This past Thursday, I spent an hour walking around the Albany Bulb, as curious a piece of land as you’ll find in the Bay Area. The Bulb is a spit of former garbage dump that projects into San Francisco Bay adjacent to the Golden Gate Fields racetrack.
Nature has taken over the abandoned land. Trees and bushes surround great piles of concrete and rebar. The peninsula is riddled with trails. It’s deliciously unkempt, a great place for people to escape civilization, let their dogs roam off the leash, gaze at the Bay up close and personal, and explore the amazing collection of folk art created from all sorts of castaway material.
I talked with Jimbow the Hobow, who lives in a ramshackle hovel cobbled together from flotsam and jetsam. Hundreds of books line his walls. A wild assortment of paraphernalia fills his yard. Jim has been writing a book for the last ten years; he’s a couple of pages into it. He’s 55 years old, subsists on beans (he has no teeth), and hangs out here with his Higher Power. He keeps people from trespassing on the humming bird preserve next door. He pointed me toward the best trail for getting to the artwork down below.
The Bulb is an outdoor museum of indigenous art.
Everywhere you turn, people have converted junk into art.
The guiding spirit of the art scene is the 69-year old attorney led the court battle that kept the City of Albany from razing the Bulb to protect people from the homeless and the hobgoblins the City Council imagined must be up to no good absent control and regulation.
I spent a while watching young adults with spray cans do their thing.
The owners of the neighboring racetrack declared bankruptcy the day I took these photos. In early April, developers will bid on the 80-acre shoreline property occupied by the track and its humongous parking lots. Commercial real estate developers are salivating.
The Bulb is officially part of the East Shore State Park but what happens next door is bound to have a big impact on the Bulb. If you live in the Bay Area and want to see the result of unbridled freedom, you better get over to the Bulb soon.
Sadly, my trusty pocket-sized camera tumbled out of my pocket and suffered a fatal fall onto the driveway when I arrived home. These are its final output. RIP, Olympus EXILIM.
Related:
Bum’s Paradise, the movie
The Bulb on Yelp
Jill Poesener’s photos of the Bulb
Jef Poskanzer’s photos of the bulb
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The article is so beautiful with the softness and fullness. Almost poetic. The man subsisting on beans and writing a book and doing the service of keeping stray intrusions, that came across so clearly. A lovely post. Thanks for sharing your life and take care.
i loved this post so much that iv added it to my favorites, you have written it so beautifully, i read it three times, its really a nice post i hav read in quite a while. any ways i was searching for property to let in central london for quite some time and i accidentally found this amazing website no agents 24 with loads and loads of information about tips for tenants, tips for moving, hips. I really like my new house. i went out for some fresh air today early morning, although i am generally not the morning person type but i have to admit i really enjoyed it.