Saturday, February 28, 2015

Albany Bulb Lives On Nearly One Year After Eviction

Around 80 people gathered at the Albany Bulb today to survey the many art installations built by former residents of the Bulb and to engage with the location's history. Participants in the "Refuge in Refuse" tour used their smartphones to uncover the stories of the Bulb's numerous makeshift dwellings and towering sculptures, which now lack people to maintain them. In May of 2013, the Albany City Council voted to turn over the East Bay peninsula, a former landfill that became the living space of dozens of people for twenty years, to the California State Park system. In April of 2014, around thirty Bulb residents were evicted from their self-made homes and placed in temporary housing scattered across the Bay Area or simply left to fend for themselves on the streets. Almost a year after the eviction, the legacy of the Bulb clearly lives on. KPFA's Andrew Klein has more.