Stories from the Shore:
Past and present perspectives
from Bayview’s own residents
On the Park
“Growing up, India Basin Shoreline Park was the closest park to my house, and I remember that me and my brother would ride our bikes to the park to practice basketball drills. I distinctly remember us helping each other up on the court, so that we would be able to take pictures hanging from the hoop as if we dunked the ball, because we weren’t tall enough at the time.
Just recently I celebrated my 20th birthday at the India Basin Shoreline Park, and we brought the whole community out to play pick-up games of basketball and served food. It was definitely a day I’ll never forget, because I practically grew up at Shoreline Park and turning 20 was symbolic for me in the sense that I was starting a new chapter of my life.”
- Louie Mezie, Community Member
“India Basin is my FAVORITE park. I used to go there as a teen and skip rocks with friends. Once I became an adult and had a child of my own, I introduced him to it as well. There was also this time that I took (literally) every youth from the neighborhood on a walk down to the park - where the beach part is, and we skipped rocks until the sun went down.
India Basin plays a HUGE role in the journey and evolution of Feline Finesse Dance Company. That park is our home! No matter where we have gone, we have always saved a day to rehearse on the basketball courts. It was home for us before we had any space anywhere. Whether it's rehearsing for competition or preparing for Carnaval San Francisco, India Basin always gave us the space and freedom to create.”
- Lilla Pittman, Director of Feline Finesse Dance Company
“We used to go down there and play and also fish. We used to catch striped bass and ocean perch, fish like that…Also, they sold shrimp and seafood [along the shoreline] and I used to go down as a little boy – this is when I was about four or five years old – we would go down and buy shrimps and we would go back up into the projects where we were living at that time. My mother would make seafood, different food like gumbo, étouffée and different things like that. Also, we would go down to Shrimp Boat which was a Chinese restaurant, and we would buy Chinese food from a lady…whose family owned the Shrimp Boat.”
- Oscar James, Community Elder
On Community Advocacy
“[I remember the] PG&E plant shutdown right next to the park here. There was a like a big march, a lot of moms and people came out and protested. I remember my mom was still in community college and she made posters and said, ‘We’re going!’ and I’m just looking at her like ‘Y’all crazy.’ And she said it would help with the soil and that we could drink water and stuff like that, and I was like ‘Yeah! I want to drink water from the tap!” I didn’t even know what that meant. But I just went along with her and I remember that being such a huge deal when they finally closed it down.”
- Chinomso Okorie, Community Leader
“I grew up under the eldership of Enola Maxwell and Sophie Maxwell when I was a little girl. They were fighting, advocating, and getting things done. They had a little school on top of that Whitney Young Circle called the Skills Center and those women, they fought hard, you know. My mother worked so a lot of the women around us, they didn't work so they had this stigma of like “oh they're just on welfare sitting at home,” but what people didn't know was when us children went to school, those ladies went to school.
[Those women] were going to school up at the Skills Center…and also advocating to get the first extension of City College in the history of San Francisco, which is over there on Oakdale. So I grew up with a lot of activism and people actually getting things done, and I think that's what sparked me as a child to want to go out and help people. I started doing community stuff at like fifteen and it was because of the elders in the community. At election time, they would tell us children that they got jobs for us. We would do door knocking just to remind people to go vote. We were always helping out the elders, passing out flyers...so it gave us a sense of pride in our community to serve and it just went with me throughout my life.”
- Kimberley Hill-Brown, Public Housing Tenants Association
On Butchertown
“The real name of our neighborhood was Bay View, but it was called Butchertown for the obvious reason that it had slaughterhouses…meat-packing plants, the tannery, etc. Because of these the air was often pretty smelly, but we ignored that because great neighbors and lifelong friends were a lot more important.
It was just everybody helping everybody and that’s what the neighborhood was – a bunch of good friends. But anybody that you could help out, you did.”
- Edna Hingsbergen, resident from the 1920s and 1930s
“A lot of time, my folks used to – bring bread to [people having economic difficulty] and wouldn’t charge them for it. In fact, when my father gave up the bakery there were some people that still owed him money for bread, but what do you do? You know. You have to give some things. I think it was because everybody was concerned with everybody else. It was like a little town. If you thought somebody needed something, you would go and give it to them…Like my mother with my stuff, as I grew out of them, she would give them to somebody whose children needed it – like clothes, or toys, or things like that. She always saw that there was some kind of food for them.”
- Antoinette De Lauff, resident from the 1920s and 1930s