2011 Year in Review: Ship scrapping and movie sets top your favorite slide shows

Welcome to the 2011 Year in Review:  a series of trips down memory lane where we visit the Vallejo Community Issues Examiner archives and share your favorite people, places and subjects (based on traffic to our blog site). 

Is this just a popularity contest, based on ratings?  Absolutely not! There's power in critical mass. But its' importance goes beyond just numbers. In a future posting, we will followup with some analysis - the storyline that we see emerging from your preferences - from your favorite articles, photos, and videos.

In this posting we share your five favorite Vallejo Community Issues Examiner slide shows.

Without further ado....(Click the titles to see the slide shows)

1)  Mare Island welcomes the SS Solon Turman

No surprise here. The accompanying article ranked second in viewer popularity (from over 110 posts). We show you the ship from different angles, poised for scrapping.

http://www.examiner.com/community-in-san-francisco/mare-island-welcomes-the-ss-solon-turman-picture

2) Film crews customize one of the mansions on Officer's Mansion Row

Another no-brainer. This summer the making of The Master captured both the resources of Mare Island and Vallejoans' imagination. The posting took our #2 spot in the year's favorite list, and the slide show offers a peek at some of the exterior and interiors that you will recognize when this long-awaited movie debuts (late 2012??).

3) Mare Island's Naval Hospital:  Then and Now

The filming of the Master used many of Mare Island's historic buildings. The Naval Hospital features prominently in the film and as we noted in the accompanying story, the building itself has more than enough history to enrich a variety of film scripts. We give you some glimpses of the Hospital (then and now) in this slide show.

4) Anatomy of a Dry Dock

Ship building and ship maintenance used to drive Vallejo's economy. While many members of the Mare Island shipyard community are long gone, the interest in this sector remains. Allied Defense Recycling, the company that received the contracts to scrap the Solon Turman and the Lincoln, shared these photos with us.

http://www.examiner.com/community-in-san-francisco/anatomy-of-a-dry-dock-picture

5) Sturgeon Biting in San Pablo Bay

There's a very large contingent of folks in the Vallejo area who live and breathe with the tides.  And when the tides are right, you will find them in Carquinez Channel, in the Straits, in the Napa river and out in San Pablo Bay in search of the 'big ones'. And no fish offers as dramatic photos as a sturgeon in the net.  That's one cry heard 'round the Bay.

Source: The Examiner. By Patricia Kutza, Vallejo Community Issues Examiner. December 30, 2011

http://www.examiner.com/community-in-san-francisco/2011-year-review-shipscrapping-and-movie-sets-top-your-favorite-slide-shows