It’s always sunny in Alameda

WEEK 11

Looking east from the San Francisco waterfront along the Embarcadero, it’s easy to see the nearly 300-foot-tall shipping container cranes at the Port of Oakland (which, urban legend has it, inspired the giant snow walkers in the Empire Strikes Back). Sitting just across the very narrow estuary from the Port is Alameda island – this week’s new discovery.

About a year ago, my good friend Vera bought a cute mid-century bungalow on Alameda, and it was time to visit.

Irena and I hopped a late afternoon ferry from San Francisco, and – get this – there’s a full bar on board. Twenty minutes later, after passing under the Bay Bridge and near Yerba Buena Island, we entered the estuary right alongside those mythical cranes.

We disembarked in Alameda, and as we began walking along the shore, I noticed one of the container ships was moving! We were mesmerized. Irena quickly calculated that the ship was about four-tenths of a mile long carrying over 2,000 containers. I loved the tiny tug boats, eyes and ears for the bridge more than 100 feet above. We kept pace with the ship for about 15 minutes, delighted with our good fortune.

Our first stop was St. George Spirits, part of the newly christened “Spirits Alley” in the decommissioned Naval Air Station at Alameda Point on the western edge of the island. I learned that Alameda was an incredibly important naval base until it closed 20 years ago, housing a massive number of aircraft, ships, two runways and row upon row of aircraft hangars (now home to distilleries, breweries and wineries). I was unprepared for the scale of this place … 2.5 square miles of (mostly) abandoned buildings, empty concrete parcels that could fit a city of big box stores, roads leading nowhere. A perfect spot for any number of movie chase scenes and drag races.

St. George has an enviable location facing the Bay, and during our tasting of craft gin, vodka, rye and absinthe, we watched a wall of fog quickly gobble up the city.

Before dinner, Vera toured us around this mostly residential island (25 mph speed limit!) with miles of shoreline and sandy beaches. She explained that in the early 1900s, Alameda was a destination for wealthy San Franciscans who frequented its swimming baths and a giant amusement park once known as the Coney Island of the West. There were some lovely tree-lined streets (“Alameda” in Spanish), restored Victorians, a neat deco movie theatre, postage-stamp homes with red tile roofs, beach shacks and boxy 70’s apartment complexes. But it all sort of worked together in a comfortable time warp, with a slower pace of life and less fog.

P.S. Although this was my first trip to the island, when I was a young teen, my father had a friend with a power boat who took my brother and me water skiing of all things in the estuary at the eastern edge of Alameda. Picture a narrow slit of water by a major highway in an industrial area of Oakland with zero natural beauty. The experience must have been so unpleasant because I never water skied again.