Monthly Archive for July, 2006

“Visalia. At least we’re not Delano.”

Published
by
Bryan
on Monday, 31 July 2006
in Personal
. 1 Comment

Jennifer’s high school reunion was held last weekend, so after driving three and a half hours to see my new niece, we drove another five hours, through a Sig Alert on “The Grapevine” portion of the 5 freeway, to get to Visalia. After finally getting through Bakersfield, I then discovered the smell of the Central Valley. There is nothing quite like the odor of cow manure, pesticide, and other unknown chemicals that have baked in 100 degree weather for twelve hours. After one horrific aroma left me, there was another, brand new “What the hell is that smell!?!” just waiting down the freeway. The only advantage I saw to living in these cities was the ability to pass gas without anyone noticing the difference.

snakes.jpg

But I’m being harsh. Visalia wasn’t as bad as I had envisioned - a picture largely drawn by Jennifer’s descriptions over the last couple of years. I think she wanted to prepare me for the worst so I’d be pleasantly surprised when I got there. Visalia did have a certain mid-western charm, and I didn’t find the place nearly as unsettling as I had expected. Honestly, any hostility I have towards the Visalia is largely fueled by the fact that that Jennifer’s high school reunion was infinitely better than mine.

bandj.jpgJennifer’s reunion was $40 per person. My reunion was $90 per person. Jennifer’s first memorable interaction at her reunion was a warm hug from a former classmate. My first memorable interaction at my reunion was our very drunk senior class president looking at my name tag and saying,”I don’t remember you - there’s no way you could have graduated from my school.” Jennifer’s last memory of her reunion was a group photo with her high school friends. My last memory of my reunion was a former-football player arguing with his girlfriend from high school in the parking lot.

Actually, my reunion might be the more memorable one, but for all the wrong reasons. Jennifer’s reunion did have the local sheriff rolling up to say “Hello” to his high school buddies. I got a pretty big kick out of that.

In any case, the reunion was a good time, and it was nice to see someone walk away with the same realization I had at my reunion: high school was not the best time of our lives. Yes, we knew that already, but sometimes it’s good to have that reminder - even if it is only once every ten years.

Welcome Julia Marie!

Published
by
Bryan
on Sunday, 30 July 2006
in Personal
. 1 Comment

Yes, it’s Bennett and Deirdre’s brand new baby girl, and my niece by association. She was born last Wednesday, and is quite possibly the cutest baby ever.

Bennett, Deirdre, and Julia

It’s going to take a lot for me to become her favorite psuedo-uncle. She’s already melting the hearts of everyone she meets, and she’s a mere three days old. I have my work cut out for me - luckily, I don’t think the other psuedo-uncles can hold their own against me. I will rule them when it comes to spoiling her.

I can’t resist - one more photo:


babyjulia.jpg

The keyboard is melting as I type this.

State Street Livin’

Published
by
Bryan
on Tuesday, 25 July 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

So after two days of deliberations, Jennifer and I decided that the State Street apartment, in the area commonly known as San Roque, was the best choice for us. After sleeping on it for one more night, that decision became final. The lease is signed and faxed. As of August 1st, we will officially be State Street livin’. We also, technically, will still be living in Isla Vista until the end of August, but that is not nearly as sexy as saying, “We live on State Street.” - a sentence made only sexier when uttered with a Belvedere martini in one hand (or both hands, if other people are to appear sexier to you).

There’s a Trader Joe’s around the corner. There’s a coffee shop less than a block away. There is an awesome bookstore and several townie bars within striking distance. We will become the personification of Santa Barbara snootiness, yet much less snooty than the snootiest of the Santa Barbara snooty (Hope Ranch, I’m looking at you). There’s even a lawn bowling field within walking distance - a sport that I threatened Jennifer with taking up should we move into that area.

So what is wrong with the Goleta cottage? Nothing really. It just wasn’t the location we wanted. Campus would still be our major outlet, which is exactly what we wanted to get away from when we decided to move out of Isla Vista. We really needed a more drastic change of scene, and Goleta was not the direction we wanted to move. Honestly, I still wanted an urban setting without the disfunction I’ve grown accustomed to in Isla Vista. The Goleta cottage didn’t have that, and the State Street apartment did. So there it is.

In any case, I am happy that we’ve ended this apartment search on a positive note, with a place I could see both Jennifer and I being happy with for a long time - State Street style. We just need some olives.

SantaBarbopoly: The Game of Arggrrgrgghhhh!

Published
by
Bryan
on Monday, 24 July 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

After two weeks of apartment hunting (a short amount of time in the Santa Barbara market), it looks like Jennifer and I finally found a place. Well, two places to be exact. We have one hell of a decision to make. Both places are almost exactly the same price - one is located in a very rural part of Goleta with plenty of amenities (i.e. dishwasher, washer and dryer, etc), yet has a five minute walk to the beach and is a 20 minute bike ride to work. The other place is on State Street within walking distance of three markets, several stores, three bars and a coffee shop. Both are about the same size. We’ve really gone back and forth - with us favoring one place, then the other, and then back in one conversation alone. After Jennifer and I debated the decision for a few hours, I called my father for advice, which is often brilliant in its simplicity, and he suggested we flip a coin and be done with it.

The good news is that no matter what we decide, we’re pretty happy to be moving. Either place will be infinitely better than where we are now, and that’s a good thing. We’re not having to settle for a dump - and in our search, we’ve seen some real doosies. All together, we looked at close to 20 different places, and of those found no more than four acceptable in terms of up keep - the rest needed some serious help.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our one experience with a certain management company (who shall remain nameless) with which we dealt. We saw several of their listings online, so we dropped by their office to pick up some keys. $20 deposit per key and if we weren’t back by 3pm we’d lose our deposit. That seemed odd, but we had three hours for four places ($80 deposit), so we had plenty of time. Once we visited the listings in person, we wanted both our deposit and our 45 minutes back.

One apartment had all of the baseboards removed, had an 8-inch hole in the bathroom door, and the edges of the brown carpet (I use the term “brown” loosely) were black. There was some funky odor as well - and not funky in a cool Sly & the Family Stone way. And they were showing it in this condition. Uh, no thank you. To quote Jennifer, “They need to give me $20 because I had to see this place.” It was a crank dealer’s dream - the kind of place in which you’d expect to see Detectives Stabler and Benson conducting an investigation. The other apartments weren’t much better. I think we returned those keys in 45 minutes, with about two hours to spare before the 3pm deadline. Only the last of the apartments we saw was decent enough to consider - but by that time, we had pretty much decided that these people didn’t deserve our business. I really regret not bringing our digital camera along for that little excursion.

My personal favorite, however, was the website of a different management company. They posted this photo, with “click to enlarge” written below, in one of their listings at their website:


KITCHEN1_2.JPG

Okay, fine. Not the greatest glimpse of what is going on, so I’ll “click to enlarge”, as they so kindly offered:


KITCHEN1_2.JPG

Wonderful. If that photo doesn’t display a remarkable level of ineptitude (or maybe it’s contempt), I don’t know what else could. It really instills confidence in folks to whom you are paying $1100 every month, which is the listed rent for that apartment. I take some comfort in knowing that they’ve had that listing up for weeks, if not months, so I’m not the only one who isn’t falling for that garbage. On another level, I’m fairly certain it is these kinds of people who drive 45 MPH on the freeway, or try to use the grocery store’s express lane with 30 items in their basket.

In any case, it looks like we’ll finally be moving into a more permanent and nicer setting in the next few weeks, and bringing an end to this rather tedious process - and none too soon.

It’s not ownership, it’s accountability…

Published
by
Bryan
on Sunday, 9 July 2006
in Notes
. 0 Comments

Everyone I know is talking about the continuing drama unfolding at the Santa Barbara News-Press, with folks generally believing the worst has yet to come. Jennifer and I, for example, decided to do a preliminary search for apartments yesterday and it took us about 30 minutes just to locate yesterday’s edition for the classifieds. At least six people I know cancelled their subscriptions after the The Independent published their story on the resignations.

Incidentally, the main story on the front page yesterday was about some local residents appearing on Trading Spaces. Not quite All The President’s Men, but that’s understandable given the circumstances.

The L.A. Times isn’t hiding their glee, running yet another story on the exodus. I think it is safe to say that they are salivating at the opportunity to expand their readership in the Santa Barbara area - much like KPFK and KCRW have attempted to penetrate the Santa Barbara radio market. Additionally, they are using this incident as evidence of the potential pitfalls of local ownership and as a distraction from their own internal strife. Sorry, but the L.A. Times is not the answer to the problem of the Santa Barbara News-Press.

Unfortunately, the idea that “locally-owned media” is preferable to that of the large corporate media machines was dealt a bit of a blow in this whole affair. Of course, it doesn’t just take a corporation to screw things up. If your local paper isn’t accountable to anyone - especially the local citizenry - then it is not serving the people it should be serving. The paper should not just serve the whims of its owner - corporate interests or the nutty opinions of an individual owner. It should serve the entire community, and the community should demand nothing less.

Even in the non-commercial world, which on bad days still retains infinitely more credibility than any of the commercial media, there are occasional problems with accountability. Ask those who participated in the Pacifica Strike a few years ago - and the listeners and affiliates (like KCSB, for example) that supported those reporters who were involved. The reporters at the Santa Barbara News-Press would be very wise to look how that situation resolved itself. It took a great deal of support from listeners and affiliates to finally bring an end to the struggle within the network - and it required a complete revamping of the network in order to fix the problem.

Those remaining reporters at the News-Press need the support of the Santa Barbara community at large to resolve this huge media crisis. The credibility of the News-Press isn’t the only thing at stake. Given the prominence of the News-Press as our only daily, the credibility of Santa Barbara as a whole will also be judged by those watching this unfold. Much like politicians, we get the media we deserve… and I hope we all believe we deserve better.