Perhaps my favorite place around the bay is the old company town of Crockett under the south end of the Carquinez Bridge. A C&H factory still processes sugar cane, though the mill families for whom the town, with it's magnificent high school, was built have given way to urban escapees and bohemian commuters. The town has been largely spared the suburban development or tourist commercialism destroying most of old California; the riverbank is occupied by the factory and the industrial detritus that has collected under the towering spans of the the bridge. One of the twin spans was replaced recently; fortunately what was lost in symmetry was made up for by that rarity in major public projects, unpretentious elegance.