The decision from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife opened up crabbing from the Sonoma/Mendocino line south to the Mexican border but came with a key restriction: Crabbers are required to adhere to a 50 percent reduction in traps. That ruling will be reviewed after the CDFW’s next assessment, scheduled to take place on or around Feb. 15.

Meantime, consumers should find local Dungeness in restaurants and grocery stores in the coming days, although inclement weather this weekend could keep some boats in dock.

The 65-foot-tall concrete letters on the southern flank of San Bruno Mountain are one of California’s largest examples of civic boosterism, an early 20th-century tradition of carving town’s initials into hillsides or building lighted roadway arches, like Redwood City’s “Climate Best by Government Test” sign.

Last month, crews from South San Francisco’s Parks and Recreation Department, apparently part mountain goat, braved the slopes of Sign Hill to coat the 34 letters with thick coats of chalk-white paint. According to Parks Manager Joshua Richardson, “It took 11 five-gallon buckets to just paint the word SOUTH”  — and he joked, “It could be argued that a considerable amount ends up on my staff as they traverse the letters.”

In Southern California, the most famous example of civic boosterism is the Hollywood sign. It, too, celebrates a centennial this year. When created in 1923, it was intended as a temporary promotion for the Hollywoodland real estate development. It survived into the late 1940s before being restored and shortened to “Hollywood.”

While Tinseltown’s sign has achieved mythical status as a cultural icon, becoming a world-renowned symbol virtually synonymous with the movie industry, its humble, blue-collar companion to the north is seen mostly by locals only and northbound freeway drivers. It remains associated with the gritty smokestack industries that once fueled the Bay Area’s growth.

Blueprints from the sign’s 1929 reconstruction project, when the original lime letters were replaced with cement ones, hang in the South San Francisco Historical Society offices of Julie Chimenti. She says the hillside sign “signifies the blood, sweat and tears of the industrial workers who helped build this place.” In 1996 local efforts successfully pushed for its inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.

For children growing up on the south flank of San Bruno Mountain, like former Congresswoman Jackie Speier, sliding down the Sign Hill letters was a rite of passage. She recalled in a 2019 KTVU interview, “We could break down a cardboard box and slide down those letters into our backyard. It was a great childhood.”

Chimenti’s husband, Alan, has family roots in the city going back to 1906. His favorite letter to ride was the “T,” the first letter of the third line. “I definitely wore out a couple pants sliding down the hill,” he said. Apparently, he didn’t know about the cardboard trick of the future congresswoman.

Letter-sliding is no longer condoned, says Candace LaCroix, the city’s natural resource specialist. “I get the appeal of sliding,” she said reluctantly, not wanting to sound like a spoilsport, “but we’re trying to preserve a historic landmark that is prone to erosion issues.”

LaCroix is also trying to restore habitat of two critically endangered butterflies, the Mission blue and Calliope silverspot butterflies. They are found almost exclusively on San Bruno Mountain. The rare insects are particularly fond of the grasslands around the letters. “I’ve found plants with hundreds of eggs there,”  said LaCroix.

Twice a month she leads crews of Sign Hill Steward volunteers on work improving the two miles of trails at the 64-acre Sign Hill park.

While Hollywood sign advocates work with deep-pocketed donors to fund a shiny new tourist center, the future of South San Francisco’s hillside sign is mostly in the hands of local descendants of the meat-packing and metal-fabricating workers who built the town.

Mauricio Garcia is one of them. He’s volunteered the 50 hours it takes to earn a coveted Sign Hill Stewards’ Mission Blue Butterfly patch. “As residents of this area we have a responsibility to take care of the other living beings here. I’d like to keep a piece of it wild.”

The last architectural remnant of the sprawling former naval hospital property in the East Oakland hills, the Oak Knoll officers clubhouse, was cut into seven pieces last year and reassembled a half-mile away on the 187-acre property, helping make way for hundreds of homes that will be built there in the next few years.

As a crowd of spectators cheered Friday morning, a cherry red crane hoisted the century-old white stucco cupola back into place.

“It’s looking really good. Things are really going to start moving now,” said Salata.

What’s going to start moving now is the pace of restoration of the Mission-style building that was designed by architect William Knowles. The clubhouse was part of the Oak Knoll Country Club, which went bankrupt during the Great Depression. In World War II, the country club above Interstate 580 was purchased by the U.S. Navy, which operated a naval hospital there until 1996.

Developer SunCal plans to restore the building, which had fallen into disrepair in the years since.

Flying bell tower in Oakland today as restoration of Oak Knoll clubhouse continues. pic.twitter.com/GvvsxGNkAE

— Karl Mondon (@karlmondon) April 15, 2022

Maybe you saw Sal Pizarro’s column this weekend describing the festive atmosphere in San Jose’s Little Italy as the Poor House Bistro was transported four blocks Saturday morning to its new home next door to Henry’s Hi-Life.

Here’s a two-minute timelapse video of the four-hour long, Mardi Gras-style street party.

San Jose’s last big building “move party” was in March 2021, when the Pallesen Apartment building, a century-old, two-story structure weighing approximately 150 tons, delighted gawkers as it rolled down Reed Street.

They also captured images of return and reopening: Children in school and worshipers in churches, high school sports and senior birthday parties and live theater. They documented a mass vaccination campaign that saw lines of cars stretching down streets and millions of shots administered, even as families continued to mourn those they had lost from COVID-19.

And then, those moments of everyday beauty in the place where we live: Encroaching fog, birds in flight, the crashing ocean. Perhaps these are especially meaningful amid so much tumult — and so much that remains unknown as we begin a new year.

Presenting 2021, through the eyes of Bay Area News Group photographers.

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Now, the tiers are gone. So are capacity limits at restaurants, bars, gyms, places of worship, amusement parks and theaters. Indoor and outdoor gatherings of any size are permitted. And vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks in most settings.

Many Californians, of course, have been eating out, exercising, going to movies and gathering with loved ones for months as coronavirus cases have declined, vaccination rates have increased and the state has loosened its rules. Our return to “normal” has been steady but gradual, accompanied along the way by both uncertainty and hope.

In that sense, today’s official reopening is less a dramatic shift in daily life (though life will look different: all those exposed chins and noses!) than a celebration of the progress we’ve made after so much loss and loneliness. That celebration consists of coffee dates and commutes, bowling and swimming and music. It symbolizes the return of our life together — just in time for the long, bright days of summer.

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Habitat for Humanity, the City of San Jose, the Preservation Action Council of San Jose, and developer KT Urban joined together to save the  Pallesen apartment building on the first block of E. Reed Street to make room for the Garden Gate Tower, a 27-story residential project.

The move took more than three hours. But since you’re busy we condensed the journey into a timelapse video.

The Sunday drive was orchestrated by 85-year-old Howard Kelly of Kelly Brothers House Movers, whose grandfather started moving houses with mules when the regions was known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight not Silicon Valley.

Last month, San Francisco had a house moving party, too, as 139-year-old, two-story Victorian house was moved from a steep location on Franklin Street to a quieter street where it, like the Pallesen, will become affordable housing.

Before this past year, images of pandemics were mostly those of strangers in century-old black and white photographs, grainy unrecognizable faces, people from a bygone era peering at us safely from the remote dustbins of history.

That all changed in 2020.

Now we are the new faces of pandemic. Our families, our friends, our neighbors.

Bay Area News Group photographers documented this past year as we began isolating from each other to stop the deadly spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.

From those early days when the virus seemed safely anchored in purgatory aboard an ill-fated cruise ship off the Golden Gate, to that St. Patrick’s Day eve, when we all faced our first day of lockdown.

Through the chaotic rainbow-colored tiers of repeated closings, openings and reclosings, as our schools, businesses, sports and the arts all grappled to make the best of a scary time — and to make it through to better days. Along the way, families generously shared their stories of love and painful loss.

And finally, through the pain of our political divides during the bitter election year, to the racial reckoning sweeping the streets of our democracy, and a never-ending string of deadly regional wildfires.

These photographs offer a small mirror of ourselves as we fought through it all to keep our health, our dignity and our humanity. We look back now one more time at these images of ourselves, before they too join the next dustbins of history.

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But what it lacked in speed was made up in curiosity factor.

Starting before dawn Sunday, hundreds of sightseers with cameras and cell phones, chased a 139-year old, two-story Victorian house through the streets of San Francisco on a four hour, half-mile trek that seemed like a West Coast Mardi Gras parade.

Police used loudspeakers to caution the crowd, “People, please get back on the sidewalk. There’s a house coming down the street.”

According to the San Francisco Historical Society, it’s been almost 50 years since a Victorian was last relocated within the city.

Boats returned to Bay Area ports Wednesday with the first Dungeness crab haul of the season — after two months of delays. The Crown Royal was the first to arrive at San Francisco’s Pier 45, pulling in at 3:30 p.m. with a hefty load.

California’s traditional Nov. 15 season start first had been postponed to keep migrating whales from getting tangled in fishing lines, then was delayed by price negotiations between fleets and wholesalers.

Crab should be available at some S.F. and Half Moon Bay piers on Thursday and make it to Bay Area markets by Friday and Saturday, fishing associations say.

“Shoreside businesses, markets and communities that support the fleet are preparing to be ready as they start hauling gear on Wednesday and bringing crab to market,” the Half Moon Bay Seafood Marketing Association said.

Since 2015, there have been delays in all but one commercial Dungeness season.

A toxin, domoic acid, that could sicken anyone who eats the tainted crab destroyed Northern California’s 2015-2016 commercial season and created delays in other years.

In 2018, recreational crabbers had to postpone their fishing, but the commercial season began without a hitch.

In 2019, as with 2020, the fishing line danger to whales resulted in a crabbing delay of several weeks.