Red Rock Island is just a pile of rock in the middle of San Francisco Bay, over near the Richmond Bridge, but it's a privately owned pile of rock that spans three different counties and is now on the market for a cool $22 million. As the NYT/Bay Citizen reports, the place was home to sea otter hunters in the early 1800s -- hunters who drove the Bay's sea otter population to near extinction -- and a San Francisco man named David Glickman bought the almost-6-acre island in 1964 for $49,500 with big development plans. He later sold the deed it seems, and someone is now flipping it for a nice profit, having once almost sold it in the mid-80s to "sex guru" Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Rajneesh was later deported, after his followers in Oregon contaminated some salad bars with salmonella, and that deal fell through. more ›

We're not sure how the pending sale of Red Rock Island is going, but if you miss out on it (or are not quite rich enough), here's another fun alternative: buy this town. For a mere $1.3 million, Bridgeville, population 30, in Humboldt County, can be yours! more ›

Whoa! Check out the SF Solar Map! Using Googlemap tech, SF Environment and CH2MHill have teamed up to show you where the solar installations are throughout the city. And if you plug in your address, it'll give you approximate numbers on how much energy you could generate with solar, how much dough you'd save, and how much carbon you'd save the environment. more ›

Who knew that one of the five islands in San Francisco Bay was privately owned? Even stranger, "Red Rock Island" is now up for sale, for a paltry $10 million. The last time we remember one of our islands changing hands was way back in 1847, when Captain John C Fremont bought Alcatraz for $5000. Fremont was in town, as you no doubt remember, as the head of a surveying expedition. A man of... more ›