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casual carpool, serendipity and radovan karadzic

"Casual carpool" is one of those (sub)urban fabric things that makes life in the Bay Area go 'round...and occasionally makes it just a bit more interesting. Every morning commuters gather at one of a couple dozen sites in the East Bay, matching up drivers with passengers to make the trip across the Bay Bridge. Passengers get a free ride into the city, and drivers get passage into the H.O.V. lane, and a free ride through the toll plaza. I've been doing casual carpool (as a passenger and a driver) on and off for about the past 10 years, and every once in a while something extraordinary happens.

This morning on my way in I picked up two passengers, and with the radio tuned to our local NPR affiliate (I'm fairly certain that there's a law on the books in Berkeley that states that casual carpool vehicles must have their radios tuned to NPR), we made our way to the bridge.

The lead story in the 8:00 hour was, of course, the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the man behind the three-year siege of Sarajevo and the massacre at Srebrenica. As the story began, a gasp came from woman in the back seat of the car, and while the story played on she interjected with the occasional sotto voce "Oh my God" and "Finally."

When the story ended, she offered up an explanation. "I worked for the United Nations for two years collecting evidence for the case against against Karadzic," she said. "I've waited a long time for this."

Every once in a while casual carpool produces nice little moments of serendipity...and I'm sure the occasional missed connection. This morning took the cake for me: this stranger had devoted two years of her life to the case, and I got to witness her hearing the news of his arrest for the first time. As the kids would say, [this is good].

As she got out of the car at 2nd and Howard, I offered my usual "Have a great day."

"I already am," she replied.

cody's sold to yohan

The Chronicle covers the sale of Cody's to Yohan, Inc., the Japanese book distributor.  In it, there's a sad quote from Andy Ross about his surprise to San Francisco's reaction to the Cody's that opened in the city...

"I thought we would just open the doors (in San Francisco) and everyone would pour in. That was pretty stupid. Cody's was so well-branded in Berkeley that I took it for granted, but still there are a lot of people in San Francisco who don't know that the store exists."

Just like the micro-climates, there are micro-markets in the Bay Area.  This shouldn't have been news to him...  But at least there's a decent ending in this for Cody's, and the 4th Street store is still one of my favorite places to buy books.

cody's, dead and buried

Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue closed last month, causing untold numbers of hands in Berkeley to wring with self-righteous indignation at the heartless march of capitalism, the encroachment of mega-onliners like Amazon and the decline and fall of literacy in west coast civilization. 

There's been plenty of press coverage of the Berkeley icon's closing; Anneli Rufus' long and thoughtful piece in the East Bay Express is the best one I've read yet.  She covers the sturm and drang of the demise of Cody's with just the right amount of gentle skewering...

When Berkeley looks in the mirror, it perceives a book town, a lit-cred Lourdes linked with so many bards and rebels and laureates alive and dead that reciting their bibliographies would take all day. Not just uninflected authors but, to a large part, activist authors with a cause. Rare is any city so spellbound by its own legacy. For better or worse, Berkeley is a living theme park, forever conjuring a heyday that Cody's crystallized. "Tie-dyed Tears," one blogger proclaimed.

Worth reading if you spent money at Cody's, have ever stepped foot on Telegraph Ave., or have an interest in retail bookselling...

gourmet ghetto

Turnhere.com has a great short (3:47) video on the Gourmet Ghetto in Berkeley; the eight square blocks of foodie heaven just up the street from where we live.  (The guy in the beret is a fixture outside the original Peet's; he's about as Berkeley as you can get.) 

See also, in case you haven't read it already, Michael Chabon's fantastic essay The Mysteries of Berkeley.

ski jumping riot

The Bay Area's all a-twitter with news that the steepest couple of blocks on the Fillmore Street hill in Pacific Heights will be turned into a ski jump later this month so that Icer can hawk their line of gear, MTV can shoot a half hour special, and has-been Olympic star Johnny Moseley can celebrate his 30th birthday.  Neighborhood residents are flipping out (pun fully intended); especially the couple that's scheduled to wed that Saturday in the neighborhood.

The best bit in the Chronicle story, though, was this -- the ski jump thing's been done before, about 70 years ago in Berkeley, and it led to a very Berkeley outcome...

In February 1934, the Auburn Ski Club of Truckee put 43,000 cubic feet of snow  --  four times the amount headed for Fillmore Street  --  on six Southern Pacific boxcars and shipped it to the steep slopes of Hearst Avenue, just north of the UC Berkeley campus, for a ski jump demonstration. About 45,000 people, including thousands on Tightwad Hill, gathered to watch the novelty.

But in true Berkeley fashion, the event ended in a riot. College students, many of whom had never seen snow before, stormed the barricades and launched an enormous snowball fight, disrupting the event before it could finish.

Here's to history repeating itself, with thousands of Pac Heights residents, led by the bride and groom, storming the slopes and pummeling Moseley and the Icer crew with snowballs.  Now that I'd pay to see.

local excitement

So the big news in North Berkeley this week was the guy who drove his SUV through the front door of the Starbucks that's literally up the block from my house.  Photo and excerpt swiped from the Berkeley Daily Planet story (emphasis mine)...

An SUV driver battered his vehicle through the doors of the Starbucks at Solano and Colusa avenues Tuesday morning, scattering a dozen or more customers who leapt out of the way and jumped through open windows as he backed up and tried it again.  “He appeared to be aiming for the counter,” said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies.  After the second try, the driver backed out and sped away northbound on Colusa Avenue, leaving parts of vehicle scattered inside and outside the coffee shop.

Either the guy really hates coffee, or maybe he got the Scharffen Berger story wrong?  Whatever his motivation, thank God no one was hurt...

slugworth!

And now for something completely different, Hershey announced yesterday that they're buying Berkeley-based Scharffen Berger.  I'm anxiously awaiting the Berkeley City Council measure that will officially condemn the sale of the gourmet chocolatier to corporate shills that exploit children by selling them non-organic snacks laden with refined sugar and saturated fats.

I haven't been on the Scharffen Berger tour, but I hear there may be a chocolate waterfall involved.