February 2012
28 posts
1 tag
Band shots
Lisa Williams and Amy Gahran and Susan Mernit had what looks like a pretty good time hanging out over hte last few days. When Amy said they wanted to get some shots of them hanging out, I met them in a corner in Temescal and took a few pictures.
It was salutary and instructive. I don’t have very many similar shots myself, and the rare ones I do are usually from my days at South by...
January 2012
28 posts
1 tag
No home wifi blues
I don’t know what happened to our old base station, but years and years of use over several different households had to be a factor. Suddenly it wasn’t working anymore, and I was trying to follow Amy’s advice on how to repair or work around it, diagnose its issues during an extraordinarily busy working weekend.
So finally it’s Apple Store visit time, and I lay my money...
1 tag
Brunch at Caffe 817
I stayed up late last night watching tweets from Occupy Oakland. Today I wanted something to do that didn’t have to do with the double murder down my block, the union gathering at the hall just over from my front door, or the clash between police defending the empty building on the edge of Lake Merritt from protesters (and then kettling them in Uptown and arresting them en masse on the...
1 tag
Right down the block
I live in this city. I love it here. I get split sometimes between not feeling obligated to defend it to people who want to take cheap shots or talk about the city as if it’s something it isn’t or reduce it to its simplest, least nuanced perspective or symbolism.
And then I wake up and read about a story like this. This is not something I expect to have happen on my block, right...
1 tag
Adjusting my glasses
After the week I’ve had, and with the weekend ahead, it was wonderful to be able to stop by Beer Revolution and pick up one or two containers of something absolutely delicious.
1 tag
Running out of shit to say
I haven’t gotten very many parking tickets to San Francisco. But when I’ve had to shovel coins into meters, they haven’t tended to go tilt as often as they have in Oakland. Sigh.
An hour and a half wait for a brunch place? I don’t have that problem. Never had it and never will. Maybe less than half an hour for, say, a really popular sushi spot on Piedmont Avenue, but...
1 tag
Forums online, forums offline
Here’s a long day, full of doing what has to be done to make things work. I couldn’t have predicted what it would take to get through it.
I shouldn’t have skipped lunch. I was ravenous by the time I got over to downtown Oakland. There was just enough time to find a hot chocolate and head over to Nile Hall in Preservation Park, find Mario Sevilla and Marnette Federis setting up...
1 tag
Stopping by the Oakland Local News Cafe
Getting up early and pedaling around the lake to lock up outside Farley’s East for a good reason: curiosity. What’s a good gathering for discussing downtown business models look like? I went to see for myself. Besides, I had to get up eventually, right?
It was well worth the ride just to see how Susan Mernit and Kwan Booth and Amy Gahran of Oakland Local held court in the...
1 tag
Twist and shorn
It’s taken me several months to get my hair long enough to be able to do this. I thought briefly about doing it before, but I knew I’d need a certain thickness at the base of my Mohawk to make it work.
It’s just twists, nothing holding them in place but aimless and distracted manipulation and a little palm-rolling action. They can be teased out pretty painlessly with just a...
1 tag
There was something in everything about you
Here’s an idea: singer-songwriter house party! I wish I’d thought of it. But I’m glad Jessi Phillips (member of the Oakland Soft Rock Choir, and leader of her band Eight Belles) did, and gladder she said I could go. Knock on the door, come in and sit down on the wood living-room floor, get up and go to the kitchen to sign up to sing on the list, sip from a beer in the fridge.
...
1 tag
If I had a world of my own, everything would be...
Today was a short haul up I-80 to Dale and Adrienne’s Lewis Carroll-themed baby shower in Vallejo. Turns out they’re having a girl! Ankita and I got dressed up and found our way off the highway and into the city, one of a few in the Bay Area that I couldn’t remember ever really visiting. Leaving my laptop behind (d’oh!) after we’d crossed the bridge back into the...
1 tag
Out of the skies and onto the streets
11:22 AM me: Seeing any producers on duty?
11:23 AM coworker: No. Not yet. Will check tho
11:24 AM me: RT @OccupyOakland: OCCUPY THE WALK FOR LIFE! fight corporate funded populist fascism, Today 1pm at Powell & market in SF #oo #osf
Not even a championship game will draw some folks.
11:25 AM coworker: Ha! You’re right!
Here’s this sort of daily split I run across: I see...
1 tag
Apps and aptitudes
I hung out for a few hours at the Oakland Tribune newsroom and sat in on Ray St. Germain’s Android tips and tricks session for reporters. In attendance were photographers Laura Oda and Jane Tyska and reporter Angela Woodall (with their company-issue Motorola Evo 4G phones) and editor Pamela Turntine (with her iPhone).
My ability to follow along with Ray’s presentation was...
1 tag
And if you sail away I will follow you
Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it does give us something: familiarity, comfort, muscle memory propelling us asymptotically toward and beyond competence. I’ll take that over perfection in service to the song, once familiar, then ignored, then dusted off and reanimated.
After practice comes karaoke, for the second time this week. I’m hoarse by night’s end, joining in...
1 tag
Mobile past, mobile present
Someday, my co-worker Patrick Cant is going to get his own site, and when he does, I’ll have to go to him for clips just like this I shot with him about fifteen minutes before leaving work for the day. You find the strangest things floating through newsrooms, and now I’m just talking things, not, say, people.
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A night at the Alley
Straight-forward karaoke: You show up, write out the song you want on a sheet of paper and hand it in. You wait your turn and eventually your name is called, you’re handed a microphone and you sing.
I dressed up, partly out of some silly feeling of respect for the venue, and partly just because I could, even though I ought to get my hat re-blocked or repaired, or maybe even just...
1 tag
Gig and get-together
Earlier in the evening, I went over to Orange Street and waited outside what I’m sure was the exact apartment building I helped a co-worker move out of the Haight and into back in 1995.
Tonight the Oakland Soft Rock Choir had a gig there, so five of us showed up to sing at a house party for about two dozen folks. Our hosts, Nate and Misa, got married two weeks ago in Bellingham,...
1 tag
A moment to myself
In the car, the radio keeps pumping out hit after hit. But it’s just programming. Stuff that used to be popular. Gold, platinum, whatever ore the oldies are made of. Not stuff that’s going to be popular, about to be popular, on the verge.
It’s like the stations’ keepers know I’ve pulled into one of the ever-emptier parking spaces in the business park. But...
1 tag
Away but still on
I wound up working from home today, and it was weird. Not “weird” weird the way it can be when you’re being pulled in twenty different directions by watching feeds and listening in to an editorial meeting and passively eavesdropping on a copy editor’s rant a few desks over, but a hyperfocused kind instead. I wound up hauling the huge dresser I’d had for several...
1 tag
Pedal and mettle
Biking again. Twice within two weeks! It’s a good start, even if I don’t keep it going. It’s something to do that gets me out of a car, that lets me people-watch completely differently from when I’m, you know, walking or driving around. Measuring my tuchis against that of the world’s, and saying, yup, I’m skinnier, I’ll grin until I win it, and I can...
