Fragmentary Evidence

I happened to mention the bakery Arizmendi in a brief post about electoral politics on Monday. The only stranger I have ever recognized inside Arizmendi is Joe Tuman, a professor at San Francisco State and a regular political analyst on CBS’s local TV and radio news. I wouldn’t typically write about a year-old sighting of a local TV personality, but little did I know when I posted on Monday that I would get a press release the next day saying that Tuman will be announcing his candidacy for Mayor of Oakland at the Lake Merritt pergola on Wednesday. For all I know this is old news to political insiders in Oakland, but it was new news to me.

What do I think about his candidacy? It’s too soon to think much of anything: my own vote is certainly up for grabs, since my feelings about the current crop of candidates range from mild disappointment to horror, but Tuman’s most compelling attribute at the moment is what he lacks—that is, complicity in the fiascos which pass for state and local government in California these days. Tuman comes off as a fairly intelligent and well-spoken guy from the little I’ve seen of him on TV, but there’s more to running a municipal government than being smart and articulate. His website’s “issues and solutions” section is, in my view, unobjectionable but thin. (Increasing the Oakland Police Department’s size by more than 50% to 1100 officers is a nice goal, but on a day when more than 10 percent of Oakland’s police force was laid off, with further layoffs looking likely in a few months, it’ll take more than vague statements about reviewing compensation packages for new hires to convince me that Tuman has any great ideas for reversing the trend.) It’s mildly interesting to listen to him discussing the possibility of police layoffs on KCBS in late June, when he was commenting on city politics in his role as a disinterested analyst while he was presumably planning his entry into the Mayoral race behind the scenes at the same time.

At this point, I feel the same way I did in December: the only prospect that excites me in Oakland’s mayoral race is the possibility (a slim one, but a boy can always dream) that I might be ineligible to vote in it because I’ll no longer live in this mess of a city. There are some things I really like about Oakland—Arizmendi and the Lake Merritt pergola are apparently two that Joe Tuman and I share—but the more I pay attention to the city’s politics, the more disheartened I get. Maybe I’ll walk the dog down to Arizmendi in the morning, then head over to the Lake to see if Tuman has anything new or interesting to say at his press conference.

This storefront on Lakeshore Avenue is frequently rented by political campaigns, but I was still a bit surprised to see that Meg Whitman’s campaign had moved in, with a cooperative bakery down the street in one direction and a ferociously anti-Republican movie theater in the other (and just a few hundred yards from where I saw Jerry Brown jogging around Lake Merritt recently). There are more conservatives and Republicans in Oakland than our leftier-than-thou reputation might lead one to believe, but I think it’s safe to say that the Grand Lake area will be fairly solid Brown territory come November.

I wonder if the Whitman campaign’s incursion into Oakland is less about trying to win Oakland votes and more about sending a message to the Brown campaign that the erstwhile eBay CEO is prepared to spend whatever it takes to be the highest bidder in California’s gubernatorial auction—not that those two things are mutually exclusive, of course.

Many people own Kryptonite U-locks; some unfortunate people own Kryptonite figure-8-locks instead:

(Incidentally, something doesn’t seem to quite add up here. The lock, while bent out of shape, is unbroken. So why did the thief even bother trying to break the lock, if he was able to steal almost all of the bike without worrying about the lock at all? Or am I missing something?)

No, I didn’t go fishing myself (although that might make a good excuse for the lack of blog posts recently), but some fishermen and sailboats made for a nice scene on the Oakland estuary early one evening last week:

“The ball is round; the game lasts 90 minutes; everything else is pure theory.”
— Attributed to Sepp Herberger

The World Cup begins tomorrow. This means, of course, that it’s time for romantics worldwide to abandon themselves to a monthlong orgy of self-indulgence. For most of us, this just means plopping down on barstools before 7 am, or sneaking out of work for a long lunch in order to get worked up over a match between two countries that we couldn’t confidently find on a map, but for professional writers, such as novelist Rabih Alameddine, the urge to channel this quadrennial folie à deux billion into published prose is apparently irresistible:

A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance—this peak of ecstasy.

During these moments, I no longer am my usual self, no longer human. I am connected to life. Call it bliss, call it ecstasy, call it what you will.

In that moment, I not only see God, I am God.

I am not only connected to life, I am connected to my TV!

Of course, not every game has these moments, just like not every opera is Wagnerian. Some games are delightful Puccinis, others are Verdis.

None are a Lady Gaga song.

The TV and Lady Gaga remarks suggest that his tongue is in the general vicinity of his cheek, but when a soccer fanatic gets on a roll like this, no amount of ironic self-awareness can dilute the pathos. (“I always considered the 1812 Overture to be the best allegory for the male orgasm, while Wagner, with its peaks, more female,” he goes on to say.)

I plan to join in the global madness too, but it may be prudent for me to keep this blog football free, lest I start waxing operatic myself…

On my way to work today, I stumbled upon this amusing juxtaposition in Union Point Park:

I seem to see more odd customized bikes in Alameda than anywhere else. This was down the block from where the family bike was parked last month, and across the street from where I spotted the tiki bike last year

The guy who was riding this did have a cowboy hat on, but it wasn’t Slim Pickens.

Bike to work day was last Thursday. Since I bike to work all the time anyway, I have to seek out other ways to mark the day. (I suppose I could borrow a car and drive to work, but that would defeat the point.) Last year I took an extremely circuitous route to work in order to visit the festivities at city hall and some of the other “energizer stations” around town. (I’m a sucker for free food and coffee.) This year, I should have volunteered at one of the BTWD events, but I didn’t have my act together enough to sign up, so instead I decided to take advantage of the free ferry rides across the bay to San Francisco. (Okay, I’m a sucker for free anything.)

Many of the people with bikes on the ferry seemed to be people like me, who would normally take BART across the bay at less than half the price, but who were taking advantage of the chance to get a free scenic trip in the fresh air instead.

I rode around the city for a while admiring all the nice new bike infrastructure since the last time I was there just a few weeks ago, such as the on-street bike racks on Valencia Street and the green-painted, separated bike lanes on Market Street. I then stopped by the San Francisco MoMA to look in on some old friends. I only took a few photos there (photos from an earlier trip to SFMoMA are here), and for some reason I was on a windows and bars kick this time:

(Come to think of it, I have felt somewhat imprisoned by circumstances lately…)

If you listen to some of the complaints of Oakland residents, you might get the impression that the Oakland Police Department is either unable or unwilling to pay any attention to property crimes. And given the high levels of violent crime, it is presumably true that the OPD isn’t able to spend a whole lot of time investigating, say, bike thefts.

It’s reassuring, therefore, that the police do respond quickly (at least sometimes) when they have a concrete lead about a stolen bicycle. I just came across the following notice over at the blog Change Your Life. Ride A Bike. (Yes! Good advice!)

MY STOLEN PEUGEOT WAS RECOVERED TODAY IN OAKLAND!

It’s a little the worse for wear and beaten up, but she’s whole, and only missing her leather-padded toe straps and the contents of my panniers and my seat bag (tools, lock, cable, pump, 3 flashing red bike lights, etc.).

Many thanks to Jason, a Cycles of Change APC volunteer, who spotted my unique mixte in Emeryville, trailed the 12-year-old riding it back to his house in Oakland, then called me.

Many thanks also to Oakland PD Officers Charles O’Connor (#8732) and Terry Jones (#8427), who quickly responded to my call and were at the house before I arrived. They checked out the house, recovered my bike, and brought it to me.

Thanks to all of you who kept an eye out for my ride, spread the word, posted about it in blogs, and offered your support through all this. It has meant a great deal and helped keep me going in the search, which took lots of time and effort in my depressed state.

(In case you’re wondering, he was in a depressed state because the beloved bike was a family heirloom. Really.) Kudos to the eagle-eyed good samaritan from Cycles of Change and to OPD!

Unfortunately, this story isn’t entirely good for Oakland. There is a widespread belief in Alameda that the crime they have on their side of the estuary is mostly caused by hoodlums from Oakland who cross the water and prey on innocent Alameda residents before crossing to safety back in Oakland, where the Oakland Police will be too overwhelmed by violent to help track them down. That fear of the barbarians at the gate—or across the drawbridge, in this case—might be overly simplistic (as is my portrayal of the Alamedan mindset), but the sad fact is that it probably has a lot of truth to it. So when I learned that the bike recovered in Oakland had been stolen in Alameda, my relief at finding out that the Oakland police promptly and professionally handled a call about a stolen bicycle (a stolen bicycle!) was tempered by disappointment at hearing yet another story about something that was stolen in Alameda and brought to Oakland, just over the water but a world away. Sigh.

It’s nice to see the Oakland Tribune covering the wonderful improvements that are about to be made to the southern end of Lake Merritt, where a dreadful ten-lane thoroughfare is going to be turned into a pedestrian-friendly, bike-friendly area with expanded lakeside parkland. It would have been nice, too, if they hadn’t flubbed the name of my City Councilmember in a photo caption in this morning’s paper:

Her name is Patricia—or usually, just Pat—Kernighan, as any copy editor at the Tribune should know. Nancy is the first name of the other Councilmember whose district includes part of the lake, Nancy Nadel. A minor error, to be sure, which was fixed in the online edition and quickly followed by a published correction, but whenever I see these sloppy mistakes in the Tribune, I always think of a new line that was added to the paper’s front page nameplate at the beginning of this year:

Ah, I see, the Oakland Tribune is now merely “an edition of the San Jose Mercury News.” No wonder they sometimes can’t keep the people on the Oakland City Council straight!

This sweet ride was locked in front of Tucker’s Ice Cream in Alameda this afternoon (just across the street from where I spotted the cool Tiki Bike a few months ago):

It seats five, just like the Honda Accord behind it, but I bet it was a lot more fun to ride to the ice cream shop. Sadly, I came by a few minutes too late to capture the grand arrival of this limousine, but I heard it was carrying some incredibly cute triplets.