Bay Area Reporter

The Bay Area Reporter is a free weekly newspaper serving the LGBT communities in the San Francisco Bay Area; it is one of the largest circulation LGBT newspapers by circulation in the United States and the country's oldest continuously published newspaper of its kind.

Background

Co-founded by Bob Ross and Paul Bentley on April 1, 1971, the Bay Area Reporter—known by locals for most of its history by the initials B.A.R. that were included in its nameplate until April 2011—was originally distributed to gay bars in the South of Market, Castro District, and Polk Gulch areas of San Francisco. Today, the paper is distributed throughout the Bay Area and beyond.

History

The Bay Area Reporter has evolved from its early years of uneven editorial and news quality to become of the most respected LGBT community newspapers in the United States. Its annual Pride issue in June is the largest and most-read edition of the year. It also features its reader's choice awards on its anniversary in the first week of April with a special BESTIES: The LGBT Best of the Bay (Renamed "The Besties") edition.

San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.44 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world.

The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not use the nine-county definition of the San Francisco Bay Area. The OMB has designated a more extensive 12-county Combined Statistical Area (CSA) titled the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area which also includes the three counties of San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, and San Benito that do not border San Francisco Bay, but are economically tied to the nine counties that do.

Bay Area (disambiguation)

The Bay Area most commonly refers to the urban area surrounding the San Francisco Bay in Northern California.

Bay Area may also refer to: