Middle Harbor Shoreline Park
Park / shoreline in West Oakland, Port of Oakland, California. Part of Oakland.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion | Jenny Odell | setting | The book’s last scene: Odell stops here on the way to her studio, describes its history as railroad terminus, Navy supply base and port land, and the re-created lagoon and beach. |
How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell (2019)
Source: How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion · How to Do Nothing · Readwise highlight
Today, on my way here, I took a detour through a serious gauntlet of big rigs thundering down Seventh Street to stop at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, a surprising sliver of sand and marsh between the active cranes and the San Francisco Bay.
- Role: setting
- In the book: The book’s last scene: Odell stops here on the way to her studio, describes its history as railroad terminus, Navy supply base and port land, and the re-created lagoon and beach. With binoculars she watches shorebirds and brown pelicans amid the noise of cranes and trucks, standing at the Chappell R. Hayes observation tower’s park.
- Why it matters: It is the book’s closing exemplar of manifest dismantling: a hopeful artifice of habitat inside an active port and former war site, contrasting with the Oakland Hills where the book began. Elsewhere it would lose the juxtaposition of industry and life.