Your statement intrigued me, so I clicked on the link and read the entire story.
Sadly, I found the complete article somewhat disappointing. It has some merits, but remains unsatisfyingly superficial (though, admittedly, this may not be the author's fault, but rather an unavoidable consequence of the constraints of newspaper writing).
And I'll be charitable and attribute the multiple orthographical errors I stumbled across in it to her editor's negligence / incompetence.
Regards,
I may be sentimental about it, because I had good times in the Oakland, San Fransico and Berkeley areas during my Navy years (early 80’s).
I started out on a 77 foot wooden ship, a Minesweeper called The Illusive out of Charleston,SC.
After reenlistment, I was on an aircraft carrier called
The Enterprise.
We were based in Alameda, California.
Some of the hotel tenants she described, reminded me of people I met while waiting overnight at the main bus stop in San Fran on Embarcadero St. If you were out too late, and missed the last bus to the East Bay at about 2.15AM, you had to sit in this giant bus stop and wait until 5.45AM for the first bus to board.
In the same vein, here is an article about living in an old building - in Oakland.