Portal:Bay Area

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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...)

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One Kaiser Plaza, Oakland (KP HQ)
One Kaiser Plaza, Oakland (KP HQ)
Kaiser Permanente is an integrated managed care consortium, based in Oakland, California, United States, founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney Garfield. Kaiser Permanente is made up of three distinct groups of entities: the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and its regional operating subsidiaries; Kaiser Foundation Hospitals; and the autonomous regional Permanente Medical Groups. As of 2006, Kaiser Permanente operates in nine states and the District of Columbia, and is the largest managed care organization in the United States.

Kaiser Permanente has 9.3 million health plan members, 167,300 employees, 14,600 physicians, 37 medical centers, and 611 medical offices. For 2011, the non-profit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals entities reported a combined $1.6 billion in net income on $47.9 billion in operating revenues. Each independent Permanente Medical Group operates as a separate for-profit partnership or professional corporation in its individual territory, and while none publicly report their financial results, each is primarily funded by reimbursements from its respective regional Kaiser Foundation Health Plan entity. (more...)

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Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was a pioneering American nuclear scientist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is also known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, and for founding the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

A graduate of the University of South Dakota and University of Minnesota, Lawrence completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in physics at Yale in 1925. In 1928, he was hired as an associate professor of physics at the University of California, becoming the youngest full professor there two years later. In its library one evening, Lawrence was intrigued by a diagram of an accelerator that produced high-energy particles. He contemplated how it could be made compact, and came up with an idea for a circular accelerating chamber between the poles of an electromagnet. The result was the first cyclotron. Lawrence went on to build a series of ever larger and more expensive cyclotrons. His Radiation Laboratory became an official department of the University of California in 1936, with Lawrence as its director. (more...)

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Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. It is named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The city shares its borders with the cities of Palo Alto, Los Altos, and Sunnyvale, as well as Moffett Federal Airfield and the San Francisco Bay. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 74,066.

Situated in Silicon Valley, Mountain View is home to many high technology companies. In 1956, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the first company to develop silicon semiconductor devices in what came to be known as Silicon Valley, was established in the city by William Shockley. Today, many of the largest technology companies in the world are headquartered in the city, including Google, Mozilla Foundation, Symantec, and Intuit. (more...)

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Korean tacos from the Seoul on Wheels food truck, in the San Francisco Bay Area
image credit: Arnold Gatilao


The Bay Area by year

1983
SF Mayor Dianne Feinstein
SF Mayor Dianne Feinstein

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Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

Previous Did you know...

Million Dollar Backfield
Y.A Tittle
Hugh McElhenny
John Henry Johnson
Joe Perry

 • ... that the San Francisco 49ers Million Dollar Backfield is the only full-house backfield to have all four of its members enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?

Illustration from work by Portnoy
Illustration from work by Portnoy

 • ... that Peg's Place, after a 1979 assault by off-duty members of the San Francisco vice squad, drew national attention to other incidents of anti-gay violence and police harassment of the LGBT community?
 • ... that Maud's in the Haight-Ashbury was patronized in the late 1960's by Janis Joplin, who would visit with her female lover Jae Whitaker?
 • ... that UC Berkeley microbiologist Daniel A. Portnoy made the seminal discovery that Listeria monocytogenes spreads from one cell to another by exploiting a host cell system of actin polymerization? (process pictured)


September 2016

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Bettye LaVette at the 2009 festival
Bettye LaVette at the 2009 festival

The San Jose Jazz Summer Fest (originally known as the San Jose Jazz Festival) is an annual music festival organized by non-profit San Jose Jazz, and held in downtown San Jose. The festival was established in 1990 and has grown to a 3-day weekend with jazz, Latin, salsa, R&B, blues (Bettye LaVette pictured), and other music styles. The main stage is at Plaza de Cesar Chavez.

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The San Francisco Giants win game one of the 2010 World Series

Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

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San Francisco from Twin Peaks
image credit: Sebastian Goll

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