fakkeltog lillehammer

Fakkeltog Lillehammer, Norway. 25.07.11.

photo by A. S. Nilsen

(lit. translation: "torchlight")

FINLAND 6 - 1 SWEDEN !!!

2011 IIHF World Championship - Finland vs. Sweden final

FINLAND WINS THE CHAMPIONSHIP!

vittun jännittävä!!
so f—ing exciting!!

SUOMI 6 – 1 SVERIGE
Finland 6 – 1 Sweden

FYEAH FINLAND!!!

chongqing

Many buildings are marked with a “chai” character, meaning that they are to be demolished.

Lost in China, 24.12.10. nytimes travel.

let there be neon

Here, Neon Is Anything but Inert. nytimes, 30.12.10 (yes, I'm backdating my entries)

response to mehserle's sentence

A man jumps on a car in downtown Oakland after people marched through downtown in response to a two-year prison sentence that was handed down to former BART officer Johannes Mehserle on Friday Nov. 05, 2010 in Oakland, Calif.

Photo: Mike Kepka / The Chronicle

100 protesters arrested in Oakland. sfgate, 06.nov.2010.

the police blocked the crowd from continuing the march? ??

had they not, maybe there would have been less rioting.

Oakland protests go wrong—152 arrested. sfgate, 07.11.10.

oh, the batch of young voters..

Hey, at least this guy voted. Obama won in '08 with 66% of the 18-29 vote. Most of that demo stayed home this time and played Cut the Rope and drank vodka/Red Bulls and tweeted about not caring anymore. Ah, silly youth.

Letter to a whiny young democrat. mark morford, sfgate, 03.11.10.

CAL 35 - UCLA 7

Jeremy Ross picks up 19-yards on a punt return in the third quarter of Cal's game

against the UCLA Bruins at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley on Saturday.

Great job CAL.

I miss (Cal/college/american) football.

Haven't been to a Cal game in so long.

This new Vereen guy? someone tell me about him.

IBM's CityOne

popsci

inhabitat

big oil's chernobyl

A dragonfly tries to clean itself as it is stuck to marsh grass covered in oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in Garden Island Bay on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana near Venice on Tuesday, May 18, 2010.

Natural gas siphoned from the BP oil leak burns off on the Discover Enterprise on May 21, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast. Ultra-deepwater rigs and other equipment are being assembled at the site, preparing for a procedure called a "top kill" that BP hopes will stop the flow of oil from the well.

Collected oil burns on the water in this aerial view seven miles northeast of the Deepwater Horizon site over the Gulf of Mexico, May 18, 2010.

more pics: Oil reaches Louisiana shores. the big picture, boston, 24.05.2010

How do you take it all in? How do you see, feel, understand the impact of what's happening to an enormous portion of our planet, the bleak and oozing death of it all? How do you shrug it off?

Behold our dark, magnificent horror. mark morford, sfgate, 04.06.2010

Conspiracy! Terrorist stripper nuns! mark morford, sfgate, 21.05.2010
end of the 5th paragraph—LOLs oh, mark morford..
actually, this whole column—WIN.

shanghai transformation

Wuijang Road

Sometimes what officials claim is conservation is anything but. Old buildings are rebuilt with new materials, while developers have torn down protected structures in the dead of night, often with official support. And even in protected zones old architecture has been displaced by new roads and hotels. Conservationists here are on constant alert, and protests among residents have become increasingly frequent. “It’s an arduous war,” said Mr. Ruan, who four years ago founded the Ruan Yisan Heritage Foundation, a preservation group.

In Shanghai, Preservation Takes Work. NYtimes, 27.04.2010

Elmwood Cafe

Elmwood Cafe opened in March after a yearlong restoration, and Pearce, a first-time cafe owner, is thrilled to have the corner of College Avenue and Russell Street thriving anew.

"Ozzie's has been a part of the community fabric for 89 years," says Pearce, an East Bay native. "When it went under, a lot of retailers were looking at the space and thinking of gutting it. I met with the owner and said, 'Give me a shot at it. Let me save everything and restore it and try to bring it back.' "

Consider Ozzie's reborn, but with a decidedly chic slant. While Pearce kept the original woodwork and postwar stools, the new cafe's menu and decor reflect the increasingly upscale Elmwood neighborhood.

Ozzie's is reborn as Elmwood Cafe. 29.04.2010, sfgate.

Fuck me and my wallet. esp if I still lived 2 blocks down (actually 'up' is correct directional word).

College Ave. with Lulelemon, the Wine Store, Ici, that cafe next to Ici, Mrs. Dalloway's, and now Ozzie's is Elmwood Cafe... Not a bad thing, buildings and facades are renovated, neighborhood is thriving. Just that it's so much more upscale-sy and I think I'd be a bit uncomfortable if I was still living in that area. like I wouldn't fit in. Actually I feel uncomfortable about this even as I'm not living down the street there anymore. Me: broke ("low income") asian college student. Not helping that I have pretty good taste and like to try new restaurants every so often, and that when I'm back in the Bay I immediately try to cross off all the restaurants on my list whose food I've missed for too long.

fuck my wallet.

SADFACE; TEARDROPx2; SIGH

at least I'll be working full-time for a month school lets out. and I'll get free sushi. but also will be eating out most of the days of the week. and that i've been spending a lot of big-ticket music events (coachella, etd.pop, edc).. also going to look into midi controllers soon..

fuck.

whatever. today I'm going to have a reasonably-priced sandwich for lunch, and then a cupcake that's half the price of the sandwich for dessert.

..and think about how citizens from the Euro Zone visiting America have it so much better. although recently the exchange rate is sort of pleasant.

I miss Ozzie's Soda Fountain. The new upscale cafe clearly does not serve ice cream floats.

asians vs blacks

sf chinatown, by imageneer on flickr

asian-american attacks focus on city hall. 29.04.2010

dirty secret of black-on-asian violence is out. 02.05.2010

bay7gia 5/2/2010 2:18:53 AM
The best way to stop this kind of drama is first, Asian people, or whoever involve into this, need to behave themselves before saying that they are targeted by African Americans and else. Majority of Asian people prejudice Black Males in the society. Whenever they see a black person approach or stand by their side, they automatically, think this person is trying todo something harmful to them regardless all other things. These Asian can never realize that their reactions and behaviors to other people specifically, black ethic group cause or encourage these young black male to pick them as the targets to do things on. Before complaining about being harassed or assaulted, they really need to take a second and think about why it's them, and not others. I don't think the language should be a serious issue that brings these violent people to these misbehave Asians, but themselves. Maybe it's just cultural, but they need to understand that other people also don't like to be looked downed on.

a little late on posting this; have a few news posts saved up in drafts meaning to repost, but got distracted by mewziks. didn't want to spend too much time browsing the comments on these 2 articles, so just grabbed a decent/mediocre one.

true, there definitely is prejudice coming from asians against black. I mean, just look at what chinese call black people: "huk gwei", lit. black monster/demon. but prejudices/stereotypes aren't usually unfounded. black-on-asian violence has been going on for a while, which spurs the continuation of asians' suspicion and wariness of blacks. My grandparents used to run a corner liquor store in Berkeley, and blacks have always been the ones who've shoplifted. That is not to say they now look on all blacks with hatred, no, they are pretty open-minded, american, and if introduced to a black person, act with friendliness. But still, the stereotyping and prejudice gets passed down (, only for the kids to grow up increasingly americanized and realize how ridiculous this all is). Asian grandparents and parents walking their children through the city would purposely change routes upon hitting a black neighborhood or a street where there are a large (or any) number of black people. "Let's walk on the other side of the street. There's a huk gwei on this side."

Asians living in fear is just stupid. (Unless you're an elderly asian. next paragraph.) That's why I extremely dislike asians and their conservative, prejudiced ways. There needs to be some revolution in Chinese discourse to stop using the words huk gwei, gwei lo (lit. monster person, colloquial for white people) and instead push for more neutral words such as huk yun, bak yun (black person/people, white). Not like this will make a huge change, but hopefully would spark a shift in asian thought on other races to not view them so differently and with such negative light.

Back to the story (on onto another thing), most of the violence is against elderly asians. wtf picking easy targets? weaak. not going to go into the possible reasons for this, but this is a concern. My mom works at the office of a senior housing apartment building in Oakland wherein all but one of the residents are asian. It's not right in Chinatown, but about a block away, and near downtown. Right next door is a corner liquor store where blacks frequent and loiter at, and every so often (or actually I don't know exactly how often) a resident of my mom's building gets robbed by a black person. Like right outside the building.

Not so safe in Oakland, esp. for the asian elderly.

from waste to energy

Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags. NYtimes, 12.april.2010

gd america. I would be so proud to be Scandinavian. Actually, no. I wouldn't even be proud. I would just go on without a thought except "isn't this what everyone's doing?" I mean, where has the world been?? america is way too problematic. gd rednecks and lameduck politicians and nimby-ers and the rest of the nation without an ounce of logical sense.

Read that article, ok? I don't post links to articles without first reading them myself.

caracas street art

Government-financed brigades of graffiti artists and muralists are blanketing the walls of Caracas, Venezuela, with politicized images, ranging from crude, semi-anonymous graffiti tags to bold, colorful works.

Of all the murals that adorn the anarchic city's trash-strewn center, one creation by the street artist Carlos Zerpa fills him with special pride: a stenciled reinterpretation of Caravaggio's "David with the Head of Goliath," in which a warrior grasps the severed head of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

photos: Meridith Kohut

artists embellish walls with political vision. NYtimes, 11.april.2010

the hate man

Q: You require people to say "I hate you" before you begin a conversation. Do you really hate everyone?

A: I do. But it's a new way of hating. It's about being straight with people. The dictionary defines hate as hostility, but that's heavy. My idea is to be straight about negative feelings that we all have, which is what hate is, and then you can have a real conversation. Don't be threatening or angry or snotty — just straight.

Homeless ex-reporter opted for Berkeley streets, sfgate, 11.april.2010

sf zipline!

Riders must scale the "101 steps of fun" up a scaffold tower to get to the zip line, which the British Columbia tourism office hopes will lure tourists to the site of the Winter Olympics.

Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

That is the most amazing shot I've seen in a while involving skyscrapers/high-rises. And the zip-line looks so fun- right in the middle of downtown/Financial District/Justin Herman Plaza (click pic to see more), too!

sf zip line gives free rides, sfgate 09.april.2010

building a green economy

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/magazine/11Economy-t.html

bedford ave bike lane

repainting the bike lane on bedford ave, nyc.

wired article, december 2009

new chinese luxury island

The most prominent development is a series of four luxury apartment towers and a "seven-star" hotel on Phoenix Island, a spit of sand off the coast that was created by the provincial government as a cruise ship dock. Photo: Shiho Fukada

In the last two months, Hainan, an island the size of Belgium in the South China Sea, has become a potent symbol of China’s economic vitality — or, perhaps, its excesses. Even in a country where new wealth spawns new tales of luxury living every day, Hainan is viewed with a mix of awe, envy and disgust. ...

“People are coming with entire bags full of cash,” said Raymond Hau, general manager of the Sun Valley Golf Resort, which is building the 220 luxury villas. “I’ve seen this myself. A man had a bag and unzipped it. Boom. ‘Here’s the deposit,’ he said. ‘I want two apartments.’” ...

Now, in Sanya, even those benefiting from the current boom say property and hotel prices have reached absurd levels. “There’s no real economy,” said Lin Mingkun, the manager of the yacht club and a condo owner. “It’s a bubble economy.”

full article: On China’s Hainan Island, the Boom Is Deafening. NYtimes, 30.03.2010

marc riboud

Man Painting the Eiffel Tower, 1953: I walked up the tower, maybe one hour of walking. Some people ask me, "Did you ask the painter for permission?" I said, "My goodness, no. To talk with them was to risk slipping and falling down." I've always been shy and I've always been trying to ignore the people I was photographing, so that they ignore me. I'm trying always to take a better picture than the one before but I was not sure of this one. I didn't think after I shot the picture that I shot something interesting. I learned from Cartier-Bresson what's called "geometry in photography." It's not dependent on what you'd call a good photograph, but good geometry.

Antiques Dealer in Old Beijing, China, 1965: This turned out to be my best icon. As a print it has been put at the highest price. It was in 1965 with my first wife who was American. She wanted to visit this antiques shop. Maybe I spent 25 minutes with her there. She was interested in buying some seals to put on letters. I kept saying, "Don't buy. It's too expensive." I wasn't pleased that we spent so much time there. She left after buying nearly half a dozen of these antique seals. We divorced. She got the seals. I got the pictures.

marc riboud
photographer of the golden era, 16.03.2010 sfgate

Marc Riboud Photographs: through May 1 at North Gate Hall, UC Berkeley.

closed sundays. (510) 642-3383. www.journalism.berkeley.edu.