Oakland, Meet Lloyd, Crossing Guard At Grand And Mac Arthur Blvd

If you are on Grand Avenue and Mac Arthur in Oakland, California, during the rush hour and school mornings and afternoons, you've seen Lloyd. For 13 years, the man, 76 years old and turning 77 July 10th, served as the official crossing guard for that corner for 13 years.

Over that time, Lloyd has always worn a big smile and had a greeting for everyone, without fail. He says that by smiling he makes others happy in a kind of "pay-it forward" way.

As to what's changed about Oakland from his vantage point, Lloyd gave me a surprising answer: that everyone's in a hurry, "Nobody got time for nothing. People just rush by."

So, let's pay it forward, and back to Lloyd - give him not just a smile, but a greeting. Stop and talk to him for a spell. It's a great way to pay back someone' who's given so much to so many with his time on that busy corner of Oakland.

Ann Coulter Skips Pierce Morgan's Question On A Gay Child

Piers Morgan, CNN's choice to replace the now-retired Larry King, has been working to find his sea legs with American audiences, holding interviews that perhaps were interesting, but didn't really "hit" the mark.

But last night's interview with Conservative Mouth Ann Coulter did it. Pierce Morgan owned Coulter from start to finish on his CNN show, with the kicker being that she could not answer his question "How would you feel if you had a Gay child."

Instead of saying what any reasonable person would expect to hear, which is "I would not care because I love my child," she skipped the question. Opting for what she thought was an "out" by saying she's never been married, even though she's been engaged not once, but three times.

Well, from her awful, robotic, performance on Pierce Morgan's show, we can only conclude Gay youth give her problems.

Sad.

But thankfully, we don't have to worry about Coulter not loving her kids because she doesn't have any kids.

Stay tuned.

Harley-Davidson Bikers Piss Off Gavin Newsom's Dad At Balboa Cafe, SF, CA.

This is a study in how not to piss of the customers of a well-known bar and restaurant in a neighborhood that doesn't like loud noises, much. When a party's not involved.

This blogger was at The Balboa Cafe in San Francisco's Marina District and after The Union Street Festival, and wound up having a cocktail with William Newsom, who's son Gavin Newsom's the current California Lieutenant Governor.

At any rate, there were two guys with Harley-Davidson Iron 833 bikes making a rukus of a noise outside the establishment and pretty much pissing-off most of the patrons; especially Mr. Newsom. So, he went and a group of others, including myself, went outside to see what was going on. And as Newsom was stewing, I figured the nuisance was best captured on video. All the better to mark the moment and get the license plate of the bikers as they performed their noise-making stunt for the World to hear.

And boy were those bikes loud!

Man, standing there was a moment I'll never forget, that's for sure.

I have no idea what happened to the bikers after than moment, but at least I'll know to bring ear-plugs for the next time they show up.  

Stay tuned.  

Oakland Restaurants - Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe Visit In Uptown Oakland

The new Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe finishes a buildout of the front store spaces of The Fox Theater in Oakland, and is enjoying its first week of operation, this week.

The deal to get Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe at the Fox Theater started just over two years ago, and while it was delayed in fits and starts of deal-making, the end result was well worth the wait.

This blogger walked in on just plain impulse and, possessing a craving for breakfast at night, changed mind and ordered the Monday Blue Plate Special: The Meatloaf. A full, hearty meal of the kind not seen during the whole California Cuisine craze (which I'm somewhat happy has been altered to encourage larger portions), the meatloaf was almost as good as my Mom's at home, and overall I'd give it a B.

The atmosphere at Rudy's was incredible. Bright and airy, it's a great place to hang out and talk or people watch over a great meal.

The added plus is a kind of dining car in the rear of the place that, as I'm told, can be reserved in advance.

Rudy's, at 18th and Telegraph Avenue in Downtown Oakland and open from 7 PM to 1 AM each night, is a great addition to the growing Uptown scene. But I still think a baseball stadium would have been much better at the condo location than what's there now.

Check it out.

Sarah Palin Paul Revere Error From Fear Of Looking Stupid

Former Alaska Governor and now GOP Presidential non-candidate, candidate Sarah Palin, has done it again. She's stuck her foot in her mouth in recounting the history of Paul Revere. First, instead of just answering the question of a reporter, who asked how the day went, Sarah had to go off on some rant that went like this:



If she had to say anything she should have said "It was nice to see the place where Paul Revere said 'The British are coming'" and left it at that. But no, not Sarah Palin.

Nope.

Sarah Palin's so afraid of looking stupid before the cameras, and thus the people of America, she over-compensates and says more than she should, rather than less. She comes off as if she has to be the ultimate authority on whatever she's talking about.

So what happens, is Palin says something at length, then is wrong about what she says, which defeats her own purpose of trying to look smart. So, Palin keeps trying to dig out of this image hole, and only digs herself deeper into it.

If Governor Palin relaxed and stopped worrying about what people thought about her, this "stupid spiral," if you will, would end. Palin would disagree with my assessment, but if it were not so, this habit, then why the pattern of consistently putting her foot in her mouth?

It certainly doesn't taste good, that foot. And eating it's not the best meal for anyone who has White House-level ambitions.

Stop The Blame The Media Game 

In closing, Palin should not just stop thinking about what people think of her, but stop blaming the media for whatever stupid comment she makes.  In the most recent case, Palin said it was a "gotcha" question.  But how the hell can that be if the question was an opened ended one, asking how the day went? 

That's a sure sign there's something wrong with Governor Palin.   She's done this before, and the act is fading, fast. 

Andrew Brietbart Obsessed With Congressman Weiner's Naked Photos

Now that New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner did an about face and admitted that no one "hacked" his Twitter account, and that he was sending nude and other leud photos of himself to women he'd never met in person and just on the Internet, along comes conservative hack blogger Andrew Brietbart to go all "Deadspin, Brett Farve" on us, and show how hot he is for Weiner's naked body, or at least for whatever photo of it he can dig up.

Just about two weeks ago CNN cornered Congressman Weiner about what has been described as an "explicit Tweet" the pol sent to a young woman on Twitter he'd never met.

Now, when this blogger listened to Weiner talk about almost everything under the sun from the debt ceiling to the deficit to the chances that the NFL Lockout would end, to what restaurant in his district served the best hamburger (just kidding), the first thought was "It's possible someone may have got hold of his Twitter account, but the photos?

The question is where did they come from? Hacking into someone's computer hard drive is harder to believe than the Twitter issue, and that' s where the problems start for Weiner.

But that would be if he stuck to his original "hacked" story. Weiner didn't. Plus, Weiner, unlike Republican Representative Chris Lee, said he was not going to resign from office.

So, maybe because of that, or more likely because Andrew Breitbart could be a gay guy in the closet, Brietbart's devoted his blog Big Government to not less than 15 blog posts about what the blogger calls Weinergate, and as much for the congressman's name as what part of his body Brietbart wants to see.

But, in a society where an 11-year old kid can go on YouTube and freely see semi-nude women and men, not to mention people doing all sorts of things from blowing snot bubbles to public sex on a train, do we really care what Congressman Weiner did on Twitter, as The Atlantic asked?

Well, the answer is that we're titilated by it, if nothing else. That's why the keyword Andrew Breitbart was number one on Google Trends, and Congressman Weiner's number six on Monday. We want to look more than complain, and much of the complaints are being aimed not at Weiner, but at Brietbart.

Technorati calls it our "national hour of shame" and says Brietbart is a "scumbag." I'm waiting for someone to call or email and report that they have the same kind of photos of Brietbart.

Republicans Not Out Of The Woods

Remember, the Republicans still have Sen Tom Colburn, Rep. Chris Lee, and Senators John Ensign, and David Vitter to remind us that they still have the lead in sex scandals.

Stay tuned.

Tech News - Code For Oakland App Competition: Redirectory Wins!

In this tech news, the first annual (hopefully) Code For Oakland hackathon is history. The event drew 102 people, complete with Oakland and San Francisco geeks, and notable non-geeks like AC Transit Board Member and long-time Oakland Piedmont Avenue Activist Chris Peeples, resulted in a number of fascinating and promising applications, all designed with the needs of Oakland's low-income residents and those who aren't well "connected" in mind.


The Saturday, June 4th meetup at Kaiser Center was sparked via the efforts of Oakland Local Founder and Editor Susan Mernitt, and "about 20 people," as Susan explained in the video, who contributed to getting Code For Oakland off the ground.


What's Code For Oakland?


Code For Oakland's mission was simply to have a "one day workshop to build an awesome mobile app." As one of the judges involved in the selection of the winning teams, I can share the criteria we were given to work under, and which were adopted from the Knight Foundation's "Apps For Communities" competition:

1. Make local public information more personalized, useable, and accessible for all.

2. Promote broadband adoption, particularly among Americans who are least likely to be regular Internet users (including low-income, rural, seniors, people with disabilties, and the low-digital, English literacy communities.)

3. Create better links between Americans and services provided by local, State, Tribal, and Federal Governments.

There were a number of interesting and fascinating apps created. Here's the winner's list below, from the Code For Oakland website:

$1500 Ramsell prize:Txt2work, mobile app to allow re-entering prisoners and parolees to search and apply for jobs via their feature phone. Team led by Elise Ackerman and David Chiu.



$500 Ramsell prize for youth,: Betta Stop, mobile app to allow tagging and commenting on quality of bus rides and schedule in Oakland. Team led by Krys Freeman.



$1000 Mozilla prize: Redirectory, platform for allowing mobile feature phone, web and smart phone access to local social services data, focus particularly on parolee and reentry data. Team led by Randall Leeds.



$1000 Pandora prize: OakWatch, mobile/web project to allow real time neighborhood reporting via mobile systems. Team lead by Robbie Trencheny.



$500 Urban Strategies Council–for work with Re-entry Data API prize: Redirectory, platform for allowing mobile feature phone, web and smart phone access to local social services data, focus particularly on parolee and reentry data. Team led by Randall Leeds.



$500 City of Oakland, for work with Oakland files prize: OaklandPM, schema to use social sharing and city & OUSD calendar information to build a mobile tool to let teens find out what after-school activities are available and which friends are going. Team led by Jed Parsons.



$250 Full Court Communications prize: Contxt, mobile service focuses on SMS text messaging: broadcast messaging to community organizers. Team led by Tim Sheiner.



$250 Full Court Communications prize: Oakland Food Finder, mobile/web service for allowing Oakland low-income shoppers (and others) to find out where healthy foods are available in their area and for food supplies (farmers markets, etc.) to broadcast what they have available. Team led by Michael Bernstein.



Addtionally, an in-kind prize from Citizen Space for three months of workspace was provided as a gift for the winners to share.

In the next blog post on Code For Oakland, we'll take a closer look at the winning apps. Meanwhile, Oakland should thank Susan Mernitt and her team.

T-Mobile Samsung Loss Leads To Bad Oakland Service

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The loss of my T-Mobile Samgung Galaxy Variant in a taxi cab has led to bad service encounters at T-Mobile's Oakland, California store at 3201 Lakeshore Avenue.

The obvious point aside, which is specifically to watch what pocket you place your phone in, that's no reason this blogger should get the minimum level of service at a T-Mobile story.

Three visits to the T-Mobile Oakland Lakeshore store this week have resulted in being told that the store did not have a hotspot-capable (even with a file download) 3G phone, when I knew damn well it did.

And who told me that? A T-Mobile sales person by the name of Grace.

And that was just the highlight of a period of bad treatment. 

Grace simply did not want to help me. She basically told me that the 4G phone I wanted to buy was $500, but in a way that implied I could not afford it because I didn't want to pay that amount all at once. Then, she failed to even try to call T-Mobile and arrange for a discounted upgrade for me, saying that I was two months before my upgrade period.

That's not a big deal; T-Mobile has actually waved that in the past, when a sales person bothered to call them.  

But the kicker for me was Grace's statement that I could not get a 3G phone with a hotspot so I could access the Internet. That bad information, for which I asked Grace if she was sure of what she was saying twice, caused the T-Mobile customer service person I talked to, to say "That's just wrong. I'm sorry you had to go through that."

See, the last time I was in a similar situation to today was last fall, in October, and a different crew worked at the T-Mobile Oakland, Lakeshore store. A much more helpful one. So much so that I made this video to talk about the G2 Phone versus the Samsung Variant Galaxy, using the live-stream video upload system called Qik.com, which sends a copy of the video to my YouTube channel:



No such luck getting a sales person who was that helpful this week, and Grace was a disgrace at the job. It's not that she wasn't nice, she was but superficially so; she did not take any initiative at all, seemed eager to do at little work as possible, and was happy when I left.

The fellow in the video did take the initiative. He called customer service himself and arranged a discounted upgrade for me.

And he worked at the same T-Mobile Oakland store location.

T-Mobile should not allow this imbalance in service to continue.

James Arness Passes At 88 Years Old - Legendary Star Of Gumsmoke

Gunsmoke, a favorite television show of this blogger when he was little, and a program that seemingly would never die until it's last episode aired in 1975, was the place where the name Marshal Matt Dillon became a household word.

Matt Dillon was expertly played by James Arness, who passed away at the age of 88 today, of natural causes, according to his website.

James Arness was a man's man, and comes from a time when we expected actors to be taller than we were; he stood 6-foot-seven-inches in height. Arness, and his character Marshal Dillon, also stood tall in character.

"He had to specifically obey the letter of the law, no matter what else was going on," Arness said to the Archives of American Television. "He, number one, which I think was a totally different approach to other westers, even western movies, is he hated violence, particularly shooting. He hated to kill a man. And I tried to get that across, in the early going. I tried to get that across... It's something that not had been done, up to that point."

Here's a scene from Gunsmoke:



Arness also starred in the iconic science-fiction films Them and The Thing From Another World. Arness played the Thing because of his 6'7" height.

His website's message concludes with this:

Jim will be deeply missed by his family and friends. In lieu of flowers the family asks that donation be made to United Cerebral Palsy in Jim’s name.

Jim is survived by his wife Janet, 2 sons and six Grand kids. The services will be private for family only.

Here's an interview with Mr. Arness with an introduction by John Wayne:



Stay tuned.

Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, Dogwood Bar, Mark Uptown Oakland

Last night this vlogger trekked down over to the Uptown District in Oakland to just check out how the scene was changing. The result? The video you see above.

It started with a walk over to the Fox Theater, with a look at how the much-anticipated Oakland version of Emeryville's Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe was coming along. As it turns out the owners were hosting what California Capital Group's Mark McClure called a "soft launch," but considering the tweets we've exchanged, like this one...

@RudyCantFailCaf Rudy'sCan'tFailCafe
@zennie62 not quite yet...a couple more weeks...we'll keep you posted! Check out the RCFC-Oakland FB page for the deets!!!

You figure they'd have invited me to the damn thing, right?

Oh well.

But that aside, the Oakland Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, which occupies a space that was once an adult book store, officially opens this coming Monday from 7 PM to 1 AM, and just as I'm leaving town. Reportedly you will be able to eat late every night there, which is good news for Oakland's growing list of Uptown bars, like Dogwood.

According to Lexy, the owner of the three-month old establishment at the corner of Telegraph and 17th Street, a late night eatery was the missing link connecting all of the establishments. "It's much needed," she said.

She's right. With The Fox Theater, Cafe Van Kleef, The Den At The Fox, The Uptown, and other bars, the only food place to this writing was Flora, and that closes at 10 PM. Meanwhile, what's a patron who just groved to a band supposed to do for late night food? Well, the on-street cart serving the hog dogs was one answer, and there's a small closet-sixed eatery that was open just a few doors down from Cafe Van Kleef, but that was it.

Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe will change all that.  But the bet here is you're going to have to compete with the other bartenders for a seat at the place.

Stay tuned. 

Yemen President Injured In Palace Attack, Civil War Looms

Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has taken up what seems to be a kind of fever in the Mid East of late, attacking one's own people, was injured in an attack by soldiers for the opposition movement on the Presidential Palace, according to the New York Times.

Saleh's spokesman said he was in the middle of starting Friday prayers just before noon. But according to CNN, Saleh had it coming.

The Yemen President's decision to attack what CNN calls "a key tribal chief has brought the country to the precipice of a civil war."

CNN claims that all U.S. President Barack Obama can do is sit back and watch, as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) "extend their influence in tribal regions," but the question is, where is there actual proof that this is happening outside of what its author Barak Barfi writes?

The reason the question's raised by this blogger is the entire CNN article is based on the assertion that al-Qaeda is involved here in Yemen, but there's no clear proof of this. Mr. Barfi writes:

The violence and the instability it has engendered have allowed Islamist militants with possible ties to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to overrun key towns in southern provinces where a secessionist movement has been agitating against Saleh since 2007.

Note "possible ties to Al Qaeda" in the paragraph. In other words, Barak Barfi isn't sure, and CNN's basing the promotion of an entire article on something that's not proven, and a fear of Al Qaeda in America.

But given the side these Islamist militants are on, against the Yemen President, could it be that they're fighting on the right side of the equation? In this case, perhaps having a good relationship with Islamist militants in Yemen's not so bad a thing?

Just saying.

Economy Is The Problem

What's the real cause of this?  Yemen's terrible economy and public sector.  With oil production far less than necessary and the government's reportedly bloated public sector, coupled with corruption and "bad management," Yemen's public corporation's not able to effectively care for its people.  

Yemen has an unemployment rate that stood at 42 percent last year, up from 35 percent in 2003 according to the CIA World Record and Fact Book.   

The numbers are all over the place, but still high. Yemen itself reports an unemployment rate of 16.2 percent for the period of 2004 to 2008.  But those unemployed also have an education problem: a 30 percent illiteracy rate. 

Spamming For Public Health

I have decided to spam for public health.

Phone calls, text messaging, and even apps have been shown to help improve health and sustain behavior change, even in people suffering from profound mental illness. But when it comes to using these tools for public health, there are two problems. The first is that each message (whether via phone call or text) costs money. The second is that it’s quite hard to use those platforms for blasting messages to a whole population.

That’s how I ended up in what is probably a community of spammers. I registered at Black Hat World in order to get access to its forum on uploading bulk tweets, and didn’t realize what company I was keeping until I saw user names like popzzz and images of a neon green skull and crossbones and rolling lines of HTML.

I am now poised at the unique intersection of spamming and homelessness. Suffice it to say, there aren’t a lot of people stampeding to spam the homeless.

So how did I, a suburban soccer mom, former Shoney’s-waitress-turned-Harvard-trained-doc, end up in this precarious position?

A lot of people are wondering if Twitter, or other similar Web-based messaging applications, could be a way to deliver health improvement messages. One big advantage of messaging systems like Twitter is that messages can be delivered either to the public at large or one-to-one. The classic example is when a celebrity direct-messages a fan (“OMG!!! Ashton just DM-ed me!!”)

Read more...

Disclaimer: Identifiable patients mentioned in this post were not served by R. Jan Gurley in her capacity as a physician at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, nor were they encountered through her position there. The views and opinions expressed by R. Jan Gurley are her own and do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the City and County of San Francisco; nor does mention of the San Francisco Department of Public Health imply its endorsement.

Photo credit: Arnold Gatilao via Flickr