Casey Miner

If you met Stephen Linaweaver after 7am, you probably wouldn’t think he’s much different from any other Bay Area professional. He’s 38 years old. He works for a company that does sustainability consulting for corporations. He’s kind of outdoorsy. Whatever.

But if you met him before 7am, you’d definitely think he was unusual. For starters, you’d have to do what I did, which is drive down to the Port of Oakland before dawn and talk with him while he’s getting ready to launch his kayak into the Bay.

You might think BART stations would be quiet at 2am. The platforms are empty, no trains rushing through. But they’re not quiet. In fact, the noise is deafening.

Huge machines run back and forth on long stretches of track, grinding down rails and carrying new ones. Crews deep in the tunnels take huge saws to pieces of metal and cranes drop other pieces on the ground.

Carliane Johnson is about to dive into a narrow channel of water, just about five or six feet between the dock and the seawall. She won’t have to dive deep to find what she’s looking for.

“The population can explode all of a sudden, and we’ll be pulling a lot,” she says. “Some can be six or seven feet long. It’s a lot of plant material, and I just bring it to the docks, someone grabs it, and I go back and look for more.”

When she came into work this morning, Frank McCoppin kindergarten teacher Selina Cheung didn’t know whether she’d have a job next semester or not. Parent Siobhan Culhane hadn’t heard the news about Proposition 30 either.

“I advise you when crossing the street to always look left and right,” John Alex Lowell tells me.

When Lowell crosses a San Francisco street, he doesn’t just look both ways. He looks left, then right, then left again, then over his shoulder, to make sure no one’s coming from behind him making a turn. He’s also keeping tabs on the countdown of the walk sign.

“Only if it’s a double digit, or at least an 8, should you start walking, and not have it become 1 and you’re right there in the middle of the intersection,” Lowell advises.