OAKLAND , the workhorse of the Bay Area, is one of the largest ports on the west coast. It has also been the breeding ground of political movements . In the Sixties, the city's population found a voice through the militant Black Panthers, and in the Seventies the Symbionese Liberation Army, kidnappers of heiress Patty Hearst, obtained a ransom of free food for the city's poor. It's not all hard graft, though: the climate is often sunny and mild when San Francisco is cold and dreary, and there's great hiking in the redwood-and eucalyptus-covered hills above the city.

The major interest to the tourist trade being the waterfront Jack London Square, an aseptic collection of national chains that have nothing to do with the writer. At the far eastern end of the promenade, however, you will find Heinhold's First and Last Chance Saloon , a slanting tiny bar built in 1883 from the hull of a whaling ship. Jack London really did drink here, and the collection of yellowed portraits of him on the wall are the only genuine thing about the writer you'll find on the square. A half-mile north up Broadway from the waterfront, Oakland's restored downtown is anchored by chain stores and the gargantuan open-air City Center complex of offices and fast food. Beside it, at Broadway and 14th Street, the massive green space of Frank Ogawa Plaza offers a good place for people-watching. A bit east on Tenth and Oak streets, the Oakland Museum of California ($6; WedSat 10am5pm, Sun noon5pm) has a good exhibit of California history, including the Beat Generation.

Gertrude Stein , who was born in Oakland at around the same time as the macho and adventurous London, is barely commemorated perhaps because she wrote "what was the use of me having come from Oakland, it was not natural for me to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there " a quote which has haunted Oakland ever since. Nonetheless, the majority of Oakland residents are proud of their city, and would argue that there is indeed a there there, notably in the small and trendy communities of Rockridge and Piedmont Avenue , and the lively Grand Avenue neighborhood.

Joaquin Miller Park , the most easily accessible of Oakland's hilltop parks, stands above East Oakland. It was once home to the "Poet of the Sierras," Joaquin Miller, who made his name playing the eccentric frontier American in the salons of 1870s London. His poems weren't exactly acclaimed (his greatest poetic achievement was rhyming "teeth" with "Goethe"), but his prose account of the time he spent with the Modoc Indians near Mount Shasta remains invaluable. His house, a small white cabin called The Abbey , still survives, as do the thousands of trees he planted.