When our local market becomes news

Berkeley's a small town. When one of the grocery stores management gets shaken up, especially if that grocery store has its own foodie fan base, word gets around. I had heard that people were gathering at Monterey Market to say farewell to the couple that ran it. I didn't know the back story. Today, locavore blog The Ethicurean gave it to me: Fujimotos’ departure from Monterey Market a tough blow to local food chain

In other local news: the new Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley has opened, and Black Oak Books in North Berkeley has closed its doors.

All of these stories, though hyperlocal, are getting more Twitter buzz than Shahrukh Khan in San Francisco. Apparently the intersection of those who Twitter in San Francisco and those who obsess over the Badishah of Bollywood have a very tiny insection. (Sigh)

The Kornbluth Brothers: Movie Pitch for "Love and Taxes"

Josh and Jake Kornbluth pitch their latest movie, Love and Taxes, based on Josh's monologue of the same name, a sort-of sequel to Haiku Tunnel.

As an indie feature, they are shooting it bit by bit (as funding allows), and there's already a rough cut of one scene available: YouTube link

More info about the film at JoshKornbluth.com and the film's
fundraising page at IndieGoGo.

Perks for donors: methinks the $1040 level perk is a better deal than the $2500 appear in the movie: at the 1040EZ donation level you get a Case Name. In my book, being name checked in a scene about tax law would be even cooler than a walk-on.

Berkeley J-School: Multimedia Boot Camp --> Local News Sites

First week of graduate school in Journalism at Cal: a crash course in audio and video editing, and Flash animation. Why? Because the school (and the Ford Foundation, which is funding this project) recognizes the role of multimedia, multi-platform storytelling in the future of journalism.

Next, the students targeted local communities, asked what locals would want in local news, and then set about building web sites. They went live at the end of October.

There's one San Francisco site:

• Mission Loc@l

And six East Bay sites:

• Oakland North


• El Cerrito Focus


• inEmeryville


• East Bay West Online


• The (510) Report


• Albany Today

You access them all at: localreport.org

Award winning photojournalist and now J-School faculty member Richard Koci-Hernandez even created a video piece on the project (Vimeo link), but it's not as interesting as clicking around the student's local news sites.

Architecture - In Berkeley, Toyo Ito’s Plans for a Museum Wrapped in Honeycomb - NYTimes.com

Latest on Berkeley Art Museum, from Nicolai Ouroussoff, the NYT architecture critic. Interesting part is on page two, where practical concerns from the client (the museum) clash with the vision of the architect. Ouroussoff sides with the architect.

LA Times Buzz on the Berkeley Bowl

Google News pointed me to the LA Times feature story on Berkeley Bowl, one of our local grocery stores with a justifably stellar reputation for its produce selection, quality, and price. (Back in 2001, I wrote about the store on Everything2 as a must-see destination in Berkeley)

Staff Writer John Glionna focuses as much on the antics of shoppers as much as the produce, and notes that the penalty at the Bowl for grazing (sampling foods before purchase) is being banned from the store, forever.

Today I learned (hat tip to the Daily Clog) that after it was published on Monday, Glionna heard from Berkeley Bowl owner Glenn Yasuda. According to Glionna's blog, Yasuda didn't like the tone Glionna took in the article, and banned him for life.

Glionna seems to take it in stride. Read the comments following his blog posting, though. I learned as much about Berkeley's reputation, culture, and recent history from these postings as anything I've ever read in all the time I've been living here.

Insanity is: Skateboarding down Claremont Canyon

The shrinking of digital video cameras has allowed for the creation of new forms of cinema that would not have been possible otherwise. I make kids'-eye-view home movies, others toss their cameras in the air, still others hold cameras to their faces to create "POV" sex movies.

Skateboarding videos take up an entire wing of YouTube. Skaters have become increasingly skilled at performing tricks while holding small HD cameras, to capture footage inconceivable by Hollywood cinematographers and their enormous camera rigs.

This video manages to stand out from the crowd, simply by being UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING NUTS.

Two guys (Noah Sakamoto and Patrick Rizzo) in powder-blue suits and laughably insufficient head and hand protection, skateboard down Claremont Ave in the upper hills of Berkeley at speeds higher than I would probably drive (at one point they zoom past a car), all the while videotaping each other with an HD camera, outfitted with a fisheye lens.

If you can ignore the meaningless title ("Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD"), interminable opening credits, and opaque two-minute intro, you will be "treated" to two gravity-driven runs down the canyon that make street luge-ing seem positively serene in comparison.

Oh, and click through to Vimeo if you actually want to watch it in HD, full screen, so you too can clutch at your seat muttering bad idea bad idea bad idea bad idea BAD IDEA BAD IDEA BAD IDEA BAD BAD BAD IDEA.


Link

(Via Kottke.)

View from the Aboveground BART

Nature writer Chris Clarke posts where it emerges from underground Berkeley to head into Albany and El Cerrito.

A whoosh of engine and a scrape of wheel on rail, and we are gone and the residents enjoy their yards in peace. I have been riding this line, though, for a quarter century, and a quarter century of daily four-second glimpses adds up. My time riding this train has been a reel of film, each pass by each yard a still frame.

Worth the two minute read.

West Berkeley Bowl, still in progress

West Berkeley Bowl, progress as of 10/17/2007
Originally uploaded by Michael L

A proposed larger-sized Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley raised the ire of the locally-owned Berkeley Daily Planet... but once the zoning variances were approved, the paper dropped all coverage of how the project was going. For a while, we couldn't tell if was moving forward or not.

Now, thanks to Flickr, an enthusiastic photographer, and his kite-flying prowess, I know. Thanks Michael L!

East Bay Monthly: the local storytelling scene

Now appearing on doorsteps in "select neighborhoods in Oakland, Berkeley, Piedmont, Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda, Albany, El Cerrito, Kensington, Alameda and Alamo" --not our neighborhood, mind you (not select enough, apparently. We'll have to pick it up at the local coffeehouse)-- is the latest issue of The East Bay Monthly.

This month's feature story is a 4000 word survey of the storytelling scence. Writer Autumn Stevens interviewed a bunch of local storytellers, and put together a nice article on the theme of "not just for kids." The article includes a description of yours truly:

More closely resembling, with his neat button-down shirt and perpetually earnest expression, a middle-school English teacher than a flamboyant performing artist, Ereneta introduces a Louisiana folktale about two sisters.

Middle school teacher, eh? I was hoping for sophisticated yet approachable, with hints of cherry and oak, and a nutty finish.

Maybe I should switch to a dinner jacket and bow tie. Or bring along poor Yorick here more often.

Photo by Lori Eanes.

Berkeley encounters: DeCadence

During lunch hour at Cal during the school year, crossing Sather Gate means two things: lots of student organizations handing out leaflets, and, most days, one of the many official or unofficial student a capella groups doing a concert next to the actual gate.

I haven't been on campus at the right hour in 8 years, but today leaving a meeting, I chanced upon DeCadence, a coed group, six men, six women, singing some pop songs. Nice choral blending, a little bit of vocal percussion, and varying qualities of solos (some thin and reedy, some big and brassy (which suited the outdoor location better).

DeCadence takes itself slightly less seriously than other a capella groups on campus, often wearing costumes or accessories to comical effect.

BUT for whatever reason today (I missed any intro or outro... didn't even figure out the name of the group until I played a game of "follow the links" through various Cal student club acapella groups)... they were all wearing business attire and dorky sunglasses*.

But the Business attire, combined with the haircuts of the men, meant that my brain could not avoid comparisons to everyone's favorite alum of Cornell's "Here Comes Treble":



(Ed Helms as Andy Bernard in NBC's "The Office")

So as much as I enjoy the fact that young adults spend hours practicing, performing, and touring songs in which they get to make "neer neer neer" noises to imitate the sound of electric guitars... I couldn't get out of my head today the notion (implanted there by repeated viewings of The Office) that college a capella isn't just populated with music dorks, but raving idiots destined for mid-level careers in sales)

I did enjoy their un-ironical arrangement of King Harvest's 1973 hit, "Dancing in the Moonlight," although they did have quite a bit of ironic choreography. And they had a somewhat clever parody of the Beach Boy's "Kokomo," sung as "Ber-kel-ey."

Like most college acapella groups, mp3s aren't easily available... but...
Ah HAH!
YouTube link!(KoKoMo)
YouTube link! (Dancin' in the Moonlight)

If you want to see them in focus: Wednesdays, noon, Sather Gate.

*And by dorky, I think I mean "fashionable." They look like they're all vintage 1977, but I think kids today are wearing that style now without irony.

Whistlin' Phil... and the Other one

No more delightful a sound than the sound of two men whistling

The next best thing to being there: having a single Whistleaire in the neighborhood to serenade the birds and lighten the hearts of the residents of our street with a cheerful tune.

Second best: YouTube video!

International VR Photography Association Comes to Berkeley

Remember QTVR? Quick Time Virtual Reality... where you stitch together photos to make not just panoramic photos, but 360 degree photos, plus up and down views.

Well the hotshots of this field of digital photography just held their annual conference in Berkeley. And they took some wild pictures of the Berkeley campus, San Francisco, Yosemite, and of course, the Super Shuttle from the airport and various conference receptions.

Requires QuickTime.

When Turkeys Attack

from KTVU.com:
"BERKELEY -- Wild turkeys went after Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory technician recently as he rode his Segway to the office."

NBC 11 broke the story... and has photos taken during the attack!!!
I like the response from The Daily Cal's staff blog: "We don't like Segways either."

(photo by jdng)

Coming Soon to Berkeley

ToyoIto_04
Originally uploaded by AQUA_.

As you walk up Center Street from BART to the campus, you pass a Paper Plus Outlet, then lots of restaurants and cafes-- it's one block from Shattuck to the West Gate of UC Berkeley. But really, it's half a pedestrian entrance. The other side of the street is a Bank of America and parking lot, and UC's printing warehouse.

But not for long. Plans are afoot to put in a hotel and conference center where B of A is... and the warehouse will be home to the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive.

Today they announced the architect, Toyo Ito of Japan.

So I went and looked to see what might be in store for downtown Berkeley. Check out these links at Flickr (single photos don't do architecture justice, and Flickr is great and grouping pics together):
Sendai Mediatheque
TODs Omotesando Building (pictured above)

Mikimoto Ginza Building


Cool. Some of his early stuff looks a little too modern (there's a Yokohama day care facility that calls to mind an airport lobby), but I'll say this: a cutting edge building is certainly going to liven up downtown.
Plus, as a bonus, the Berkeley Daily Planet is so going to hate whatever the final product looks like.

Commencement Speeches from Cal

Excerpts from speeches made by geographers, writers, journalists, psychologists, and activists.

My favorite is actually from a Stanford professor, David Kennedy, addressing the Department of History graduates:

I know college has seemed hard — all those papers, tedious lectures, course assistants speaking an incomprehensible language, exams, labs, problem sets. But three things have made it easy: freedom, forgiveness, and indulgence. All three are about to disappear from your lives forever.

INCIDENTLOG.COM - CA - BERKELEY

via BeastBlog

Berkeley Police incidents plotted on Google maps. Looks like this week we're in a crime free zone.