Nick Denton

New York
In case anyone is wondering why I'm posting less, and cutting and pasting from my email inbox, I'm in New York. I have a new theory: the west coast is the home of weblogs because people in New York have a real city to enjoy, and real newspapers for which to write, and there's no damn time to opine for free. #

Reply to Colleen Bazdarich

   Thanks for your feedback. The answer is yes, I have lived in San Francisco, and still do, certainly for the moment. Do you honestly think that someone so snobby could live down in Menlo Park?
   "Every city has its gay neighborhood, its "insert race here" neighborhood; the problem is, none of those neighborhoods ever quite fit their rash descriptions."
   True, just as any adjective attached to any noun is a simplification. I'm not as snobby as all that, for instance. So, damn, another journalistic simplification.
   And it is more true in San Francisco than in other cities I know. Take one example: Castro in San Francisco versus Soho in London. Castro has gay barbers, gay travel companies, gay insurance companies. It is quite possible to live in Castro without ever having contact with heteros. Soho, by contrast, has plenty of gay bars, but it is an entertainment district for all kinds of Londoners. It just isn't a ghetto the way Castro is. Same goes for Chelsea in New York.
   If you want to go deeper, I think there is something of the separatist in the San Francisco character. It is full of people who have defected from the mainstream, have abandoned the idea of government, have no time for civic virtues, who seek refuge in personal obsessions, and community in those who share those obsessions. A generalization, but we are talking generalizations here.
   I do like other cities. New York, Berlin, London, Los Angeles... But it's much harder for me to work in those places. That's my dilemma, and that's why I wrote the article. Hope this explains. #

From Colleen Bazdarich

"a little late in feedback, I guess. but I wonder if you've ever actually lived in SF, or if you were just a (maybe not-so) frequent visitor from the Valley. Your quick and blatantly inaccurate portryal of SF's ghettos (Mission for Mexicans, Sunset & Richmond for Asians) betrayed a true ignorance of the city's makeup. And I'd have to remind you that when people are describing NYC they make just the same flippant comparisons about the various neighborhoods of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Having also lived in London, I can say that the same goes there. People who have never really lived in the city assess the various neighborhoods based on distant and limited understanding that they've picked up from residents, tour guides etc. Every city has its gay neighborhood, its "insert race here" neighborhood; the problem is, none of those neighborhoods ever quite fit their rash descriptions. The same is very true for SF. Calling my neighborhood (the mission) a mexican ghetto, just shows that you don't get it. If anything, it has taken a giant and perhaps unfortunate step away from its latino influences, with Valencia street offering up a slew of restaurants bars and night clubs to fairly wealthy, wanna-be hip white people."
"As for your assertion that you never meet people who ignite a conversation, etc., it seems you just haven't met the right people. And if ballet isn't your thing, the theatres and galleries of the mission and portrero hill (ATA, Cell Space, etc. etc. ) offer up some nice little alternatives to corporate and conventional art. As a native of SF, I'd point out that while it is not the bohemian emerald city that every East Coaster fantasized about as a misunderstood child among New England preppiness, the city is pretty fantastic if you go in without tired assumptions." #

Dave Winer, the carpetbagger

For those who have never heard of Dave Winer, just move on now. For the rest, here's some more reaction to my hornet-nest-stirring column about San Francisco. I've had more feedback to that piece than anything else I've ever written, even pieces I did for the Financial Times. And the column hasn't even been published yet in print. The emails and weblog postings have been running about even. For half the people out there, they've always felt that way about SF, but never quite dared to say so. For the other half, I'm a turncoat. And that half includes Dave Winer, the irascible author of scripting.com. I was the victim of a Winer broadside, which is a rite of passage in Silicon Valley. His feelings were a bit raw, because one of his favorite haunts, the Good Earth, had just shut down. He's Silicon Valley's chief propagandist and provocateur, and this is a challenging time for someone in that position. Dave is a crotchety guy, but with a good heart. Not at all bland. No surprise that he's from the East Coast. A carpetbagger in his time. But in Silicon Valley long enough to give more recent immigrants a hard time.
· Dave Winer: Even as they leave they fuck us
· Winer on Silicon Valley and San Francisco
· A Talking Heads song about London, courtesy of Dave Winer
· Other weblog comments, courtesy of Blogdex #

Friday, February 15

Remote Surveillance the Wi-Fi Way
D-Link comes out with a new camera with built in wireless ethernet. So the device can be untethered from the PC, and still controlled remotely.
Wireless News #

Remix culture
Pete Rojas is working on a book about remix culture. How everything - music, video, software - is broken down into components and reassembled. You could argue that weblogs do the same remixing for written ideas. Anyway, here's an interesting illustration of the phenomenon, a website devoted to fans' remixes of Bjork songs.
Bjork Remix Web #

Google goes business class
Commentary on Google's enterprise search appliance, from Glenn Fleischmann.
glennf.com #

San Francisco: Overrated or just plain craptacular?

Cory Doctorow sparks off the San Francisco debate with a post on his blog, and the following discussion...
Quick Topic #

What the hell were we thinking?

Since I slammed San Francisco in my Management Today column, I've received a pile of email and comments. A few last-ditch defenders, who are pleased that the carpetbaggers are leaving town. But here is a more common, critical sentiment...
· "The more time I spend in New York, the more baffled I am that I actually lived [in San Francisco] for so long, especially after getting laid off."
· "I'm just shocked that I lived there for so long." [Ken Layne]
· "Get out here. I don't know what the hell we were thinking, living in SF." #

Return of the dotcom IPO
PayPal finally went public, and is actually trading above the offering price. Market cap of more than $1bn. Happy days are here again.
CNET.com - Quotes #

In the shadow of the twin towers
Fred Bernstein, an architecture writer, has a scheme for a memorial: two piers sprouting out of Manhattan, as if they were the twin towers laid on their sides. The structure mirroring the floors. The names of the dead where they died. Build it.
Slate: How To Build a Memorial to 9/11
Fred Bernstein
#

With Candor, Powell Charms Global MTV Audience
"I've been thrown out of places because I was just black enough not to be served."
· With Candor, Powell Charms Global MTV Audience
· MTV air times #

Thursday, February 14

The day you were born
If you're thirtysomething, or more, search through Life magazine covers for the week you were born. Me? The most interesting thing that happened: some wedding of people I've never heard of.
Life.com: Cover Search #

Tuesday, February 12

Oscar nominees
Trailers from this year's academy-nominated movies.
74th Annual Academy Awards #

Daddy's boy
Marko Milosevic, the dictator's son, telling his father about his latest business idea, a maternity ward. From the Croatian secret service wiretap.
"Marko: I employ reputable gynaecologists from Pozarevac, offer acceptable prices, best conditions, separate rooms for women with all creature comforts.
SM: Don't fuck around with me. Better hang on to Madona [Marko's discotheque] and work that.
Marko: But I didn't think of opening a ward in the Madona. That's not compatible.
SM: So where did you think of doing it?"
Guardian: Dial-a-dictator #

Monday, February 11

Blog ad nauseam
The old media backlash begins. The charge: most blogging is self-referential. Well, duh. Most writing - whether offline or online - is self-referential.
Blog ad nauseam. #

Friday, February 8

San Francisco strikes back II

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Name withheld
> Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 8:15 PM
> To: Nick Denton
> Subject: RE: sf renaissance plan
>
> stuff that started in the Bay Area and now resonates
> throughout the culture at large: there's a lot more that
> could be added -- Rolling Stone was initially based in SF, SF
> had its own indigenous punk scene just as quickly as NY and
> LA, the Re/Search line of books helped popularize at least
> half a dozen major lifestyle trends in the '90s, and other
> local publications like Maximum Rocknroll, Might, Juxtapoz,
> Thrasher, Mondo 2000, and Boing Boing helped spawn various
> subcultures/trends that now reach far beyond the Bay Area.
>
> also, the only people who ever said silicon valley was
> anything more than strip malls, office parks, and bland
> suburbia were probably people like you
> -- i.e., recent arrivals who came for the "the gloss of
> transient boomtime wealth." That's not meant to be a diss of
> you or your motives for coming to this area -- I'm just
> pointing out that until 1998 or so no one ever characterized
> Silicon Valley as anything more than a featureless jumble of
> office parks where narrow-minded engineers made tons of money
> every ten years or so. And pretty much every decent book on
> the history of the Valley and tech culture spends at least an
> obligatory chapter or two emphasizing this fact.
>
> as for the other stuff you say about SF (the homeless
> problem; the segregated neighborhoods; the lack of glamor,
> and glamorous intellectuals, and glamorous hot people; the
> fragmented politicking), those are pretty much the stock
> SF-bashing cliches -- as cliches, of course, they obviously
> have a fair measure of truth to them, but they ultimately
> represent such a superficial take that they're reductive to
> the point of essentially being meaningless. I.E., sure the
> Sunset has a lot of Chinese people, but not only Chinese
> people, and same with gays and the Castro and all your other
> examples. There's way more neighborhood cross-pollination
> than your essay suggests (with the notable exception of
> Hunters Point), and I'd say for its size the city has its
> share of glamor and even intellect. It's true, the newspapers
> aren't that great -- but how many newspapers are? At least SF
> has something of a magazine/zine tradition...and of course,
> there's also the videogame industry, the web, ILM and Pixar,
> etc. -- i.e., to say it's still dining out on the Beats is
> to miss the fact that the tech revolution has been a cultural
> revolution as well.
>
> conclusion: look a little deeper. as long as you're here,
> learn about the area, and not just from other dot-com types
> who came in 1998. #

San Francisco strikes back

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [Name withheld]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 11:13 PM
> To: Nick Denton
> Subject: sf renaissance plan
>
> Just writing to say thanks for your great essay on SF and
> Silicon Valley. If it's possible, can you please write about
> 1000 more columns just like it, and distribute them as widely
> as possible? I'm a longtime SF resident who actually likes
> fog, bland conversation, and even alcoholics and drug
> abusers, as long as they're not too interesting! And while
> I'm still along way from it, I'm hoping to buy property here
> some day, so it'd be cool if another 300,000 - 500,000 people left.
>
> civic pride compels me to point out that our burg is not
> quite as culturally bereft as you would have it. have you
> forgotten that SF in the '90s was home to Might magazine and
> Wired magazine, not to mention that family of orphans on
> Party of Five? Are you not aware that Battlebots would not
> exist were it not for Survival Research Laboraties, and that
> local innovators like Fuckingmachines.com continue to push
> the machinertainment envelope? And what about that hotbed of
> turntablism, Daly City? I could go on and on, citing writers
> who lived in the Bay Area throughout most of the '90s
> (Michael Chabon, Nicholson Baker, Dave Eggers, Po Bronson,
> Dan Clowes), local traditions like Burning Man, etc. etc, but
> i'm sure you get the point -- the Bay Area may not rank with
> whatever London or Tokyo has produced in the last 20 years,
> but it's totally got Tulsa licked! #

Wednesday, February 6

Ken Layne, the original Friscophobe

There I was, thinking I'd produced a true rant, yelled all my complaints about San Francisco, no holds barred. And then I read some of Ken Layne's pioneering anti San Francisco work from the late 1990s. Compared with Ken, I am a limp-wristed, equivocating apologist for the city. You want to read real hatred for San Francisco? Read some of Layne's articles from Tabloid, linked below.
· The only people who move to San Francisco are people who hate themselves
· San Francisco is truly the foulest place on earth
· This town is a doomed experiment #

Letters page: Silicon Valley isn't Florence; it's Manchester

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Nolan
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 9:14 AM
> To: Nick Denton
> Subject: Column
>
> A few points:
>
> 1) San Francisco isn't ungovernable. It's ungoverned just as,
> sad to say, New York was ungoverned for so many years in the
> last '70's and early 80's. That's when it was chic to write
> off cities as nothing more than safeharbors for the hopeless
> cases in our society. Giuliani takes credit for a lot of the
> "lifestyle" issues in the city but much of what he gets
> credit for -- very specifically the crack down on minor
> street crime -- was put in place by others, among them former
> Mayor Dinkins and former Police Commissioner Kelly.
>
> 2) Silicon Valley has _always_ been an American suburb.
> That's why it's so unsophisticated. It's American -- and
> believe me, all of them regardless of their backgrounds think
> it's perfectly appropriate to call up at 8 p.m. and say we
> can't make dinner, we're too tired. Ask Ottavia. One of her big
> complaints: Americans are rude and unsophististicated. She's right.
>
> Silicon Valley is made up of wealthy people from wealthy
> upper and upper middle class suburban homes. You think
> they're going to build a new Florence? Kurt Anderson in Turn
> of the Century says that Silicon Valley is more like Leeds or
> Manchester than it is like Florence or Venice (the local's
> preferred analogy by the locals). You think it's a
> coincidence that someone like me, who makes her living in
> Silicon Valley, never lived south of Market St.
>
> 3)The ballet sucks. But SF's Opera, particularly with the
> import of one Pam Rosenberg, promises to be kind of fun. She
> ran the Opera at Stuttgart and is said to be quite cutting
> edge. We'll see how long she lasts. There's also the SF Art
> Institute, which is interesting the way lots of modern art
> can be. And, believe it or not, there's some great alt
> theater and dance here. The trick is to avoid all that stuff
> formal old San Francisco stuff. #

Friscophobia

new column "It is ungovernable. The city of cute cable cars has abandoned large swathes of the city centre to 5,000 vagrants, mostly alcoholics, drug abusers and the mentally ill. Homeless advocates, taking San Francisco's famed tolerance to ridiculous extremes, defend their lifestyle choice. The mayor, Willie Brown, has given up. Imagine New York, before Rudy Giuliani took office, except more corrupt and lethargic."
San Francisco: the city that never quite made it #

Tuesday, February 5

Another scorching Salman Rushdie column
Salman Rushdie, already under fatwa, has nothing to lose: "even if that [Middle East] settlement were arrived at tomorrow, anti-Americanism would probably not abate. It has become too useful a smokescreen for Muslim nations' many defects � their corruption, their incompetence, their oppression of their citizens, their economic, scientific and cultural stagnation."
America and Anti-Americans
via Jeff Jarvis #

US: put up or shut up

Finally, a real challenge to US complacency. From the managing director of the International Monetary Fund of all people. I've been harping on tediously about trade policy since September. The US should shut up about the virtues of free markets, and stop acting surprised that most of the world is resentful towards it. First remove tariff and other trade barriers to imports from the developing world. Confront those domestic agro-industry, textile and steel lobbies. Shame the congressmen in their pay. Then the US will have the right to lecture the world again about this wonderful Western system. What about American jobs? Well, think about American *lives* in an unfair and insecure world.
Anyway, here is Horst Kohler's surprisingly robust call. "We need to focus on giving developing countries better access, and this includes the phasing out of these subsidies, which are absolutely distorting and devastating sectors in the poor world. If we are really serious about globalization to work for all, the advanced countries have to recognize they can't do business as usual."
Activists Protest Trade in NYC
WEF Speakers Assail U.S. Policies #

Sunday, February 3

Portraits of grief
The New York Times is engaged in the monumental task of documenting every life lost in the attack on the Twin Towers. Prompting Howard Zinn, in The Nation, to remind us of all the Afghans killed, and to document some of those stories, their lives being worth recording too. But I don't buy Zinn's implication that similiar numbers of people died in New York and Afghanistan, and therefore the US has as much blood on its hands as its enemies. Al-Qaeda bears as much responsibility for death and suffering in Afghanistan, as it does for September 11 itself.
The Others #

Saturday, February 2

Wankers
The Weekly Standard reports on the games between Al-Qaeda prisoners and their guards. "They know they're being watched," he explains, "so they'll stare at you, and while they stare at you, they'll, uh, masturbate."
Weekly Standard: Guantanamo's Unhappy Campers #

Friday, February 1

John Hunt
Always dangerous to link to a weblog without a track record of regular postings. John Hunt - founder of Obongo, host of Eurotrash parties, and art collector - has just joined the weblog world. If he writes as he speaks, this site should be entertaining. [By the way, I set up his site, and both use a modified Kottke design, so it may look a little familiar.]
johnhunt.com #

The credit card industry: America's first line of defense
The Washington Post has a story on a giant new information retrieval system to pick up potential terrorists when they book their tickets. "It might find, for instance, that one man used a debit card to buy tickets for four other men who sit in separate parts of the same plane -- four men who have shared addresses in the past. Or it might discern an array of unusual links and travel habits among passengers on different flights." This is in an automation of existing screening methods, and a necessary infringement of personal privacy. But I have one worry. Among others behind this initiative: credit card data companies such as HNC Software, Acxiom and Equifax. These are the guys who won't permit me a credit card because I'm a foreigner without a credit history. Inflexible, erratic, and answerable to no one. America's security in their hands. Frightening.
Intricate Screening Of Fliers In Works [Washington Post} #

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