Miss USA Rima Fakih does Miley Cyrus pole dancing

Miss USA Rima Fakih is in the middle of a sexy photo controversy (another one) that really should go away, but here it is. In 2007, Rima Fakih participated in a contest produced by the Detroit "Mojo In The Morning" Radio Show that invited women to enter a stripper pole dance contest.

This is what an email sent to this blogger from the Detroit MoJo In The Morning show representatives read:

In 2007, newly-crowned Miss USA Rima Fakih participated in our annual event titled "Stripper 101." Our nationally-syndicated morning show (based in Detroit) holds an annual class for women who wish to add spice to their relationships. Real-life strippers teach our female listeners the art of the strip tease and pole dancing at the Coliseum Gentleman's Club in Detroit. At the end of the class, a contest is held among the new students and in 2007, Rima Fakih was the grand prize winner, walking away with jewelry, gift cards, adult toys and a stripper pole for home use. The event is attended by women only and Fakih did not remove any clothing. The circulating photos have been on our website for three years.

So with that, the overall question is "what's the big deal?" Just last week we had the Miley Cyrus Lap Dance Video controversy, and if you don't know what that's about here's my video on that...



And last year we had the Carrie Prejean Miss USA issue, and the Miley Cyrus Stripper Pole Dance issue at the Teen Choice Awards, and a number of other similar scandals in between. Do we really care anymore?

To be frank, I'm not surprised that Rima took these photos and then entered a pageant. It seems to be this new standard that women who think they look good and do enter these photo contests or have racy photos of themselves created, then go into Miss USA-style beauty competitions.

It raises the issue of what a role model's supposed to be at a time when the very definition of it is being rewritten as we debate it. We talk about it as a way of working our way toward accepting it, then it goes away.

I think that's what should happen here, but for those conservatives and racists who may use this issue as a tool against her. Good luck Michelle Malkin.

I write that because I'm lovingly taking my Facebook friend Malkin to the woodshed for her attack on Rima Fakih, and really just because she's Arab-American as Barrett Brown at True/Slant points out - even though Michelle will not admit that. If Rima were white, Michelle would be defending the photos and her. Ball's in your court, Michelle.

What do you think about all this? Should Miss USA Rima Fakih be allowed to keep her crown? Take my poll > Click for poll

The San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl at The Union Street Festival

Sunshine The Clown 

The month of June means San Francisco Festival Season and that means events like The Union Street Festival and San Francisco institutions like The San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl.

The San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl, is "Sunshine The Clown" and appears at San Francisco festivals from Union Street and the North Beach Festival, to The Folsom Street Fair. But one thing happened at Union Street last year which should not happen to the San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl: harassment from so-called festival representatives.

What the San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl is make flower balloons for money, and not a lot. But the nature of what Sunshine The Clown does such that she's mobile. Asking Sunshine The Clown to get some kind of festival booth permit, which runs into the thousands in some cases, is anti-business.

The San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl should be hired by the festival producer to add to the ambiance of the event. Let Sunshine The Clown make some money and put smiles on the faces of the people of San Francisco in the process. There's nothing wrong with that.

And if you want to hire the San Francisco Sunshine Flower Girl, go to this website: http://www.thesunshineshow.com or just send Sunshine The Clown an email here: sunshine@thesunshineshow.com

YouTube Turns 5: My YouTube Story - Zennie62

YouTube turns 5 years old and this is my third installment to celebrate YouTube's fifth birthday.

 This blog post presents the video called YouTube Turns 5: My YouTube Story.

For me, all of this started when I was using a camcorder at the 2006 NFL Draft and interviewed my friend Oakland Raiders Legend and Stanford Hall of Famer Michael Dotterer as we were walking to 21 Club restaurant in New York City.

On the way, Michael said "you're a vlogger, You should start video-blogging" or words to that effect. He also mentioned an online show called Rocketboom.   That was here:



Later that year I was lucky enough to attend Vloggercon in San Francisco, and met a lot of interesting people including Irina Slutsky and Schlomo Rabinowitz, who produced the event:



The stars of Vloggercon were Amanda Congdon and Andrew Michael Baron the founders of Rocketboom. While not YouTube stars, Amanda and Andrew's daily video news show with videos hosted on their own site, drew as much as 125,000 viewers a day, and over 1 million during their celebrated argument over control of the company. That happened just a month after this presentation:



While their argument was nasty and publicly displayed it served to shine light on the value of video-blogging and vloggers.

It was also an example of what was possible for me.

In 2007 I became a YouTube Partner, which means I draw a monthly check based on the views my videos generate. That set in motion a number of events, from being on the CNN / YouTube Democratic Debate and the "coin question"...



Which now-Vice President Joe Biden answered very well at the debate:



That started a major change in my life and led to to being on my first national TV show, and on CNN, and one of my favorite videos:



And later that year I met YouTube Founder Chad Hurley at the BizWorld Luncheon:



Then there was the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and CNN's Jessica Ellis found me to be their on the scene iReporter. Of course, YouTube was right there with me and Matthew Modine and Willie Brown:



As of this writing I have posted 942 videos on YouTube and heading toward my 1,000th. I officially joined YouTube in April of 2006, so I'm past my 4th year mark with YouTube. But what's changed is that now I feel like I'm part of the YouTube family:



YouTube and vlogging have made me a better, more confident, and more thoughful person. It's actually helped my game business Sports Business Simulations, and for me, now, I have two jobs that I have to figure out how to merge into one. Whatever it comes to be, YouTube will be a part of it.

And yes, YouTube fixed my Channel, Zennie62.

Hong Kong seeks California and U.S. wine imports, signs MOU

This blogger just received a letter from an unnamed source and written by Jeff Leung of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in San Francisco that announces a formal economic relationship between Hong Kong and The United States beneficial to California wine makers.

The bottom line is that for winemakers in America, and particularly in California, Hong Kong has made doing business there much easier. US wine exports to Hong Kong totaled $49 million in 2009-2010. The U.S. is Hong Kong's fourth largest wine importer; America wants to be number one.

The Secretary of Commerce of the United States, Gary Locke, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Hong Kong Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Rita Lau, in Hong Kong. The "Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Wine-related Businesses" (MOU) was signed between Hong Kong and the United States on Monday, May 17, 2010.

Because of the MOU, Hong Kong will facilitate in the pairing of wines with regional cuisine, facilitate wine auctions and assist in the establishment of quality storage facilities in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is becoming a regional wine trading and distribution center for Asia, and it's clear from the MOU that it wants to grow in that area.

For more information, contact the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in San Francisco. It's at 130 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94104-4386; the phone number is 415-677-9038.

YouTube turns 5: the vlogger exodus from YouTube

YouTube turns five (5) years old and while some celebrate the fact that YouTube has reached 2 billion views per day, this vlogger feels its important to look at the people who helped YouTube get to where it is today: the vloggers.

 While looking at videos to help frame my thought about YouTube turning 5 from a video-blogger perspective, I found a number of videos and blog posts that described a kind of video-blogger exodus from YouTube that started back in 2007.

Now I have uploaded videos on as many as eight different video distribution systems, but YouTube went from being my second favorite to my favorite because in "the old days" of 2006 and 2007, YouTube's website design encouraged vlogger interaction in a way that Blip.tv's website design did not do.

That caused a number of video-bloggers to emerge like Renetto, Kenrg, Gimmeabreakman, Nalts, and others. They were the pioneers. Renetto and Kenrg were on YouTube before me in 2006; YouTube was just launched in 2005. Vloggercon, a convention of vloggers, brought all of us together in 2006.

But something happened to really piss off a number of vloggers starting in 2007, and in retrospect, I think this funny video called God talks to me about YouTube by the one YouTuber Renetto, who YouTube has not celebrated during its birthday celebration, yet owes a lot of its early growth to, sums up what happened.

In this video created and uploaded on December 19th 2007, Renetto replays YouTube Founder Chad Hurley's words that "We're just creating a new market for distribution" and notes that YouTube dropped the "Broadcast Yourself" tagline from its main logo design. Renetto goes on to explain that YouTube's direction is to become a market for TV clips and says that YouTube was becoming essentially becoming less about community and more about control.



It's for that reason Renetto and Kenrg and a few others started a new website called Vloggerheads. They invited me to join in 2008; this was my video response thanking them for inviting me to Vloggerheads and pointing to the enormous level of racism on YouTube:



A number of people expanded their video distribution from, but did not quit YouTube, for that reason: Internet trolls. The people who sit down in cubicles at work or sit at home jobless drawing the government's money and waste that time and money writing nasty comments to creative people like me.

When I joined Vloggerheads there were 50 videos; now there are over 17,000 videos. It's growing and it will keep growing as more people fall in love with the method of using a camcorder to express their ideas in an online community. Some have left YouTube for sites like it and Blip.tv. I haven't quit YouTube. I'm here and plan to stay but some issues really need to be ironed out.

I think YouTube stumbled over a way to maintain community in a sea of shows and television clips, and that's what is being done with My YouTube Story: putting vlogs all in one page area for us to see.

That's a great start toward reestablishing community.

Stay tuned. I'm not done celebrating YouTube's 5th birthday and they still need to fix my channel!

AC Transit Bus Rapid Transit: San Francisco video of Van Ness Av

BRT Along Geary in San Francisco 

AC Transit has embarked on a program to construct Bus Rapid Transit in Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro and the East Bay.

Bus Rapid Transit is best described as combining the "dedicated lane" advantages of light rail systems with the cheaper equipment purchase and maintenance costs of buses to have a new kind of urban transit system.

Bus Rapid Transit has become "the thing" Worldwide; there are scores of examples of successful programs and systems.

While AC Transit has worked for four years to advance Bus Rapid Transit, the latest round of voting by elected officials in Berkeley proves that more education is required. In Berkeley, the City Council was under the impression Bus Rapid Transit would harm deliveries to businesses along Shattuck Avenue.

In the last blog post this blogger presented a photo where a Bus Rapid Transit system was in the middle of Shattuck Avenue and asked how such a configuration would harm businesses? But a better example is video, and the video below, while not of BRT along Shattuck Avenue, does have it along several familiar streets in San Francisco: Market, Geary, and Van Ness.

Here's the video by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority:



What BRT would look like and how it would mix with traffic along Van Ness is shown at the 23 second mark. What's important to note is the configuration does not block intersections and does not harm or block vehicle access to businesses, because it's in the middle of the street.

Aside from the access issue, the video provides an excellent animated example of how BRT fits in the fabric of San Francisco's pedestrian and vehicle traffic and its urban design.

Again, I see no example where businesses would be harmed in any way. Indeed, considering Bus traffic congestion along Telegraph Avenue and Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, BRT's the perfect solution to improve public transit performance.

Stay tuned.

Celebrity Apprentice winner 2010: 70 percent pick Bret Michaels

The Celebrity Apprentice 2010, Donald Trumps' celebrity version of his hit show The Apprentice, is down to two celebrity contestants, Holly Robinson Peete and Bret Michaels.

To determine who the public thinks should the the Celebrity Apprentice 2010, this space issued a poll. As of this writing, Bret Michaels is the runaway pick of the public with 70 percent of the vote. Holly Robinson Peete only gets 14.19 percent of the vote.

Keep in mind that's with just 161 voters responding. The number of voters would have been greater if a video was part of the blog package. So we'll keep running the poll.

Bret Michaels is so overwhelmingly favored because of his very public brain hemorrhage and his battle to survive it. Also, Michaels mentioned his diabetic daughter several times on Celebrity Apprentice.

Michaels has recovered from hospital surgery and is scheduled for perform in his first concert with Poison and will appear live on the season finale of The Celebrity Apprentice, May 23rd on NBC.

If you want to cast a vote for Bret Michaels or Holly Robinson Peete, here's the poll:

More opinion surveys on pollsb.com