This ad (slightly condensed horizontally to fit here more easily) was a banner across an article at the Oakland Tribune website today. Memo to Avis: Hummers are not “cool cars,” not even the H3 shown in the ad, described without irony at the Hummer website as “the midsize SUV” and “proof positive that good [sic] things can come in small [sic] packages.”
From Steven Pinker’s op-ed in Thursday’s NY Times:
Though the ungrammaticality of split verbs is an urban legend, it found its way into The Texas Law Review Manual on Style, which is the arbiter of usage for many law review journals. James Lindgren, a critic of the manual, has found that many lawyers have “internalized the bogus rule so that they actually believe that a split verb should be avoided,†adding, “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers has succeeded so well that many can no longer distinguish alien speech from native speech.â€
In his legal opinions, Chief Justice Roberts has altered quotations to conform to his notions of grammaticality, as when he excised the “ain’t†from Bob Dylan’s line “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.†On Tuesday his inner copy editor overrode any instincts toward strict constructionism and unilaterally amended the Constitution by moving the adverb “faithfully†away from the verb.
So Roberts’s mangling of the oath might not have been a “flub” after all: he might have been, consciously or unconsciously, trying to “correct” the words in the constitution.
I knew we couldn’t trust that guy — two documents that you really shouldn’t mess with lightly are the United States Constitution and the collected lyrics of Bob Dylan.
The San Francisco Chronicle had a “Chronicle Watch” feature the other day about one of those solar-powered displays that cities put up to let drivers know how fast they are going (the Chron’s “Journalism of Action” in action!). The display in question, which briefly wasn’t working because its solar battery was dead, happens to be a few blocks from me on Park Boulevard (where the marchers were protesting recently).
I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about Park Blvd, because I face its problems every time I cross over it, walk down it, or bike up it. In some ways, Park is a nice street: it curves gently up shallow valleys and ridgelines, from humble flatland beginnings at Kragen Auto Parts and Church’s Fried Chicken to a posher terminus in hillside Montclair. There are several parks alongside the street, and numerous shops, restaurants and cafes. You wouldn’t call it bustling in the way that some other Oakland neighborhoods such as Chinatown or Fruitvale are bustling, but compared to the strip malls of Fremont or Fairfield, it’s an urbanist’s dream.
And yet lower Park, from E. 18th Street to Interstate 580, is clearly not living up to its potential; cars drive at dangerous speeds past the occasional pedestrian who stands helplessly at a crosswalk, businesses routinely disappear for lack of customers, and some neighborhood residents avoid the sidewalks and parks because they don’t feel safe.
Earlier this week, I was eating lunch outside a bagel shop on Park Street in Alameda, and I was surprised to realize that Park Street has just as many lanes as Park Boulevard. The streets could hardly feel more different: Park Boulevard often feels like a speedway running through a semi-deserted neighborhood, whereas on Park Street, the sidewalks are thick with pedestrians popping in and out of thriving businesses, drivers obey the speed limits, and people can cross the street without putting their life at risk.
I’m not a city planner or a traffic engineer, but a few explanations for Park Boulevard’s deficiencies come to mind. (Continued)
“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” — Bill Bryson
I had a visitor late last week, and I thought I would show him around town. The fact that my visitor was a pirate, and under 6 inches tall, did not hinder us in the least. After the pirate passed my dog’s smell test, we headed into San Francisco for some sightseeing.
First we stopped by a pirate supply store in case my little friend needed any equipment. He wasn’t very impressed, so instead of buying supplies, we sat in the park for a while.
Then we stopped by Mission Dolores.
My pirate friend was hungry for lunch, so we went to the oldest Taqueria in San Francisco and ate a burrito that was bigger than the pirate. A lot bigger. (Continued)
They say that people in San Francisco will protest absolutely anything. After seeing this banner hanging on a building under renovation in North Beach, I can see what they mean.
May the light of justice shine upon Oakland:
The setting sun shining through and around the Alameda County Courthouse across Lake Merritt.
Also known as afterschool pickup at an elite private school in an elite neighborhood of the liberal and holier-than-thou city of San Francisco:
While I was ranting about trucks, I thought I might as well go ahead and post this photo too. This is a line for a high school in one of the country’s most compact cities with a very comprehensive public transit system; so why exactly do these teenagers need to be shuttled home in SUV’s every day? The line was literally half a block long, and as soon as it moved forward, another big gas guzzler would fill the gap left at the back of the line (except for one lonely prius which I could barely see squeezed between two trucks).
I know, I know, this is probably no different than any elite high school in the country. You expect more from San Franciscans, though — if they won’t make their teenage kids walk or take the bus, then who will?
Just an hour or so after there was a rally to save a portion of bike lane on Market street in San Francisco (the lane is being removed in order to make it easier for car drivers to make an illegal right turn. Really!), I happened to come across this scene as I was riding down Market a few blocks away:
Thanks, guys! I was hoping I would have an excuse to merge into the car traffic on one of the busiest thoroughfares in San Francisco!
I’m generally a pretty easygoing guy, but this is one thing that gets to me, probably more than it should. (I’m not the only one: see www.mybikelane.com.) You do have to admire the way the drivers of these trucks both managed to park directly adjacent to “Tow Zone: No Stopping Any Time” signs. They both had their hazard blinkers on, so they must have thought that made it all okay. Since there probably wasn’t a chance in the world that they would get tickets for this, I suppose they were right in a way.
To a lot of people, the words “East Oakland” conjure up thoughts of poverty and crime, liquor stores and drugs, sideshows and Raiders fans, hyphy and scraper bikes. And indeed, you can find all these things in East Oakland, some of them in larger quantities than you might like. What many people in Oakland (and even fewer elsewhere) don’t know about East Oakland is that you can also find several miles of parkland along the estuary nestled between Oakland, Alameda, and Bay Farm Island.
I personally appreciate this park because it allows me to ride on a 3-mile bike path all the way from High Street to Hegenberger without crossing so much as a train track or driveway, instead of braving the maniacal drivers and potholes of the city streets. Others have their own reasons: the joggers and dog walkers like having a place to exercise, the birders out in the early mornings enjoy the plentiful fowl, and the fowl themselves find plentiful marshes, channels and shoreline.
With a national spotlight currently fixed on Oakland’s violence and unrest (and with more destruction possibly scheduled for Wednesday night), now seems like a fine time to note one of the many bright spots you can find in East Oakland’s varied neighborhoods.
This boat — maybe about 40 feet long — must have been beached on this tidal flat near the mouth of East Creek Slough quite a while ago. By now it is just a carcass, rotting and decaying like roadside carrion. It seemed especially picturesque this afternoon as I rode home just after sunset, with the sky aglow, what may or may not be a planet hanging above the horizon in the Southwest (any amateur astronomers out there?), and jets coasting in for landings at OAK to the South. A person might be able to walk out to the old boat at low tide, but I just glance its way as I ride by, wondering what passengers or cargo it once held, and what voyages it might once have made.
Today I woke up early and went out to walk the dog and get some coffee. When I’m out walking, I often listen to KALX, the Berkeley student radio station, but the first thing I heard when I turned it on this morning on was “Anarchy in the UK” by the Sex Pistols. Don’t get me wrong: I like the Sex Pistols as much as the next guy, but it wasn’t what I was looking for at 8:30 on a lovely Sunday morning. So I switched over to NPR, something I try to avoid doing, especially on the weekends (I’ll save my full NPR rant for another time).
So what do I hear on NPR? A report from Linda Wertheimer about the personal side of George W. Bush. I have no objection to these sorts of stories in principle, but my God was this one awful. The NPR website claims that the report is “the third in a series examining President Bush’s legacy.” Sure, if by “examine” you mean quoting a total of three observers: two fawning Bush advisers, and one reporter who is extremely impressed with the rigor of Bush’s mountain bike rides.
It’s a short enough report that you can read it yourself if you like, but this assessment from former Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a longtime friend and aide to Bush, pretty much captures the tone of the whole piece:
“I wasn’t a knee-walking drunk, but I was drinking. And alcohol was beginning to compete for my affections. So I quit. One night I had too much to drink in Colorado Springs, Colo., and I haven’t had a drink since,” Bush said.
That was in 1986. Don Evans, secretary of commerce in the president’s first term and a friend of 40 years, says that act demonstrated the president’s commitment to his family and to the Bush family’s belief in public service.
“He realized at that point in his life, not only for his children and his family but for all fellow man — he can’t honor that core belief like he wants to if he’s drinking,” Evans says. “So he quit. Pretty amazing, I might say.”
Did you catch that? Bush quit drinking “for all fellow man.” Really! And people say that Barack Obama is treated as the Messiah. For an alcoholic to quit drinking cold turkey is indeed a difficult and praiseworthy thing to do, but since Evans chose to describe this personal accomplishment as an act of global salvation, I can’t help but point out that “all fellow man” would been spared eight years of Bush’s disastrous “leadership” if he had never quit drinking.
NPR apparently thought that Evans was a particularly insightful observer of the President, because they chose to give him the last word:
“I promise you this,” Evans says. “Anybody that has a chance to sit down and visit with George Bush will come away saying, ‘You know what? I really like that guy. He is really a good man.’ “
In retrospect, I should have stuck with the Sex Pistols: despite containing lines like “I am an antichrist,” I think “Anarchy in the UK” is much less offensive than NPR at 8:30 on a lovely Sunday morning.
Why go to a march when you can let the march come to you? I was eating lunch at home this afternoon when I started hearing chants of “Fuck the Police” getting louder outside the window. I went down to see what was going on, and it turned out to be a small protest march down Park Boulevard:
I assume that these are students from Oakland High School, which is a few blocks up Park Boulevard. They must have been inspired by the rioting in downtown Oakland on Wednesday night, because they kicked a few cars whose drivers had the audacity to creep past them going the other way as they marched (there was plenty of room).
The large banner reads “STOP US BACKED ISRAELI MASSACRE IN GAZA / MASSIVE RESISTANCE NEEDED NOW!” and the anti-police chants alternated with “Free Palestine” chants — another thing these kids seem to have learned from their activist elders is how to cover their bases. I can’t say whether this was a pro-Palestinian march which expanded to include the anti-police message after last week’s shooting of an unarmed man at an Oakland train station, or whether this was an anti-police-brutality march which expanded to include the pro-Palestinian message. And I can’t say whether the marchers would even recognize that distinction.
I followed the march until it got to Lake Merritt, when I turned toward home. As I walked home, I passed the girls in headscarves who had been bringing up the rear of the march (see the first photo above). They must have left the protest when it reached the Lake, although the marchers seemed to be heading toward City Hall.
The fatal shooting of Oscar Grant (who was unarmed, and lying face down on a train platform) was obviously a grievous injustice, and people have a right to be outraged. The fact is, however, that although the BART station happens to be located in Oakland, the officer was a member of BART’s police force, which has no connection to the Oakland Police Department or Oakland’s city government.
Smashing store windows and burning cars in downtown Oakland, and lashing out at Oakland’s mayor and police force, is a strange way to seek justice for this particular crime, but I can’t say I’m surprised after having seen the same phenomena during the Rodney King riots in Berkeley in the early 90’s — storekeepers on Telegraph and Durant Avenues obviously had nothing to do with the Rodney King case, but when simmering rage erupts into violence, you can’t expect it to follow any kind of strict logic. I’m just glad that no one seems to have been seriously hurt in this week’s protests, at least so far — this could be a tense weekend in the streets of Oakland.
I feel like I’ve seen this in different form somewhere before, but this is a cool visualization of the uncool spread of Walmart across the United States, from FlowingData. Store count is in upper left, year is in lower right.
I’ve been riding right past Oakland’s very own Walmart this week on my commute. (“Right past” in this case means that I can see it in the distance, across a parking lot, even though I ride up the same street that Walmart is on.)