All About San Francisco Bay Area

The Bay Area (San Francisco Bay Area) is an area of over 7 million people, with cities including San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose all situated around the San Francisco Bay, in northern California. The Bay Area is  renowned for its lifestyle, progressive politics and high-tech companies (Silicon Valley), once the refuge of Spanish missionaries and prospectors for the gold rush.

The bay region covers 9 regions of the bay area although it has no defined limitations: Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara. The Peninsula is San Mateo and Santa Clara County West, while Contra Costa County and Alameda County are on the East Coast of the Bay Area. The southern parts of the provinces of Sonoma and Napa are seen as part of the Bay Area as they face the Bay in terms of their culture and economy. To the east and south, you depend on who you ask from the outskirts like Gilroy and Santa Cruz of the Bay Area or CentralValley / Central Coast.

The Bay Area is a perfect place to visit in summer all year long and cool in winter. It may be up to 15 degrees warmer on the Eastern bay than the San Francisco Centro and 20 degrees warmer than the Golden Gate Bridge district due to microclimates that influence the weather in the bay area. The narrower the ocean, the cooler it is, the more you remember while touring the city.

The Bay Area currently features a booming computer animation industry led by Light & Magic Industrial and Pixar Animation Studios. The first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, produced by Pixar with its office in Emeryville, was created using internal software and 26 academic awards for its computer animation films and since then, it has been widely applauded.

The Bay Area is also home to several hundred classical music ensembles, including community choirs, professional orchestras such as the San Francisco Symphony, the California Symphony, the Fremont Symphony Orchestra, the Oakland Symphony and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra.

The Bay Area also features an active young theatre. In the Peninsula and the South Bay theater, the Bay Area children's playgrounds and the Children's Music Theater Danville in East Bay, and Marin Shakespeare in the North, among many others, ACT and the Berkeley Repertory also runs young players' classes and workshops.

The San Francisco Bay area is the 8th-largest television market in the United States and the 4th-largest radio city. San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, the second most widely circulated newspaper in Northern California, are the major newspapers of the Bay Area.

San Francisco is home to six major professional sports franchising companies: The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) in American football, the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer (MLS).

The Bay Area has an ideal outdoor recreational climate, allowing local people to enjoy activities such as walking and cycling. In San Francisco there are over 320 kilometers of cycling paths, lanes and cycling routes and the Embarcadero and Marina Green are the most popular skateboarding destinations. Golden Gate Park, Dolores Park and smaller courtyards throughout the area offer extensive tennis facilities. San Francisco residents are also among the most fit in the United States. San Francisco Bay is a popular destination for sailing, sail, windsurf and kitesurfing, with Marina District Yacht Harbor being maintained in the area.

The Bay Area is one of the richest areas in the USA, largely due to San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland's economic strength. The bay area town of Pleasanton has had the second highest household income in the country after New Canaan, Connecticut. However, discretionary income is comparable to the rest of the world, given that the higher costs of living outweigh higher income.