Jutting out into the Bay by the Albany Hill is the nearest piece of post-modern wild land to Berkeley. Part temporary autonomous zone, part dog park, part autorevegetative experiment, the Albany Bulb is home to fennel forests, jutting concrete tumbles, wild rebar tangle scultpures, skunks, owls, curlews, and vividly color-splashed murals. In many ways it is a free space, an embodied outlet of creativity and a place to make firey noise late into the night. It is a place to take refuge from the rectilinear city, perched atop its crumbled body.

In 1919, the State of California granted the City of Albany a portion of the San Francisco Bay tidelands for use as a harbor to promote commerce and navigation. In 1963, the City awarded a contract for a dump for the purpose of creating usable land to accomplish the grant. About 1972, the City challenged the operator for illegal landfill operation. He had been dumping plant debris, which had created methane fires. In 1985, after more than 10 years of litigation, the City of Albany gave up the fight and released the landfill to nature.

Since then, whatever plants and animals that could establish themselves took over. The Bulb's flora is a collection of every hardy, adaptable plant that people ever brought to this city, with a few similarly-minded native plants mixed in. Acacia from Africa rub shoulders with eucalyptus from Australia and date palms from the Middle East. South African sourgrass grows amongst European fennel and our own California Poppy. The Bay has not forgotten that it is the original proprietor of the land, and it laps constantly and the Bulb's edges, creating mudflats rich with shorebirds.

A community of people also established themselves in makeshift cabins at the Bulb. Artists followed, working with whatever the tides and storms brought in. It has become a favorite of dog owners, one of the few places in the Bay to let your dog run off-leash. In 1999, the people living there were removed, and their village destroyed, a story told in the movie Bums' Paradise. The public art survived, and continues to this day.

Among the artists is a team that calls itself Sniff. Sniff paints or builds sculptures every Saturday morning. "We are eminently approachable," they say. Most of the other artists who work at the Albany Bulb work alone, anonymously and at irregular intervals. They sculpt. They paint. A few even write poetry. Some people say that some of their work should be seen in a museum. Other people say that it already is. All agree that the art is alive, an inseparable part of the soul of the Bulb.

The future of the Bulb is still uncertain. The racetrack at the foot of the Bulb ran its last race this summer, and there are many eyes on the pricey real estate it occupies. The Bulb itself is scheduled to become part of the growing Eastshore State Park in an indetermined number of years. Only time and active public participation will tell: Will the Bulb will become one more overmanaged expression of the rift between today's City and mother Nature? Or will it continue to evolve as an organic expression of development from below, finding new ways to welcome Nature into the City?

In the meantime, come make it your own.

You can find the Albany Bulb here