Going through the tunnel from Oakland to Alameda is like traveling back in time. But to which decade? The downtown district has the atmosphere of a 1950's small town though most of its buildings are actually Art Deco. School kids hang out in bunches on the streets, in ice cream parlours and coffee houses, but the area feels safe since the police station, public library and City Hall are located nearby. Everything is in easy walking distance...so we took a lazy walk in the warm afternoon sun, a slow ramble round the block.
Just a few blocks from the business center you've wandered into the Victorian era. Great rambling houses with front porches, turrets, and port-holed windows give one the illusion of living in the 1880's -- if it weren't for the ratty apartment buildings stuck in between the houses, cheap concrete structures erected in the 60's to make a fast buck.
Go to the north of the island and you're in today's suburbia with look-alike condos, MacDonald's, and shopping malls. Along the beach you're in the 1970's: beachcomber apartments with grills and surfing boards parked on their balconies.
Huge Elizabethan mansions line the canal. Neighborhoods of Art Deco, Craftsman, and Mediterranean bungalows are sandwiched between the beaches and downtown. Abandoned Navy buildings disintegrate by the bay while factories turned into artist studios proliferate by the bridges.
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