An Explanation

I live next to the Oakland Estuary in a mostly-industrial neighbourhood of the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California, on the border of the Jingletown and San Antonio districts of East Oakland, near Union Point, Fruitvale, and Alameda. The Google Map image above shows the approximate center of my neighbourhood; it's an interesting, unusual, and not well-known place, even by Bay Area standards (and if you want to know more, see the main site's "about" page).

I've lived and worked in the area for years, and during that time I've taken literally thousands of photos of the area and surrounding places like West Oakland, Emeryville, Alameda, Berkeley, etc. The Around Jingletown photo blog is an attempt to put some of these images up for other people to see; it's a part of the larger Around Jingletown site that includes (or will eventually include) a gallery and other stuff. The blog is updated whenever I feel like it (which is typically a couple of times a week), and doesn't pretend to give a comprehensive view of the world around Jingletown, just those little bits of what I see and what interests (or obsesses) me. And a lot of the images are just snapshots (sometimes done while trespassing), so don't get too hung up on the technical deficiencies and obvious problems. Note that the date an individual image is posted is almost never the date the photo was taken; I try to include at least the year that the image was taken somewhere in the commentary.

If you want to leave comments, you can currently do so anonymously (without registering), but that probably won't last long — with all the likely comment spam you'll probably soon have to register with this site (which is pretty painless), or use a special anonymous pesudo-login (which is tiresome but effective), and the comments will be always be moderated (which may not be so painless). All this may change soon if I can set up a good captcha service.

If you want to get hold of me, see the main contact page. If you want to buy some of the images, see the main site's Buy! page (but there's not much there at the moment), or get in touch. If you want to use one or more of these images for commercial use, get in touch, and please don't use these images commercially without my explicit permission.

Hamish Reid, Oakland, October 2007.

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