All About San Francisco Bay Area
The Bay Area (the San Francisco Bay Area) is a geographically diverse and vast metropolitan area that is home to over 7 million people in cities like San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose and is located in northern California on San Francisco Bay. The Bay area is now well known for lifestyle, radical politics and high-tech industry (Silicon Valley), which once was the focus of Spanish missions and Gold Rush prospectors.
Although it has no defined limits, it covers nine regions in the Bay Area: Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara. San Mateo and the northern portion of the counties of Santa Clara constitute the Peninsula while the counties of Contra Costa and Alameda surround the Bay Area’s East Coast. The southern parts of the provinces of Sonoma and Napa are regarded as part of the Bay Region because their culture and economy face the Bay. To the East and to the South, the Bay Area or Central Valley / Central Coast rely on who you inquire from the outlying towns such as Gilroy and Santa Cruz.
The Bay Area is a wonderful place to visit all year round and temperate in the summers and cool in winter. Microclimates influence the weather in the bay area, so it may take up to 15 degrees warmer in sections of the eastern bay than San Francisco Centre, and 20 degrees warmer than the Golden Gate Bridge district. The closer to the ocean, the cooler it is, it is suggested that you remember this while traveling around the city.
The Bay Area is currently home to a booming computer animation industry led by Pixar Animation Studios and Light & Magic Industrial. Pixar, based in Emeryville, produced the first full-computer animated feature film, Toy Story, using in-house software that it designed and its computer animation films have received 26 Academy Awards and critical acclaim since.
The Bay Area also hosts several hundred classical music ensembles, ranging from community choirs, professional orchestras, such as the San Francisco Symphony, California Symphony, Fremont Symphony Orchestra, Oakland Symphony and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra.
There is also an active youth theater scene within the Bay Area. ACT and the Berkeley Repertory also run young actors’ classes and workshops, as do the Peninsula Youth Theater and Willow Glen Children’s Theater in the Peninsula and South Bay, the Bay Area Children’s Theater and Danville Children’s Musical Theater in the East Bay, and Marin Shakespeare in the North Bay, among many others.
The San Francisco Bay Area is the eighth-largest TV market and the fourth-largest radio area in the United States. The Bay Area’s main newspapers are the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, Northern California’s top and second-most frequently circulated newspaper.
The Bay Area is home to six professional major league sports franchises: The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) in American football, the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer (MLS).
The Bay Area has an ideal climate for outdoor recreation, so that activities such as hiking and cycling are popular with locals. There are more than 200 miles (320 km) of bike paths, lanes and bike routes within San Francisco, and the Embarcadero and Marina Green are the favorite spots for skateboarding. There are extensive tennis facilities in Golden Gate Park, Dolores Park and smaller courts throughout the area.Residents of San Francisco were also among the fittest in the United States. San Francisco Bay is popular for boating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing, and the City maintains a Marina District Yacht Harbour. In Marina Harbour is St. Francis Yacht Club and Golden Gate Yacht Club, while the Oracle Park is next to the South Beach Yacht Club. The Bay Area hosted the 2013 America’s Cup.
The Bay Area is one of the richest regions in the United States, mainly due to the economic power of San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland. After New Canaan, Connecticut, the bay area town of Pleasanton has the country’s second highest household income. Nevertheless, discretionary revenues are comparable to the rest of the world, especially as the higher living costs outweigh higher incomes.
