San Quentin State Prison is located in the town of San Quentin in Marin County, some 13 miles (or 21 kilometers) north of San Francisco. It is the oldest prison in California and holds only male inmates. The state’s only execution chamber, located at San Quentin, was closed in 2019 following Governor Gavin Newsom’s moratorium on the death penalty in Read more...
Swimming is allowed at Lake Anza in Berkeley’s Tilden Regional Park in the designated beach area on weekends and holidays from around the end of April and on weekdays from the end of May until around mid-September. Swimming is prohibited from November onwards and when periods of poor water quality are identified by East Bay Regional Park District. When lifeguards Read more...
The Millbrae Art & Wine Festival is held annually on the Labor Day weekend preceding the first Monday of September. The event is held between 10 am and 5 pm on the Saturday and Sunday along Broadway (one block west of El Camino Real) between Victoria and Meadow Glen Avenues in downtown Millbrae. Read more...
In the early hours of April 7th, 1982, a collision in the third bore of the Caldecott Tunnel involving a tanker truck carrying gasoline caused a devastating fire. The road tunnel, carrying westbound traffic from Orinda to Oakland, acted as a chimney during the fire with the natural draft moving smoke towards oncoming vehicles. Seven people died in the accident, Read more...
Mount Tam is 784 meters (or 2571 feet) above sea level at its peak, with three major summits, named the West, Middle and East Peaks. The West Peak is unofficially considered the highest point, while the East Peak offers the best views of San Francisco. The West Peak was some 28 feet higher before it was flattened for construction of Read more...
American singer Bing Crosby moved to Hillsborough, California, with his second wife, Kathryn, and their three children in 1964, after selling their home in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles. Their first home in the area was at 101 Robin Road in Hillsborough’s Carolands neighborhood, but they moved by the end of 1965 to a larger property on Jackling Drive at Armsby Read more...
You can swim and surf at Stinson Beach and lifeguards are normally on duty from late May to early September. The water is cold, even in summer, and you should be aware of the dangers of rip currents and the rare chance of sharks swimming near the shore. Read more...
YouTube was originally based on the Second Floor of 71 East 3rd Avenue in San Mateo, California, before it moved to new offices in San Bruno in 2008. Read more...
The San Mateo-Hayward Bridge has a total length of 7 miles (or 11.3 kilometers), making it the longest bridge in California. It carries the six-lane State Route 92 across San Francisco Bay between Foster City on the San Francisco Peninsula and the city of Hayward in the East Bay. The bridge comprises a 1.9-mile highrise orthotropic deck western span and Read more...
Foster City, California, was created in the 1960s on former tidal marshland near San Mateo, overlaid with an engineered landfill of sand and shell dredged from San Francisco Bay. The lands were once tidal wetlands sitting around mean sea level which were dried out in the 19th century using dikes and levees to keep out the tidal flows. The reclaimed Read more...
The Flintstone House is located on Berryessa Way in the town of Hillsborough, California. The cartoon-like appearance of the domed house, led to it gaining the popular nickname after The Flintstones animated TV sitcom from the 1960s. The distinctive house, constructed in 1976 to a design by architect William Nicholson, is visible from the Doran Memorial Bridge on I-280 where Read more...
Water Light Public Plaza is located behind the Lyric apartments on Locust Street at Bonanza Street in downtown Walnut Creek, California. The courtyard-style parklet was designed by artist Jason Middlebrook and features a large abstract wall mosaic created from hand-cut glass and ceramic tiles, with arcs of mirrored glass. The patterns are emulated in a water feature spraying arcs of Read more...
Tolls are paid in the westbound direction on Dumbarton Bridge between Fremont and Menlo Park, California. This follows the convention for all the Bay Area’s state-owned bridges that traffic headed towards the San Francisco peninsula pays a toll. Read more...
The Facebook sign with the iconic thumbs up symbol is located outside the company’s headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park. On the reverse is the original sign of Sun Microsystems, who substantially vacated the site in 2010. Read more...
American journalist and author David Halberstam died, aged 73, in a car crash at the intersection of Bayfront Expressway and Willow Road in Menlo Park, California, on April 23rd, 2007. Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was a passenger in a car that turned left against a red light into the path of another car, and died at the scene from Read more...
Buck’s restaurant is at Woodside Road and Cañada Road in Woodside, California, about a mile from Exit 25 of I-280 that runs between San Francisco and San Jose. The eccentric diner is a Silicon Valley mainstay with many VC deals reportedly sealed at its tables. Read more...
Google was initially based out of a garage rented from Susan Wojcicki, along with three rooms inside her house on Santa Margarita Avenue in Menlo Park. Wojcicki eventually became a Google employee and went on to be CEO of the company’s YouTube subsidiary. While the company moved to a bigger office at 165 University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto after Read more...
Debbi Fields opened her first cookie store as Mrs Fields’ Chocolate Chippery in Palo Alto on August 18th, 1977 in the Liddicoats Market food mall at 340 University Avenue, where the Apple store stands today. The popularity of the store’s freshly baked cookies grew, and in 1979 a second location was opened at Pier 39 in San Francisco. The business Read more...