'Skank' Blogger v. Google and "The Violence Against Women Act"

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Rosemary Port is the blogger (and fashion model student) who for some reason believed it was ok to call fashion model Liskula Cohen a "psychotic, lying, whoring...Skank," under the blog post title, "Skanks of NYC" and from under the cover of a name not her own. On Wednesday August 19th, a U.S. Federal Judge ordered Google to identify the name of the person who we now know as Ms. Port.

 

Rosemary Port

But for some weird reason I can only attribute to a lawyer with a super large ego, Rosemary Port thinks she can win a lawsuit against Google for $15 million.

No way.

And it's not because she's suing Google; it's because in using her blog to make malicious fun of Cohen, Rosemary Port unknowingly violated a provision of "Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act" that was passed in 2006.

 

Liskula Cohen 

The little-talked-about law has three sections that specifically concern cyberstalking Sections 113 (Preventing Cyberstalking), Section 114, and Section 2261 A . This is what is posted at GovTrak.com for the purpose of this discussion. The entire bill section reads in summary:

Section 113. Preventing Cyberstalking ... Whoever ... utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet ... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person ... who receives the communications ... shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

The punishment for this is not less than a year in jail and the charges can be brought forth by the Department of Justice. This, then, is the law Ms. Port has ran up against. Given what she was doing against Ms. Cohen, Rosemary Port is in clear violation of this law and could see jail time if Ms. Cohen or the Department of Justice, or for that matter Google, pressed the issue.

I really think Ms. Port's lawyer is giving her some terrible counsel.

Cyberstalking is not free speech

Some are under the impression that the kind of blogging Port was doing is free speech. Nothing could be further from the truth. Classic free speech is standing on a corner and talking about something using your mouth to blast your voice into public airspace.

A blog is not really public to start with: everything from the web page to the internet service provider is privately owned, so they can control the content that gets out there - it's not the place for free expression. I think what's happened is that the relative ease of blogging has seduced some into thinking that they can write whatever they want, whenever they want, thus believing they have the right to free speech.  Not so.

People are jailed for cyberstalking

Something else Ms. Port must consider is the timing of her actions could not have been worse.  They not only come after 2006 and the laws against cyberstalking, but at a time when there's a war against the act and the people who do it.  In England, a teenager by the name of Keeley Houghton is facing three months in the juvenile detention system for harassing and threatening Emily Moore, eventually writing that she was going to kill her.

And law enforcement has been active in America, too.  In Southwest Florida in 2008 a teenager was arrested for the act.  In Louisiana a pastor recently turned himself in after an arrest for cyberstalking.  In that case, he was accused of "sending several anonymous, sexually-explicit e-mail messages" to a 21-year old woman who attended his church. 

And more and more states and cities are installing their own versions of the law, and police departments are adding cyber crime units, so the infrastructure to stop this behavior is being created.  It's about time. 



I'm cyberstalked on a daily basis, as I have several blogs and video channels (10 channels with an average of 200 videos on each one, and over 600 on YouTube)  and am on SFGate.com and the Examiner and CNN's iReport.  I get racist emails, and comments that lie about me, insult me, or threaten me every day. 

To say I'm tired of it is an understatement but I'm not going away.  In 2008 I was twice the subject of a death message (and got such a comment on SFGate.com this year), leading me to make this video:




And vloggers like MelissaJenn (who I referred to in my video) have been treated terribly, with people stalking her and taking photos not just of her but of her dwelling then sending the photo to her writing "I know where you live."  That's sick.  Just plain ill.  She stopped making vlogs for a few months after that, then came back to her normal schedule of vlogging.  But the bottom line is we're tired of this and fighting back. 

Blogs, news outlets and other online information outlets must beware of this war, because it they're not policing their sites, they too could be the focus of a huge lawsuit by someone who's life was threatened or just plain made to suffer emotionally.  It's not right.  


And now we have the legal tools to use, and will do so. 



Rosemark Port should appologize to Liskula Cohen rather than going through a legal path that will only do her more harm than good.   Port's not the victim here; she's her own worst enemy.  She's not going to beat Google and moreover, she's not going to overturn that provision of  "The Violence Against Women Act".   Ironic that a woman would run up against that law, eh?

Still, I think it's time for some healthy and civil talk about where we go from here.  I don't think teenagers should be jailed for these acts, and I do believe that more training is needed to save people, well, from themselves.   Stay tuned.

Message to YouTube's Renetto - less is more

Even though vlogging - video blogging - can be considered a self-indulgent practice, vloggers are fans of others who vlog. In my case, I'm a fan of several - Paul Robinett, or "Renetto" is one of them. Renetto's YouTube's first big vlog star just from the simple practice of posting videos consistently of him talking into a camcorder about something. But after developing a great following - 41,000 subscribers on YouTube - and a "name", Renetto's concerned that he's not serving his fan base, so my idea is that he shorten his video time.



What makes Renetto popular is he talks to you through the camera. It's not so much lifecasting as leaving a message for the World. But they tend to go on for seven or eight minutes, where I've found that people tend to drop out of a video after about 2.15 minutes. I don't always like making such short videos, but I've slowly adopted this rule: me talking should be up to four minutes or so, me interviewing a person can be as long as 20 minutes for my video and TV show, me filming an event can be up to an hour. (My TechCrunch video at the 2008 August Capital Party was over 40 minutes.)

But for me, I try to say it in two to four minutes. Lately, I've clocked in around just a hair over 3 minutes or so average. I can't say I've seen such a short video from Renetto, but I'll check back with him.

Some of Renetto's fans like the long conversational format he brings; I do too. But he started the whole thing by complaining so I thought I'd help out.

We do get paid for vlogging

Some people think we vlog for free - in other words we don't get paid for our vlogging. Every time I hear that or see it written I wonder why some people insist on being so blind. I tell everyone I know about the YouTube Partner program and generally if I talk to 30 people, I'll get one person who's really interested and then it's a coin flp probability that they'll do anything. For example, at the recent blogger meetup at the Berkeley J School, I was the only one of two vloggers in the room.

And while there may be 175 bloggers in Oakland, I can think of one other vlogger than myself and that person's not consistently at it. Terrible. In San Francisco, I know of five - Irina Slutsky, Sarah Austin (back from New York), Tracy Swedlow, Josh Wolf (who just moved to Berkeley), Schlomo Rabinowitz, Justin Kan (who's not as visible of late). (If I've left someone out, sorry. But also I'm thinking of consistent vloggers, not one and done vloggers.)

You can make money creating videos and having an audience - living wage level revenue that doesn't take all of your day to earn. It's all eyeballs folks. I'm up to 7.7 million total viewers on my YouTube channel Zennie62 since 2006 and of that, drew 5 million viewers in the last year, and over 2 million of them in the last five months. That's not a lot compared to vloggers like Renetto or Phil DeFranco, but I'm headed in the right direction: up.

Vlogging is the future of marketing and communications and is at the heart of New Media, and is a powerful tool for social change, but let's face it: it's a test of your self-esteem. The more comfortable you are with who you are the easier it is to get a camcorder, make a video, and post it, and not give a care what people think about your looks. (Well, except the racism and cyberharassment part; that's sick, I have zero tolerance for it, and fortunately a number of people do too. People who do it get cut from my channels or in a few cases reported to the authorities. Period.)

There are only about 600 YouTube Partners out of the thousands of people who upload something daily worldwide. That means we're out there doing this as a business where I have no idea what anyone else is doing.

Hmm. Just 600 YouTube Partners? On second thought, maybe I should stop telling the rest of you about the program! More money for Renetto and me!

Jane Fonda discovers New Media and Twitter

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Generally we hear and read about "older folk" pooh-pooing blogs, websites, and Twitter. So it's refreshing to find someone 71 years old taking to New Media with all the zest of a 20-something. That is the legendary Jane Fonda. I literally stumbled over her blog post as I'm one of her 45,000 (as of this writing) followers on Twitter and had to take time to check it out.

Ms. Fonda's site and blog also contain her videos, Twitter updates, and other information. You can even buy her famous fitness tapes. But I think she needs to go a step further and have video channels on YouTube, Blip.tv, and other services to better distribute her images. Also a page of Mp3's of interviews and music, and a widget like the one I have would be cool, too.

That way her fans can have her content on their blogs!

In her 70s it seems the Atlanta dweller has rediscovered her youth but isn't trying to be young. Indeed, Fonda says that "sex gets better with age" and is coming out with a book detailing her views on this called "The Third Act: Entering Prime Time". Trouble is she's so busy living life she's behind schedule with the book! I can't wait to see what she does in her 80s!

Oakland's Lake Chalet has some Oakland Council haters

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Now that the long-awaited Lake Chalet is open, one would think everyone in Oakland's happy that it's done and the boathouse is restored. But no. I'm told some Oakland councilmembers are still upset over a vote that took place three years ago. So much so they won't even set foot in the Lake Chalet!



Let's go back three years to 2006, when San Francisco restaurateurs Lara and Gar Trupelli, known for the Beach Chalet and Park Chalet restaurants, were selected over the always good and very popular Everett & Jones Barbeque, in Jack London Square. The Oakland City Council was deadlocked four in favor of the Beach Chalet proposal and four against it.

Specifically, Nancy Nadel (Downtown-West Oakland), Oakland Councilmembers Larry Reid (Elmhurst-East Oakland), Desley Brooks (Eastmont-Seminary), and Jean Quan (Montclair-Laurel) against the Beach Chalet proposal. Then Oakland Council President Ignacio De La Fuente (Glenview-Fruitvale), Vice Mayor Jane Brunner (North Oakland), Councilmember Patricia Kernighan (Grand Lake-Chinatown) and then-Councilmember Henry Chang Jr. (At-Large) voted for it.

It was left to then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown to cast the tie-breaking vote, selecting the Beach Chalet proposal. Why? Because the Trupelli's proposal called for them to spend $2 million of their own money to create the new eatery, a sum Ms. King could not match at the time (her proposal called for $1 million in spending.

The City of Oakland's plan was to use $12 million to refurbish the boathouse; some councilmembers believed that expenditure should be coupled with "capacity building" an Oakland business, in this case, Everett and Jones.

The outcome caused King to charge that racism was the reason for the vote outcome, and that then-Mayor Brown promised to give her the lease if she would defend him from charges of racism; Brown vehemently denied King's claim calling it "crazy". Councilmemeber Reid also disagreed with King's claim, stating that race was did not play a role in the vote outcome.

The controversy also helped to cause the petition drive that caused Ron Dellums to run for Mayor of Oakland. Because De La Fuente voted against King, it was believed by some that he would not be supportive of African American business interests. He lost to Dellums, who's now Oakland's mayor.


King was not notified of the competition

King said she learned about the restaurant competition after seeing it advertised at the boathouse and called Mayor Brown. The submission deadline had past, but the process was restarted to give her time to submit the appropriate documents and review her proposal. In all, 10 proposals were considered; the Trupelli approach won.

It's over; enjoy the result

It's sad to learn that some councilmembers can't even bring themselves to visit the Lake Chalet and congratulate Gar and Lara for the work they've done. It's an incredible place with great food at the right price. We've always talked about increasing investment in Oakland, but when it happens, some of us seems to take pleasure in finding something wrong with the result.

If those councilmembers are so concerned with building the capacity of women and minority businesses in Oakland, they need to set up a program that does just that. But what's happened historically is Oakland gives out loans - not grants - to such businesses then makes public examples of them when they can't pay them back.

The City of Oakland needs to put its money and effort where its mouth is rather than pay lip-service to a problem that needs to be addressed and indeed should have been a long time ago.

Oakland Raiders must fix run defense ASAP

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When I learned the Oakland Raiders hired John Marshall to be the defensive coordinator, I held out hope that he would repair the Silver and Black run defense, which was 24th in the 32-team league against the run in 2008.

In preseason so far, the Raiders have given up 5.1 yards per rush, and made 49ers rookie runner Glen Coffee look better than he may really be. That's too much already. The objective is to be at or below 3 yards per rush average per game. (If you say, "Well, it's preseason", that's doesn't make a difference. Formation structure and technique remains robust through preseason and regular season. What may change is what's done out of the formation.)

In the past three years, the defense has been gouged by several elite NFL runners, most notably LaDainian Tomlinson of the San Diego Chargers.

And who's up first on the Raiders' 2009 schedule? The same Chargers.

The problem with the Raiders defense is not with personnel. They have two capable defensive tackles in Tommy Kelly and Terdell Sands. Their linebackers are swift to the ball, led by Kirk Morrison and Ricky Brown, who had an interception in the 49ers game yesterday. No, it's not people; it's scheme.

The NFL's best defenses were all known for a special approach. 1985 The Chicago Bears used the then-new "46" defense. The 2000 Baltimore Ravens employed a hybrid of that system to keep offensive lineman off Ray Lewis, their talented middle backer. The Dallas Cowboys under Tom Landry used the "Flex Defense", a kind of zone defense against the run. The Tampa Bay Bucaneers under Tony Dungy as their head coach used a variation of the Steelers Defense under Head Coach Chuck Noll and Defensive Coordinator Bud Carson.

Defensive experimentation wins even in high schools. This is the 46 "Gambler Defense" by Coach Steve Calende at Conrad Weiser HS, Robesonia, PA.



I think you get the idea. The best defenses have innovative design approaches to accomplish the objective of stopping the run. Not so the Oakland Raiders defense. The 2009 Raiders' four-man-front defense spreads the linemen out leaving giant bubbles that can be exploited by a smash mouth offensive team. That's what the 49ers did on Saturday and even what the Cowboys did in their loss against the Raiders a week ago when they averaged 4.4 yards per rush.

Fixing the Raiders Defense

To stop this problem, the Raiders need to go back to the basic 4-3 "over" and "under" alignments but with a twist. This is where one defensive tackle is over the center, and the other is over either the strong or weakside guard. But the "twist" is that the other defensive tackle would angle toward the center rather than the guard thus double-teaming the center with the other defensive tackle. The defensive end would fill the guard-tackle gap on that side; the opposite defensive end would maintain a position outside the offensive tackle.

The objective is to stop the strong or weakside off-tackle run and force it to the outside. Of course, getting the right defensive call requires homework on opposing offensive tendencies, but with this, even if the running play is to the opposite direction, the placement of the defensive tackles will allow the middle linebacker to flow to the ball and make the play and the defensive end stationed outside the offensive tackle will place him in a position to get the runner or funnel the runner inside to the middle backer. The outside linebackers remain in their positions to stop the runner from going around the end.

Another adjustment here would be to bring the strong safety up to a place on the opposite side of the defensive tackle double-team and essentially give the defense a "four-four" (four linemen and four linebacker) look. We would blitz the safety from that set.

This defensive design would immediately solve the Raiders run defense problems. Right now, the Silver and Black don't seem to be concerned with defensive design and it shows up in the terrible post game statistics we've seen over the years.

District 9 movie review and poll - best sci-fi ever?

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Last night I saw the incredible sci-fi movie "District 9" at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (and the line for it was out of the door and around the building). Without giving too much away (and that's a matter of opinion) for those who've not seen it, the movie produced by Peter Jackson (of Lord of The Rings and King Kong) and directed by Neil Blomkamp, concerns a giant alien spaceship that has parked itself over Johannesburg, South Africa.

Over the course of the last 28 years - over a generation - over one million aliens, called the derogatory name "Prawns", were placed in an area of the city called "District 9", and that zone became a giant slum.

Some say District 9 is the best science fiction movie of 2009 if not the best one ever made. That question will be the focus of my poll below, but let's focus on the movie more before we get to the survey.

The story concerns what happens to a common human (Wilkus Van De Merwe played by Sharito Copley) who works for a government organization that is directed to evict the aliens and move them to a new location said to be better than District 9 and called- in an obvious set up for a sequel - "District 10".

During the eviction process, Wilkus finds a harmless-looking metal vial that when he turns it sprays a "fluid" into his face that causes him to go through a gradual transformation from human to human / alien. That, and how the World reacts to his change, is the central story of the movie.

The movie has two incredible story archs, the first one is how Wilkus changes from kind but bumbling government worker to awakened activist for the aliens in the process of trying to find a "cure" for his problem. The other is how humans go from being the one's putting up with the weird and threatening habits of the aliens, to the ones who are actually being weird and threatening to the aliens. As we learn more about them in the movie, we find they are just like us: concerned with family and wanting to just go home.

What I love about this movie is it shows front and center man's inhumanity not only to man but to other life forms and throws it right in one's face. I came away with the idea that the United Nations needs to craft an international plan for alien visitor protocol just to make sure we don't allow the violation of alien life forms.

District 9 Best Picture?

Julian Scanton of Vanity Fair thinks District 9 is best picture material, and I have to agree with him, especially now that we will have ten movies to pick from at the 2010 Oscars. But is it the best science fiction movie ever?

That's a tall order of a question as their are so many to chose from. Here's one comprehensive "Top 10" list posted in Popular Mechanics in 2008:

10. 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. Short Circuit
8. Soylent Green
7. Blade Runner
6. The Running Man
5. Destination Moon
4. The Truman Show
3. The Road Warrior
2. Minority Report
1. Gattaca

Cick here for the poll results and to vote: POLL (or vote below)

Colin Powell rumored to be selected for high-level post

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This blog post is to be filed under "hedging my bets" because it's based on a tip from a very good friend who texted me that Ret. General and Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was to be named as Deputy Commerce Secretary under Gary Locke.

But Dennis Hightower - who's referred to as the "Colin Powell" of business and serves on the Howard University Board of Trustees with Powell - was sworn in to that position August 11th.

So either there will be two deputies, or my friend's source (who's a friend of General Powell) got it wrong, or Powell's headed to another high level post, or some hybrid possibility's afoot.

But since my friend is not in the habit of calling or texting me with this kind of tip (or any kind for that matter) and remained firm that the news was certain when I fired off questions , I elected to pull the trigger on issuing this rumor. Moveover my friend and I both worked for several years on the Obama campaign and gained a lot of well-placed contacts, so the chance my friend's correct is pretty high.

But to be sure, I just called the White House and The Department of Commerce for confirmation - no "yea" or "no" but a promise to "check and call me back" as of this writing.

Powell the focus of many appointment rumors

Since Barack Obama became the 44th President of The United States, Powell, who endorsed him even though the General's a Republican and Obama's a Democrat, has been rumored for a high-level post. Last December it was Mid East envoy, before that it was defense secretary, and for a time education secretary. And while Obama has stated that Powell would have a role within his administration, he hasn't made that happen. Meanwhile, Powell has taken to the airwaves to express concern with the President's economic strategy.

Powell appears on CNN's Larry King Show three weeks ago to talk about the Gates / Crowley issue and said he was concerned with how much money the Obama Administration was spending and where it was going. On King's show, he said:

"And the greatest concern I'm hearing -- and I see as a citizen and I hear from my fellow citizens as I go around the country -- is, my gosh, where is all this money coming from? Doesn't this mean more taxes? And we have to do -- what the administration, I think, and the Congress, has to do a better job in helping the American people understand some of these most complex issues, health care being number one.”

So it may be that Obama's planning to put Mr. Powell in a position to help him focus on the health care issue, or the economy in general. Regardless of the direction, it's clear that President Obama wants Colin Powell in his administration in some kind of way.

Stay Tuned.

Billy Ray Cyrus defends Miley Cyrus' pole dance at Teen Choice Awards

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Last week, 16-year old singing sensation Miley Cyrus performed a song and dance number using a stripper pole at the Teen Choice Awards as she introduced her new single "Party in the USA."

I remarked that it was good, but well look, she's 16 and according to her Twitter page, still concerned about wearing her retainer, ok? Too young. Moreover her father Billy Ray Cyrus reportedly helped her create the performance!



The controversial production was the focus of much discussion and even outrage in some quarters. But according to US Magazine, Miley's father Billy Ray Cyrus defended his daughter's actions Thursday at the Hellman's/Facebook Feeding America event in New York City.

"You know what? I just think that Miley loves entertaining people, She loves singing, songwriting. I always tell her to love what you're doing and stay focused for the love of the art and not worry so much about opinions."

On the matter of opinions, the poll I ran asking what you thought of her dance presentation has drawn 1,763 votes with 38.84 percent preferring she had not used a pole and another 30.46 percent hating both the pole dance and Cyrus too.

What I find interesting is that people don't understand that even a negative online reaction is an endorsement of Cyrus in that it's additional content about Cyrus.

As I will present in a a future post, Miley Cyrus has a remarkable worldwide online search reach I've never seen before, reaching three continents. There's a marketing formula here that seems to tap into our basic primal instincts and generates buzz, traffic, ratings, and sales. ("Party In The USA" opened this week at number two in the Billboard Hot 100.)  In effect this approach actually uses society against itself.

Local bloggers meet at Berkeley J-School (YouTube video)

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Last night, Wednesday, August 19th at 6 PM (well, I got there ay 6:38 PM) Paul Grabowicz, the Associate Dean and New Media Program Director at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, hosted the second meetup of local bloggers in the school's library. It was a great event.

The idea of these meetings is, as the email put it, ...

"so people can get together to socialize, share ideas, solve common problems and explore ways we might collaborate.


We also want to find out what kind of training people might be interested in through the UC Berkeley J-School's Knight Digital Media Center"

And really that's what happened. The meeting itself, which I did not video as some people don't want to be on camera, started with the idea of breaking into groups around "editorial" concerns and "business" issues, but that was jettisoned because the free-flowing conversation the group established was going really well.

The meetings drew about 25 people, including such luminaries as Scott Rosenberg, who wrote the book "Say Anything" about the history of blogging (and which I'm reading now), Mark Haas who's partner in business is the legendary Dave Winer (also featured in Scott's book), Dave Cohn of Spot.us which raises money for stories that journalists and bloggers want to cover, and Martha Ross who has a blog called Crazy In Suburbia, and George Kelly from the blog "All About George".

There were a large number of ideas thrown out during our talk session. One of them was a kind of Bay Area Advertising Network, which was Susan Mernit's concept for a way to tie together local bloggers into one "place" online that can draw better ad dollars. The other was a directory of news and blogging tools, to which Grabowicz directed us to the website NewsInnvotation.com.

(A momentary aside here. NewsInnvotation.com features new business models for news and is a kind of online think tank created by the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. It's worth a visit. What are some of those "new models"? The "hyperlocal" blog site - like Oakland Focus or Oakland North - the new news organization, publicly supported journalism like Spot.us, and "the ecosystems framework" which brings together individuals to join as one, which is something like what Susan's proposing.)

The talk part of the meeting ended with in all about 20 different ideas. Teaching workshops are one of them, and something I want to do as few people know about vlogging (I was the only vlogger in the room). Another one that was talked about at length was just getting more people to these events. Kwan Booth said that there were about 175 bloggers in Oakland and only a handful of them were there: about six. So we resolved to reach out and tell you all about these meetings; Booth wants to twist arms to get more people there. Seriously.

(But don't worry about having your arm broken. The next meeting is to be determined in September and then we're planning another gathering in Oakland in October.)

Then the meet-and-greet restarted and I took out the Flip Video Camera to get the impressions of the attendees (well, those who didn't mind talking to me with my camera on). In general, everyone was very happy.

I agree with Paul Grabowicz who said that he felt as if he was at the ground level beginning of something big. Media is going through a massive upheaval as more sites come online, ad revenues are spread around, and large media companies are being cut down to size, and all of this is really fun to be a part of for me.

But in all of this change, it's foolish for anyone to go it alone, even those with large media companies. (Er, heck, especially them!) Being a part of a group like ours - well, join our group - is the way to go. I went to meet other bloggers and just listen and it was cool to meet the other African American bloggers in this area. It was a lot of fun.

If you want more information, contact Paul Grabowicz at 510-642-3892 or grabs@berkeley.edu

Britney Spears must visit Oakland's Lake Chalet Restaurant!

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I couldn't wait to visit the new Lake Chalet Restaurant at the restored Lake Merritt Boathouse, so I made a plan with my friend Gab to be there when the doors opened for the first time right at 5 PM last Monday, August 17th.

As you may recall, I recently posted a video-blog of the day the ribbon was cut to dedicate the boathouse and Lake Chalet owner Lara Truppelli and Executive Chef Jarad Gallagher were kind enough to give me an interview at the bar as the eatery was under construction. Now, it's open and man is it terrific!

What's so exciting is the setting. The Boathouse is right on the shore of Lake Merritt and a seat at the "Pumphouse Bar" section of the place on a sunny day as Monday was is a treat to the kind of Oakland many of us have wanted to see and cause to happen for a long time. That's where we sat after we arrived.  The interior is both modern, futuristic in a way, and warm.

Lara came over to say hello and check on us; she and her husband Gar Truppelli really deserve all the accolades they get for creating a new destination place in Oakland right where it should be at Lake Merritt. As Gar said "It's wonderful. Three-and-a-half years it took to get to this."

We were like kids in a candy store, my friend and I, trying to figure out what to order. So, we turned to Gallagher who said he wanted us to try "something that we normally would not get" and offered several suggestions. Out of those, we ordered two dishes: Brandade Fish Sticks and Herloom Tomato and Buratta Cheese. We also elected to go on a kind of tour of Lake Chalet's cocktail offerings starting with me and Old Whiskey and a kind of mint drink Gab had that I can't remember the name of and I'm not going to bug her to ask about it.

Then Gallagher brought over a nice surprise: his special English Pea Soup.  Now I haven't eaten pea soup since I was six, but I never had English Pea Soup with White Truffle Oil, (and found this great blog post about making it!).  I hated pea soup; not this time.  Not this kind.  

The soup and the Herloom Tomato and Buratta Cheese were out of this world!  Gallagher said he had the Buratta Cheese delivered from Italy and so wanted us to give him our impression of it and the tomatos. As we said in the video, just great.  The meal dances in your mouth. 

Since we were part of the first set of patrons to arrive at the Lake Chalet it was a perfect place to talk and to just stop and admire the place. Then the rush came in and the Lake Chalet became a kind of cool center of Oakland.

It seemed as if almost everyone in the town walked in at some point that night: people who live around the Lake, folks young and old, and even celebrity politicos like California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who, Lara told me, was really helpful in helping them get a good lease agreement, my friends the ever-energetic Oakland builder Mike Baines, and Bob and Barbara Schock (Bob's a well-known Oakland-based lawyer), and of course Helen.  I think we ended up closing the place down.

Yeah. We did.  Thanks Lara and Gar! 

Folks, I love this place. You've got to visit it. Soon.

Don Hewitt of 60 Minutes passed on

Just a quick note on the passing of Don Hewitt of 60 Minutes, and who created the show. What he developed changed the face of television news and made CBS News relevant through the 21st Century. He will be missed.

Welcome William Wong to CityBrights on SFGate.com

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I write this with a large degree of bias because he's my friend, but I'm welcoming William Wong to SFGate.com and the CityBrights blogger section. "Bill", as I call him more than deserves to be here. He's written expressively about his Asian American culture and in the process has given all of us a great window into a world too often ignored in America.

Bill wrote for the Oakland Tribune for more years than I can remember and offered views on everything from Oakland politics to sports and of course his life. But Bill's also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, too. His work has received much attention. But his best stuff in my view is in Images of America: Oakland's Chinatown and in a multi-part series ran in the Oakland Tribune about his trip to China and a rediscovery of his roots.

I'm a big believer in celebrating great people while they're here, and that should be done for Bill Wong. Please join me in welcoming Bill to SFGate.com and CityBrights!