Blast from the past: The original BAA homepage

Straight from the time machine is this somewhat dated looking design, the original Bay Area Action website, created by Steve Glikbarg of Impact Online in 1995.

While this design looks a little old-fashioned by today's standards, this was actually a very clean and cutting-edge design for 1995. Remember that 1995 was practically the birth of the web (or the "World Wide Web," as it was still being called).

For a little perspective, consider that AOL was still a private community that you had to dial into to use, the Netscape browser was still in beta, there was no such thing as Firefox, Facebook, MySpace, or Google, and even Yahoo! was brand new.

Some of that original BAA site is still archived online, although many of the deeper-linked pages are missing, such as the Electric Vehicle Project's MG conversion manual.

Impact Online would later go one to become the widely-used VolunteerMatch.org.

San Francisquito Creek

This photo by Peter Drekmeier, and several others, have been newly uploaded to the BAA Flickr group.

I'm lacking data on a bunch of the pictures, like the names of people featured. If you can help, please create a (free) Flickr account and leave comments so I can amend the pictures' descriptions. Any details you can provide contribute greatly to the historical accuracy of this project. Thanks!

Some Schoolie photos

More archive photos have been posted to the BAA group on Flickr. These are mostly from a Gap protest in Los Gatos in March 2000.

More new/old photos uploaded

I saw Peter Drekmeier a couple weekends ago and he gave me a CD of 100 old BAA photos, so I'm going to upload them in small batches and tag them with as much info as I have. The first batch contains photos from Montara Mountain and from the 100th Monkey.

Please help identify people, dates, locations, etc.

Check out the new/old photos...

New photos

I've uploaded some new (well, old actually) photos to Flickr and tagged them "Bay Area Action." Please check 'em out, add any names or dates you can, comment, upload your own pics...

David Smernoff, Olya Milenkaya, Mark Bult, and Talia Stoessel

Oh, how I do love to collect photos. I've undoubtedly got hundreds, maybe thousands of photos from my BAA days, mostly taken in the pre-digital days. Here are three that I scanned a while ago, part of an ongoing effort to make digital copies of all my print photos so I can store them offsite in case I ever suffer a fire or flood at home.



I had this photo with a bunch of others on my desk and someone saw it and asked "Who's this gentleman?" And I said, "That's not a gentleman, that's David Smernoff."

David Smernoff and a bear, that is. I used to have this one on my desk when I worked at Acterra, and David just loooved that. He was my boss at the time.

Good thing he's got a sense of humor. Well, he'd have to, right? Look at the picture for evidence.

I think this was around 1996, on the way to Nevada Beach. A group of BAA members went on a vacation/mountain bike trek near South Lake Tahoe. Photo by Mark Bult.



Velma Gentzsch took this shot of Olya Milenkaya and myself enjoying homemade fondue at Velma's house. Circa 2003 or '04.



Talia Stoessel was part of the High Schools Group after BAA moved to Mounatin View. This was in 2000 I believe, and Talia used to help Olya a lot in the office after school. I haven't seen her in years, but she went on to UC Santa Cruz and I heard she's doing well these days. Photo by Mark Bult.

Welcome

From 1990 to 2000, Bay Area Action (commonly known as BAA) was one of the region’s most effective and respected environmental groups.

The people of BAA accomplished a lot in ten short years, from helping to save Bair Island to ensuring the success of Earth Day year after year. And there was so much more.

In 2000, with the merger of Bay Area Action and the Peninsula Conservation Center Foundation, BAA ceased to exist as we knew it.

I created this new site to serve as a historical archive. To recognize the important contributions of hundreds of dedicated members, and the organization they loved.

Welcome. Please feel free to post comments, send photos, share stories and memories.



Pictured: Three of BAA's founders — David Coale, Peter Drekmeier, and David Smernoff — at the BAA Moffett House. Photo by Mark Bult.