From Cesar Chavez Park on the Berkeley waterfront, an hour or so before last evening’s thunderstorm blew in.
Flash and Report
News of the evening: Our big Bay Area thunderstorm, which actually left a signature on the National Weather Service radar just before 6 p.m.–those orange and reddish areas, which were moving from southwest to northeast. We had lots of rumbling and banging here with a couple of close lightning strikes–within about half a mile judging by the short delay between flash and report. Later on, the area of turbulent weather, which dumped a half-inch or more of rain in less than an hour and led to urban flood advisories, moved off to the south and east. Now, we’ve got big banks of clouds moving in off the ocean, occasional showers, and occasional clear breaks that reveal a full moon (OK–technically, the moon’s at opposition and really full tomorrow at 9:29 a.m. I can’t tell the difference.)
[Update, 1:35 am. Sunday: Wow. Now hail is pounding down, and we got one big flash and a long, loud roll of thunder. The Dog is growling and barking and threatening to tear the ass off the weather.]]
[Update: 11:15 a.m. Sunday: Beautiful morning after the storm. A couple blocks south of here, PG&E is working on a transformer struck by lightning last night–apparently the flash I saw before 6 p.m. The utility had four or five trucks on the scene and maybe half a dozen guys working. A nearby resident was out complaining that the power had been out since the lightning strike and asking for reasssurances that PG&E was going to get the lights back on quickly. “Every time there’s a storm, the power goes out right here,” he said.]
Berkeley: Memorial Stadium
A friend had tickets to last Saturday’s game between the local college’s gridiron squad, the University of California’s Golden Bears, and the top-ranked University of Oregon Ducks. Great game. The local lads almost pulled off an upset before succumbing to the insistent nibbling of the visiting waterfowl (score: 15-13).
There’s construction at the stadium,, which is built directly on a fault at the mouth of a canyon in the Berkeley Hills. The current project doesn’t address the high seismic risk to the stadium. Instead, the university is building a training center for Cal sportsmen and sportswomen (it’s called the Student Athlete High-Performance Center). [Update 11/19: I was wrong about this: the bracing illustrated here is part of the larger stadium renovation project that will get under way in earnest after the season’s final home game, against Washington on November 27. Details here.]
In large part, the new center will be The House that Tedford Built. That’s Jeff Tedford, the coach who ushered in an era of winning football at Cal (eight straight winning seasons, seven straight bowl appearances; both streaks could end this year). The university–the Athletic Department, the administration, and the alumni, not necessarily in that order–were so gaga over Tedford’s prowess that they essentially promised they’d build the training center to get him to stay in Berkeley. Cal is also paying him north of $2 million a year–details of his contract here (PDF)–despite being so strapped for cash it has raised undergraduate tuition about 45 percent over the last three years. That’s big-time college sports.
The stadium construction, though. Well, the temporary measures outside that exterior shell are kind of cool. 
The Gaff
The late singer/songwriter/labor saint Utah Phillips was both a practitioner and connoisseur of life on the bum — a phrase with no pejorative overtones for him or for me. Not that I imagine myself embracing it. Yes, every once in a while I think about what life might be like on the streets and how I’d make out hustling spare change. Necessity can make lots of things happen, but I’m not sure it would make me a good panhandler.
What I lack is the ability to craft what Phillips called a gaff. He used to talk about how disappointed he was in most modern spare-change come-ons, which mostly amount to literally that: “Spare change?” (A popular local variation: the Berkeley guys who say as you enter a store, “Maybe on your way out. Whatever you can spare … (pregnant pause) … without hurting yourself.”)
Phillips gave an example of a gaff that went something like this: “Mister, I’ve got a chicken in this sack and I’m going to go back to my camp and cook it and all I need now is a little salt and pepper to do it right. Can you help me out with that?” We’re not talking high art. We’re talking about storytelling that’s plausible and serves the suppliant’s need to ease his potential benefactor toward generosity, past qualms about giving something for nothing.
On Sunday, a day so warm and clear and so out of character for November it shone like a gift, I went over to a hardware and gardening store to buy some dirt. When I got out of our minivan (current mileage 198,000), I stopped to tie my shoes. A guy approached me from behind and asked, “Do you have a lug wrench?” Without turning to see who was asking, I said, “No.” The guy walked away muttering. I thought to myself, “Yeah, OK, I have a lug wrench.” So I opened the back of the van and pulled it out and followed the Lug Wrench Man across the parking lot. “Here you go,” I said. I was even ready to help him use it.
He turned and walked toward me. A black guy. Maybe in his 40s. Wiry. Intense. Working on a cigarette that he’d smoked nearly down to the filter. He was holding a Bank of America ATM card.
“That won’t work,” he said. And then he explained how his car had gotten a flat but that the special wheels on his ride had a special locking nut that he didn’t have the tool for.
“Where’s your car?” I asked, thinking I’d go and take a look.
Oh — it was nearby. He’d been trying for hours to get someone to help him. “Look at my hands,” he said, holding them out. “I’ve been trying to get those damn things off with my bare hands.”
I apologized for not talking to him when he first walked up. “I’ve lived here for a long time, and I think I spent my first ten years saying ‘yes,’ and I’ve been saying ‘no’ ever since.”
“I’m sorry for my attitude,” he said. “I’ve just been out here for hours and nobody will help. ‘The black guy,’ right? The police just told me I have 20 minutes to move my car or they’ll have it towed.”
I asked his name. “Anthony,” he said. We shook hands. He volunteered he worked for the Berkeley school district. As a janitor. Which schools? He rattled off the names of a few and added, “All of them.” He was still smoking the cigarette. Now it was down to the filter.
I pointed out we were standing outside a hardware store — maybe they had the tool he needed. “They won’t let me borrow a wrench — they don’t loan tools.”
Where was he headed? How close were we to someone who could help? “South San Francisco,” he said. Clear across the bay.
I returned to the possible fixes that might be waiting inside the hardware store. He repeated that they didn’t loan tools. But of course, I was thinking about what he, or perhaps I, might buy that could get him out of his jam. I’m thick, but not thick enough that I hadn’t seen where this was headed. “Anthony” was working a gaff and working it hard.
And at this key moment, he said, “Maybe I can get a couple of cans of Fix-a-Flat, that’ll get me seventy-five miles. If I can get that up there at Walgreen’s, it’s seven ninety-nine a can. …” He held up the ATM card. “But I don’t have any cash. But give me your address and I can get it back to you.”
Let’s stop and do an inventory here. Motorist in trouble. His car’s someplace else, suffering from a problem that’s simple enough but somehow unfixable. Of the seven million people abroad in the Bay Area on this lovely afternoon, he’s lit on you as his salvation — in fact, as the only person decent enough to even consider reaching out to help. Everything that’s implausible about his situation has been plausibly framed (though still easy to puncture with a little insistence: “Let’s see the car. I want to see that flat tire.”) Your keen instinct, the one that prompted you to say “no” without so much as a glance over your shoulder — well, you’ve left that behind. What do you do now?
I take out my wallet. As it turns out, I have eight bucks in cash. Enough for one can of Fix-a-Flat, or for a decent six-pack, which would be a nice addition to the afternoon as it winds down.
“OK–here’s what I’ve got,” I say. I hand him the bills. He says, “Can I get it back to you?” I think: Do I want this guy having my home address?
“No, no,” I say. “That’s OK. This is just a … a gesture. I just want to give it to you. So you can do what you have to do. Good luck with that tire.”
I went in to buy my dirt. Anthony walked away, and I think I heard him muttering.
Berkeley: The Weather Record
Mid-November, and the temperature stayed above 70 tonight–“tonight” meaning Sunday night though it’s past midnight now–until well past dark. The forecasts say there are high winds from the north and east just above the tops of our mountains and ridges, and that’s one thing keeping things warm. Walking through the neighborhood this evening, you keep encountering distinct pockets of summery warm air.
Checking the local weather records maintained by the Western Regional Climate Center, I see Berkeley’s record high for November 14 listed as 74, set in 2008. In fact, that 2008 record was the first day in a three-day string of records. On the 15th and 16th two years ago, Berkeley’s highs were 81 and 82 degrees. That 74 record for November 14 was, until today, the lowest high temperature record for the month up to November 21 (the record for that date: 74, set in 1919).
The November 14 record was rewritten today. To what, I’m not precisely sure, because I’m not precisely sure which Berkeley weather station is “official.” I’ve got two candidates.
One is on a rooftop at 2111 Bancroft Way in downtown Berkeley, just west of the southwest corner of the UC-Berkeley campus. Here’s the weather station site, complete with current observations (this is the downtown station that appears on Weather Underground; you can see the enclosure for the station in this Google satellite view). The high at this site today, for what it’s worth: 79.5 degrees.
OK, that’s one. I was led on a wild goose chase for the second potential official Berkeley weather station by a loose reading of a UC-Berkeley website that describes “The Berkeley Weather Station, 1886-present.” The page mentions that this station is an old and established member of the “Cooperative Weather Observer Program (CWOP)”–an effort that Thomas Jefferson dreamed up back in the 18th century. Looking for a listing for Berkeley’s “CWOP” data, I Googled that acronym. Sure enough, there is a Berkeley station listed: CW1634. A couple oddities, though: The latitude and longitude coordinates for that station put it in a residential neighborhood near the Claremont Hotel, a mile or more from campus. A little more poking around, and I established that CWOP also stands for “Citizen Weather Observer Program” and that CW1634 is at a private home with a contact email belonging to the founder of a well-known local software company. The high at this station today: 81.
So, back to “The Berkeley Weather Station.” I tried to track this down before and didn’t quite get there. Thanks to devoting about two and a half hours to just sitting and sorting through different possibilities, I found a page that gives a precise location for the station, which is at 310 feet above sea level, just outside McCone Hall, near Euclid Avenue and Hearst Street. I tried contacting the guy listed as running the observation program in hopes that I could get access to daily data from the station, but I must have said I’m a blogger, and he ignored me. In any case, this is the station that has provided the data that appears in the Western Regional Climate Center tables that include the high temperature records set in 2008.
Not sure what the high was up there today. A project for another time.
Annals of Berkeley Solid-Waste Management
Our block today enters the Fancy-Ass Recycling Cart Era. Last week, the recycling pickup crews came around and picked up the chaff the recycling poachers had left behind, and they also distributed these nice baby blue “split carts” that are apparently 1) supposed to make it harder for the recycling poachers to grab the more lucrative materials and run off with them and 2) designed to make recycling here a more efficient and tasteful enterprise.
As to the first point, it’s obvious that all a determined poacher needs to do is flip up the lid of the container and start digging around in the “cans and bottles” side of the cart to find what they’re looking for. Those who are not content to rummage around like that can also resort to just tipping the cart over and dumping out the contents. That would be aggressive, but these folks are in it for the money, not recreation. In my late walk with The Dog last night, I didn’t see any turned-over carts; but I did come across one person bent over one of the carts, pawing through the contents.
Unknown: How the recycling upgrade will pencil out for the city financially (I’ve found one reference that suggest the price tag for the carts is $2.7 million–31,000 carts at $90 each), which I believe also includes special trucks that can divide the paper/cardboard and metal/glass/plastic components of the recycling stream. It’s also unclear to me whether the city or its recycling contractor will spend more on workers to sort what’s the material the trucks pick up. I’m sure the argument has been made that any extra costs will be at least partially defrayed by additional revenue the city realizes through its increased share of recyling proceeds (the poachers divert a lot of the potential cash now).
Live On-the-Scene Update (10:45 a.m.): Although I resorted to a tried and occasionally effective strategy of not putting the recycling out until after 7 a.m.–that increases the chances the city contractor, the Ecology Center, will pick up the stuff instead of the poachers–a pirate arrived and cleaned just about all of the bottles and cans in the cart. Looked like the same had happened up and down our block. So the next question will be: how much do the new carts actually affect the amount of recycling picked up by the contractor.
Two Mugs, One Shot
We were watching KTVU’s “10 O’clock News” tonight–the Bay Area’s erstwhile decent local news broadcast (all right, KTVU: go ahead and look up “erstwhile”; the rest of us will wait here)–when a story came on about Berkeley police announcing they’d solved several recent street robberies. In one case, involving a group who was holding up pedestrians with a shotgun, the cops said they’d picked up four locals. KTVU showed pictures of four young guys. Next, the anchor said the police had announced an arrest in another stickup, and then they put the above two pictures–or one picture–up on the screen. You just hope that this is a picture of a real suspect–for extra points, one of the two in this case–because based on the stupidity of using the same picture twice, you don’t really have any reason to trust they got any of the pictures or names right.
Berkeley Butterfly Ranch
One of Kate’s sideline projects the past couple of years–part of her elementary school science teaching–has been to raise anise swallowtail caterpillars to the point where they go into the chrysalis, then harbor the chrysalides until the butterflies emerge. It’s not easy. We had a couple of chrysalides on the back porch that some predator–a bird, probably–came and picked off. After that, Kate improvised some netting to protect the five remaining caterpillars, which in due course changed to chrysalis form.
The last of them changed probably a month ago, and what we’ve had, first on the sometimes very warm back porch and then in a shadier spot in a side yard, is a green plastic box with some sticks in it that have had some dead-looking mummy-type things hanging from them. Honestly–when you look at these objects, it’s a little hard to believe anything living can emerge from them. But we’ve been checking every morning anyway.
Yesterday, a surprise: a newly metamorphosed anise swallowtail butterfly, perched on one of the net-supporting hoops in the green box. We were headed out for the afternoon, but we lifted the netting to give it a chance to fly away when it was ready. When we got home, well after dark, it was gone. I’d like to think it got a chance to feed and perhaps eluded for a few hours anyway whatever out there in the world will look at it and see food. I’d like to think that it might find a like-minded anise swallowtail of the opposite sex and get a shot at perpetuating their kind.
Long damn odds, but beautiful to behold.
Snail at Work
One of the surprises of the late summer and fall: A bunch of chrysanthemums I planted last fall have gone nuts (or run riot, perhaps). They were scrawny little things in pots last year with a few promising blossoms, They are big and lush and colorful now. All I’ve done is water them.
I started to realize in the past week they’re also attractive to snails. I could see the shiny aftermath of the snails’ slime trails on the flowers themselves. This morning was muggy and drizzly, and the snails are out there crawling all over the blossoms. Strangely, they don’t seem to be consuming them. Maybe they’re just fanciers of mums.
Bay Area August: Departures from Normal
Saturday and Sunday were actually sunny here, for the most part. Off to the west Sunday night, Venus was visible well after dark–the first time I’ve seen that in weeks. Not that this signals a break in our marathon summer fogfest. The forecast for the next week calls for more of what we’ve been having for weeks along the coast: cool, mostly gray days that might give way to an hour or two of honest sunshine. Highs in the low to mid 60s. (This is not a complaint. Our air-conditioning bills here: zero.)
The map below is something that my friend Pete pointed me to a couple weeks ago. It’s from the Western Regional Climate Center and is a quick take on how much our daily high temperatures have departed from normal. There’s a tiny wedge just north of San Francisco–Point Reyes–where daily maximums have been more than 10 degrees lower than average. Here in Berkeley, highs have been 6 to 8 degrees below normal, and that’s pretty much the story for most of the rest of region. 