Walking quiet streets in Golden Gate

The streets around San Pablo were quiet in the late September sun last Wednesday afternoon.  The shouts of kids playing jump rope at Berkeley-Maynard Academy, a charter elementary school, punctuated the quiet.  The Golden Gate neighborhood is reputed to be “rough”  and there was evidence of hard living.  Graffiti was abundant and random bits of urban detritus — a torn couch pillow, a broken stroller — were leaning up against fences or in abandoned lots.  Boarded up houses stuck out here and there — the result of recent foreclosure? A crime bust? At the same time, brightly painted houses, a vase of yellow roses showing through a window, pink and silver princess balloons decorating an apartment complex, gave warmth and voice to the otherwise quiet streets.