Two unsanctioned beach parties attracting hundreds of teens are scheduled to take place in Alameda, and while they’re reportedly part of a regular tradition involving activities like water balloon and water gun fights, police warn that past events have resulted in “dangerous consequences.”

The Alameda Police Department posted on social media advising parents to discourage their kids from participating in two upcoming “beach takeover” events taking place Sunday and Tuesday at Alameda’s Crown Beach, which typically draw hundreds of teens, posing a public safety hazard.

As KGO reports, the Alameda Unified School District wrote in a message to parents that a takeover event last Saturday “resulted in fights, car accidents, and other significant disruptions on both the beach and at the shopping center,” as hundreds of teens congregated at Crown Beach and South Shore Center.

“While this may seem like harmless fun, similar games in the past have led to unintended and dangerous consequences,” wrote the police.

Additionally, KRON4 reports that beach takeover events often include “assassination-style” water balloon and water gun fights, which have led to authorities or bystanders misidentifying the guns as real weapons at past events.

Officers from the East Bay Regional Park District will be heavily monitoring the beach during upcoming events with support from the Alameda Police Department, according to the Alameda PD’s social media post.

A parent commented on the police department’s post, saying the water balloon and water gun fights are a longheld senior tradition in Alameda.

“The kids who choose to participate (not everyone does and it’s def not required) have a lot fun doing it,” wrote the parent. “There are tons of rules that they all respect. (Example: not in businesses, not on someone’s private property, etc). I’m impressed with the students who put this one and participate.”

“It’s an ongoing game that will last months … until there is one person left,” they said.

Another commenter pointed out the fact that it’s desirable for teens to get outside and be active.

“Relax, just kids going to the beach to hang out and shoot water guns at each other,” said one commenter. “This is what we want them to do. Enjoy the beach on a hot day. Oh my god.”

Others described the scene at South Shore Center mall last Saturday as chaotic and stressful.

“The whole shopping center lot on the beach side taken over by people not in cars, traveling into the mall,” said a commenter. “Fights breaking out. Shops having to lock doors early. Home Goods restrooms full of people smoking weed, among other things and likely not the only shop with issues.”

“Not a place I would have wanted my teens to hang out,” they continued. “I also would not have wanted to be in that area when it was happening.”

Consider this a heads-up for any East Bay non-teens to perhaps choose a different beach — and mall — Sunday and Tuesday!

Image: Marc Crumpler/East Bay Regional Park District

• A military watchdog group said it’s received a flood of complaints from alarmed US military personnel who were pressured into watching the Melania documentary by their MAGA-supporting superiors. The $75 million documentary received an 8% positive rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and Melania’s contract reportedly earned her $27 million from the project regardless of ticket sales. [Chronicle]
• Seattle Seahawks fans were out in full force in San Francisco Saturday — as seen in the below footage by content creator Corky Trewin who's posted several reels highlighting his time in SF. Swaths of blue shirts could be seen flying high on double-decker tour buses and mingling with the masses throughout town Saturday — with the occasional clusters of red-shirted New England Patriots fans sprinkled in. [SFist]

• The US Coast Guard conducted an overnight search Friday after receiving a report of two surfers calling for help offshore near the Santa Cruz Lighthouse, which was eventually called off after ten hours with no official missing persons reports filed. [Santa Cruz Sentinal]
• A skier died on Mammoth Mountain Thursday after attempting a double-black-diamond run, which occurred within full view of those riding some of the resort’s chair lifts, marking the fourth fatality of the season. [Chronicle]
• A portion of the Super Bowl pre-game show will be broadcast live from Alcatraz, featuring former Alcatraz prisoner and convicted car thief, 93-year-old Bill Baker, sharing his stories from the three years he spent on the island after attempting to escape from three other federal prisons. [NBC Bay Area]

• Here’s an exhaustive list of the many celebrity sightings and high-profile events that took place over Super Bowl week. [Chronicle]
• Next Saturday, SFMTA is inviting all who celebrate Valentine’s Day to head to the Hyde & Beach cable car turnaround at Fisherman’s Wharf for a free photo opp in a decked-out V-Day cable car. [SFMTA]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Daly City residents are urging city officials to take down an eight-foot-tall fence that recently appeared, blocking a public path near Thornton State Beach and featuring a handmade cardboard sign with a drawing of a gun and a message stating trespassers will be shot on sight.

As KRON4 reports, San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa sent a letter Friday to the California Coastal Commission requesting that the property owner be ordered to remove the large, metal fence, which blocks a public path to Daly City's Thornton State Beach used by local beach-goers, hikers, horseback riders, and dog walkers.

“On the fence was a hand drawn sign with an image of a gun warning that trespassers would be shot on site,” wrote Canepa, per KRON4.

“There is only one trail down to the beach from Olympic Way,” Canepa continued, per KRON4. “This multi-use trail is a popular destination for recreation extending from the scenic bluffs and cliffs overlooking Thornton State Beach all the way down to the water.”

Per Reddit, the fence is located on property owned by Olympic Way LLC, which sits on the bluffs between the beach parking lot and the equestrian Mar Vista Stables. According to a campaign created by residents, Olympic Way LLC had previously planned to develop a private religious retreat on the land, which was shut down by the commission in 2021, as the SF Examiner reported at the time.

According to a comment on a change.org petition about the fence, some residents believe the fence was installed as retaliation for shutting down the project.

“There was zero need for the property owner to sabotage public access to a State Park by fencing off the path that borders his property other than to intimidate and seek revenge because the surrounding community did not want a religious outfit to build upon the property and take over the space,” wrote Tina of San Francisco on the petition.

“The state should purchase the property and add to the park. Keep it open and voice the need for path access to Daly City, San Mateo County and the State of California Parks system,” Tina continued. “This is such a pathetic attempt to intimidate neighbors and the use of public property.”

Per KRON4, the fence brings to mind a similar incident in which billionaire Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, tried for a decade to keep Marins Beach in Half Moon Bay to himself, as SFist reported at the time.

While most assume the property owner erected the Thornton Beach fence, some residents suspect a longtime squatter installed it, due to the highly threatening, handmade sign, per Reddit.  

“Kind of darkly funny that people are calling out billionaires when in contrast some are saying this was probably done by a mentally unstable squatter who is apparently well known to people in the area,” said Redditor m0llusk. “Property owners still have responsibility for this situation, just not in the way  many are thinking.”  

“I am urging the California Coastal Commission to stand up once again and oppose any efforts to restrict access to public beaches by private landowners and to have the property owner specifically to dissemble the fence restricting access to Thornton State Beach,” concluded Canepa, per KRON4.

Per Reddit, Daly City residents are encouraged to attend a city council meeting on Monday evening and leave a public comment before 4 pm Monday.

Image: Jin Chen; Bay Area Hikers/Facebook

Related: Silicon Valley Billionaire Wants $30 Million For His Beach Access, National Media Shames Him

• Muir Woods National Park temporarily reopened Thursday for ten days, thanks to donations from some of the park’s operational partners. The $15 entry fee will be waived, and park rangers will be on-hand offering programs through November 1 during the ongoing government shutdown. [KQED]
• Bay Area residents are advised to avoid swimming at local beaches along the coast over the weekend. The National Weather Service is forecasting potential rip tides and 15- to 25-foot sneaker waves. [KRON4]
• Google deleted years’ worth of content and programming geared toward women in tech from its website. It’s just one of many steps tech companies, and corporations in general, have taken toward unraveling DEI initiatives. [CNN]
• Pharmacy customers at the last remaining Walgreens in San Francisco's Mission District are forced to wait an average of 45 minutes, many of them seniors and people living with chronic pain. [Mission Local]
• District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder called for an investigation at a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday into the egregiously pricey contract the mayor’s office signed with tech firm OpenGov last week. [KALW]

National:

• The USS Gerald R. Ford, the US’s largest warship, set off to the Caribbean from the Mediterranean Sea Friday. The ship joins eight other warships, along with a nuclear submarine and an F-35 aircraft, taking part in the military’s supposed crackdown on drug trafficking in the region. [BBC]
• Despite claims that Amtrak is failing, the agency broke ridership records in 2024. Proponents emphasize that Amtrak is a government agency successfully fulfilling its mandate to serve the public, not a business meant to turn a profit, as it’s often incorrectly categorized by critics. [Streetsblog]

• It appears that Suzanne Somers’s widower has successfully created an AI clone of the late star — upon her request, with the help of Boston-based inventor Ray Kurzweil (who’s also Google’s top AI researcher). [People]
• Chelsea Clinton and Donald Trump Jr. had a bit of a spat on X after Clinton said Trump Sr. was “taking a wrecking ball to our heritage.” [Huffington Post]

Video of the Day:

Families: Get those oversized tote bags ready — tomorrow is Yerba Buena Gardens’ First Annual Pumpkin Giveaway. Starting at 10 am, the first 100 kids under 12 get a free pumpkin. Plus, free carousel rides until 11 am!

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

If you're planning on going to a NorCal beach today or tomorrow, take care: The National Weather Service is warning everyone that things are going to be especially dicey up and down the coast these days.

According to the NWS alert, there's a high probability of sneaker waves, rip currents, and long shore currents for any beach between Sonoma and Monterey all day Friday and late into Saturday night.

The most dangerous spots will be "west and southwest facing beaches," like San Francisco's Ocean Beach and Stinson Beach in Marin, as well as Santa Cruz, Twin Lakes, Montara, Manresa, Marina, and Half Moon Bay beaches.

The NWS warns anyone taking a stroll along the beach to never turn your back on the sea, which sounds like just a cautionary figure of speech but isn't. And if you're fishing, don't do it from a pier or jetty, as waves could easily overtake either of those structures and suck you in.

If you absolutely must swim in the ocean (you be you, I guess) and find yourself caught in a rip current, do your best to keep your head and swim parallel to shore to escape the current before heading back to land.

Here's the full NWS alert. Sorry about the caps, that's just how they roll:

...BEACH HAZARDS STATEMENT REMAINS IN EFFECT THROUGH SATURDAY EVENING... * WAVES...BUILDING MIXED SWELL 3 TO 6 FEET WITH A LONG PERIOD OF 17 SECONDS. * HAZARDS...INCREASED RISK FOR RIP CURRENTS...LONG SHORE CURRENTS AND SNEAKER WAVES. * TIMING...EARLY FRIDAY MORNING AND CONTINUING INTO THE WEEKEND. * LOCATION...THE ENTIRE COASTLINE FROM THE SONOMA COAST THROUGH MONTEREY COAST IN PARTICULAR WEST AND SOUTHWEST FACING BEACHES...INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO...STINSON BEACH...SANTA CRUZ BOARDWALK BEACH...TWIN LAKES BEACH...OCEAN BEACH... MONTARA STATE BEACH...HALFMOON BAY STATE BEACH...MANRESA STATE BEACH AND MARINA STATE BEACH.

Instructions: A BEACH HAZARD STATEMENT FOR RIP CURRENTS MEANS THAT CONDITIONS ARE PRESENT TO SUPPORT A HEIGHTENED RISK OF STRONG RIP CURRENTS. RIP CURRENTS ARE TYPICALLY MORE FREQUENT AND STRONGER IN THE VICINITY OF JETTIES...INLETS...AND PIERS. SWIMMERS CAUGHT IN A RIP CURRENT SHOULD SWIM PARALLEL TO THE COAST TO ESCAPE THE RIP CURRENT BEFORE TRYING TO SWIM FOR SHORE. SWIMMERS SHOULD ALWAYS SWIM NEAR A LIFEGUARD. A BEACH HAZARD STATEMENT FOR SNEAKER WAVES MEANS THAT CONDITIONS ARE PRESENT TO SUPPORT A HEIGHTENED RISK OF UNSUSPECTING BEACH GOERS BEING SWEPT INTO THE SEA BY A WAVE. PEOPLE WALKING ALONG THE BEACH SHOULD NEVER TURN THEIR BACK TO THE SEA. FISHERMAN SHOULD AVOID FISHING FROM ROCKS OR JETTIES.

Target Area:
Coastal North Bay Including Point Reyes National Seashore
Northern Monterey Bay
San Francisco
San Fransisco Peninsula Coast
Southern Monterey Bay and Big Sur Coast

A giant wall will soon be at the beach to provide you shelter from the Sun's rays and a Wi-Fi signal to upload that beach bod selfie to Instagram.

The four-story Shadow Wifi is monolithic structure that'll provide beachgoers with shade and free Internet service, while also raising awareness of the dangers of skin cancer. Users will have access to the network when they are anywhere within the wall's shadow, and be sent an email with health tips. To stay connected through the day, users will have to follow the shadow and stay in the wall's shade. As demonstrated in the video above, the wifi is beamed from a directional antenna that moves along with a sensor that tracks the Sun.

It's like a friendlier version of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

"It gives [people] a really good reason to actually seek some shade: free Wi-Fi. And at the same time we are of course informing them, and potentially preventing skin cancer," said Geoffrey Hantson of Happiness Brussels. The Belgian agency teamed up with the Peruvian League Against Cancer to install the first walls at Playa Agua Dulce, according to psfk. More will be coming soon to San Francisco and New Zealand.

And if you're worried that Shadow Wifi will give you brain cancer while protecting you from skin cancer—well, it won't.

Hello beautiful! #SanFrancisco #sand #Mermaid

A photo posted by Yev Pusin (@yevp) on Apr 11, 2015 at 4:34pm PDT

Spotted last weekend near the Marina harbor (above) and on the steps of Aquatic Park Cove (below), these two reclining sand mermaids are thought to be the work of Scott Dosch, a West Coast sand sculptor with an interesting past.

In a December, 2000 profile in the Monterey County Weekly, a picture of Dosch is painted as:

A self-described "California folk artist" who speaks four languages, Dosch arrived at his career calling after wandering a path that lead him through five years in the Christian ministry and a stint as a salesperson. Cutting his hair and removing his earrings didn''t jibe well with the free-spirited personality he developed as an army brat ensconced in Europe.

"I hated that whole thing--being the cog. I just hated it," Dosch says. "In 1986, I basically moved into a van on Venice Beach. And it just hit me one night to do sand sculptures."

...After dealing with LAPD harassment for concocting sand sculptures on the boardwalk, Dosch got a chance to turn the Hollywood spotlight on his art. He landed gigs creating a background for a scene in Oliver Stone''s The Doors and lending atmosphere to a larger-than-life Nike commercial.

In 1994, Dosch and his apprentice split LA (for what he calls "personal reasons") and drove up the California coast. Dosch dropped his sidekick off in Big Sur and ended up in San Francisco. But after a month, he headed down to Carmel. "I drove down to the Central Coast and fell in love with it," he says. "I saw my apprentice was working in Carmel and I told him to hit the road. I have a deal with people I teach: If we find each other on the same beach someday, they have to defer. He honored that and went to Half Moon Bay"

That wasn't Dosch's last brush with the law — in 2011 Dosch announced his departure from Santa Barbara after 15 years there following a dispute with the city over his use of a public fountain. According to a report in the Santa Barbara Independent, Dosch said he had to use fountain water for his creations due to a "physical handicap, which reputedly leaves him unable to access ocean water."

“I don’t want to go up against the city,” said Dosch, “If they don’t want me here, which they have expressed, then I don’t want to be here.” Currently in his third year attending Santa Barbara City College, where he is studying studio art, Dosch said he intends to bid farewell to Santa Barbara once his class schedule is sorted out. Without access to the fountain’s water, he said, he would be unable to create his statues. He added that he would like to sculpt “without hindrance to the right of [his] expression of public art.”

But though Dosch has been in San Francisco from time to time — here's another local work of his from last September, for example:

He appears to remain in based in Santa Barbara. According to CBS5 last weekend's artist “said he was trying to get gas money to head down to Santa Barbara,” they quote one of the mermaids' admirers as saying.

“(I) gave him $4 and said it might be easier to walk.”

And this is why we don't have jails in the middle of the water any more (except in movies, shout out to Face/Off and Escape Plan). Rough waters have forced the Golden Gate National Parks to close Alcatraz, since boats might not be able to land.

This isn't just an issue for tourists, as Golden Gate National Parks spokesperson Alexandra Picavet tells us that "Not only is the choppy Bay an issue, sneaker waves and strong rip currents are also forecast along our coast today and tomorrow."

So not only is it a terrible day for Nic Cage and Sean Connery to try to save San Francisco, it's also a bad time for splashing around at the beach. Be careful, surfers!

Photo by Ben Swartley.

Photo by andertho.

The Oakland Tribune (via Mercury News) reports on a tragic story of a 57-year-old man who drowned in the bay in Alameda on Monday after wading chest-high in the water fully clothed for nearly an hour before rescuers could reach him.

Witnesses told the Tribune that police and fire crews responded quickly to the scene, but because the Alameda Fire Department is not certified in land-based water rescues, they had to wait for the United States Coast Guard to arrive.

The Coast Guard reportedly responded within 20 minutes with a rescue boat, but because the man was in fairly shallow water, they had to wait for a helicopter instead. The helicopter took 65 minutes to arrive because it had been out on another mission and needed to refuel.

In the mean time, a woman in her late 20s who's trained as a water rescue nurse, was able to pull the man out when he was about 50 yards from shore. Unfortunately, rescuers were unable to revive him, and he was later pronounced dead at Alameda Hospital.

Naturally, commenters at both Oakland Tribune and Mercury News are outraged that the city of Alameda, which is surrounded by water, isn't equipped with water-rescue personnel.

Here are some videos of this morning's tsunami action shot by people along various Bay Area coastlines ranging from Santa Cruz to San Francisco to Emeryville. (Outside of Santa Cruz and Crescent City harbors, the tsunami didn't affect Bay Area cities. Harmless, really.)

As most of you know by now, the tsunami waves were brought on by a severe 8.9 earthquake in Japan.

Videos below.

"On the beach" by Darwin Bell.

"Hot chick on the beach" by Bhautik Joshi.