If you've ridden Golden Gate Ferry within the past 25 years, you may very well recognize Rene Alvarado, a terminal assistant who works primarily at the Larkspur Ferry Terminal.
For Golden Gate Ferry Terminal Assistant Rene Alvarado, working on the water runs in the family. His father has been a seaman for 55-plus years and his mother worked as a Golden Gate Ferry deckhand for 16 years.
By Matt Larson
Published: April, 2015
If you’ve ridden Golden Gate Ferry within the past 25 years, you may very well recognize Rene Alvarado, a terminal assistant who works primarily at the Larkspur Ferry Terminal. “What I enjoy the most, besides working with my co-workers, is our customers,” he said. That’s what’s kept him at the job for so long—his love for the people he gets to be around every day, quite possibly including you!
Working on the water actually runs in the family. Alvarado’s mother, Elva Alicia Blake, was a deckhand for Golden Gate Ferry for 16 years and just retired about a month ago. “I was very thankful to share all those years with her, working and commuting together,” said Alvarado. “At one time we used to commute together every day.”
In addition to his mother’s experience, his father is the one who actually got him started in the business. “My dad has been a seaman for 55-plus years,” Alvarado said. “When I was a young man, I remember him hustling tugs, barges and ferries, and going out to sea. When it came my opportunity to start working I asked my dad if I could do the same.”
Alvarado began working as a seaman with the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific right out of high school, transporting crude oil for Chevron along the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska and Texas. He later worked for the Inlandboatmen’s Union, going through the ranks. “Most of the work in the Bay—deckhand, able-bodied seaman—I have done it.”
Alvarado is happy to have been at this post all these years. “I don’t have to ship out and not see my family for months or weeks, and I still can be next to the water,” he said. Raised in Daly City but living in San Pablo, he would take the ferry to work himself, but the terminal assistants need to get there before the ferry even starts running. “To open the terminal and make sure all the safety measures are in proper order,” he said, “I have to be there before everybody else.”
Some of his fondest memories of the job are during San Francisco’s special events, like the Giants’ World Series games or the Pride Parade. “It’s so much fun seeing people get into the excitement of the moment,” Alvarado said. “It’s nice to see folks having that positive energy. That’s something I always look forward to at the job—seeing different things and different folks from different parts of the world.”
And he enjoys helping to bridge the language gap for the tourists when he can. “My second language is Spanish so that makes it easy for me to understand Portuguese, Italian, even French, anything that’s got Latin in it,” he said. “And the passion and love that you have for your job enables you to break those language barriers. Even if I don’t understand someone’s language, I can understand their body language by the way they try to communicate.”
When he’s not at the terminal, he’s often still at work, as he’s also a DJ on the weekends for weddings, birthday parties and all sorts of events. He’s still himself though, going simply by the name “DJ Rene Alvarado.” “A lot of people say ‘Don’t you have a DJ name?’ but I always try to keep it real,” he said. “And DJ Rene has always been as real as it can get.”
Alvarado sees the ferry as the most luxurious way to travel in the San Francisco Bay Area, and if you can make it work with your schedule, he recommends that you do so. “Some people don’t have that advantage to relax, to unwind, instead of being in a car panicking with all the traffic,” he said. “You can do your work, have a drink, it’s a win-win. And it’s a win for the environment as we take so many cars off the road,” he said. “It’s the best way to travel; this is like first class in the Bay when it comes to commuting.”
