Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Meet Broke Ass Stuart of San Francisco

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com



Short on money? Trying to figure out how to make it in New York or San Francisco after having just lost your job? Want to find the best pizza slice for cheap? That's where Broke Ass Stuart comes in. I met him a while back when he was just getting his business going and now its become something of a small success, and he a micro-celebrity. But one thing's clear..

He's got a great idea.

"Who are we?" He asks. Then Stuart provides this manifesto:

We write for busboys, poets, social workers, students, artists, musicians, magicians, mathematicians, maniacs, yodelers and everyone else out there who wants to enjoy life not as a rich person, but as a real person. Namely, we write for you.

The website is geared toward living the cheap life. It has tips on everything from shopping to dating. For example, Stuart's section on "sex and dating" has the quirky perspective of a set of writers who've seen one too many off-the-wall dates.

There's "What Your Girl’s Male Celebrity Crushes Say About Them", next to What Your Dude’s Female Celebrity Crushes Say About Them, and both by Anna G, since no male Broke Ass writer has bothered (or is it dared) to take on the task of speaking up for the men of the Bay Area.

Then we have "Dating and Life Lessons from Mad Men’s Peggy Olson" and creatively presented by (again) AnnaG, who instructs women to...

Sleep with someone younger just for shits & giggles

Though you don’t have to act like an Ann Margaret-25-year-old-acting-like-a-14-year-old to do it, but generally, more often than not, it’s a totally fantastic idea to go to a bar, pick up a younger, hot dude and have a one-night stand on your own terms. Mention that you work on Madison Avenue if he wants to find you.

As you can see this is almost all in fun. The San Francisco section of the website lists events you can attend for free, or for a wee fee where noted.

Finally Stuart, who calls himself "The Editor in Cheap" features the "Broke Ass Of The Week", featuring Jesika Gorton as this week's winner. Who knows? Next week it could be you -- if we avoid the Tsunami. (Well, you, not me. I'm in Georgia.)

In all, "Broke Ass Stuart's goddamn website" is a fun take with some really good ideas for things-to-do roped in.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Calvin Klein SF Union Square store front poll: 12 percent, racist - 36 percent questionable

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com



On YouTube.com

Calvin Klein SF (San Francisco) Union Square store in San Francisco Shopping Center has as of this writing a display front that triggered an email from a viewer and the video above presenting its design. Personally I think it evokes racist images of lynchings, but its boarderline, so I put the question to a poll vote.


As of this writing 12 percent believe it to be racist, 36 percent questionable but not racist, 7 percent report nothing wrong with it, 22 percent don't care, and 22 percent think it's not racist at all.

The store front's a standout in a San Francisco Center dominated by mannequins that are generally white in color and positioned in normal poses; Calvin Klein's mannequins are a shade of grey so dark, it's almost black. But its not the color so much as how they're positioned and the kind of rope and knots used in the display.

Check out the video and take the poll yourself.

Poll

More fun polls on pollsb.com

Thursday, July 09, 2009

SF Homeless man assaulted for no good reason



More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget!



On YouTube.com

This happened today in San Francisco as I was walking up Sansome toward Bush at about 1:14 PM PST. Two men were arguing for some reason - one homeless - then the other man chased him and started to throw him but we asked him to stop and walk off. Later, the homeless man admitted to me on camera he made fun of the guy (for some reason) but that didn't mean he had to try and assault the guy.

Moreover, the police came later, but threw the Homeless Man's items away. Why? He says someone called security, gesturing to the building on the corner of Sansome and Bush. Unfortunately, my camera's batteries ran out, so I went to buy new ones at the Walgreens accross the street; when I returned the Homeless Man was gone.

But the bearded, long-haired guy in black clearly had some problems himself. Total anger management issues as all he had to do was ignore the Homeless Man and walk on, but it was clear that before I arrived he was already in an argument with the guy which (my guess) has to do with the kind of camp site the Homeless Man set up on the corner. Wrong, yes. But it was much more "wrong" to assault him.

If you feel like you've got to take that kind of action against a helpless person, you're one sick dude in my view.

Monday, June 29, 2009

San Francisco Happy Hour: Aventine is raging! (video)



More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget!



On YouTube.com

The evening of Friday June 26th started in a rather routine way for me: meeting friends after work at the outdoor patio setting that the restaurant Cafe Americano provides on the corner of Howard Street and The Embarcadero in San Francisco (now, yes, I live in Oakland but as any dweller knows, Oakland, San Francisco and all cities as far north as San Rafael and as far south as South San Francisco make up what I call "The Inner Bay Area": a place of with a population of 2 million people, one college town, Berkeley, and two downtowns in Oakland and San Francisco, both served by BART.  It's common to see the same people anywhere within the Inner Bay Area, from a Cal football game to Friday nights in San Francisco, or a concert at Oakland's Fox Theater.)

Paul, one of my associates who's always on the hunt for the ultimate party. knew of one and said "Let's head over to Aventine. It's going to be raging tonight." (For you older types, "raging" is a term used to decribe a well-attended event with a lot of dancing and socializing.) So he rounded up the group of us gents and we grabbed a cab over to 529 Washington Street, next to the TransAmerica Pyramid.

I'd never officially visited Aventine, so this was a treat. When we arrived I asked one of the owners Adam Snyder, if I could use my video camera to record the festivities there and he not only gave permission he opened the video with an introduction.

Nice.

Aventine itself is a restaurant and bar I've not yet eaten at that shares series of blocks occupied by a number of good eateries and nightclubs which make up Jackson Square where San Francisco's Financial District ends and North Beach begins. With places like Bix, Kell's, and The Bubble Lounge near by, it's important to have an "angle" - something that draws people.

A Happy Hour in an alley



Aventine's revelers on Friday evening

The owners of Aventine took over an alley that connects Washington and Jackson streets, closed it off to traffic with the help of the San Francisco Police department, installed a set of turn tables operated by a disk jockey, added two bars and a pizza vendor, and encouraged non-profit neighborhood groups to set up places where party-goers could sign up to donate to their organizations. The result is a cross between a convention for do-gooders and a nightclub in the day, a street fair; and around 7 PM on a hot summer day like Friday was, the combination's electric, drawing a 1,000 people according to Snyder.

Michael Jackson, the amazing force of music talent, tragically passed the day before, so the record-spinner played a number of Jackson's best known hits: Billy Jean, Thriller, Pretty Young Thing, etc. At first, one or two people danced, most notably "D" who holds court with her rhythmically frenetic dancing, but eventually two turned to twenty, and twenty turned to 40, then 40 turned to 80. Now, I've attended a lot of street fairs, parties, and other events in San Francisco, and this one is one of the best I've seen. It's a perfect after work place to go to have good clean dancing fun.

Now some people don't like to dance, but my observation is once they have a few cocktails they start movin' and grovin' like there's no tomorrow, and badly. That was certainly the case for some at Aventine, but others like me just like to dance and need little excuse (or drink) to do so, especially since I just recovered from the worst flu of my life.  I was celebrating!

And for those who just like to socialize and not move their hips, there's the occasional only-in-San Francisco character to talk to. In Aventine's case, that person is the colorful "Emperor Norton" a uniformed chap who claims to own Mexico and California. Give him your attention and he'll write a bond for you he claims you can trade for money!

Aventine's Friday Happy Hour's a cool place for singles; the guy / gal ratio gets better - that is, even - as the night approaches, everyone's nice, and the folks are attractive (and the women who comes to Aventine look like models). But that written, it's San Francisco, so the event draws both Gay and straight and no one cares. We can thank the the energy of the event for that; there's just something, well, joyful about seeing people have fun. It's the best attraction element in the world.

Friday, June 19, 2009

YouTube As-One Meetup in San Francisco



More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget!'



On YouTube.com

A few months ago, a few vloggers (that's video-bloggers), most located in the SF Bay Area, and a few from other parts of the country came to meet in North Beach for the San Francisco YouTube As-One Meetup.

Now you're probably thinking "What's the heck is that." Well, the idea was started in 2007 by Cory Williams, AKA "Mr. Safety" who's current claim to fame is something called "The Mean Kitty Song" and who's knack for making viral videos has earned him celebrity status in the vloggerverse, if there is such a thing.

Ok. There is. The vloggerverse.

Anyway, the idea is for YouYube vloggers, or YouTubers, to get together at one place and get to know each other in a real-time physical environment. Mr. Safety organized the first one of these at Pier 39 in San Francisco and included then then major star of YouTube, Renetto, who flew out from Ohio to be a part of the event.



That gathering, helped along by YouTube's marketing staff, attracted about 200 people, 60 of them YouTubers, and was a ton of fun. There have been "As-One" meetups in New York, London, Australia and other cities I'm not aware of. (But frankly it hasn't really caught on as I thought it would for reasons I'll get into later in this post. ) The San Francisco As-One held in March was a new stab at re-establishing the trend of events like this. The organizers even made a cool video:



Personally, I really loved meeting all the vloggers and the wanna-be vloggers, but something's missing from the concept.

I think that something is a thing to do other than just standing around. The first As-One was really cool because the YouTubers that arrived really just re-started online conversations offine before the cameras, thus putting them online again. For example, Renetto's great at talking about race without bringing his emotions into it. He's a talker and an idea exchanger; that shines through in his videos. But a lot of that conversational activity that used to gain viewers has been replaced by fake sex tape videos, music videos, the Associated Press, and Oprah.

For Renetto, YouTube adding Oprah was the last straw. He helped start a new vlogger community of which I'm a part called Vloggerheads. There, the kind of conversations Renetto enjoyed on YouTube before it got big have been replicated on Vloggerheads. So now, the kind of community energy once there has gone to a degree and that's reflected in the As-One meetups.

What's the answer?

Well, having something to do is one. That could mean having the events at restaurants or bars which helps market those places. The As-One concept's also perfect for events, too (especially street fairs). In other words, when we YouTuber's come to As-One's the producers should have a plan for us. All that camcorder firepower's a waste just pointing them at each other.

So, if you're getting the view that I have a plan of my own, I do.

Something completely different.

Stay tuned.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Widgetbox.com - On Widgets and The Web



More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget!



YouTube , Yahoo, MySpace, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, StupidVideos, Sclipo and Viddler


Widgets are identified as the next hot "app" by many in the digital media industry, and from an upcoming video episode of "The Blog Report With Zennie62" created by Producer Sierra Choi, widgets were the talk of the Digital Hollywood conference in Santa Monica. But what are widgets? Why are they important?

I recently had the pleasure of visting San Francisco-based Widgetbox.com. There, I talked with Ryan Spoon, the Vice President of Marketing for the company, a visit faciliated by my friend Steve Kloft, a Widgetbox consultant whom I call "The Legendary Steve Kloft" for his Internet marketing exploits.

Our interview, captured in full in the video that accompanies this blog, was aimed for those who've never heard of "widgets" and don't know what they do. And after our talk, I was treated to a look at Widgetbox's "hack day" staff preparation. But first, a few observations about the culture of the company itself.

What I like about Widgetbox is the same for almost every Internet company I've ever visited or been involved with in some way: it's fun. There seems to be this standard format where the staff is a mix of the techy programmers and the people doing other business functions in one place - programming is not outsourced.

Also, Widgetbox, like many Internet firms in the Bay Area, is "young" not just in age - three years - but in that the staff is young. All of the Widgetbox people I met looked to be in their 20s and 30s. And, of course, there's always a remote staffer or two, in Widgetbox's case, in Boston. There's a dry-erase board with notes on whatever, and in general an open, freeform environment of people who really seem to like what they do.


What's a Widget?


According to Spoon, widgets are "portable pieces of content on the web." Any content that can be shared on a website, a blog like this one, or a social networking page like Facebook. (For the reader, "content" is anything posted in a website for your consumption: text in a news article, or photos, or videos, or sound as in a music podcast.)

The idea with widgets is for you to not have to go to a particular site to see that site's content. Regarding their value to society, "Widgets help with communication," Spoon says, "Communication can mean you pulling in content: SF Chronicle, ESPN, that can be my personal blog. It also allows two-way communication, where people taking content and putting it in places where it can be read from both sides. That would be Facebook."

Spoon talks about Widgetbox's most popular product, "The Baby Ticker", shown here:



The Baby Ticker is an interesting device that allows one to establish a countdown to the birth of an expected child; an animated baby actually grows in a "womb" in the widget itself. Spoon says "three-quarters of a million" people have downloaded the widget since its creation.

Widgets play a central role in the establishment of "web-portability" and many data-aggregation companies are "widgetizing" their services. For example, I use news widgets on the blogs in my network, including Zennie62.com, Oakland Focus, and the NFL Business Blog. Those widgets consists of the headlines of the day from other news organizations. So you don't have to go to those sites to get their news. You can "pull" their content from the widget; on the other hand, the maker of the widget is "pushing" their content to you using the widget. This is a widget made for me by Widgetbox consultant Steve Kloft for me, and is a combination of all of my most accessed feeds, from YouTube.com to SFGate.com, CNN, and Zennie62.com:



As you can see, the widget serves as a portable one-stop place on the web which can be embeded anywhere and as many times as possible, up to millions of times. Anyone who has a website that subscribes to a feed, or a blog site, or videos or podcasts and place (or "aggregate") their feeds to one widget of their own design.

Because of this portability of online information, widgets serve as a threat to the idea that people will go to one place on the web for news or information: that's less so and widgets are driving this process of fragmentation even as much as RSS(Really Simple Syndication)feeds.

Spoon says that site traffic (called "hits" on the street) is always going to be important in this era of web-portability but the business model is different, and there has been talk of micropayments (Which I personally think is a terrible loser of an idea and I'll explain why in a separate post.). "News is based on what my network is telling me is popular, or what's relevant to me", he says "If the content is good, ultimately you can do a lot with it."

Spoon then used his personal widget from his blog Ryanspoon.com as an example of Widgetbox's latest product "Blidget Pro."



As Spoon explains, "what is appearing here is RSS". What appears on Spoon's widget is what he wrote on his blog, yet the widget is here in this blog post; again, we don't have to go to his site.

The propagation of widgets actually increases total traffic to the main site. The widget serves as a kind of satellite website. But if the widget's not monetized you don't make money from the increase in traffic. That's the problem facing content producers from newspaper organizations to bloggers.

A Tour of Widgetbox on "Hack Day"

After my talk with Spoon, I was introduced to the staff of Widgetbox and the company's founder and Chief Technology Officer Giles Goodwin who walked with me and talked about the staffers and "Hack Day." As the video shows, the staff sits in a closet-set group of interlocking desks with computers and rolling chairs that facilitate interaction. The group consists of programmers specializing in Java, and Ruby, and an operations manager and web designers, support and "user interface" specialists and content developers (which calls for a knoweldge of HTML and Flash coding).

The day of my meeting was called "Hack Day" where the staff members works on their individual projects for the entire day (rather than other work), then presents them to each other at 4 P.M. Some of the interesting work includes a new way to embed widgets into websites and a new search system. That reminded me of a visit to Pixar in 1996 when I worked for the Mayor of Oakland and the digital animation firm was based in Richmond, CA (it's now in Emeryville, CA). Pixar, known for its creative staffers, had a similar kind of Friday event which was part happy hour, stage theater, and "hack day."

Widgetbox is one of several companies in a segment, widgets, of a growth industry, digital media. As more publishers and now television networks move online following the growing number of people who get their information from the web, there will be more ad dollars moving toward web-based sources. While widgets may fragment information on the web, they open new opportunities for revenue-generation and usher in a new era of digital media.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Bay To Breakers Rauchy Party Solution: Concerts

 


More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget!



In my last Bay to Breakers post we looked at an amazing race of top talent from around the World. Some of you thought "Well, who's interested in that part of The Bay to Breakers; it's all about the parties in the streets and the booze." Well, I've not forgot that perspective. Here it is.

Overall, the event was a success and the people in my video said so. Moreover the new regulations didn't pose the huge roadblock to a day of fun that the Citizens for The Preservation of The Bay to Breakers feared would happen. Still, something was missing: concerts.

The problem with the 2009 Bay to Breakers was "Footstock", the annual giant gathering place and party held in San Francisco's Polo Grounds, was closed at 2 PM. That's too early and the halting of the event midway through the Bay to Breakers caused a bottleneck that pushed people out into Golden Gate Park and led to massive parties in the streets and people sneaking past barriers to relieve themselves in the nearby pools. It was a hot day; having a big name concert to go to at Footstock would have caused people to want to get their and not hangout and clog the park's streets and roads.

No example captured the magnitude of this problem better than the "Spring Break" float started by a group of guys called "The Godfathers" (someone believed the float was started by Citizens for The Preservation of The Bay to Breakers head Ed Sharpless, but I could find no evidence to back that claim), and according to John Cote in the San Francisco Chronicle, the float makers planned to move the float into the course midway through it, rather than having it at the stating area as the race organizers wanted. The tiki-style creation had a DJ spinning pulsating tunes and women in bikinis dancing on it, and booze.


UPDATE: Ed Sharpless responded to my email by stating the float was did not start in the middle of the route, which is contrary to the information I was given. But the responses of those in the video would objected to the float's impact on traffic were unplanned and real and underscore the need for extended Footstock hours.


Midway through the floats march through San Francisco, police came and confiscated the alcohol they had on board, but that didn't curb a thing and only pissed off the crowd. The float continued through Golden Gate Park, where its operators took refuge under a bridge and the crowd following it started a massive rave-like event which looked every bit like the dirty-dancing nightclub-turned-day it was. Ok, it was fun to watch, but because it took up the entire street, cars and in particular emergency ambulances carrying heat-stroke victims (it was that hot) could not easily pass through. It took almost five minutes just to clear a space for them to pass through. That's valuable time. Plus, the street head was still filled with people.

Toward Big Concerts and Big Planning

That would not have happened if Footstock remained open and a band like "Coldplay" were the headliner, with a local group serving as the warmup entertainment. That's the way we used to do it. People were convinced they had to get through Golden Gate Park to be there; instead, in search of fun and with nowhere else to go, they made the park their own rave party. The Bay to Breakers should be the scene for big concerts and formed by big planning.

What's happening to our society? A "hook-em-and-book-em" mentality has swept America and found its way into the Bay to Breakers. Time to put on the breaks! We have to go back to actually planning large-scale events around the idea of getting people to do something rather than preventing them from doing something. We have this desire, it seems, to want to control each other; why? It causes an irrational level of frustration that's contaminating our society, leading to policy brutality, assaults on students by teachers, and a backlash of social unrest that causes a cycle of government versus the people to develop.

Nuts.

The Bay to Breakers is a celebration of people having fun. The planner and the community should work together to make it so. My solution is to have a $5 charge at Footstock for those who don't have a Bay to Breakers number, a pass, or a pass that they could purchase online or at the "runners expo" held the days before the race. Then back that with a big name, big deal-of-a-concert that starts at 2:30 PM, just as the crowds are streaming in from a long walk. The money could be used for cleanup and the concert.

That would restore a lost luster to one of the events that makes San Francisco a place people want to be.