The Leaping Ellipsis: Three-Dotting Our Way Through Another Saturday Night
Tip of the Fedora and a picked-up bar tab for our fellow scribbler Herb Caen as we ankled our way from swell joint to swinging nightspot Saturday, dodging the over-served, the occasional stray cougar and revved-up anti-Mandater – taking the air, copious notes, and anything else we could find along our route. Burglars and bartenders…
Sink Hole Surfaces – Or Sub-Surfaces – In Alamo Friday
Neighbors living in the area of Valley Oaks Drive and Stone Valley Road in Alamo have something new to talk about tonight after a failing water main undermined their road and turned the asphalt into an unnavigable undulating slab. The failure was first noticed at 6:38 p.m. with police and town crews quickly putting up…
Anti-Mandate Protestors March In Walnut Creek Friday
People opposed to vaccine mandates took to the streets of Walnut Creek Friday night as other protests are planned to take place across the Bay Area over the weekend. About 100 protestors marched through the city’s downtown, chanting and shouting anti-mandate slogans. People in San Jose were also planning to gather in support of police…
Shaking Off The Beat – And Listening To People We Meet
Back in the bad old days, the boys and girls with ink in their bloodstreams would depart the newsroom for a night walk around town, currying favor with doormen, nightclub owners, cab drivers, cops and semi-respectable ladies of the evening who knew where the “bodies were buried.” Some referred to them as “buzzer nights” –…
Broken Water Main Causes Semi-Sinkhole In Moraga Tuesday
A broken water main burbled to the surface of Constance Place in Moraga Tuesday, sending a steady stream of water into drought-sleepy Moraga Creek and prompting a frantic effort to stanch the flow. Moragans, unwilling to utter the word sinkhole after a previous experience with one that garnered attention when it collapsed to life at…
Suspected DUI Driver Tours The I680 Corridor – Wakes Up A Lot Of Locals In The Process
A circuitous police chase kept several police jurisdictions on the run and the locals awake as a suspected drunk driver fled from a traffic stop north of Benicia, visited Alamo and ended up on bare rims in Pleasant Hill in the wee hours Thursday. Things kicked off around 1 a.m. – as many things have…
It’s What We DON’T Know That’s Bothering Us
We were out and about last night in our quest for truth and insight into our New America, keeping a parking garage meeting called by our own version of Deep Throat (Ref: All The President’s Men, 1976). Remarking about the unsettled nature of the current American landscape our tipster looked away, toed a discarded fast-food…
Sometimes, The Best Rescues Are The Littlest Ones
There was a good rescue in Martinez today, perhaps not the most dramatic with buzzing helicopters or cast life rings, but nevertheless one pulled off by strangers who came together to do some good. It started with Orinda Reader/Runner Amanda Ferguson, one of those people who sulk all day if they haven’t run 30 or…
Ask Not For Whom The Road Tolls, It Tolls For Thee…
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has announced that an express lane along an 11-mile stretch of southbound Interstate 680 from Martinez through Walnut Creek will begin charging tolls next month. Tolling operations will begin at 5 a.m. on Aug. 20 and will connect with the existing 11-mile express lane from Rudgear Road in Walnut Creek to…
Tales From Suburbia: Oddities Du Jour
All in all a bittersweet week in the semi-rural Badlands of the East Bay, with fair weather prevailing, cooks sharing recipes, gardeners comparing tomato harvests, and water mains giving out just as we declare ourselves in drought and in need of every precious drop. It’s all part of the irony of life, we suppose, attempting…