Free Republic

Picture yourself on BART. Now subtract half a century of technology and add on-board dining, a ferry connection and windows that passengers could open to catch a breeze. The image forming in your mind should start to resemble the Sacramento Northern, one of the Bay Area’s vanished electric railroads and a forerunner of BART. As late as 1940, the company operated trains from San Francisco and Oakland to Walnut Creek, Concord and points northeast all the way to Chico. The railroad disappeared in phases. It was done in by cars, competition and the cost of renewal. Today, BART and Capitol...

A 16-year-old boy was shot and killed and another individual injured by a "high powered rifle" in east Oakland Thursday evening, officials said. The Oakland Police Department said it received a report of shots being fired and "one person down" in the Frick neighborhood at 64th Avenue and Camden Street near Concordia Park around 6 p.m. The city's ShotSpotter system also detected shooting activity in the area. At the scene, officers found a 16-year-old boy who had been shot and who had died from his wounds, Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong said in a Facebook video stream Thursday night. A...

WALNUT CREEK — BART police arrested a man on a no-bail theft warrant Monday night following a major delay aboard the system, officials said. Officers initially responded about 5:15 p.m. for a report that a male was holding a female hostage on board a train at the Walnut Creek station and that he had a gun. BART said Tuesday that that report was discovered to be unfounded. The police response and subsequent investigation led to trains being shut down for about an hour, according to the agency. The suspect was taken to the Martinez Detention Facility.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — As the Bay Area continues to struggle under the weight of its homelessness crisis, officials and nonprofits are asking local residents to do more than hand out meals or donate spare change. They’re asking them to open up their homes.

Someone surreptitiously gained access to a Bay Area community's water supply and deleted programs that treat drinking water, NBC News reported. The breach happened on January 15 and was noticed the next day by workers at the unnamed facility, who changed passwords and added the programs back in. The individual is being referred to as a hacker, but it doesn't appear it took much hacking to get in. The person got hold of a former plant employee's username and password, and simply logged themselves into the system.

A group of self-governing, co-living tenants residing in a 17,000-square-foot grand mansion on the San Francisco Peninsula are looking for some new roommates. A tenant at the unique living situation in Woodside, Calif., is seeking three new renters to join their sprawling palatial home, and started the search on Facebook Wednesday. "We all enjoy developing quality relationships and maintaining a sense of community. We’re all open minded, educated, conscientious, and responsible professionals who work hard and like to enjoy ourselves on our time off. We are a diverse group of technologists, financiers, entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, nurses, musicians, etc.," the post...

It’s been scrawled across the pavement in front of government buildings in bright yellow paint, etched into cardboard signs and poster boards as a rallying cry during protests and addressed as a possibility in countless city council meetings. “Defund the police.” While cities across the country continue to reel in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd, some city officials, politicians and activists are taking action, working on measures aimed to divert funding away from what they view as bloated police budgets, and toward community-based organizations. The objective, commonly summed up with the controversial phrase, has both ardent...

The skies are forecast to be clear in the Bay Area on Saturday, even in San Francisco that has a reputation for being socked in with fog on July 4. Despite the fireworks-friendly forecast, there won't be any dazzling displays of color lighting up San Francisco Bay. Fireworks shows across the region are cancelled to discourage large gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic. None of the big annual shows at the Berkeley Marina, Marin County Fair, Sausalito waterfront and San Francisco's Aquatic Park will take place. Small-town celebrations—including fireworks, parades and festivals—have also been cancelled.

The thunderous sound of fireworks — their blasts sudden, deafening and often terrifyingly similar to gunfire — have reverberated throughout the Bay Area in recent weeks. Residents in the big cities and even in the quieter suburbs report the explosions started over Memorial Day weekend and have persisted through June, waking them in the night, interrupting their babies' naps and scaring their pets. Fireworks packaging has been found around Lake Merritt in Oakland, and Nextdoor boards and Twitter are filling up with news of the booms and bangs in San Francisco. "I’m losing my mind," said SF resident J. Barry....

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Police in a small San Francisco Bay Area community were about to help authorities in neighboring Oakland keep the peace during a protest when a more pressing crisis hit home: groups of thieves were pillaging malls, setting fire to a Walmart and storming a car dealership. By the time San Leandro officers arrived at the Dodge dealership, dozens of cars were gone and thieves were peeling out of the lot in $100,000 Challenger Hellcat muscle cars. Nearly 75 vehicles were stolen Sunday, including models driven through glass showroom doors to escape. “It was very strategic,” Sgt....

Alameda and Contra Costa counties are likely to move into Stage 2 of California Governor Gavin Newsom's reopening plan next week, meaning every Bay Area county except one will be in line with the rest of the state. An Alameda County spokesperson told SFGATE Thursday that barring a big spike in cases over the next few days, retail for curbside pickup as well as associated manufacturing and warehouse work will be permitted to return sometime next week, but a specific date was not provided. A Contra Costa spokesperson also stated that the county is considering revising the health order to...

The 49ers Faithful is anxiously awaiting the day that they can safely pack Levi's Stadium and watch their defending NFC Champions live after the COVID-19 pandemic. That day may not be as soon as many thought according to Santa Clara County executive officer Dr. Jeff Smith. "Sorry to say, I don't expect that we'll have any sports games until at least Thanksgiving and we'll be lucky to have them by Thanksgiving," Dr. Smith said. These predictions came Tuesday during the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors meeting as Dr. Smith discussed the fact that even if shelter-in-place orders are lifted...

If you're like me, you might have noticed religious billboard ads seem to have proliferated around the Bay Area. I've seen them all over my morning commute and encountered one on a recent trip to Sacramento that made me especially curious. "After you die," it professed in large block letters, "you WILL meet God." The ads have been spotted in several locations around Oakland and San Francisco, so my first assumption was that the billboards were being put on by a local or California-based mega-church. But I figured my questions were better answered through a call to the toll-free number...

A rise in the number of wild mushroom poisonings in the Bay Area may be linked to our wet winter, state officials said. The California Poison Control System says 14 cases were reported in five counties in December. Three of the victims required liver transplants. The youngest victim was just 18 months old. Poison control says it usually sees just a few cases of so-called "death cap" mushroom poisonings each year. Experts say the abundance of rain likely caused more of the wild mushrooms to sprout. Doctors say symptoms don't appear for many hours, and by then the toxicity is...

More than one-third of Bay Area residents say they are ready to leave in the next few years, citing high housing costs and traffic as the region’s biggest problems, according to a poll released Monday. Of the 1,000 people polled by the Bay Area Council, 34 percent said they are considering leaving. Those who have lived here five years or less are the most likely to want to leave. “This is our canary in a coal mine,” said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council. “Residents are screaming for solutions.”

Last July, Google threw an office party. But this being Google — the third largest company in the world as of January — it wasn't really a standard ice-cream-cake-and-canned-beer office party. The event was luau-themed, so the company hired staff to dig big holes in its Mountain View campus' lawn and fit spits inside for the purposes of roasting pigs, according to people who were there. There were tables full of food and drinks scattered around. Also on offer: a sophisticated wave machine so employees could try their hands at surfing — miles away from the ocean. In the tech...

The Bay Fair BART Station in San Leandro was shut down for more than five hours Saturday after a midday shooting killed a man and wounded a woman, authorities said. The deceased victim, described only as a 40-year-old black man, died at the scene of the 12:20 p.m. shooting at the bus stop outside the station, BART officials said. The station was shut down at 12:50 p.m. while authorities collected evidence and searched for suspects. The station did not completely reopen until after 7 p.m. The second shooting victim was rushed to a nearby hospital. Her injuries are not believed...

It's no surprise to LaTanya Lozano that homicides are up in the Bay Area's biggest cities. She moved to Hayward in late 2011 to try to protect her four sons, only to see two of them shot dead last year back where she used to live, Oakland. First her 15-year-old, Shonte Daniels Jr., was shot by a 14-year-old friend in a park, apparently after teasing him. Six months later, in October, 21-year-old Rashad Meredith was caught in the middle of a gunfight between rival groups outside his aunt's apartment. "This tore down my whole life," said Lozano, who was hospitalized...

Arturo Hurtado of Richmond was still stricken with grief over the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 schoolchildren dead when he awoke Saturday morning. So he decided to get rid of his gun - "that darn thing," he called it - and purged it from his home. "I've got kids, man," said Hurtado, who works at Waste Management in Oakland and has children ages 14, 10, 6 and 1. "Kids are curious. Kids don't know any better. I had it locked in a toolbox, so I don't know. ... I just know it had to go." Hurtado was...

(10-18) 15:07 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A bright flash across the sky and a shaking boom awed Bay Area onlookers Wednesday evening, and one scientist says souvenirs of the phenomenon might be strewn in the hills around Martinez. A meteor, perhaps the size of a small car when it hit the Earth's atmosphere, put on a spectacular lightshow at 7:45 p.m. that was visible throughout the Bay Area and elsewhere in Northern and Central California. The accompanying noise was the meteor's sonic boom as it traveled faster than the speed of sound, said Jonathan Braidman, an astronomy instructor at Oakland's...