TL31 - The San Francisco Bay Area By Mobiyuz Watch

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Okay. Let's try something different.

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The San Francisco Bay Area is without question the "core" of California. Home to both its national capital, Eureka, and one of its major centers of culture and finance, San Francisco, as well as one of its largest ports, Oakland, this one region is by far one of the most significant in California in terms of economics, politics, and culture. Officially, the Bay Area is said to consist of 4 states: Contra Costa, Eureka, San Pablo, and San Francisco, all of which compose the entirety of the coastline in this region, but locals will most often say that the real "Bay Area" is San Francisco and Eureka and the counties that are closest to the actual bay, which itself is divided into two halves: San Francisco Bay in the south, and San Pablo Bay in the north, which also connects through the Delta to the interior of the country.



Geographically, the Bay Area is essentially a gigantic estuary complex draining a large part of western California through the Delta, bringing sediments from as far as the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Surrounded by large hills, the region has a fairly short supply of flat land to build on, which is exemplified by San Francisco's famous hills. The entirety of the bay drains through a narrow strait between the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, the Golden Gate (which, curiously enough, gained its name even before the Gold Rush). Infamously, the region also sits on top of numerous tectonic faults formed from the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North America Plate, which has produced powerful earthquakes such as those in 1906 and 1989. Chief among these is the San Andreas Fault, which can be seen from above in the form of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Tomales Bay.



The San Francisco Bay Area has been described as one of the most staggeringly diverse places on the planet demographically, with the city of San Francisco alone representing almost any nationality or ethnicity you could think of. Equally, cities such as Oakland or Eureka or San Jose are also highly diverse, and all cities have large concentrations of Chinese immigrants clustered largely in the "Chinatown" neighborhoods but have more recently become more dispersed throughout the cities. Because of this massive mingling and mixing of world cultures, the Bay Area is often described as a blast furnace of culture, responsible for a vast number of pop culture trends that spread through the world today. San Francisco is also something of California's financial capital, with Market Street at its core being home to vast international enterprises and the primary stock exchange in California. While San Francisco itself is no longer a major port, Oakland just across the Bay has subsumed this role and is host to vast, sprawling shipyards moving goods through the Golden Gate and across the Pacific. And just to the east, the Livermore Valley has gained the nickname "Silicon Valley" through its associations with many of the world's largest technology companies.



The Bay Area's character is unique in California; owing to the fact that the region is largely self-sufficient (in terms of culture, that is, the region requires massive food imports), most will only venture outside of their region sparingly, giving it a very inward-facing attitude. This is especially bad in San Francisco itself, to the point that its residents simply call it "The City" and outsiders disparagingly call it the "Center of the Universe". Not helping this is the presence of Eureka, where the nation's government meets and deliberates issues of policy. Still, the city is irrevocably linked to the outside world. It has always been a center of immigration from the days of the Gold Rush to today, and the Bay is one of the best natural harbors on Earth for ships traveling the world over, making it one of the Pacific's dominant ports.



It has been said that if the entirety of civilization outside of the Bay Area were to suddenly vanish, it could be rebuilt entirely with the knowledge and cultures hosted within. However, it has its own drawbacks. Not even mentioning the periodic earthquakes that cause so much destruction and chaos, the region's high quality of life has made the cost of living alarmingly high in many places. Property values continue to rise and the vast majority of people in San Francisco don't own their houses. Homelessness is also a pervasive problem in large areas of the region, with people driven onto the streets by being unable to afford the costs of living in the largest cities. Cities such as these will also invariably attract crime, with the local flavor often being smuggling and human trafficking. While nowhere near its former peak, gangs and organized crime still have a presence here, perhaps the most infamous being the triads of San Francisco that may or may not still have an active role among a city where a plurality are Asian-Californian.



Promise and heartbreak. Prosperity and decay. Glory and squalor. If there was ever a singular microcosm of the chaos of human society, it's here.

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Published : Aug 7, 2017