Jump to content

Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Portal:SFBA)
WELCOME TO THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA   BAY AREA CITIES   RECOGNIZED BAY AREA CONTENT

The San Francisco Bay Area Portal

California Bay Area county map
California Bay Area county map

The San Francisco Bay Area (referred to locally as the Bay Area) is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.68 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels, and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world with 8.80 million people.

The Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 companies in the United States, after the New York metropolitan area, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The area ranks second in highest density of college graduates, after the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and performs above the state median household income in the 2010 census; it includes the five highest California counties by per capita income and two of the top 25 wealthiest counties in the United States. Based on a 2013 population report from the California Department of Finance, the Bay Area is the only region in California where the rate of people migrating in from other areas in the United States is greater than the rate of those leaving the region, led by Alameda and Contra Costa counties. (more...)

Selected article

YouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005 and has been owned by Google since late 2006. The site allows users to upload, view, and share videos, and it makes use of Adobe Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. Available content includes video clips, TV clips, music videos, and amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS, the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via YouTube, as part of the YouTube partnership program. Unregistered users can watch videos, and registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old. YouTube, LLC was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion in November 2006 and now operates as a Google subsidiary. (more...)

Selected biography

Daniel O'Connell (1849 – January 23, 1899) was a poet, actor, writer and journalist in San Francisco, California, and a co-founder of the Bohemian Club. He was the grand-nephew of Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847), the famed Irish orator and politician.

O'Connell's strict classics-oriented education in Ireland stood him in good stead for his early career choices of teacher and journalist. In San Francisco, he formed friendships with artists and influential men who joined with him in presenting and promoting theatrical productions and in publishing books and newspapers. He wrote short stories for magazines and journals, and lived a life rich in food, drink, and the arts. A dedicated family man in America, O'Connell never lost his Irish poet's sense of overarching sadness joined with keen pleasure in the sensations of the physical world. (more...)

Selected city

A view of Mission Peak from Fremont Central Park
A view of Mission Peak from Fremont Central Park
Fremont /ˈfrmɒnt/ is a city in Alameda County, California. It was incorporated on January 23, 1956, from the merger of five smaller communities: Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Mission San Jose, and Warm Springs. The city is named after American explorer John Charles Frémont, "the Great Pathfinder."

Located in the southeast section of the San Francisco Bay Area in the East Bay region primarily, Fremont had a population of around 220,000. It is the fourth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the largest suburb in the metropolis. It is the closest East Bay city to Silicon Valley, and is thus sometimes associated with it.

The area consisting of Fremont, Newark (an enclave of Fremont), and Union City (formed from the communities of Alvarado and DeCoto), is now known as the Tri-City Area. (more...)

Selected image


The Bay Area by year

1930
Berkeley Public Library building, downtown Berkeley
Berkeley Public Library building, downtown Berkeley

Selected historical image

Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

Previous Did you know...

the statue Ashurbanipal in April 2011
the statue Ashurbanipal in April 2011
Liberty Head double eagle
Liberty Head double eagle

 • ... that critics complained that a bronze statue (pictured, left) of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal standing in San Francisco's Civic Center more closely resembled the Sumerian king Gilgamesh?
 • ... that the twenty-dollar Liberty Head double eagle (pictured, right) was minted after the California gold rush as the "most efficient way to coin a given quantity of gold bullion"?
 • ... that the Blue Wing Inn (pictured, right), started as a one-room hotel in Sonoma, California, in 1836, was also a saloon, a gambling hall, a stagecoach depot, a grocery store, a winery, a museum, and a retail center?
 • ... that Mike McCormick was the first San Francisco Giants pitcher to win the Cy Young Award?
 • ... that former First Lady of California, Anne Gust has served as both an Executive Vice-President for Gap Inc. and on the board of directors for Jack in the Box?
 • ... that Bay Area Bike Share, the first large-scale bike sharing service deployed on the West Coast of the United States, opened to the public in five cities on August 29, 2013?


August - October 2013

Selected periodic event

Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center on 4th Street in San Rafael, California
Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center on 4th Street in San Rafael, California

The Mill Valley Film Festival in Mill Valley is an annual, non-competitive film festival presented by the California Film Institute (pictured). Known as a filmmakers’ festival, the 11-day festival was founded in August 1978 by Mark Fishkin.

Quote

~ Bucky Sinister, All Blacked Out and Nowhere to Go
*more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

Selected multimedia file

Edited views of San Francisco, taken from a Philip Greene film produced by Richard Moore and Zev Putterman for KQED in 1973
credit: Philip Greene

Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

WikiProject

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

Things you can do

Selected panorama

San Francisco Bay Area categories


Full category tree
Select [►] to view the full category tree.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals

Purge server cache