Tuesday, June 07, 2011

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.

Monday, June 06, 2011

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.

Friday, June 03, 2011

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. 

Thursday, June 02, 2011

Spamming For Public Health

Spam, public health, Doc Gurley, Reporting on Health, health journalismI 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

John Russo On Oakland A's, Raiders, "Donated Alameda Politicians" Issue



On May 17th, this blogger interviewed now former Oakland City Attorney John Russo on video, as you can see. There have been three blog post written in this space, referring to that 38-minute interview.

But even with that, comes the usual San Francisco Bay Area journalist that has to tell you they got an "exclusive" with Mr. Russo, and after the interview. Enter the website Oakland North this week.

So, the initial plan was to run this new blog post next week, but considering Oakland North's hubris or error in claiming they had an "exclusive" interview, I figured "Why not today," so here it is.

John Russo Recaps Sports In Oakland

When John Russo gave his video interview for this blogger, he talked about how proud he was that he settled a number of legal issues with Oakland's sports teams, the Oakland A's, Golden State Warriors, and the Oakland Raiders. But, as John leaves for Alameda to become its new city manager, he says there are new issues.

"We've talked before about the (Oakland) A's. The A's still want to go away (leave Oakland), the economy is not cooperating with their plans. Nobody knows where Major League Baseball is (after the creation of the "blue ribbon" commission that was to evaluate Oakland as a home for a baseball team). They..I don't know maybe the Blue Ribbon Commission.. I just don't know.

John continued "Maybe the Blue Ribbon Commission came up with the wrong answer? I don't know. All we can do is speculate. Maybe the Blue Ribbon Commission didn't give the right answer?" I pressed John on this, because over the years of knowing him, I can generally tell when he's hiding part of what he knows, but he insists otherwise, saying "I truly just don't know (what happened to the MLB Blue Ribbon Commission or what Major League Baseball plans to do with the Oakland A's).

The "right answer" would have been for the MLB Commission to say that the Oakland A's would be better off in San Jose than in Oakland, but that view has not been expressed via the much-anticipated report.

And while other reports last fall have now-former City Administrator Dan Lindheim as stating that the commission looked at the fiscal health of Oakland's Redevelopment Agency and at its plans for a baseball stadium at Victory Court were sound, MLB has not released a final report. So, Russo is correct, it seems, that MLB did not find Oakland to be the bad baseball bet they probably assumed it was.

On the Oakland Raiders, "they say they want a new ballpark - a new stadium. It's understandable. They also seem to understand there's no appetite for public finance. And, uh, I think the Raiders are trying very hard" to come up with solutions that are workable in getting the new stadium they desire and need given changes in the industry that have left the Coliseum a relic - again. (I will explain in another post.)

"The Raiders are a different deal than the A's," Russo said. "The A's, I've felt, for a long time just did not want to cultivate their fan base here, because they wanted to prove a point 'We don't have a fan base here in Oakland, so we're not going to cultivate a fan base that had over 2 million people come here in 1981."

I personally think the A's don't get how their brand can fit with Oakland, and said so, but Russo actually does like their commercials and approach, and so had nothing negative to say on that more detailed issue of marketing, which is related to the overall picture of "not cultivating the Oakland fan base."

His issues with the Oakland A's were "tarpping up the upper deck to create (ticket) scarcity," which means no walkup ticket purchases for games, the constant changes in radio stations, making it harder for fans to find the games, and the rapid roster changes that "make it harder for fans to get to know the players."

Russo says he's never talked to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, and he's never been part of the City of Oakland team that's worked on the Oakland A's project.

On NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's statement that he wants the Oakland Raiders to team up and build a stadium in the Bay Area, Russo says he's never talked to Goodell, doesn't think the Niners will get their stadium deal done in Santa Clara, and isn't sure "the teams want to share. You have to want to share a stadium" to get such a deal done.

John says that because the NFL doesn't have baseball's anti-trust exemption, Goodell could not force the Raiders and The Niners to team up, even if he wanted to.

Here, a digression is in order.

If the NFL had such legal power, it could move teams around as it wished, or prevent a team from moving. But the idea that the NFL could do that was effectively killed in court by Al Davis and the Oakland Raiders in 1982.

The point was that the NFL doesn't have monopoly power, thus a team trying to move from one city to another should be allowed in the spirit of business competition, and the NFL Bylaws that then prohibited such actions were said to be illegal after the Raiders challenged the NFL. The Silver and Black won the right to move to Los Angeles from Oakland in 1982, only to return to Oakland in 1995.

I skipped over the Golden State Warriors, which Russo later said he had "no comment on" and mainly because the long-standing litigation between the City of Oakland and the NBA Oakland team had been discussed in closed session, to come to ask how the Oakland Coliseum Joint Powers Authority could sign a cheap $7 million naming rights agreement with Overstock.com, while at the same time being sued by the County of Alameda.

Russo said that was a JPA issue that didn't come across his desk, but that the JPA itself, with a board of eight members, thus insuring the chance of deadlock on votes, should but restructured to have some kind of "tie-breaking method."

On Alameda, The City Of, and Russo

We finally shifted gears to talk about his new occupational home, Alameda. On the question of what's first on his agenda, Russo blew and his eyes widened by a factor of two before he answered the question. "Well, there's number of things that need to be done in Alameda. Firs there are a number of people in interim positions in Alameda, so the team needs to be made permanent."

Russo says that he will be the seventh city manager in six years, and Alameda has an interim fire chief, interim police chief, and a "vacancy at economic development," as well as an interim city attorney, so Russo's job is to make a city executive team that's permanent. But if you think about it from another perspective, it's a great opportunity for John to populate the City of Alameda with the kind of public executives he thinks can't help him get the job done there over his five-year contract, and "bring stability."

Second, Russo says that the City of Alameda will work to secure the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory expansion, and says there is public support for the effort to place them at Alameda Point, for which Alameda is "short listed." He says that Alameda will work to get it, "like no other city in The Bay Area."

"I don't think it's an accident that the reuse of bases has been held up. There must be structural impediments," Russo said. He wants to "re-engage the Federal Government" to determine how best to speed up the base reuse process because it "shouldn't take 25 to 30 years to get the bases back into reuse."

Changing The City Of Alameda

"The City of Alameda needs to adopt these three words: accountability, responsiveness, and transparency. By those I mean if you look at Alameda's budget and you look at performance measures that are adopted for each department, they are in significant number input based, not output based. What I mean by that is, they'll say 'Your job is to make sure you've gone to 12 League Of City Meetings each year' if your the intergovernmental person there - who cares? Your job should be how many millions in grants have you gotten for the City." Russo says that his job will be to install a more output-based, results-oriented, performance evaluation system for the City of Alameda, as a starting point over the next year.

On "responsiveness," Russo says that too many Alamedans write or email city hall and never get a response from it "That will change," he says.

Regarding "transparency," Russo says that Alameda's tag as the least transparent city in the Bay Area will change. By September, the City will put out its city council agenda two weeks ahead of schedule, so that "everybody can see what their government will be voting on."

Russo will also stress public comment on what Alameda is "doing on their behalf." Overall the changes he will install are really basic to the operation of a good urban municipal government.

John says that, at 700 people, Alameda's not too big for him to manage and get to know. He's always wanted to be the chief exective of a city, and was looking for a city that had significant problems but also had significant opportunities."

On The Idea That Russo Donations Got Him The Job

We turned to the charge that John's donations to several Alameda City Council members essentially got him the job as City Manager. I was particularly eager to talk about this on camera, because the East Bay news organization that raised the issue has a bad habit of not contacting the people it writes negatively about while in the process of creating a story.

When I asked, directly, about the claim, John laughed in that funny "hehehe" he gives when he thinks something's stupid, and said "I love that. I also wanted to go to El Cerrito, Richmond, San Francisco, Piedmont, Emeryville, and every other city where I've given money to candidates. It's just silly. People say some really foolish things in politics."

Russo continued "I gave Marie Gilmore I think a thousand dollars for her mayoral campaign. I think I gave three thousand or thirty-five hundred dollars (to her) in 2004, when she ran for council. So does that mean I like her a third as much? I gave money to Lena Tam when she ran for hospital board in 2004. Understand something. As (Oakland) City Attorney, I gave a strong position that I should not give money to local (Oakland political) candidates."

And because Russo, as Oakland City Attorney, was essentially an Oakland department head. So what Russo did was to spread that money around the Bay Area, helping people he liked and had good relationships with over the years. But by not giving money in Oakland, Russo says that decision has hurt him politically.

He said the idea that he bought his way into Alameda is "ignorant of how the World works" -  the "job for donations" charge by the news organization that is the East Bay Express. Moreover, Russo says that it was presented as an isolated incident, rather than looking at the range of donations he's made over the years, and to people who are his associates and friends and represent Alameda.

But the biggest kicker is that no one at the East Bay Express bothered to call John, and yet the publication went with running the story under the guise of journalism. Next thing you know, because it's in print, the Bay Area pseudo-intelligencia that follows that publication quote it without investigation, and so it unfairlty tarnishes Russo's image.

This is no the first time the East Bay Express has done this, and it's really a sad practice. It happened during the 2010 Oakland Mayor's Race, when the target was mayoral candidate Marcie Hodge, who was first said to be a plant of Don Perata, getting money from him, and then that her whole candidacy was illegal. Marcie says she was never contacted about those claims before the stories ran, and eventually went to court to sue the East Bay Express.

I want to think the best about the East Bay Express and myself have a long history with them as both author and subject that's worth a series of blog posts, so this is not personal. They have a long standing history in Bay Area media and are a valuable resource. But the EBX must make sure that it's not using the paper to take out personal agendas against people. I'm not saying that it it, but many people around town think it looks that way.

But I digress.

Stay tuned. One more topic to come, on SunCal.










Shaq O'Neal Retires Via Tout; Congrats To Michael Downing



On Wednesday, Shaq - or Shaquille O'Neal - retired via Twitter and Tout, but really, the big story is that the legendary NBA Center and most of all LA Laker, did it via Tout.

This blogger's introduction to Tout came in an email from a friend: Michael Downing. Michael's a serial entrepreneur best known for GoFish and for TransMedia Capital.

Until now.

I met Michael one late Thursday night four years ago at the Balboa Cafe in San Francisco's Marina District, and as many frequent readers of my blogs know, one of my favorite hangs.

Our conversation started with him asking me what business I was in, and my reply was "Internet." We proceeded to a talk so long we left after the Balboa closed.

Yep. After.

We stayed in touch, and then, on March 30th of 2010, I received an email from the man who's now "Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford Research Institute." This one:


Zennie


I hope you are well – and my apologies for the random email coming end-of-day, but I wanted to reach out and personally invite you to a brief sneak-peek of Tout – the new company I co-founded in partnership with SRI (Stanford Research Institute) this last year.


Tout is all about delivering a new kind of social-communications-experience enabling people to share their unique perspective on life through simple, short video updates from their smartphones.


We are launching Tout.com to the world in less than 1 week, and in advance of that date, I am personally inviting about 100 of the most interesting people I know in technology, media and entertainment to give it a test-drive.


If you want to be a part of the Sneak-Peek before launch, here’s what you need to do:


1. You need an iPhone 3GS or 4… if your on Android or BlackBerry we will be launching those versions shortly


2. Go to (My Tracking URL) hit Sign-Up-Now in upper right of page


3. Once your register with an email address and password, you will get a verification email – be sure to click “confirm your account” link to verify


4. On your iPhone, go to the APP Store and get the TOUT application (from Tout Industries)


My problem was I had not an iPhone, but a Samsung Galaxy Variant Smartphone. Just the perfect Android phone that Tout wasn't yet ready for at the time. But, and this is a big "but," I could add a link from my YouTube videos, and, at 1,470 videos and counting, I've got a lot of them.

Michael wrote:


Zennie


We gotta get you going
let's talk tomorrow - we got some great blogger/celebrities prepping now, you would be perfect
'555-555-5555.'


Let me know when u can chat tomorrow


So I tried to track Michael down via phone, and in the interim joined, created a channel, and actually posted a Tout from my Georgia Down YouTube video.

Which for some reason that may be related to the slick new website design, isn't there any more; so I had to install new YouTube video links.   

But the Shaq announcement explains why I'd not got a call from Downing after the emails.

I was tossed for Shaq.

Wait. I was tossed FOR Shaq?!

Cool!

Nice work Michael!