Vacation extended

This blog will remain on hiatus longer than expected, until sometime next week, on account of me not having a computer at the moment.

Taking the week off

Things feel, from where I sit at least, particularly grim in Oakland lately. Thinking and writing about it just makes me really sad. So I’m taking a break.

If the Council can have nine weeks of vacation, I deserve at least one, right?

I was wrong!

So I totally said there was no way OPD was going to be able to find 100 people to fill these two academies starting May 19th.

KCBS reports that 94 trainees will be starting the Academy today.

So, on the one hand, this is good. It means we have a shot at getting to 803 by the end of the year. (Of course, those projections are contingent on a bizarrely low Academy attrition rate, but who knows.) On the other hand, getting this many POTs in this short a time is completely inconsistent with multiple public statements from the Department over the past year, so either the department was just being incredibly inefficient before and finally got into gear, or there was some serious standards relaxation going on trying to fill these Academies.

Of course, this also means that once these Academies finish in November, we can look forward several months with no crime reduction teams and even further reductions in our already strained investigation and traffic units. Hey, the Mayor did say “Whatever it takes.” Clearly he meant it.

Finding A Better Oakland

One of the things I like to do when I need a little break is to look at the search terms people use to find this blog. The top 10 are pretty predictable by now - number one is almost always “a better oakland,” followed by something like “better oakland blog.” “v smoothe” always makes it on the list, and one or two variations of “recall Dellums,” usually something about crime or “oakland most violent,” lately some election related searches, and every single day, guaranteed, something about Flora.

Yawn. I’m more interested in the less popular searches. I wish I’d kept a catalog of my favorites over time, because there have been some real doozies. But here are some of my favorites from the past week. They range from the practical to the very, very silly:

west oakland grocery store

Sorry, you’re out of luck. Take two buses to Emeryville.

city of oakland publice works teen center crime plagued disaster waste of money dangerous for kids

You’re thinking of Campbell Village.

stupidest law ever

Actually, I don’t think Oakland is guilty of that one. That crown goes to Canonsburg, PA, where the Mayor banned outdoor grilling for air quality reasons (although he repealed the order less than a day later). Speaking of stupid laws, you guys heard Chicago repealed their foie gras ban?

things to make you puke

In the interest of being more civil, I’ve discontinued use of this tag.

nonnude tribbing

Not a clue.

hillary clinton sobbing

Again, not sure why this led to me. Or why someone is searching for that.

illegal artists stealing precious industrial land

Max, care to weigh in on this one?

And my absolute favorite, and the whole reason I decided to write this post today (besides, of course, the fact that I’m too busy to write a real blog):

so you think you can hoop, desley brooks?

Well Desley, do you?

Tune in next week for a return to real posting.

Pseudonymous posting

As I said yesterday, I encourage my readers to use pseudonyms when commenting if they feel more comfortable doing so. I respectfully ask users to adopt a handle a retain it over time. For future reference, I’d like everyone to know that when you leave a comment, I can see where you’re posting from. I certainly don’t make a habit of looking at this, and for the most part, I don’t care at all. (And by the way, there’s no need to leave a fake e-mail address when you comment. I’m the only one who will ever see it, and I am not going to put you on some kind of mailing list or expose your identity to anyone. The only time I’ll ever use it is if I want to contact you about something privately, and even that’s fairly rare.)

But I do not want to see anyone spamming my blog with slanderous comments about a local political figure under seven different handles in a 24 hour period posted from the exact same IP address ever again. I will inform my readers that you’re doing so.

UPDATE: To clairfy, since my post appears to have caused a lot of confusion - the person using multiple handles was making anti-Ignacio comments.

Taking the week off.

A Better Oakland will return to regularly scheduled programming on Monday. Feel free to entertain yourselves in the comments section.

Happy Birthday, Future Oakland!

I’d like to wish a very happy birthday to Future Oakland. The blog, one of the oldest on my links list, turns two today! dto510 (nee Oakland Native) and I started Future Oakland one evening after spending hours sitting in my living room gossiping about the Mayoral election. We were frustrated that our perspective wasn’t represented anywhere in the media, and thought it would be great to have a platform to share how someone other than the usual players in this town felt about Dellums, De La Fuente, and inclusionary zoning. I certainly never imagined then that it would lead to the daily coverage of legislative minutia I provide here.

Back then, there were only a handful of Oakland blogs. Now, there are lots, and the list just keeps growing - I added two to my links page just this week. Some have come and gone (I miss you, Dogtown Commons), but others persist. Living in the O, Oakland Goods, Oakland Geology, East Bay Conservative, and very new addition Brooklyn Avenue all provide regular and high quality content.

While I’m thrilled Future Oakland has lasted this long, and I love most of the posts, I’m a little sad that they’re so infrequent. On March 4 of this year, dto510 wrote the following:

I promise to post at least once a week! This blog will focus narrowly on planning and zoning issues.

Since then, there have only been two posts! I learned 10 years ago, when we co-edited our college student newspaper, that the only way to get dto510 to do anything is to nag, nag, threaten, and nag some more. So if you want to see more of his excellent coverage of planning and zoning, head over to Future Oakland, wish dto510 a happy birthday, and tell him he needs to post more often!

Crime, “citizen journalism,” Oakland/Brooklyn, and so on.

Hopefully I’ll get another post in my slowly-progressing industrial land use series up later today, but for now… Read more

Local news is a rough business

I can’t stop blushing! I’d like to offer a grateful welcome to all the new visitors checking out the site because of Chip Johnson’s column about local blogs, and thank everyone who’s commented or e-mailed about it for their kind words. My little space on the interweb has gotten more traffic today than I’ve ever dreamed of, and I’m confident that I won’t be breaking my new record for quite some time, if ever. I do hope that at least some of my new visitors will find the site worthy of regular visits in the future.

Wednesday’s post complaining about local news coverage has drawn a ton of comments, including a defense of the Tribune’s Oakland coverage from managing editor Martin Reynolds. I have enough to say in response that I figured it deserved its own post.

My initial (and totally snotty) reaction to Mr. Reynold’s comment would be that the Trib doesn’t cover the Port or Alameda County in any meaningful way, most stories the Trib runs about Oakland’s government are simply recycled press releases that fail to provide any perspective, and that I would imagine that the Great Falls Tribune faces similar, or possibly more difficult, regional reporting challenges than our paper, since it’s responsible for covering communities as far as 80 miles away.
Read more

What’s wrong with Oakland’s political coverage?

As much as I adore Oakland, I have to admit that it always feels great to get away for a while. At home I tend to forget how incredible it feels to fall asleep in silence and make it through a full eight hours without getting woken up by sirens, motorcycles, or the mentally ill. Getting out of town also gives me an excuse not to blog for a while, which is nice, because getting something thoughtful and informative up here on a daily basis is kind of…um, challenging.

At least once a week, someone asks me why I do this, and the truth is that I don’t really know. I believe people should know what their government is doing and where their tax money is going, and there just doesn’t seem to be any reliable source providing that around here. Leaving town reminds me that it isn’t just because I love Oakland. I do, but beyond that, I think I’m just hopelessly geeky when it comes to local politics. Even on vacation, I can’t seem to get my mind off it. Read more

Vacation

I’m on vacation for the next week, and so is this blog.

Mobile ABO: You asked for it. You got it.

Although I’m somewhat shocked that anyone feels the need for this, I have gotten some requests for a mobile-browser friendly version of this site. In theory, you now have one.

Of course, I don’t actually have a Blackberry of my own to test it on, so I’m not entirely sure whether it’s working or not.

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