The Burlingame Voice

Podcast: Hear About the Voice in Our Own Words

This is one of the most exciting posts in the history of the Burlingame Voice because it is about the history of the Voice.  Man-about-town and now podcaster-about-town, Mark Lucchesi, who we wrote about two years ago when he "retired" from Mollie Stone's, has trained his microphone on Russ and me.  You can listen to a number of "Mark at the Mic" podcasts that he has gone for the Burlingame Historical Society by searching that moniker on YouTube.

Russ and I were happy to be asked and had a blast talking about the Voice past and present for about 45 minutes.  The direct link to our podcast is HERE.  You will hear about how we started, who was involved early on, what each of us thinks about some local issues (hint:  we don't always agree and that is half the fun).  I describe some of the "Principles of the Voice" but I didn't get to all of them during our conversation, so here's the list as it sits currently:

• Respect the Law of Unintended Consequences
• There are Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics (popularized by Mark Twain, maybe Benjamin Disraeli)
•               Corollary:  A numerator without the denominator is useless
• There is no Free Lunch, somebody is paying.
• Always do cost/benefit assessments
• Does it pass the “Shoe on the other foot” test?
• People get interested when the pothole is in front of their house.
• A cat seldom changes its stripes.
•               Corollary: “When someone shows you who they are believe them” Maya Angelou

The session was also video recorded, so you may get to see our mugs in the future if and when that version is posted to YouTube.  In the meantime, enjoy the podcast. 

Snowy Memories

After reading about the incredible snow levels in California, a regular Voice reader forwarded a photo of the famous 1962 Burlingame snowfall.  Here she is with her sister and an awesome snowman!  She notes that the houses shown are still there (another wonder) and challenges readers to identify the street.

Update:  This photo arrived from the Burlingame Historical Society after the initial post.  It is credited to Sister Marilyn Gouailhardou

In case you haven't been following the snow news, it's crazy out here.  I'm standing on the walkway to my Tahoe place yesterday--and I'm 5'8".  It's snowing now with another 2' expected.

New Recycling Company Comes to Town

The consumer recycling effort is complicated and fraught with problems from slim markets for certain materials (see the percentages from two years ago here) to consumer education and discipline about sorting and contamination.  I worry that a lot of what I put in the blue bin doesn't get recycled in the end--and I'm paying for it on the front-end (CRV) and the back end (to Recology).  I'm not alone and that has presented an opportunity for a new company to come to B'game.  I started seeing Ridwell boxes and lawn signs a couple of months ago--they look like the milkman drop boxes of old--white with red letters.

Ridwell found the Voice and offered up a call with the CEO, Ryan Metzger, to explain what the company is up to.  Organized as a Social Purpose Corporation, it offers a subscription service for scheduled pick-up of otherwise less-recyclable materials like light bulbs and "plastic film"--which is the myriad plastics that you can scrunch up in your hand.  In addition to the recurring items, Ridwell runs "specials" --featured categories of materials that are scheduled out six months in advance, e.g. CDs/DVDs are coming up soon.

For about $15 a month a subscriber gets the box, separate bags that go in the box for different materials, an IOS app and a dashboard to see how you are doing and what is coming up.  I haven't tried it myself so I'm hoping some Voice reader is among the ~125 customers in B'game and can weigh in.  The company notes:

We provide lots of education on what can / can't be recycled, have a staff of employees who answer questions, give people material to pre-sort rather than mixing it altogether, and then publish data on how much of it came in the way it was supposed to so that it can improve over time.  As a result, we have very high-quality bales of plastic. Our members are showing that the 9% number (Ed: from my earlier post) on how much plastic is recycled is not fixed and can actually go up!

On their end, Ridwell works directly with a number of organizations that take their better-conditioned recyclables, e.g. the composite lumber manufacturers like Trex.  Clothes and shoes ("threads" in Ridwell parlance) go to Goodwill or other similar organizations.  I'll be curious to check in with them after the first year of local operation and see how it's going.  In the meantime, welcome to B'game.

New Vet in Town: Dr. Treats

With all of the pandemic puppies and kittens that we adopted over the last couple of years, I've heard some vets are very tightly booked out and short-staffed.  So, it's good to see a new vet with a new business model take on space at the old Anthropologie space.  The photo is a bit shadowy because it was near sunset and the tree we fought so hard to save during the Safeway project is still casting its shadow on Primrose.

I'll be interested to see how this $149 per year membership service from Dr. Treat works out.  I burn through more than $150 over the course of a year pretty regularly at my vet (which I love).  It's good to see this space occupied and without having to resort to the tactics EssEff has embraced.  The SF Examiner piece about a cafe on Cole St. that could not come to terms on a lease renewal has the numbers:

The City adopted a commercial vacancy tax in 2020. Its aim, in part, was to incentivize landlords to keep their storefronts occupied, thus providing more negotiating power to small businesses.  Like most taxes, it’s complicated and contains a number of exceptions. In designated business districts, the vacancy tax amounts to $250 per linear foot of storefront that faces the public right of way — if that storefront has been left empty for six months or more that year. The tax escalates to $500 per foot in the second year and $1,000 per foot in the third year and beyond.

Storefronts on Cole Street are about 25 feet wide, meaning the tax would amount to roughly $6,250 in the first year — less than what the Reverie was paying in rent per month.

Yet another bad idea that I hope doesn't work its way down the Peninsula.

The History and Innerworkings of Local Newspapers

The Burlingame Historical Society drew a good crowd to its quarterly meeting especially considering it was right before the Super Bowl.  This quarter's topic was the How the News is Made with guest speaker Jon Mays from the Daily Journal.  Society president Jennifer Pfaff provided an overview of the various early newspapers that existed in the area before Jon spent almost an hour on the innerworkings of the news business.  I had already watched local podcaster Mark Lucchesi's episode with Jon that you can find on YouTube here.

There was some overlap between the two presentations so the podcast will give you some of what you missed by not being at the meeting.  I'll just add three observations.  Jon described how the business model has changed, mostly for the worse, because of the changing advertising and classified ad business.  The subsequent reduction in staffing levels precludes covering events like the local crab feed the way they were done back in the day.  In a sense, that is what I am doing as a citizen journalist with this post.  Noting something that wouldn't otherwise be covered.

Jon also described a recent instance of the Law of Unintended Consequences when he noted the impact of AB5 (the controversial gig worker bill) on his delivery team.  The people who deliver local newspapers don't just deliver one paper; they deliver most--maybe all-- of the papers in the area simultaneously.  My SF Comical comes bundled with my Wall Street Journal everyday which I find amusing.  AB5 disrupts the ability of the drivers to work four jobs at once--literally at once as they make their rounds.  Jon noted that the forces behind AB5 don't understand his business.  That's an understatement since I don't think they understand many businesses at all.

Lastly, Jon described the student journalist program that the DJ operates after school with a kid from each of the local high schools.  This is the classic internship model with hands-on-overseen by professionals work experience.  It's good stuff and has been the origin of a few careers in the news business.  As the grandson of a newspaper editor, Jon gets it naturally.  Notice the Advance Star office on the screen.

A Small Man in a Big Office

The political hack at the SF Comicle sucked me in with the on-line teaser about Newsom talking about "small men in big offices".  I had higher aspirations for a New Year's Voice post, but I got sucked in by Joe Garofoli's hyperbole.  Joe G. is the epitome of a In-the-tank Chronicle columnist.  He has no shame insight.  Boy, do I miss Willie Brown.  So here are just a few of Gavin's misses courtesy of Joe G.:

Newsom:  “I’ve been thinking a lot about time,” Newsom said to open his 21-minute speech. “Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s being a parent. But time is now on my mind.”

Did he not see the 50,000 jokes about Kamala Harris and "the passage of time"?  The dude is 55.  His speech writer must be 30.  Garofoli calls him "the guy in charge of the world’s fourth-largest economy — a place he calls the “nation-state” of California."  This year the only thing he might be "in charge of" is the nation's largest deficit.  Want to make a name for yourself?  Go find the $30 billion dollars of taxpayer money that you let the EDD send to fraudsters.  THAT would be like "being in charge" and might balance the budget.

Challenges?  Garofoli notes

And there’s a lot to do in a state where 161,000 people are unhoused, wealth inequality is vast, the poverty rate is high, housing is unaffordable and less than half of students are proficient in reading.

Newsom couldn't "house" the "unhoused" when he was the mayor of EssEff.  What makes anyone thing he can do anything productive across the whole state except threaten local governments' payments?  And "wealth inequality"?  Really Joe G.?--Newsom better hope the wealth inequality holds firm for the rest of his term since that is what is payin' the bills.  Here's the kicker:

“In our finest hours, California has been freedom’s force multiplier, protecting liberty from a rising tide of oppression taking root in statehouses — weakness, masquerading as strength. Small men in big offices.”

I take it back.  His speechwriter must be 23.  California lost 343,000 people to net out domestic migration in the last year and the states he is trying fruitlessly to demonize accepted most of them.  Not that I think that is a problem.  I'd be happy to see California "lose" another million or two so maybe our second-rate politicians could get a handle on the problems we have now.  Not holding my breath.  Happy New Year.  Stay dry and save some of the rainwater because we are gonna need it.

NYE Deluge: Floating down the Avenew

The Pineapple Express arrived right on time to make a mess of New Year's Eve.  I only ventured onto El Camino once yesterday and it was before the stuff really hit the fan.  My mother-in-law drove on it later and a splash from an adjacent car knocked her windshield wiper right off the car!  But we know ECR is a drainage disaster.  What about the Ave?  It seems the deluge combined with a king tide that was expected, per the Chron

The tides will be at their most extreme on Friday when the high tide of 7.12 feet will arrive at 10:24 a.m. and the low tide will dip to -1.74 feet at 5:26 p.m. — a sea change of nearly 9 feet in about seven hours. Saturday’s high tide rolls in at 11:14 a.m. at 7.09 feet with a low tide of -1.77 feet at 6:15 p.m. A high tide of 6.88 feet will appear at 12:06 p.m. on Sunday.

The king tide combined with the National Weather Service measurements shows the magnitude and also that this isn't a 100-year flood--more like a 30-year flood.

Our San Francisco Downtown site hit 5.46” in the 24 hours of December 31st. This makes it the second wettest day in the 170+ years of records at that site, just 0.08” less than 1st place (11/5/1994) with 5.54”.

It also highlights a design challenge with the seawall that is being proposed for sea-level rise.  Keeping Bay waters out is one thing.  Letting rainfall out is quite another.  Friday's king tide was a shade bigger, but not until the deluge came on Saturday did we have this problem:

I hope this video plays for everyone.

Download Flood vid 123122

Update Jan 5th.  Here is the downed Euc on the Caltrain tracks that PSA noted in the comments.  Thanks to the intrepid photog who captured it for me.

Stanfoolery and "bad words"

Herb Caen used to refer to Stanford as Stanfoo, but the university is looking more like Stanfools lately.  In the interest of free speech which we value here at the Voice, I'll post a recent WSJ editorial that is so ridiculous that it merits keeping around for when the next bit of tomfoolery pops up in the language arena:

Parodists have it rough these days, since so much of modern life and culture resembles the Babylon Bee. The latest evidence is that Stanford University administrators in May published an index of forbidden words to be eliminated from the school’s websites and computer code, and provided inclusive replacements to help re-educate the benighted.

Call yourself an “American”? Please don’t. Better to say “U.S. citizen,” per the bias hunters, lest you slight the rest of the Americas. “Immigrant” is also out, with “person who has immigrated” as the approved alternative. It’s the iron law of academic writing: Why use one word when four will do?

You can’t “master” your subject at Stanford any longer; in case you hadn’t heard, the school instructs that “historically, masters enslaved people.” And don’t dare design a “blind study,” which “unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.” Blind studies are good and useful, but never mind; “masked study” is to be preferred. Follow the science.

“Gangbusters” is banned because the index says it “invokes the notion of police action against ‘gangs’ in a positive light, which may have racial undertones.” Not to beat a dead horse (a phrase that the index says “normalizes violence against animals”), but you used to have to get a graduate degree in the humanities to write something that stupid.

The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative is a “multi-phase” project of Stanford’s IT leaders. The list took “18 months of collaboration with stakeholder groups” to produce, the university tells us. We can’t imagine what’s next, except that it will surely involve more make-work for more administrators, whose proliferation has driven much of the rise in college tuition and student debt. For 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrative staff.

The list was prefaced with (to use another forbidden word) a trigger warning: “This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.”

Evidently it was all too much for some at the school to handle. On Monday, after the index came to light on social media, Stanford hid it from public view. Without a password, you wouldn’t know that “stupid” made the list.

One can only imagine the reaction if you told a Chief Master Sergeant in the Army or Air Force that his or her rank needs to be edited for political correctness.  Then you would hear some forbidden words for sure!

TypePad is working on it..................

Dear readers,  It's not you or your browser.  Nor is it me or my skills.  If you have been getting the 503 Unavailable message for the Voice's URL or an empty top banner (the green box) or you see the main posts, but none of the stuff on the right side, you are not alone.  TypePad (our kind host) has been migrating the platform to a new data center and that comes with hiccups.  The latest is right below, where for some reason, the right side of the photo of the new clipping is missing.  They'll figure it out sooner or later, so please be patient!

School warning: Get protected

I have a bit of background in the computer security arena--just enough to know it's complicated and hard to defend oneself.  I also have some background advising various levels of government agencies on their technology decisions.  For the most part, they are trailing edge shops with limited budgets and older technology.  So when I read this Calmatters.org piece on schools being unprepared, I was not surprised in the least.

If Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest school district, can be hit with a ransomware attack, how prepared are California’s public schools for the increasing threat of cyberattacks?  It depends, according to experts working in the field of cybersecurity and information technology in the state’s public schools. Some districts might have a handful of cybersecurity professionals on staff, while others don’t have any. On top of that, there are currently no statewide guidelines for digital security at school districts.

Public schools possess confidential data ranging from Social Security numbers to health records and financial information. While the Los Angeles Unified attack has drawn national attention, Loftus says this prominent case is just the latest example of public education’s vulnerability to cyberattacks.   “Education is a mash-up of multiple different sectors,” he said. “We are transportation providers. We provide food and nutrition services. We have school nurses and so much more.”  And as school districts and the state took steps to close the digital divide during the pandemic, more students online means more blindspots vulnerable to cyberattacks.

The shame of the whole scenario is that BSD, SMUSHD and even the city of B'game and the county spend a lot of energy on things that are far less important.  Some of that is forced upon them like going to district-based elections.  But a lot of it is self-inflicted.  If we put as much effort into hardening our tech as we do forcing the march to an all-electric future we would be a lot safer.  I really hope our misplaced priorities don't end up costing the taxpayers a ton of ransom money.