Welcome to the Year 2000, last arbitrary year of the Entirely Made-Up Millennium.

To visit other times, use the navigation bar below.

DECEMBER 24, 2000

The sun is shining bright, the teenage girls are all walking down by the beach in their tube tops trying to rouse the boys and its another xmas eve/post solstice/mid-Channukha day in California.  Down on Mozart street you couldn't tell the Gov' had declared a Stage III power emergency for the state as the houses blazed from attic to lawn with all sorts of light fantasy.

Over in the County of Alameda, the Bored Supes chose Islander Alice Lai Bitker to replace Wilma Chan, who departs for the State Assembly.  Sorry Mayor Ralph.  The 42 year-old Alice has assisted Chan for six years and, besides being highly capable, is as cute as the dickens.   Although from overhearing a few contentious sessions of the Board, the impression develops that latter quality probably will not last long.  Alameda County, home to well over 8 million people and arbitrator of a tax fund that easily exceeds that of most European nations, is no easy roost to govern.

On the music front, we all know nothing happens until Dec. 31, when all of us bid adieu to Y2K.  Charlie Hunter is doing Oaktown's Yoshis for a couple nights and Irina Rivkin hosts her annual Escape from You-Know-What up in Berzerkeley.  At the Great American Music hall, we have the Radiators from New Orleans ringing in the new. Box Set plays the Last Day Saloon in North Beach.  Accentuating the obvious, the Manhattan Lounge is hosting the first Nymphomaniac's Ball; dress in formal white for that one. At the Fillmore, nothing is listed for the 31st, oddly enough, but Joe Satriani, the God among guitar gods, will play on the 29th.  John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room will feature a mixup band, which looks to be popular all over this year, including former members of groups that backed Frank Zappa, Ray Charles,Joe Louis Walker and Toni Toni Toni. 

For those who miss the notoriously good Greatful Dead shows at the Civic (possibly the only times the Dead would play reliably well) former members team up in two seperate shows in two seperate venues. Phil Lesh plays with friends (including Warren Haynes from the Allman Brothers) at the Henry Kaiser Auditorium in Oaktown, whileThe Other Ones -- including Phil Kreutzman, Bob Weir and Micky Hart -- play across the water from probably the same song list. 

Then, there is an host of shows in all the usual venues about town.  This year it seems almost no stage is dark anywhere, so finding something to do shouldn't be a problem.

Rabbi Yoseph Langer lit the flame at the Bill Graham menorah for the 26th consecutive year in Union Square on the 21st and there was much rejoycing and song and hubbeleh bubbeleh among the hoi polloi.   So much so that even the cold heart of Babylon's shopping center in the shadow of Macy's got a little spiritual for a while.

Please note that the SF MOMA exhibition of modern art ends January 15th.  This exhibit of the Anderson Collection, one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world, includes something from virtually every name of consequence in the world of 20th Century art.

Meanwhile, on the Island, as Mayor Ralph returns to his lonely Mayoral post and our hapless car thieves continue to fail with astonishing regularity to successfully hotwire so much as a Toyota, the garish lights of the Season continue to blink and strange messages continue to appear on the side of the Wierd House on Lincoln.  The latest bore this testimony:

GUT

SHABBOS

DOWN TWO

It appeared on Saturday, but we are not sure if the author is aware of the passage of time.  Anyrate, that is how it is on the Island, this balmy day before the big unwrap.   Remember to bring a sleeping bag wherever you go on the last evening of December and have a merry week and a jolly New Year besides.

DECEMBER 16, 2000

If you have not purchased that special glass-enclosed fantod or that fur-lined tchotchkes tushie retainer she always wanted, by now its too late.  The legions of cabbage-patch doll hunters have already ransacked the stores of all the soap-on-a-rope and cologne/hairgel/bath bubble knickknacks, razor scooters, digital cameras, and fluffy bathrobes, leaving only the stray Billy the Trout flopping to the tune of "Don't Worry Be Happy" amid the scattered styrofoam peanuts and torn advertising.  The Shopping Season is officially Over and Out and we can all relax with our eggnog and California energy crisis.  For another year. 

Sorry about missing last week -- the flu and the Company Party both intervened one after another.   The flu knocked out our excercise regimen and the Party knocked out our morals.   A serious System Crash didn't help much either.  The shindig was held at the notorious Silverado Resort, which is the sort of place where Ex-President Gerald Ford used to go to bean hapless electorate with errant golf balls.  All of California's varied Congresspersons like to come there and speed around in those electric carts after sloshing down four or five good martini's with sushi.   All the palm trees were lit up for the Holidays and a herd of artificial reindeer glowed on the lawn, but that could have been the numerous Manhattans we swilled down to the tunes of the Fundamentals, who happily played their hearts out for all the ten grand that they were worth.  The Company Founder got up on stage, as these types are wont to do in their moment of glory, slockered beyond repair and more loveable than in years while goosing the VP of Marketing.  A fine time was had by all, especially the raucous Table 38 in the corner.

How was YOUR company dinner?

Anyrate, the news has it the bad guys won.  Again.  And so we have yet another four years of an imbecile, as opposed to four years of an idiot, on which to blame the economy.   Are we pessimistic?  Yes we are.  The present Bush holds not a candle to his fathers idiocy, as his father was, at the very least, a competant asshole, which his son cannot claim.  After four years of regression to medieval concepts and worse

Now that the (Reagan-appointed) Supreme Court has nixed that little ole thing called Democracy in favor of Strict Federalism, allowing the Bad Guys to win for the moment, the elections fallout continues here as Babylon goes into the runoffs for its districts even as Alameda County seeks to replace departing Wilma Chan on its own Supervisors Board.   Continuing the trend of The Few decide who wins, Chan's successor is to come from the 15 selectees and to be chosen by all of 8 people on the surviving Board seats.   Eight of these hopefuls come from the Island, no less, including our Mayor Ralph.   Sources in the know say that Ralph has not a snowball's chance in Hell of getting it, which is just fine, as the Island would lose one fine barber if he went across the water. 

Friday night Alternative music owned the City as Everclear rocked out down on Market while the annual Live105 Not So Silent Night owned the Bill Graham Memorial Auditorium at the Civic Center   A.F.I and Deftones slogged through some sets that were more than a little troubled by sound problems.  At one point the teens my Significant Other and I were supposedly chaperoning departed for the quiet hallways of the Civic during the excruciatingly loud sets.  When Papa Roach took the stage, things like harmony, lyrics, balance and music returned to teach the crowd just how to punk out proper and make your voice distinct from the feedback.  Was A.F.I aweful?  Yes they were.   But to give the guys their due, their professionally mastered recordings sound so much better than what was inflicted on the crowd Friday night that the mixing board can be blamed here. 

The BGM Auditorium, sold out within hours of availability for the headliners, Green Day, rocked to its feet shortly before 11 and didn't sit down for the local faves done good until well after 2 am.  From the grungy beginnings up in North Berkeley, where the band used to share the stage at Gillman Street with stale beer and garage band wannabees, the homeboys have become a world touring act that does Saturday Night live and plays music across the dial from coast to coast.  Pulling selectively from four CDs, including the recent crossover hit "Warning", Billy Joe, Mike and Cool had the crowd in the palms of their sweaty hands and singing along to almost every song.  At one point, Billy Joe grabbed three guys at random from the crowd and formed a band on stage, had them play drums, guitar and bass, then had these total strangers leap head-first off of the stage, over the barricade area into the arms of the crowd.

We were impressed, to put it mildly.

The whole affair was a benefit for Bay Area music, for as all of us know, things are pretty rough right now for musicians with the closing of the largest rehearsal space in the City (and probably the country) as well as the wholesale destruction of the artist neighborhoods South of Market and in the Mission.

Let it not be forgot: "The modern day composer refuses to die."

This was the ninth Live105 Not So Silent Night concert attended by my Significant Other, which tends to feature the best of those about to become famous with uncanny accuracy. 

Also this weekend, the "History and Mystery of the Universe" captured the stage at George Coates Performance Works.  This one-man show presenting the life and ideas of Buckminister Fuller was, funnily enough, the most low-tech performance ever presented in this space, relying on simple backdrop projections and the simple wit and talent of actor Ron Campbell.  Some of the same thematic motivs that seem to inhabit all of the productions at Coates PW cropped up in more humanistic ways that previously presented: ticking timepieces, man as organic machine, and zen motion.  In one of the more interesting moments, the decidedly Victorian-mannered actor glides from a lecture on metaphysics into a Tai chi sequence without a hitch, then resumes.  There were, unfortunately, far too few such moments, as the work descended to unfortunate sentiment while at the same time appealing to "Synergy" in a manner that reminded one uncomfortably about the existence of a Dianetics Institute across the street.   Fuller, a sort of Everyman's genius who's ideas were heavily inflected with Presbyterian religiosity was among the first to conceive of  a global economy, and his ideas about universal structural forms equalled those of theoretical mathematicians who had many more decades of academic learning than this Harvard dropout.  Einstein endorsed his writing and gave the man the benefit of a personal one-on-one meeting at a time when the German physicist was deluged with appeals.  That the performance fails to bridge the gap between the hard and inflexible concepts of structural physics and the aery flights of metaphysical fancy cannot be the fault of the playwright or actor, for Fuller, born in 1894, could not have ever incorporated both the establishment of Einsteinian relativity as well as the diametrically opposed quantum theory, which came to supercede Einstein's ideas, coupled with the chaos theory that now preoccupies the minds of physicists today.  

Um, but the play gets you thinking, I guess.  Which is never a bad thing and certainly a hallmark of what happens in the space at GCPW.

All right, that about wraps up this week as we descend, post-election, into another period of vicious medieval mentality and alzheimer's-inflected versions of American history. 

On the Island, which owns its own power grid independent of the State PGE, the lights are burning bright all over as per usual, even as downtown Babylon suffers rolling blackouts during this Stage Three Power Emergency.  As of a week ago, power reserves dropped below 1%, putting us all in a bind.  At least now there is no advantage here over the East Coast in energy costs, as each home got dealt a 100% price increase on its electric bill.  That on top of two bedroom homes going for $300,000 and rents hovering at $1500 for one bedrooms, puts us square in the Unlivable section, next to Newark, NJ. 

How come people still wanna come here? 

The palms still sway with tinsel, Santa wears Birkenstocks and groundsquirrels scamper madly across the dunes down by the water, long after rodent cousins have gone into hibernation in other places.   Congress swelled the numbers of HB1 visas, so Indians and Pakastanis can take your jobs and all is well with the world.

That is how it is on the Island.  According to Bucky, you have have the option to save the planet or not.   Have a great shopping week and please, don't destroy the planet in the process.   A lot of people I love very much happen to live on it.

READ NEXT ISSUE

DECEMBER 3, 2000

As digestions settle from the Thanksgiving feasts, the nation turns to its ongoing soap opera which has all of the distinguishing characteristics of Verdi at his most portentious.  Three weeks down and the fat lady hasn't sung yet.  Bushy keeps shouting "I won it far and square (sort of) now give it to me; I deserve it!", while Gorey appears to have finally got his campaign in fighting trim -- unfortunately after all the votes have been cast.   Meanwhile, in the back rooms the GOP movers and shakers are kicking one another over their candidate slate when they all thought the Republican Party had not a ghost of a chance in hell in coming anywhere near this close to actually winning.  Over on the Donkey side of things, the theme of shooting the foot just stuck in the mouth continues with messy certitude.   The Press is aghast at the whole round-robin tango of snatching defeat from the jaws of certain victory.

And if your name is Chad, better not come west of the Mississippi, where we know how to run elections. 

Across the street a bunch of Bushy signs appeared all around the house on the corner two days after the election was over.  Better late than never?

The Beast Fest, known to all as pig latin for East Bay, held its first celebration over the weekend, with 20 some local bands playing in four East Bay venues.   The cultural wave has been washing out of Babylon over to the more affordable side of the Bay for at least twelve to fifteen years, well before the "dot-com revololution."  Now, numerous events like this are proving to the world that Oakland has what it takes to be the new star in the heavens.

Moving into the last month of Y2K, the Dave Grisman Quintet plays the Warfield on 12/8.  The venerable Fillmore hosts Hot Tuna on 12/7, followed by bluesman Taj Mahal on 12/13, Los Lobos with their latin-inflected rhythms, and the Guitar God himself -- Joe Satriani -- on 12/28.

Roy Rogers and Norton Buffalo snuck into Marin's intimate Sweetwater on 12/1 while we weren't looking.   Rogers, probably the preeminent slide guitarist west of the Mississippi rocked the house.

In the jazz lineup at Yoshis, Dr. John hauls himself out of the New Orleans bayou on 12/19 and Charlie Hunter takes the venue from 12/26 through 12/31.

More good news: the current production of "Buckminister Fuller" at the George Coates Performance Works has been extended through the new year and me and the Significant Other are going.   Coates, who's innovative multimedia works combine operatic voice, live music, mesh screen projections, holograms and loads of hi-tech has never failed to garner rave reviews and accolades.   His Zen-philosophy infused "Actual Sho" series blew the socks off of every other performance theatre in town.  With topics ranging from the story of a buddhist nun who finds a laptop and "enters" into the internet matrix -- years before the movie of that name came out -- to the simple tale of a basic 9-5er with a troubled childhood, whose job just happens, incidentally, to be that of hired assassin, things that appear on the stage at the GCPW never fail to enthrall.  The life of one of America's most interesting geniuses fits well within the territory mapped out by the Company.

Meanwhile, on the Island , the two story athletic facility that bills itself as "The Bladium" just opened on the grounds of the old Navy base, so now we got a gym to compete with those inattentive folks at Mariner Square, where the prices go up and the hours go down all the time.

Down the street, a string of antifeminist statements appeared recently on the Wierd Old House, the latest mysterious communication being:

BOTTOM

PANTY LINE

With that bit of dada nonsense in place, we bid you adieu.  That's how it is on the Island.  Have a great week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

NOVEMBER 26, 2000

The big news, besides gross consumption of L-tryptophan proteins with cranberry sauce, has been the Presidential contest, which this year appears to be something more than your usual beauty contest kind of thing.  Two weeks after the polls have closed the Nation is still Undecided and the unfolding drama rivals anything General Hospital or Days of Our Lives ever put out.   People are so caught up in the National issues that the local runoffs still underway in Babylon have seeped into the cotton fog of unconcern.  Which is a shame, given that at least two men were murdered and scores of political lives ruined over 20 years to make district elections possible in The City. 

As of the Recount, Bushy Baggot and Greene lead in Florida by 500 votes and fall behind in popular vote by some 60,000, making Bushy the feller most likely to take lead by a minority vote, much as King Richard III took his some few years ago.  Hopefully by different means, but it's a smelly business from beginning to end as it is. 

So the scenario is as follows, according to the Most Informed around these parts.  Bush takes the helm of State, appoints his rightist Justices and Cabinet, and then goes golfing for four years while the "centrist" point of view plays the caddy on the course, well away from the men who are infinitely more capable than this three-time bankrupt loser with a silver spoon in his mouth.  The Capable men, led in prayer by Pat Robertson, reinstitute a mock form of "supply side" voodoo economics -- which works about as well as it did for 16 years under that brainless ninny Ronnie Raygun -- the economy tanks and the GOP blames Democratic intransigence for the free market collapse, even while the very Rich continue to rake in the bucks, ever more valuable during a depression.

All of the smartfood people, former dot-commers reduced to dumpster diving and inventing widgets that actually do something, but which nobody buys because nobody real has any money to spend, take revenge on the GOP in four years and Bushy walks off the golf course wondering why everybody is mad, since he kept all of his campaign promises -- he just never put himself in a position to execute them, darn it.  Must have been those evil Democrats.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, Steve Jobs founds a new company called Peaches and sells Apple-clones at an affordable price while the Courts finally catch up will Bill Gates and, instead of breaking up Microsoft, tie Bill Gates naked to the gates of MIT's computer science department and a hundred angry CIO's flog him with stuffed penguins.

If you get that last joke, then you really ARE a nerd.

Just about the only benefit to all of this comes out during the next Depression, when housing prices in California actually fall and rents become something close to reasonable again. 

Enough of this gloom.   'Tis the holiday Season, begun with a vengeance, as always.  This year's Poodleshoot and BBQ was a resounding success under the cloudy skies and fog.   Fourteen and a half critters got bagged this time, the last catch being the ace by Willie Cutters, who used a Briggs and Stratton Mobile lawn mower, to snag his prize for the Most Inventive Weapon, easily defeating the brothers from Salinas who, using percussion grenades and 180lb crossbow,  brought in a couple of fine 8 pounders.  

During the Melee at Crab Cove, where close quarters reduced the participants from Glock nines, Makarovs, Sig 380's and light howitzers to basic machetes and molotov cocktails, the latter providing the unexpected benefit of on-the-spot bar-b-que conditions.

Honorable Mention went to the Seaver-Kent cadre from distant Palo Alto, who braved bitter winds and fog over the straits to participate with a set of explosive golf clubs and a jeep-mounted anti-aircraft gun, used most effectively along the Northwestern Territories of the former Navy Base.  

Apologies to the owners of the former good ship USS Prewitt; from long range, your lapdog had looked like a rare Rhode Island Blue.  The Society is chartering the Island Ship Scavengers to salvage your vessel.

All-in-all it was a spendid day on the Island, full of Tradition and lots of whiskey and good times, if not always good marksmanship.  Here's hoping your Holidays remain joyful and bright.  And not too serious.

Here, Lalia Futzbottom takes aim against an highly dangerous Cockatiel Poo.

That's how it is on the Island. Have a grand week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

NOVEMBER 19, 2000

Nobody knows who is President.  At this point, we get either a sophomoric drunk-driving two-time bankrupt nincompoop who has never held any office of responsibility in his life without major screw-up, including governorship of a state where the governor has no real power, or we get a sterile braniac who can't even run a sure-win campaign against a total loser with any conviction.  Either way, it looks like the economy is gonna take a dive and who do you want on your side when the jobs get scarce?  All of this squabbling over handfuls of votes escapes the real issue of just why the hell should either candidate get ALL of Florida, when it is patently clear Florida itself is undecided.  Split the damn votes in half and hand 'em out fifty-fifty is the only way to resolve things.

Meanwhile, life goes on in the Big World.  Napster may be gone, but the whole affair of shared music has pointed a finger at the commodification of art in a way that not a hundred performance art pieces could hope to accomplish. 

As for music beyond commodity, we have the annual Concerts for Kids, hosted by KFOG coming up on 12/7 at Cupertino and featuring Joan Osborne, followed by Joe Jackson and John Hiatt at the Masonic Aud. on the 13th. 

Live 105 trots out its Not So Silent Night Concert on 12/15 at the Civic and tickets are already gone, gone, gone for this show featuring a slim lineup of Green Day and Poppa Roach among others.  The Significant Other and I shall make what has become a holiday tradition of attending this for the 9th time.  See you there with Big Rick and the rest of the gang.

Which leaves the usual round of corporate parties and dinners, where the apple-cheeked boys and girls from accounting trot out their figures -- at the more successful companies -- and the secretarial pool gets blotto on quasi-free liquor.  If your company is doing the Sheraton or the Hyatt, then you know the books look good, but pity the company that needs to vacate the room for the second show, for the signs fortell pink slips in the year to come.  It has long been known among the cognocsenti that Ice scuptures of the corp logo and live bands mean tony times shall continue. For the company that swings during the Holidays is the Company that has done well by its shareholders.  Which goes to say that there shall be cold cuts and soda for a plethora of dot-coms this year, instead of the beef wellington and salmon champignons with wine sauce enjoyed by Deloitte and Touche. 

Are you really sure about that Bush guy?  During the next Depression, when the atavistic fangs of hunger drive into the flanks of any careless doe that wanders far from the herd, is this dude really going to be your friend?

Yeah, right.

Rumor has it that several tekkies have voted for Bush under the premise that, should the idiot get elected, the economy will surely tank and therefore it will become possible to get a decent apartment in Babylon after all.  Assuming their position remains relative to the status quo.  

In this time of confusion and certain betrayal of all things we hold dear, there remains one bright light of constant Tradition among the dark forces that rule us.  We speak, of course, of that delightful Holiday event the Annual Thanksgiving Day Poodleshoot and Barbeque..  Now, this year we have the splendid cooks from El Caballo Taquaria ready to do the honors for any and all kills brought in  without too much shot embedded in the meat, and the Official Beverage, Wild Turkey, is being supplied in casks by several characters of questionable disposition.  All of which indicates a fine time shall be had by all.  We have visitors from Palo Alto competing in the Corporate Challenge who promise to exceed last year's record of 8 and one half certified kills by Lucent of Harbor Bay.  Lucent, which employed explosive-laden gill nets with particular effectiveness is sure to return with innovative surprises. 

As always, kills must be certified by breed and species by the authorized Trainers and bribes are encouraged.

That's the way it is on this delightful pre-holiday Season.  Have a grand week and Happy Hunting!

READ NEXT ISSUE

NOVEMBER 12, 2000

By now, history is being scribbled at a mad pace as regards the presidential elections, the one no one was supposed to care about.  Now its in your face and, to tell the truth, that is probably a good thing, and it is a good thing that a big hullabaloo is being made right now.  For no system can be guaranteed to be a success unless it gets stressed to the test every once in a while and the proper fixit tweaks get put in place.

For a long, long time, the electoral process has needed some serious revision, and for a long, long time the American people have felt, "Oh what the hell.  What difference does it make?"    Now its on the news day by day and no wrap-up, no convenient sound-bite provided by friendly newscasters to sum it all.  Democracy is supposed to be a contentious day-by-day affair with constant attention by the people to the process and this attention has flagged worse than the last-pack runner in the Boston marathon.   The People had given up caring and now its patently obvious that yes, it does matter a damn,  the whole thing from campaign to inauguration. 

Whatever the result, people are going to now sit up and take notice when these issues arise, because everybody is going to be saying, "Not again! Not like the last time!"

Meanwhile the prospects of Bush becoming Prez, since he has the most clear advantage at this point, have sent the stock market plummeting.  And he was supposed to be "good" for the Market.   Go figure.

Meanwhile, the local music scene unfolds with the Big Guns coming to town for The Season.  Enjoy it while it lasts.  kd lang did the Berkeley Community Theatre with an astonishing voice and showmanship that destroys all opposition.  Pity the material was rather weak-watered.

Saturday the Taiko festival took Zellerbach by storm. Taiko, a form of martial arts drumming, is increasing in popularity here. Paul Simon, ever the re-inventor of himself, will take the local Paramount theatre with his top-notch international band.  Simon, who early established his career with light pop ditties has continually expanded and renovated his music to include sophisticated world-beat rhythms and in his ripe old age has finally become seriously worth listening to.

Local SoCal faves, the Offspring have released a new CD and it is anticipated that Dexter will haul his band, and his blue language, to the Bay Area very soon.  At the other end of sound, Yoshis will host Earl Klugh, the renowned jazz guitarist, followed by Tuck and Patti, who will do a series of gigs beginning 11/21 and ending 11/26.  Flipping the dial again to Irish folk, Shane MacGowan hauls his boozy Popes into the Fillmore on 11/17 and hopefully he's got the company to do "Fairytale of New York".  Keb Mo follows up after Thanksgiving on 11/24.  The remnants of Hot Tuna, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady do the Fillmore on 12/7.

Not to be outdone, the venerable Warfield brings on Yossou N'Dour, the Wallflowers and the David Grisman Quartet.   Grisman, who is one of the last persons to see Jerry Garcia alive, has provided bluegrass-inflected music to the Bay Area for many years.

Not to be omitted, since one of their songs provided the inspiration for the title of this column, the Flaming Lips perform the Maritime Hall 11/16.

If you caught Channel 4 last Friday evening, you caught the Island featured on "Bay Area Backroads"   Then again, if you live in Iowa, you probably did not.

Now begins the season when dark winds blow, chilling the bones and CNN does "retrospectives" of mass murders in wierd places like Bosnia and East LA.   Fortunately, there remains the Holiday light that gladdens our hearts this time of year, when friendship and renewal take place among the pines and the swamps.  I am speaking, of course, of the Annual Island Thanksgiving Day Poodleshoot and Barbeque.   This year, the Official Beverage, Wild Turkey, is provided by our sponsors, Defunct DotCom, the cleanup company.  Company go belly-up?  DDC will handle those messy bookkeeping chores for you.

All the talk about town is now about the end of the "Dot Com Spring".  Just about when Bush shall be ushered into office to do away with Social Security and handle the next big depression, the bottom has dropped out in Silicon Valley, and now it is open news among everybody who Knows.  The party is over, folks.  Time now to get a real job.  In anticipation of a Republican "austerity program", the banks have clapped their coffers shut on lending and the funding angels have all taken vacations to Majorca.   Company after company is tossing in the chips and the employees, let loose in the wild rental market of the Bay area, where 750 sq foot studios go for $1500/month are streaming like lemmings out of the area. 

Think it does not matter to you?  Notice the picket lines at Safeway recently?

You want Bush?  You got Bush and a Depression. Remember the 80's when Ronnie and Georgie ran things into the ground?  Welcome back hard times. 

And hey, you did your part didn't you?  After all, you cast your ballot.

That's how it is in the country.  Have a perfectly delightful week.  Better save your cash this Xmas.

READ NEXT ISSUE

NOVEMBER 09, 2000

Special Election Issue

It is an odd sensation when you realize you are near the center of history-making events while those events are still going on.  Tuesday, the polls closed on the West Coast with the East Coast still in a tizzy of confusion even as long lines of voters were turned away from the polls in the middle of the country because of ridiculous traffic problems.  At the end of the day, Gore had the clear majority of the people by about 50,000, but one single state in the East, Florida, remained hung up by lost ballot boxes, accusations of improper conduct by elections officials, and a slim margin of 200 votes that ensured an automatic recount.   If Bush takes Florida's electoral college reps, then our next president, the leader of the Free World will have been instated by a minority.  And given that virtually everyone who does not have his/her head in the sand knows full well that Gore mismanaged a botched campaign from the beginning, it is clear that justice has a long way to go before the slim chance of realization. 

Around 2 am, with the Gore supporters standing in freezing rain in Tennessee for six hours without sign or word from the Man, the Press rep came out to announce continuance of the fight.  His prepared speech was instantly drowned out by thousands of cheers.

As the night went on, the press looked on the big conference center screens in disbelief as the tallies for Gore rose above Bush in the national totals, while the totals for Florida fluctuated like the stock market, at times actually subtracting votes from Gore before inexplicably giving them back again.

In the humble press room of Alameda County, which selected Gore by an overwhelming 71%, the remaining press scribbled their notes and fired off reports with laptops and phones even as the NY Times presses remained halted in an unprecedented move subsequent to Gore's retraction of concession.   Over in the Registry of Voters, it would be 4 am before Tom York and the assembled team would break away for bed and rest.  Ten days and counting before Florida retallies its votes and takes a hard look at the things that went wrong, producing national and international confusion while other states had long since put their tallies to bed.  Here in California, everyone in the know is crowing about the news they always knew about the poor processes going on everywhere else.  The Registrar here shook his head in disbelief it took so long for Florida to respond at all.

Locally, Senator DiFi had nothing really to worry about to interrupt her hegemony, and  County Supervisor Wilma Chan (DEM) celebrated her decisive victory in the state assembly elections with an impromtue Chinese banquet for her supporters.  She joins six other Democrats over the single Republican victory (15th District, Lynne Leach) to counterbalance the fading GOP Governor. Her successor has yet to be appointed, but we saw her walking out with a bouquet of flowers.  Best of luck.

The incumbent Dems also took all three of the House positions up for grabs. 

Local props that have, or will have national interest include the Drug Rehab program which passed with a 69.4% over its more punative choice.  This state prop requires Rehab over prison for drug offenders and will almost certainly continue to cause uproar. 

On the Island, where change is anathema of the highest order, Dewitt and Kerr remain Council members and the Mayor still gets to keep his leather-clad chair because he was not up for re-election.

That's the way it was on the Island this historic election, November 7, 2000.  Continue to have a great week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

NOVEMBER 5, 2000

PAPOON FOR PRESIDENT!  

NOT INSANE!

The man the GOP nicknamed "Slick Willie" pulled through Oaktown on a stump speech tour supporting Gore.   Echoing The Great Pretender, Ronnie of the Forgetful Mind, Billy asked the crowd, "Ask yourselves, are you not better off than you were 8 years ago?"  The answer is most definitively YES for virtually everyone in Oaktown, if not the country, which is not something most could say in the depths of the Great 80's Depression.

By now, most everybody, even people  on the Island, should know that Tuesday decides which goofball becomes the butt of columnist puns and political cartoonists for four years.  And as always a plethora of local and state propositions are causing whole forests to be decimated on behalf of campaign literature. 

We've been down to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters to check out the scene where hellzapoppin.  This election sees the County ushering the East Bay into the Silicon Age as 20 special touchscreen ballot devices are deployed on a test run, which, if successful, will lead to purchase of well over 4000 devices that will end the days of punch cards forever.   Yes, Virginia, you will now vote on computer until the world runs out of silicon.   As it works, the voter gets a magnetic card in response to proper registration.   This card gets inserted into the device in the polling booth, which then wakes up the touchscreen.  Candidates are selected by using the old index finger to point at the choices.  No keyboard and no mouse.  The choices are stored on the device's hard drive.

After the polls close, the devices return to the basement under the County Courthouse on Oak Street and will be connected to the main computer for tallying and final report.  Orange County and parts of San Diego have already gone digital.  After this election, most of the major Northern California counties will do the same.

Right now, most people will use the old punch-card and little push-pin to make their voice heard.  The cards are collected and shipped to the basement where a small army of minions under the Registrar will shuffle the cards into stacks and load these into old-fashioned card readers.   The data is gathered in the DIMS system on a UNIX server and reports are generated every 20 minutes or so by Tom York who will then fire off results to the media, the Secretary of State and, of course, the County's official website.

Across the street, on the 4th floor, the assembled media will be gathered all night under two huge projection screens and beside the Lexmark printer that will spit out election tallies.  And that, my friends, is where I will be also until the very last precinct has reported in.  

Do not call me on Wednesday; phone will be off the hook.

That's how it is on the Island.  Get out and vote.

READ NEXT ISSUE

OCTOBER 29, 2000

It may not have the cachet of Cinco de Mayo or Hannukha, but the Dias de los Muertes, the Mexican Day of the Dead, certainly has caught fire here in the Bay Area as a sort of basic entree during the week-long party that is the Bay Area's interpretation of Halloween. The Exotic Erotic Ball came and went and its revelers are now on to other lascivious enjoyments. Me and the Significant Other   popped on down to Oaktown's Fruitvale district where 10 blocks of Hispanic Harlem were blocked off for the arts booths, food concessions, and rows upon rows of the wildly decorated altars to ex-loved ones, ancestors, or just the general concept that every single last person among the crowds of thousands on that street that day would not see the year 2999. This was one of those street festivals, but one with a unique flavor.  The announcers on the four stages we saw spoke Spanish and the mobile concession wagons sold churros with bagged papaya or melon while a local band, called simply Los Tresos sang "romantica" and a nine-foot high skeleton waltzed down the way with attenuated arms supported on poles held by attendants.

On the Day of the Dead, what better music to play than the Blues, and Brenda Boykin led off with a deep, soulful moan to start an energetic show of R&B backed by her excellent band, Home Cookin.

The rain doesn't come often to the bay area, but when it does, it certainly reminds everyone not to mess with Mother Nature. After 10 months of dry, the skies opened up last week and it looks like things are heading for wet, wet wet.

After the rage of wind that had fire fighters scrambling along the ridge-line, it's a good thing. The local chapter of the California Ladies Against Foreign Species rejoiced with great abandon at the destruction of a grove of eucalyptus. This organization, which really does exist -- I am not making this up -- exists entirely for the purpose of eradicating any and all plant species in California which did not have a solid foothold within the boundaries of the State prior to 1849.  "Today the hated eucalyptus, tomorrow the marigolds!" crowed Ms.  Eulalia in triumph at a recent press conference.   All vagrant flora beware.

Except for the palm, which appears to be the sole exception.

Tuesday is Halloween.  Party hearty and don't let strangers bite you on the throat.

That'st the way it is on the Island.   Have a scare-free week.

OCTOBER 21, 2000

Only a few references to what happened at 5:05pm on October 17, 1989 appeared in the local rags.  On that day, at that time, a colleague dived under a desk and shouted up at me, "What the hell ar you doing?!" Basically, I sat in my chair and watched through the vibrating iron bars of Building 80 at SFGH as billows of clouds filled the sky above the building directly across from us.  Turned out it was the hospital laundry boilers venting steam from the emergency release valves.  We didn't know what it was, but we knew something big had just happened, and it had nothing to do with the first game of the World Series being played a few miles away.  We also did not know that in two minutes, about sixty people had just died and over three thousand injured.  That night, as we picked our way home through the Mission, through intersections where the traffic lights were out and street lights dark, thousands of people huddled in masses around battery-driven TV sets and transistor radios to get the basic news.  To the north we could see plumes of dense smoke coming from the Marina District.

The years have passed, but along the wide strip that used to be the Cypress freeway, they finally have gotten around to setting up a little park as a memorial to  that very real and tragic disaster.

Down on the Island, another memorial to loss of life stands on Pier 3 with the USS Hornet forming the backdrop.   The traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall has come to the former Navy base here for a week.  The Installation service took place Saturday and a wreath laying will take place on the 24th.  By then the brisk winds that have been knocking down trees and scattering the flowers left by relatives along the base of the Wall should have slackened   off. 

In yet another loss, the ITD department at Alameda County mourned the passing of Debra Dickerson at services held Wednesday.  She had passed away the preceding week from Lymphoma.  Debra was a delightfully intelligent and warm human being who came from a human services background to provide a capable bulwark to the IT department.  She was not only technically savvy, but literate and cultured -- our last conversation was about certain popular movies and how they reflected parts of American culture.  She was born in 1957 and  will be remembered as one whose eyes were always clear and bright beneath her African fez. 

By now, Albertsnobs must be chortling over the increased volumne of business as Safeway grinds into its second week of strike activity at the Tracy distribution center.  Thirty people have been injured in the increasingly acrimonious and violent dispute over work quotas. 

At 3 am the worlds largest container cranes will pass within a few yards of the Island on their way to final berth at Oaktown port across the water.  The cranes are so huge that the port engineer physically measured the clearance using an old-fashioned tape measure -- he does not trust electronics -- and found only 22 inches to spare beneath the Bay Bridge. Even so, the cranes will still need to wait until low tide before being brought through, and the transport ship needs to take on ballast until its deck is only two feet above the water.   Better hope it does not get choppy out there boys, or the Monday commute is gonna be a hella mess.

Last time a huge container crane came through, it banged up against the Golden Gate, causing over a hundred thousand dollars in damage.  Oops.

The seasons are changing; now begins the Season everyone waits for and this Season kicks off with a big guns line-up at the Fillmo', starting with Ratdog, followed on successive weekends by Tower of Power, Hootied and the Whatever, Joan Baez and other luminaries.  The SF Jazz fest has begun already, and features Etta James with Lou Rawls, ending on 11/4 with Robert Cray who is no puny cap shooter himself.

Furthermore we have on the menu for your delectation and amusement, the Exotic Erotic Ball, which one of Babylon's last claims to sinful pleasure and abandonment.  Besides the charm of watching nekkid ladies gettin it on, one has the double happiness of knowing proceeds go to charity.   So there Mr. and Mrs. Bluehair. 

Finally, imagine if you were in a position to invite anyone you chose -- anyone at all -- to perform in an exclusive concert benefit, and the performers could not say no.  Neil Young is in that position and the annual Bridge School Benefit concert hosted by the man himself  is once again almost upon us.  These concert programs typically read like a Who's Who of the Best and Brightest in music, so tickets tend not to last more than a few minutes after going on sale. 

Meanwhile, back on the Island, some scamp has been running around stealing SUVS, moving them a block, then running off after removing the tires and rims.  Clearly the Island chapter of the East Bay Division of the Bay Area Anti-SUV Proliferation Brigade has been at work again.   This clearly beats out the Mission's sorta wimpy keying of paint jobs and such and we suspect inter-departmental rivaly is going on here.  May the best Leftist Terror Organization win. 

In the Really Uncool department some scalawag robbed a Round Table Pizza recently, forcing the clerk to lie on the floor while the till was rifled.  While worse could happen, we think this marks yet another decline in the quality of Island criminals.  Robbing a pizza clerk -- now that's pretty damn cheap. 

That paunchy feller in the Director's chair during the filming at Lee's Auto was not the Director, but the Owner and Proprietor.  Cisco has commissioned a film project on internet usage and much of the Island has been used as backdrop.  One item we should mention: the "mechanic" was seen smearing grease on his arm to make it look like he has been working hard.  Hey, whaddabout my valve job!

We took a direct hit from one of those ads for the Mercury/Contra Costa Times which mentions that "A paper reflects the community it serves."  Hey, over at the Chron/Ex they have been backstabbing, backbiting, and backpedaling like crazy since the sale of the Exasperator.   The staff considers itself all underemployed, underpaid, threatened by change, no matter how slight, well-deserving simply by virtue of tenure, and each works avidly to oust his or her neighbor while scrabbling desperately with lies and tricks to hold their own respective territory. And this reflects the community  those papers serve?

Give me a moment while I consider revising the punctuation of that last grammatical unit.

Speaking of community in Babylon, four more major dance troupes have been given the Notice to Vacate, bringing the total to about eight of the most influential dance groups now searching for a place to perform and/or practice.  Since over 5000 musicians have been evicted from the Downtown Rehearsal, there soon may not be any community left.

Upcoming: ghouls, ghosts, vampires and nymphomaniacs. 

That's the way it is on the Island.   Have a great week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

OCTOBER 15, 2000

The day after a full moon and only the usual suspects acted crazy.  It was a week of in-betweens, except you may have missed the 39th annual Wrist-Wrestling Championship on the 14th in Petaluma.   Petaluma, if you must ask, is the capitol of wrist wrestling and of chicken production.  There isn't much else up there, but what they do, they do well.   The Beatles are known to have paid a visit to the Championships, where sturdy-armed gents and gals come to do battle among the phalanges. 

Whatever. 

It all happened in Petaluma, and by now, it is all over except for the "Rocky" music. 

Meanwhile there is the usual complaints about the bad housing market.  To exist only until the next shaker.   And we are days away from the anniversary of the last moderately vile shake, which we will discuss in detail next week.

That's how it is on the Island.  Have a great week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

OCTOBER 8, 2000

By now you are all done making yontif and should be winding up things like the good penetentials you are.   The High Holy Days come to an end with the Day of Atonement and we can all go back to eating and drinking and ... whatever pleases. 

In the world of snorts spews, or sorts screws or shorts spews or, oh,  whatever, there is much rejoicing in post-Olympics Mudville tonight.  As the time buzzer went off over Pac Bell park across the water a mighty wave of voice roaring over the Island after a heartbreaker victory of the Raiders over the 49ers on the griddle-iron today. You could hear them whooping it up all the way across the water to City Hall where Jerry Brown never sleeps.

Amongst the pugilistic arts, further rejoycing was heard as the East Bay San Shou team, coached by former world champion martial artist Brent  Hamby, returned with two weight-class national champions and four additional medals.  Standings appear below:

Special congrats to Adam Caldwell who successfully defended the honor of the East Bay in taking the National San Shou Championship in San Diego in the Open Weight Class.  The bouts were televised on ESPN. Oss!

San Shou, a full-contact sport combining hand and foot striking as well as greco-roman style throws, is gaining in popularity since the advent of the more violent Brazilian vale tudo where fighting continues once contestants hit the ground.  As in boxing and Thai kickboxing, points are earned for successful attacks.  Additional information is obtainable at http://www.sanshou.com and
http://www.kungfu.net.

More sadly, the Yanks done stomped on the heart of the fledgling A's to ruin any chance of entering the World Serious.  In Brooklyn, the Giants met the same fate on the same day.  Bummer, dude.

The Wammies, the annual Bay Area music awards took place this weekend  in SF.  No word yet on who took what.   The field was heavy with what used to be called "post-punk alternative" with some jazz and latin thrown in. 

Dana Hubbard and Moris Tepper played in different venues in the East Bay last week.  Tepper did the Stork Club in its new venue on T'graph.  Guitarist Extraordinaire Chris Whitely played the City on an active Thursday.

The display windows for Paganos has been changed to match the festive season.  Where the rather spartan concrete bench once stood with two wineglasses and a rose, now perches an evil hunchback dwarf-monk, a scythe-bearing figure of Death, beaucoups spiderwebs, and more rats, spiders, ghouls, bats and skeletons than you could shake your sheet at.  The neighboring window displays feature seething buckets, severed limbs, jars of grinning skulls, glowing jack-o-lanterns mouthing huge spiders and more rats of the demonic variety.  As you enter the store, Going to pickup some penny nails never was this fun.

Our Roving Investigator glommed onto a rich prize in the form of a Form snatched from the circular files of Bob's Ford and Chevrolet located in the middle of Island Auto Row.  The form has the Official letterhead of the American Car Conglomerate, which, as all of us know, rules the Big Three US manufacturers with an iron fist.  The sheet purports to be an Application for Permission to Purchase an SUV and it appears to be highly genuine as it was found in a folder marked TOP SECRET FOR EYES ONLY in big red letters.  Besides the usual personal identification spaces, the form presents twenty questions, starting with the rousing "Do you beat your wife?  If so, how often?" and including such gems among the financial/insurance data as

• Do you plan on exceeding the speedlimit by 25 / 35 / 45 / 55 miles-per-hour?  If so, how often? (Circle the correct response)

• Do you kick your dog?

• What is your standard following distance at a presumed 55 MPH? 10 feet / five feet / two feet / six inches / I never follow anybody (circle the correct response)

• When solicited by the Impoverished, you give them a) A long lecture on morality b) spit in the eye c) kick in the balls d) raucous laughter of the smugly self-satisfied e) all of the above.

At the bottom of the form are instructions to the interviewer to congratulate the interviewee and welcome them as automatic passing candidates for SUV ownership if two or more questions have been answered correctly. 

This explains a lot.

Wednesday things got a little hotter than usual downtown Oaktown as the former State Building, vacant since the Loma Prieta earthquake (whose anniversary we are soon to remember in a week) caught fire and blew out windows going up three floors in the seven story building.  Fire was contained with no injuries, but they are gonna really have a time trying to rent out the place now.  Long an eyesore encapsulating the worst of the 70's modernist archetectural style with ugly agglutinations of no style in particular and surrounded entirely by a chain-link fence, the building certainly had its share of aesthetic enemies. At the moment, no one is raising their hand to admit responsibility.

Fleet Week in the City -- which gave up its port facilities to Oaktown something like half a century ago -- capped with displays by the Blue Angels over the sparkling Bay.  Trees are a-twitter with migrating flocks, the Oaks are turning golden and the nights are turning cooler.   Must be that time of year.

The other day we foolishly decided to try to keep pace with traffic on 580 going east, but round about 85 mph, the old beater just could not keep up and so we moved on over to the 65 lane on the middle right to watch taillights disappearing over the horizon.  Soon as we could finish our business we hustled on back to the relatively sane limits of the Island and Officer O'Madhaun's bailiwick.  Lately there are signs we are heading for another meeting of the Non Compos Mentis sub-chapter of the Organization for Directionally Challenged and Traffic Befuddled.  This space will post warnings as the date for the convention approaches.

That's how it is on the Island this Fall.  Have a great week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

OCTOBER 1, 2000

By now the stragglers have all straggled across the finish line in the Annual Bridge to Bridge Run and the revelers down in Park Presidio have gathered up their picnic baskets and lotions and booze in the fog after the post-race party.  In a major elections year with the Olympics under way Down Under, such things have settled to the back burner of the papers.  The SF Bleakly  has reappeared in the kiosks and the Bay Curmudgeon has issued its recommendations and endorsements for those too weak of mind to make up their own minds and too irritated with the Comical/Exasperator's flagrant toadyism .   With the merger of the big dailies, which never were all that different from each other anyway, we now have a single source of daily non-news which can be disregarded, leaving open the specter (to the City dwellers) of the lowly and highly provincial SJ Mercury covering the local beat in direct competition with the equally as provincial Comical.  

We took a trip to Silly-cone Valley to check out the 'burbs and see how the other half lives.  There, the organ of choice is the Palo Alto Daily Blues.  Before you respond with a knee-jerk, "oh no, not another provincial daily!" let me say how refreshing it was to read decent movie and performance reviews that were uncolored by (provincial) biases and axes to grind.  Still, looking at the real estate pages, one begins to wonder what planet these people are from.  "Charming 3 bedroom ranch-style house on 'spacious' 1/4 acre lot with subdivision potential" going for $899,000. 

And that was the cheapest lot on the page.  Got about 13 mil to drop on a modest 4 bedroom house?  Well, Atherton is your town.  Walking distance to schools, too.  You have to wonder about the minds of some people considering 1/4 acre a space with "subdivision potential".  Used to be that the rich insulated themselves with acres by the hundreds, which kept the population density down. 

Meanwhile, we got things beginning to warm up during this Indian Summer.  Morris Tepper, patron of the wierd and co-musician with such notables as Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits, returns to life on October 5th at the Stork Club. One of the few who can rock out with tuba and washboard, his show is a definite Do Not Miss.

The time of ghoulish screams, splashing blood, terrifying violence and frightening smells is at hand and no, we are not talking about driving through Chinatown, although the double-parking is always an exercise in scary absurdity.  The storefront windows at Paganos feature talking skulls, witches, spider-infested jack-o-lanterns and dancing ghosts. It's the Bay area's best loved holiday.

And speaking of holidays,

If I eat another candy-apple I will die of caramel poisoning.

In a sort of contrapuntal harmony, the Mysterious House on Chestnut, which maintained a serious silence for two weeks, now displays the sign

NEW

This, we take to be a mark of optimism. 

That's the way it is on the Island.  May your good deeds be recorded in the Book and have a great week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 23, 2000

The last vibrato chords have wafted over the crowd at Fort Mason and the annual Babylon Blues Festival came to a close under suddenly clear, blue skies and mildly chilly breeze.   The Blues, however, never end, as Birdlegg continues the jams over here on the warmer side of the Bay at Everett and Jones and Daniel Castro rocks the house at Eli's.  

Rumor has it the Grandmothers, a band of players who formerly worked with the incomparable Frank Zappa,  will confuse and delight the masses at the Paradise Lounge in late October.   Are you ready for the statistical densities of the "Black Page"?

Our hot weather spike appears to have mercifully ended and we are back to the delightful cool and clammy weather which brought everyone here. 

It's been three weeks in a row now, and enough is enough.  First, we went down to the corner to get our usual dose of Savage Love, and found the kiosk bare as the bottom on a Lusty Lady dancer.  Another week went by and the kiosk remained empty, so to fulfill our jones for "Dog Bites" we hopped on down to City Center to find all the kiosks empty there as well.  Finally, in the third week, pining for the wit of Laurel Wellman and Dan Savage, we hunted through the main venues of three East Bay cities, finding not a single issue in sight up in Berzerkeley, in Oaktown or on the Island. Now for a paper with an estimated circulation of a quarter million copies, we find this odd.   To say the least. 

So we did what dot commers do in this day and age and we went online to find our dear Laurel and Dan writing trenchant prose as usual.  So the paper is still being published, just not distributed?  What gives?  Is Bruce Brughmann, head of the rival  SF Bay Curmudgeon sneaking about with thugs in white panel trucks, swiping the print as soon as it gets delivered?  Now we know that when Bruce shouts "Read my paper, dammit!" he also means, don't read anyone elses paper either.

Are we going to witness the forced merger of the two leading independent weeklies along the lines of the recent merger of the SF Exasperator and the SF Comical?   If so, then we have questions to address to Dan Savage concerning the role he sees for himself in the new organization.  Who does he want to sit next to?  Who does he not want to sit next to?  Will Isadore Altman refuse to sit next to his lovers?   Does he feel he covers "his beat" adequately?  Does he expect to win the Pulitzer for covering the Sex Advice beat so brilliantly?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Are you good people?  If so, then Beyt Tikkun has a seat for you.  Next week commences the High Holy Days, starting with Rosh Hashanah and barrelling through to Yom Kippur.  No wonder the challah has disappeared off all of the shelves..    

Meanwhile work on the Island Tunnel continues most evenings.  Coming back from Oaktown from work the other night after nine we had to skirt the bayfront warehouses to get to the launching point near 23rd.  This we did on our rusty bicycle, nicknamed "Hapless".  While puffing and pedaling along what should we see but one of those evicted musicians, strolling along the chainlink of the concrete refinery with a positively huge acoustic guitar of the "dreadnought" variety.  And there he was, lit only by the passing car headlights, pounding away at his rhythms.  Which just goes to show you.

In the Heart of Darkness, there is wondrous music to be found.

That's the way it is on the Island.  Have a great week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 17, 2000

It was a week of conversing with the Old Guys.  No, not the latest punkers rocking out gilman street, but real old guys.  Chatted with a distinguished gent, complete with white whiskers and fisherman's cap who had been born on the Island in the house his father built, essentially, out of an old shack purchased for $1,500.  As the family grew, adding some nine more members, the father added another room to the house, working with his own hands.  The Old Guy went over to the house in which he had been born and raised -- it's on Santa Clara Avenue -- and noticed a For Sale sign out front.  Knocked on the door and asked what it was going for.  Answer: house that had initially cost $1,500 in memory now going for $350,000 with a waiting list of buyers.

The Old Guy now lives in Oaktown and "hates every minute of it."  But it is cheaper.  For now.

On the same subject, drove by the newly upholstered house on the corner of Santa Clara and Walnut to see a for rent sign with prices clearly marked.  We watched the workers come in and lift the entire house on jacks some six months ago to begin raising the ceiling of the ground floor and redo the foundations.  We were all quite impressed by the enterprise and imagined the family moving back in with a great deal of fanfare on completion.  Instead, what had been a two bedroom cottage had been subdivided inside, with seperate electrical meters for two apartments.  The two bedroom is going for $1500 a month and the 3 bedroom -- which has to be miniscule -- is going for $2100 a month.

And here is the secret and clue to why the Bay area rental market has gone absolutely nuts.  In the past, renting a house or a portion of a house was simply a means of helping to defray the cost of a mortgage while the value of the land increased over time, or bolster the social security check each month, or cover costs on a base investment that had been acquired only to provide equity for the real money-maker business.   It has come to pass that people can make so much money off of small unit rentals that the rent becomes the Big Kahuna, the main raison d'etre for  leasing out a space.in the Bay Area.   It is NOT true that increasing emigrant population has driven up demand, as any casual look at the census figures will reveal.  What has happened is that people are being evicted right and left for any slim excuse and units are being taken off the market in large numbers for "retrofitting" so as to charge even higher, more exhorbitant rents, putting major pressure on those units left remaining at "reasonable" prices.  At any given time you have large numbers of people -- I mean in the thousands -- who have lived here, who already live here, and who continue to live here, but are forced to add themselves to the lessee search pool. 

Proof in the numbers lies in capitalism's own logic.  If demand increases, then supply will increase to meet the demand.  This has not happened and is not happening.  All major new construction is for  business-district structures.  Statewide home-building is in a major slump and it does not appear than anyone is building apartments.  Even E'ville, that bastion of hell-for-leather construction worker's wet dream has not started any new apartment complexes of any size for at least two years. 

But hey, if you got it, you can always furnish it with Ikea.

Meanwhile, the good citizens of Sunnyvale and Milpitas and San Jose voted to block the BART extension and add, instead, traffic inhibitors in private neighborhoods.  Didn't this kind of traffic situation with winding, narrow, twisted streets and low-level access lead to, um, an incendiary problem a few years ago?

Oh well.  Long shall the Blinkered triumph.

More on a positive note was our chat with Mike Ramsey, who manages a building on St. Charles Street.  Mike, member of the Coast Guard and Babylon's PD, handles his spare time by building ships.   That's right, ships.  Sunday we checked out his replica of the USS Hornet aircraft carrier, some five feet in length and six months in the making.  Beautifully detailed down to the planes and life rafts, the entire ship is made of cardboard, although you would not know to see it.  Similar modals of this quality have commanded high prices, and an experienced appraiser present valued this one held within its case at between $1800 and $2000.  Mike has been making scale replicas of merchant and fighting ships for some 15 years and some of his ships are proudly put on display, notably on board US Coast Guard vessels.

The IPD foiled a would-be robbery recently, when alerted by an informant, they put surveillance on a trio that had already backed off the planned heist three times.  Each time the three had parked the car to watch a store clerk bring in the day's take for deposit downtown, and each time the three called if off only to return with plan modifications. At first, they planned to just grab the money and run.  Then, they brought a can of mace with which to disable the clerk.  Finding this one too fraught with potential back outcomes, one of the three stole a handgun and it was with this they planned to rob the unsuspecting man.   Perhaps the third time they planned to use a bazooka -- who knows -- but the police finally tired of watching these losers and hauled them in.

In the meantime, the felonious watermelon thrower continues his dastardly work of smashing windshields. Hope somebody gives him a tomato-nose.

The Babylon blues festival is coming up next weekend.  If today's 100+ degree heat is any indication, better bring sunscreen.

And Oct 1, The Third Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival takes place, bigger and better than before.  Readings will be broadcast live on Channel 25.  Wonder if the Cafe Barbarians will hold their tongues in check sufficient for prime time.  To acquire Fame or to twit the Boo-boo-geoisie -- oh, the anguish!

In honor of Poetry and those Roadhouse entertainment circuses called Poetry Slams, we quote these poetry slam jewels gathered from a recent World Heavy-weight Full Contact Poetry Slam in Babylon.

genderfuck banananose

i detest salmon eyes and

swans

    Egrets of Disdain

spiders crawl on their visages

piss and other (predictable) bodily fluids

choking on heroin needle-tracks so i wear

combat boots over pantyhose whadderyou lookin at?

****

swirling condoms cigarette butts

beer swirling flat

assaulting the sensibilities

concrete wires brown goo and yucky stuff

nonsensical poodles of dispair

i almost committed suicide last week --

boy aint life really neat

You might say the Bay Area is home to loads of talent and great Genius.

Then, again, maybe not.

Once again, the victor over this year's Island Poetry Slam was the ground squirrel who lives in the Oak at the end of Eighth Street.  His winning piece has been translated into nine languages and here is the English version, which lacks the melodious quality of the original, but nevertheless:

in spite of cats, warm sun and you

i dig nuts

That's the way it is on the Island.  Have a poetic week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 10, 2000

We had an adventurous chili-roasting party on the Island last weekend. There was beer and music and joyful jumping up and down from three in the afternoon until late.  No poodle-tossing.   Now a chili-roast is a special southwestern thing when the famous New Mexican chilis become available for about two weeks in August.  We got about 12 pounds of the little devils and set 'em on the barbie.  Now when you got 12 pounds of chilis you don't want to eat them all right away -- not if you value your life and your digestive tract.  People need to char the outside so the skin pulls away and the fresh meat can be frozen for use in tamales, rellenos, sauces and all kinds of good stuff.  My Significant Other popped a few and immediately got high as a kite, for a hot chili rush is the best natural high in the world.

Just make sure you got lots of beer to cool em off.

Latest craze on the Island are those mini-self propelled scooters, which the kids have been darting around on. Into traffic, each other and the ground.  The Island Emergency Room has seen some volumne intake due to these speedy low-riders, so y'all get some good helmets and elbow pads, ya hear!

Are we experiencing a new wave of low-rent behavior or what?  Officer O'Madhaun is scratching his head over a stabbing on Santa Clara Ave.  A feller was out having a smoke in front of his apartment when an "emotionally distraught" gent ran up to him and stabbed him several times.  The two did not know one another and never had any interaction previously, as far as we know.  The victim is doing fine at the Island Hospital and the perp is doin time in Oaktown jail.

Pagano's Hardware has a new storefront scene, this one a bit tamer and, well, a lot more boring than the previous, which featured an old man asleep in his easy chair before a TV set while hoards of mice scampered all around him, stealing the vittles.  The new scene is of a people-less park bench with roman statuary.  Whoever comes up with these scenes deserves an award.

Latest from the Wierd House on the Corner, a succession of signs, beginning with

CINDERELLA

and proceeding to

LADY BUG

in bright yellow.  It went through a variety of permutations during the week on the side of the old house until he ended with

RED LADY

In Fall, a young man's thoughts turn to poster-making.

Gentrification strikes the Island: the Council recently approved plans to renew the Northside neighborhood, long a strip of decrepit warehouses and crack pads.  Soon we, too, will endure the sight of overbearing yuppies crusing in their bloated SUV's.  Come to think of it, we already do, so what's the diff'?  Oh well, the next Big Shaker or serious drought will knock a few of them loose and they'll all scurry back to Locust Valley or wherever they come from.  Then we'll have only ourselves to blame again.

On the lighter side, Olympics fever has taken hold in this time of seasonal change.  The Island is rife with Olympic hopefuls aiming for one last shot at the tryouts.  Notable, we have Blubbers McFarley, who, weighing in at 320 pounds (and gaining) will give his best shot at the pole vault competition as well as the honorific as the World's Largest Athlete.  The sight of this gentleman sailing over the vault at world record height shall be thrilling to say the least.  Gina Sangfroid, another Olympian not to be missed in tights, has been training for the triathalon by dining exclusively on red herring on zwieback and Red Tail Ale.  Gina works on the Island as a repo girl for Good Chevrolet, so we know this lady is fast. As well as quite thin.  In the new sport of Extreme Bungie Jump on Motorized Skateboard with Luge, Willy Spatz aims to make his mark; if he survives basic training.  Not many do. Lastly, but not, it must be emphasized, least, is Shorty McDowell, pugilist extraordinaire, who plans to waltz away with the heavyweight title, notwithstanding his given stats of 4-2 and 89 pounds.  Shorty is the Great grandson of Fred Schultz, who made a name for himself as the official leader of the munchkins in the classic Wizard of Oz.  There remains a block of houses on the Island still, which were built to specs by actors who portrayed Dorothy's friends in that famous movie and who later settled here.  They all came from Germany and spoke not a word of English, learning the now famous songs through phonetics teachers.

Shorty's record is 30-0-1, which makes you wonder.  Maybe the guy has a chance.

That's the way it is on the Island.   Have a great week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2, 2000

Anywhere they play good Blues, there you'll find the best people.  And the best people were rocking out the blues this weekend down in old town Oaktown.  The annual Oaktown Blues festival took place, as usual, with not an ad on radio, TV or newspaper and still they came in droves.   People who love the blues just know. 

This year, the fest is complemented by various artisans who have fled the high rent prices in Babylon, giving blues 2000 the name "Blues and Art on the Bay".  Saturday kicked off with the Oakland Jaz Choir and JJ Malone, but Sunday brought out the big guns in the Elmer Lee Thomas Revue, Roy Tyler and Sonny Rhodes.  Yes, THE Sonny Rhodes.  On the Broadway stage Ms. Dee followed by Freddie Hughes blasted what remained of the rainy weather clean out of the sky, turning the day into delightfully warm and sunny.

We got there in the middle of Ms. Dee's set on the Broadway stage.   Ms. Dee and her backup band of young musicians blew the covers off of "Mustang Sally", sequeing midway through into "Low Rider", before returning to the original for a whalloping finish.  She did a soft ballad, resplendent in fuschia dustcoat and leopard skin hat, before taking ownership over a version of the old blues "Take me to the River".  Starting with a crunching rock beat, moving through a Jimi Hendrix styled instrumental with overdrive set on nine before rocking the crowd with a gospel-blues shouting, stomping, eaves-rattling vocal, Ms. Dee made you forget the Talking Heads ever existed.

Fred Hughes and his band took over at two PM, when the sublime Chris Burns returns on keyboards to infuse the sound with his Dr. John riffs and boogies.  On lead guitar, Steve Gannon provided his accomplished and distinctive Eric Clapton meets Steve Vai and Trent Reznor virtuosity.   Steve has played with John Lee Hooker and other Greats, so it was no surprise to see him backing Fred Hughes, who first established his rep in 1962 with the Soul Machine.   Mr. Hughes, riding high on a CD due out on a major label in November began with a solid bluesy "Last 2 dollars" before reprising his 1968 hit "Send My Baby Back".  Chris Burns returned to provide solid piano  lead and backing.   Also joining on stage was Vinnie Jones on sax.  After a nice rock'n soul "Long Time Coming", the crowd enjoyed another rocking version of "Take me to the River".  When Hughes did "Stand By Me", the pit, the side aisles and the whole back area was filled with people drawn to the sound. 

The fun continues on Labor Day tomorrow.

Meanwhile, on the Island, the sign that has appeared on the Sign at the Mysterious House on the Corner is:

CINDERELLA

Now this might mean something.

The Significant Other and I checked out Jim Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog" on video over the weekend.  Jarmusch has always excelled in portraying the grittier side of life with its mixture of natural non sequiturs, tragi-comic absurdities and blood-stained harshness.  In this movie, as in "Down by Law", phrases from certain books, snatches of music, and specific images stud the strands of the lives of different characters as they weave together, intersect briefly and part only to meet again. Forest Whittaker plays a mafia hitman who communicates with his employer only by carrier pigeon and who lives out passages from the ancient book of the Hagakure: Way of the Samurai.  We revisit Jarmusch's favorite haunts in and around Jersey City as the camera paints tone poems composed of neon-lit streets, homeboys composing rap on park benches, half-lit back alleyways and flights of birds across industrial landscapes.  Like any of the other Jarmusch movies, the point is less about telling a story with a linear narrative about characters into which we can project ourselves somehow than it is about presenting images arranged in patterns that suggest still other patterns that persist off camera, much as a jazz musician presents his own phrases in a good performance.  It is not surprising that jazz musicians have appeared as actors in Jarmusch's previous four films.   "Ghost Dog", if it is about anything, is about the passage of generations and the coming to term of outmoded traditions and habits in the presence of upcoming generations.  Joe Bob says, "check it out." 

So another labor day comes to a close after all the festivals and hoopla have closed up shop.  SF A La Carte took place in Babylon, where there was music and poodle-tossing and all sorts of joyful jumping up and down.  Here on the Island, the local youth extend themselves to such intellectual pursuits as melon felony.  They still have not caught the feller, or fellers, who have been tossing watermelons at automobiles, but if it involves motor vehical infractions, you can rest assured that Officer O'Madhaun is on the case and no hole is deep enough to hide.

That's the way it is on the Island.  Have a great short week.

READ NEXT ISSUE

AUGUST 27, 2000

We hopped on over to Babylon to check out the latest hormone-driven craze among today's youth: Thai kickboxing.  The "smoker" took place at Fairtex gym, which nestles south of Market street in the warren of  alleys that criss-cross the endangered warehouses, hole-in-the-wall businesses and rehab shelters soon to be steamrolled by the juggernaut of construction that is overwhelming the city.  Most city downtowns are windswept empty on Saturday, but the traffic snaked in stop-and-go past the construction cranes and superhighrise steel lattice work.

At Fairtex, however, the primeval and atavistic reigned supreme.  There were 12 bouts that day, each lasting three rounds of three minutes each, during which the contestants wailed on one another with knees, legs, fists and whatever else came to mind.  All this to the sound of raucous Thai music, sounding like a combination of Indian snake-charmer pipes and  kletzmer with drums, piped over the PA system.  There was a lot of bowing with the palms pressed together and general good sportsmanship, notwithstanding a few bloody noses and such.   The contestants  would typically hug one another after smacking the hell out of each other and there was lots of bon hommie.  A good time was had by all, except the feller who got his nose broken -- he probably did not enjoy that too much.

On other fronts in Babylon, the evicted dance troupes are holding last gasp performances before the City ends its long period of dominance as a premier site for experimental and developmental dance in the West.  A group of musicians is fighting the mass eviction of the Downtown Rehearsal space by enlisting investors interested in keeping live music in Babylon.  With median rents popping over 1000/month for one-bedrooms, and 2000/month becoming quite common,  the end may be in sight, however. 

With Labor Day coming up, the Kfoggers are touting the annual eatndance thing in Golden Gate Park where Los Lobos will be headlining next weekend.  End of September the SF Blues festival returns to Fort Mason with a notably thinner line-up -- in terms of Big Guns -- than in previous years, but especially worth going to see and hear will be Keb Mo and Alvin Youngblood Hart, both masters of Old School acoustic blues. 

Here in the East Bay, rumor has it Tracy Chapman tore the house down at the Greek Theatre on Friday night.  The Other Ones, basically Grateful Dead without Jerry, did the Shoreline in company of Bruce Hornsby.  

Me and the Significant Other had a chili-roasting party out on the Deck of Pam, a marvelous outcropping among the apartments above the Grand Lake Theatre there among Pam's eight cats (the eldest died two weeks ago).   Chili roasting, we discovered, is not something you do by the book, but by feel.   As true chili-heads will know, New Mexico's Hatch chilies become available for only a few weeks each year; the chilies must have their skins charred a bit so that they can be pulled from the fresh chili meat and then stored for use in chili stews, salsas and the Significant Other's special EggandChili cheese soufflé.  Don't laugh; its to die for.   And what better excuse to drink more beer?  There among the aroma of roasting chilies we discussed driving to Los Angeles and the deplorable decline of the City of Fremont, where people regularly get scalped in the alleyways and poodles run wild endangering the kids and the ars publicum.

It appears that a gentleman wandered into a Fremont drug deal gone awry and some disgruntled speed freak tried to give the man a mohawk in the old fashioned way -- unfortunately the man was nearly bald even before the incident.  If the next passerby had not been a certified EMT, the man would have died there in that alley. 

Here on the Island we have our share of troubles, but there is something to be said for having dull, unimaginative criminals. Friday night the air was filled with the sirens of Officer O'Madhaun chasing some fool around trying to escape.  Imagine that: stealing a car on an island, of all places, and then trying to outrun the police by driving in circles.  Its enough to make you want to send the kid back to Fagan for additional crime training. 

Its deplorable how the quality of crime has declined.  Nobody robs filthy rich heiresses of their diamond necklaces or palms the famous Star Sapphire of India anymore.  Nowadays its all lowbrow smash the window and swipe the cash kind of stuff, or easy car theft.  No crime cred is required anymore and now any idiot can swipe a handful of electronic parts and call himself successful.   As for certification, forget it.  Standards have lapsed with the quality of the California Middle school.  We have become a nation of small-time Napoleons.  

On the Island, where our jailers were too misbehaved to run a jail properly, resulting in the dismantling of the facility, there is scant hope for improvement.  When the city ran a jail, the wardens routinely took advantage -- to put it delicately -- of the inmates and there was non-stop partying from dawn to dusk in the cells.  This led to a decline in the moral fiber of the correctional officers at large.  Many took to drink and  some even took to poodles, which provoked a scandal when it came out.  The drinking, the populace could handle, but the poodle abuse led directly to shutting down the jail for good and the correctional officers found other work, such as day care and Boy Scouts where certain perversions are accepted as part of the package.

Anyrate, it is with sadness that we bid adieu to one of our favorite whipping girls, Gloria -- editor of the Island Journal -- who meets her last deadline September 1st before moving with the family to Lake County.   It is a custom in the Bay Area -- known only to VERY long term residents and born-here's to excoriate traitors and such as a measure of affection and as a way of venting over seeing one good one go while so many a------s come to stay.  Hence it is that if you really care, drive by the old residence and shout " G--d d----d m-------g B----h!"  

Just make sure the kids are not also listening.

More on this "quaint" custom some other time.  That's the way it is on the Island.  Have a great week.

NEXT WEEK (September 2000)

AUGUST 20, 2000

The latest sign at the House on Lafayette stares blankly, cryptically and starkly in Cyrillic block letters, but says how we all feel these days:

It is now Sunday evening, seven days after the Russian submarine "The Kursk" foundered in 320 feet of Arctic water. An international assembly of divers and rescue ships, including Norway and Great Britain have been trying to rescue the 118 men who were aboard when US seismologists registered two blasts at 4.3 on the Richter scale.  The flotilla of some 20 Russian ships was able to communicate with men still alive on board shortly after the disaster, but there has been no sign of life for a couple days.   

On the Island, Officer O'Madhaun and the Thin Blue Line are a bit red-faced after someone found that about half of the free gun locks issued earlier in the year are defective and will not secure a firearm.  If you got one, best check with the IPD about that at 748-4508.

We may have our troubles, but over in Babylon, where the vacancy rate is somewhere about .001%, over 2000 musicians have been issued eviction notices as the largest rehearsal space in the Bay Area has sold out to greed by a planned conversion to downtown condos.  Once a funky old warehouse on the edge of things, the space has found itself engulfed by high-price development, and the lure of an 8 million dollar profit was too much for the original owners who sold to JMA in Cupertino.  Yosemite studios has also begun issuing evictions to its tenants, which, together with the evictions of the four largest dance troupe studios now shelves Babylon firmly in artistic backwater territory.  People have been looking out to the Valley and even Detroit for friendlier environments to hone their crafts. 

Among the musicians evicted from Downtown Studios was Chris Isaak.

As we watch Babylon slip into the status of a second-rate cultural backwater, the City of Oakland proudly celebrated the opening of the new 74 million dollar science center up on Mountain Blvd.  The site itself is spectacular, with vistas that extend out to Babylon's towers across the Bay, down to Fremont and up to Albany.  Just as soon as the kids are back in school, me and the Significant Other are gonna boogie on up there.

We are pleased to see that the Vagabond Lovers have survived the band's name change after Mattel Corp. sued them over the moniker "Naked Barbies".  Toymakers are not known for having any sense of humor.

Continuing a level of investigatory excellence worthy of the world famous Inspector Clouseau, the IPD have ruled a man's death "suspicious".  The man was found shot in the neck by a .380 caliber bullet.  His room-mate had died a month previously of a massive methampetamine overdose.

On a cheerier note, the Island's thugs have wised up -- a bit -- and are now actually stealing stuff of substantial value, the latest heists nabbing about 20k in two separate robberies as South Shore continues its bad luck with thieves. 

Here, too, we have our election fever, or election indisposition to put it more accurately.  One candidate has already been disqualified from running by reason of forged support signatures.   Some say, the Island Council offers too low a position for a man with impressive credentials like that.  Is the Governor's spot coming up any time soon?

As the sun sinks slowly in the west . . . oh forget it.  That's the way it is on the Island.  Have a great week.

NEXT WEEK

AUGUST 13, 2000

The mysterious house on Lafayette has no words for us this week; instead, the Mad Genius has hung what appears to be a Jewish wedding tent from a tree next to the sign space and further draped the tree with garlands of tinsel. 

The semi-annual meeting of the East Bay chapter of the International Association of the Directionally Challenged and Traffic Enfeebled begins with month-long preparations of the roadways and general populace at large.  This is so that the citizenry can be ready for those sudden left turns from the right-hand turn lane, backups on the off-ramp, lane straddle and weave, driving 20 miles under and over the posted speed limits -- sometimes within ten minutes on the same roadway -- heedless turn signals that blink for miles and turns that provide no warning at top speed. Our most recent fave maneuver was a six-inch tailgating session at seventy miles per hour -- on the freeway decel lane to terminate in a right turn on a fourway without stopping or signalling or slowing down.  The guy in front had to perform, shall we say, basic evasive actions.  Well, sometimes you just have to get to a rest room REAL quick.

This year the Best Western on the edge of Oaktown's Chinatown is hosting the conference.  Ample parking everywhere; just double-park anyplace.

Over at the mudflats, engineers and such capped the last reconstruction project associated with replacing the Cypress structure that was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.  The I80 connector to i580east / 880south finally got fixed up properly after 10 years of snafus and hiatus, transporting now 5,000 vehicles per hour instead of bottlenecking them from i80's five lanes to one narrow passage.  This was reported in depth in the recent issue of the East Bay Excess.  The same article also reported that the main sewage treatment vats for the east bay reside only 500 feet from the brand spanking new, tres chic Ikea furniture outlet.  Don't forget the Lysol when you tote that danish couch back home, dude.

Meanwhile, on the Island, it's warming to election time and the Ground