Tuesday, January 5, 2010

There is here

On the border between Oakland and Berkeley stand two iron sculptures with "THERE" denoting where Oakland starts.  What does Berkeley's side say?  "HERE," of course.  It's actually pretty funny even if it is a sideways diss of Oakland.  It's a sly reference to Gertrude Stein's supposed comment about Oakland that "There's no there there."  But honest, folks, she wasn't referring to her hometown, but rather to the fact that her childhood home was no longer standing in the old neighborhood.  The elevated structure in the background is the BART metro system.
Posted by Oakland Daily Photo at 6:10 PM
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4 comments:

  1. Janet M KincaidJanuary 6, 2010 at 11:55 PM

    Fabulous! I can say the same thing about the hospital I was born in in Vallejo: there's no there there. Now, it's a 7-11.

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  2. Oakland Daily PhotoJanuary 7, 2010 at 4:14 PM

    You might end up saying the same thing about the Cal campus. So much building has gone on in the last 15 years that it is almost unrecognizeable. If they ever try to build on the old Eucalyptus Grove, I've vowed to become a tree sitter myself! Some things should just be sacrosanct. Go Bears!

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  3. Three Rivers, MichiganJanuary 10, 2010 at 4:46 PM

    I'll fly out for treesitting in the Eucalyptus grove - they'd never get away with it. But wow when I was there Christmas, all the building going on!
    (Note: There's definitely no "there" left in Walnut Creek, either, if there was there there ever!)
    Three Rivers Daily Photo

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  4. KimMarch 20, 2010 at 3:40 PM

    Hey, our 2nd Berkeley house is a block up 62nd St. from here/there. Ours was the last house in Berkeley, with our next door and backyard neighbors' homes being in Oakland. In fact, a two foot by forty foot strip of our property was in Oakland, so we had to pay property tax on that separately, so we were both Here and There :-). This was a convenient location, for sure. Our first house was in north Berkeley.

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