This Place in Martinez is a Bay Area Bargain
Joe DiMaggio's hometown on the shores of the Carquinez is preserved and reaching out for its third iteration—this time a post-fossil-fuels era
My first newspaper beat, and probably the one I got to know best, was the city of Martinez.
Located on the southern shores of the Carquinez Strait, Martinez was a town of just under 40,000, the county seat of Contra Costa County, a stop-off point between the Sierra foothills and San Francisco during the Gold Rush, the late-in-life home of racist naturalist John Muir from 1880 until his death in 1914, the place where Pony Express riders would take the ferry if they missed the steamer to Sacramento, birthplace and boyhood home of Joe DiMaggio, and the very spot where the Martini was invented.
In the late 1880s, railroad magnate and former California Guv Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, decided that Martinez would be a fine location for the university they were spinning up in the name of their only child, Leland, Jr., who they lost to typhoid in 1884.
But those in charge of the newly incorporated city had different ideas, and Stanford was rebuffed. They made way for the state's first refinery to begin operations in 1904 at Bull’s Head Point, a then-unincorporated waterfront area two miles east of the downtown. And Stanford instead purchased an 8,180-acre Palo Alto stock farm that became the campus—and the rest... well, you know the rest.
Taking a closer look at Martinez during my first few city council meetings and to my green eyes, it looked and sounded like a place filled with regret and self-owns that only started with the Stanford fuck-up but created an overall cursed atmosphere.
The second story I ever covered there was about a local couple who got hitched and then immediately proceeded to go from city hall to a downtown bank and rob it. They made off with about four grand in cash from the drawer.
The teller, who I had to talk my way a little bit around the manager to get to, wasn’t able to give me any specifics. “This isn’t my first time getting robbed,” she said, cracking her gum. “When I do, I ask them why, and it’s always the same answer: ‘to get out of here.’”
I included that quote in the story, which prompted the mayor to make a call down to the paper, if for no other reason than to say he did.
The town council meetings were especially onerous. They went, as all such affairs do, late into the night every other Tuesday. The relatively harmless local crazies always kicked off in public comment as a sort of performative make-out session between the electeds and the proles, and then to the nitty-gritty of it all: budget talk, review of contracts, presentations from city planning, update on schools, cops, and fire, the droning on of the waterfront peeps, and the downtown redevelopment district’s PR backflips.
Not a whole lot was done, but small decisions were eventually made, and the can was kicked down the road. When you serve on the city council at behest of big oil and the county, there’s a constant shadow hanging over you, a specter of influence that’s never too difficult for even an outsider to define—it’s the constant reminder of one’s own abuser lurking over every decision.
So in the spirit of choosing the world’s greatest polluter over one of the world’s greatest institutions of civility and learning, the town gentry and its shepherd class were, in fact, simply treading water in a sea of black muck compounding the mistakes of their forefathers—because those mistakes made them rich and provided JOBS.
When I started to write stories in that vein, it wasn’t necessarily frowned upon for the content but for the fact that there was an air of stolen valor to it all. My kind, sweet editor Cathy Jacobson pulled me into her office one day and told me she understood that I had “gotten my head around” Martinez, but “You can come and go; those folks have to stay and make it work.”
And she was right. A Berkeley resident in my early twenties, I had no designs on living in Martinez or making my home there one day. As much as I abhorred staying up till two in the morning on a weeknight filing a story on whether or not the asbestos remediation at the site of the old Martinez-Benicia ferry building was over budget or waaaaay over budget, it became clear to me after months of being treated like an outsider, in spite of spending my weekends attending car shows and bocce tournaments, that I would always be at arm’s length.
The generations who’d been blessed with stories of the town’s greatest hits, from the DiMaggio clan to the Van Gundy brothers, also had 10:1 tales of the big misses. The bank robber couple was eventually caught in San Francisco having one heck of a honeymoon. Both did a couple of months in the county lock-up, in, you guessed it: downtown Martinez.
As a reward for my overall OK work pissing off the locals, I was promoted to the city of Walnut Creek beat and then again to Concord, the most populous and largest-in-area part of the county.
Those city councils had their minor differences. Walnut Creek, a mostly white exurb and commuter-safe haven, was always trying hard to be a shopping and dining alternative to San Francisco for families who just couldn’t bear to get on the BART train one more time that week.
And Concord, slightly more countrified but with a couple of minor convention hotels and the chain fast-casual restaurants dotting Willow Pass Road, tried to tread that fine line between suburbia mall rat problems and the real problems of a midsized city.
None of it was as fun or as dreary or as filled with natural intrigue as old Martinez. I suppose one day soon, the refineries will all shut down, and the flaming metal towers will all be carted away and sold for scrap. The century-plus smog and pollution that has settled over one of the most beautiful waterfronts and natural, rolling hillsides anyone has ever laid eyes on will be lifted off and discarded like a pair of old braces.
Till then, the downtown is choked off and constantly dying. All the old shops, the men’s clothier, the women’s dress shop, the ice cream parlor, and the shoe store are either gutted or boarded or flipped over and over by antique dealers; errant weekenders looking for a trinket to remember a yesterday that wasn’t so hot in the first place stroll through, county workers eat lunch, and then the place is dead after 5 p.m..
It’s a town that knows where it's been if only because the daily reminders of where it ain’t—especially compared to their neighbors—are so prominent. The Martinites’ living history lessons are those of humility.
1413 Elm St Martinez, CA 94553
In early August of last year, Marathon Petroleum announced plans to permanently close its oil refineries in Martinez, California. The 161,000 barrel per day plant in Martinez on the eastern edge of the town has defined the small city’s skyline for more than a half-century. About 750 jobs will leave the area.
Marathon, the largest U.S. refiner by volume, had earlier idled the facility following weak demand due to COVID-19 outbreaks in the US and will continue (for now) to use the Martinez plant as an oil-storage facility and is evaluating its future use to produce renewable diesel fuel with plans to temporarily contract between 250 and 2,500 workers.
But the damage has been done and done and done again for generations—and now, it’s all gotta go.
So yeah, tear the fucker down, start the 20-year (more?) clean-up process, and plan for a new waterfront. The past is oil extraction, and refinery and the town happens to be the barn car of the Bay Area, the hidden gem blanketed under a layer of dust and soot and rust, waiting to be brought out into the light once more.
Anemic Dems like Rep. Mark DeSauliner who remains relatively free from campaign funds from region’s oil businesses, nonetheless will drag their feet while saying the right things: “This move is a big loss for our workforce and potentially the economy. That is why, before the pandemic hit and had a drastic impact on energy production, I started convening labor unions, environmental groups, and local governments to talk about how we prepare for a shift to sustainable energy and renewables in Contra Costa.”
I mean, yeah, great, then DO IT Bro. Call it what it is—addition by subtraction.
Either way, Martinez is a place where change is probable. It’s too close to too much good and it’s so pretty in its own right to stay down for much more than a century. Named after Californio ranchero Ygnacio Martínez, the downtown can be viewed as stagnant, or a preserved globe. The access there is 21st Century-ready with a temperate climate, tons of water, and an unlimited supply of fish—plus proximity to San Francisco and Oakland—not to mention my old lunch spot, a real hot yellow plate OG La Tapatia on Main make it practically the only secret left in the Bay Area.
So look now to buy when it’s still gotten at turn-of-this-century prices.
…The median home price in Contra Costa County is currently $909,963; that’s right, a million fucking dollars will get you an entry-level rancher in Walnut Creek or Concord. Not so in Martinez. Where progress impeded by the grotesque spew of flame and exhaust 24-7 stagnated the place to the point where its classic pre-World War I downtown neighborhood is frozen in amber.
I can’t think of a better street than Elm, one of the side streets off of Pacheco Blvd, the downtown feeder. Walking distance to the restaurants and bars and waterfront bocce, as well as to Martinez Junior High and Alhambra High School, a movie-set classic towering Spanish Colonial revival building the likes of Rydell or West Beverly
This little home was built in 1927, the same year thirteen-year-old DiMaggio was likely skipping through these same streets. Pull the original plans at the county offices and see what can be done here to restore the facade and the old detached garage. Fix up the deck in the back, get the clutter out and give a fresh coat of paint inside. Leave the ‘40s kitchen cabinetry alone and see what can be done with that big ol' backyard. You'll be the one of the first back in to old Martinez. At less than half the cost of other homes in the area code, you won't be the last.