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OAKLAND , the workhorse of the Bay Area, is one of the largest ports
on the west coast. It has also been the breeding ground of revolutionary
political movements . In the Sixties, the city's fifty percent black
population found a voice through the militant Black Panthers, and
in the Seventies the Symbionese Liberation Army, kidnappers of heiress
Patty Hearst, obtained a ransom of free food for the city's poor.
It's not all hard graft, though: the climate is often sunny and
mild when San Francisco is cold and dreary, and there's great hiking
in the redwood-and eucalyptus-covered hills above the city.
Despite this, there's not all that much to see within the city,
the major concession to the tourist trade being the waterfront Jack
London Square, an aseptic collection of national chains that have
nothing to do with the writer. At the far eastern end of the promenade,
however, you will find Heinhold's First and Last Chance Saloon ,
a slanting tiny bar built in 1883 from the hull of a whaling ship.
Jack London really did drink here, and the collection of yellowed
portraits of him on the wall are the only genuine thing about the
writer you'll find on the square. A half-mile north up Broadway
from the waterfront, Oakland's restored downtown is anchored by
chain stores and the gargantuan open-air City Center complex of
offices and fast food. Beside it, at Broadway and 14th Street, the
massive green space of Frank Ogawa Plaza offers a good place for
people-watching. A bit east on Tenth and Oak streets, the Oakland
Museum of California ($6; Wed-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm) has a
good exhibit of California history, including the Beat Generation.
Gertrude Stein , who was born in Oakland at around the same time
as the macho and adventurous London, is barely commemorated - perhaps
because she wrote "what was the use of me having come from
Oakland, it was not natural for me to have come from there yes write
about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is
no there there " - a quote which has haunted Oakland ever since.
Nonetheless, the majority of Oakland residents are proud of their
city, and would argue that there is indeed a there there, notably
in the small and trendy communities of Rockridge and Piedmont Avenue
, and the lively Grand Avenue neighborhood.
Joaquin Miller Park , the most easily accessible of Oakland's hilltop
parks, stands above East Oakland. It was once home to the "Poet
of the Sierras," Joaquin Miller, who made his name playing
the eccentric frontier American in the salons of 1870s London. His
poems weren't exactly acclaimed (his greatest poetic achievement
was rhyming "teeth" with "Goethe"), but his
prose account of the time he spent with the Modoc Indians near Mount
Shasta remains invaluable. His house, a small white cabin called
The Abbey , still survives, as do the thousands of trees he planted.
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