It’s 11 o’clock on the L-shaped pier, Fort Point, less than a mile from the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. Vince Reyes is at the far end, setting up the third and last crab hoop for this evening’s catch. The tall and stocky, 20-year-old is working on unknotting a green nylon rope. His cousin, Eloy Reyes, is nearby fiddling with a hoop net at the mid-section of the pier’s edge. Other than a few flashlights that go on and off, it is pitch dark on the tiny pier. Behind Vince, a quick 360-rotating light from Alcatraz flashes in the sky as it passes in the direction of the pier. And to the left, alongside and a few miles from Vince, the city lights sparkle. No fog. No clouds. No drizzle, but chilly.

“I’ve been hearing it on the news that it’s Dungeness season out here,“ says 27-year-old Eloy, who is wearing a black hooded parka, blue jeans and brown insulated boots. “So I told Vince to come out.” Eloy walks across the pier to join his cousin, who has now finished with the rope. So far Eloy’s theory of catching more crab with the high tides at 10 p.m. have produced nothing.

It’s mid-November. Crab fishermen are out to sea, pulling up their crab pots from the side of their boats. Some boats work around the clock, hoping to catch Dungeness crabs that are crawling on the mud and rocks at the bottom of the ocean. However, for those who crab at the pier, one can legally catch four-inch or bigger Rock (Red) crab. For the Reyes cousins, this evenings crabbing is part recreation, part family tradition and part spontaneous.

Commercial fishermen in the Bay are not allowed to harvest Rock crab. Pier crab fishermen in San Francisco are not allowed to keep Dungeness. The more popular, meaty, large and live Dungeness crabs can cost upwards from $3.99 per pound in store.

For some, pier crabbing in San Francisco can offer not only a few memorable hours, it can offer an alternative taste of a kind of crab that may not be easily found in popular markets.

“Rock crabs are sweeter,” says 38-year-old, Nate Ringor, who on another night at the Fort Point pier used his father’s 30-year-old hoop net and a newer triangular and square cage trap with two of his friends. “I used to come out here in the early 70’s with my mom, dad, three sisters and five brothers. We’d barbeque, have a pot of rice and some garlic bread.”

“They do it for sport or they do it for food,” says Jeff Kirk, a former San Francisco State student. Kirk has a webpage devoted entirely to pier crabbing.

“It’s like any other kind of fishing. While the hoop is in the water, we'd take snacks, lounge chairs, books and we'd take the time to bond at the pier,” Kirk says. “When it was all said and done, we spent three or four hours on the pier.”

On the turn of the pier, there is group of three men and three women in their late teens and early 20s, who are huddling around their nets and buckets. They are drinking beer, smoking, laughing and talking. This group has been there for the past 45 minutes and they’ve caught almost a bucket full of crabs. Each time they pull up a net, a short young man yells, “Yeah! We got a gang load!”
There is a limit of 35 crabs per person. They don’t keep Dungeness crabs as the fine is $1000 for each Dungeness crab, regardless of size. A ranger came by earlier as a reminder.

Vince, or “Chu”, as Eloy calls him by his Guamanian nickname, is wearing a thick grey sweater with the hood on his head. He is wearing blue jeans, and a remarkably clean white pair of sneakers- considering the dirt, gravel and moisture that make up the surface of the pier.

The cousins rode out from San Leandro in a red Jeep Cherokee, listening to Hawaiian music the whole way to San Francisco. They’ve got an ice cooler with wheels, three thawed-out chicken cut in halves, three crab hoop nets and over a hundred feet of rope in the back of the jeep.

Vince winds the flashlight to get some light to where Eloy ties the green rope on the plank of wood at the edge of the pier. Eloy takes a few steps back from the edge with an approximately three-foot in diameter hoop net in his hands. Like a discus thrower, he twists at the hip, but with two hands, he tosses the net into the water.

Eloy quickly walks over to the net at the end of the pier. Vince goes off nearby to grab the ice cooler. Just in case. When Eloy brings up the net. His hands quickly pull up the rope. Right hand over left hand over right hand over left. He looks over the edge. Then he leans back. It’s too dark and the net is still to far to tell if they’ve caught anything. Eloy is worried about getting wet, but staying completely dry is impossible from the soaked rope that splashes over his jacket and jeans. Finally he gets to the net and drops it on the gravel. His hands are sore and cold. Nothing.

“Get the light,” Eloy says to Vince. “I’m gonna untie this one.”

Eloy’s decided to put the half of the chicken carcass outside the net pouch, instead of inside it, copying what the loud group has done. “We’re going to get some good ones now.” He spins the hoop net into the water.

He first came to this pier when he was seven or eight years old. Vince too. Their fathers, brother-in-law and family would sit around, talk and pull up crabs. By the end of the night, they would have an ice chest full. And when they got home, the uncles would divide all the crabs by twelve so that each sister and brother would get to taste their catch of the evening. Vince remembers that his only responsibility back then was to make sure that the crabs did not get out of the chest.

Eloy pulls up the crab net then drops it on the gravel. Vince shines the light on the net. Crabs and more crabs appear with each net Eloy pulls up. Most have a dark red shell, a white underbelly with black-tipped clippers. Eloy, like his butt is on fire, goes from net to net pulling rope, checking for crab, throwing it back out.

Vince is right behind him with the ice chest in one hand and a lit flashlight going in erratic directions in the other.

“Notice that we’re getting more crabs now that we’ve put the chicken out,” says Eloy. Or could it be the change of current that he notices. He is moving much faster now. But Vince is moving a bit slower and sluggish each and every pull. The ice chest wheels rotate much slower over the gravel. He yawns. He has to wake up for church the next morning.

"The big ones are coming Chu. The big ones are coming," Eloy yells. “Screw church tomorrow.”

There are five to 10 crabs for each net Eloy pulls up. There are baby crabs about an inch, maybe two. Vince throws those back out into the water with a quick back or side toss.

Then there are four-inch crabs that make the ice chest.

There are crabs that crawl sideways, out of the net and fall over the edge into the water.

There are several crabs that put up fights. One of these snappy crabs puts up a good two-minute fight with the Reyes cousins simultaneously. Eloy tries shaking the hoop net to get it off. Here comes Vince trying to pull the stubborn crab off. But this crab hangs on. “Fiesty one,” says Vince. Finally the crab falls to the ground. And as Vince’s brown hands approach the snappy red crab, the crab leans to its rear and throws both clippers up in the air, in a kind of gangster attitude.

“That one earned his keep,” says Vince, as he tosses the crab into the ocean.

The group of six makes their way out of the pier with two full buckets of crabs. And for a moment it is quiet on the pier, except for the wheels that rotate on the gravel.

The Reyes cousins are content with the half-filled ice chest of Rock crab, some of which they will eat in the early afternoon, in a Guamanian soup dish: crab with coconut milk, squash and spices.

It’s 1:30 a.m. A group of about a dozen men and women has just settled at the turn of the pier. Their nets are attached to a rope that is tied to a wooden plank at the edge. And then they wait, as the Reyes go home after a good nights work.