By Jason Hendardy
Almost a decade ago, a friend had told me about a man-made skate structure in the East Bay I had to check out. It was built out of garbage and quick cement in an old landfill — the Albany Bulb — located on the east shore of the Bay, next to the Berkeley Marina and behind the Golden Gate Fields racetrack, he told me. When I finally made my way there, I was surprised to find that the Bulb was not an actual trash dump. At least not anymore. It was a waterfront park surrounded by trees and natural beauty, as well as concrete slabs, huge art pieces made out of metal, wood, and found materials, and encampments where squatters lived. Since that first visit, the Albany Bulb became one of my favorite places to go, even after the erosion of the skate bowl.
Throughout the years, my friends and I found ourselves heading back to the Bulb to see punk bands play generator shows, meet up for late night parties, and spend days just hanging out there. We learned more about the Bulb’s history, like how the 31-acre land mass was initially created in 1939, when the area was dynamited to build the neighboring racetrack and the debris from the explosion filled the shallow bay, creating the man-made peninsula. The city of Albany agreed to use this land as a dump for construction materials from 1963 until 1987, when efforts by environmental groups like Save the Bay finally put an end to the dumping and the Albany Bulb became part of the Eastshore State Park. But the rebar and concrete and other debris remained, allowing four artists who lived in the area, a collective called Sniff, to create impressive sculptures with what they found.
My friends and I would walk the perimeter of the beach, collecting remnants to mimic the metal and wood sculptures with our own takes on what we thought a garbage version of a snowman would look like. We’d head there late at night with scrap wood and, during the right season, freshly discarded Christmas trees to see how large of a fire we could create. We never got in any trouble.
It felt like the Bulb was placed in a vacuum, immune to permits or permissions; a haven for outsiders and free spirits. But there have been groups, including the East Bay Regional Parks District, the Sierra Club, and Save the Bay, who’ve been pushing for years to evict the people living at the Bulb, and their efforts have succeeded. In October 2014, the resident squatters will finally be forced to leave, due to enforcement of the city’s no-camping ordinance.
The Albany Bulb as I knew it will no longer exist in a few months, so I decided to pay it a visit before its imminent change. I went on a Saturday in mid-January and was happy to see that the Bulb looked like I remembered it. The two-story Mad Mark’s Castle still stood facing out into the Bay, the Landfillian Library still offered a great deal of free books*, and a number of welcoming residents still lived there.
Teetering on a cliff over the Bay, Boxer Bob’s three-story makeshift home created out of pallets is almost like something out of a bizarre art student’s take on a Dwell magazine highlighted home. It’s complete with an indoor fireplace and it faces out toward the water with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge that could make any renter envious. The entire thing is pretty unbelievably DIY chic.
As I continued to walk about 50 yards from there, I happened upon a man who was staring out at the North Bay through binoculars and sitting on a rock wall he had built with his girlfriend. Rich and I began to talk. He told me how he and his girlfriend watched countless sunsets, and recalled when the Richmond refinery caught on fire and filled his view with an unbelievable black cloud. As I walked away, a part of our conversation happened to stick with me. Rich referred to his current setup as “a hundred-dollar tent with a million-dollar view.”
On October 25, 2013, the city of Albany stated that most of the artwork, such as the large driftwood sculptures created by artist and activist Osha Neumann and his son-in-law Jason De Antonis, will remain after the eviction and cleanup of the residential encampments. Yet it’s hard to visualize the Bulb without its residents and a number of the housing structures. There are still several months before any real renovations happen to the Bulb. If you’ve never been, it’s a great slice of rough, untouched old Bay Area that everyone should visit.
*Editor’s note: This story was written just before a fire destroyed the library on Jan. 13.
