05 May 2005

Bay Bridge

I'm looking out the window of the 21st floor of the Oakland Marriott. It is Cinco de Mayo, and election day in Britain, and they have rounded up another top al Qaida operative. I am far behind the world that lives in Greenwich Mean Time, or Eastern Standard, for that matter. All things will be revealed in time.

I am peering out the window. It is actually the 20 th floor, since they skip the unlucky one, and the objective number of floors is symmetrical. It has been raining, and the clouds hang low over the Bay Bridge. I look down on the roofs of the downtown. There are some gaps, and some construction. The word is that Jerry Brown, former Governor Moonbeam and current mayor, has made some progress in sprucing up this gritty port town.

There are still has some heroic buildings of another century, but it is sliced and bisected by the freeways, contained by the concrete arms of the I-880 that heads north to the bridge and the spur of I-580 that lops the top off the city.

I could not see that in the morning, of course. The details of the architecture looked fine from down on the street. That is the perspective from which they are supposed to be viewed, not from above, with the ugly business of heating and cooling on the roof visible for anyone to see.

After the meeting with the Admiral that brought me here, I stood on the corner in front of the Hotel. It is new, or relatively so, and shares the Convention Center. I was looking at the marvelous crumbling façade of a mustard brick building that had once been headquarters to the major competitor to the Southern Pacific Railroad company for cross-bay trolley traffic. It stands, a little forlorn, over the underground entrance to the Bay Area Rapid Transit System. Behind it, the Tribune Tower and the crenellated castle of City Hall loom majestically.

I have always spent my time by the Bay on the other side, in magnificent San Francisco. Oakland is terra incognita to me. In the day it was the city of Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, simmering anger and resentment looking across the water at the Summer of Love.

My room at the hotel was not ready and had no prospect of being so until late in the day. I gently suggested that as a valued customer, they might help me out. They replied in an equally gentle way that after only another 38 nights with them I would be advanced to the Platinum Level of membership when that might be possible. Until then, nothing could be done.

I had nothing to bargain with and nothing on the agenda until a conference call at noon local time. I resigned myself to doing my business in the lobby. I walked down Broadway, under the freeway and past the jail and the Coroner's office to Jack London Square.

Oakland has embraced her almost-native son as an icon and spiritual symbol of the town. He was born in 1876 across the water, “south of the slot,” on Market Street in San Francisco. He was moved to Oakland from the roaring streets of the Barbary Coast as a toddler, and grew up on the docks of Oakland.

London is the name he took as a writer, part of the tradition of re-invention that is California. He lived hard and wrote hard and he died of kidney failure at the ripe old age of 40. There is a quote from him on a plaque set in the pavement. It is a passionate and well-crafted plea to live in the moment, shooting like a meteor across the sky.

Years later it could be said more simply. “Live fast. Die Young. Leave a beautiful corpse.”

The city fathers have taken him as the symbol of the Klondike Gold Rush that left from these docks and named an impressive public esplanade after him. A statue of the author stands larger than life down by the rail above the water. His bronze face is impassive, though intended to convey passion, and the fingers of his left hand are curiously splayed in supplication. His back is to the water and his face looks toward the freeway and the truncated downtown.

I think the square is intended to be the Oakland equivalent of Fisherman's Warf, and it looks like the verdict is still out. About half the storefronts are vacant, and it lappears to be struggling to survive. Perhaps it is just too soon in the tourist season.

I am here to talk to the University of California people about their contract to manage the National Weapons Labs. I had thought I was done with nukes, but you never know what fate sends your way. The issue is that we cannot test the pesky things anymore, and they are a bit like nuclear toaster ovens left on in their little vaults, cooking steadily, and there is some question of whether they will work as advertised.

I think it would be a charming thing if the atomic capability slowly just cooked away, but then that would leave the upstart nations with new weapons that work. That would be bad. So there is some justifiable concern about whether our weapons will work. And that is why I am here.

There are still a few gray ships over at the former base at Alameda, though the Navy is long gone. An ancient aircraft carrier is now parked there as a memorial to what was. Beyond the towering cranes of the Port of Oakland and the bridge are the spires of the City. I can just make out the sharp point of the TransAmerica Tower. The city beckons on the other end of the Bay Bridge, cloaked in cloud.

But it is on the other side of the water, and it is raining.

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