Photos: Bayview-Hunters Point in black-and-white

For an outsider looking in, it takes time to get to know Bayview.

After striking up conversations with the residents and walking on Third Street, the epicenter of the neighborhood, Bayview starts to take you by surprise.

At Third Street and Palou Avenue, I talked to C.C. Chatman in late January. She was hanging out with some middle-aged friends in a triangular plaza at the corner. Two months later, I would run into a Saturday afternoon revival there.

Chatman didn’t want her picture taken, so I asked her afterward for a good place to eat. “My place,” she said in a heartbeat. “Tell me what you want to eat.”

“Pork chops, mac and cheese, collards, and corn bread,” I said.

“I’ll call you in a week for you to pick it up.”

After a long week at work, I forgot about my order until the next Sunday afternoon, when Chapman texted that my dinner was ready for pickup. It rivaled anything I’ve eaten in my hometown of New Orleans.

Outside the Super Save grocery store at Third and McKinnon Avenue, I spoke a few times to Tamika at her beauty stand. A young woman in her late twenties. In February, I asked for her picture; she said her hair wasn’t ready for one.

A week later, I asked her again, but no way, her hair was not done. Another week passed when she texted me to say her hair was ready and she wanted her picture. We will have her picture soon enough.

Two blocks down from Super Save is the Bayview Opera House Ruth Williams Memorial Theatre. Managing Director Cydney Nunn escorted me to the mezzanine, where I made a panoramic picture of the theater. Just the night before, the 2026 California gubernatorial candidates debated below.

While I took my ultra-wide picture, a felt a growing sense of history. In the silence, you could feel great potential vibrate, or maybe it was just the rascally local kids running around on the stage. Nunn said earlier that the Opera House has, in fact, been called “the heartbeat of the Bayview.”