now manages the orchard, which remains fully operational. They used to sell the oranges, but now they \u003ca href=\"https://www.shfb.org/impact/blog/one-of-the-last-surviving-orchards-in-silicon-valley-donates-92843-pounds-of-oranges/\">donate them\u003c/a> to a local food bank. At this point, it’s essentially an extravagant garden.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Moitozo said she’s had many buyers express interest in her approximately 15-acre property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had a fellow come to my door one time … and he offered me a million dollars an acre,” she said. “I said, ‘No, I’m not selling. I’m going to die here.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Urban farming today\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While Silicon Valley has largely converted from farmland to techland, there are still hundreds of urban farms all over the Bay Area. From small-scale vegetables to rooftop flowers, urban farmers are growing all different kinds of things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What they all have in common is that it’s hard to make it work financially here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s incredibly difficult to be a commercially viable urban farm,” said Eli Zigas, food and agriculture policy director at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand how they survive, Zigas divides Bay Area urban farms into two general categories: commercial and noncommercial. Commercial farms are ones that make a living on what they grow.\u003cbr>\n“They are in it for the business of agriculture,” said Zigas. Perhaps they sell at a local farmers market or have an online shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Noncommercial farms, on the other hand, tend to focus more on education.[emailsignup newslettername=\"baycurious\" align=\"right\"]“Those projects are things like community gardens, school gardens and teaching farms,” Zigas said. “In the Bay Area and most of the country, those are the most common forms of urban farming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonprofit farms are incredibly important to urban communities, said Zigas, because they help people connect with the land and learn about ecology, seasons and how to grow their own food. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture has an advisory committee and various grant opportunities targeted specifically at urban farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While not all urban farms fall squarely into these two categories, Zigas said it’s a helpful framework for understanding how they survive here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand it even better, we visited some farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘A skill for life’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At Valley Verde, a nonprofit farm in downtown San José, the mission is simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want people to learn how to grow their own food,” said Lovepreet Kaur, the farm’s executive director. “We want to teach them a skill for life. We don’t want to just provide a vegetable and say, ‘OK, here you go,’ and that’s it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valley Verde was founded in 2012 and currently offers a handful of educational gardening programs specifically for lower-income community members in San José. For example, their Shared Garden program provides participants with the tools and know-how for gardening at home, including a class and materials such as raised beds, soil and seedlings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943648\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11943648\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A raised garden bed with several small green plants growing. A small greenhouse is in the background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Native pollinator plants grow at Valley Verde. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those skills can help alleviate food insecurity — a significant issue in Silicon Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The farm also grows food that is culturally relevant to its participants, including okra, bitter melon and Thai chili peppers. That’s important to Kaur, who immigrated to the U.S. from India when she was 11 years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I came here to the U.S., there were a lot of vegetables that I grew up eating that were no longer accessible to me,” she said. “I didn’t see them at any stores, or if you did, they were very, very expensive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943650\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11943650 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A bespectacled Indian woman with her head completely covered in a black scarf knotted at the nape of her neck, bends over and holds the tip of a leaf of a purple and green plant, growing in a raised bed, between her first finger and thumb. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lovepreet Kaur looks at a Japanese red mustard plant at Valley Verde. The farm is intentional about growing plants that are culturally relevant to community members and may be hard to find. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But running these programs for free isn’t easy. Like most nonprofits, Valley Verde survives on grants, including from the Health Trust and the Lucile Packard Foundation. But according to Kaur, the biggest challenge is accessing land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to stay either downtown or on the east side,” said Kaur. “Wherever we serve the community, we want to be in our community. We don’t want to be far away from them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s plenty of land available in more rural areas or in the hills surrounding Silicon Valley, but Kaur said they need to be accessible to their program participants to maintain their mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valley Verde has moved multiple times over the last few years. Right now, they’re leasing their lot from Google, which is charging them only $1 per month. But with only two years left on that lease, Kaur’s already starting to think about what comes next. She hopes the next move will be permanent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is extremely stressful to be moving from one place to another, especially when you have plants. There’s a high mortality every time we try to move the plants while they’re still in their growing stages,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943651\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11943651 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A bespectacled Indian woman with her head completely covered in a black scarf knotted at the nape of her neck touches soil in a small container with a just-sprouted plant. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kaur checks on seedlings in a greenhouse at Valley Verde. She says moving plants to a new location is a tricky process, and not all plants survive. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Farming in the sky\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As opposed to nonprofit farms like Valley Verde, commercial operations in the Bay Area are harder to come by, which makes Bluma Farm, a commercial flower farm based in Berkeley, a rarity. In fact, founder and owner Joanna Letz doesn’t know anyone else in the Bay Area operating a for-profit farm in such an urban environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bluma’s situation is unique; the farm is spread across 15 modular apartment rooftops near downtown Berkeley and boasts a spectacular 360-degree view stretching from the Berkeley hills to downtown San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Letz started growing flowers here in 2019, just a couple years after the building was built. She grows all kinds of flowers: godetia, nigella, violas, larkspur. The farm looks like a mosaic of raised beds in the sky, punctuated with a rainbow of flowers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943660\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1980px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11943660\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406.jpg\" alt=\"A woman walking through a rooftop garden, holding a gathering of flowers, with apartments and a mountain in the distance. \" width=\"1980\" height=\"1238\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406.jpg 1980w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-1020x638.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-1536x960.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-1920x1200.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1980px) 100vw, 1980px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bluma Farm founder and owner Joanna Letz runs her business on 15 modular apartment rooftops. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Nicola Parisi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At first, Letz said it was hard transitioning from farming on the ground to the roof. But now that she’s more used to it, she sees “all the really important benefits of farming on a roof and also just the ability to be growing in the city and showing other people what’s possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a for-profit business, Bluma has various revenue streams. About half their income comes from weddings, though that changed somewhat during the pandemic, said Letz. She sells some flowers wholesale and some retail, and she has a flower-subscription service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Cut flowers are higher profit per square foot than just about any other crop I can think of,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it’s hard to make it work financially — especially in such a high-priced area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I try to keep my prices as high as I can because I want myself and my employees to be able to make enough money to live here,” she said. “And that’s still hard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943663\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11943663 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-1020x1428.jpg\" alt=\"A smiling white woman with long brown hair in a bun, a white-and-gray striped sweater, a tool belt, and brown boots pulls back some opaque plastic to reveal seedlings underneath.\" width=\"640\" height=\"896\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-1020x1428.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-800x1120.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-160x224.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-1097x1536.jpg 1097w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146.jpg 1414w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Letz says flowers earn a high return per square foot. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Nicola Parisi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But it’s important to her to stay in the city, where she hopes more rooftop farms will start to emerge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of buildings that have gone up just in the time that I’ve been farming here,” she said, pointing to some buildings in the distance that don’t have rooftop farms. “What could we be doing with them that we’re not?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Letz said she’s especially passionate about teaching youth about farming and the power of growing your own produce. She currently works with a handful of interns from local high schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That makes me excited … that we can get people up here and experience this,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why, despite the challenges, we should be fighting to keep urban farms here in the Bay Area, said SPUR’s Zigas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[It’s] not about the number of people we can feed, but the number of people we can reach or touch through education and awareness,” he said. “And for that reason we should try and have more spaces where people can learn about food and how it’s grown.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Bay Area Land Is So Expensive. How Do Urban Farms Survive? | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3Ltoxfg\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlos Urbina used to ride the San José light rail every day to work. As he looked out the train window, he’d pass by big buildings, busy intersections, offices and apartment complexes. But there was one part of his daily commute that always caught his attention. Amid all that urban infrastructure, the train would pass by a sprawling orange orchard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This orchard was striking. It took up a whole block with rows and rows of big, bushy orange trees. It looked like a green-and-orange haven amid the North San José suburban sprawl. People would often stop and take photos of the farm, wondering what it was doing in the middle of Silicon Valley. Carlos would spot tractors on the property and farmworkers tending to the trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was weird to me to see a farm in the middle of what seems like super-valuable real estate and, you know, like they’re just doing their farming stuff,” said Carlos. “I found it very curious.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The orchard struck Carlos for another reason. It reminded him of his favorite place to visit as a child: his grandma’s house. Carlos grew up in Mexico City, and his grandma lived in a small agricultural community in a neighboring state called Tlaxcala. With its bountiful fruit trees and mountains in the distance, the orange orchard bore a striking resemblance to that place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I got a little nostalgic for that,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Carlos also wondered how a scene like that could exist in the middle of Silicon Valley, with its notoriously high land prices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I’d like to know is, who owns it? What kind of products do they grow there? And, finally, how come they are still the owners of that piece of farm?” he asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The orchard\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The orange orchard is located in north San José, right across from the River Oaks light-rail station. It’s in a fairly suburban area, sitting amid a sea of tech company headquarters, school campuses and manufacturing facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After some sleuthing, we tracked down one of the current owners of the property: Alice Moitozo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moitozo is 93 years old and co-owns the orchard with her sister-in-law. She’s lived in a house in the middle of the orchard for 72 years. Her father-in-law, a Portuguese immigrant, bought the property in 1915 and established a dairy operation on-site. Eventually, with the influx of canneries in the region, the Moitozos switched to growing fruit, specifically pears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This whole area here, north San José, was all pear orchards,” said Moitozo. The canneries eventually all moved away, many to the San Joaquin Valley. “So my husband and his brother planted the orange trees.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was around the 1960s. At a time when property values in Santa Clara Valley were skyrocketing — convincing many farmers to sell their land — the Moitozos stayed and planted the orange trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11943645\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An orange tree with dozens of large oranges on its branches that look ready to be picked. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63268_029_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When canning was a larger industry in San José, pears were grown on this land. In the 1960s, as canneries were moving away, the owners turned it into an orange orchard. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Moitozo’s husband has since passed away, but their son now manages the orchard, which remains fully operational. They used to sell the oranges, but now they \u003ca href=\"https://www.shfb.org/impact/blog/one-of-the-last-surviving-orchards-in-silicon-valley-donates-92843-pounds-of-oranges/\">donate them\u003c/a> to a local food bank. At this point, it’s essentially an extravagant garden.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Moitozo said she’s had many buyers express interest in her approximately 15-acre property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had a fellow come to my door one time … and he offered me a million dollars an acre,” she said. “I said, ‘No, I’m not selling. I’m going to die here.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Urban farming today\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While Silicon Valley has largely converted from farmland to techland, there are still hundreds of urban farms all over the Bay Area. From small-scale vegetables to rooftop flowers, urban farmers are growing all different kinds of things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What they all have in common is that it’s hard to make it work financially here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s incredibly difficult to be a commercially viable urban farm,” said Eli Zigas, food and agriculture policy director at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand how they survive, Zigas divides Bay Area urban farms into two general categories: commercial and noncommercial. Commercial farms are ones that make a living on what they grow.\u003cbr>\n“They are in it for the business of agriculture,” said Zigas. Perhaps they sell at a local farmers market or have an online shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Noncommercial farms, on the other hand, tend to focus more on education.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Those projects are things like community gardens, school gardens and teaching farms,” Zigas said. “In the Bay Area and most of the country, those are the most common forms of urban farming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonprofit farms are incredibly important to urban communities, said Zigas, because they help people connect with the land and learn about ecology, seasons and how to grow their own food. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture has an advisory committee and various grant opportunities targeted specifically at urban farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While not all urban farms fall squarely into these two categories, Zigas said it’s a helpful framework for understanding how they survive here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand it even better, we visited some farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘A skill for life’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At Valley Verde, a nonprofit farm in downtown San José, the mission is simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want people to learn how to grow their own food,” said Lovepreet Kaur, the farm’s executive director. “We want to teach them a skill for life. We don’t want to just provide a vegetable and say, ‘OK, here you go,’ and that’s it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valley Verde was founded in 2012 and currently offers a handful of educational gardening programs specifically for lower-income community members in San José. For example, their Shared Garden program provides participants with the tools and know-how for gardening at home, including a class and materials such as raised beds, soil and seedlings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943648\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11943648\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A raised garden bed with several small green plants growing. A small greenhouse is in the background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63252_008_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Native pollinator plants grow at Valley Verde. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those skills can help alleviate food insecurity — a significant issue in Silicon Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The farm also grows food that is culturally relevant to its participants, including okra, bitter melon and Thai chili peppers. That’s important to Kaur, who immigrated to the U.S. from India when she was 11 years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I came here to the U.S., there were a lot of vegetables that I grew up eating that were no longer accessible to me,” she said. “I didn’t see them at any stores, or if you did, they were very, very expensive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943650\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11943650 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A bespectacled Indian woman with her head completely covered in a black scarf knotted at the nape of her neck, bends over and holds the tip of a leaf of a purple and green plant, growing in a raised bed, between her first finger and thumb. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63248_010_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lovepreet Kaur looks at a Japanese red mustard plant at Valley Verde. The farm is intentional about growing plants that are culturally relevant to community members and may be hard to find. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But running these programs for free isn’t easy. Like most nonprofits, Valley Verde survives on grants, including from the Health Trust and the Lucile Packard Foundation. But according to Kaur, the biggest challenge is accessing land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to stay either downtown or on the east side,” said Kaur. “Wherever we serve the community, we want to be in our community. We don’t want to be far away from them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s plenty of land available in more rural areas or in the hills surrounding Silicon Valley, but Kaur said they need to be accessible to their program participants to maintain their mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valley Verde has moved multiple times over the last few years. Right now, they’re leasing their lot from Google, which is charging them only $1 per month. But with only two years left on that lease, Kaur’s already starting to think about what comes next. She hopes the next move will be permanent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is extremely stressful to be moving from one place to another, especially when you have plants. There’s a high mortality every time we try to move the plants while they’re still in their growing stages,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943651\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11943651 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A bespectacled Indian woman with her head completely covered in a black scarf knotted at the nape of her neck touches soil in a small container with a just-sprouted plant. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS63243_004_KQED_ValleyVerdeFarmSJ_02282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kaur checks on seedlings in a greenhouse at Valley Verde. She says moving plants to a new location is a tricky process, and not all plants survive. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Farming in the sky\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As opposed to nonprofit farms like Valley Verde, commercial operations in the Bay Area are harder to come by, which makes Bluma Farm, a commercial flower farm based in Berkeley, a rarity. In fact, founder and owner Joanna Letz doesn’t know anyone else in the Bay Area operating a for-profit farm in such an urban environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bluma’s situation is unique; the farm is spread across 15 modular apartment rooftops near downtown Berkeley and boasts a spectacular 360-degree view stretching from the Berkeley hills to downtown San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Letz started growing flowers here in 2019, just a couple years after the building was built. She grows all kinds of flowers: godetia, nigella, violas, larkspur. The farm looks like a mosaic of raised beds in the sky, punctuated with a rainbow of flowers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943660\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1980px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11943660\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406.jpg\" alt=\"A woman walking through a rooftop garden, holding a gathering of flowers, with apartments and a mountain in the distance. \" width=\"1980\" height=\"1238\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406.jpg 1980w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-1020x638.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-1536x960.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1406-1920x1200.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1980px) 100vw, 1980px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bluma Farm founder and owner Joanna Letz runs her business on 15 modular apartment rooftops. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Nicola Parisi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At first, Letz said it was hard transitioning from farming on the ground to the roof. But now that she’s more used to it, she sees “all the really important benefits of farming on a roof and also just the ability to be growing in the city and showing other people what’s possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a for-profit business, Bluma has various revenue streams. About half their income comes from weddings, though that changed somewhat during the pandemic, said Letz. She sells some flowers wholesale and some retail, and she has a flower-subscription service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Cut flowers are higher profit per square foot than just about any other crop I can think of,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it’s hard to make it work financially — especially in such a high-priced area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I try to keep my prices as high as I can because I want myself and my employees to be able to make enough money to live here,” she said. “And that’s still hard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11943663\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11943663 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-1020x1428.jpg\" alt=\"A smiling white woman with long brown hair in a bun, a white-and-gray striped sweater, a tool belt, and brown boots pulls back some opaque plastic to reveal seedlings underneath.\" width=\"640\" height=\"896\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-1020x1428.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-800x1120.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-160x224.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146-1097x1536.jpg 1097w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/nicola-parisi_kitchen-table-advisors_bluma-farm_1146.jpg 1414w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Letz says flowers earn a high return per square foot. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Nicola Parisi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But it’s important to her to stay in the city, where she hopes more rooftop farms will start to emerge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of buildings that have gone up just in the time that I’ve been farming here,” she said, pointing to some buildings in the distance that don’t have rooftop farms. “What could we be doing with them that we’re not?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Letz said she’s especially passionate about teaching youth about farming and the power of growing your own produce. She currently works with a handful of interns from local high schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That makes me excited … that we can get people up here and experience this,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why, despite the challenges, we should be fighting to keep urban farms here in the Bay Area, said SPUR’s Zigas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[It’s] not about the number of people we can feed, but the number of people we can reach or touch through education and awareness,” he said. “And for that reason we should try and have more spaces where people can learn about food and how it’s grown.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "san-franciscos-castro-theatre-a-cultural-temple-facing-a-fight-for-its-future",
"title": "San Francisco's Castro Theatre: A Cultural 'Temple' Facing a Fight for Its Future",
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"headTitle": "San Francisco’s Castro Theatre: A Cultural ‘Temple’ Facing a Fight for Its Future | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode \u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3LeQebL\">here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can’t walk through San Francisco’s Castro District without your eyes being drawn to the towering marquee. The words “CASTRO” shine in bright, flashing neon over this proud queer neighborhood. But get a little closer and you notice that some of the neon lights are out, and there aren’t any people around. The front of the theater seems as deserted today as it was during the COVID-19 pandemic. What gives?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The theater is in a state of limbo while its new managers push to renovate the space for a mixed-use future. If their plan goes forward, The Castro wouldn’t be just for movies anymore, but also things like concerts, performances and weddings too. These plans have not been received warmly by all members of the community, who point to the theater’s historical significance as a reason to restore it, but not renovate. The fate of the space currently sits at San Francisco City Hall, where a fight for it’s future has been unfolding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand the issue fully, we’ve first got to go back to the theater’s earliest days, because behind the boarded-up windows lie 100 years of stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The early years\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the earliest days of film, three brothers — William, Elias and George Nasser — opened a nickelodeon at 18th and Collingwood in San Francisco. This crude cinema was little more than pictures projected onto a wall, but it led the Nasser brothers to dream of a bigger space in which to entertain audiences with silent films. Before long, they’d tapped architect Timothy Pflueger to design a movie palace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Castro Theatre opened in 1922 on Castro Street, and Pflueger would go on to design celebrated movie theaters like the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, and iconic San Francisco cocktail lounges like the Top of the Mark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Castro is a bit of a grab bag of Beaux-Arts, Spanish Baroque, Renaissance, and a variety of other styles,” said queer public historian Gerard Koskovich, “including some Art Deco elements.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That mix of styles creates a whimsical environment designed to transport the audience into a world of fantasy and film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942950\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 582px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/Castro-Theatre-1927.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11942950 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/Castro-Theatre-1927.jpg\" alt=\"Black and white image taken from the balcony of a classic, highly decorated movie theater.\" width=\"582\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/Castro-Theatre-1927.jpg 582w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/Castro-Theatre-1927-160x110.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 582px) 100vw, 582px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The interior of the Castro Theatre in 1927. \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the beginning, the Castro showed silent films, often accompanied by live music from a variety of instruments, most famously the Castro’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/CastroTheatre/videos/san-francisco-on-castro-organ/747351313094835/\">Wurlitzer organ\u003c/a>. The Castro catered primarily to the working-class community in the Eureka Valley, then considered a distant suburb outside bustling San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In those days, people expected to see a mixed program … some shorts, perhaps to see a newsreel, and then a feature,” said Koskovich.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8810679935&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As sound arrived in film, speakers arrived at the Castro, installed into a large, burlap-lined hole in the wall behind the square movie screen. When film went wide-screen, so did the Castro: Just a few feet in front of the original screen and proscenium, another screen was constructed, and over time the old, gold square was forgotten. It remains visible backstage at the Castro, if you can climb the stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Castro, with its 1,400 seats, was considered small for the time period. In San Francisco alone there was competition from behemoths like the El Capitan on Mission Street; now a parking lot, the Cap had double the seats of the Castro. The Fox Theatre on Market Street (on the land now home to Fox Plaza) was dubbed “The World’s Finest Theatre” by \u003cem>The San Francisco Chronicle,\u003c/em> and clocked in at 4,651 seats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The average movie theater in 2023 has approximately 150 seats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The larger movie houses like the Fox and El Capitan would show the big blockbusters or first-run pictures, while the Castro’s repertoire mostly consisted of second- or third-run pictures — films that had already played at the bigger theaters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942945\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11942945 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"The inside of a grand movie theater with ornate decoration. An Art Deco chandelier hangs from a vaulted ceiling. Many rows of red velvet seats lead down to an elevated stage with a curtain closed over the film screen. The lighting is low, in reds and ambers.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The interior of the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on Aug. 10, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The gay Castro\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Deindustrialization and white flight changed the makeup of the Castro through the ’50s and ’60s. Then the gay community began moving in. By all accounts, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon — a lesbian couple who became longtime community activists — were the first openly LGBTQ people to move into the Castro, arriving in 1953.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By the 1950s, this declining working-class neighborhood had started to emerge as a gay enclave,” said Koskovich. The Castro’s first gay bar — called the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgayhistory.com/neighborhoods/castro/castro-gay-bars/84-2/\">Missouri Mule\u003c/a> — opened in 1963. “And by the early ’70s,” said Koskovich, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5rlwVsyKXA&ab_channel=KQEDArts\">the Castro\u003c/a> was becoming very clearly marked as a gay neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mel Novikoff was the Castro Theatre’s programmer in those days, and he quickly discovered a strategy for getting the neighborhood’s rapidly growing gay community into the theater:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Bringing back old film, mixing it with art house films and foreign films,” said Koskovich. This was key to understanding this emerging urban public, he added: “It was people who’d fled their dismal, monochrome hometowns and moved to San Francisco because they wanted to have a sophisticated, thrilling, cosmopolitan cultural life.” Novikoff understood that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And what emerged at the Castro Theatre,” said Koskovich, “was the fact that there were an awful lot of crazed movie queens in San Francisco. They just had to go see a double bill of \u003cem>The Women\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?\u003c/em> often dressed like their favorite characters, or dressed to mock some of the characters, often reciting along the best lines of dialogue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the outside world, it wasn’t necessarily safe to be openly gay. But inside the Castro Theatre, gay people — mostly gay white men — felt safe to express themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1977, the Castro Theatre was recognized as a beacon for the LGBTQ community when it became San Francisco’s 100th historic landmark, protecting the exterior from demolition or alteration. [baycuriousbug]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A place of refuge\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“Before there were effective treatments around 1996, remaining part of the community as a person with AIDS was impossible,” Koskovich said. Close to 20,000 people died in San Francisco alone during the AIDS crisis — “the overwhelming majority of them gay men under the age of 50,” Koskovich added, with the majority of them living within two miles of the Castro District. “So imagine the impact of that epidemic, not just on the city, but on this specific neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Castro Theatre became a chapel to a community grieving the loss of a generation of young men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a place to go after you got done with the two memorial services for people you knew that week,” remembered Koskovich. “You could spend a couple of hours escaping to a movie, or a live show. You could bring people who were sick and they could sit calmly in a safe, secure, comfortable place and know they weren’t going to be excluded if they had signs [of AIDS], like Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions. That people weren’t going to pull away from them. They could remain part of the community that had been built there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the ’90s and 2000s, the Castro Theatre continued to grow in engagement and visibility within the LGBTQ community under the watchful eye of programmer Anita Monga. She began the era of film festivals, like Frameline, being hosted at the theater, as well as major film premieres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2008, the Harvey Milk biopic, \u003cem>Milk\u003c/em>, much of which takes place in the Castro, held its world premiere at the theater. In preparation for the event, the film studio funded a facelift to the Castro’s exterior, restoring it to its 1970’s glory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942954\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11942954 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1-800x594.jpg\" alt='Image taken at night of a glowing neon sign and marquee outside a movie theater. Posters for the movie \"Milk,\" starring Sean Penn are featured on the sign.' width=\"800\" height=\"594\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1-800x594.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1-1020x757.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1-160x119.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Atmosphere at the world premiere of ‘Milk’ at the Castro Theatre on Oct. 28, 2008, in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Steve Jennings/WireImage)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The future of an icon\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>During the COVID-19 pandemic, theaters and concert venues were shuttered. Though the Castro Theatre is still owned by descendants of the original Nasser brothers, it came out of 2020 under new management, a company called Another Planet Entertainment. APE is a locally owned concert production company founded in 2003, which also manages the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, Oakland’s Fox Theater and the Outside Lands festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>APE announced \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13908311/castro-theatre-to-become-live-music-and-events-venue-after-renovation\">plans to renovate\u003c/a> the Castro Theatre, which include removing the fixed movie theater-style seating, and adding tiered sections for standing-room concerts. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13917362/castro-theatre-seating-renovation-town-hall\">film community’s reaction\u003c/a> was swift, and decisive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Castro Theatre Conservancy, a community organization whose mission, according to their website, is to protect the theater “as a cultural and entertainment venue for motion pictures and live performances,” announced the creation of the “Save the Castro Theatre” campaign in response.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942947\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11942947 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt='A person wearing a rainbow striped sweater hold up two signs. One says \"Another Planet Sucks!\" The other says \"Save the seats.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Petrelis holds a sign that says ‘Save the Seats’ during a town hall meeting about renovations by Another Planet Entertainment at the Castro Theatre on Aug. 11, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What followed were rallies, the online #SaveTheSeats campaign, and hundreds of chain emails sent to officials asking that the seats and their layout be specifically protected in a landmark designation for the interior of the theatre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Historic Preservation Commission took public comment for and against the proposed landmarking on Feb. 1, 2023, at San Francisco City Hall. More than 100 people lined up and waited hours to speak. The majority of the public comments were against any proposed changes to the Castro Theatre’s seating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the \u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://citypln-m-extnl.sfgov.org/Commissions/HPC/2_1_2023/Commission%20Packet/2022-006075DES.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-stringify-link=\"https://citypln-m-extnl.sfgov.org/Commissions/HPC/2_1_2023/Commission%20Packet/2022-006075DES.pdf\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\">HPC voted to recommend landmarking\u003c/a> the interior of the Castro Theatre, but the details are complicated. The official draft of their recommendation to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors says, “The following features are character-defining and shall be preserved or replaced in kind,” and goes on to list interior features of the theatre, including the “Vast interior auditorium volume with raked floor, aisles, and presence of seating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, it will be up to the Board of Supervisors to decide on the designation and interpretation thereof, including what that means for the existing seats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the film community see APE’s proposed changes as the destruction of a cultural space. On the other side are folks who imagine a future where queer concerts play just as much of a role as queer cinema.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t imagine the city of San Francisco, or the international gay community without the Castro Theater,” said David Perry, the Castro Theatre spokesperson for APE, “The plan that Another Planet has put forward doesn’t lessen the iconic nature of the Castro. It increases its ability to become an icon for people to embrace for years to come.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Either way, the iconic Castro Theatre will remain a part of the San Francisco experience for generations to come, whether as a multi-use community space, or a temple to film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A final decision on its fate could be reached by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors some time in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story has been updated. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "San Francisco's Castro Theatre: A Cultural 'Temple' Facing a Fight for Its Future | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode \u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3LeQebL\">here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can’t walk through San Francisco’s Castro District without your eyes being drawn to the towering marquee. The words “CASTRO” shine in bright, flashing neon over this proud queer neighborhood. But get a little closer and you notice that some of the neon lights are out, and there aren’t any people around. The front of the theater seems as deserted today as it was during the COVID-19 pandemic. What gives?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The theater is in a state of limbo while its new managers push to renovate the space for a mixed-use future. If their plan goes forward, The Castro wouldn’t be just for movies anymore, but also things like concerts, performances and weddings too. These plans have not been received warmly by all members of the community, who point to the theater’s historical significance as a reason to restore it, but not renovate. The fate of the space currently sits at San Francisco City Hall, where a fight for it’s future has been unfolding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand the issue fully, we’ve first got to go back to the theater’s earliest days, because behind the boarded-up windows lie 100 years of stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The early years\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the earliest days of film, three brothers — William, Elias and George Nasser — opened a nickelodeon at 18th and Collingwood in San Francisco. This crude cinema was little more than pictures projected onto a wall, but it led the Nasser brothers to dream of a bigger space in which to entertain audiences with silent films. Before long, they’d tapped architect Timothy Pflueger to design a movie palace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Castro Theatre opened in 1922 on Castro Street, and Pflueger would go on to design celebrated movie theaters like the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, and iconic San Francisco cocktail lounges like the Top of the Mark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Castro is a bit of a grab bag of Beaux-Arts, Spanish Baroque, Renaissance, and a variety of other styles,” said queer public historian Gerard Koskovich, “including some Art Deco elements.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That mix of styles creates a whimsical environment designed to transport the audience into a world of fantasy and film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942950\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 582px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/Castro-Theatre-1927.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11942950 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/Castro-Theatre-1927.jpg\" alt=\"Black and white image taken from the balcony of a classic, highly decorated movie theater.\" width=\"582\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/Castro-Theatre-1927.jpg 582w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/Castro-Theatre-1927-160x110.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 582px) 100vw, 582px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The interior of the Castro Theatre in 1927. \u003ccite>(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the beginning, the Castro showed silent films, often accompanied by live music from a variety of instruments, most famously the Castro’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/CastroTheatre/videos/san-francisco-on-castro-organ/747351313094835/\">Wurlitzer organ\u003c/a>. The Castro catered primarily to the working-class community in the Eureka Valley, then considered a distant suburb outside bustling San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In those days, people expected to see a mixed program … some shorts, perhaps to see a newsreel, and then a feature,” said Koskovich.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8810679935&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As sound arrived in film, speakers arrived at the Castro, installed into a large, burlap-lined hole in the wall behind the square movie screen. When film went wide-screen, so did the Castro: Just a few feet in front of the original screen and proscenium, another screen was constructed, and over time the old, gold square was forgotten. It remains visible backstage at the Castro, if you can climb the stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Castro, with its 1,400 seats, was considered small for the time period. In San Francisco alone there was competition from behemoths like the El Capitan on Mission Street; now a parking lot, the Cap had double the seats of the Castro. The Fox Theatre on Market Street (on the land now home to Fox Plaza) was dubbed “The World’s Finest Theatre” by \u003cem>The San Francisco Chronicle,\u003c/em> and clocked in at 4,651 seats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The average movie theater in 2023 has approximately 150 seats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The larger movie houses like the Fox and El Capitan would show the big blockbusters or first-run pictures, while the Castro’s repertoire mostly consisted of second- or third-run pictures — films that had already played at the bigger theaters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942945\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11942945 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"The inside of a grand movie theater with ornate decoration. An Art Deco chandelier hangs from a vaulted ceiling. Many rows of red velvet seats lead down to an elevated stage with a curtain closed over the film screen. The lighting is low, in reds and ambers.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57657_003_KQED_CastroTheatreInterior_08102022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The interior of the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on Aug. 10, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The gay Castro\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Deindustrialization and white flight changed the makeup of the Castro through the ’50s and ’60s. Then the gay community began moving in. By all accounts, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon — a lesbian couple who became longtime community activists — were the first openly LGBTQ people to move into the Castro, arriving in 1953.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By the 1950s, this declining working-class neighborhood had started to emerge as a gay enclave,” said Koskovich. The Castro’s first gay bar — called the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgayhistory.com/neighborhoods/castro/castro-gay-bars/84-2/\">Missouri Mule\u003c/a> — opened in 1963. “And by the early ’70s,” said Koskovich, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5rlwVsyKXA&ab_channel=KQEDArts\">the Castro\u003c/a> was becoming very clearly marked as a gay neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mel Novikoff was the Castro Theatre’s programmer in those days, and he quickly discovered a strategy for getting the neighborhood’s rapidly growing gay community into the theater:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Bringing back old film, mixing it with art house films and foreign films,” said Koskovich. This was key to understanding this emerging urban public, he added: “It was people who’d fled their dismal, monochrome hometowns and moved to San Francisco because they wanted to have a sophisticated, thrilling, cosmopolitan cultural life.” Novikoff understood that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And what emerged at the Castro Theatre,” said Koskovich, “was the fact that there were an awful lot of crazed movie queens in San Francisco. They just had to go see a double bill of \u003cem>The Women\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?\u003c/em> often dressed like their favorite characters, or dressed to mock some of the characters, often reciting along the best lines of dialogue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the outside world, it wasn’t necessarily safe to be openly gay. But inside the Castro Theatre, gay people — mostly gay white men — felt safe to express themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1977, the Castro Theatre was recognized as a beacon for the LGBTQ community when it became San Francisco’s 100th historic landmark, protecting the exterior from demolition or alteration. \u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n What do you wonder about the Bay Area, its culture or people that you want KQED to investigate?\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Ask Bay Curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A place of refuge\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“Before there were effective treatments around 1996, remaining part of the community as a person with AIDS was impossible,” Koskovich said. Close to 20,000 people died in San Francisco alone during the AIDS crisis — “the overwhelming majority of them gay men under the age of 50,” Koskovich added, with the majority of them living within two miles of the Castro District. “So imagine the impact of that epidemic, not just on the city, but on this specific neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Castro Theatre became a chapel to a community grieving the loss of a generation of young men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a place to go after you got done with the two memorial services for people you knew that week,” remembered Koskovich. “You could spend a couple of hours escaping to a movie, or a live show. You could bring people who were sick and they could sit calmly in a safe, secure, comfortable place and know they weren’t going to be excluded if they had signs [of AIDS], like Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions. That people weren’t going to pull away from them. They could remain part of the community that had been built there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the ’90s and 2000s, the Castro Theatre continued to grow in engagement and visibility within the LGBTQ community under the watchful eye of programmer Anita Monga. She began the era of film festivals, like Frameline, being hosted at the theater, as well as major film premieres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2008, the Harvey Milk biopic, \u003cem>Milk\u003c/em>, much of which takes place in the Castro, held its world premiere at the theater. In preparation for the event, the film studio funded a facelift to the Castro’s exterior, restoring it to its 1970’s glory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942954\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11942954 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1-800x594.jpg\" alt='Image taken at night of a glowing neon sign and marquee outside a movie theater. Posters for the movie \"Milk,\" starring Sean Penn are featured on the sign.' width=\"800\" height=\"594\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1-800x594.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1-1020x757.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1-160x119.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/GettyImages-112329231-1.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Atmosphere at the world premiere of ‘Milk’ at the Castro Theatre on Oct. 28, 2008, in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Steve Jennings/WireImage)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The future of an icon\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>During the COVID-19 pandemic, theaters and concert venues were shuttered. Though the Castro Theatre is still owned by descendants of the original Nasser brothers, it came out of 2020 under new management, a company called Another Planet Entertainment. APE is a locally owned concert production company founded in 2003, which also manages the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, Oakland’s Fox Theater and the Outside Lands festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>APE announced \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13908311/castro-theatre-to-become-live-music-and-events-venue-after-renovation\">plans to renovate\u003c/a> the Castro Theatre, which include removing the fixed movie theater-style seating, and adding tiered sections for standing-room concerts. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13917362/castro-theatre-seating-renovation-town-hall\">film community’s reaction\u003c/a> was swift, and decisive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Castro Theatre Conservancy, a community organization whose mission, according to their website, is to protect the theater “as a cultural and entertainment venue for motion pictures and live performances,” announced the creation of the “Save the Castro Theatre” campaign in response.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942947\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11942947 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt='A person wearing a rainbow striped sweater hold up two signs. One says \"Another Planet Sucks!\" The other says \"Save the seats.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/RS57720_005_KQED_CastroTheatreTownHall_08112022-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Petrelis holds a sign that says ‘Save the Seats’ during a town hall meeting about renovations by Another Planet Entertainment at the Castro Theatre on Aug. 11, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What followed were rallies, the online #SaveTheSeats campaign, and hundreds of chain emails sent to officials asking that the seats and their layout be specifically protected in a landmark designation for the interior of the theatre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Historic Preservation Commission took public comment for and against the proposed landmarking on Feb. 1, 2023, at San Francisco City Hall. More than 100 people lined up and waited hours to speak. The majority of the public comments were against any proposed changes to the Castro Theatre’s seating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the \u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://citypln-m-extnl.sfgov.org/Commissions/HPC/2_1_2023/Commission%20Packet/2022-006075DES.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-stringify-link=\"https://citypln-m-extnl.sfgov.org/Commissions/HPC/2_1_2023/Commission%20Packet/2022-006075DES.pdf\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\">HPC voted to recommend landmarking\u003c/a> the interior of the Castro Theatre, but the details are complicated. The official draft of their recommendation to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors says, “The following features are character-defining and shall be preserved or replaced in kind,” and goes on to list interior features of the theatre, including the “Vast interior auditorium volume with raked floor, aisles, and presence of seating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, it will be up to the Board of Supervisors to decide on the designation and interpretation thereof, including what that means for the existing seats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the film community see APE’s proposed changes as the destruction of a cultural space. On the other side are folks who imagine a future where queer concerts play just as much of a role as queer cinema.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t imagine the city of San Francisco, or the international gay community without the Castro Theater,” said David Perry, the Castro Theatre spokesperson for APE, “The plan that Another Planet has put forward doesn’t lessen the iconic nature of the Castro. It increases its ability to become an icon for people to embrace for years to come.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Either way, the iconic Castro Theatre will remain a part of the San Francisco experience for generations to come, whether as a multi-use community space, or a temple to film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A final decision on its fate could be reached by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors some time in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story has been updated. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3SHQgur\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a stretch of shoreline near Folsom, where the northern end of Lake Natoma meets the American River, is a park called Black Miners Bar. Its name is a nod to a group of Black miners who discovered gold just south of Folsom back in 1848, just before the wider California gold rush. [baycuriouspodcastinfo] But the park has only been called Black Miners Bar since June 2022. Before that, it was called by a different name for decades: Negro Bar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week on Bay Curious, we’re featuring an episode of fellow KQED podcast, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/rightnowish\">Rightnowish\u003c/a>, from their series on land in Northern California, ‘From the Soil.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13924949/from-the-soil-unfolding-the-story-of-black-miners-bar\">You can read the original story here. \u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "In Folsom, just east of Sacramento, you’ll find a state park whose name caught the attention of Pendarvis Harshaw, host of KQED's Rightnowish podcast. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3SHQgur\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a stretch of shoreline near Folsom, where the northern end of Lake Natoma meets the American River, is a park called Black Miners Bar. Its name is a nod to a group of Black miners who discovered gold just south of Folsom back in 1848, just before the wider California gold rush. \u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp> But the park has only been called Black Miners Bar since June 2022. Before that, it was called by a different name for decades: Negro Bar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week on Bay Curious, we’re featuring an episode of fellow KQED podcast, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/rightnowish\">Rightnowish\u003c/a>, from their series on land in Northern California, ‘From the Soil.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13924949/from-the-soil-unfolding-the-story-of-black-miners-bar\">You can read the original story here. \u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "The Night That Changed San Francisco Cycling Forever",
"headTitle": "The Night That Changed San Francisco Cycling Forever | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3xMsmE9\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look around San Francisco’s streets today, and you’ll see all sorts of infrastructure designed to make bicycling in the city safer. Lime-green bike lanes crisscross the city’s roads, barriers discourage drivers from entering bike lanes, and designated routes and slow streets let riders get away from cars more easily. In 2021, San Franciscans made 4.7 million trips on bicycles, and the city boasts more than 463 miles of bike lanes, paths and trails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But just 30 years ago, none of this existed. There were just a few bike lanes, no slow streets and not nearly as many people on bikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was literally no place where the bicycle was accepted to be on the road. Every square inch of the width of Market Street was full with motorized vehicles, buses or streetcars,” said Chris Carlsson, author and historian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Carlsson would commute down Market Street to an office on Rincon Hill, right by the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a lot of abuse hurled at you, verbally mostly. But there would also occasionally be the aggressive motorist who would actually try to cut you off or bump you off the road,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other cyclists who rode during that time remember the situation similarly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You weren’t allowed to bicycle in San Francisco in the early ’90s,” said Hugh D’Andrade, a friend and collaborator of Carlsson’s. “I mean, you certainly could do it, it was legal, but you were taking your life into your own hands.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One night, on the last Friday of the month in September of 1992, Carlsson and a group of friends decided to take action. They planned to gather at Embarcadero Plaza, right by the Ferry Building in downtown San Francisco, and ride home together. They called the ride “The Commute Clot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were asserting our right to the streets, essentially. One of the slogans that came out that period was that we’re not blocking traffic, we are traffic. So if you’re sick of being treated like crap on the streets of the city, show up for this thing and ride home in a group. About 50 people showed up,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They ended up riding southwest along Market Street to Zeitgeist, a bar in the mission. Carlsson said the experience was euphoric. The group made plans to do another Commute Clot the next month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was the beginning of what became known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcriticalmass.org/\">Critical Mass\u003c/a> — a group bicycling event that is often referred to as an “organized coincidence” or a “leaderless phenomenon.” That’s because for the last 30 years the ride has met at Embarcadero Plaza on the last Friday of every month and flooded the city with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of cyclists riding together in one or sometimes multiple dense packs, despite the fact that it has no leadership, no formal organization and no planned route. It’s also spread outside of San Francisco. Chris Carlsson estimates more than 350 cities across the world hold Critical Mass rides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ride also played a pivotal role in the evolution of the city’s robust bicycle network. But Critical Mass didn’t do it alone. In the early ’90s, right when Critical Mass was getting its start, the \u003ca href=\"https://sfbike.org/\">San Francisco Bicycle Coalition\u003c/a> also was forming.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Working together, separately\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Today the bicycle coalition is a political organizing powerhouse that advocates for safer cycling and alternative transportation policy in San Francisco. But back then, it was a nascent nonprofit meeting in the back of a Chinese restaurant called The Pot and Pan in the Inner Sunset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The people who made decisions were whoever showed up,” said Dave Snyder, who was elected as the coalition’s first executive director in 1991. “They elected me executive director with a salary of $0 to help get the organization started.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critical Mass and the bicycle coalition have similar goals: raising awareness and making the streets safer for people on bicycles. But they couldn’t be more different in how they work toward that. While Critical Mass is simply an event — a raw, unmediated expression of the frustration cyclists feel at being second-class citizens on the city’s streets — the bicycle coalition is a more policy-focused group with its eyes set on changing things from within City Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the bicycle coalition has always been a mainstream group representing the average person who would like to ride a bike on the streets but can’t because they’re not safe enough,” said Snyder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chris Carlsson went to one of the early bicycle coalition meetings in August 1992, and tried to get them to endorse his idea for the Commute Clot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We decided that we would not endorse it, but we would tell people about it. That it wasn’t something that we [could] control, but that it was an important cultural event. So we would make sure everybody knew about it, but that would be the extent of our involvement,” said Snyder. “When you’re a nonprofit that has a legal responsibility, you don’t want to take any responsibility for a ride that you can’t control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941590\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941590\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-800x479.jpg\" alt=\"A group of cyclists happily riding through San Francisco streets together. \" width=\"800\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-800x479.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-1020x610.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-160x96.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-1536x919.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-2048x1225.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-1920x1149.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Critical Mass participants bike from Justin Herman Plaza to Candlestick Park in one of the earliest bicycle rides on the city’s streets, May 27, 1994. \u003ccite>(Photo By Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even though the coalition said no, Critical Mass began picking up steam. By the mid-’90s, thousands of people would participate in Critical Mass rides every month. Carlsson says one reason for the growth of the ride was that anyone could make the ride what they wanted it to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So you didn’t have to adopt a dogma, either political or religious. You could just come and you really only needed to be interested in riding your bike,” said Carlsson. “Then you have the actual euphoric experience of riding through the streets in a group of bicycles. It changes the auditory environment, it changes the olfactory environment, everything is different. It’s really a surprise the first time you do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Tension grows\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>But the cold reality of being stopped by those bikes in Friday rush-hour traffic as Critical Mass passed by was not as serene an experience for people in cars and buses. Imagine trying to drive home on a Friday night, and in addition to the normal traffic, thousands of bicyclists are streaming in front of you. You’re stopped at an intersection and watching as the traffic light goes from green to red to green again, and you don’t go anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critical Mass rides sometimes involve a practice called “corking,” where a group of riders stand at an intersection and block traffic while the rest of the ride passes. Depending on the size of the ride, drivers can be held up for around 15 or 20 minutes. In the early days of Critical Mass, the San Francisco Police Department would actually assist the ride in blocking traffic while the bicyclists passed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Critical Mass grew in size through the years, so did the amount of time drivers were obligated to wait for the mass. People got frustrated. Drivers would try to push through the mass, screaming at cyclists while they attempted to inch their car through the intersections. Cyclists would respond by yelling back, or pounding on a car hood. Sometimes these interactions became physically violent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critical Mass soon gained a reputation for being aggressive and antagonistic. Carlsson says he thinks the ride was often portrayed unfairly in the media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea that we went out attacking cars … that never happens in Critical Mass. People might respond to a car that is trying to run them over by hitting them, or smashing windows on some occasions. That’s happened. But not unprovoked. It’s always been because a motorist loses it and decides they can just ram through the bikes with their car,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cyclists thought of themselves as part of traffic, not causing it. The thinking: When traffic is caused by cars, it’s normal. When it’s caused by bicycles, it’s treated as something to be stopped. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but what about all the other times you’re inconvenienced and you just think that’s normal?” said Carlsson. [baycuriousbug]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlsson pushes back against the idea that Critical Mass was about a sort of class war between people on bikes and people in cars. Rather, he says, it was intended to be celebratory and invitational. They wanted people in the cars to join them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People in their cars are just like us. We’re just like them. We’re in a car on another day, we just don’t want to admit it,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cutting a deal\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Things took a turn when Willie Brown was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1996.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I became mayor, and I said, ‘That is not subject to acceptance, period. You violate the law by running red lights, disrupting the streets. You are subject to be prosecuted,'” said Brown in an interview with KQED in January 2023. “So I went to war with them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown wanted Critical Mass to leave at a later time and follow a police-approved route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They disrupted the whole goddamn town,” Brown recalled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He tasked City Supervisor Michael Yaki with trying to bring Critical Mass to heel. The bicycle coalition took notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dave Snyder, then executive director of the bicycle coalition, got a call from a friend who worked in public relations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘Hey, Dave, they’re talking about Critical Mass and bicyclists in the paper every day, and they never mentioned the Bicycle Coalition.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, isn’t that great?’ And there was silence on the other end. He goes, ‘No, no, that’s not great. You need help.’ And he worked with us to talk about how we could take advantage of all this attention to promote our agenda,” recalled Snyder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since Critical Mass didn’t have any formal leadership, Supervisor Yaki reached out to the next logical choice: the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, the coalition had been pressing for bike lanes on some of the city’s biggest thoroughfares, but Snyder said the plan was just gathering dust. All of a sudden, they had leverage, and hearings on those bike lanes were on the table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In exchange for holding hearings on building some of the first bike lanes in the city, Supervisor Yaki asked the bicycle coalition to make sure Critical Mass would leave later and follow a police-approved route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bicycle coalition people said, ‘Well, yeah, we can tell them that, but they’re not gonna listen,’” said Snyder. “And I think they thought we were being coy, that we were telling him that because we wanted to keep an official arm’s-length distance. But we weren’t being coy. They did not listen to us, and we knew that would be the case.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941591\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941591\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM-800x514.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM-800x514.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM-160x103.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM.png 987w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cyclists ride through the streets as part of a Critical Mass event on July 25, 1997. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ted White)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The city didn’t realize that nobody, not even the bike coalition, had power over the mass. But the coalition did get their meetings, and those bike lanes eventually did get built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Snyder was surprised. “One of the aides to Willie Brown was talking with me about the hearings that they were holding, and I asked her, ‘So what’s changed? Two years ago, I couldn’t get a hearing on any of this stuff,’” said Snyder. “And she just laughed and she said, ‘5,000 people in the streets, Dave. That’s what changed.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlsson remembers when Yaki announced that the city had reached a deal with the Bicycle Coalition. “It just meant nothing to us. We knew you’re gonna have no effect on anything other than potentially producing some serious chaos. And there was major chaos that night,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It set the stage for the most chaotic and violent night in San Francisco Critical Mass history.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>July ’97\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On July 25, 1997, it’s estimated that 5,000 cyclists showed up at Embarcadero Plaza for the ride. Besides the unusually large number of riders, something else was different that night: The police had set up a public-address system. Police Capt. Dennis Martel spoke to the crowd, trying to project his voice above a chorus of boos from the cyclists, imploring them to follow the police-approved route, which was published in newspapers days before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then-Mayor Willie Brown also addressed the crowd. He, too, was met with jeers. Suffice to say, nobody followed the police-approved route that night. The cyclists felt indignant that the police were trying to co-opt their ride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941594\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11941594 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM-800x510.png\" alt=\"An African American man wearing a suit and black fedora makes an announcement into a microphone. \" width=\"800\" height=\"510\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM-800x510.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM-160x102.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM.png 985w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco’s then-mayor, Willie Brown, addresses a a crowd of thousands of cyclists on July 25, 1997. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ted White)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“All the bicyclists are booing [Brown] and he is really pissed. You could tell he’s really pissed. And he walks off the little stage they have and apparently he tells the cops, ‘Shut it down.’ And so they tried and they couldn’t because there was just too many cyclists and everybody just went in every direction,” remembered Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dave Snyder recalls the night as being utterly wild.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Five thousand people divided into 10 groups of 500 on average. Massive clogs of bicycles were all over downtown. It completely messed with traffic in downtown San Francisco for a couple of hours on that Friday,” recalled Snyder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Footage of the night from the bicycle documentary \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpsdy24xbLY&t=2394s\">We Are Traffic\u003c/a>\u003c/em> shows police mounted on motorcycles declaring the event an unlawful assembly and threatening to ticket and arrest cyclists and impound their bikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> article describing the night of July 25, 1997, reads sort of like a war report:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left\">\u003cem>At 8:35 p.m. at Sacramento and Montgomery streets, police formed a skirmish line of a dozen officers with a backup of several dozen more. As the first of the cyclists were put into arrest wagons, a crowd of more than 150 bikers chanted, ‘Let them go.’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>At Fifth and Howard, a rider said that a motorist deliberately swerved into him, flattening the rear wheel of his bike. At the same corner, police said a cyclist reached into the driver’s side of a stopped vehicle and socked the man behind the wheel.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Near Civic Center, an officer ticketed cyclist John Bruno for running a red light — and then warned him, ‘If I were you, I’d get out of here. It’s out of control.’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941595\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11941595 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM-800x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM.png 983w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San Francisco police officer kneels on the neck of a cyclist while making an arrest during a Critical Mass event on July 25, 1997. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ted White)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One scene from that night includes a police officer kneeling on the neck of a woman, as the crowd shouts for them to stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At another intersection, the police encircled about 100 cyclists and conducted a mass arrest. People were booked on charges of failure to disperse, unlawful assembly and blocking traffic, but none of them were convicted. One cyclist who was arrested that night later sued and won against the city for illegally declaring an unlawful assembly and arbitrarily arresting the cyclists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the dust settled, it was clear that San Francisco’s cycling community was demanding change — and they would not be ignored or suppressed any longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reimagining San Francisco’s streets\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Even though the bicycle coalition worked hard to distance itself from Critical Mass, it ended up being one of the greatest beneficiaries from the chaos of July 1997.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A few months after the July 1997 ride, I was in the elevator with Willie Brown in City Hall and I said, ‘Mr. Mayor, our membership has grown 50% since you cracked down on Critical Mass. I haven’t had a chance to thank you for that! Thank you, Mr. Mayor.’ And he laughed and said, ‘You’re welcome.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The events of July 25, 1997, drew attention to the issues the coalition had been fighting for for years, and showed there was a large, passionate electorate that wanted safer streets in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just drew attention to the issue like nothing else could,” said Snyder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the start of the reimagining of San Francisco’s streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941586\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941586\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Bicyclists zoom by in bikes lanes going both directions along San Francisco's Embarcadero at sunset.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco’s Critical Mass, a mass bicycle ride that takes place on the last Friday of each month, celebrates its 30th anniversary on Sept. 30, 2022, in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Aryk Copley/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Valencia Street was the first example where the city traffic engineers took out a traffic lane to put in a bike lane and traffic wasn’t completely messed up. They called it the ‘Valencia epiphany.’ Truly, within the [San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency], that’s what they called it. With the support of the bicycle coalition and some key members of the Board of Supervisors, they started doing it all over the city,” said Snyder.[aside postID=news_11927460 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/RS58902_DSC07979-qut-1020x680.jpg']Paradoxically, the decentralized, brash and confrontational Critical Mass gave rise to the political organizing machine that is the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition we know today, and the maze of bike lanes that snake their way around the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That wouldn’t have been possible if you hadn’t had a mass seizure in the streets by bicyclists for years and years on end every last Friday of the month. And it started in San Francisco and it’s grown throughout the world,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Critical Mass in San Francisco is far less well-attended, even for the 30th anniversary ride, where hundreds, not thousands, of people showed up. It still has no leaders, and many of the original riders stopped going years ago. Carlsson calls it a zombie ride — it just exists on its own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941596\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941596\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man with a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and a suit sits astride his custom bicycle constructed of a playground-style spring horse mounted to a BMX bike.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cyclist Slim Buick sits astride his custom bike on the 30th anniversary of Critical Mass on Sept. 30, 2022, in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Aryk Copley/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Group rides today\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Since Carlsson and his friends rode home together in 1992, there has been an explosion of group rides in the Bay Area. \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/ebbikeparty\">East Bay Bike Party\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.sjbikeparty.org/\">San José Bike Party\u003c/a> are similar to Critical Mass, only with more rules. The bike party stops at red lights, posts their route beforehand, and have designated stopping and regrouping areas so people can meet back up with the ride if they get separated. These regrouping areas are also often sites for dance parties among the thumping sound systems and flashing lights people adorn their bikes with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Richmond, \u003ca href=\"https://www.richcityrides.org/\">Rich City Rides\u003c/a> is focused on promoting healthy and active lifestyles in the city through cycling. They’re also working to bring everyone to an activity that is often seen as being overwhelmingly white and male.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941600\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941600\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-800x722.jpg\" alt=\"A group of people pose with their bicycles, one person holds theirs aloft. \" width=\"800\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-800x722.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-1020x920.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-160x144.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-1536x1386.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-2048x1848.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-1920x1732.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Riders gather at the Richmond BART Plaza for a ride commemorating the third anniversary of a bike lane pilot on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, organized by Rich City Rides. \u003ccite>(Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We focus intentionally on making sure that minorities are welcome and feel comfortable when they are at our space or at our activities in general,” said Dani Lanis, project manager with Rich City Rides. “There’s no aggression whatsoever. In fact, it’s all about inclusion, inclusivity and making sure that everybody feels comfortable, including kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rich City Rides also hosts a Black wellness hub, which has talking circles for the community, like Black Men Tea Talk Tuesday and Black Women Wellness Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lanis says that Rich City Rides will tailor their route according to the needs of the slowest or least experienced person on the ride. “We have little ones with us often, and so we could have a whole plan for where to ride on a day, and five minutes before we take off, if a bunch of 7-year-olds show up, we will totally change the route because all of our routes are dictated on who is the slowest person in the ride.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a recent ride celebrating the third anniversary of a bike-lane pilot program on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, Candace Peters of Oakland said it’s exactly that type of atmosphere that brought her out for her first ride across the bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This group doing it brought me out and motivated me to do it, so I probably wouldn’t do it by myself. I feel like I won’t get lost, I feel like I won’t get confused, I feel like if anything goes wrong, I can have help. I can kind of see what it’s like, and so when I want to do it by myself, I’m already aware of what I’m getting into and what I need to do and how to get there and how to get back,” said Peters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gesturing toward a bubble machine mounted onto the rack of a nearby bicycle, she added, “Bubbles make bike rides more fun.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cycling in the Bay Area today\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Recent events thrust the issues Critical Mass originally organized around back into the spotlight. Earlier this month, people in cars intentionally attacked cyclists in a string of incidents over a single weekend. People in cars would open their doors into cyclists while they were riding, causing them to crash. Two people were seriously injured. Many of these people were on their way to or leaving the East Bay Bike Party. The \u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2023/02/22/bay-area-cyclists-attacked-solidarity-ride-roll-out-crew/\">Oaklandside\u003c/a> reported there were 16 incidents of people being attacked that weekend, and that over 800 people turned out for a solidarity ride the following weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has led people in the Bay Area cycling community to renew calls for more protections for cyclists — like protected bike lanes — continuing the work that Critical Mass and the bicycle coalition started 30 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "San Francisco wasn't always such a bike-friendly city. At least, not until the '90s, when two groups working without coordination made cyclists hard for the city to ignore. ",
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"description": "San Francisco wasn't always such a bike-friendly city. At least, not until the '90s, when two groups working without coordination made cyclists hard for the city to ignore. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3xMsmE9\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look around San Francisco’s streets today, and you’ll see all sorts of infrastructure designed to make bicycling in the city safer. Lime-green bike lanes crisscross the city’s roads, barriers discourage drivers from entering bike lanes, and designated routes and slow streets let riders get away from cars more easily. In 2021, San Franciscans made 4.7 million trips on bicycles, and the city boasts more than 463 miles of bike lanes, paths and trails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But just 30 years ago, none of this existed. There were just a few bike lanes, no slow streets and not nearly as many people on bikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was literally no place where the bicycle was accepted to be on the road. Every square inch of the width of Market Street was full with motorized vehicles, buses or streetcars,” said Chris Carlsson, author and historian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Carlsson would commute down Market Street to an office on Rincon Hill, right by the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a lot of abuse hurled at you, verbally mostly. But there would also occasionally be the aggressive motorist who would actually try to cut you off or bump you off the road,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other cyclists who rode during that time remember the situation similarly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You weren’t allowed to bicycle in San Francisco in the early ’90s,” said Hugh D’Andrade, a friend and collaborator of Carlsson’s. “I mean, you certainly could do it, it was legal, but you were taking your life into your own hands.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One night, on the last Friday of the month in September of 1992, Carlsson and a group of friends decided to take action. They planned to gather at Embarcadero Plaza, right by the Ferry Building in downtown San Francisco, and ride home together. They called the ride “The Commute Clot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were asserting our right to the streets, essentially. One of the slogans that came out that period was that we’re not blocking traffic, we are traffic. So if you’re sick of being treated like crap on the streets of the city, show up for this thing and ride home in a group. About 50 people showed up,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They ended up riding southwest along Market Street to Zeitgeist, a bar in the mission. Carlsson said the experience was euphoric. The group made plans to do another Commute Clot the next month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was the beginning of what became known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcriticalmass.org/\">Critical Mass\u003c/a> — a group bicycling event that is often referred to as an “organized coincidence” or a “leaderless phenomenon.” That’s because for the last 30 years the ride has met at Embarcadero Plaza on the last Friday of every month and flooded the city with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of cyclists riding together in one or sometimes multiple dense packs, despite the fact that it has no leadership, no formal organization and no planned route. It’s also spread outside of San Francisco. Chris Carlsson estimates more than 350 cities across the world hold Critical Mass rides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ride also played a pivotal role in the evolution of the city’s robust bicycle network. But Critical Mass didn’t do it alone. In the early ’90s, right when Critical Mass was getting its start, the \u003ca href=\"https://sfbike.org/\">San Francisco Bicycle Coalition\u003c/a> also was forming.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Working together, separately\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Today the bicycle coalition is a political organizing powerhouse that advocates for safer cycling and alternative transportation policy in San Francisco. But back then, it was a nascent nonprofit meeting in the back of a Chinese restaurant called The Pot and Pan in the Inner Sunset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The people who made decisions were whoever showed up,” said Dave Snyder, who was elected as the coalition’s first executive director in 1991. “They elected me executive director with a salary of $0 to help get the organization started.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critical Mass and the bicycle coalition have similar goals: raising awareness and making the streets safer for people on bicycles. But they couldn’t be more different in how they work toward that. While Critical Mass is simply an event — a raw, unmediated expression of the frustration cyclists feel at being second-class citizens on the city’s streets — the bicycle coalition is a more policy-focused group with its eyes set on changing things from within City Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think the bicycle coalition has always been a mainstream group representing the average person who would like to ride a bike on the streets but can’t because they’re not safe enough,” said Snyder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chris Carlsson went to one of the early bicycle coalition meetings in August 1992, and tried to get them to endorse his idea for the Commute Clot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We decided that we would not endorse it, but we would tell people about it. That it wasn’t something that we [could] control, but that it was an important cultural event. So we would make sure everybody knew about it, but that would be the extent of our involvement,” said Snyder. “When you’re a nonprofit that has a legal responsibility, you don’t want to take any responsibility for a ride that you can’t control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941590\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941590\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-800x479.jpg\" alt=\"A group of cyclists happily riding through San Francisco streets together. \" width=\"800\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-800x479.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-1020x610.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-160x96.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-1536x919.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-2048x1225.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/GettyImages-1321312454-1920x1149.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Critical Mass participants bike from Justin Herman Plaza to Candlestick Park in one of the earliest bicycle rides on the city’s streets, May 27, 1994. \u003ccite>(Photo By Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even though the coalition said no, Critical Mass began picking up steam. By the mid-’90s, thousands of people would participate in Critical Mass rides every month. Carlsson says one reason for the growth of the ride was that anyone could make the ride what they wanted it to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So you didn’t have to adopt a dogma, either political or religious. You could just come and you really only needed to be interested in riding your bike,” said Carlsson. “Then you have the actual euphoric experience of riding through the streets in a group of bicycles. It changes the auditory environment, it changes the olfactory environment, everything is different. It’s really a surprise the first time you do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Tension grows\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>But the cold reality of being stopped by those bikes in Friday rush-hour traffic as Critical Mass passed by was not as serene an experience for people in cars and buses. Imagine trying to drive home on a Friday night, and in addition to the normal traffic, thousands of bicyclists are streaming in front of you. You’re stopped at an intersection and watching as the traffic light goes from green to red to green again, and you don’t go anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critical Mass rides sometimes involve a practice called “corking,” where a group of riders stand at an intersection and block traffic while the rest of the ride passes. Depending on the size of the ride, drivers can be held up for around 15 or 20 minutes. In the early days of Critical Mass, the San Francisco Police Department would actually assist the ride in blocking traffic while the bicyclists passed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Critical Mass grew in size through the years, so did the amount of time drivers were obligated to wait for the mass. People got frustrated. Drivers would try to push through the mass, screaming at cyclists while they attempted to inch their car through the intersections. Cyclists would respond by yelling back, or pounding on a car hood. Sometimes these interactions became physically violent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critical Mass soon gained a reputation for being aggressive and antagonistic. Carlsson says he thinks the ride was often portrayed unfairly in the media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea that we went out attacking cars … that never happens in Critical Mass. People might respond to a car that is trying to run them over by hitting them, or smashing windows on some occasions. That’s happened. But not unprovoked. It’s always been because a motorist loses it and decides they can just ram through the bikes with their car,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cyclists thought of themselves as part of traffic, not causing it. The thinking: When traffic is caused by cars, it’s normal. When it’s caused by bicycles, it’s treated as something to be stopped. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but what about all the other times you’re inconvenienced and you just think that’s normal?” said Carlsson. \u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n What do you wonder about the Bay Area, its culture or people that you want KQED to investigate?\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Ask Bay Curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlsson pushes back against the idea that Critical Mass was about a sort of class war between people on bikes and people in cars. Rather, he says, it was intended to be celebratory and invitational. They wanted people in the cars to join them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People in their cars are just like us. We’re just like them. We’re in a car on another day, we just don’t want to admit it,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cutting a deal\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Things took a turn when Willie Brown was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1996.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I became mayor, and I said, ‘That is not subject to acceptance, period. You violate the law by running red lights, disrupting the streets. You are subject to be prosecuted,'” said Brown in an interview with KQED in January 2023. “So I went to war with them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown wanted Critical Mass to leave at a later time and follow a police-approved route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They disrupted the whole goddamn town,” Brown recalled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He tasked City Supervisor Michael Yaki with trying to bring Critical Mass to heel. The bicycle coalition took notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dave Snyder, then executive director of the bicycle coalition, got a call from a friend who worked in public relations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘Hey, Dave, they’re talking about Critical Mass and bicyclists in the paper every day, and they never mentioned the Bicycle Coalition.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, isn’t that great?’ And there was silence on the other end. He goes, ‘No, no, that’s not great. You need help.’ And he worked with us to talk about how we could take advantage of all this attention to promote our agenda,” recalled Snyder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since Critical Mass didn’t have any formal leadership, Supervisor Yaki reached out to the next logical choice: the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, the coalition had been pressing for bike lanes on some of the city’s biggest thoroughfares, but Snyder said the plan was just gathering dust. All of a sudden, they had leverage, and hearings on those bike lanes were on the table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In exchange for holding hearings on building some of the first bike lanes in the city, Supervisor Yaki asked the bicycle coalition to make sure Critical Mass would leave later and follow a police-approved route.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The bicycle coalition people said, ‘Well, yeah, we can tell them that, but they’re not gonna listen,’” said Snyder. “And I think they thought we were being coy, that we were telling him that because we wanted to keep an official arm’s-length distance. But we weren’t being coy. They did not listen to us, and we knew that would be the case.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941591\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941591\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM-800x514.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM-800x514.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM-160x103.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.21.46-PM.png 987w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cyclists ride through the streets as part of a Critical Mass event on July 25, 1997. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ted White)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The city didn’t realize that nobody, not even the bike coalition, had power over the mass. But the coalition did get their meetings, and those bike lanes eventually did get built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Snyder was surprised. “One of the aides to Willie Brown was talking with me about the hearings that they were holding, and I asked her, ‘So what’s changed? Two years ago, I couldn’t get a hearing on any of this stuff,’” said Snyder. “And she just laughed and she said, ‘5,000 people in the streets, Dave. That’s what changed.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carlsson remembers when Yaki announced that the city had reached a deal with the Bicycle Coalition. “It just meant nothing to us. We knew you’re gonna have no effect on anything other than potentially producing some serious chaos. And there was major chaos that night,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It set the stage for the most chaotic and violent night in San Francisco Critical Mass history.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>July ’97\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On July 25, 1997, it’s estimated that 5,000 cyclists showed up at Embarcadero Plaza for the ride. Besides the unusually large number of riders, something else was different that night: The police had set up a public-address system. Police Capt. Dennis Martel spoke to the crowd, trying to project his voice above a chorus of boos from the cyclists, imploring them to follow the police-approved route, which was published in newspapers days before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then-Mayor Willie Brown also addressed the crowd. He, too, was met with jeers. Suffice to say, nobody followed the police-approved route that night. The cyclists felt indignant that the police were trying to co-opt their ride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941594\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11941594 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM-800x510.png\" alt=\"An African American man wearing a suit and black fedora makes an announcement into a microphone. \" width=\"800\" height=\"510\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM-800x510.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM-160x102.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.20.23-PM.png 985w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco’s then-mayor, Willie Brown, addresses a a crowd of thousands of cyclists on July 25, 1997. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ted White)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“All the bicyclists are booing [Brown] and he is really pissed. You could tell he’s really pissed. And he walks off the little stage they have and apparently he tells the cops, ‘Shut it down.’ And so they tried and they couldn’t because there was just too many cyclists and everybody just went in every direction,” remembered Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dave Snyder recalls the night as being utterly wild.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Five thousand people divided into 10 groups of 500 on average. Massive clogs of bicycles were all over downtown. It completely messed with traffic in downtown San Francisco for a couple of hours on that Friday,” recalled Snyder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Footage of the night from the bicycle documentary \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpsdy24xbLY&t=2394s\">We Are Traffic\u003c/a>\u003c/em> shows police mounted on motorcycles declaring the event an unlawful assembly and threatening to ticket and arrest cyclists and impound their bikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> article describing the night of July 25, 1997, reads sort of like a war report:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left\">\u003cem>At 8:35 p.m. at Sacramento and Montgomery streets, police formed a skirmish line of a dozen officers with a backup of several dozen more. As the first of the cyclists were put into arrest wagons, a crowd of more than 150 bikers chanted, ‘Let them go.’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>At Fifth and Howard, a rider said that a motorist deliberately swerved into him, flattening the rear wheel of his bike. At the same corner, police said a cyclist reached into the driver’s side of a stopped vehicle and socked the man behind the wheel.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Near Civic Center, an officer ticketed cyclist John Bruno for running a red light — and then warned him, ‘If I were you, I’d get out of here. It’s out of control.’\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941595\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11941595 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM-800x533.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM-800x533.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM-160x107.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-22-at-1.25.40-PM.png 983w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San Francisco police officer kneels on the neck of a cyclist while making an arrest during a Critical Mass event on July 25, 1997. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ted White)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One scene from that night includes a police officer kneeling on the neck of a woman, as the crowd shouts for them to stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At another intersection, the police encircled about 100 cyclists and conducted a mass arrest. People were booked on charges of failure to disperse, unlawful assembly and blocking traffic, but none of them were convicted. One cyclist who was arrested that night later sued and won against the city for illegally declaring an unlawful assembly and arbitrarily arresting the cyclists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the dust settled, it was clear that San Francisco’s cycling community was demanding change — and they would not be ignored or suppressed any longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reimagining San Francisco’s streets\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Even though the bicycle coalition worked hard to distance itself from Critical Mass, it ended up being one of the greatest beneficiaries from the chaos of July 1997.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A few months after the July 1997 ride, I was in the elevator with Willie Brown in City Hall and I said, ‘Mr. Mayor, our membership has grown 50% since you cracked down on Critical Mass. I haven’t had a chance to thank you for that! Thank you, Mr. Mayor.’ And he laughed and said, ‘You’re welcome.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The events of July 25, 1997, drew attention to the issues the coalition had been fighting for for years, and showed there was a large, passionate electorate that wanted safer streets in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It just drew attention to the issue like nothing else could,” said Snyder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the start of the reimagining of San Francisco’s streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941586\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941586\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Bicyclists zoom by in bikes lanes going both directions along San Francisco's Embarcadero at sunset.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58943_R0005712-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Francisco’s Critical Mass, a mass bicycle ride that takes place on the last Friday of each month, celebrates its 30th anniversary on Sept. 30, 2022, in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Aryk Copley/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Valencia Street was the first example where the city traffic engineers took out a traffic lane to put in a bike lane and traffic wasn’t completely messed up. They called it the ‘Valencia epiphany.’ Truly, within the [San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency], that’s what they called it. With the support of the bicycle coalition and some key members of the Board of Supervisors, they started doing it all over the city,” said Snyder.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Paradoxically, the decentralized, brash and confrontational Critical Mass gave rise to the political organizing machine that is the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition we know today, and the maze of bike lanes that snake their way around the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That wouldn’t have been possible if you hadn’t had a mass seizure in the streets by bicyclists for years and years on end every last Friday of the month. And it started in San Francisco and it’s grown throughout the world,” said Carlsson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Critical Mass in San Francisco is far less well-attended, even for the 30th anniversary ride, where hundreds, not thousands, of people showed up. It still has no leaders, and many of the original riders stopped going years ago. Carlsson calls it a zombie ride — it just exists on its own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941596\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941596\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man with a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and a suit sits astride his custom bicycle constructed of a playground-style spring horse mounted to a BMX bike.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS58897_DSC07955-qut-1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cyclist Slim Buick sits astride his custom bike on the 30th anniversary of Critical Mass on Sept. 30, 2022, in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Aryk Copley/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Group rides today\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Since Carlsson and his friends rode home together in 1992, there has been an explosion of group rides in the Bay Area. \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/ebbikeparty\">East Bay Bike Party\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.sjbikeparty.org/\">San José Bike Party\u003c/a> are similar to Critical Mass, only with more rules. The bike party stops at red lights, posts their route beforehand, and have designated stopping and regrouping areas so people can meet back up with the ride if they get separated. These regrouping areas are also often sites for dance parties among the thumping sound systems and flashing lights people adorn their bikes with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Richmond, \u003ca href=\"https://www.richcityrides.org/\">Rich City Rides\u003c/a> is focused on promoting healthy and active lifestyles in the city through cycling. They’re also working to bring everyone to an activity that is often seen as being overwhelmingly white and male.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11941600\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11941600\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-800x722.jpg\" alt=\"A group of people pose with their bicycles, one person holds theirs aloft. \" width=\"800\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-800x722.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-1020x920.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-160x144.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-1536x1386.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-2048x1848.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_2152-1920x1732.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Riders gather at the Richmond BART Plaza for a ride commemorating the third anniversary of a bike lane pilot on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, organized by Rich City Rides. \u003ccite>(Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We focus intentionally on making sure that minorities are welcome and feel comfortable when they are at our space or at our activities in general,” said Dani Lanis, project manager with Rich City Rides. “There’s no aggression whatsoever. In fact, it’s all about inclusion, inclusivity and making sure that everybody feels comfortable, including kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rich City Rides also hosts a Black wellness hub, which has talking circles for the community, like Black Men Tea Talk Tuesday and Black Women Wellness Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lanis says that Rich City Rides will tailor their route according to the needs of the slowest or least experienced person on the ride. “We have little ones with us often, and so we could have a whole plan for where to ride on a day, and five minutes before we take off, if a bunch of 7-year-olds show up, we will totally change the route because all of our routes are dictated on who is the slowest person in the ride.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a recent ride celebrating the third anniversary of a bike-lane pilot program on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, Candace Peters of Oakland said it’s exactly that type of atmosphere that brought her out for her first ride across the bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This group doing it brought me out and motivated me to do it, so I probably wouldn’t do it by myself. I feel like I won’t get lost, I feel like I won’t get confused, I feel like if anything goes wrong, I can have help. I can kind of see what it’s like, and so when I want to do it by myself, I’m already aware of what I’m getting into and what I need to do and how to get there and how to get back,” said Peters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gesturing toward a bubble machine mounted onto the rack of a nearby bicycle, she added, “Bubbles make bike rides more fun.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cycling in the Bay Area today\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Recent events thrust the issues Critical Mass originally organized around back into the spotlight. Earlier this month, people in cars intentionally attacked cyclists in a string of incidents over a single weekend. People in cars would open their doors into cyclists while they were riding, causing them to crash. Two people were seriously injured. Many of these people were on their way to or leaving the East Bay Bike Party. The \u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2023/02/22/bay-area-cyclists-attacked-solidarity-ride-roll-out-crew/\">Oaklandside\u003c/a> reported there were 16 incidents of people being attacked that weekend, and that over 800 people turned out for a solidarity ride the following weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has led people in the Bay Area cycling community to renew calls for more protections for cyclists — like protected bike lanes — continuing the work that Critical Mass and the bicycle coalition started 30 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "The Building That Looks Like a Boat Off the Coast of Palo Alto",
"headTitle": "The Building That Looks Like a Boat Off the Coast of Palo Alto | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CkwPS-Dc8ftWLCpcjDjRoSIIBcv_Tzo3/view\">\u003cem>Read the transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I walk along the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Departments/Community-Services/Open-Space-Parks/Neighborhood-Parks/Baylands-Nature-Preserve\">Palo Alto Baylands\u003c/a>, I see what looks like a paddle-driven riverboat that you would typically see on the Mississippi River. What is that boat and why is it there?” asked Agnes Veith of Sunnyvale. She’s a volunteer at \u003ca href=\"https://www.environmentalvolunteers.org/ecocenter/\">Environmental Volunteers\u003c/a>, a nonprofit housed in a building that really does look like a boat, and wanted to know more about its history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re a fan of art deco buildings in the Bay Area, you probably know of San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://noehill.com/sf/landmarks/nat2007001468.asp\">Coit Tower\u003c/a>. Or Oakland’s beloved \u003ca href=\"https://www.paramountoakland.org/history_news\">Paramount Theatre\u003c/a>. Or the iconic \u003ca href=\"https://www.destinationhotels.com/hotel-de-anza/hotel-de-anza-blog/spend-the-night-at-legendary-hotel-de-anza\">Hotel de Anza\u003c/a> in downtown San José. There aren’t a lot of these nostalgic throwbacks to the 1930s still standing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But art deco doesn’t really describe the building Veith is thinking of. It’s in a subcategory of art deco called streamline moderne, or nautical moderne. Which is to say: horizontal orientation, rounded edges and porthole-shaped windows. There’s something that looks like a navigation bridge popping out onto a third story. A rainbow flag flies high and proud from a hoist at the top of the building. The paint job is a white that Benjamin Moore might describe as “sand dollar” or “dune,” with French blue accents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whimsy or cheese? I’m going with whimsy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The building was designed for the \u003ca href=\"https://seascout.org\">Sea Scouts\u003c/a>, a maritime program of the Boy Scouts of America, by architect \u003ca href=\"https://www.paloaltohistory.org/birge-clark.php\">Birge Clark.\u003c/a> He’s the one behind the Palo Alto Post Office, the President Hotel and several Stanford buildings. Clark reportedly took his inspiration for the Sea Scout building from the pilot house of an old paddle wheel steamer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that’s the story of what hits your eyeballs as you’re walking in the Baylands. The history of the building is just as compelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940610\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2139px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11940610\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts.jpg\" alt=\"A sepia toned photograph shows rows of young men in maritime uniforms in front of an Art Deco building that looks like a boat. What looks like a military band plays in foreground.\" width=\"2139\" height=\"1714\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts.jpg 2139w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-800x641.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-1020x817.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-160x128.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-1536x1231.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-2048x1641.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-1920x1539.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2139px) 100vw, 2139px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Palo Alto Sea Scout Base was commissioned in May of 1941. That’s the Stanford Band in the foreground. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hyde Forbes)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Palo Alto philanthropist Lucie Stern commissioned it as a home base for the \u003ca href=\"https://seascout.org\">Sea Scouts\u003c/a>. The building opened in 1941 to great fanfare, especially given the ongoing hostilities of World War II.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a pivotal moment for the local chapter, which taught teenagers from as far north as Redwood City and as far south as San José. Their counterparts in the Girl Scouts were called the Mariners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Murray was a Sea Scout. He joined in 1974, at the age of 14, and rose up through the ranks from apprentice to vice commodore for the western region. Over the years, he also became an amateur historian of the Sea Scouts on the Peninsula. He’s talked to old-timers before they died about \u003ca href=\"https://www.paloaltohistory.org/the-palo-alto-yacht-harbor.php\">the start of the harbor in 1928\u003c/a>, and the decades of fun and education that followed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That harbor was alive and well. It was teeming with families, with teenagers, a bunch of sailboats. Aww, man, it was a whole other world,” Murray said. “Imagine right in front of that building, an 85-foot PT boat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A PT boat, by the way, was a motorized torpedo boat used by the Navy in World War II: small, fast and cheap to build. They were cheap to give away, too, to programs like the Sea Scouts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940611\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11940611\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6.jpg\" alt=\"A class photo taken outdoors of young, teenage boys looking jaunty in sailor outfits.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1367\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-1920x1282.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Palo Alto Sea Scouts after a coastal summer cruise from PA to San Diego and return, circa 1969. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Skipper George Moore)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Here I was, a 14-year-old kid, and they put me on a WWII, 64-foot tugboat. I started as a deckhand and then I graduated to become an engineer, working on an engine the size of a train. So the first thing I noticed was we were being treated as men, not little boys anymore,” Murray said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were adventurous trips to San Francisco and even Alaska. There were regattas and dances and lifelong friendships formed. Murray credits his time in the Sea Scouts for turning him into an educator. He was a political science professor for 30 years before he retired. Most of his brothers went into education, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But times change and so do social attitudes toward the environment. The dredging that made Palo Alto’s harbor operational stopped after a contentious citywide vote in 1986, to allow for the area to return to its original state as wetlands. Then in 1994, the Palo Alto and San Mateo County Sea Scout councils merged, and in 2002, they gave up the lease on the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, while sitting empty, the foundation sank three feet into the mud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you come inside and you look at the floorboards, you can actually see the original floorboards and see some of the blackening as a result of some of that constant tide flow and flooding,” said Toby Goldberg, director of programs and partnerships at Environmental Volunteers. The local nonprofit where Goldberg works, and where Agnes Veith (our Bay Curious question-asker) volunteers, hosts field trips for some 50 schools in Silicon Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940613\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11940613 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/AF5A903D-EFC1-4C58-9728-9352E8236814_1_201_a.jpeg\" alt=\"A gray goose, with a long black neck, white and black head, and wings outstretched, lifts off from a rippling, brown lake, three splashes from its feet behind it.\" width=\"640\" height=\"330\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/AF5A903D-EFC1-4C58-9728-9352E8236814_1_201_a.jpeg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/AF5A903D-EFC1-4C58-9728-9352E8236814_1_201_a-160x83.jpeg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Canada goose takes flight in the Palo Alto Baylands. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Agnes Veith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The organization got hold of the building in the 2000s and lined up grant money to renovate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The refurbished Sea Scout building sits 4 feet higher than its forebear, to prevent future flooding due to tidal influx as well as sea level rise. But 4 feet may not be enough. “During particular times of the year, especially king tides, if there’s a storm, the water actually does come up sometimes over the deck. So we have had instances where there was a question of, ‘Did we need our kayaks for getting into work today?'” Goldberg said.[emailsignup newslettername=\"baycurious\" align=\"right\"]You might think that a building that looks like a boat circa World War II would be an odd choice for an outfit that teaches about wetlands. But somehow, it just feels right when you’re out there. Especially standing on the deck in the back and looking out over a calm expanse of mud and pickleweed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940614\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11940614 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-scaled.jpeg\" alt='A big sign by a building that looks like a boat says \"Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter.\"' width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-1920x1440.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter in the Palo Alto Baylands. \u003ccite>(Rachael Myrow/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hazel Watson, a former science educator now with Environmental Volunteers, can wax more poetic: “A whole vista of cordgrasses and the pickleweeds, with the channels that still remain here. Today, we’ve got lots of Northern shoveler ducks and Ridgeway’s rails. Sunset is beautiful here. It’s certainly the best part of the day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Goldberg added that the wetlands act like a nursery for a lot of organisms. “So we see things like bat rays, and we’ll see harbor seals occasionally coming through. Birds galore, [depending on] the season. So every time you come out here, you’re going to be seeing different things, different birds, different insects. You can see that all from the deck of this building that looks like a boat,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Don’t wait for the Sea Scout building to sink into the mud again. Make tracks and come see it, across from the duck pond, and bring your camera and a pair of binoculars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CkwPS-Dc8ftWLCpcjDjRoSIIBcv_Tzo3/view\">\u003cem>Read the transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I walk along the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Departments/Community-Services/Open-Space-Parks/Neighborhood-Parks/Baylands-Nature-Preserve\">Palo Alto Baylands\u003c/a>, I see what looks like a paddle-driven riverboat that you would typically see on the Mississippi River. What is that boat and why is it there?” asked Agnes Veith of Sunnyvale. She’s a volunteer at \u003ca href=\"https://www.environmentalvolunteers.org/ecocenter/\">Environmental Volunteers\u003c/a>, a nonprofit housed in a building that really does look like a boat, and wanted to know more about its history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re a fan of art deco buildings in the Bay Area, you probably know of San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://noehill.com/sf/landmarks/nat2007001468.asp\">Coit Tower\u003c/a>. Or Oakland’s beloved \u003ca href=\"https://www.paramountoakland.org/history_news\">Paramount Theatre\u003c/a>. Or the iconic \u003ca href=\"https://www.destinationhotels.com/hotel-de-anza/hotel-de-anza-blog/spend-the-night-at-legendary-hotel-de-anza\">Hotel de Anza\u003c/a> in downtown San José. There aren’t a lot of these nostalgic throwbacks to the 1930s still standing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But art deco doesn’t really describe the building Veith is thinking of. It’s in a subcategory of art deco called streamline moderne, or nautical moderne. Which is to say: horizontal orientation, rounded edges and porthole-shaped windows. There’s something that looks like a navigation bridge popping out onto a third story. A rainbow flag flies high and proud from a hoist at the top of the building. The paint job is a white that Benjamin Moore might describe as “sand dollar” or “dune,” with French blue accents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whimsy or cheese? I’m going with whimsy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The building was designed for the \u003ca href=\"https://seascout.org\">Sea Scouts\u003c/a>, a maritime program of the Boy Scouts of America, by architect \u003ca href=\"https://www.paloaltohistory.org/birge-clark.php\">Birge Clark.\u003c/a> He’s the one behind the Palo Alto Post Office, the President Hotel and several Stanford buildings. Clark reportedly took his inspiration for the Sea Scout building from the pilot house of an old paddle wheel steamer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that’s the story of what hits your eyeballs as you’re walking in the Baylands. The history of the building is just as compelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940610\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2139px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11940610\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts.jpg\" alt=\"A sepia toned photograph shows rows of young men in maritime uniforms in front of an Art Deco building that looks like a boat. What looks like a military band plays in foreground.\" width=\"2139\" height=\"1714\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts.jpg 2139w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-800x641.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-1020x817.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-160x128.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-1536x1231.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-2048x1641.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/disk-022-IMG0081-adj-sea-scouts-1920x1539.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2139px) 100vw, 2139px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Palo Alto Sea Scout Base was commissioned in May of 1941. That’s the Stanford Band in the foreground. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hyde Forbes)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Palo Alto philanthropist Lucie Stern commissioned it as a home base for the \u003ca href=\"https://seascout.org\">Sea Scouts\u003c/a>. The building opened in 1941 to great fanfare, especially given the ongoing hostilities of World War II.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a pivotal moment for the local chapter, which taught teenagers from as far north as Redwood City and as far south as San José. Their counterparts in the Girl Scouts were called the Mariners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Murray was a Sea Scout. He joined in 1974, at the age of 14, and rose up through the ranks from apprentice to vice commodore for the western region. Over the years, he also became an amateur historian of the Sea Scouts on the Peninsula. He’s talked to old-timers before they died about \u003ca href=\"https://www.paloaltohistory.org/the-palo-alto-yacht-harbor.php\">the start of the harbor in 1928\u003c/a>, and the decades of fun and education that followed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That harbor was alive and well. It was teeming with families, with teenagers, a bunch of sailboats. Aww, man, it was a whole other world,” Murray said. “Imagine right in front of that building, an 85-foot PT boat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A PT boat, by the way, was a motorized torpedo boat used by the Navy in World War II: small, fast and cheap to build. They were cheap to give away, too, to programs like the Sea Scouts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940611\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11940611\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6.jpg\" alt=\"A class photo taken outdoors of young, teenage boys looking jaunty in sailor outfits.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1367\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-800x534.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/6-1920x1282.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Palo Alto Sea Scouts after a coastal summer cruise from PA to San Diego and return, circa 1969. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Skipper George Moore)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Here I was, a 14-year-old kid, and they put me on a WWII, 64-foot tugboat. I started as a deckhand and then I graduated to become an engineer, working on an engine the size of a train. So the first thing I noticed was we were being treated as men, not little boys anymore,” Murray said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were adventurous trips to San Francisco and even Alaska. There were regattas and dances and lifelong friendships formed. Murray credits his time in the Sea Scouts for turning him into an educator. He was a political science professor for 30 years before he retired. Most of his brothers went into education, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But times change and so do social attitudes toward the environment. The dredging that made Palo Alto’s harbor operational stopped after a contentious citywide vote in 1986, to allow for the area to return to its original state as wetlands. Then in 1994, the Palo Alto and San Mateo County Sea Scout councils merged, and in 2002, they gave up the lease on the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, while sitting empty, the foundation sank three feet into the mud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you come inside and you look at the floorboards, you can actually see the original floorboards and see some of the blackening as a result of some of that constant tide flow and flooding,” said Toby Goldberg, director of programs and partnerships at Environmental Volunteers. The local nonprofit where Goldberg works, and where Agnes Veith (our Bay Curious question-asker) volunteers, hosts field trips for some 50 schools in Silicon Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940613\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11940613 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/AF5A903D-EFC1-4C58-9728-9352E8236814_1_201_a.jpeg\" alt=\"A gray goose, with a long black neck, white and black head, and wings outstretched, lifts off from a rippling, brown lake, three splashes from its feet behind it.\" width=\"640\" height=\"330\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/AF5A903D-EFC1-4C58-9728-9352E8236814_1_201_a.jpeg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/AF5A903D-EFC1-4C58-9728-9352E8236814_1_201_a-160x83.jpeg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Canada goose takes flight in the Palo Alto Baylands. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Agnes Veith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The organization got hold of the building in the 2000s and lined up grant money to renovate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The refurbished Sea Scout building sits 4 feet higher than its forebear, to prevent future flooding due to tidal influx as well as sea level rise. But 4 feet may not be enough. “During particular times of the year, especially king tides, if there’s a storm, the water actually does come up sometimes over the deck. So we have had instances where there was a question of, ‘Did we need our kayaks for getting into work today?'” Goldberg said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>You might think that a building that looks like a boat circa World War II would be an odd choice for an outfit that teaches about wetlands. But somehow, it just feels right when you’re out there. Especially standing on the deck in the back and looking out over a calm expanse of mud and pickleweed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940614\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11940614 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-scaled.jpeg\" alt='A big sign by a building that looks like a boat says \"Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter.\"' width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-800x600.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-1020x765.jpeg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-160x120.jpeg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_6014-1920x1440.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter in the Palo Alto Baylands. \u003ccite>(Rachael Myrow/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hazel Watson, a former science educator now with Environmental Volunteers, can wax more poetic: “A whole vista of cordgrasses and the pickleweeds, with the channels that still remain here. Today, we’ve got lots of Northern shoveler ducks and Ridgeway’s rails. Sunset is beautiful here. It’s certainly the best part of the day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Goldberg added that the wetlands act like a nursery for a lot of organisms. “So we see things like bat rays, and we’ll see harbor seals occasionally coming through. Birds galore, [depending on] the season. So every time you come out here, you’re going to be seeing different things, different birds, different insects. You can see that all from the deck of this building that looks like a boat,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Don’t wait for the Sea Scout building to sink into the mud again. Make tracks and come see it, across from the duck pond, and bring your camera and a pair of binoculars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3YiEvfS\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rain — California has seen a lot of it so far this year in the form of multiple atmospheric river storms that have hammered the Bay Area. That got the Bay Curious team wondering about some of the questions we’ve received over the years about water — where it flows and how we’re affected by it. This week we have a three-question lightning round.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>1. When it rains in the Bay Area, and the water runs to the gutter, does it go directly into the bay?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This question came to us from listener Eric Bauer. For most cities in the Bay Area, the answer is yes. Depending on where you live, gutters in your street will take stormwater or other runoff to creeks that lead out to the bay without any kind of treatment. Instead, many cities put signs on the curb urging residents not to put pollutants in the drain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one exception to that is San Francisco. The city has what’s called a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpuc.org/about-us/our-systems/sewer-system/our-combined-sewer\">combined sewer system\u003c/a>, and other than a section of Old Sacramento, it’s the only one in California. This means rainwater and runoff go into the sewer system, along with whatever is coming from the pipes in our homes, and is subject to the same level of water treatment before it is released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The vast majority of the time, this system works great, and the environment is spared from the chemicals, oil and other unsavory substances that get washed from San Francisco streets. During normal conditions, the system can handle a lot of water — up to 500 million gallons of sewage plus runoff, with an additional 200 million gallons of storage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940547\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11940547 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Close up image of a storm drain on a street corner. Someone is sweeping debris away from it.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stormwater drains are part of San Francisco’s combined sewer system, which treats both sewage and storm runoff. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But every system has its limits. On the most recent New Year’s Eve, a storm dropped 5.46 inches of rain on San Francisco in one day, equivalent to over 4 billion gallons of water. That led to some sewage being discharged without full treatment — not just in San Francisco, but throughout the Bay Area. Collectively, the nine counties \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11938273/our-worst-nightmare-as-storms-raged-millions-of-gallons-of-sewage-spilled-into-bay-area-waterways-streets-and-yards\">discharged some 62 million gallons\u003c/a> of raw or partially treated sewage into waterways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How do we keep that from happening again, as storms like these become more common as the climate changes? One idea is creating more “green infrastructure” by capturing or diverting some of that water before it gets into the sewer system. That could be in the form of cisterns to collect water for use in drier times, opening up more green space or creating permeable asphalt to allow water to soak into the soil below.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>2. Are there really underground rivers in San Francisco?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A listener named Norm wrote to us asking about an oft-repeated story about San Francisco’s secret, underground rivers. He mentioned \u003ca href=\"https://sfist.com/2021/09/29/central-subway-construction-is-98-done-but-you-wont-be-allowed-in-until-next-spring-or-summer/#:~:text=%22We%20did%20not%20know%20that%20we%20would%20hit%20an%20underground%20river%20that%20we%20would%20have%20to%20contend%20with.\">a 2021 quote from the director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency citing an “underground river”\u003c/a> as part of the reason the city’s Central Subway completion was delayed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By definition, a creek or river is free-flowing water that follows a channel, like a creek bed, either on the surface or in an underground cave. So are rivers really down there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Time to do some myth-busting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have caves underground for creeks to flow through, other than the sewer,” says writer and natural history educator \u003ca href=\"https://www.joelpomerantz.com/\">Joel Pomerantz\u003c/a>. “So really, the misimpression that there’s an old creek here and it’s still down there somewhere is not accurate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940515\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11940515 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-800x608.jpg\" alt=\"A man wearing blue jeans, a sweater and a knitted cap leans forward on a railing, with a colorful mural on the wall behind him.\" width=\"800\" height=\"608\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-800x608.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-1020x775.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-1536x1166.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joel Pomerantz stands near Mission Playground. In the early days of the city, this area held a large freshwater marsh and estuary. \u003ccite>(Amanda Font/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But there is a connection between areas that are prone to flooding and where creeks \u003cem>used to\u003c/em> flow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s no secret that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11799297/large-parts-of-the-bay-area-are-built-on-fill-why-and-where\">much of San Francisco is built on fill\u003c/a>, and the most visible of those areas are along the edges of the city. But inland waterways have been covered up over time, too. A few years ago, Pomerantz created the “\u003ca href=\"http://seepcity.org/index.html\">Seep City\u003c/a>” map, which traces waterways that existed when San Francisco first became a city. That includes the bays, but also numerous creeks and large areas of marshland and estuaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one time, much of the Mission District was marshland fed by the Arroyo Dolores, a waterway that ran from Twin Peaks down the center of 18th Street and through the northern corner of modern-day Dolores Park. That led to a larger saltwater marsh and slough that fed into Mission Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those waterways have since been filled, but the topography of the land hasn’t changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I mean, if you think of the shape of the land,” says Pomerantz, “and if you’re a bicyclist, especially, like I am, you notice the shape of the land because you’re avoiding the hills. That’s what the water does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousbug] In addition to gravity leading rainwater down to those lower-lying sections of the city in the form of storm runoff, groundwater is also seeping through the soil to pool in those areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when it’s raining really hard, says Pomerantz, the combination causes flooding. San Francisco’s large concentration of groundwater, coupled with increasing atmospheric river storms and the potential for sea level rise, could pose a big problem for the city. A new study finds that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11938215/new-study-finds-rising-groundwater-is-a-major-bay-area-flooding-risk\">rising groundwater has huge implications for future flooding events\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>3. What happens to the ground squirrels when it floods? Do they drown?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Our final question comes from listener Emily Robertson. In light of the massive flooding many cities have dealt with recently, Emily was worried that California ground squirrels might be getting flooded out of their burrows — or worse, drowning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the answer to this question, we turned to \u003ca href=\"https://www.jenniferelainesmith.com/\">Jennifer Smith\u003c/a>, a behavioral ecologist who studies social mammals, and specializes in squirrel behavior. For nearly a decade, Smith has been leading a research team in a long-term study of California ground squirrels in Briones Regional Park in Martinez. The team safely traps and marks the fur of individual animals so they can study their behavior and social patterns over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940549\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11940549 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A small, fuzzy, and very cute juvenile ground squirrel pops out of a burrow. Another squirrel is partially visible behind it.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A young California ground squirrel peers out of its burrow in Briones Regional Park. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jenn Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>They’ve also been able to map what the ground squirrel’s burrows look like. It turns out they’re well-prepared for the possibility of flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It may look like that burrow entrance will go directly down, and it might go a foot down or something, but it actually spreads out underground,” says Smith. “And part of the design is to have horizontal rather than vertical burrows. The horizontal nature of the underground structure is quite resistant to rainfall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The burrows branch out into numerous sections that can be extended if they become wet. So when the rains are thundering above, the ground squirrels stay nice and dry in their complex, multilevel burrows. They’re even good at withstanding intentional flooding: People who consider ground squirrels pests may stick a hose in the burrow to attempt to drive the squirrels from their home. But observations show that doesn’t really work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The squirrels are very, very faithful to their home,” says Smith. “They’ve invested a lot. They’ve constructed it, and they’ll usually stay. So we know from those types of studies that’s not a very effective method.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, because ground squirrels typically live in family groups, a family may stay in the same burrow for many generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Note: In researching this story, we asked if you had any questions about squirrels in the Bay Area. So many of you did that we’re working on an episode all about squirrels! It’s not too late to get your squirrel questions in. Submit them in the Bay Curious question box below. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3YiEvfS\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rain — California has seen a lot of it so far this year in the form of multiple atmospheric river storms that have hammered the Bay Area. That got the Bay Curious team wondering about some of the questions we’ve received over the years about water — where it flows and how we’re affected by it. This week we have a three-question lightning round.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>1. When it rains in the Bay Area, and the water runs to the gutter, does it go directly into the bay?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This question came to us from listener Eric Bauer. For most cities in the Bay Area, the answer is yes. Depending on where you live, gutters in your street will take stormwater or other runoff to creeks that lead out to the bay without any kind of treatment. Instead, many cities put signs on the curb urging residents not to put pollutants in the drain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one exception to that is San Francisco. The city has what’s called a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpuc.org/about-us/our-systems/sewer-system/our-combined-sewer\">combined sewer system\u003c/a>, and other than a section of Old Sacramento, it’s the only one in California. This means rainwater and runoff go into the sewer system, along with whatever is coming from the pipes in our homes, and is subject to the same level of water treatment before it is released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The vast majority of the time, this system works great, and the environment is spared from the chemicals, oil and other unsavory substances that get washed from San Francisco streets. During normal conditions, the system can handle a lot of water — up to 500 million gallons of sewage plus runoff, with an additional 200 million gallons of storage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940547\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11940547 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Close up image of a storm drain on a street corner. Someone is sweeping debris away from it.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/RS61878_010_KQED_BombCyloneStorm_01052023-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stormwater drains are part of San Francisco’s combined sewer system, which treats both sewage and storm runoff. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But every system has its limits. On the most recent New Year’s Eve, a storm dropped 5.46 inches of rain on San Francisco in one day, equivalent to over 4 billion gallons of water. That led to some sewage being discharged without full treatment — not just in San Francisco, but throughout the Bay Area. Collectively, the nine counties \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11938273/our-worst-nightmare-as-storms-raged-millions-of-gallons-of-sewage-spilled-into-bay-area-waterways-streets-and-yards\">discharged some 62 million gallons\u003c/a> of raw or partially treated sewage into waterways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How do we keep that from happening again, as storms like these become more common as the climate changes? One idea is creating more “green infrastructure” by capturing or diverting some of that water before it gets into the sewer system. That could be in the form of cisterns to collect water for use in drier times, opening up more green space or creating permeable asphalt to allow water to soak into the soil below.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>2. Are there really underground rivers in San Francisco?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A listener named Norm wrote to us asking about an oft-repeated story about San Francisco’s secret, underground rivers. He mentioned \u003ca href=\"https://sfist.com/2021/09/29/central-subway-construction-is-98-done-but-you-wont-be-allowed-in-until-next-spring-or-summer/#:~:text=%22We%20did%20not%20know%20that%20we%20would%20hit%20an%20underground%20river%20that%20we%20would%20have%20to%20contend%20with.\">a 2021 quote from the director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency citing an “underground river”\u003c/a> as part of the reason the city’s Central Subway completion was delayed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By definition, a creek or river is free-flowing water that follows a channel, like a creek bed, either on the surface or in an underground cave. So are rivers really down there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Time to do some myth-busting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have caves underground for creeks to flow through, other than the sewer,” says writer and natural history educator \u003ca href=\"https://www.joelpomerantz.com/\">Joel Pomerantz\u003c/a>. “So really, the misimpression that there’s an old creek here and it’s still down there somewhere is not accurate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940515\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11940515 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-800x608.jpg\" alt=\"A man wearing blue jeans, a sweater and a knitted cap leans forward on a railing, with a colorful mural on the wall behind him.\" width=\"800\" height=\"608\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-800x608.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-1020x775.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz-1536x1166.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/Joel-Pomerantz.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joel Pomerantz stands near Mission Playground. In the early days of the city, this area held a large freshwater marsh and estuary. \u003ccite>(Amanda Font/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But there is a connection between areas that are prone to flooding and where creeks \u003cem>used to\u003c/em> flow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s no secret that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11799297/large-parts-of-the-bay-area-are-built-on-fill-why-and-where\">much of San Francisco is built on fill\u003c/a>, and the most visible of those areas are along the edges of the city. But inland waterways have been covered up over time, too. A few years ago, Pomerantz created the “\u003ca href=\"http://seepcity.org/index.html\">Seep City\u003c/a>” map, which traces waterways that existed when San Francisco first became a city. That includes the bays, but also numerous creeks and large areas of marshland and estuaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one time, much of the Mission District was marshland fed by the Arroyo Dolores, a waterway that ran from Twin Peaks down the center of 18th Street and through the northern corner of modern-day Dolores Park. That led to a larger saltwater marsh and slough that fed into Mission Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those waterways have since been filled, but the topography of the land hasn’t changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I mean, if you think of the shape of the land,” says Pomerantz, “and if you’re a bicyclist, especially, like I am, you notice the shape of the land because you’re avoiding the hills. That’s what the water does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n What do you wonder about the Bay Area, its culture or people that you want KQED to investigate?\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Ask Bay Curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp> In addition to gravity leading rainwater down to those lower-lying sections of the city in the form of storm runoff, groundwater is also seeping through the soil to pool in those areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when it’s raining really hard, says Pomerantz, the combination causes flooding. San Francisco’s large concentration of groundwater, coupled with increasing atmospheric river storms and the potential for sea level rise, could pose a big problem for the city. A new study finds that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11938215/new-study-finds-rising-groundwater-is-a-major-bay-area-flooding-risk\">rising groundwater has huge implications for future flooding events\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>3. What happens to the ground squirrels when it floods? Do they drown?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Our final question comes from listener Emily Robertson. In light of the massive flooding many cities have dealt with recently, Emily was worried that California ground squirrels might be getting flooded out of their burrows — or worse, drowning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the answer to this question, we turned to \u003ca href=\"https://www.jenniferelainesmith.com/\">Jennifer Smith\u003c/a>, a behavioral ecologist who studies social mammals, and specializes in squirrel behavior. For nearly a decade, Smith has been leading a research team in a long-term study of California ground squirrels in Briones Regional Park in Martinez. The team safely traps and marks the fur of individual animals so they can study their behavior and social patterns over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11940549\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11940549 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A small, fuzzy, and very cute juvenile ground squirrel pops out of a burrow. Another squirrel is partially visible behind it.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/02/IMG_8118-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A young California ground squirrel peers out of its burrow in Briones Regional Park. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jenn Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>They’ve also been able to map what the ground squirrel’s burrows look like. It turns out they’re well-prepared for the possibility of flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It may look like that burrow entrance will go directly down, and it might go a foot down or something, but it actually spreads out underground,” says Smith. “And part of the design is to have horizontal rather than vertical burrows. The horizontal nature of the underground structure is quite resistant to rainfall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The burrows branch out into numerous sections that can be extended if they become wet. So when the rains are thundering above, the ground squirrels stay nice and dry in their complex, multilevel burrows. They’re even good at withstanding intentional flooding: People who consider ground squirrels pests may stick a hose in the burrow to attempt to drive the squirrels from their home. But observations show that doesn’t really work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The squirrels are very, very faithful to their home,” says Smith. “They’ve invested a lot. They’ve constructed it, and they’ll usually stay. So we know from those types of studies that’s not a very effective method.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, because ground squirrels typically live in family groups, a family may stay in the same burrow for many generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Note: In researching this story, we asked if you had any questions about squirrels in the Bay Area. So many of you did that we’re working on an episode all about squirrels! It’s not too late to get your squirrel questions in. Submit them in the Bay Curious question box below. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>You probably know the broad strokes of the Donner Party Saga: In 1846, a group of migrants traveling to California got stuck in a surprise October snow storm. After exhausting all their resources, they turn to \u003cem>cannibalism\u003c/em> to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a grisly tale … but the way it’s often told is incomplete.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousbug]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this Bay Curious podcast episode, we’ll delve into the details many leave behind, and explore what happened to the Donner Party survivors after they escaped the snowy Sierra. This notorious disaster struck deep at the heart of everything California held dear — and came to represent everything it wanted to forget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC7257734226&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This story originally aired on Bay Curious in 2020 in two parts. This version has been re-cut and condensed into one part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re re-airing it because on Feb. 23 we’re hosting a live event at KQED’s headquarters called \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/event/2792\">Endless Winter: Inside the Donner Party Disaster\u003c/a>. It will be an atmospheric night of immersive storytelling that takes audiences deep inside the Donner Party saga step-by-step and casts this disaster in a new light.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>You probably know the broad strokes of the Donner Party Saga: In 1846, a group of migrants traveling to California got stuck in a surprise October snow storm. After exhausting all their resources, they turn to \u003cem>cannibalism\u003c/em> to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a grisly tale … but the way it’s often told is incomplete.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n What do you wonder about the Bay Area, its culture or people that you want KQED to investigate?\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Ask Bay Curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this Bay Curious podcast episode, we’ll delve into the details many leave behind, and explore what happened to the Donner Party survivors after they escaped the snowy Sierra. This notorious disaster struck deep at the heart of everything California held dear — and came to represent everything it wanted to forget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC7257734226&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3WCOI4X\">\u003cem>Read the transcript of the podcast episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco has a lot of Victorian houses. But … why do they have garages, if they were built back before cars were popular?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did people used to put horses and buggies in these garages? Would somebody, you know, roll their buggies in?” asks Bay Curious listener Jessica Calefati.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adam Eads has a similar question. He’s been trying to figure out why the ground floor of his house, built in 1910, is just a big open room with a dirt floor. “What would people have been doing with all this space?” he wonders. “Because it couldn’t have been easy to just build your house 12 feet off the ground without a good reason to do so.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer, as it turns out, is not just about architecture. It’s a window into another technology, another social structure … another time.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Keeping cool and clean\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the late 1800s when these houses were being built, the Port of San Francisco was teeming. Ships were bringing in all kinds of goods: lumber, coal, boots … also \u003cem>blocks of ice\u003c/em> the size of microwave ovens. This was before houses had refrigerators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so the ice is coming down from the northwest, typically Tahoe and even further north,” said Pamela Larson with \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfheritage.org/\">San Francisco Heritage\u003c/a>. “You load it on your wagon, pack it full of sawdust and hay to keep it from melting. And you’re delivering it around the neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, you needed a place to keep this ice. Someplace cool, like a basement. “Milk is being delivered daily, right?” said Larson. “You want to keep your butter, your meat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So cold storage — and storage in general, like for the piles of coal that was burned at the time — was one reason for the ground floors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousbug]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But also, with streets full of horses and wagons clattering about — making tons of noise and tons of horse manure — people wanted to build their living areas up above the muck and the stench. Thus, the second story entrance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another use for the ground floor was partying! Some houses had an entertainment room, or even a ballroom, in the basement — next to the ice, and away from the living quarters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Behind that, Larson explained, would have been a laundry room, with big sinks and rug beaters and washboards. And in wealthier households, a laundry man would have lived in the basement, normally a Chinese man. This was the era of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/chinese-exclusion-act\">Chinese Exclusion Act\u003c/a>. Racism was a federal policy, and with few employment opportunities, Chinese men often turned to physically demanding laundry work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11939159\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11939159\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop.jpg\" alt=\"A laundry room in a 1880s Victorian house. It includes three wash basins, a wringer and a washboard.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1245\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop-800x519.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop-1020x661.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop-1536x996.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Laundry was a large, painstaking chore before the advent of the washing machine. \u003ccite>(Katherine Monahan/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So the ground floors were originally used for the technology of the times and, in the middle- and upper-class households, for the workers who used that technology. But then came a new technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Ground floors get a new purpose\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the 1920s, cars were getting really popular in the Bay Area. Coal heat was turning into gas heat, and iceboxes into refrigerators. New houses were built with garages for those cars. And the old Victorians?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are all just wood-framed houses, right?” said Larson. “They’re not hooked to anything. They’re just sitting on a foundation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People lifted up Victorians using pulleys and levers, and built garages underneath. And then just set the houses back down on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, if the ground floor was tall enough, they just cut a driveway down to it and installed a garage door leading to the old storage space. And that’s why you see such steeply slanted driveways sometimes around the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who knows, maybe these spaces will take on yet another use in the future, when the next technology comes along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://bit.ly/3WCOI4X\">\u003cem>Read the transcript of the podcast episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco has a lot of Victorian houses. But … why do they have garages, if they were built back before cars were popular?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did people used to put horses and buggies in these garages? Would somebody, you know, roll their buggies in?” asks Bay Curious listener Jessica Calefati.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adam Eads has a similar question. He’s been trying to figure out why the ground floor of his house, built in 1910, is just a big open room with a dirt floor. “What would people have been doing with all this space?” he wonders. “Because it couldn’t have been easy to just build your house 12 feet off the ground without a good reason to do so.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer, as it turns out, is not just about architecture. It’s a window into another technology, another social structure … another time.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Keeping cool and clean\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the late 1800s when these houses were being built, the Port of San Francisco was teeming. Ships were bringing in all kinds of goods: lumber, coal, boots … also \u003cem>blocks of ice\u003c/em> the size of microwave ovens. This was before houses had refrigerators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so the ice is coming down from the northwest, typically Tahoe and even further north,” said Pamela Larson with \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfheritage.org/\">San Francisco Heritage\u003c/a>. “You load it on your wagon, pack it full of sawdust and hay to keep it from melting. And you’re delivering it around the neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, you needed a place to keep this ice. Someplace cool, like a basement. “Milk is being delivered daily, right?” said Larson. “You want to keep your butter, your meat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So cold storage — and storage in general, like for the piles of coal that was burned at the time — was one reason for the ground floors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n What do you wonder about the Bay Area, its culture or people that you want KQED to investigate?\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Ask Bay Curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But also, with streets full of horses and wagons clattering about — making tons of noise and tons of horse manure — people wanted to build their living areas up above the muck and the stench. Thus, the second story entrance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another use for the ground floor was partying! Some houses had an entertainment room, or even a ballroom, in the basement — next to the ice, and away from the living quarters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Behind that, Larson explained, would have been a laundry room, with big sinks and rug beaters and washboards. And in wealthier households, a laundry man would have lived in the basement, normally a Chinese man. This was the era of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/chinese-exclusion-act\">Chinese Exclusion Act\u003c/a>. Racism was a federal policy, and with few employment opportunities, Chinese men often turned to physically demanding laundry work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11939159\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11939159\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop.jpg\" alt=\"A laundry room in a 1880s Victorian house. It includes three wash basins, a wringer and a washboard.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1245\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop-800x519.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop-1020x661.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_0666_crop-1536x996.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Laundry was a large, painstaking chore before the advent of the washing machine. \u003ccite>(Katherine Monahan/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So the ground floors were originally used for the technology of the times and, in the middle- and upper-class households, for the workers who used that technology. But then came a new technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Ground floors get a new purpose\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the 1920s, cars were getting really popular in the Bay Area. Coal heat was turning into gas heat, and iceboxes into refrigerators. New houses were built with garages for those cars. And the old Victorians?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are all just wood-framed houses, right?” said Larson. “They’re not hooked to anything. They’re just sitting on a foundation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People lifted up Victorians using pulleys and levers, and built garages underneath. And then just set the houses back down on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, if the ground floor was tall enough, they just cut a driveway down to it and installed a garage door leading to the old storage space. And that’s why you see such steeply slanted driveways sometimes around the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who knows, maybe these spaces will take on yet another use in the future, when the next technology comes along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://bit.ly/3CZKddT\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Daniel Lawlor was walking around San Francisco a couple years ago, admiring its historic churches and the large properties they sometimes stand on. He had the state’s affordable housing crisis on his mind, too. So, putting two and two together, he started wondering: Could religious organizations build affordable housing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel sent his question to Bay Curious in January 2021. When we reached out to him late last year, he’d moved to Brooklyn, New York, and switched careers — from working at an after-school literacy program in Oakland to being the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Hudson Valley in New York. His new role changed his perspective on his initial question, and he now also wanted to know what kind of support systems are available to churches interested in building affordable housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A UC Berkeley study estimates there are about 38,000 acres of unused land owned by faith groups in California, an area roughly the size of Stockton. But turning that land into affordable housing takes a lot of time and commitment, as reporter Adhiti Bandlamudi found. And if a house of worship is hoping to make money off the property, they face a slate of challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hit the play button above to hear our Bay Curious episode, or read Adhiti’s web post: \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11922784/california-churches-want-to-build-affordable-housing-on-their-land-so-why-is-it-so-hard\">California Churches Want to Build Affordable Housing on Their Land, So Why Is It So Hard?\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://bit.ly/3CZKddT\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Daniel Lawlor was walking around San Francisco a couple years ago, admiring its historic churches and the large properties they sometimes stand on. He had the state’s affordable housing crisis on his mind, too. So, putting two and two together, he started wondering: Could religious organizations build affordable housing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel sent his question to Bay Curious in January 2021. When we reached out to him late last year, he’d moved to Brooklyn, New York, and switched careers — from working at an after-school literacy program in Oakland to being the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Hudson Valley in New York. His new role changed his perspective on his initial question, and he now also wanted to know what kind of support systems are available to churches interested in building affordable housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A UC Berkeley study estimates there are about 38,000 acres of unused land owned by faith groups in California, an area roughly the size of Stockton. But turning that land into affordable housing takes a lot of time and commitment, as reporter Adhiti Bandlamudi found. And if a house of worship is hoping to make money off the property, they face a slate of challenges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hit the play button above to hear our Bay Curious episode, or read Adhiti’s web post: \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11922784/california-churches-want-to-build-affordable-housing-on-their-land-so-why-is-it-so-hard\">California Churches Want to Build Affordable Housing on Their Land, So Why Is It So Hard?\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Uncovering the Real Story Behind the 'East Bay Mystery Walls'",
"headTitle": "Uncovering the Real Story Behind the ‘East Bay Mystery Walls’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was first published on Aug 31, 2018. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or more than a century, people in the Bay Area — and especially the East Bay — have puzzled over the existence of stone walls scattered on ridges from near San Jose north through the Berkeley Hills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes the walls are built in long straight lines. Sometimes they form angles. Occasionally you’ll find rectangular or circular constructions.\u003cbr>\n[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003cbr>\nWho built these things? How long ago? And why?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe voyagers from a lost continent built them. Or visitors from outer space. Or a vanished tribe of “superior” Native Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People have suggested these walls could have been meant for defense. Or as navigational aids for extraterrestrials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We started getting “mystery walls” questions almost as soon as Bay Curious opened for business, including one from Eric Haven. He’s an artist — he writes and draws graphic novels — and he’s been a producer on “MythBusters” as well as the reboot, “Mythbusters Jr.” So he’s someone who wants to get to the bottom of things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His query was pretty straightforward: “Who built the East Bay mystery walls? They appear to be ancient, many hundreds or even thousands of years old.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eric came to the Bay Area in 1989. As we hiked up a steep, rocky trail in the Berkeley Hills to visit a wall segment there, he told me that’s when he first heard about a nearby “mystery wall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And the way it was relayed to me was very much like urban myth or urban legend,” he said. “There are certain signifiers of that conversation — you know, the vagueness of it — and yet certain things are very specific. ‘No one knows who built it. No one knows why they built it.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11689988\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11689988\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-800x519.jpg\" alt=\"Segments of stone walls, like these on Monument Peak, in Ed Levin County Park near Milpitas, can be found throughout the hills of the East Bay.\" width=\"800\" height=\"519\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-800x519.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-160x104.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-1020x661.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-1200x778.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-1180x765.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-960x623.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-240x156.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-375x243.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-520x337.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Segments of stone walls, like these on Monument Peak, in Ed Levin County Park near Milpitas, can be found throughout the hills of the East Bay. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hat “no one knows” refrain is a constant in the story of the walls from the beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to say precisely when locals might have started gossiping about the walls — or if they ever did — but the oldest published mention of the “mystery” appears to be \u003ca href=\"https://flic.kr/p/2aywx85\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 8, 1896,\u003c/a> in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Half a mile east of Grizzly Peak stand the remnants of stone walls which have long baffled the researches and curiosity of antiquarians,” the unbylined story said. “By whom they were erected, when and why is an unsolved mystery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same little essay goes on to drop a theory or two: that perhaps the walls were the work of what it called “a long forgotten race,” or maybe the Aztecs of Mexico, who might have used the walls for defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For structures that have excited such feverish speculation for so long, most of them look pretty modest. The section Eric Haven and I tramped up to is actually kind of nondescript: about 100 feet long and just 2 or 3 feet high. The rocks used for construction — local limestone — are stacked or piled, not mortared or cut to fit. Most of the stones are small enough that one person could place them easily; some would have required a crew to put in place. Most are covered with lichens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we soaked in the atmosphere of the place — a spot with a sweeping view, but one we promised the property owners we wouldn’t disclose — Eric shared a friend’s idea about the origins of the walls. It’s a variation on the notion that Native Americans built these walls for a mystical purpose.\u003cbr>\n[baycuriousbug]\u003cbr>\n“His theory was that there was an earthquake here, and it opened up fissures in the ground,” Eric said. “And he thought these were purely ceremonial. They were here to appease whatever gods they thought were angered, or spirits, and this was a way to mark those fissures and to show those spirits they’d do whatever it takes so the earthquake doesn’t happen again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before we headed back down the trail from the wall, we observed that the wall runs parallel to a modern barbed-wire fence that pretty clearly marks a property boundary. So this wall, perhaps, was built as part of a property line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690201\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11690201 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-800x504.jpg\" alt=\"A portion of walls with the Diablo Range in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"504\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-800x504.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-160x101.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-1020x642.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-1200x756.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-1180x743.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-960x605.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-240x151.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-375x236.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-520x327.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A portion of walls with the Diablo Range in the background. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ooking for an answer meant going through old newspaper stories, tracking down amateur sleuths’ accounts of the walls, searching old maps for evidence of the structures and finding out whether real live archaeologists had ever studied the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There have been many newspaper pieces over the years, starting with the Chronicle’s in 1896. Most have repeated the original article’s conclusion that the walls are an impenetrable enigma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, in August 1904, the Chronicle ran another story on the walls, this time, as a big spread in the Sunday paper. It featured a dramatic illustration of stereotype savage fighting with spear and bow and arrow and hurling big rocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was written by a guy named Harold French — a hiker, writer and clerk at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11667314/this-s-f-fortress-is-full-of-money-that-will-never-be-spent\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">San Francisco’s U.S. Mint\u003c/a>. The prose sounds a lot like that in the 1896 piece.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did a colony from lost Atlantis once populate the Berkeley hills?” the story asked. “Are the ancient rock walls which crown the Contra Costa ridges remnants of a Toltec or a pre-Toltec civilization? Are these remarkable walls really relics of the Stone Age?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few weeks later, the Chronicle was back with another dramatic Sunday spread, announcing an amazing find unearthed by a University of California chemistry professor named Henry Coffinberry Myers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The headline declared that “stone age relics discovered in the Berkeley Hills … seem to change the accepted history of the Western world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The objects Myers said he’d uncovered during forays into the hills included a “five-faced stone image,” stone axes and pieces of pottery. Myers said that mineral deposits on the carved stone image proved it was 1,000 to 10,000 years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Myers and other experts the Chronicle contacted said the artifacts and the walls in the hills were evidence that early hill dwellers — perhaps giants who had gained immense strength by lifting big rocks — had migrated from China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Myers’ find was almost certainly a hoax. The Chronicle doesn’t appear to have said another word about the professor and his world-shattering discoveries. Myers left Berkeley shortly afterward to manage a sugar refinery in Hawaii. He eventually donated his artifacts — telling \u003ca href=\"http://kaga.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=%2Fclipping&CISOPTR=10799&DMSCALE=100.00000&DMWIDTH=600&DMHEIGHT=600&DMMODE=viewer&DMFULL=0&DMOLDSCALE=16.35769&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMTHUMB=1&REC=1&DMROTATE=0&x=42&y=146\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a different story\u003c/a> about where they’d come from — to a \u003ca href=\"http://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/536\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bible college\u003c/a> in Spokane, Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1908, the Berkeley Hills walls were back in the news. “Professor” Joseph Voyle, president of the Berkeley Society for Psychical Research, identified some of the walls as \u003ca href=\"http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19080622.2.60.11\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">remains of a prehistoric civilization\u003c/a>. He was led to the site by a kind of divining rod, and newspapers delighted in telling the tale of Voyle leading a group on an expedition into the wilds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(Voyle also claimed to have discovered a radium mine beneath San Francisco and reported he had invented an earthquake detector and figured out how to make non-intoxicating alcohol. He died an indigent in Alameda County’s public hospital in 1915, having succumbed to what one paper called “an infirmity of which he had long been a sufferer.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690204\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11690204\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"The stone walls wind through the landscape on Monument Peak.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-1180x885.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-960x720.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-240x180.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-375x281.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-520x390.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The stone walls wind through the landscape on Monument Peak. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hile Myers and Voyle departed the scene, Harold French showed up again and again in print over the years promoting the legend of the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I say “legend” advisedly. In published writings through the early 1920s, French never failed to describe the walls as “prehistoric” or “ancient.” But beyond the walls’ mere presence, the only evidence he ever cited was the testimony of unnamed old-timers who, he said, had told him that the walls had been a puzzle to both Native Americans and early settlers alike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear if trained archaeologists ever seriously studied the walls at the time French was writing. At one point, French reported he had spoken to a “certain teacher of anthropology” at the University of California about the walls’ origins. The anthropologist reportedly responded:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From time to time my students have come and told me about these walls … but I never took them seriously enough to climb way up there in that ‘Beanstalk Land’ to see them. I suppose they are either old sheep corrals or ranch boundaries.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11689477\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/Screen-Shot-2018-08-29-at-4.16.31-PM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11689477\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/Screen-Shot-2018-08-29-at-4.16.31-PM-1020x1172.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"735\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Oakland Tribune feature article on the East Bay Walls by writer and hiker Harold French.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Eventually, though, amateur researchers started trying to decipher the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One was Seth Simpson, who spent years documenting the presence of the walls and puzzling over their origins. His conclusion, \u003ca href=\"https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4807539/East-Bay-Walls-Simpson-Pursuit.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">summarized\u003c/a> in a 1972 number of Pursuit, the Journal of the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, is classic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simpson said there was a possibility some of the walls had been erected by local tribes to trap and kill game. But for the rest, he said, “All I can suggest is that they were built by unknown persons, in an unknown year, for an unknown purpose … and very possibly they will remain a puzzle for the indefinite future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ther wall fanatics were exploring the hills, too. Robert Fisher, a physician from Fremont, and a friend from Berkeley, Russell Swanson, took a lively interest in the walls, especially those in the hills near the south end of the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fisher and Swanson were inclined to see massive rock formations on the ridges and highlands as the work of unknown ancients they called “the Earliers.” The meaning of the walls, massive standing stones and outcroppings, was baffling. Fisher suggested some of the stone work could have served as navigational aids for extraterrestrials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least one real live archaeologist joined Fisher to tour one area of the hills — Monument Peak, above Milpitas in Santa Clara County’s Ed Levin Park. It’s a dramatic site, with wonderful stretches of walls snaking along ridges about 2,000 feet above the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an answer to an email query relayed through the Society for California Archaeology, Breck Parkman, a now-retired state parks archeologist, said that in the late 1980s a friend prevailed upon him to visit Monument Peak with Fisher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fisher “wanted me to come and authenticate what he was finding,” Parkman said in an email. “… I said, show me the best you have. He did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parkman said the area featured “lots and lots of stone walls” he believed dated to sometime in the 1800s. Most were built, he felt, in the later years of the century, perhaps by Chinese workers, perhaps by Basque sheep herders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he found a handful of structures — possible hunting blinds and prayer circles — he thought could have been Native American in origin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was these features that convinced me that among the many late 19th century rock features in the East Bay Hills, we might find a few older features of importance,” Parkman wrote. “It would be worth checking out, but I don’t know who’d be interested in taking a systematic look at this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason that professionals may have stayed away from the walls, Parkman added, is “not wanting to be associated with the fringe element” responsible for the many wild wall hypotheses over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690202\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11690202\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A portion of the stone walls found throughout the Berkeley Hills.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-800x450.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-160x90.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-960x540.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-240x135.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-375x211.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A portion of the stone walls found throughout the Berkeley Hills. \u003ccite>(Adam Grossberg/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nother archaeologist, Jeff Fentress, went up into the Berkeley Hills with me to look at the same section of wall I visited with our question asker, Eric Haven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress, now retired from his position as a professor of archaeology at San Francisco State University, was raised nearby and said he’d been hearing stories about the walls since his boyhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I was growing up in Berkeley here, we were told the Lemurians built the walls, and the Lemurians were the inhabitants of the lost continent of Mu,” Fentress said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.crystalinks.com/lemuria.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mu\u003c/a> is said to have existed out in the Pacific Ocean somewhere. And Fentress said stories like that are still coming up. The History Channel asked him whether a Chinese admiral might have erected the rock walls, and British TV interviewed him about whether the West African adventurers might have put up the walls during a visit 30,000 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress said the problem with all of those theories — Lemurians, Chinese, West Africans and extraterrestrials — is that there’s simply no evidence any of those real or imagined groups ever landed here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So I think you have to look at the walls in the context of who was actually here in the Bay Area,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690203\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11690203\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-800x446.jpg\" alt=\"Archaeologist Jeff Fentress says it would take a lot of time and money to definitively determine when the stone walls were built and by whom.\" width=\"800\" height=\"446\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-800x446.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-160x89.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-1020x569.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-1200x669.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-1180x658.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-960x536.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-240x134.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-375x209.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-520x290.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Archaeologist Jeff Fentress says it would take a lot of time and money to definitively determine when the stone walls were built and by whom. \u003ccite>(Adam Grossberg/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Native American tribes have populated the Bay Area for about 10,000 years, according to the latest estimates. They were here long before the arrival of Spanish and Mexican colonists and the Gold Rush-era invasion of Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Fentress said “there is no indication that Native American people built rock walls that extended for hundreds or thousands of feet. There are no accounts of them building massive wall structures or corrals or any of the other sort of rock features we see in the East Bay here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress and other archaeologists who have studied and recorded the walls agree that there is an explanation, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rock walls were the work of us — the people who pushed the native tribes off the land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress said some wall building may have begun in the Mission period, and walls like the ones in the hills followed. Some were likely built to mark property lines. Many others were put up as part of ranching and farming operations, such as those that were known to have existed both in the Berkeley Hills and the Monument Peak area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also points to the many European immigrant groups known to have ranched and farmed in the hills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did these people make rock walls in their countries?” Fentress asks. “Look at them all — Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and so on. \u003cem>Of course\u003c/em> they made rock walls.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11689494\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11689494\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/Screen-Shot-2018-08-29-at-10.05.19-PM-800x487.png\" alt=\"Fentress says the most likely answer is that European immigrants built the walls as functional parts of their lives that didn't rise to the level of recording their purpose.\" width=\"800\" height=\"487\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fentress says the most likely answer is that European immigrants built the walls as functional parts of their lives that didn’t rise to the level of recording their purpose. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fentress and others also point out there was no shortage of labor — provided either willingly or unwillingly. Chinese crews, paid as little as a penny a linear foot, were hired to build ranch walls in Mariposa and Tehama counties, for instance. And many Native Americans, displaced from their lands and denied basic civil rights, were forced into indentured servitude to provide labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Fentress concedes his explanations for the walls are speculative and said you’d want to search for more evidence to back up what he and other researchers have observed and been told in the field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The main thing to do would be to systematically record and map all the walls,” he said. Once the walls were mapped, researchers could compare their locations to older maps showing historic property lines and other features.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also said it could be useful to dig along the base of walls to study their construction and to look for artifacts. It would also help to study the rocks used in the structures to confirm what most people assume — that they come from the same area as the walls themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dating techniques could be useful, too. \u003ca href=\"https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4807533/Proceedings-of-the-Society-for-California.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">One experimental study\u003c/a> that used the growth of lichens as a dating technique estimated that the surviving wall segment in the Berkeley Hills may have been built between 1850 and 1880.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress said you’d want to do a more systematic study — a hundred lichen sites, say — to really come to a firm conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historical records — written accounts — could be important, too. But those are in short supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And really the reason is that, you know, we’re looking at — you could call it the archaeology of the common people, the archeology of the working class,” he said. “Back in 1850, if Mr. McGillicuddy cleared his fields and he built a wall between his property and Mr. Sousa next door, no one’s going to write a newspaper article about that. It’s not going to get in the history books. So all we have is the remains of these people showing their hard work and their ingenuity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690200\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11690200\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Downtown San Jose rises in the distance behind a small collection of stones seen from Monument Peak.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-960x640.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-240x160.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-375x250.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-520x347.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Downtown San Jose rises in the distance behind a small collection of stones seen from Monument Peak. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o, at the end of all this, there is still some mystery left in the walls and more work to be done to come to definitive answers. Eric Haven, who prompted our own investigation, said he’s OK with that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People love a mystery,” he said. “And since this is an unsolved mystery, it’s naturally evocative and compelling. I still think about it — a lot. And part of me somewhat hopes that we never find the answers, so that the Berkeley walls can always be a mystery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Extraordinary structures of the ancient past? Or completely mundane piles of rock?",
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"title": "Uncovering the Real Story Behind the 'East Bay Mystery Walls' | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was first published on Aug 31, 2018. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">F\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>or more than a century, people in the Bay Area — and especially the East Bay — have puzzled over the existence of stone walls scattered on ridges from near San Jose north through the Berkeley Hills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes the walls are built in long straight lines. Sometimes they form angles. Occasionally you’ll find rectangular or circular constructions.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cbr>\nWho built these things? How long ago? And why?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe voyagers from a lost continent built them. Or visitors from outer space. Or a vanished tribe of “superior” Native Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People have suggested these walls could have been meant for defense. Or as navigational aids for extraterrestrials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We started getting “mystery walls” questions almost as soon as Bay Curious opened for business, including one from Eric Haven. He’s an artist — he writes and draws graphic novels — and he’s been a producer on “MythBusters” as well as the reboot, “Mythbusters Jr.” So he’s someone who wants to get to the bottom of things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His query was pretty straightforward: “Who built the East Bay mystery walls? They appear to be ancient, many hundreds or even thousands of years old.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eric came to the Bay Area in 1989. As we hiked up a steep, rocky trail in the Berkeley Hills to visit a wall segment there, he told me that’s when he first heard about a nearby “mystery wall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And the way it was relayed to me was very much like urban myth or urban legend,” he said. “There are certain signifiers of that conversation — you know, the vagueness of it — and yet certain things are very specific. ‘No one knows who built it. No one knows why they built it.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11689988\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11689988\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-800x519.jpg\" alt=\"Segments of stone walls, like these on Monument Peak, in Ed Levin County Park near Milpitas, can be found throughout the hills of the East Bay.\" width=\"800\" height=\"519\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-800x519.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-160x104.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-1020x661.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-1200x778.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-1180x765.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-960x623.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-240x156.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-375x243.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32665_19025042463_9119852fb9_o-qut-520x337.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Segments of stone walls, like these on Monument Peak, in Ed Levin County Park near Milpitas, can be found throughout the hills of the East Bay. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hat “no one knows” refrain is a constant in the story of the walls from the beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to say precisely when locals might have started gossiping about the walls — or if they ever did — but the oldest published mention of the “mystery” appears to be \u003ca href=\"https://flic.kr/p/2aywx85\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 8, 1896,\u003c/a> in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Half a mile east of Grizzly Peak stand the remnants of stone walls which have long baffled the researches and curiosity of antiquarians,” the unbylined story said. “By whom they were erected, when and why is an unsolved mystery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same little essay goes on to drop a theory or two: that perhaps the walls were the work of what it called “a long forgotten race,” or maybe the Aztecs of Mexico, who might have used the walls for defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For structures that have excited such feverish speculation for so long, most of them look pretty modest. The section Eric Haven and I tramped up to is actually kind of nondescript: about 100 feet long and just 2 or 3 feet high. The rocks used for construction — local limestone — are stacked or piled, not mortared or cut to fit. Most of the stones are small enough that one person could place them easily; some would have required a crew to put in place. Most are covered with lichens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we soaked in the atmosphere of the place — a spot with a sweeping view, but one we promised the property owners we wouldn’t disclose — Eric shared a friend’s idea about the origins of the walls. It’s a variation on the notion that Native Americans built these walls for a mystical purpose.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n What do you wonder about the Bay Area, its culture or people that you want KQED to investigate?\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Ask Bay Curious.\u003c/a>\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cbr>\n“His theory was that there was an earthquake here, and it opened up fissures in the ground,” Eric said. “And he thought these were purely ceremonial. They were here to appease whatever gods they thought were angered, or spirits, and this was a way to mark those fissures and to show those spirits they’d do whatever it takes so the earthquake doesn’t happen again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before we headed back down the trail from the wall, we observed that the wall runs parallel to a modern barbed-wire fence that pretty clearly marks a property boundary. So this wall, perhaps, was built as part of a property line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690201\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-11690201 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-800x504.jpg\" alt=\"A portion of walls with the Diablo Range in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"504\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-800x504.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-160x101.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-1020x642.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-1200x756.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-1180x743.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-960x605.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-240x151.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-375x236.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32679_19023508794_fb75164909_o-qut-1-520x327.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A portion of walls with the Diablo Range in the background. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">L\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ooking for an answer meant going through old newspaper stories, tracking down amateur sleuths’ accounts of the walls, searching old maps for evidence of the structures and finding out whether real live archaeologists had ever studied the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There have been many newspaper pieces over the years, starting with the Chronicle’s in 1896. Most have repeated the original article’s conclusion that the walls are an impenetrable enigma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, in August 1904, the Chronicle ran another story on the walls, this time, as a big spread in the Sunday paper. It featured a dramatic illustration of stereotype savage fighting with spear and bow and arrow and hurling big rocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was written by a guy named Harold French — a hiker, writer and clerk at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11667314/this-s-f-fortress-is-full-of-money-that-will-never-be-spent\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">San Francisco’s U.S. Mint\u003c/a>. The prose sounds a lot like that in the 1896 piece.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did a colony from lost Atlantis once populate the Berkeley hills?” the story asked. “Are the ancient rock walls which crown the Contra Costa ridges remnants of a Toltec or a pre-Toltec civilization? Are these remarkable walls really relics of the Stone Age?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few weeks later, the Chronicle was back with another dramatic Sunday spread, announcing an amazing find unearthed by a University of California chemistry professor named Henry Coffinberry Myers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The headline declared that “stone age relics discovered in the Berkeley Hills … seem to change the accepted history of the Western world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The objects Myers said he’d uncovered during forays into the hills included a “five-faced stone image,” stone axes and pieces of pottery. Myers said that mineral deposits on the carved stone image proved it was 1,000 to 10,000 years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Myers and other experts the Chronicle contacted said the artifacts and the walls in the hills were evidence that early hill dwellers — perhaps giants who had gained immense strength by lifting big rocks — had migrated from China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Myers’ find was almost certainly a hoax. The Chronicle doesn’t appear to have said another word about the professor and his world-shattering discoveries. Myers left Berkeley shortly afterward to manage a sugar refinery in Hawaii. He eventually donated his artifacts — telling \u003ca href=\"http://kaga.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=%2Fclipping&CISOPTR=10799&DMSCALE=100.00000&DMWIDTH=600&DMHEIGHT=600&DMMODE=viewer&DMFULL=0&DMOLDSCALE=16.35769&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMTHUMB=1&REC=1&DMROTATE=0&x=42&y=146\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a different story\u003c/a> about where they’d come from — to a \u003ca href=\"http://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/536\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bible college\u003c/a> in Spokane, Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1908, the Berkeley Hills walls were back in the news. “Professor” Joseph Voyle, president of the Berkeley Society for Psychical Research, identified some of the walls as \u003ca href=\"http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19080622.2.60.11\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">remains of a prehistoric civilization\u003c/a>. He was led to the site by a kind of divining rod, and newspapers delighted in telling the tale of Voyle leading a group on an expedition into the wilds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(Voyle also claimed to have discovered a radium mine beneath San Francisco and reported he had invented an earthquake detector and figured out how to make non-intoxicating alcohol. He died an indigent in Alameda County’s public hospital in 1915, having succumbed to what one paper called “an infirmity of which he had long been a sufferer.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690204\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11690204\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"The stone walls wind through the landscape on Monument Peak.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-1180x885.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-960x720.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-240x180.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-375x281.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32677_19597532225_92ce855207_o-qut-520x390.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The stone walls wind through the landscape on Monument Peak. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">W\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hile Myers and Voyle departed the scene, Harold French showed up again and again in print over the years promoting the legend of the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I say “legend” advisedly. In published writings through the early 1920s, French never failed to describe the walls as “prehistoric” or “ancient.” But beyond the walls’ mere presence, the only evidence he ever cited was the testimony of unnamed old-timers who, he said, had told him that the walls had been a puzzle to both Native Americans and early settlers alike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear if trained archaeologists ever seriously studied the walls at the time French was writing. At one point, French reported he had spoken to a “certain teacher of anthropology” at the University of California about the walls’ origins. The anthropologist reportedly responded:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From time to time my students have come and told me about these walls … but I never took them seriously enough to climb way up there in that ‘Beanstalk Land’ to see them. I suppose they are either old sheep corrals or ranch boundaries.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11689477\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/Screen-Shot-2018-08-29-at-4.16.31-PM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11689477\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/Screen-Shot-2018-08-29-at-4.16.31-PM-1020x1172.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"735\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Oakland Tribune feature article on the East Bay Walls by writer and hiker Harold French.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Eventually, though, amateur researchers started trying to decipher the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One was Seth Simpson, who spent years documenting the presence of the walls and puzzling over their origins. His conclusion, \u003ca href=\"https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4807539/East-Bay-Walls-Simpson-Pursuit.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">summarized\u003c/a> in a 1972 number of Pursuit, the Journal of the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, is classic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simpson said there was a possibility some of the walls had been erected by local tribes to trap and kill game. But for the rest, he said, “All I can suggest is that they were built by unknown persons, in an unknown year, for an unknown purpose … and very possibly they will remain a puzzle for the indefinite future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">O\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ther wall fanatics were exploring the hills, too. Robert Fisher, a physician from Fremont, and a friend from Berkeley, Russell Swanson, took a lively interest in the walls, especially those in the hills near the south end of the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fisher and Swanson were inclined to see massive rock formations on the ridges and highlands as the work of unknown ancients they called “the Earliers.” The meaning of the walls, massive standing stones and outcroppings, was baffling. Fisher suggested some of the stone work could have served as navigational aids for extraterrestrials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least one real live archaeologist joined Fisher to tour one area of the hills — Monument Peak, above Milpitas in Santa Clara County’s Ed Levin Park. It’s a dramatic site, with wonderful stretches of walls snaking along ridges about 2,000 feet above the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an answer to an email query relayed through the Society for California Archaeology, Breck Parkman, a now-retired state parks archeologist, said that in the late 1980s a friend prevailed upon him to visit Monument Peak with Fisher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fisher “wanted me to come and authenticate what he was finding,” Parkman said in an email. “… I said, show me the best you have. He did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parkman said the area featured “lots and lots of stone walls” he believed dated to sometime in the 1800s. Most were built, he felt, in the later years of the century, perhaps by Chinese workers, perhaps by Basque sheep herders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he found a handful of structures — possible hunting blinds and prayer circles — he thought could have been Native American in origin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was these features that convinced me that among the many late 19th century rock features in the East Bay Hills, we might find a few older features of importance,” Parkman wrote. “It would be worth checking out, but I don’t know who’d be interested in taking a systematic look at this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One reason that professionals may have stayed away from the walls, Parkman added, is “not wanting to be associated with the fringe element” responsible for the many wild wall hypotheses over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690202\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11690202\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"A portion of the stone walls found throughout the Berkeley Hills.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-800x450.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-160x90.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-960x540.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-240x135.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-375x211.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32680_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.40.56-PM-qut-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A portion of the stone walls found throughout the Berkeley Hills. \u003ccite>(Adam Grossberg/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">A\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>nother archaeologist, Jeff Fentress, went up into the Berkeley Hills with me to look at the same section of wall I visited with our question asker, Eric Haven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress, now retired from his position as a professor of archaeology at San Francisco State University, was raised nearby and said he’d been hearing stories about the walls since his boyhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I was growing up in Berkeley here, we were told the Lemurians built the walls, and the Lemurians were the inhabitants of the lost continent of Mu,” Fentress said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.crystalinks.com/lemuria.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mu\u003c/a> is said to have existed out in the Pacific Ocean somewhere. And Fentress said stories like that are still coming up. The History Channel asked him whether a Chinese admiral might have erected the rock walls, and British TV interviewed him about whether the West African adventurers might have put up the walls during a visit 30,000 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress said the problem with all of those theories — Lemurians, Chinese, West Africans and extraterrestrials — is that there’s simply no evidence any of those real or imagined groups ever landed here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So I think you have to look at the walls in the context of who was actually here in the Bay Area,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690203\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11690203\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-800x446.jpg\" alt=\"Archaeologist Jeff Fentress says it would take a lot of time and money to definitively determine when the stone walls were built and by whom.\" width=\"800\" height=\"446\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-800x446.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-160x89.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-1020x569.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-1200x669.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-1180x658.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-960x536.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-240x134.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-375x209.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32682_Screen-Shot-2018-09-02-at-12.41.59-PM-qut-520x290.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Archaeologist Jeff Fentress says it would take a lot of time and money to definitively determine when the stone walls were built and by whom. \u003ccite>(Adam Grossberg/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Native American tribes have populated the Bay Area for about 10,000 years, according to the latest estimates. They were here long before the arrival of Spanish and Mexican colonists and the Gold Rush-era invasion of Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Fentress said “there is no indication that Native American people built rock walls that extended for hundreds or thousands of feet. There are no accounts of them building massive wall structures or corrals or any of the other sort of rock features we see in the East Bay here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress and other archaeologists who have studied and recorded the walls agree that there is an explanation, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rock walls were the work of us — the people who pushed the native tribes off the land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress said some wall building may have begun in the Mission period, and walls like the ones in the hills followed. Some were likely built to mark property lines. Many others were put up as part of ranching and farming operations, such as those that were known to have existed both in the Berkeley Hills and the Monument Peak area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also points to the many European immigrant groups known to have ranched and farmed in the hills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did these people make rock walls in their countries?” Fentress asks. “Look at them all — Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and so on. \u003cem>Of course\u003c/em> they made rock walls.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11689494\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11689494\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/Screen-Shot-2018-08-29-at-10.05.19-PM-800x487.png\" alt=\"Fentress says the most likely answer is that European immigrants built the walls as functional parts of their lives that didn't rise to the level of recording their purpose.\" width=\"800\" height=\"487\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fentress says the most likely answer is that European immigrants built the walls as functional parts of their lives that didn’t rise to the level of recording their purpose. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fentress and others also point out there was no shortage of labor — provided either willingly or unwillingly. Chinese crews, paid as little as a penny a linear foot, were hired to build ranch walls in Mariposa and Tehama counties, for instance. And many Native Americans, displaced from their lands and denied basic civil rights, were forced into indentured servitude to provide labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Fentress concedes his explanations for the walls are speculative and said you’d want to search for more evidence to back up what he and other researchers have observed and been told in the field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The main thing to do would be to systematically record and map all the walls,” he said. Once the walls were mapped, researchers could compare their locations to older maps showing historic property lines and other features.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also said it could be useful to dig along the base of walls to study their construction and to look for artifacts. It would also help to study the rocks used in the structures to confirm what most people assume — that they come from the same area as the walls themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dating techniques could be useful, too. \u003ca href=\"https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4807533/Proceedings-of-the-Society-for-California.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">One experimental study\u003c/a> that used the growth of lichens as a dating technique estimated that the surviving wall segment in the Berkeley Hills may have been built between 1850 and 1880.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fentress said you’d want to do a more systematic study — a hundred lichen sites, say — to really come to a firm conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historical records — written accounts — could be important, too. But those are in short supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And really the reason is that, you know, we’re looking at — you could call it the archaeology of the common people, the archeology of the working class,” he said. “Back in 1850, if Mr. McGillicuddy cleared his fields and he built a wall between his property and Mr. Sousa next door, no one’s going to write a newspaper article about that. It’s not going to get in the history books. So all we have is the remains of these people showing their hard work and their ingenuity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11690200\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11690200\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Downtown San Jose rises in the distance behind a small collection of stones seen from Monument Peak.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-960x640.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-240x160.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-375x250.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32678_19457917600_a0745537be_o-qut-1-520x347.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Downtown San Jose rises in the distance behind a small collection of stones seen from Monument Peak. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">S\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>o, at the end of all this, there is still some mystery left in the walls and more work to be done to come to definitive answers. Eric Haven, who prompted our own investigation, said he’s OK with that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People love a mystery,” he said. “And since this is an unsolved mystery, it’s naturally evocative and compelling. I still think about it — a lot. And part of me somewhat hopes that we never find the answers, so that the Berkeley walls can always be a mystery.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "cattle-ranching-is-at-the-center-of-a-battle-brewing-in-point-reyes",
"title": "Cattle Ranching Is at the Center of a Battle Brewing in Point Reyes",
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"headTitle": "Cattle Ranching Is at the Center of a Battle Brewing in Point Reyes | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://bit.ly/3QhozaD\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is inspired by a question from Bay Curious listener Beth Touchette. She asked, “How did we end up allowing cattle in Point Reyes National Seashore?”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]S[/dropcap]aturday, Aug. 28, 2021, brought a dramatic scene to the normally peaceful, windblown hills of Tomales Point in Point Reyes National Seashore. Dozens of people, from small children to older adults, hauled jugs of water over hills and through valleys only to dump their precious cargo into nearly dry ponds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The volunteers were trying to keep the Tule elk that live on a fenced preserve alive during one of California’s longest droughts. In 2019, nearly a third of the herd died from a shortage of water and malnutrition — in part because they could not roam beyond the tall fence that contained them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Mammals/Elk/Tule-Elk\">Tule elk\u003c/a> are an endemic species found only in California. They were hunted almost to extinction in the 1800s, but have been making a comeback in places like Point Reyes. The elk are big, averaging around 400 pounds, and need room to roam and forage. But this herd is isolated behind the fence to keep them away from another animal grazing in the park — an animal that some environmentalists say is being given priority: cattle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since Point Reyes National Seashore was established in 1962, it’s been a lot of things to a lot of people. To the general public, it’s a beloved park that offers beautiful coastline, lush forests and windswept grassy hills. To environmentalists, it’s a habitat worth preserving. To ranchers, it’s the land their livelihoods depend on. To the area’s Native people, it’s long been a homeland with sacred sites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one time, these competing interests could exist in relative harmony on the 70,000 acres that make up the park — but increasing demands on the land have caused things to sour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936864\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/DSC5101-scaled-e1672874259984.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11936864\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/DSC5101-800x553.jpg\" alt=\"A group of female Tule elk lounge on a green hillside. The rugged California coastline and ocean are visible in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"553\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Once abundant in Point Reyes, Tule elk were nearly hunted to extinction. \u003ccite>(Amanda Font/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>How cattle came to graze on Point Reyes\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Point Reyes peninsula is the homeland of the Coast Miwok people, who lived here for generations alongside the Tule elk. When Spanish missionaries colonized the area, they brought cows with them. Although the missionaries were based in San Rafael, their cows would roam as far west as the Point Reyes peninsula. Later, when Spain granted the land to Mexico, rancheros divided up the peninsula and continued to run cattle. After the Mexican-American war, California changed hands once again to become part of the United States. In the chaotic transition period, the boundaries of the Mexican ranches on the peninsula were challenged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you look at some of the Spanish land grants, they literally said from the tree to the rock,” said Loretta Farley, a former park ranger at Point Reyes National Seashore. “So that’s really open to interpretation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Squatters moved in and settled on the land. The Mexican rancheros took them to court, but lost because they didn’t have the paperwork to demarcate the boundaries of their land. The legal battles were many and complicated, but when the dust settled in 1857, the law firm of Shafter, Shafter, Park and Heydenfeldt emerged as primary owners of the peninsula we now know as Point Reyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After a series of tremendous fights we have beaten our adversaries at all points and, what is more, have humbled the strongest and the proudest of them,” \u003ca href=\"http://npshistory.com/publications/pore/hrs-ranching.pdf\">wrote Oscar Shafter (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936882\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 637px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Alphabet-Ranch-Map.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11936882\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Alphabet-Ranch-Map.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"637\" height=\"881\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Alphabet-Ranch-Map.jpg 637w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Alphabet-Ranch-Map-160x221.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 637px) 100vw, 637px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A historic map of the alphabet ranch parcels in Point Reyes.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Shafter brothers divided their property into more than 30 sections and leased the land to immigrants flooding into the area from places like Ireland, Switzerland and the Azores, in Portugal. The Shafters named the ranches from A to Z, what we now call the historic alphabet ranches, and developed a flourishing dairy business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco was growing rapidly and people were hungry for the butter and cheese produced at the dairy farms. Later, when refrigeration was invented, the farms would also ship milk. At one point, the Point Reyes dairies produced more butter than anywhere else in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early 1900s, the Shafter families sold some of their land to the farmers who had been leasing it from them. Some of those families are still operating beef and dairy ranches to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Home of the Coast Miwok\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Many of the laborers on those early dairy ranches were Coast Miwok people who had been enslaved by Spanish missionaries, but returned to their homes along Tomales Bay if they were able. Their way of life had been completely upended, and now white ranchers owned the land and offered some of the only employment around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My grandmother was a ranch cook,” said Theresa Harlan. “My uncles worked on ranches as ranch hands.” Harlan is now the founder and director of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.alliance4felixcove.org/\">Alliance for Felix Cove\u003c/a>; the cove is known as Laird’s Landing on maps. Harlan’s mother is Tomalko (Coast Miwok Tomales Bay) and grew up in a small wooden cabin here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My family would row a small skiff across the bay to get mail or supplies that they couldn’t make themselves,” she said. “They say it was a 30-minute row.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harlan’s family was evicted in the 1950s by the white dairy farmers who owned the land at the time, Sayles Turney and James Lundgren. Harlan’s family tried to fight the eviction, saying they’d been there since the 1800s, and the case went all the way to the state Supreme Court. Her family ultimately lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936854\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_2299-scaled-e1672872337625.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11936854\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_2299-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A couple stands below the porch of an old wooden cabin\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Theresa Harlan and her husband, Ken Tiger, pose in front of the wood cabin her great-grandfather Joe Felix built. \u003ccite>(Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“This is a historic site,” Harlan said. “This needs to be protected. This little house sits neglected. Why? Why? Because it was the home of Tomalko people, California Indian people?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s been pushing the National Park Service and the \u003ca href=\"https://gratonrancheria.com/\">Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria\u003c/a>, the federally recognized tribe with whom it partners to preserve Coast Miwok sites, to do more to explain and protect her family’s legacy here. In particular, she wants visitors to know that as recently as the 1950s Tomalko people lived here, but were pushed out, repeating the violent history of Indigenous people throughout California. This is family lore to her, not ancient history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are other Coast Miwok archaeological sites in Point Reyes, but many of them are kept confidential because they are sacred. The cabins in Felix Cove represent a more modern side of Native American history here, one that existed alongside the ranching history, which has already been designated as historic. Still, far fewer people know about Theresa Harlan’s family than about the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/news/newsreleases_20181113_ranches_national_register_of_historic_places.htm\">historic alphabet ranches\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>From private ranch land to national park\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For decades, West Marin remained quite rural, with the ranches dominating local life and culture. But after World War II, when the Bay Area population was booming and demand for housing was high, real estate speculators started eyeing the Point Reyes peninsula for subdivision and development. Conservationists and local residents didn’t want to see that happen. They rallied together to advocate for a national seashore that would preserve the coastline for the public in perpetuity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A local U.S. representative, Clem Miller, was the primary force advocating for the national seashore in Washington, D.C. To achieve the dream, park advocates had to convince the ranchers to sell their land to the federal government. At first, many ranchers were adamantly opposed to the idea, but they also saw that if it wanted to, the government could use eminent domain to take their land, so instead they made a deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, the government was most interested in preserving the coastline. So, they \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/getinvolved/upload/planning_gmp_ea_goga_pore_1980_map_management_zoning.pdf\">divided the park into pastoral zones and wilderness areas (PDF)\u003c/a>. The ranchers sold their land to the government, but retained the right to ranch the land in the pastoral zones. It took years for the federal government to acquire the land, but by 1978, most of the ranchers had signed 25-year leases. At the end of the lease, the Park Service could decide whether to renew or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The arrangement made most parties happy. Conservationists were proud to have saved the area for the public. And the ranchers had earned a chunk of cash, while retaining the right to lease their lands from the government. \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/historyculture/people_coastmiwok.htm\">The Coast Miwok, however, continued to struggle for recognition.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The original 25-year leases have long expired, but for decades the Park Service has renewed them on a five-year basis. This longevity has made the ranches an important part of the economy and culture of West Marin, as well as key players in the local organic food scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Recent controversies challenge the status quo\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 2014, the National Park Service, which manages Point Reyes National Seashore, started a public process to update its Ranch Comprehensive Management Plan. Environmental groups watching the process believed the Park Service was heading down a road that would give ranchers more of what they wanted, without considering the rest of the park’s needs. So in 2016, a coalition of environmental groups sued the Park Service. They pointed out that the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/management/upload/planning_gmp_1980.pdf\">Point Reyes General Management Plan (PDF)\u003c/a>, the document that governs park activities, hadn’t been updated since 1980. Awareness of sensitive habitats, endangered species, climate change and the impacts of cattle on ecosystems had evolved since then, they said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The parties came to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/getinvolved/upload/planning_ranch_cmp_settlement_agreement_final_170714.pdf\">court-approved settlement agreement (PDF)\u003c/a> that required the Park Service to amend its general management plan with an emphasis on the 28,000 acres affected by ranching activities. They had to come up with several scenarios, including one that would eliminate all ranching from the park. They also had to detail the environmental impacts of their preferred option, which involved several rounds of public comment and a presentation before the California Coastal Commission, which safeguards the state’s coastline and is concerned with the health of the waterways that run into the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936897\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11936897\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-800x600.jpg\" alt='Protesters hold signs that say \"Save the Elk\" and \"Protect the Herd.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">People protest the National Park Service over a plan to cull Tule elk at Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California. \u003ccite>(Peg Hunter/flickr)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the past several years, in public comment and through advocacy, environmentalists have argued that it’s time for cattle ranching to end in Point Reyes National Seashore. They say cattle suppress endemic plant species and endanger protected animals like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/amphibians/California_red-legged_frog/index.html\">California red-legged frog\u003c/a> when their manure gets into waterways. And, they’re concerned that as climate change worsens, drier conditions will be the norm, further upsetting ecosystems. If water and grass are scarce in Point Reyes, they say, it should go to the endemic flora and fauna, not cattle raised by private businesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Complicating the matter are the Tule elk, which have no natural predators now that grizzly bears no longer roam the area. Current management practices used throughout the state call for \u003ca href=\"https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=162912&inline\">lethal termination to keep herd sizes in check (PDF)\u003c/a>. But in the 1990s, the Park Service got major pushback from the public when they proposed killing some of the Tule elk behind the fence once their numbers had grown too large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, in 1998, the Park Service moved some of the elk from behind the fence to a wilderness area near Limantour Beach. In the early 2000s, some of those elk migrated to an area near Drakes Beach, creating another herd.* These free-roaming herds have increasingly created problems for the ranchers, knocking down fences and competing for the same grass cattle eat. The Park Service has said it will actively keep these unfenced herds at specific sizes, terminating elk if need be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936879\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/DSC5237-scaled-e1672877098790.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11936879\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/DSC5237-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Four male elk walk down a grassy hillside\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the ’70s, the Park Service designated the northern tip of Point Reyes as an elk preserve. \u003ccite>(Amanda Font/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The elk situation has increasingly called attention to the Park Service’s management of the national seashore. Some Bay Area residents, like our question-asker this week, Beth Touchette, are wondering whether ranching is still appropriate there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Cattle ranching] never really bothered me until the drought got really bad,” she said. “There’s just limited resources and it’s like, well, how do we decide who gets this limited water? Should it be cattle ranching or should it be trying to keep the wildlife in the national park?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ranching advocates and the National Park Service say the issue needn’t be so cut-and-dried. While they admit they do need to plan for more extreme dry conditions in the future, they contend there are ways for the agency to balance ecological diversity with the direction from Congress and the Department of the Interior to continue to grant leases to ranchers. They say they are committed to more monitoring and regulation of the ranches in the park to ensure high environmental standards are met. In public comment, the ranchers also have committed to complying with environmental requirements. The Secretary of the interior could decide to end the decades long agreement, but so far each one, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.doi.gov/office-of-the-secretary\">the current Secretary Deb Haaland,\u003c/a> have not chosen to exercise that authority.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>All eyes on what’s next\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>History is at the heart of the debate about the future of Point Reyes National Seashore. The Coast Miwok were pushed off this land by Spanish colonizers, and again by ranchers decades later. Environmentalists and ranchers once found middle ground to create this 70,000-acre park. That ground has gotten shaky. How and if the Park Service can balance the interests of all parties going forward is yet to be seen. But the economic future of part of the community, the health of the environment and the very spirit of this land are at stake. Everyone will be watching what happens here next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*An earlier version of this story said the NPS created the Drakes Bay herd, when in fact the second herd was a product of the original elk migrating to a new area. We regret the error.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Visitors searching for tule elk in Point Reyes are sometimes surprised to find cattle grazing on commercial ranches. This week on we explore the legacy of ranching on this land, and hear from those who want it to end.",
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"title": "Cattle Ranching Is at the Center of a Battle Brewing in Point Reyes | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://bit.ly/3QhozaD\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode here.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is inspired by a question from Bay Curious listener Beth Touchette. She asked, “How did we end up allowing cattle in Point Reyes National Seashore?”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">S\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>aturday, Aug. 28, 2021, brought a dramatic scene to the normally peaceful, windblown hills of Tomales Point in Point Reyes National Seashore. Dozens of people, from small children to older adults, hauled jugs of water over hills and through valleys only to dump their precious cargo into nearly dry ponds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The volunteers were trying to keep the Tule elk that live on a fenced preserve alive during one of California’s longest droughts. In 2019, nearly a third of the herd died from a shortage of water and malnutrition — in part because they could not roam beyond the tall fence that contained them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Mammals/Elk/Tule-Elk\">Tule elk\u003c/a> are an endemic species found only in California. They were hunted almost to extinction in the 1800s, but have been making a comeback in places like Point Reyes. The elk are big, averaging around 400 pounds, and need room to roam and forage. But this herd is isolated behind the fence to keep them away from another animal grazing in the park — an animal that some environmentalists say is being given priority: cattle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since Point Reyes National Seashore was established in 1962, it’s been a lot of things to a lot of people. To the general public, it’s a beloved park that offers beautiful coastline, lush forests and windswept grassy hills. To environmentalists, it’s a habitat worth preserving. To ranchers, it’s the land their livelihoods depend on. To the area’s Native people, it’s long been a homeland with sacred sites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one time, these competing interests could exist in relative harmony on the 70,000 acres that make up the park — but increasing demands on the land have caused things to sour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936864\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/DSC5101-scaled-e1672874259984.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11936864\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/DSC5101-800x553.jpg\" alt=\"A group of female Tule elk lounge on a green hillside. The rugged California coastline and ocean are visible in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"553\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Once abundant in Point Reyes, Tule elk were nearly hunted to extinction. \u003ccite>(Amanda Font/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>How cattle came to graze on Point Reyes\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Point Reyes peninsula is the homeland of the Coast Miwok people, who lived here for generations alongside the Tule elk. When Spanish missionaries colonized the area, they brought cows with them. Although the missionaries were based in San Rafael, their cows would roam as far west as the Point Reyes peninsula. Later, when Spain granted the land to Mexico, rancheros divided up the peninsula and continued to run cattle. After the Mexican-American war, California changed hands once again to become part of the United States. In the chaotic transition period, the boundaries of the Mexican ranches on the peninsula were challenged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you look at some of the Spanish land grants, they literally said from the tree to the rock,” said Loretta Farley, a former park ranger at Point Reyes National Seashore. “So that’s really open to interpretation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Squatters moved in and settled on the land. The Mexican rancheros took them to court, but lost because they didn’t have the paperwork to demarcate the boundaries of their land. The legal battles were many and complicated, but when the dust settled in 1857, the law firm of Shafter, Shafter, Park and Heydenfeldt emerged as primary owners of the peninsula we now know as Point Reyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After a series of tremendous fights we have beaten our adversaries at all points and, what is more, have humbled the strongest and the proudest of them,” \u003ca href=\"http://npshistory.com/publications/pore/hrs-ranching.pdf\">wrote Oscar Shafter (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936882\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 637px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Alphabet-Ranch-Map.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11936882\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Alphabet-Ranch-Map.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"637\" height=\"881\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Alphabet-Ranch-Map.jpg 637w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Alphabet-Ranch-Map-160x221.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 637px) 100vw, 637px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A historic map of the alphabet ranch parcels in Point Reyes.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Shafter brothers divided their property into more than 30 sections and leased the land to immigrants flooding into the area from places like Ireland, Switzerland and the Azores, in Portugal. The Shafters named the ranches from A to Z, what we now call the historic alphabet ranches, and developed a flourishing dairy business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco was growing rapidly and people were hungry for the butter and cheese produced at the dairy farms. Later, when refrigeration was invented, the farms would also ship milk. At one point, the Point Reyes dairies produced more butter than anywhere else in the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early 1900s, the Shafter families sold some of their land to the farmers who had been leasing it from them. Some of those families are still operating beef and dairy ranches to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Home of the Coast Miwok\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Many of the laborers on those early dairy ranches were Coast Miwok people who had been enslaved by Spanish missionaries, but returned to their homes along Tomales Bay if they were able. Their way of life had been completely upended, and now white ranchers owned the land and offered some of the only employment around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My grandmother was a ranch cook,” said Theresa Harlan. “My uncles worked on ranches as ranch hands.” Harlan is now the founder and director of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.alliance4felixcove.org/\">Alliance for Felix Cove\u003c/a>; the cove is known as Laird’s Landing on maps. Harlan’s mother is Tomalko (Coast Miwok Tomales Bay) and grew up in a small wooden cabin here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My family would row a small skiff across the bay to get mail or supplies that they couldn’t make themselves,” she said. “They say it was a 30-minute row.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harlan’s family was evicted in the 1950s by the white dairy farmers who owned the land at the time, Sayles Turney and James Lundgren. Harlan’s family tried to fight the eviction, saying they’d been there since the 1800s, and the case went all the way to the state Supreme Court. Her family ultimately lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936854\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_2299-scaled-e1672872337625.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11936854\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/IMG_2299-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A couple stands below the porch of an old wooden cabin\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Theresa Harlan and her husband, Ken Tiger, pose in front of the wood cabin her great-grandfather Joe Felix built. \u003ccite>(Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“This is a historic site,” Harlan said. “This needs to be protected. This little house sits neglected. Why? Why? Because it was the home of Tomalko people, California Indian people?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s been pushing the National Park Service and the \u003ca href=\"https://gratonrancheria.com/\">Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria\u003c/a>, the federally recognized tribe with whom it partners to preserve Coast Miwok sites, to do more to explain and protect her family’s legacy here. In particular, she wants visitors to know that as recently as the 1950s Tomalko people lived here, but were pushed out, repeating the violent history of Indigenous people throughout California. This is family lore to her, not ancient history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are other Coast Miwok archaeological sites in Point Reyes, but many of them are kept confidential because they are sacred. The cabins in Felix Cove represent a more modern side of Native American history here, one that existed alongside the ranching history, which has already been designated as historic. Still, far fewer people know about Theresa Harlan’s family than about the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/news/newsreleases_20181113_ranches_national_register_of_historic_places.htm\">historic alphabet ranches\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>From private ranch land to national park\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For decades, West Marin remained quite rural, with the ranches dominating local life and culture. But after World War II, when the Bay Area population was booming and demand for housing was high, real estate speculators started eyeing the Point Reyes peninsula for subdivision and development. Conservationists and local residents didn’t want to see that happen. They rallied together to advocate for a national seashore that would preserve the coastline for the public in perpetuity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A local U.S. representative, Clem Miller, was the primary force advocating for the national seashore in Washington, D.C. To achieve the dream, park advocates had to convince the ranchers to sell their land to the federal government. At first, many ranchers were adamantly opposed to the idea, but they also saw that if it wanted to, the government could use eminent domain to take their land, so instead they made a deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, the government was most interested in preserving the coastline. So, they \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/getinvolved/upload/planning_gmp_ea_goga_pore_1980_map_management_zoning.pdf\">divided the park into pastoral zones and wilderness areas (PDF)\u003c/a>. The ranchers sold their land to the government, but retained the right to ranch the land in the pastoral zones. It took years for the federal government to acquire the land, but by 1978, most of the ranchers had signed 25-year leases. At the end of the lease, the Park Service could decide whether to renew or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The arrangement made most parties happy. Conservationists were proud to have saved the area for the public. And the ranchers had earned a chunk of cash, while retaining the right to lease their lands from the government. \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/historyculture/people_coastmiwok.htm\">The Coast Miwok, however, continued to struggle for recognition.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The original 25-year leases have long expired, but for decades the Park Service has renewed them on a five-year basis. This longevity has made the ranches an important part of the economy and culture of West Marin, as well as key players in the local organic food scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Recent controversies challenge the status quo\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 2014, the National Park Service, which manages Point Reyes National Seashore, started a public process to update its Ranch Comprehensive Management Plan. Environmental groups watching the process believed the Park Service was heading down a road that would give ranchers more of what they wanted, without considering the rest of the park’s needs. So in 2016, a coalition of environmental groups sued the Park Service. They pointed out that the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/management/upload/planning_gmp_1980.pdf\">Point Reyes General Management Plan (PDF)\u003c/a>, the document that governs park activities, hadn’t been updated since 1980. Awareness of sensitive habitats, endangered species, climate change and the impacts of cattle on ecosystems had evolved since then, they said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The parties came to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/getinvolved/upload/planning_ranch_cmp_settlement_agreement_final_170714.pdf\">court-approved settlement agreement (PDF)\u003c/a> that required the Park Service to amend its general management plan with an emphasis on the 28,000 acres affected by ranching activities. They had to come up with several scenarios, including one that would eliminate all ranching from the park. They also had to detail the environmental impacts of their preferred option, which involved several rounds of public comment and a presentation before the California Coastal Commission, which safeguards the state’s coastline and is concerned with the health of the waterways that run into the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936897\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11936897\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-800x600.jpg\" alt='Protesters hold signs that say \"Save the Elk\" and \"Protect the Herd.\"' width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/Point-Reyes-Protest.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">People protest the National Park Service over a plan to cull Tule elk at Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California. \u003ccite>(Peg Hunter/flickr)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the past several years, in public comment and through advocacy, environmentalists have argued that it’s time for cattle ranching to end in Point Reyes National Seashore. They say cattle suppress endemic plant species and endanger protected animals like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/amphibians/California_red-legged_frog/index.html\">California red-legged frog\u003c/a> when their manure gets into waterways. And, they’re concerned that as climate change worsens, drier conditions will be the norm, further upsetting ecosystems. If water and grass are scarce in Point Reyes, they say, it should go to the endemic flora and fauna, not cattle raised by private businesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Complicating the matter are the Tule elk, which have no natural predators now that grizzly bears no longer roam the area. Current management practices used throughout the state call for \u003ca href=\"https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=162912&inline\">lethal termination to keep herd sizes in check (PDF)\u003c/a>. But in the 1990s, the Park Service got major pushback from the public when they proposed killing some of the Tule elk behind the fence once their numbers had grown too large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, in 1998, the Park Service moved some of the elk from behind the fence to a wilderness area near Limantour Beach. In the early 2000s, some of those elk migrated to an area near Drakes Beach, creating another herd.* These free-roaming herds have increasingly created problems for the ranchers, knocking down fences and competing for the same grass cattle eat. The Park Service has said it will actively keep these unfenced herds at specific sizes, terminating elk if need be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11936879\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/DSC5237-scaled-e1672877098790.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11936879\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/01/DSC5237-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Four male elk walk down a grassy hillside\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the ’70s, the Park Service designated the northern tip of Point Reyes as an elk preserve. \u003ccite>(Amanda Font/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The elk situation has increasingly called attention to the Park Service’s management of the national seashore. Some Bay Area residents, like our question-asker this week, Beth Touchette, are wondering whether ranching is still appropriate there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Cattle ranching] never really bothered me until the drought got really bad,” she said. “There’s just limited resources and it’s like, well, how do we decide who gets this limited water? Should it be cattle ranching or should it be trying to keep the wildlife in the national park?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ranching advocates and the National Park Service say the issue needn’t be so cut-and-dried. While they admit they do need to plan for more extreme dry conditions in the future, they contend there are ways for the agency to balance ecological diversity with the direction from Congress and the Department of the Interior to continue to grant leases to ranchers. They say they are committed to more monitoring and regulation of the ranches in the park to ensure high environmental standards are met. In public comment, the ranchers also have committed to complying with environmental requirements. The Secretary of the interior could decide to end the decades long agreement, but so far each one, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.doi.gov/office-of-the-secretary\">the current Secretary Deb Haaland,\u003c/a> have not chosen to exercise that authority.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>All eyes on what’s next\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>History is at the heart of the debate about the future of Point Reyes National Seashore. The Coast Miwok were pushed off this land by Spanish colonizers, and again by ranchers decades later. Environmentalists and ranchers once found middle ground to create this 70,000-acre park. That ground has gotten shaky. How and if the Park Service can balance the interests of all parties going forward is yet to be seen. But the economic future of part of the community, the health of the environment and the very spirit of this land are at stake. Everyone will be watching what happens here next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*An earlier version of this story said the NPS created the Drakes Bay herd, when in fact the second herd was a product of the original elk migrating to a new area. We regret the error.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
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"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"order": 9
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"order": 15
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"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
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"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"source": "American Public Media"
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"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
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"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"order": 11
},
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"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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},
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
},
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
"subscribe": {
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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