San Leandro Needs You
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5/30/2008
This is an interesting town. At the northwest end, McArthur Avenue by the Oakland border, are neighborhoods of well-kept but funky little houses. During the Real-Estate Bubble, few of these houses were for sale, as if the people had found where they wanted to live and were satisfied. Now that the crash has come, still, few of them are for sale.
The north-central end, around the creek, is where San Leandro's upper classes live. This means medium-sized, two-story houses and a few smaller Craftsmen, and lots of greenery close to the creek.
As for the rest of San Leandro, there are large tracts of ordinary-looking suburbia, much of it on the old side.
The main , North-South street through town is East 14'th St. It looks funky but OK from the Oakland border to around the Civic Center; quite nice from there to downtown; and fairly clapped-out south of downtown. The clapped-out zones are kind of interesting, though, with a lot of um ethnically diverse small businesses. There are also many used-car lots through here, with appealingly-priced cars. These look tacky, of course--the tackiest, however, which was actually a car lot with its own collection agency, has been chased out by the Redevelopment Department. It is to be replaced by an old folks' home.
You see, this is one of the really interesting things about San Leandro: the suspense. Will it gradually succeed and become cool like Oakland's Temescal, at least in places--or will it ultimately just spiral into tackiness? For me, anyway, this leads to a feeling that, hey, I can make a difference! Others seem to feel this way too, and there is a fair amount of passion over town politics, the school board, and so on.
San Leandro is not just a bedroom community. Things get done here. San Leandro companies make steel, diesel exhausts, desalination systems, computer control systems. Ghiradelli chocolates are no longer made in Ghiradelli Square. They are made in San Leandro. Companies you have heard of are headquartered here: Jansport, North Face, Otis Spunkmeyer. San Leandro is for real.
San Leandro has two BART stations. They are both located north of where the tracks split to go to Dublin and Fremont, so that three BART lines run through both stations. When gasoline is ten dollars a gallon, San Leandrans are among those who will win, and those living far out will lose.
There's a Civic Opera. There's a weekly newspaper, with a police blotter section that is often an absolute scream. There's Lake Chabot right up the hill. If you are honest and good and work hard, come make your life in San Leandro! Remember, it's much, much more than the rusty Levitz Furniture sign you see from 880.
Mahlon | San Leandro, CA