On our drive home from Southern California we stopped at one of our traditional travel oases. As little kids we would frequently visit the Andersen’s Pea Soup restaurant in Buellton on Highway 101 between LA and Santa Barbara. Needing a little nourishment today as we were rolling north on Interstate 5, we pulled off for a bowl of soup when we saw the big windmill at Santa Nella a little after noon. The Santa Nella Andersen’s was a frequent stopping spot for us when our boys were little. When you clean your bowl, you reveal the Andersen’s iconic pea-splitting mascots, Hap-pea and Pea-wee. It took me very little time to find my old friends.

We enjoyed our weekend down south, and while I thought it would be fun to think of something snarky to say about the cultural differences between Northern and Southern California, I find myself unable to come up with anything substantive. These are different cultures, to be sure, but to value one over the other is to miss what is special and unique about each.

Southern California traffic is horrible. There’s pretty bad smog. But the people down south are just as friendly as people here in Oakland. We were in San Diego last night to hear some music, and the band played a few Tower of Power songs to welcome us Oaklanders to their town. Even San Clemente (which I have a hard time separating in my mind from images of Richard Nixon) rolled out a welcome mat for us.

Much of the landscape that sprawls along the freeways of the LA basin is grotesque, but get a few blocks off those atherosclerotic arteries and you can find nice neighborhoods of modest homes and tidy yards. Our travels took us through Silverlake, Echo Park, Hancock Park, West Hollywood, and several other neighborhoods. These places seemed vibrant and healthy. There is an optimism bubbling under the surface of what we saw in LA. Sure, there were vacant storefronts and other signs of an economic slump, but there were also the happy bubbly conversations of young, enthusiastic movie star wannabes.

It’s easy to be cynical about what appears to be a shallow layer of culture in the City of Angels. But the town cannot be that easily dismissed. Sunset Boulevard, Melrose Avenue and Beverly Boulevard may not be dressed in their boom time effervescence, but the people out walking along those streets were smiling and laughing. I don’t know if optimism is the source of their resilience or if resilience breeds optimism, but the people we encountered while walking these streets down south seemed up-beat.

We’re very happy to be where we belong, living in to our cozy space near Lake Merritt. But we enjoyed our visit to the Southland, and I suspect we’ll go back again soon.

We kicked off our last full day in Southern California with an early morning stroll on the beach in San Clemente. Our afternoon/evening plans called for a trip south to San Marcos and San Diego, so we wanted to be sure to get a few quiet moments on the beach before we started our trek. After a quick rinse to get the sand off our legs we jumped in the car and drove down I-5. We parked in Oceanside and strolled out on the pier, encountering this pelican sitting on the railing. This was just one of the 5 pelicans we saw resting on the pier.

Pelicans are incredibly interesting to watch. Not so much while they’re sitting on the pier, but when they are flying low and slow over the breaking waves. It appears that they are using the updraft created by the rolling wave as a power source for their flight, often gliding so low that it appears their wing tips just barely touch the water.

After a short walk around Oceanside’s downtown (taking in a wide array of shops devoted to serving the military personnel who live just up the road at Camp Pendleton), we drove inland to San Marcos to meet up with Anna’s cousin Chuck. We shared a tasty meal with Chuck and his wife Tipper and their daughter Pearl before hopping in the car again to drive to San Diego to hear Chuck and his pals play at Humphrey’s. The band is named Soul Persuaders and they cover a bunch of gems by Earth Wind and Fire, Chicago, and one of our all time favorite bands of the genre, Tower of Power. When Anna and I arrived the lead singer announced that there were guests from Oakland in the house and that they were going treat us to a couple of tunes, kicking off with one of TOP’s biggest hits: You’re Still a Young Man from the album Bump City.

It was a great evening, and a perfect way to cap our mini honeymoon. Thursday morning we’ll be up early—hopefully early enough to beat the LA rush hour traffic—and on the road, back to Oakland.

We’re still enjoying the warm weather and the salty sea air of San Clemente. Spent a good chunk of the day yesterday walking the length of the shoreline south of the San Clemente Pier. We saw a few whales surface just beyond the breaking waves, lots of impressive surfing, and fortunately I saw this gigantic fish hook before I stepped on it. It was wrapped in a bit of plastic, so it was slightly concealed. The sun glinted off it just as I was about to put my foot down on top of it. It looks like it might have hurt a bit to get it stuck in my foot.

I walked down the beach as far as Richard Nixon’s Western White house (Called La Casa Pacifica). From the driftwood log where I sat I could see the round enclosed gazebo on the northwest corner of the property and the tower of the main house above. I didn’t have a camera, so I can’t provide a photograph, but there’s more information at Wikipedia and on Google Maps.

This morning we drove up to LA to check out our old neighborhood. Hopped off of 101 at the Silverlake exit and moseyed up the Micheltorena hill to 921. The front yard was totally different than when we lived there. The oval rose garden was gone, replaced by a fenced yard with much taller landscaping. The front of the house was completely concealed. Anna said she didn’t recognize it at all.

We drove on down to Sunset and parked and walked the section of Sunset between Micheltorena and Fountain. A few landmarks were still visible. One of my favorite spots from the 1980s when we lived here was Millies restaurant. It was, at that time, just a counter with about 6 seats. I think they may have had one small two-top table. Now they have a tiny dining room next door and there were about 5 or 6 small tables on the sidewalk. The place was a little bigger but retains much of it’s original charm.

We couldn’t find the laundromat where Anna used to take our laundry (and where Justin befriended the girls in the neighborhood), but we did find the building that used to house L.A. Nicola, the restaurant where I worked most of the time we lived in LA. The façade of the building had changed (gone was the corrugated steel shed that housed the host station) but the bones of the building were otherwise recognizable.

We puttered on down to Melrose Ave., thinking we might enjoy a little stroll. That neighborhood had changed too. It wasn’t nearly as hip as I recall — there were still a handful of vintage clothing spots but the bulk of the shops seemed pitched more to the tourist crowd than the local hipsters that used to hang out there in the 80s. After a quick stop at the Beverly Center we drove south on Beverly to an old favorite restaurant, El Coyote. It was mostly as we remembered. A little kitschy, not the greatest food, but kind of fun. The clientele was kind mostly the same as we remembered, only (big surprise) about 30 years older than in the early 80s.

One thing we noticed on this afternoon foray into LA was the traffic. Anna recalled how long it used to take her to drive to Beverly Hills from Silverlake to work each day. We agreed we could never live here in LA again, but it was fun to visit. People watching here is a real pleasure.

As beneficiaries of my parent’s generosity and hospitality, Anna and I are spending a couple of nights on the lovely South Coast of California. We drove to San Clemente today arriving in time for a nice dinner and a walk on the San Clemente pier at sunset. We’re staying in a cozy little studio about a mile from the beach. Significant doses of sand, sun, and salty sea air are on the agenda.

We drove through thick, soupy fog as we left Oakland at about 8:30 on St. Valentine’s morning. The Temperature topped out at about 80 degrees as we were driving down Interstate 5. Not bad for mid February. There was snow on the tops of the hills above the Grapevine, but the sky was clear, and as we dropped down into the LA basin we both noted the absence of significant smog.

We’re looking forward to spending some time with Anna’s cousin Chuck and his wife Tipper and their daughter Pearl on Wednesday. We’ll have dinner with them and then trot to a San Diego club to hear Chuck’s band.

Nothing finer than a short vacation with my baby.

The warm weather is popping another poppy on the front terrace. The yellow pansy in the foreground is keeping an eye on her neighbor. The poppy pod reminds me of what a kernel of corn looks like when it pops. Check back later to see the fully opened flower.

Rocky has been digging through the planter boxes looking for nuts and seeds, so I hope all the flowers we’ve planted survive. I’m trying to figure out a way to train him out of this particular behavior.

UPDATE | 4:00 PM — no significant progress on the poppy this afternoon. I expected that it would be open by now. Clearly I am not a very good judge of the poppy lifecycle.

Anna and I spent a quiet evening at home last night. We watched the Opening Ceremony of the Vancouver Olympics. Very interesting. After it was over I stayed up to do some reading. At about 2:00 AM I heard a loud wail. It sounded like someone was over the legal blood alcohol limit. I stepped onto the terrace to investigate and saw a spotlight shining on the side of my parent’s building. Kathleen and Dave live on the southeast corner of 7th floor. The spotlight was focused on the northwest side of the 10th floor. There was a man in the window shouting at the police below. “You know me, OPD!”

We live in an urban valley. Tall buildings on either side of the street channel the sound up Perkins, so this shouter, amplified by the landscape, sounded closer than he was. He was loud enough to have caught the attention of two neighbors across Perkins who were standing on their front porch, drinking a beer. At one point there were at least 3 police cars sitting on the street, shining lights at the shouter on the 10th floor.

Our neighborhood is generally quiet at 2:00 AM. From our terrace, after shouting man tired of taunting Oakland’s peace officers, I could hear the steady rhythm of the tick-tocking cross walk indicator. Occasionally a car would whip around the corner—the sound of its wheels on the pavement could be mistaken for a wave breaking on the shore. The only thing missing that would have made a symphony of this wee hour soundscape was someone playing a saxophone. (A twitterer noted a sax player contributing to her appreciation of sunset the other day.)

I finished what I was reading then slipped into bed with my honey.

I had coffee this morning with Deb of Oaktown Art. We met at Coffee with a Beat, and shared a few minutes chatting about what we’re up to with our respective blogs and how fun it was to run into each other in cyberspace.

If you haven’t already, you must take 15 minutes and spend it visiting her fantastic collection of photos and stories about Oakland. Even if you are only marginally interested in Oakland, I think you’ll find a lot of what she writes about interesting.

Anna called me this morning to say that the little apartment we lived in on 17th Street between Madison Street and Lakeside Drive was engulfed in flames and the place was buzzing with firetrucks. I hopped on my bike and dashed over to see what had happened. When I got there Anna met me and said that it wasn’t our old apartment after all, but the taller apartment building next door.

Back in the late 1970s we lived in two different apartments in the gold building on 17th Street. Our first was a tiny studio in the back. It had a Murphy Bed, and the tiniest little kitchen you can imagine. There was a closet that was pretty generous, but the place was overly cozy for two. The rent was right, though, at $240 per month. Later, when we were not quite as broke we upgraded to the one bedroom apartment in the front. That upped our rent to $350. We were living large. The front apartment had a fireplace. The only real downside was that the previous tenant was a smoker and it took a lot of scrubbing and a couple of coats of paint to get rid of the smoke stains on the walls. It was a temporary victory — a couple of months later we noticed streaks of brown in the coved ceiling were the smoke stains began to seep through.

One night as we were sleeping in our bedroom in the northeast corner of the building we heard a woman crying out in pain, begging for help. At first we thought it might have been some sort of domestic abuse — the neighborhood was pretty tough at that time — so Anna called the police. They arrived 10 or 15 minutes later and we could hear them breaking through the door in the neighboring apartment. She was alone, having a baby. Fortunately the police arrived in time to summon help and we saw them wheeling her out of the building on a gurney a little later with a baby in her arms.

The apartment that burned this morning is the apartment where that woman gave birth. In one of the photos below you can see her burned out windows and one of the windows of our bedroom.

The Oakland Fire Department was out in force — there were two hook and ladder trucks and at least three other big trucks when I arrived (after the fire was out).

Anna and I were treated to a delicious dinner a few nights ago in San Francisco by Jennie and Susan. It was Susan’s birthday, and we met at Nopa. We arrived early so that we could sit at the big community table in the front of the restaurant. Dinner service starts at 6:00 but you can sit down for drinks and snacks at 5:00 and if you are happy with the seats you get, you can just camp there for dinner. We were the first patrons in the door and grabbed the prime real estate at the north end of the table. We ordered an array of cocktails and a trio of snacks and settled in for a party.

The drink concoctions are slightly tweaked versions of the classics. Among us we had a white Manhattan, a Rum Sidecar (sweet and strong), a Pisco Sour (the egg white froth was interesting), and a Margarita. Paired with a plate of broccoli salad, spicy roasted chickpeas, and a duck skewer with blood orange sauce, the drinks went down nicely. As the hour hand moved towards 6 the place really began to fill up. The community table seats about 20-24 and the long bar (maybe seating for 30) were completely hopping by the time the restaurant opened for dinner.

The women ordered an array of small plates to share. Jenny and I ordered burgers (Jenny shared with Susan). Everything was tasty. And the burger did not leave me wanting. It was a smallish patty, but plump and juicy. It was served on a fresh bun that seemed like it might have been house baked. The meat was a grass fed beef, and very flavorful. A slice of pickled onion, a couple of small Romain heart leaves and a light spread of garlic aioli kicked in just the right amount of extra flavor. Like the delicious bun at TrueBurger in Oakland, this bun played its role perfectly. Durable enough to trap any juice that flowed from the meat, but soft enough to give way without aggressive biting.

The desserts were yummy — we shared an almond olive oil cake with Meyer lemon cream that was awesome. The other a chocolatey minty thing was tasty, too, but I was too distracted by the Meyer lemon cream to give it more than a cursory taste.

Our server seemed to enjoy her work. Not a hint of that hipster foodie coolness that can easily be mistaken for arrogance. She was like a nice crisp Fumé Blanc — bright, austere, and sophisticated. Cheerful, not cloying.

Nopa is a hopping spot — for those who want a meal late at night they serve dinner until 1:00 am. Parking in the neighborhood isn’t easy, but Divisidero has an interesting, eclectic collection of shops, restaurants, cafés, etc., so if you have to walk a few blocks, there’s plenty to entertain you on the street. If you haven’t visited already, I highly recommend a trip to Nopa. And follow dear Susan’s advice: Get there early for a seat at the community table. (The community table is first-com/first-served.) Eating in the dining room might also be fun, but eating at the community table was awesome. The trio sitting next to us for the first couple of hours were incredibly entertaining.

I took a brief break from writing here as I was in final approach for my interview with Teach For America. I had to plan a mini lesson to teach and there was a bunch of reading to complete. I also needed to put my head into the right frame of mind for the day-long interview process. It turned out to be a total blast. In the morning session the 10 interviewees each teach a little lesson. (I taught a fourth grade math class: Patterns and shortcuts for the multiplication table.) There were a few other activities (which we are not supposed to disclose—to keep the application process fair for all the applicants). In the afternoon I had my personal interview with Jessica. I hope she liked me as much as I liked her — I’d really love to have an opportunity to join the Bay Area teaching corps. And I would be so happy to be able to teach in Oakland. I will hear from TFA around the 8th of March.

On a totally unrelated note I got up this morning and read about a 3.8 magnitude earthquake centered 50 miles west of Chicago. (Not a typo.) That would put the epicenter somewhere near Elgin, IL. We had felt a couple of little quakes when we lived in Moline, but this morning’s quake is definitely a little bigger than the mini temblors that struck during our Midwestern adventure. I haven’t spoken with my brother yet this morning, so I don’t know if they even felt it, but the local papers are reporting the story on their website. No word from Pat Robertson yet about the effect of Midwestern religious sensibilities as the root cause of the quake.

Leaving Moline meant saying goodbye to our furry friend Tucker. We miss him every day. When we remodeled our Oakland terrace the other day (we moved the planters from the box on the ground to hanging racks on the outside of the railing, making room for a little table) we uncovered a hiding place for a little squirrel who likes to visit. We used to have a love/hate relationship with the squirrels in Moline. They were always jumping up on our bird feeders and slurping down all the good seeds. But since we’ve moved into an apartment and don’t have other furry companionship, the squirrel who visits is becoming a surrogate pal. I’ve decided to call him (her?) Rocky (after Rocket J. Squirrel of the Rocky and Bulwinkle Show).

We’re two stories above street level, and it looks like Rocky uses the telephone cables outside the building to get onto the railing around our terrace. It’s a bold little squirrel. Even when I opened the door to discourage him from eating directly out of the bird feeder he refused to skitter away. I was able to sit in the open doorway and snap several photos, and it seems like Rocky was pretty happy to pose.

The birds (half a dozen or so have found and are now frequent diners at our feeder) have been dropping a lot of seed onto the floor of the terrace. This gives Rocky plenty to eat, so hopefully he won’t feel inclined to jump up onto the feeder. I’d worry that he might fall off and drop 30 feet to the ground below. It would be tragic to lose him, just as we’re getting fond of him.

Since our remodeling disturbed Rocky’s old cubby hole, we’ve set up some of Justin’s ceramic art to create a couple of little hiding spots for our new friend. Hopefully he’ll feel welcome.

I have a friend who wrote a book about the bible. Don, a computer scientist and mathematician, wondered what he would find by sampling the third chapter, 16th verse of every book.¹ (The artist in Don also thought it would be interesting to find the best calligraphers in the world and ask them to illustrate these verses.) The book he produced was 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated. It’s a beautiful book that delivers on the promise in the title.

I enjoy remembering Don’s explanation of how he approached this study of the bible, and I’ve felt his sampling strategy would apply to other areas of research and study. For instance, one might compare and judge restaurants by eating the same dish as prepared by each restaurant one visits. What dish do most restaurants have in common? It should be no surprise that you can get a hamburger in many dining establishments.

I have long felt that a restaurant that is attentive to the burger on the menu will likely be attentive to other dishes. If a chef treats the burger with disdain and only offers it as a token concession to public taste, I’d prefer he or she not bother to serve it at all. (And frankly, such a chef should not expect me to visit for a second meal.) The chef, however, that recognizes the simple hamburger as a worthy meal, and a meal to be prepared with loving attention, will earn my respect and the opportunity to feed me again and again.

Bear with me, I’ll get to Trueburger, I promise.

The hamburger, in it’s conceptual simplicity, has infinite expressions. I have probably eaten a couple thousand burgers in my life. Many have been delicious and satisfying. Others have been marginally nutritious and unmemorable. I trace my fondness for burgers to my youth. I remember the burgers my dad cooked for us on the grill at home. The love that goes into a home-cooked meal conceals many culinary flaws, so topping my list of burger styles is the traditional homemade charcoal grilled burger. Served on a store-bought bun with a thin slice of onion, some crisp lettuce, a slice of tomato (garden grown is best, obviously), a dollop of ketchup, and a thin spread of mustard, that burger is a staple of a joyful family meal, often eaten al fresco. The other childhood burger memory that shapes my preference is the old Bob’s Big Boy burger chain. I can still recall the taste of their toasted, sesame studded buns. In fact I can hardly taste a toasted sesame seed without thinking about the Big Boy statue that used to stand in front of the restaurants. I believe those burgers were grilled on a smooth steel grill rather than over charcoal, but they were tasty to my 10 year old palette, and the experience cemented my love for the classic burger.

Over the years I have developed a more nuanced taste, and I enjoy burgers of varying styles. There are several excellent burgers within walking distance of our home, and as time allows I may share my impressions of these burgers. But today I want to talk about a new burger place that opened up a couple of weeks ago. It’s 6 and a half blocks from our domestic headquarters. It’s a straight up burger place. The owners are former sous chefs from some mighty respectable Bay Area restaurants, but like me, they have respect for the simple, classic burger. Trueburger delivers an incredibly tasty patty, perched on top of one of the tastiest hamburger buns I’ve ever chewed. Other burger aficionados will likely agree that, while the meat is clearly (and literally) the centerpiece of a burger, the chef who fails to match the meat with an appropriate piece of bread commits an error of the first degree. The Trueburger bun is a thing of beauty. (The buns are made to Trueburger’s specifications by the Bread Workshop”:http://thebreadworkshop.com/ in Berkeley.) Just enough elasticity and crumb to stand up to the juicy runoff from the perfectly cooked meat, but not so firm as to cause the burger and toppings to squirt out the side of the bun when one attempts to pierce the crust with one’s teeth. And the flavor of the bread compliments the juicy beef, crispy lettuce, ripe tomato, and garlic aioli perfectly. Trueburger slips the sandwich into a brown paper sleeve and serves it on a baking sheet lined with parchment. (Fans of New York City’s Shake Shack will recognize the look.) The topper? This burger is just $4.95. A bit more for a cheeseburger, and add $2.50 for a basket of fries. Anna and I each had a burger and shared a basket of fries and were very satisfied.

The place is as unpretentious as the burger. There’s a mural on one wall that depicts an idealized downtown Oakland skyline. The silhouette of the Tribune Tower bears the words TRUE BURGER. The folks behind the counter (which I’m guessing included the owners) were friendly and welcoming. It was clean and tidy and the kitchen is open to the room so you can watch your burger being cooked. This is a great place to eat a burger. Other hamburgers in Oakland will be compared to Trueburgers. Some will be as good. Very few, however, will be able to unseat this burger from near the top of my all time top ten burgers.

Since Trueburger is a burger place and not a fine dining establishment, we should expect their burger to be pretty friggin’ fantastic. While it’s tempting to be seduced into thinking that a fine dining establishment should not be in direct competition with a burger joint, such thinking is flawed reasoning. If a restaurant puts a burger on the menu, they should be able to match (allowing for stylistic differences) the tasty sandwich one can get from Trueburger. Most high-end places charge considerably more for their burgers than $4.95, so even accounting for the higher overhead in such an establishment, there should be room to make a burger that is at least as satisfying as a Trueburger.

—

¹ For those literalists who are even now flipping through the pages of the Bible to verify that there is indeed a 16th verse in every chapter three of every book in the bible, relax. The actual system that Don devised called for examining the 16th verse, starting with the first verse of the third chapter. For those books that have fewer than 16 verses in the third chapter, Don continued counting into the fourth chapter until he reached a total of 16 verses.

Anna and I took a walk along Piedmont Avenue this morning, looking at vacant storefronts. We were thinking it might be interesting to locate a Prenatal Education and Resource center (like Blossom, the place she founded in Palo Alto) somewhere along the avenue. Piedmont is a pretty short street that stretches from the Mountain View Cemetery to Broadway, just past MacArthur.

There are several vacant properties along the street. Some big, some small. Anna has been scouting the neighborhood for a while and she feels like she’s seen a fairly significant population of pregnant women along Piedmont. We’ll continue to scout, but we’re also eyeing a couple of places on Grand Avenue and Lakeshore. The Farmer’s Market at Splash Pad Park on Saturday’s seems to attract pregnant women, too. And the Grand Lake area is more convenient for us — it’s within easy walking range. If you have suggestions (or you want to learn more about what kinds of things Anna does, please visit her website to send her an email).

As we were walking I noticed the little piece of artwork on the sidewalk pictured above. Interesting piece. I’m keeping an eye out for other examples of this kind of street level graffiti art. I can see some of the overspray outlines around the image that confirm my suspicion that this was a stencil, but it’s a multicolor stencil. A nice technique.

On the second half of my bike ride through West Oakland yesterday I made a short visit to the Loma Prieta Earthquake memorial park. The park pays respect to the residents of the neighborhood who risked their lives to scramble up onto the collapsed double deck Cypress Structure to rescue strangers trapped by the fallen freeway. Imprinted in the concrete are remembrances of the rickety ladders, some attached end to end with duct tape to make them long enough to reach the crushed cars. I had a quiet moment and recalled that day. (I was stuck in San Francisco after the quake — the Bay Bridge was partially broken — so I worked all night at KFRC until I found a way home via Marin County the next day.) Being in the park made me a little weepy. I hadn’t thought about the Cypress Structure in a long time. Despite the efforts of all those brave neighbors, 42 people died in the collapsed viaduct in 1989.

I crossed over Interstate 980 on 14th Street. On the southwest corner of of 14th and Castro Streets sits the First Unitarian Church, an attractive stone and brick building. As I passed the church it triggered another memory. I recalled that the original location of First Lutheran Church in Oakland was somewhere in this neighborhood (before it moved to the location where Anna and I got married). I stopped and called my dad. He told me the church was on Martin Luther King, just north of 14th Street. Sure enough, on the corner of 16th and MLK sits the Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church. That congregation purchased the building from First Lutheran in the late 1950s. The church building is fenced and I didn’t check to see if the gate was unlocked, but from the outside the building looks well kept. I don’t know if this is what the building looked like when it was First Lutheran, but it’s a nice, simple looking building.

The last stop on my ride was the Tribune Tower for an espresso at Modern Coffee. Robert described my bean options — The Sermon by Verve and the Ecco Espresso. I decided to try a shot of each. The Sermon had a bright blueberry flavor. The Ecco had a restrained carmel flavor. Both were good, but I’m finding myself really appreciating the beans from Verve.

It was a good ride. Removing the freeway that collapsed in the 1989 earthquake has renewed a relationship between two neighborhoods that had lost contact with one another. I encountered at least 9 or 10 people while riding around. Most smiled and said “hi.” Some seemed curious about the guy stopping to take pictures of old houses and the crumbling train station, but no one tried to make me feel like an interloper in a neighborhood where I didn’t belong. It’s interesting that the destructive power of the earthquake may have helped to clear an atherosclerotic connection between two parts of this town. Riding in West Oakland I felt welcomed. Like a neighbor.