Alameda-Centric



Most Islanders (which I am not) are proud of the fact that they can get everything they need right here in Alameda without ever leaving the Island.
    Alameda-based freelancer Mary McInerney is one of them. She has perfected the insular Alameda way of life and writes about it in this issue in “The Island Nation of Alameda,” offering Alameda Magazine readers a glimpse into the real psyche of Alamedans.
    She talks to your fellow Alamedans to find out what exactly it is that keeps them here. Is it because Alameda is their center of the universe? Or that it’s hard to leave because Alameda is an island? What about the Mayberry Factor? McInerney touches on those and more, putting her adopted home above all others with healthy doses of homerism and humor shining through.
    “I also like the idea of our small island holding itself up there with the other island on the East Coast, Manhattan,” she says, noting that Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover representing Manhattan’s telescoped view of the country applies here, too: the Bay Area, the country, the world, all diminishing in importance to Alameda to make a point about Alamedans’ mental geography. “It is simply the idea of an Island Nation, where all who live there believe they are the center of the universe. And how ludicrous is that?”
    Meanwhile, another Mary, Mary Eisenhart, a frequent Alameda Magazine contributor, explores quite another Alameda phenomenon: the outpouring of community support for one of its own. Eisenhart’s tale of a young man’s struggle to recover from a horrific attack and the spontaneous community effort to help him embodies the type of place Alameda is, one that puts the needs of its citizens on the front burner.
When Cole Cloren was brutally beaten in 2003, there was little hope for his recovery, but his friends and family as well as the entire community rallied behind him. Those support efforts, says Dr. Atul Patel, one of Cole’s physicians, may well have been what got Cole on the road to health.
    In typical Alameda fashion, everyone pitched in to help. Supporters built a shower for him, tutored him, paid for his physical therapy, organized an impressive Web site and enlisted an army for the Mayor’s Fourth of July parade to raise awareness about Cole’s needs. Most of it was unprompted. Ultimately, the community engineered the gala of the season to raise funds for his treatment at the Barrow Neurological Institute’s Center for Transitional NeuroRehabiliation. And that’s where Cole, or “Alameda’s Kid,” is recuperating with a good prognosis. Only in Alameda.




                                                                                                   Judith M. Gallman
                                                                                                   judy@alamedamagazine.com