The San Francisco Bay we know today was born from violent ruptures of the [...]
The San Francisco Bay we know today was born from violent ruptures of the earth, the decomposition of glacial sheets & catastrophic ecological change. Its social history is also one of rupture, decomposition, and catastrophic change. From that struggle, beautiful things emerged.
That history is also filled with continuities, recompositions, and unexpected encounters. Its stories can be read like a tapestry, threaded by the lives and deeds of dead generations. But its patterns are not as clear as the city skyline or the contours of the bay’s shoreline.
Instead, they resemble the muddied edges of the marshlands. And if we peer into those muddy waters, we can still make out shapes: displaced histories of conflict, forgotten landmarks, hard-fought movements, and organizations built from the sweat and blood of working masses.
We must plunge into the marsh, that messy living mass, to find out what’s left in the bay.
