Port of Oakland

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
by Marc Levinson
Published 1 Jan 2006

Erie, Globalizing L.A., pp. 80–88. 9. Woodruff Minor, Pacific Gateway: An Illustrated History of the Port of Oakland (Oakland, 2000), p. 45; Port of Oakland, “Port of Oakland,” 1957; Ben E. Nutter, “The Port of Oakland: Modernization and Expansion of Shipping, Airport, and Real Estate Operations, 1957–1977,” interview by Ann Lage, 1991 (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 51, 84, 139; Rosenstein, “The Rise of Maritime Containerization,” p. 45. 10. George Home, “Intercoastal Trade,” NYT, January 29, 1961; Nutter, “The Port of Oakland,” pp. 78–79. American-Hawaiian never received the government subsidies it sought to finance its ships. 11.

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American-Hawaiian never received the government subsidies it sought to finance its ships. 11. Rosenstein, “The Rise of Maritime Containerization,” pp. 47, 69; Nutter, “The Port of Oakland,” pp. 79–80; Port of Oakland, “60 Years: A Chronicle of Progress,” 1987, pp. 17–18. 12. Erie, Globalizing L.A., p. 89; Walter Hamshar, “Must U.S. Approve All Pier Leases,” Herald Tribune, April 5, 1964. 13. Nutter, “The Port of Oakland,” p. 82; Rosenstein, “The Rise of Maritime Containerization,” pp. 98–104. 14. Ting-Li Cho, “A Conceptual Framework for the Physical Development of the Port of Seattle,” Port of Seattle Planning and Research Department, April 1966, p. 15; Arthur D. Little Inc., Community Renewal Programming: A San Francisco Case Study (New York, 1966), p. 34. 15.

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Rosenstein, “The Rise of Maritime Containerization,” pp. 65 and 85–86; Worden, Cargoes, 148; Nutter, “The Port of Oakland,” pp. 112, 120; Port of Oakland, “1957 Revenue Bonds, Series P, $20,000,000,” October 17, 1978, p. 15; Erie, Globalizing L.A., p. 90; Seattle Port Commission, “Container Terminals 1970–1975: A Development Strategy,” November 1969, pp. 1, 10. 16. Burke, A History of the Port of Seattle, pp. 116, 122; Erie, Globalizing L.A., pp. 85–89; Minor, Pacific Gateway, p. 53; Fitzgerald, “A History of Containerization,” pp. 91–93; Niven, American President Lines, pp. 250–251; Nutter, “The Port of Oakland,” p. 84. 17. U.S. Department of Commerce, Marad, “Review of United States Oceanborne Trade 1966” (Washington, DC, 1967), p. 11. 18.

The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-Up in Oakland
by Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham
Published 10 Jan 2023

Many became involved in the drug trade from the early 1970s onward, supplied with tons of heroin lugged home by demobilized Vietnam veterans and sailors smuggling product in through the burgeoning West Oakland docks.19 In Mexico, production of the old narcolero staple of brown tar heroin increased to meet growing demand in El Norte.20 Along with Los Angeles, Oakland became one of the West Coast hubs for the trade. The Port of Oakland, the fifth biggest in the United States, was the first West Coast port to move from break-bulk shipping—that is, loose cargo loads—to containers, in 1962. The new process made trade faster and simpler but also complicated customs inspections. In 1991 the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and US Customs broke up a heroin trafficking network that moved tons of high-quality “China White” from Thailand, seizing a then-record 1,200 pounds from a Hayward warehouse.21 “The Port of Oakland pretty much goes unchecked; I don’t know of any other large port that doesn’t have a police department,” said Vic Bullock, an Oakland native who joined the OPD in 1981.

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., 5–6, 133, 168–69 Noll, Holly, 261–62 Norfleet, Derrick, 254 Norteños (gang), 195, 267–68 North Side Oakland (NSO, gang), 265–66 Nowak, Steven, 41, 44 NSA, see Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA, OPD) Nut Cases (gang), 303 O Oakland, California, 177–78, 242–44, 247, 258, 273–76, 302, 305–6 Caldecott Tunnel fire (1990), 174–75 Citizens’ Police Review Board, 7, 19, 132–33, 157–58, 174, 182, 189–93, 290–91, 306, 351–52, 374 crime statistics, 34, 163, 175, 178–79, 186, 266, 302, 308, 341 disinvestment and white flight, 5–6, 33–39, 125–26, 152, 162–67, 175–76, 179 drug trade, see drug trade economic rebounds / gentrification, 16, 24–25, 125–26, 179, 181, 281, 314 financial challenges, 158, 162–63, 167–68, 243, 273–74, 280–82, 302 Ghost Town (Hoover-Foster neighborhood, West Oakland), 5–6, 14, 59, 222, 303–4, see also Black Panther Party (BPP); the Riders history of ethnic conflicts and corruption, 100–108, 110–20 history of labor conflicts, 108–13, 127, 288–91 Ku Klux Klan and, 103–6, 107–8 legal settlements, see Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA, OPD); Oakland, California legal settlements and jury award payments Loma Prieta quake (1989), 173–74 Measure Y parcel tax, 243, 274–76 Measure Z parcel and parking tax, 314 Occupy movement, see Occupy movement police department, see Oakland Police Department (OPD) Port Chicago disaster (1944), 131 Port of Oakland, see Port of Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission, 311, 382, see also surveillance racial discrimination and segregation, 121–29, 131, 171, 201, 299, 312–13 rise of Black leadership, 34, 38 school boycott (1966), 121–22, 124 Oakland, California legal settlements and jury award payments, 83, 88–89, 296, 298 Melvin Black killing, 156 Bradshaw / Meyer illegal strip-searches, 224–25, 272 Burris / Chanin Warrantgate class action lawsuit, 220–21, 224 federal consent decree, 94–96, 98–99, 207, 240, 265, 374, see also Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA, OPD) Matthew Hornung wrongful termination suit, 81 Gary King, Jr. killing, 193 Uganda Knapps, 272 Monell doctrine and, 89–90 for OPD abuses of protesters, 264 for OPD officer punitive damages penalties, 272 Matthew Watson, 98 D’Wayne Wiggins, 18 Willie Wilkins killing, 201 Mack “Jody” Woodfox killing, 206 Oakland Black Officers Association, 148, 155, 369–70, 377 Oakland Direct Action Committee (ODAC), 121–22, 123 Oakland Economic Development Council (OEDC), 132–33 Oakland Police Commission Community Police Review Agency (CPRA), 352–53, 367, 369 creation of, 352, 375 sexual exploitation scandal and, 352 termination of Anne Kirkpatrick, 372–76 Oakland Police Department (OPD) absence of US Justice Department “patterns and practices” review, 62–63 achieves compliance with the NSA, 378–79 Chief Armstrong, 366, 377–79 Chief Batts, see Batts, Anthony Black Lives Matter and, 244, 316–17, 353 Black officer resistance to police violence, 138–41 Black Panthers and, see Black Panther Party (BPP) Citizens’ Police Review Board (CPRB) and, 7, 19, 132–33, 157–58, 174, 182, 189–93, 290–91, 306, 351–52, 374 code of silence, 18, 24, 29, 54–57, 63, 68–70, 73, 138–39, 291–92, 297, 327, 340, 383 community-policing model, 177–78, 274–76 Crime Reduction Teams (CRTs), 39–41, 48, 52, 182, 217, 308, 359 Criminal Investigation Division (CID), 256, 297, 343–44, 348 directed patrols, 78–79, 300 DNA testing, 227–28, 245, 305 documentary film about, 313–14, 342 drug trade, see drug trade early intervention program and, 7–8, 341 Executive Force Review Board (EFRB), 186, 197–98, 279–80, 366–70 FBI investigations of, 154, 233, 234, 236, 278, 288 federal court oversight and reform, 3, 94–96, 98–99, 107, 180, 240, 265, 374, see also Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA, OPD) Fruitvale BART Station rally for Oscar Grant III shooting, 237, 239–44 Chief Gain, see Gain, Charles gangs and, see drug trade; gangs Grove-Shafter Freeway sniper, 153–54 Chief Hart, see Hart, George T.

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By the time that crack cocaine arrived in the 1980s, Oakland’s social fabric was already ripping under economic pressures. Violent crime hit its apex in 1991, when 165 Oaklanders were murdered, mostly in turf wars between competing drug organizations.1 Large stretches of the West and East Oakland flatlands, where the drug trade and underground economy flourished for years in symbiosis with the Port of Oakland, military installations, and the growing logistics industry, were now home to open-air bazaars where hustlers sold crack and heroin. Oakland voters had moved significantly to the left in the mid-1970s, when the city’s Black community united with white liberals and Latinos to overthrow the conservative Republican business community that had dominated city hall for decades.

Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement
by Amy Lang and Daniel Lang/levitsky
Published 11 Jun 2012

After the first attempt by the police to evict the camp on 25 October, thousands took to the streets marching in protest and the police responded with brutal repression, using ‘chemical weapons’ against the protesters. On 26 October, following a second march, at the General Assembly of Occupy Oakland, 3,000 people approved a call for a General Strike on 2 November. The Oakland General Strike on 2 November (the first in the city since 1946) was an overwhelming success, blockading the Port of Oakland, with more than 50,000 people participating. Since then, the Occupy Oakland movement continues to resist, alongside related movements throughout the world, and we are very concerned by the possibility of another eviction attempt and more repression in the coming days. For these reasons, we feel it is extremely important to send this message of solidarity to our comrades on the Other Side of the border, to show our support.

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The UC Davis Bicycle Barricade collective go beyond growing calls for their removal, proposing that nothing short of structural change, within the university as outside, will do and arguing that internal repression cannot be separated from other forms of complicity with violence, like UC Davis’ involvement in agribusiness operations both in the US and in US-occupied Afghanistan. After the successful shut-down of the Port of Oakland during the Oakland General Strike, West Coast Occupy/Decolonize groups called for a Pacific Coast port blockade. The call was in part a response to specific requests to Occupy for solidarity with the labor struggles of port truck drivers in Los Angeles and longshore workers in Longview, Washington.

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Protests will be held at Oscar Grant Plaza (14th and Broadway) at nine, noon, and at five. They have opted to schedule multiple mass convergences so that those who cannot leave the workplace can participate in the evening. The evening plan, as I understand it, is to march south from the plaza to the Port of Oakland and to arrive before the change of shifts that will take place at seven o’clock. They plan to shut down the port, which happens to be the fifth-busiest container port in the country. This is hardly an impossible task. In 2008, union workers and protesters who opposed the Iraq war successfully shut down much of Oakland’s port.

Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action That Changed America
by Writers For The 99%
Published 17 Dec 2011

While the strike did not totally shut down the city, it did garner the widespread support of students, workers, labor unions, and even small business owners, some of whom closed down in solidarity with the Occupy movement. Thousands of demonstrators, with tacit solidarity from ILWU dockworkers and independent contractor port truck drivers, shut down the Port of Oakland for the evening. The success of this “General Strike” in Oakland invigorated activists across the country and the world, leading to solidarity actions by the New York occupation and others, and giving many a new sense of the possible and the power of the 99 percent. More generally, the Oakland occupation and its success helped spark debate in the camps and around the country about expanding the movement’s tactics— from the occupation of new spaces, such as foreclosed homes, to the costs and benefits of “property destruction,” such as graffiti and breaking windows. *** A Dispatch From the Midwest By Dan La Botz, an organizer for Occupy Cincinnati In a bid to achieve critical mass of their own, activists in Cinncinnati staged an occupation of their own.

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The judge said she had already decided to grant the restraining order because the curfew was a “clear prior restraint on free speech rights.” Military veterans join the protesters at Zuccotti Park. November 2—Demonstrations continued in Oakland, California, with a citywide general strike taking place in response to the serious injury sustained by a protester on October 25. Protesters shut down the Port of Oakland, the nation’s fifth busiest port. November 3—Riot police clashed with Occupy Oakland, firing tear gas and flash bang grenades. Over a hundred protesters were arrested, including another Iraq veteran who was seriously injured by police. Occupy Seattle protesters and police briefly clashed in protests sparked by Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s visit to town.

How to Do Nothing
by Jenny Odell
Published 8 Apr 2019

During the nineteenth century, this site served as the western terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and in World War II was a supply base for the Pacific Fleet of the US Navy. Eventually it ended up in the hands of the Port of Oakland, who turned it into one of the few parks in West Oakland. Like most of the land edging the San Francisco Bay, this was once a wetland ecosystem, but building a port also meant dredging the shallows for ships. When the Port of Oakland took ownership of the land in 2002, it used sediment to re-create a lagoon and a beach in the hopes of supporting the local shorebird population. It also built an observation tower named after Chappell R.

The Docks
by Bill Sharpsteen
Published 5 Jan 2011

For that, you have to be a regular reader of the union’s monthly newspaper, the Dispatcher. For late 2007 through 2008, it listed three fatalities on the job: ╯ ╯ Edward Hall, Local 10, struck and crushed by a yard hustler Carlos Rivera, Local 13, hit by a forklift carrying rolls of sheet metal Delmont Blakeney, Local 91, struck by a container and thrown into the bay at the Port of Oakland, where—with no emergency lad╯ 46â•… /â•… Moving Cans der available to reach him—he spent more than thirty minutes in the cold water and eventually lost consciousness; he was proÂ� nounced dead once he was pulled out and taken to a hospital ╯ So I ask MacDonald why such an important statistic as deaths doesn’t go in the PMA’s record.

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Port of Los Angeles Handbook 2009. www.portoflosangeles.org/pdf/Â�Shipping _Handbook_2009.pdf (accessed July 1, 2010). ———. “Port of Los Angeles Tariffs.” June 30, 2006. Price, Tom. “Local 13’s Carlos Rivera Dies in Dockside Tragedy.” ILWU Dispatcher, May 2008. Showalter, John. “The Deadly Side of Longshore Work.” ILWU Dispatcher, May 2008. ———. “Two Deaths at Port of Oakland Prompt Safety Actions by Union.” ILWU Dispatcher, January 2008. Tabor, Damon. “Swept Away by Currents.” Wired, April 2009. Taggart, Stewart. “The 20-Ton Packet.” Wired, October 1999. ╯ Referencesâ•… /â•… 283 Wahner, Christoph M. “Daily Vessel Casualty, Piracy, and News Report.” Law Offices of Countryman and McDaniel, Los Angeles. www.cargolaw.com/ presentations_casualties.php (accessed July 24, 2010).

Habeas Data: Privacy vs. The Rise of Surveillance Tech
by Cyrus Farivar
Published 7 May 2018

“But I’m like every nine out of ten people, I just sat on the sidelines,” he said. After graduating with a BA in cconomics, Hofer bounced around, first getting a job as a paralegal in 2004, and eventually landing in law school at the University of San Francisco in 2008. By 2011, he’d graduated, and later joined one of the protest marches to the Port of Oakland as part of the broader Occupy movement. In June 2013, he read in horror about Edward Snowden and revelations of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) overreach. He was trying to figure out how to best channel his nascent political identity—a mix of Bay Area progressivism with an undercurrent of his rural libertarian roots.

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Then, in July 2013, when Snowden was still a fresh name, the City of Oakland formally accepted a federal grant to create something called the Domain Awareness Center (DAC). The idea was to provide a central hub for all of the city’s surveillance tools, including license plate readers (LPR), closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras, gunshot detection microphones, and more—all in the name of protecting the Port of Oakland, the third largest on the West Coast. Had the city council been presented with the perfunctory vote on the DAC even a month before Snowden, it likely would have breezed by without even a mention in the local newspaper. But because government snooping was on everyone’s mind, including Hofer’s, it became a controversial plan.

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World
by William J. Bernstein
Published 5 May 2009

Bairoch, Economics and World History, 26. 48. Harley, "Ocean Freight Rates and Productivity, 1740-1913: The Primacy of Mechanical Invention Reaffirmed," 861. 49. Marc Levinson, The Box (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 7-53; Mark Rosenstein. "The Rise of Containerization in the Port of Oakland," New York Univerity master's thesis, 2000, 23-31, http://www.apparent-wind.com/mbr/ maritime-writings/thesis.pdf, accessed on March 13, 2007. Both sources are entertaining and well written: Rosenstein's thesis is the more balanced, readable, and inexpensive of the two. 50. Rogowski, 100-101; quote, 121.

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Rodrigue, Jean-Paul, "Straits, Passages, and Chokepoints: A Maritime Geostrategy of Petroleum Distribution," Les Cahiers de Geographie du Quebec 48, no. 135 (December 2004): 357-374. Rodrik, Dani, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? (Washington DC: Institute for International Economics, 1997). Rogowski, Ronald. Commerce and Coalitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). Rosenstein, Mark, "The Rise of Containerization in the Port of Oakland," New York University master's thesis (2000),23-3 1, http://www.apparent-wind.com/mbr/ maritime-writings/thesis.pdf, accessed March 13, 2007. Rostow, W.W., The World Economy (Austin: University of Texas, 1978). Roy, Tirthankar, "Economic History and Modern India: Redefining the Link," The Journal of Economic Perspectives 16, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 109-130.

Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic
by Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin
Published 14 Jul 2022

Cruise ships were a rabbit hole, and the White House didn’t need a cruise ship crisis to further drain resources and brainpower. Olivia was stunned, but she understood the clear message: Let the locals handle it. Several weeks earlier, the federal government had deployed massive resources to coordinate the docking of Carnival’s Grand Princess at the Port of Oakland, California. It had been a logistical nightmare. The overlapping jurisdictions, regulations, and teamwork required were massive, so the White House had simply passed the problem down the line, forcing every state to invent its own protocols. They were all exhausted by the ceaseless outbreaks on cruise ships.

Please Report Your Bug Here: A Novel
by Josh Riedel
Published 17 Jan 2023

“You’ll see when you meet them. I want you to visit, before an acquisition makes that less possible.” We made plans to ride BART together into West Oakland the next morning. “This is their warehouse,” she said, handing me her phone, open to a satellite image. The warehouse was nestled near the train tracks, close to the Port of Oakland, where cargo ships arrived with supplies from the other side of the world. I handed her phone back. “Meet at Civic Center?” “Sure,” she said, sliding her phone into her pocket. “But be patient. I’m taking the N.” * * * Two N MUNIs passed Civic Center station, seventeen minutes apart, and Noma still hadn’t shown.

Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age
by Manuel Castells
Published 19 Aug 2012

Oakland witnessed several major, violent confrontations in repeated attempts to dislodge the occupied square, with dozens of injured, hundreds of arrests, and two veterans seriously injured and hospitalized. This police action radicalized the movement in Oakland, to the point that on November 3 demonstrators succeeded in shutting down the Port of Oakland, the second largest on the US Pacific Coast, at the price of pitched street battles with the police. New York oscillated between its initial tolerance of the occupation and several instances of harsh repression. Many university campuses, including some of the elite universities such as Yale, Berkeley, and Harvard, were occupied.

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
by Novella Carpenter
Published 25 May 2010

Since my mom and dad had both lived in the Bay Area in the 1960s—she as a political-science student at UC Berkeley, my dad as a classical guitar player in Oakland—I would have thought that they would have lots of stories to tell. They even lived together in West Oakland at one point: after they met in Mexico (my mom still insists that it’s not a good idea to meet your life partner while on vacation), they shacked up near the Port of Oakland, about twenty blocks from where I live today. But neither of them could remember much about Oakland back then. My mom had a vague memory of buying tamales from the lady living next door to them, but that was all. My dad said they lived near some Black Panthers and wannabe rock musicians, but when pressed, he couldn’t recall much else.

The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
by Martin Gurri
Published 13 Nov 2018

Nor did OWS manage to attract African-American or Hispanic activists in any numbers. Every Occupy site embraced nonviolence, but some were more nonviolent than others. In Oakland, protesters fought pitched battles against police, with each side accusing the other of brutality. Occupy Oakland’s “General Strike and Anti-Capitalist March” on November 2 managed to close the Port of Oakland – probably the only significant economic impact of the protests. Sanitation was always a problem, and was frequently cited by the authorities as a pretext for clearing out the encampments. Crime became a concern with the passage of time, as the homeless and other distinctly non-middle-class elements drifted into the sites.

Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth
by Mark Hertsgaard
Published 15 Jan 2011

The flourishing of urban gardens in Detroit was described in "Detroit Arcadia: Expiring the Post-American Landscape" by Rebecca Solnit, Harper's, July 2007. The history and achievements of Victory Gardens were described by Fred Kirschenmann in an author's interview. Chapter 9: While the Rich Avert Their Eyes The vulnerability of the ports of Oakland and Long Beach (and much else in California) is documented in the Pacific Institute study The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast (see http://www.pacinst.org/reports/sea_level_rise/report.pdf) and in the state government's 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy report, available at http://www.energy.ca.gov/2009publications/CNRA-1000-2009-027/CNRA-1000-2009-027-F.PDF.

Frommer's San Francisco 2012
by Matthew Poole , Erika Lenkert and Kristin Luna
Published 4 Oct 2011

The USS Potomac: FDR’s floating white house It took the Potomac Association’s hundreds of volunteers more than 12 years—at a cost of $5 million—to restore the 165-foot presidential yacht Potomac, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s beloved “Floating White House.” Now a proud and permanent memorial berthed at the Port of Oakland’s FDR Pier at Jack London Square, the revitalized Potomac is open to the public for dockside tours, as well as 2-hour History Cruises along the San Francisco waterfront and around Treasure and Alcatraz islands. Prior to departure, a 15-minute video, shown at the nearby Potomac Visitor Center, provides background on FDR’s presidency and FDR’s legacy concerning the Bay Area.

Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping
by Roger Faligot
Published 30 Jun 2019

The couple were both attachés at the Chinese embassy in Washington in the 1980s, charged with cultivating valuable arms trading relationships and with establishing a pro-China lobby populated by well-known American figures. But in 1996, US police arrested seven people in San Francisco suspected of having brought approximately 2,000 Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles and 800 handguns into the United States. The cargo was seized in the port of Oakland, California, thanks to a patient FBI intelligence operation that brought to light the leading role of two Chinese state-owned firms in the affair: Norinco (North Industries Corporation) and Poly Technologies. Norinco had ten offices around the world, including in Hong Kong. Two of those who worked in the San Francisco office, Zhang Yi and Lu Yilun, ended up in jail.

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy
by Francis Fukuyama
Published 29 Sep 2014

The explosion of opportunities for litigation gave access and therefore power to many formerly excluded groups, beginning with African Americans. For this reason, litigation and the right to sue has been jealously guarded by many on the progressive left. But it also entailed large costs in terms of the quality of public policy. Kagan illustrates this with the case of the dredging of Oakland Harbor. During the 1970s, the Port of Oakland initiated plans to dredge the harbor in anticipation of the new, larger classes of container ships that were then coming into service. The plan had to be approved by a host of governmental agencies including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the EPA, and their counterparts in the state of California.

Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area
by Nick Edwards and Mark Ellwood
Published 2 Jan 2009

.*--&3 &VHFOF 3&(*0/"- 0/FJMM 1"3, )PVTF $)"#05 3&(*0/"-1"3, .06/5%*"#-0 .U 45"5&1"3, %JBCMP 0BLMBOE *OUFSOBUJPOBM "JSQPSU | 1BDJmDB -JWFSNPSF )":8"3% '3&.0/5 )BMG.PPO#BZ 1FTDBEFSP4BOUB$SV[ 286 .JTTJPO 4BO+PTF NJMFT 1BMP"MUP4BO+PTF its livelihood from shipping and transportation services, as evidenced by the cranes in the massive Port of Oakland, but Oakland is in the midst of a renaissance as it lobbies to attract businesses and workers from the information technology industry. Oakland spreads north along wooded foothills to Berkeley, an image-conscious university town that looks out across to the Golden Gate and collects a mixed bag of international students, heavily pierced dropouts, aging 1960s radicals, and Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicists in its cafés and bookstores.

Northern California Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Frogs and Wolves Long before Huck Finn, Twain got his break with a story called The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which he wrote while living in a cabin in the California foothills. Every year the central event of Twain’s story still sees the competition of little green contestants at the Calaveras County Fair in Angels Camp. Jack London was also a restless vagabond. Born in San Francisco, London shipped in and out of the ports of Oakland, which informed seafaring stories and adventure novels such as White Fang, The Call of the Wild and The Sea-Wolf. London’s old neighborhood isn’t the turf of salty dogs any more; the waterfront area in Oakland is now a dining and entertainment district that bears his name. Beatniks A generation later came the Beats, a collection of poets, novelists and alternative thinkers who populated San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood.