4701 San Leandro Street

It’s grimy. Industrial. It looks like no one lives here. But if you look closely, you’ll see the rusted tin metal numbers on the concrete gate: 4701. It smells of welded metal & black ash, dogs and weed.

Across the street, the buildings are abandoned. Scrawled across the khaki- colored building are the large spray-painted words: “Barzceuwchon I”. Maybe it’s a puzzle, a code. I wonder how the artist painted such massive letters on a building that looks to be about 25 feet tall and 50 feet long. Across the street, every 15 minutes, the Fremont BART defiantly rattles itself across its track. And underneath the overpass where it rattles are heaps of trash, faded cigarette boxes and crumpled McDonald bags that say “going that extra mile.”

Caught between the 880 and railroad tracks, there are no grocery stores within a three-block radius. There are the 4701 Dutch Boy Lofts, and then adjacent to it, eastward on San Leandro St, is the Standard Iron & Metals Company where mountains of metal collect to be crunched into iron, copper & aluminum cubes. I walk farther down to see the Vulcan Lofts.  The structures look like a medley of old remodeled factories turned into metal homes. There is a Thai Restaurant, called Vulcan Thai. Farther, there is the “Bike-in” Bicycle shop where it says “roll-up”. Peering in, I could make out the silhouettes of used bikes amidst a thick fog. As I Right before its dark entrance, a woman in flames is painted on the wall— it says “Inferno Gallery”. I moved on.

Still, there are no grocery stores. Only a smog check station and a corner gas station called “Eagle Gas”, where Day Laborers eagerly wait for jobs. Across the street, on the corner of San Leandro and High Street, there are hundreds of abandoned pinewood crates neatly stacked.  I head farther east onto International & High; I find 4 taco trucks—some attract larger crowds than others – and small produce stores in the distance.