For decades, trucks laden with rubble from construction sites around the Bay rumbled to the edge of the water here and dumped their loads, building what was envisioned as future waterfront real estate. In 1984, after citizens won legislation to protect their Bay, winds and birds took over. Seeds sprouted, plants took root in crevices. Wild grasses sprouted. California poppies, coyote bush, fennel, thistle, succulents, pine, palm, blackberry, and pampas grass spread over the wreckage. Lizards darted over rocks. Garter snakes slid through the grass. Snails clung to the stalks of fennel and swallow-tail butterflies flitted among its yellow flowers. Wrens swooped through laurel and Canada geese stopped by en route to distant places.

This thickening green blanket did not fully hide what lay below. Mounds of concrete and rusted rebar poked through, like Mayan temples in the Yucatan. An accidental sculpture garden of twisted metal rose above the weeds.

Over the years a variety of urban explorers, fishermen, and dog walkers found their way to the place. Eventually—inevitably—it was discovered by those we have come to call the homeless. They hauled in their belongings, food, and water with shopping carts. They slung tarps over the rebar and built shacks with million-dollar views, hidden in the scrub. Middens of cans, bottles, discarded clothing and other spoils of dumpster diving formed around their campsites. They shat in the bushes. They brought dogs and cats who had puppies and kittens. The landfill became a refuge for people who absolutely did not fit in. Here they lived for a while without being rousted at night, without demands for repentance and reform, without bed checks or urine tests.

A community of sixty or seventy persons was so well concealed in the landscape that you could walk from one end of the spit to the other and barely notice a sign of it. At night they lay wrapped in thin gray blankets and dirty sleeping bags. In the daylight they were sometimes groggy and disoriented. They indulged in the forbidden pleasures of the contraband anesthesia of the street.

Albany prides itself on being a quiet residential community, in contrast to neighboring Berkeley. But as the landfill squatters kept to themselves and caused no significant problems, the city turned a blind eye to their presence for a time. Local police, rousting homeless encampments along the railroad tracks, would suggest the Bulb as an alternative.
It was inevitable, however, that as the spit’s population grew, murmurs of concern would arise in City Hall and the police station next door. An ordinance prohibiting camping was passed and, in June 1999, eviction signs went up. Police tramped through the maze of footpaths handing out warnings and then citations, then photographed and catalogued campsites. “Operation Dignity” set up an emergency shelter the parking lot of nearby Golden Gate Fields racetrack. Most of the landfill people shunned it.

The mass eviction caught the media’s attention. Bulb residents became celebrities. Their words were noted down, their street names dutifully recorded: Caveman, Animal, Rabbit, Racetrack Robert. Hitherto they had operated on the principle that it was best to be invisible. Now they bicycled to the 7-11 to buy newspapers with their pictures in them. The snout of the world poked under their tent. Cameras clicked. Microphones were clipped to their tattered lapels. Improbably welldressed TV reporters did stand-up in front of their shanties.

It was in the days after the reporters had gone and before the final eviction that Jimbow the Hobo, who had lived on the landfill, off and on, for seven years, led me along the dirt road that cuts through the center of the Bulb to a stretch of waterfront where, for the first time, I saw a wild gallery of anonymous artwork. I felt as if I had stumbled into a cave and discovered paintings of bison, reindeer, and saber tooth tiger.

Jimbow looked on in amusement as I rushed about, exclaiming. Here’s a driftwood boat, large enough to sail away on, with a plywood horsehead bow. A flag flies from the mast. It reads: SNIFF. A few feet away is a 20-foot concrete sewer valve housing, rectangular in shape, about five feet wide and tall, and pierced at one end by an iron pipe. It has been painted inside and out. On the wall facing the water, an ambulance rushes toward a circus ring where a fallen acrobat lies on the floor. A Chinese juggler has dropped his juggling balls. A donkey in a yellow polka-dotted clown suit sits at the ringside, watching impassively. On the inland wall, two mermaids reach to scoop up a sailor who has fallen overboard as passengers watch from a ship in the background.

I clambered onto the housing to find a bearded Chinese fisherman reaching to touch a naked woman who was holding a gigantic red fish; more red fish were in a net at their feet. To see what was inside the housing I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl beyond the reach of sunlight. The giant valve that once controlled the flow of sewage is painted silver. The walls are covered with a phantasmagoric Last Judgment. Drunks and lovers drown in a red sea, demon donkeys spear the damned with tridents and grab the coattails of those who try to escape. On the ceiling, this hell gives way to a garden of earthly delights, where, among nude picnickers, a Christ-like figure with arms outstretched is crowned with flowers as a gull flies overhead.

There is much more. Behind the boat, extending into the bay, chunks of concrete have become the severed heads of bearded men, horses, a turtle, a fish, and various unidentifiable beasts, as if washed up by tides. Nearby, hunks of broken telephone pole stand upright, transformed into totemic figures with driftwood arms and concrete heads. A sea captain with a rope slung over his shoulder wears a cap with “Sniff” painted on the front.

What is Sniff? Jimbow says he has seen four or five young men painting on weekends. The only clue I find is in the depths of the concrete valve housing. On the ceiling is a quick sketch of four skeletons, one holding a “Sniff” flag. They are labeled “Dave, Scott, Bruce, Scott.” Whoever they might be, they are attuned to this place. Like the people who have moved in among the bushes, they are exploiting the freedom afforded by wastelands and dumps, where everything is permitted because no one cares. Up the road society’s misfits and discards are indulging in forbidden and self-destructive vices. Here these artists have taken possession of construction industry waste, painting hallucinations.

I come back repeatedly, talking with the homeless who are still here and visiting the art works, which are expanding. I snap photographs and scribble notes. I consider writing about Sniff’s work, blowing their cover, interpreting. I worry that I would destroy for others the surprise that had been a significant part of my pleasure, but I have an excuse—in time, words and photographs may be all that remain of Sniff.
A few weeks after my first visit, colors have begun to fade. Decapitated heads have been knocked about. The head of a monster is partly obliterated by black gunk. Then one day Sniff’s flag disappears, along with the mast from which it flew.

The evictions are proceeding. The City tacks a yellow “Abate and Vacate” order to the valve housing, warning that on August 5 it will remove the structures from what they call “Site 213.” if their owner does not do so first. Sniff responds with a “Save Site 213” sign painted on a chunk of concrete. It gives the phone number of the City Attorney.

I call him and tell him that I am a lawyer and an artist, and offer him an opportunity to avoid being enrolled in the annals of infamy where the names of those who replaced beauty with ugliness are inscribed. He laughs, listens to my assurances that “Site 213” is not a housing project for the homeless, and assures me in turn that if what I say is true, he will recommend that the City leave the work alone.

On my next visit the yellow notice is gone, and new images have appeared. A once-bare slab of concrete has a painted checkered tablecloth and the remains of a banquet: a fish, bananas, a raw steak, a glove, paintbrush, pink bikinis with black polka dots, a pack of SNIFF cigarettes, a bottle of booze with a skull and crossbones label, and a pornographic magazine. A new stone skull sits at the base of the mermaid wall. The valve housing has been repainted. The fallen acrobat, the ambulance, the donkey are gone. Now a drunk takes a swig from a bottle, and a scroll proclaiming “Sniff 213” emerges from his mouth. A new circus covers the old. A simple bench has been built, facing the wall. It seems that the City’s cease and desist order has unleashed an urge to test whether art can save itself by its own unaided energy. Sniff’s only concession to political expedience is the “Save Site 213” sign painted on a hunk of concrete.

In late August, as blackberries ripen, the Sniff boat sails nowhere, its mast gone, its stoic captain unperturbed. The sky is gray. Geese fly in formation. The homeless are gone. Wildness has been tamed. For the moment I’m the sole tourist in this temple to the unfamiliar, the only recipient of this gift of strangeness.

Osha Neumann is an attorney who specializes in civil rights, the rights of the homeless, and police misconduct. He is also a muralist. I met him on the Bulb one Sunday morning. Dozens of blocks of orange styrofoam that once floated a dock moored offshore had washed up on the beach. He was carving a big mermaid from one of them. Some distance away, beyond a recently built styrofoam archway, the four Sniff artists were working on a new painting. One of them came up to offer encouraging comment and ask Neumann if he wanted to join the group for lunch. —RG

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