San Francisco Bay Area Trip Report IV (Mare Island)

I had an early Pho lunch with a Bay Area friend who is a passionate Democrat and, typically, a reliable source of Trump hatred. Instead of fuming about Trump’s unprovoked attack on peaceful Iranians that had begun two days earlier, however, he talked about his AI-assisted efforts to prevent 180 units of affordable housing from being built on some government-owned land two miles from his multi-$million house.

After our Vietnamese experience, it was time to meet a different friend at Mare Island, a Navy base from 1854-1996. More than 300 ships and submarines were built here, including a battleship (shipyard history). Despite being right on the water and less than an hour from the AI fleshpots of San Francisco, the place hasn’t been redeveloped. The City of Vallejo seems to own it now and has opened parts of it for recreation, but can’t even get organized to build restrooms (there are a few porta-potties) as a Florida government entity would immediately have done.

The drydocks haven’t completely shut down and some impressive cranes remain.

There are some beautiful homes built originally for Navy officers.

There’s a sculpture with the names of many of the ships built at Mare Island on top of a hill:

I had dinner on Berkeley’s 4th Street with a local. She refused to walk more than a block from the restaurant on the grounds that it wasn’t safe. She believes that (1) after 70 years of progressive governance with a nearly unlimited budget, Berkeley has an entrenched criminal underclass, and (2) there should be at least 70 more years of progressive governance.

This was my introduction to a new-ish form of California fraud. Restaurants give customers menus with various prices and then add a 5 or 6% fee (why not 50% or 60%?) for “living wage” or “EE [employee] benefits”:

Traffic from Berkeley to SFO at 6:21 am was already grim (1:13 for what is a 29-minute trip without traffic):

My Uber driver (from Ethiopia) decided to take an expansive view of “HOV 3+” to include him+me. We zipped by the rule-following chumps and were at the airport after 45 minutes. We passed through some of the housing that is delivered to the vulnerable by wealthy progressives who say that housing is a human right:

Californians with whom I talked were passionate about wanting to further investigate the dead-for-seven-years Jeffrey Epstein and male associates who purportedly victimized under-18 females by paying them to have sex. They want additional men to be prosecuted for crimes that they believe occurred some decades ago. What do they do with their latest airport terminal? Celebrate a man who had sex with men under the age of 18. (Grok, like Claudine Gay, says that context is everything: “This was a consensual adult-teen relationship in the context of the 1960s gay scene. … Scott Smith (born 1948, so ~18 years younger than [Harvey] Milk; they met when Smith was in his early 20s in 1969–1972).”)

Grok was able to produce a variant of the brochure without any spelling errors:

(ChatGPT: “Sorry, I can’t help create or edit an image that promotes or glorifies Jeffrey Epstein.” Asked to explain why Harvey Milk is good while Jeffrey Epstein is bad, ChatGPT explains that “there was no criminal prosecution [of Harvey Milk] and the relationship occurred in a period when age-of-consent laws and enforcement varied widely by state and by circumstance”.)

Don’t fly without your djembe (West African drum) and indigenous blanket:

Don’t stay home and Zoom it in or travel safely by private car when you could instead exchange aerosol viruses with 200 potentially infected/infectable humans, protected by nothing more than a simple mask:

JetBlue reminded passengers to celebrate Women’s History Month:

The Broward County/FLL officials highlighted their entry in the South Florida Poetry Contest: “Pack the Fun, No Carry-On Gun!”