Public transport
Public transport is transport of passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public managed on a schedule, operated on established routes, that charge a posted fee for each trip. Examples of public transport include city buses, trolleybuses and passenger trains, rapid transit and ferries. Public transport between cities is dominated by airlines and intercity rail. High-speed rail networks are being developed in many parts of the world. Most public transport systems run along fixed routes with set embarkation/disembarkation points to a prearranged timetable, with the most frequent services running to a headway. However, most public transport trips include other modes of travel, such as passengers walking or catching bus services to access train stations. Share taxis offer on-demand services in many parts of the world, which may compete with fixed public transport lines, or compliment them, by bringing passengers to interchanges. Paratransit is sometimes used for people who need a door-to-door service.
Urban public transit differs distinctly among Asia, North America, Europe. In Asia, profit-driven, privately-owned and publicly traded mass transit and real estate conglomerates predominantly operate public transit systems In North America, municipal transit authorities most run mass transit operations. In Europe, both state-owned and private companies predominantly operate mass transit systems, Public transport services can be profit-driven by use of pay-by-the-distance fares or funded by government subsidies in which flat rate fares are charged to each passenger. Services can be profitable through high usership numbers and high farebox recovery ratios, or can be regulated and subsidised from local or national tax revenue. Subsidised, free of charge services operate in some towns and cities. For geographical and economic reasons, differences exist internationally regarding use and extent of public transport. While countries in the Old World tend to have extensive and frequent systems serving their old and dense cities, many cities of the New World have more sprawl and much less comprehensive public transport.
The International Association of Public Transport is the international network for public transport authorities and operators, policy decision-makers, scientific institutes and the public transport supply and service industry. It has 3,400 members from 92 countries from all over the globe. Conveyances designed for public hire are as old as the first ferries, the earliest public transport was water transport: on land people walked or rode an animal. Ferries appear in Greek mythology—corpses in ancient Greece were buried with a coin underneath their tongue to pay the ferryman Charon to take them to Hades; some historical forms of public transport include the stagecoach, traveling a fixed route between coaching inns, the horse-drawn boat carrying paying passengers, a feature of European canals from their 17th-century origins. The canal itself as a form of infrastructure dates back to antiquity – ancient Egyptians used a canal for freight transportation to bypass the Aswan cataract – and the Chinese built canals for water transportation as far back as the Warring States period which began in the 5th century BCE.
Whether or not those canals were used for for-hire public transport remains unknown. The omnibus, the first organized public transit system within a city, appears to have originated in Paris, France, in 1662, although the service in question failed a few months after its founder, Blaise Pascal, died in August 1662; the omnibus was introduced to London in July 1829. The first passenger horse-drawn railway opened in 1806: it ran between Swansea and Mumbles in southwest Wales in the United Kingdom. In 1825 George Stephenson built the Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in northeast England, the first public steam railway in the world; the first successful electric streetcar was built for 12 miles of track for the Union Passenger Railway in Richmond, Virginia in 1888. Electric streetcars could carry heavier passenger loads than predecessors, which reduced fares and stimulated greater transit use. Two years after the Richmond success, over thirty two thousand electric streetcars were operating in America.
Electric streetcars paved the way for the first subway system in America. Before electric streetcars, steam powered subways were considered. However, most people believed that riders would avoid the smoke filled subway tunnels from the steam engines. In 1894, Boston built the first subway in the United States, an electric streetcar line in a 1.5 mile tunnel under Tremont Street’s retail district. Other cities such as New York followed, constructing hundreds of miles of subway in the following decades. Aerial lift Aerial tramway Funifor Chairlift Detachable chairlift Funitel Gondola lift Maritime transport Ferry Cable ferry Reaction ferry Water taxi Land transport Personal public transport Bicycle-sharing system Carsharing Personal rapid transit Rail transport Inter-city rail High-speed rail Maglev Urban rail transit Airport rail link Atmospheric railway Automated guideway transit Cable car Cable railway Commuter rail Elevated railway Funicular Inclined elevator Light rail Medium-capacity rail system Mono
Hardtop
A hardtop is a rigid form of automobile roof, which for modern cars is constructed from metal. A hardtop roof can be either fixed, detachable for separate storing or retractable within the vehicle itself. Pillarless hardtop is a body style of cars without a B-pillar, which are styled to give the appearance of a convertible. A detachable hardtop is a rigid, removable roof panel, stored in a car's trunk/boot. A retractable hardtop is a type of convertible that forgoes a folding textile roof in favor of an automatically operated, multi-part, self-storing roof where the rigid roof sections are opaque, translucent, or independently operable; the pillarless hardtop is a hardtop with no B-pillar, styled to look like a convertible. If window frames are present, they are designed to retract with the glass; this creates an impression of uninterrupted glass along the side of the car. A pillarless hardtop is inherently less rigid than a pillared body, requiring extra underbody strength to prevent shake. Production hardtops shared the frame or reinforced body structure of the contemporary convertible model, reinforced to compensate for the lack of a fixed roof.
Hardtops tend to be more collectible than sedan models of the same vehicle. Some hardtop models took the convertible look further, including such details as simulating a convertible-top framework in the interior headliner and shaping the roof to resemble a raised canvas top. By the late-1960s such designs could be highlighted with an optional vinyl cover applied on the steel roof; the hardtop began to disappear along with convertibles in the mid-1970s out of a concern that U. S. federal safety regulations would be difficult for pillarless models to pass. The ascendancy of monocoque construction made the pillarless design less practical; some models adopted modified roof styling, placing the B pillars behind tinted side window glass and painting or molding the outer side of each pillar in black to make them less visible, creating a hardtop look without omitting the pillar. Some mid- to late-1970s models continued their previous two-door hardtop bodies, but with fixed rear windows or a variety of vinyl roof and opera window treatments.
By the end of the 1990s all hardtop designs disappeared as structural integrity standards continued to increase. Early automobiles had no roof or sides, however by 1900 several cars were offered with fabric roofs and primitive folding tops. However, cars with closed bodies grew in popularity and soon became the norm. In 1915–1918, the first pillarless hardtop cars were produced called "convertible cars"; the Springfield design featured folding upper frames on the doors and the rear glass frames are removable and stored under or behind the seats. In the late teens, Cadillac offered a sedan with removable "B" pillars. Another form of early pillarless hardtop is the "California top", originating in Los Angeles and most popular from 1917—1927; these were designed to replace the folding roofs of touring cars, in order to enclose the sides of the car for better weather protection. One objective of these aftermarket tops was to bring the cost of the closed car nearer to the prices of corresponding open cars.
Automobile dealers were encouraged to equip an open car with a California top to demonstrate that they were "cool and clean in summer, warm and dry in winter." The hard tops were equipped with celluloid windows that retracted like a roller blind for open sided motoring offering a low-cost compromise between an open and closed car. There were a variety of hardtop-like body styles dating back to 1916. Chrysler Corporation built seven pillarless Town and Country hardtop coupes as concept vehicles in 1946, included the body style in its advertising that year. Mass-production of hardtops began with General Motors, which launched two-door, pillarless hardtops in 1949 as the Buick Roadmaster Riviera, Oldsmobile 98 Holiday, Cadillac Coupe de Ville, they were purportedly inspired by the wife of a Buick executive who always drove convertibles, but never lowered the top. The Kaiser-Frazer 1949 Virginian was an early example of a four-door hardtop albeit with a removable thin, chrome- and-glass'B' pillar held on by five screws.
The car was designed to have a convertible look and padded nylon or cotton was applied over the roof to contribute to the soft-top appearance. Two-door hardtops became popular with consumers in the 1950s while the two-door sedan body fell out of favor among buyers. In 1955, General Motors introduced the first four-door hardtops. To popularize the introduction of the body style with no B-pillar, GM gave special trim designations for all their brands in North America; the term Seville was used for Cadillac, Riviera was used for Buick, Holiday was used for Oldsmobile, Catalina was used for Pontiac, Bel Air was used for Chevrolet. GM wasn't the only manufacturer to designate special names for their pillarless models. Fords were Victorias, Chryslers were Newports. Nash used pillarless Studebakers were Starliners. By 1956 every major U. S. automaker offered two- and four-door hardtops in a particular model lineup. General Motors restyled their new models and now offered four-door hardtops from every division and in nearly every series except the lowest priced lines.
In 1956, the first four-door hardtop station wagons were introduced by Rambler and American Motors Corporation. The foll
Big Blue Bus
The Santa Monica Big Blue Bus is a municipal bus operator in the Westside region of Los Angeles County, that provides local and bus rapid transit service in Santa Monica and adjacent neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Express service is provided to Downtown Los Angeles and Union Station; the impetus for the creation was a fare increase on the Pacific Electric interurban trains between Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines was founded on 14 April 1928, launched its first route, choosing a blue livery. Culver CityBus was founded in 4 March 1928, making it the second oldest municipal bus line in California and the oldest public transit bus system still operating in Los Angeles County. San Francisco Municipal Railway began streetcar service 28 December 1912. Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines kept its base fare at 10 cents for a long time; the Santa Monica bus connected with the Los Angeles Railway streetcars at Pico and Rimpau Boulevards in the Mid-City section of Los Angeles. That historic terminus point has become an important transit center in Los Angeles because it is the point where thousands of bus riders along Pico Boulevard must transfer to continue their trips eastward to Downtown Los Angeles or westward to the Westside.
The Big Blue Bus is considered one of the best bus services in the Los Angeles area. The system won the American Public Transportation Association’s Outstanding Transportation System award in 1987, 1992, 1997, 2000 and 2011; the Big Blue Bus did not raise its regular fare above 50 cents until 2002. In contrast, most public bus lines in California were charging fares of a dollar or more well before 2000. There was no monthly pass until August 2010 except for the EZ Pass, unlike other EZ Pass agencies, Metrolink fare media are not accepted. However, allowing for the inevitability of traffic delays on weekday afternoons, the Big Blue Bus system provides frequent and convenient service to most neighborhoods in its service area. Many routes serve UCLA; the Big Blue Bus was one of the last transit agencies using the GMC New Look buses. Big Blue Bus received the last New Looks built; the last one built, #5180, was driven off the property in May 2013 after being donated to the Museum of Bus Transportation in Hershey, which preserves the bus.
It was the first transit agency in the State of California to use the Grumman-Flxible Model 870 advanced design transit buses equipped with Lift-U wheelchair lifts beginning in 1978, the third customer after Atlanta's MARTA, the Connecticut's Department of Transportation's CT Transit's order of these buses. These buses never experienced the same chronic structural problems that plagued these early vehicles that were sold to other transit agencies; these were the first production buses built with wheelchair lifts before ADA became law of the land in 1990. For 20 years until December 1999 Santa Monica Bank ran a series of humorous ads on the back of the buses. Examples include "wrinkled is beautiful. In large denominations", "Go invest, young man", "Was it his eyes? His lips? His jumbo CD?" and "After 20 years on the bus, we've reached our stop". The campaign ended as the bank was absorbed by U. S. Bank; the system was started by former Brentwood resident Rudolph F. Brunner, who sold the system thinking it wouldn't amount to any more than a few dollars a week.
On November 20, 2012, a Big Blue Bus turned left in front of an oncoming motorcyclist, which resulted in the 25-year-old man's death. The accident occurred at 10:33 a.m. at the triangular intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Marquez in the Pacific Palisades. Only buses are allowed to make the left turn, a maneuver, determined to be too dangerous for other vehicles. On June 7, 2013, Bus 4057 of Big Blue Bus was among several vehicles fired at during a thirteen-minute killing spree that left six people dead, including the gunman, four others wounded. Three women suffered minor injuries aboard the bus, one from shrapnel-type injuries and the other two from injuries unrelated to the gunfire. Two dozen people were inside the bus at the time of the shooting; the attack on Bus 4057 marked the first time a Big Blue Bus came under attack by a gunman in its 85-year service. Big Blue Bus operates 14 local routes, 3 Rapid routes, 1 express route in Los Angeles County; the most famous Big Blue Bus is the one rigged with a bomb in 1994's hit movie Speed.
Driving through Los Angeles at rush hour, the bus has to keep its speed over 50 mph or the bomb on the bus will detonate. Two humorous slogans Santa Monica Bank used on Big Blue Buses appeared in the film; the bus operator in the movie is called the Santa Monica Intercity Bus Lines, a fictionalized version of the Big Blue Bus's official name, the Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines. More tellingly, the bus in the film is a General Motors "New Look" bus, introduced in 1959 but kept in prominent and active service by Santa Monica until early 2005, long after most other American cities had retired the retro-looking bus. In another effort to differentiate the movie's bus from any real-world bus, the headsigns on the Speed bus display: 33 DOWNTOWN | VIA FREEWAYHowever, number 33 buses are operated by Metro, not Big Blue, run on Venice Boulevard, not the Santa Monica Freeway; the closest thing to the movie bus's routing is Santa Monica's number 10 express route. The bus number was 2525, not within any equipment number range operated by the real company at that time.
It should be noted that at the time the movie was released, Santa Monica's GM New Look fleet were the Canadian-built versions with wheelchair lifts.
Superior Coach Company
Superior Coach is a former body manufacturer of the American automotive industry. Founded in 1909 as the Garford Motor Truck Company, Superior is best known for constructing bodies for professional cars and yellow school buses. Following major downturns in both segments in the late 1970s, Superior was liquidated by its parent company in 1980. From 1925 to 1980, the company was based in Ohio. After its 1980 closure, the Superior name would live on through several other companies; the manufacturing of school buses would play a part of the formation of Mid Bus and the professional car operations would remain in Lima as part of Accubuilt, Inc. In 1909, the Garford Motor Truck Company was established in Elyria, Ohio, a small town 30 miles outside Cleveland. By June 1912, the company was awarded a lucrative contract with the United States Post Office; the first order called for the following for 20 trucks, for a total of 31 trucks. "This is significant of the practical efficiency of this most advanced commercial car."
The post office had experimented for two years "with every truck made." They tried not only the foreign trucks, as well. The test resulted in the Garford being awarded first honors; the Garford proved to be the most practical truck under all conditions. In 1925, Garford Motor Truck changed its name to the Superior Body Company and moved its operations to Lima, where it occupied a new plant housing a large manufacturing facility and administrative offices; the company diversified, introducing a line of hearse and ambulance bodies and becoming a major producer of school bus bodies for the U. S. and Canada, as well as export markets. For its professional-car platforms, Superior signed an agreement with Studebaker, thus gaining instant access to some 3000 dealers and Studebaker's chassis engineering; the company had continuing success for several years, on the strength of this arrangement, rose to a prominent position in the professional-car business. By 1930, Superior and Studebaker had the only complete line of professional cars in the North American market.
In 1938, having achieved success and having established a dealer network of its own, Superior left the partnership with Studebaker and began building bodies on General Motors platforms. In 1940 the company changed its name again, to Superior Coach Company. School bus bodies were built on Chevrolet/GM, Dodge and International Harvester truck chassis. In 1951, the Lima facility was expanded and a new facility in Kosciusko, Mississippi was opened. In 1969, Superior Coach Company was acquired by the Sheller-Globe Corporation, an industrial conglomerate and auto parts maker based in Toledo, Ohio; the 1977 model year saw a major downsizing in the Cadillac automobile chassis used for the professional car business. In addition to being smaller, Cadillac's commercial chassis was more expensive and Superior, as well as other ambulance and funeral car manufacturers, had to design new bodies and retool their factories, resulting in much higher consumer costs; the ambulance sector switched to larger vehicles based upon van, cutaway van chassis, truck chassis.
The watershed year of 1977 brought new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for school buses built after April 1, which increased both costs and engineering challenges. In addition to higher costs, at the same time, a downturn in North American school bus purchase volumes began as the children of the Baby Boom generation completed their elementary and secondary educations. By 1980, Superior was one of the "Big Six" school bus body manufacturing companies in the United States, competing with Blue Bird Body Company, Carpenter Body Company, Thomas Built Buses, Inc. Ward Body Company, Wayne Corporation, as well as Gillig Corporation and Crown Coach Corporation. Bidding competition for reduced volumes became devastating to profits and liquidity. In 1979, Ward declared bankruptcy, reorganizing as AmTran the following year, which became IC Bus. Faced with these challenges, industry over-capacity among school bus manufacturers, the loss of ambulance business in the professional car sector and decreased sales of funeral coaches due to higher production and sales costs, Sheller-Globe Corporation liquidated its Superior Coach Company-related investments in late 1980, portions of its assets were sold.
After Sheller-Globe announced the closure of its Lima bus and professional car manufacturing operations in 1980, several small businesses purchased portions of the assets, carried on with several product lines. Although large school bus manufacturing was discontinued with the 1980 model year, Mid Bus, a new small business based in Lima organized by three former employees, resumed production of the smallest Superior school buses, beginning with a workforce of seven persons; the small business of Mid Bus grew and after a move to a much larger facility at Bluffton, was acquired by Collins Industries in 1998. In 1981, the hearse business of Superior was sold to Tom Earnhart; that year, it was merged with the largest competitor, the S&S Coach Company. This formed a new company, S&S/Superior of Ohio, to oversee the further development of the two businesses. Manufacturing operations were consolidated at Superior's plant in Lima, expanded 30 years earlier; as of 2007, S&S/Superior now operates as a division of Accubuilt, Inc. using the Superior Coach trade name for its line of funeral cars and specialty vehicles.
Accubuilt's 200,000-square-foot flagship facility was the exclusive production plant for the W. P. Chrysler Executive Series 300, a l
Los Angeles International Airport
Los Angeles International Airport, locally referred to as LAX, is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California. LAX is in the Westchester district of the city of Los Angeles, California, 18 miles southwest of Downtown Los Angeles, with the commercial and residential areas of Westchester to the north, the city of El Segundo to the south and the city of Inglewood to the east. Owned and operated by Los Angeles World Airports, an agency of the government of Los Angeles known as the Department of Airports, the airport has over 3,500 acres of land, LAX has four parallel runways. In 2018, LAX handled 87,534,384 passengers, making it the world's fourth busiest and the United States' second busiest airport following Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport; as the largest and busiest international airport on the U. S. West Coast, LAX is a major international gateway to the United States, serves a connection point for passengers traveling internationally; the airport holds the record for the world's busiest origin and destination airport, since relative to other airports, many more travelers begin or end their trips in Los Angeles than use it as a connection.
It is the only airport to rank among the top five U. S. airports for both passenger and cargo traffic. LAX serves as a hub or focus city for more passenger airlines than any other airport in the United States, it is the only airport that four U. S. legacy carriers have designated as a hub and is a focus city for Air New Zealand, Allegiant Air, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Southwest Airlines, Volaris. While LAX is the busiest airport in the Greater Los Angeles Area, several other airports, including Hollywood Burbank Airport, John Wayne Airport, Long Beach Airport, as well as Ontario International Airport serve the area. In 1928, the Los Angeles City Council selected 640 acres in the southern part of Westchester for a new airport; the fields of wheat and lima beans were converted into dirt landing strips without any terminal buildings. It was named Mines Field for the real estate agent who arranged the deal; the first structure, Hangar No. 1, is in the National Register of Historic Places. Mines Field opened as the airport of Los Angeles in 1930 and the city purchased it to be a municipal airfield in 1937.
The name became Los Angeles Airport in 1941 and Los Angeles International Airport in 1949. In the 1930s the main airline airports were Burbank Airport in Burbank and the Grand Central Airport in Glendale. Mines Field did not extend west of Sepulveda Boulevard. A tunnel was completed in 1953 allowing Sepulveda Boulevard to revert to straight and pass beneath the two runways. For the next few years the two runways were 8,500 feet long. Before the 1930s, existing airports used a two-letter abbreviation based on the weather stations at the airports. At that time, "LA" served as the designation for Los Angeles Airport, but with the rapid growth in the aviation industry the designations expanded to three letters c. 1947, "LA" became "LAX." The letter "X" has no specific meaning in this identifier. "LAX" is used for the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro and by Amtrak for Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. The "Imperial Hill" area in El Segundo is a prime location for aircraft spotting for takeoffs. Part of the Imperial Hill area has been set aside as Clutter's Park.
Another popular spotting location sits under the final approach for runways 24 L&R on a lawn next to the Westchester In-N-Out Burger on Sepulveda Boulevard. This is one of the few remaining locations in Southern California from which spotters may watch such a wide variety of low-flying commercial airliners from directly underneath a flight path. At 12:51 p.m. on Friday, September 21, 2012, a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft carrying the Space Shuttle Endeavour landed at LAX on runway 25L. An estimated 10,000 people saw the shuttle land. Interstate 105 was backed up for miles at a standstill. Imperial Highway was shut down for spectators, it was taken off the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a modified Boeing 747, was moved to a United Airlines hangar. The shuttle spent about a month in the hangar while it was prepared to be transported to the California Science Center; the distinctive white googie Theme Building, designed by Pereira & Luckman architect Paul Williams and constructed in 1961 by Robert E. McKee Construction Co. resembles a flying saucer that has landed on its four legs.
A restaurant with a sweeping view of the airport is suspended beneath two arches. The Los Angeles City Council designated the building a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1992. A $4 million renovation, with retro-futuristic interior and electric lighting designed by Walt Disney Imagineering, was completed before the Encounter Restaurant opened there in 1997. Visitors are able to take the elevator up to the roof of the "Theme Building", which closed after the September 11, 2001 attacks for security reasons and reopened to the public on weekends beginning on July 10, 2010. Additionally, a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks is located on the grounds, as three of the f
East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area)
The eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area referred to as the East Bay, includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Contra Costa Counties. With a population of 2.5 million in 2010, it is the most populous subregion in the Bay Area. Oakland is the third largest in the Bay Area; the city serves as a major transportation hub for the U. S. West Coast, its port is the largest in Northern California. Increased population has led to the growth of large edge cities such as Alameda, Fremont, San Ramon and Walnut Creek. Although initial development in the larger Bay Area focused on San Francisco, the coastal East Bay came to prominence in the middle of the nineteenth century as the part of the Bay Area most accessible by land from the east; the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 with its western terminus at the newly constructed Oakland Long Wharf, the new city of Oakland developed into a significant seaport.
Today the Port of Oakland is the Bay Area's largest port and the fifth largest container shipping port in the United States. In 1868, the University of California was formed from the private College of California and a new campus was built in what would become Berkeley; the 1906 San Francisco earthquake saw a large number of refugees flee to the undamaged East Bay, the region continued to grow rapidly. As the East Bay grew, the push to connect it with a more permanent link than ferry service resulted in the completion of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge in 1936; the Bay Area saw further growth in the decades following World War II, with the population doubling between 1940 and 1960, doubling again by 2000. The 1937 completion of the Caldecott Tunnel through the Berkeley Hills fueled growth further east, where there was undeveloped land. Cities in the Diablo Valley, including Concord and Walnut Creek, saw their populations increase tenfold or more between 1950 and 1970; the addition of the BART commuter rail system in 1972 further encouraged development in far-flung regions of the East Bay.
Today, the valleys east of the Berkeley Hills contain large affluent suburban communities such as Walnut Creek, San Ramon and Pleasanton. The East Bay is not a formally defined region, aside from its being described as a region inclusive of Alameda and Contra Costa counties; as development moves eastward, new areas are described as being part of the East Bay. In 1996, BART was extended from its terminus in Concord to a new station in Pittsburg, symbolically incorporating the newly expanded Delta communities of Pittsburg and Antioch as extended regions of the East Bay. Beyond the borders of Alameda County, the large population of Tracy is connected as a bedroom community housing commuters traveling to or through the East Bay. Except for some hills and ridges which exist as parklands or undeveloped land, some farmland in eastern Contra Costa and Alameda Counties, the East Bay is urbanized; the East Bay shoreline is an urban corridor with several cities exceeding 100,000 residents, including Oakland, Fremont and Berkeley.
In the inland valleys on the east side of the Berkeley Hills, the land is developed on the eastern fringe of Contra Costa county and the Tri-Valley area. In the inland valleys, the population density is the cities smaller; the only cities exceeding 100,000 residents in the inland valleys are Concord. East Bay cities include: The East Bay has a free weekly newspaper, the East Bay Express, which has reported on the culture and politics of the East Bay for over 30 years, has influenced the identification of the East Bay as a culturally defined region of the Bay Area; the free East Bay Monthly has been published since 1970. In the early years of the evolution of USA Today, during the early 1980s, they operated regional newspapers, with the region's paper entitled East Bay Today; the Solano Avenue Stroll, the oldest and largest street festival in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, is held every September on the Solano Avenue shopping district in Albany and Berkeley. The East Bay is the birthplace of many musical acts, including Creedence Clearwater Revival, Counting Crows and Today, Digital Underground, Green Day, Operation Ivy, Rancid, Set Your Goals, Tower of Power, The Pointer Sisters, MC Hammer, Tony!
Toni! Tone!, Tupac Shakur, Too Short, Spice 1, en Vogue, Pete Escovedo and Sheila E, Keyshia Cole, Mac Dre. The region is a major center for the development of rock, funk, hip hop and women's music. Bay Area thrash metal has centered on the East Bay, including the bands Exodus and Metallica, among others. Possessed and Death, both considered the first death metal bands, have roots or connections in the East Bay: Possessed formed in El Sobrante, with Death debuting nationally while in Concord. Major music venues include home arena of the Golden State Warriors. Major museums include the Oakland Museum of California, the Lawrence Hall of Science and the Chabot Space and Science Center; the East Bay Regional Parks District operates over fifty parks, many consisting of significant acreage of wildlands, in the East Bay, many directly adjacent to urban centers. Tilden Regional Park, is one of the largest regional parks (2,000 acres (8.1
San Francisco
San Francisco the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th-most populous city in the United States, the fourth-most populous in California, with 884,363 residents as of 2017, it covers an area of about 46.89 square miles at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second-most densely populated large US city, the fifth-most densely populated U. S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the fifth-most populous primary statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area; as of 2017, it was the seventh-highest income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $119,868. As of 2015, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $154.2 billion, a GDP per capita of $177,968. The San Francisco CSA was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2017, with a GDP of $907 billion.
Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the US, the San Francisco CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2017, at $93,938. San Francisco was ranked 14th in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2018. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, all named for St. Francis of Assisi; the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.
It became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes along liberal Democratic Party lines. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, its Chinatown district. San Francisco is the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Gap Inc. Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Reddit, Inc. Dolby, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pinterest, Uber, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Weather Underground.
It is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the California Academy of Sciences. As of 2019, San Francisco is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings; the earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. Seven years on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís, established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system ended, its lands became privatized.
In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, Mexico ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography; the California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849; the promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.
Some of these 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships and hotels.
