Archive for 'Oakland & The Bay Area'

Rethinking The Newspaper: It Can Be Done

Posted 14 May 2009 | By | Categories: Business & The World, Essays, Media, Oakland & The Bay Area | No Comments

A recent Clay Shirky post, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” says that the newspaper as a business model is dead, killed by its reliance on industrial printing technology. The future, he tells us, will be based on experiments in journalistic form and not any particular form of media, new or old. Meanwhile, as I talked [...]

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Sports franchises need to take a cue from airlines and Apple

Posted 28 April 2009 | By | Categories: Business & The World, Essays, Oakland & The Bay Area, Sports | No Comments

With all the fuss over the empty luxury seats at the new Yankee Stadium, I was mildly surprised to find something similar happening in my own backyard.  At Sunday’s A’s-Rays game at the Oakland Coliseum, all the ingredients for a great day at the ballyard were in place: sunny April weather, last year’s AL champions [...]

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Tires, onions and panic

Posted 10 February 2008 | By | Categories: Essays, Oakland & The Bay Area | No Comments

We got a little surprise Tuesday night when we let Ruby out back to do her evening business. For those of who have never been lucky enough to feel the full fury of fresh skunk, let me give you some quick wisdom. Fresh skunk does not smell anything like the mildly unpleasant musk you occasionally [...]

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Glenview haunting

Posted 30 December 2007 | By | Categories: Oakland & The Bay Area | No Comments

Over a month ago, Amanda Stokes went missing about three blocks from my house. Posters are up all over the neighborhood. SFGate: Homicide police join search for Oakland woman missing since Nov. 25

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Peng Wins Ar Cul

Posted 28 December 2007 | By | Categories: Oakland & The Bay Area | No Comments

This is the Christmas window display at my old neighborhood toy store, Sweet Dreams. It’s incredible that this store has survived 35+ years in the face of toy retailer consolidation, but this is a credit both to the store’s inventory policies (plastic franchise toys held to a minimum, lots of personality in displays and a [...]

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Brussels comes home

Posted 26 December 2007 | By | Categories: Oakland & The Bay Area | No Comments

The Trappist, open about three weeks now, is a surprisingly beautiful tavern in downtown Oakland specializing in hard-to-find Belgian beers and nothing else. Its proprietors have gone wonderfully overboard, importing a brand new tap system from Belgium and decorating the narrow space with a beautiful dark wood bar, handsome shiny taps and tasteful wall decor. [...]

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Slouching towards Fremont

Posted 26 December 2006 | By | Categories: Oakland & The Bay Area, Sports | No Comments

Last night I was taken to task for not blogging in God knows how long. Rumor has it that I’m a good writer, though you’d never actually know it from my output, or lack thereof. Luckily, 3+ months off may (should?) lead to a queue of interesting things to write about. As usual, the baseball [...]

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In Praise Of The Roads Not Taken

Posted 01 September 2006 | By | Categories: Essays, Oakland & The Bay Area | No Comments

On a week when my home state has signed into law one of the world’s most sweeping environmental policies, it’s fitting to take a brief look at one of San Francisco’s other major contributions to the greening of America. This one, though, took place over 50 years ago. In the early 1950s, the California Division [...]

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World Cup Detour #3: How To Beat Brazil

Posted 22 August 2006 | By | Categories: Music - Live Testimony, Oakland & The Bay Area, Sports | No Comments

Yes, I really am still writing about the World Cup. And, no, that does not mean that all four of you Entroporium fans are going to need to wait another four years before I start posting regularly again. Sunday, June 18th was a glorious San Francisco summer day with nary a wisp of fog in [...]

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