It's a Good Day to be an Obama Geek

If it's not illegal in California to take pictures with your iPhone while driving your car, it should be. Still, I couldn't let this shot pass me by during my commute this morning:


Those are Obama/Biden '08 stickers in the middle of the W00T!

What I'll Miss About New York: #17 — The Carless Life

They overcharge you for the extra tank of gas at the rental car agency. Well, really, they don't overcharge you, but you have to bring it back completely empty in order to take advantage of their faux discount. C'mon: Who brings a car back to the rental agency completely empty?

So I buy the extra tank of gas right before I return the rental car when we're on vacation or attending someone's wedding — however, other than these occasions, I haven't bought a tank of gas in three years. You see, I don't have a car.

I know people who live in Manhattan and have automobiles. These friends aren't necessarily rich – it's just that they're comfortable paying for a luxury that is altogether unnecessary in this borough. And luxury it is. You can have a monthly parking spot (if one is available) across the street from my apartment for a paltry $800 per month. As reported in the New York Times, spaces further downtown push well into the six figures.

A few months ago, I noted that there are lessons to be learned when you don't have a car. First on that list is that you don't ever buy more than $40 worth of groceries because, well, you can't carry them. Your trunk is whatever you can carry in your own two hands, so don't go buying multiple hams.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

A city needs two elements before most of its residents are comfortable going without a car. First, it needs the requisite density. It's easy for me to go without a car because the 100 yard radius around my apartment contains 2 grocery stores, 2 banks, 2 drug stores, a clothing store that my wife is convinced is a front for the mob, one of the best Jewish delis in the world, and 5 restaurants including a bakery, a Dunkin Donuts, and a Starbucks. I just don't need to have a car to get the stuff I need on a regular basis.

The second element that the city needs is a commitment to public transit. Of the cities I've visited, only New York really gets this — even if San Francisco and Chicago understand to a lesser extent. A commitment to transit improves the lives of all citizens, but it especially lightens the load of the lower middle class and the working poor.

In the Bay Area, folks in a lower socio-economic tier who desire to be homeowners move to places hither and yon from their place of employment. Though they might work in Palo Alto, they'll live in Tracy — a city that Google maps claims is "1 hour and 10 minutes" away. During commute times, I'd be shocked if you made the trip in under 2 hours each way.

Compare this commute with someone living in the outer boroughs yet working in Manhattan. Someone living in Rockaway Park might have a commute of a similar time duration if they work in Manhattan, but they're not driving. No $4.00 gas. No focusing on the road. Wanna read, work, or do the crossword puzzle? Be my guest.


Beyond benefits to the less affluent, not having a car benefits everybody. It means that you're going to interact with people during your daily commute and your errands. There's simply no avoiding it. You're not rolling around in a metal box with wheels — you're on the sidewalk, trying to stay out of the way of other people with your $40 of groceries, rubbing elbows with rich and poor, neighbors and strangers alike. No one rides first class on the subway and the sidewalk does not have a "Yuppies Only" section (Wait, that's Park Slope, isn't it?).

By October, we'll have a car. Hell, we'll have two. And I'll enjoy having a car again. Buying more groceries. The mobility to head off in any direction I desire. But in returning to the John Wayne Yankee car culture, I'll lose something that I had these past few years hoofing it with my fellow New Yorkers.

What's this? After living in New York City for three years, I'm returning to California. These are the parts of my New York experience that I'll miss the most.

What I'll Miss About New York: #18 — Occasional Brooklyn

I won't pretend that I visited Brooklyn frequently during these past three years. Truth be told, I think I visited the borough maybe a dozen times. I could blame law school for keeping me away from Brooklyn, but I think that travel time is the greater culprit. On the weekends (when I'm most likely to harass friends living there), the exclusively-local-running subway trains translate into a trip of greater than an hour each way. Of course, the trip is longer if there are glitches in the system. (Note: There are always glitches in the system.)

So I've been to Brooklyn only as many times as I've been to LA. Yet, I'm comfortable passing judgment on LA (Verdict: I hated it until visit #9. Now it's like the cousin whom you appreciate for who he is.), so I guess I'm comfortable opining on Brooklyn.

In a nutshell, Brooklyn is to Manhattan as San Jose is to San Francisco. That is, if San Jose were cool.

You see, although San Francisco captures the public's imagination, it's San Jose and the communities that surround it that really supply the engine driving the Bay Area economy. Google, Apple, eBay, Yahoo, HP, Cisco, Venture capitalists and start-ups A thru Z — are they in San Francisco? Not even close. They're all tightly clustered in the area around San Jose.

San Jose – the more populous of the two cities by 100,000 – is as bitter as a rural Pennsylvania voter, forced as it is to linger in the shadow of San Francisco. Yet, there's a reason that San Francisco came out on top of this sibling rivalry. For all San Jose's economic might, San Francisco has that certain je ne sais quoi that San Jose is most definitely lacking. San Francisco is a global city, brimming with culture and sustaining its own distinct lifestyle. It is a beautiful city populated with strange and fascinating people. The greater San Jose region? Well, it is home to low-slung offices and worker bees. (Even if those worker bees are multimillionaires and are reinventing the world economy as we know it.)

This state of affairs is mirrored between Brooklyn and Manhattan. First, there's the chip on Brooklyn's shoulder. A slight majority of Brooklyn residents voted in 1894 to merge with the City of New York, and the wound to the Brooklyn identity was referred to at the time as the "Great Mistake." Mourning the loss of an independent identity is hardly an exaggeration. One need only glance at a map of the New York City subway to see that all roads (with the exception of the G line) lead to Manhattan. How can another borough truly have an independent identity when even the subway reveals the point of the city's story?

Although the epicenter of New York City's economy is undeniably Manhattan, Brooklyn's status as the most populous borough means it supplies the people required to keep the city going. According to the last census, Manhattan's population was 1,620,867, while Brooklyn's figure was 2,465,326. The only other borough with a population comparable to Brooklyn is Queens, with a population of 2,229,379.

Despite Brooklyn's second-city similarities with San Jose, this is where the comparison breaks down. San Jose, I love ya. But Brooklyn in cool in two ways that, well, you're not.

First, Brooklyn in a cultural force in its own right. Starting with Walt Whitman, Brooklyn has served as a home to writers looking for a little perspective, a place apart from the cacophony that sometimes makes Manhattan too frantic. The trend continues. In last summer's New York Times, Arthur Phillips noted in passing that "new zoning laws that require all novelists to live in Brooklyn." Brooklyn has a siren song that the creative cannot resist.

Second, San Francisco yuppies don't grow up and move to San Jose. Conversely, Manhattan yuppies do grow up and move to Brooklyn. Sure, this migration of thirty-somethings to Brooklyn occasionally draws the ire of committed Manhattanites, but the lady doth protesteth too much. Are these frustrated urbanites afraid of losing their youth by proxy when they see their friends head to the outer boroughs?

Steph & I felt the pull of Brooklyn strongly during a trip to a friend's Park Slope home for brunch a few weeks ago. On the way back from brunch, we walked down 5^th Avenue to return to the subway. As we progressed toward Bergen Street, we both got the feeling that – were we to stay in New York – this is where we'd be headed. Turning 30, having a child, and staying on Manhattan means that someday, if you work hard and are lucky, you might have an apartment where TWO (yes, TWO!) people could shower at the same time IN DIFFERENT BATHROOMS. Alternatively, moving to Brooklyn means staying connected to the heart of the city while living in a community that permits you a little more space. To me, the choice would be easy.

What's this? After living in New York City for three years, I'm returning to California. These are the parts of my New York experience that I'll miss the most.

On a Purely Parochial Note...

...I wish the Stanford Women's Basketball Team would hurry up and win the national title so that ESPN can get back to telling me how AWESOME the women's teams are from Tennessee, Connecticut, and Rutgers.

It's almost rude for Stanford to interrupt ESPN's adoration of women's basketball teams east of the Mississippi.

Et Tu, Monty?

I do not like noncompete clauses in employment contracts. You see, I tend to agree with legal theorists who argue that the relative nonenforceability of noncompete clauses in California has helped create Silicon Valley, creating a legal competitive advantage over other tech clusters.

Still, I'm not exactly thrilled to see the Stanford's still-much-beloved former coach Mike Montgomery is slated to coach Stanford's rival Cal. I feel like an implied, purely emotional covenant not to compete has been violated.

In professional wrestling, when a Good Guy becomes a Bad Guy, they say he turns heel. Stanford basketball fans were already in a weakened state after hearing the (not too surprising) news that Robin Lopez would join his brother Brook in the NBA draft. Catching us dazed and stumbling around the wrestling ring, it now appears that Monty is ready to finish us off with a suplex.

Stanford vs. U$C, October 6, 2007 Greatest Las Vegas Upset of All Time

It's been about a year since I last posted anything about Stanford athletics and about three-and-a-half years since I've posted my reaction to a Stanford victory. Sparse discussion of Stanford athletics has something to do with a conscious attempt to avoid reliving college in print, but it's also fueled by Stanford's inability to seriously compete in football or basketball these past few years.

Well, last night Stanford really competed.

In 2003, Forbes magazine estimated that somewhere between $80 to $380 billion is illegally gambled annually on sports in the United States. And although ESPN's website maintains a link to the Las Vegas odds on various sporting events, the network likes to pretend that gambling doesn't exist. Since they largely ignore gambling, here's a statistic about Stanford's 24-23 victory last night over #2 USC that you won't hear repeated ad nauseum on SportsCenter:

(According to the Aspergerians running Wikipedia) Stanford's 24-23 victory over USC was the greatest football upset in the 60-year history of spread betting. Stanford entered the game a 41-point underdog.

Changing the NACDA Directors' Cup Scoring System to Change the Winner?

In 1993, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) established the Directors' Cup to reward the best overall NCAA Division I (other divisions & the NAIA were added 1995) athletic program in the country. North Carolina won the first Directors' Cup in 1993-94; however, the twelve subsequent Division I cups have been won by my alma mater, Stanford University.

On November 1, the NACDA announced a new scoring methodology for the contest. At first glance, the new rules – scoring both indoor/outdoor track, scoring all sports for which the NCAA/NAIA offers a championship (a change required by a new Program Philosophy) – do not seem to harm Stanford's chances of continued dominance in this contest. However, I can't help but wonder why the NACDA would change the rules other than to unseat Stanford University (and Williams College, which has won 10 of 11 Division III cups) from the top of the standings. (Also, note that UC Davis would likely still be winning the Division II award had it not started migrating sports to NCAA Division I in 2003.)

The original sponsor the Directors' Cup, Sears, ended its sponsorship of the contest in 2003. The present sponsor is a much less high profile organization (The U.S. Sports Academy). Although I don't know why Sears terminated its relationship with the program, the annual standings for the contest tell the tale: No one cares about the Directors' Cup, for the end result is almost always the same. Since the contest appears practically predetermined, the media ignores it. Why would a retailer throw advertising dollars at a contest sponsorship when ESPN et al. do not amplify those dollars through coverage of the contest?

Don't get me wrong: I'm a Stanford partisan, and I grin a big, provincial grin whenever Stanford wins any contest. Yet, whether it be through a rule change or a rough year, it's clear that their string of consecutive Directors' Cups cannot last. If Stanford & Williams continue their dominance unabated, I wouldn't be surprised to hear one day that the NACDA has decided to stop expending energy and resources on tabulating a contest that is not a contest.

A Parting Note: The reality is that collegiate athletic programs change very little from one year to another, so it's not surprising that the same affluent school, interested in investing in teams in each and every arcane varsity sport, would win every year. Maybe the NACDA is taking advice from U.S. News & World Report, whose overall collegiate rankings appear to be based on a methodology that changes every year, even if the data measured (the excellence of one school compared to another) do not.

For Every Pig, There Will Be a Saturday

Like my friend Adam, I'm proud of the showing my alma mater made in the face of a Bush visit on short notice. On his blog, Adam pulls a choice quote from the Stanford Daily:

Some students, like incoming freshman Alejandra Aponte, said they were surprised by the protest’s high turnout.

“I thought Stanford was really a bubble, but seeing all the people that are out here has shown me that people really are concerned,” she said. “I’m Latina; I’m from Guatemala. Right now President Bush is doing some very interesting things in Latin America. We have a phrase ‘For every pig, there will be a Saturday.’ Basically, his game is over.” (Emphasis mine)

I'm sorry, dedicated vegans and fervent (Is there any other kind?) animal rights folks, but for every pig, there will be a Saturday is an apt description for a President who just polled at 33% approval at his pet Fox News.

If it ain't Saturday yet, then it's at least beer thirty on a Friday.

Stanford Wins 11th Consecutive Directors' Cup. Details on Page D20.

Last week, Stanford University won the NACDA Directors' Cup for the 11th year in a row. The Directors' Cup was created to acknowledge the best overall athletic program for each division of the NCAA.

The only problem with the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics' plan is that Stanford has won the Division IA award every year since the award's inception.

The Cardinal's dominance has resulted in the award receiving almost no attention, and has already scared away Sears, the award's original sponsor.

How much longer until the NACDA just decides to stop giving the award out?

Palo Alto, California: 1 Police Officer per 673 Residents

It's been quite a week for the Palo Alto Police.

The 92 officers of Palo Alto's finest started off the week handing out We're Bored tickets to cyclicts for riding while talking on cell phones (an activity which, as you guessed, turns out to be legal). The cops ended the week befuddled by an anarchist rally downtown.



(I'd heard before that Palo Alto had more police per capita than any comparable US city. Although I haven't found a good online resource to back up this factoid, here's a point of reference: With slightly over 9,600 police officers and a population of 9,871,506, Los Angeles has 1 police officer per 1,028 residents.)

The Daily News Police Blotter: Fear and Loathing in Atherton

One of the many charms of living in Silicon Valley is the presence of a high-quality, 100% ad-supported (therefore, free) daily newspaper: The Daily News.

For a free newspaper, the quality of this journal is really unbelievable. The local coverage is surprisingly good, national coverage is AP and syndicated content, and it has two (count 'em) crossword puzzles. For anyone less than a news junkie, it really does the trick.

However, the best section of the Daily News is easily the Police Blotter, where they diligently detail the less savory side of Silicon Valley.

Like anywhere, most of the incidents detailed in the police blotter are no laughing matter. Yet, some items in the blotter always bring a smile — if not for the incident itself, than for the tone of the item: an inimitable blend of matter-of-factness, tongue-in-cheek commentary, and the drudgery of dealing with people behaving badly.

Here are a few choice items — unretouched — that graced the Palo Alto Daily News Police Blotter on April 21, 2005.

Some items have the sense of resignation that comes with reporting mindless crime:

REDWOOD CITY
Monday

900 block of Roosevelt Ave., 8:43 a.m.: Graffiti was found on a school for the second day in a row.

Other pieces are short form stories, drawing me in for 15 words and then leaving me wondering about the rest of the tale:

REDWOOD CITY
Monday

First block of Atherwood Place, 1:10 p.m.: A woman reported finding a club card membership card with her name and her neighbor's picture on it.

SAN MATEO
Monday

1600 block of Borel Place, 9:34 a.m.: A woman reported receiving 42 harassing messages.

100 block of Ontario St., 10:57 a.m.: A person reported their son borrowed their car on April 1 and has yet to return it.

(If only they provided updates. Did the son bring the car back?)

Finally, there are the police blotter items from the Atherton Police Department. These bits are truly in a class by themselves.

In terms of median home value, Atherton is the richest zip code in America. The average home was worth $2,266,711 at the end of last year. Furthermore, Atherton is about as cloistered and quaint as they come (for an area squat in the middle of a major metropolitan area). The Atherton cops keep copies of people's home keys on file, lest they lock themselves out. Most of Atherton is sidewalk-free, though it is sandwiched betwixt several communities of more than 50,000 people.

Without fail, police blotter items for Atherton are twice as long as items from the surrounding community. Each one is a tale diagramming this strange burg. Each one shows what police are called to do when they become a security force for the rich and nervous:

ATHERTON
Monday

First block of Walnut, 7:15 a.m.: A resident called police to report that their fence was damaged and construction vehicles were blocking their driveway

Just one battle in the Martha Stewart-esque property wars forever underway beneath Atherton's oaks.

ATHERTON
Monday

100 block of Selby Lane, 9:38 a.m.: Someone broke into a container at Selby Lane Elementary, spreading the container's contents across the campus. Burglars also tried to break into the ice cream room.

This school has an ice cream room?

ATHERTON
Monday

500 block of Middlefield Road, 10:28 a.m.: A silver IT70 Nextel cell phone was stolen from a locker at Menlo Atherton High School.

Something tells me that daddy can afford a new one.

ATHERTON
Monday

First block of Lowery Drive, 1:35 p.m.: A resident reported that cars were illegally parked in front of her property.

If these cars are parked here for 5 more minutes, then the terrorists have already won.

ATHERTON
Monday

First block of Lilac Drive, 3:06 p.m.: A resident called police because a neighbor had been complaining about the noise level from their son's band practice. The resident asked police to come to the practice at 4 p.m. and take a decibel reading.

Battles 2 & 3 of the day in the Inter-Atherton Resident Wars.

ATHERTON
Monday

300 block of Walsh Road,11:27 p.m.: A 46-year-old man was taken to the hospital.

I thought this was the police blotter.

The Palo Alto/San Mateo/Redwood City/Burlingame/Los Gatos Daily News Police Blotter. I highly encourage you to check it out.

Patxi's Pizza: Soy Cheese Challenge

My friend Scott eats at Patxi's Pizza quite a bit. Born with supernaturally low cholesterol, Scott eats enough Chicago deep dish pizza to fell a lesser man.

Scott's miracle biology aside, the good folks at Patxi's still thought it wise to begin weaning Scott from standard cheese filling to a potentially healthier alternative.

Last week, unbeknownst to Scott, they gave him a Chicago-style pizza filled with soy cheese.

Scott is easily the most finicky eater I know, so I was taken aback to hear that he barely noticed the difference between soy cheese and Patxi's standard issue cow curd. Since a more thorough investigation had to be immediately conducted, four of us descended onto Patxi's last night for a more rigorous scientific evaluation. We ordered one pepperoni with regular cheese and one with soy cheese.

We began dining without knowing which pizza was loaded with cow and which pizza was slathered with beans.

Both pies arrive.
Slice 1: Soy Cheese Slice	Slice 2: Standard Cheese Slice
Judgment. I am the only diner to incorrectly guess which pie had soy cheese instead of standard cheese.

I'll save the detailed comments for my dining companions. I don't have the most refined pizza palate, so I had absolutely no idea which was which. I incorrectly guessed that the regular cheese pizza was the soy cheese pizza on the theory that it tasted just a little bit too much like cheese.

Until soy cheese is proven to be bad for you, I'll be ordering soy cheese from here on out.

Welcome to the Hotel California, Such a Lovely Place

Last night, a funnel cloud touched down in South San Francisco.


Source: Henry Jasinksky

Since I know you're curious, I bothered to take some California tornado statistics from 1951 to 2001 and put them into Microsoft Excel. Here's what the resulting chart looks like:

Manhole Covers that Smell like KFC

It's easy to be environmentally conscious when people illegally dump 3,000 gallons of restaurant grease into your city's sewer.


Source: mass.gov

Happy St. Patrick's Day

8 years ago, Irish Americans everywhere were up in arms about the Stanford Band's halftime show at the Notre Dame game, entitled These Irish, Why Must They Fight?

Alas, I was the announcer who offended so many at that show. As misery loves company, I'm pleased to see The Onion enter the same fray.


Source: The Onion

Our Day in the Independent Music Sun

Sinister Dexter's Morenita is the Latin track of the week on GarageBand.com. Check it out!

The Bryce Special @ Patxi's Pizza

Since my blog appears pretty high up in the Google search results for Patxi's Pizza, permit me to abuse that power.

The Bryce Special needs to appear on the printed menu. The world has waited long enough.

Sinister Dexter's New Year's Eve @ The Lost & Found Saloon

In San Francisco? Searching for a fantastic, nay, a SUPER-FANTASTIC New Year's Eve? Well, cease your searching and join Sinister Dexter @ the Lost and Found Saloon in North Beach.

A big band with 17 musicians onstage. Live Music from 9:30 till 1:30. $30 cover. Antimatter will be served. Funk. Blues. Swing. Latin. See you there.

A Tale of Two Bridges

During the same week that the French open a breathtaking and marvelous new bridge, the Governator announces that the new eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge will not be the distinctive design currently in progress, but shall be a far less expensive option utterly without artistic merit.

With California on the verge of bankrupcy, cost savings are on Ahhhnold's mind -- but supporters of a grander span think that he should consider the psychological impact of a more beautiful bridge.

On NPR, San Francisco architect John Kriken notes that, "cities are reflections of their aspirations at any given time. One generation gives us these great bridges... our generation is giving us something equivalent to an expressway." Kriken also notes that the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge's equally impressive western span were built during the Great Depression, yet their builders still managed to include aesthetic qualities that we Bay Area denizen find grand today.

It's Going to Get Worse Before It Gets Better

With Feinstein getting involved in the fray, Democrats are going to start piling on Gavin Newsom.

Regardless of Democratic in-fighting and wound-licking that's bound to occur, I still agree strongly with Josh Marshall: Time is not on the side of the kind of values and politics that President Bush represents.