Infospigot: The Chronicles

Your Berkeley Weather Outlook: Nice; Really Nice

At the risk of unleashing a wavelet of hate mail, here's a quick take on the Berkeley weather for this week. Meantime, the calendar says it's November. Please remind me of this when next I snivel about the cold and rain. Of course, in the next 48 hours I'll hear someone spoil the party by saying global warming is responsible for the continued warm, dry conditions.

Berkeley Halloween, Before and After

Halloween morning on Holly Street. You can just feel the anticipation: tricking and treating, overindulgence, and vandalism just hours away. Late in the afternoon on the front porch, Kate and I carved pumpkins. Hers looked like something; mine looked like nothing you could describe. Then nightfall and the troops of costumed youngsters. Well, first we saw maybe a dozen kids make their way up the other side of the street who never made it to our side. Maybe they were scared of odd-numbered addresses. After that, infrequent visits by one or two kids at a time. One bigger group, including the neighbor kids, knocked at the door. By the time we realized no one else would show up, at 8:30 or so, maybe 15 or 20 kids had contended for the five pounds of candy we had (a jumbo-sized bowl was contributed by a neighbor a couple of houses down at whose door no one stopped, apparently).

An acquaintance on Facebook talked up a San Francisco neighborhood where residents get together to do a full-on trick-or-treat fest. Lots of decorations and the like. "Haunted houses, horror films projected on bedsheets, hundreds of happy screaming kids trick-or-treating with their parents. Real Halloween."

Real Halloween? Maybe where he came from. But in that odd place and time I grew up--the suburbia of the American Midwest, 1950s and '60s--the adults didn't organize much beyond treats and defensive measures against kids who might not be satisfied with them. Unless their kids were very young, parents didn't have much of a presence on the street. There were hundreds of kids out and about because there were hundreds who lived in any given half-mile radius, and just about everyone was out in search of loot. A generation later, when our kids were little here in Berkeley, that culture didn't seem to have changed a whole lot. Bunches of kids out after dark, trooping up front walks to whatever welcome awaited them.

The latter-day neighborhood festival my friend talked about in San Francisco is very un-Halloween-like in those terms. I suspect it's purely a reflection of a culture that has decided that fun is fun within bounds: organized and controlled. You wouldn't want kids interacting with strangers on the scary night of all scary nights, would you? So if there were kids out anywhere last night, I think that's where you'd find most of them--where the parents could make sure the program contained enough of the right kinds of entertainment, but not too much, and none leading in some unpredictable or untoward direction.

You could argue about the value of our old Halloween customs. It has never been a favorite occasion of mine, even with the candy. Maybe there are good reasons for that tradition of door-to-door greeting to die. But I think its disappearance is just one more bit of distance we put between ourselves and whoever else we chance to encounter--not just on Halloween, but every other day and night of the year. Another barrier, another measure of isolation. And it's really too bad for the kids, too.

"Modern American life"--i.e., we parents and our fears, helped along by media that seize on the most lurid of crimes, paint them as the stuff of unversal reality, and suggest we're powerless to respond rationally--has already killed pick-up sports, going to and from school without a chaperone, and free-style loitering, among other pleasures of youth. In addition to the sweets, Halloween night used to represent a chance to explore one's surroundings (an impromptu geography lesson), a chance to judge neighbors by the goodies they'd offer (applied sociology), experience in dodging ne'er-do-wells and dealing with fear of the dark (survival training), and hands-on practice with negotiations and bartering (economics and entrepreneurship). All that on top of healthy exercise in the out-of-doors.

It's all a shame. Almost as big a crisis as the tens of thousands of candy calories our household must now figure out how to consume.

New Ho Ho

A sighting on our weekly Friday night stops in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood. One of many restaurants in the area and part of an almost equally large group we have not yet tried. "New Ho Ho"? Somewhere, there's an original Ho Ho Restaurant, I guess. And the "Ho Ho" part? The Chinese version shown below, shot with exceedingly slow shutter and excessively moving hands, gives a hint. The character for "ho" is repeated (you can just make that out in the red characters above the awning). "Ho" apparently means "good." I don't know whether doubling it means "extra good." Or maybe "greasy spoon."

The Reward

A basic Berkeley bike ride: Start at my house, 120 feet above sea level. Take your favorite route up through the neighborhoods towards Spruce Street, one of the main roads into the hills (I ride up the north, purely residential end of Shattuck Avenue to Indian Rock, then to Santa Barbara, then the short, sharp climb up Northampton to Spruce). At the top of Spruce, roughly 2.2 meandering miles from home and at an elevation of about 800 feet, turn right on Grizzly Peak. The direction you're conscious of going is up; you may not perceive until looking at a map later that you've been riding mostly north on Spruce and that as you climb the ridge on Grizzly Peak you've doubled back south. After the first quarter-mile on Grizzly Peak, you get to a long stretch where the climb is pretty gentle. You're around 960 feet or so when cross Marin Avenue and just under 1100 as you approach the Shasta Gate into Tilden Park. Then you plunge down past the intersection with Shasta Road and climb again to the city limits and cross Centennial Drive where it tops out on its ascent from the UC-Berkeley campus, elevation about 1250 and about 5 miles from my front door. The road then climbs more twistily, steadily and steeply--though far from punishingly steep--for another 1.7 miles or so to the top of the road--a shade under 1700 feet.

So if you're keeping track of all that, that's a climb of something like 1550 vertical feet in 6.7 miles right outside the front door. Again, the way it unfolds with its long, gradual stretches is not a killer. But it's not a bad workout, either.

When I first went up Grizzly Peak, in 1980, I think, I was stunned by the views. The road clings to the western slope of a very steep ridge, so you have a pretty much wide open view across Berkeley to the Bay and beyond. About a quarter-mile or so before the top of the road, where the pops over a last little rise before leveling out and pitching down toward toward the Claremont/Fish Ranch saddle, there's a nice turnout with a stone wall. I used to stop there every time I went up the road to take in the view. I thought of it as my reward for working to get there. It was also a good place to take a breather. Then at some point I became more focused on getting up across the top as quickly as I could, and I didn't stop there much anymore.

Today I did. For a minute. To see the view. To drink in the warmth of this amazing October day. To take a couple of pictures. It was a good reward.

A Stroll in Berkeley, or The Hostile Inebriate

For the late afternoon dog walk, we took a fistful of bills out to mail and walked downtown. We stopped at the PG&E office, then the post office. Then we decided to get what's going to pass for our dinner tonight at Top Dog, just up Center Street from downtown Berkeley. Lots of Cal fans were walking the other way from the football game; the home team had given the visitors from Washington State an ugly thumping (the score was 49-17, but Cal, coached by a local gridiron millionaire, repeatedly committed stupid personal fouls and during one stretch appeared to stop playind defense).

Anyway. As The Dog and I waited outside Top Dog, a young woman wearing a Cal sweatshirt and seated at the open front window repeatedly sang, "We beat the Cougars! We beat the Cougars!" During her fifth or sixth round, I finally responded. "Yeah -- everyone does." Washington State's known mostly for the big scores its opponents run up; its unofficial mascot is the crime-scene silhouette. She looked at me and said, "Yeah, isn't it wonderful?" She explained that she's from Seattle, which is University of Washington. She loves it when Huskies maul Cougars.

Kate came out of the restaurant and we walked up to the west entrance to campus to eat our hot dogs on the steps up there. It was a nice open-air repast as the sun got lower. Along the drive leading into campus, I heard someone angrily say, "F---!" I looked over, and a wiry guy with long hair and a beard, maybe in his early 40s, was walking toward us. He got to the top of an adjacent set of steps about 30 feet away and asked if we had a cigarette. Neither of us wanted to engage the guy, and we both shook our heads no. "What?" he said, and started to walk toward us. "No," Kate said. He stopped and looked away. I had taken out my camera to take a picture of the sunlight on the steps. "What's that?" he asked, and started to walk toward me again. He wasn't menacing, exactly; more like drunk and challenging. "A camera," I said. When he got to within about five feet of where I was sitting I put up my hand and said, "Back off." He advanced another step. "You taking a picture of your dog?" "Yeah," I said. "See?" I pointed the camera at him and took a shot. Simultaneously, he flipped me the bird, then stalked off cursing. Kate said, "Let's get out of here."

If things had gone any further than that, I would have called the cops. As it is, I have a nice likeness of my new friend as a keepsake.

We walked toward home, careful to take a different route from Mr. Finger's. A large, fluffy cloud floated south over downtown. The setting sun illuminated it, creating a soft top-lit glow. Just another evening in the city.

Berkeley: Friday Night Light

From the Martin Luther King Middle School yard this evening. A lovely, long sunset and red dusk. So far, this has been some kind of ideal October: lots of rain for an early end to the fire season, and plenty of warm clear days. It's just a little cooler and a little darker day to day, though, and we're just a couple of weeks away from having to push the clocks back. Late twilight: love it while you can!

All Class/No Class Crete-Monee Reunion, 2009

The big event of the late weekend was a small gathering, at our house in Berkeley, of folks from Crete-Monee High School, from which I graduated in 1972. This was sort of an informal reprise of an actual "all-class" reunion held a couple weeks ago in Crete, a town about 30 miles straight south of downtown Chicago. About 700 people showed up for a catered event at the racetrack on the edge of town. The Crete-Monee diaspora includes at least a handful who have landed in Northern California. A few of us who have stayed in touch or who have happened upon each other on Facebook began talking about a West Coast version of the Crete event. And so this weekend's All Class/No Class Crete-Monee High School Reunion, 2009 was born.

Who showed up? Anne Kaufman, '74, right off the plane from Chicago. Mike Rodgers -- '74, too, I think, and Wendy Seehausen Rodgers (not sure what class). Jimmy O'Donnell, who blasted down from his creekside paradise near Mount Lassen in Shasta County; he's an honorary graduate of the Class of '74 because his family moved after his sophomore year and he was forced to complete school in the snowless suburban sprawl of Contra Costa County. His sister Laurie O'Donnell, who was in my class ('72) but who I never really talked to much until yesterday. Linda Stewart, who as a German teacher to many of the assembled was in all our classes; she came down from Truckee, the town just across Donner Pass on Interstate 80 in the Sierra. And then there was Kate, my wife, who grew up Crete-less (she's from the northern Jersey shore, sort of) and me.

So eight in all. More would have been fun, and if we could teleport people I can name several friends (Randy, Ron, Mike, Dan--you listening?) I would have beamed in in a second. But yesterday eight was enough, to coin a phrase. Linda remarked that everyone talked to everyone else, the group kept forming into small groups, breaking up, and reassembling itself into twos and threes of engaged conversation. The food was good. The weather was beautiful. There were some funny memories, some warm recollections, some scary and sad stories about classmates and friends. Most of us ended up taking a walk through our neighborhood just after sunset, and that was the way I imagined the day ending.

I've never once gone to one of my class reunions. It's been 10 or 12 years at least since I've been part of a high-school-centered gathering; the last one was at Linda's when she lived in San Francisco. People are talking about it happening again next year. We'll see what comes. Meantime I'll work on my teleportation skills.

'Please Help Me Find Him': The Resolution

A couple of days ago, I wrote about seeing a particularly eye-catching missing persons poster in the Mission. It appeared to involve a promising young science student from San Diego. So: I did call the numbers on the poster. The home phone had an answering machine in Spanish -- the only thing I understood was the family name, Trujillo.

The listed cellphone was answered in Spanish by a man. I asked whether he spoke English. "Yes -- who's this?" He asked. I explained I was calling from San Francisco and had seen the poster. He said, "I already found my son. Everything's OK. He's back home and back in school -- everything's OK." I was tempted to press him for the circumstances that led to him posting the flyer. I did manage to ask whether anyone else had called with information after seeing the poster. But he was clearly a little uncomfortable--speaking English and talking to a stranger--and I let it go. Anyway, that's the outcome. A happy one, I'd say, and I'm all for happy endings.

Bay Area Storm Numbers

The storm came, and now it has gone, mostly. It was advertised as the marriage of a Gulf of Alaska storm and some typhoon remnants. Watching the rain pour down here, and seeing the totals mount on the National Weather Service statistics pages, I believe the typhoon part. It was the heaviest mid-October rain for most locations since 1962, when the World Series--Giants and Yankees, at the still-new Candlestick Park--was washed out by rain.

Some of the more amazing 24-hour totals, midnight Monday to midnight Tuesday: Mount Umunhum in the Santa Cruz Mountains, 13.07 inches. Ben Lomond, Santa Cruz Mountains: 10.58 inches. Mining Ridge, a remote recording station at an elevation of 4760 feet in the Santa Lucia range above Big Sur: 20 inches even. The totals of 5-plus inches at lowland locales in the central Bay Area seem semi-arid by comparison--even though they represent anywhere from 15 to 25 percent of what those locations get in an average rain year.

It's not easy to get apples/apples numbers just casually browsing the Weather Service sites. But the service did publish a record report for 24-hour rainfall (the standard here is from 5 p.m. to 5 p.m., I think).

Location	New Record	Old Record
Kentfield	6.14	4.20, set in 1957
Oakland Museum	3.86	0.37, set in 1988
Richmond	3.38	2.47, set in 1962
San Francisco Airport	2.64	2.62, set in 1962
San Francisco Downtown	2.49*	1.80, set in 1962
Santa Rosa	2.74 (tied)	2.74, set in 1962
King City	1.65	0.30, set in 2007
Monterey Climate Station	2.66*	1.14, set in 1962
Salinas	1.05	0.39, set in 1992
Santa Cruz	3.16*	2.49, set in 1957

*New unofficial record for 24-hour rainfall in October.

For several days before yesterday's storm, the Weather Service office in Monterey was highlighting some of the highest October rainfall totals for stations in its forecast area. Here they are:

Location	One-Day Record	Two-Day Record
Santa Rosa	4.67 (10/12/1962)	7.41 (10/12-13/1962)
Napa	4.66 (10/13/1962)	9.32 (10/12-13/1962)
San Francisco Downtown	2.29 (10/15/1969)	3.72 (10/12-13/1962)
San Francisco Airport	2.62 (10/13/1962)	4.56 (10/12-13/1962)
Oakland Airport	4.53 (10/13/1962)	5.85 (10/12-13/1962)
Livermore	2.17 (10/13/1962)	3.45 (10/13-14/1962)
San Jose	3.22 (10/13/1962)	4.56 (10/12-13/1962)
Santa Cruz	3.15 (10/20/1899)	3.35 (10/20-21/1899)
Monterey	1.80 (10/26/1907)	2.09 (10/26-27/1907)
Salinas	1.50 (10/30/1982)	1.50 (10/30-31/1982)
King City	1.88 (10/29/1996)	2.18 (10/29-30/1996)

Source: National Weather Service, Monterey, California

Storm

That's the National Weather Service radar map for the Bay Area right now. That area of yellow and orange is heavy rain, and its moving pretty much straight east from the Pacific.