I made a little venture out to Yerba Buena Island this morning. I think YBI (as the kids call it) has a mysterious air about – but it’s mostly concocted in my head. Yerba Buena island used to be solely military housing, the enlisted men and their families live on Treasure Island. Treasure Island is man-made, Yerba Buena Island is solid rock and used to be officer’s housing (it’s also a mid-way marker on your trip across the Bay Bridge.). On Yerba Island there aren’t really any people – there are strange condo-type housing places that are inhabited by renters, and there are “Strictly Off-Limits” areas controlled by the U.S. Coast Guard. Because the Coast Guard still has a presence on the Island, and because that causes me to think that there are guys with machine guns hiding out in the woods i take the hundreds of, “No Stopping Anytime,” signs fairly seriously. It seems that you’re not supposed to climb around looking for interesting places to take pictures, rather just drive down the hill to the bridge on-ramp, from your house, because “outsiders” (that would be me) don’t seem to be too welcome there.

I was driving up past a group of condos when a guy in an old beat-up range rover cut me off, his friend was in front of him, also in a beat up old range rover. His friend was towing a large trailer with some water-sports equipment attached (jet-skis, etc) Immediately after he cut me off his friend decided that the trailer needed some minor adjustment, so i waited there for about 5 minutes while he ran around tightening things (single lane roads everywhere up there). The two guys seemed to live there and since i politely waited for them to go about their business i decided that i was allowed to park in one of their now vacant parking spots and explore the wooded hill in front of their house. It was earily silent at the top of the island and the fact that there were about 10 other cars parked there had me imagining various confrontational scenerios the entire time, so i made especially sure not to litter or trample the grass too much.

The vantage point i found was an excellent one – it wasn’t far off the road, but was a little ways down a rather uninviting hill. There was an old rusted chainlink fence preventing someone from falling down the 40 or 50 feet to the road below. On top of the fence were some old non-working flood lights and thick steel cable, i can only imagine these items were used to flush out trespassers such as myself during the days when the island was an active Coast Guard base.

After about 20 minutes of trying to find a good location my nature-induced sneezing fit set in full swing and i decided it was probably time to take off. On my way back to the car i found a spot just off the hill under a couple of trees that had the view i had been looking for – with a pre-cut camera hole already in the fence! It looked like no one had been there in ages, the hole was at perfect tripod height, but had old rusty sections of lens-ruining chain-link sticking out all over the place.

I didn’t end up getting arrested or confronted or anything else this morning. I did however end up sneezing a lot more after i left. (I also ended up eating a chicken burrito, but that’s another tale)