| October 11, 2005 | Why Am I Leaving San Francisco for Santa Monica? |
 I'm excited to announce that next week I'm relocating to Yahoo!'s new Santa Monica office. I'll continue to fulfill my current role as Senior Editor for the U.S. broadband portals (SBC, BellSouth, Verizon, and Plus), but I'll be working among the Full Coverage and Yahoo! News teams who have recently moved down south to be part of the new Yahoo! Media Group. "Why the hell are you leaving San Francisco?" at least hundreds of people have asked, yelled, emailed, and pinged me. It sounds like some people think I have a lotta explainin' to do -- so here are the main reasons why I'm so glad to be making this move: 1. It's a great opportunity to work among colleagues in the Yahoo! Media Group where most of the new original content on the Yahoo! Network (including Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone ) is being created. I've worked in online web content creation for the past ten years (can you believe that -- ten years?! That's making me start to feel a bit old.), so now that Yahoo! is making a big commitment to creating original content it makes sense for me to be located where it's all happening. 2a. I love San Francisco, but to be honest I don't see as much of it as I'd like to. For the past five years(!) I've made the arduous commute from San Francisco down to Silicon Valley -- I worked for two years at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View and for the last three years at Yahoo!'s campus in Sunnyvale. I spend ten hours per week driving on the 101 freeway, and that's 10 hours too many at this point. Sure, I still do cool things up in SF, like produce a weekly pirate radio show with Allyson and go to my friend Derek's Walk-In Movies and occasionally to see bands -- but the truth is, I'm in Sunnyvale in the midst of Silicon Valley waaaay more hours per week than I'm up in SF. And since I never want to live down in the suburban sprawl of "The Valley," I'm looking at many more years of commuting ahead of me if I decided to continue living in San Francisco and working a decent tech job. Pretty much all the best tech companies: Apple, Google, Yahoo!, and eBay are each headquartered somewhere down on the Peninsula, an hour's drive from San Francisco. I love it when Bay Area people comment about all the traffic in Los Angeles. My commute in Northern California is far worse than any Southern California commute I've ever had. 2b. In Los Angeles, I can live near the Yahoo! office and still live in a great area with cafes, bars, and shops that I'll enjoy. My friend Laura and I just signed a lease on an amazing house right across the street from the beach in Venice . It's only 4 miles from the office, and it has trees in the living room growing down into the ground! (Have you ever heard of such a thing?!) And I just might *gasp* ride my bike to work along the Venice to Santa Monica beachfront bike path. 3. I've lived in San Francisco for exactly 5 years. I arrived in SF in October 2000 just as closing time was setting in over the drunken magic of the dotcom days -- the music was turned off and the dim lights were turned up and everyone had to go home alone to their cold, lonely beds.) My instincts are saying that five years is long enough to stay in one city at this point in my life. I've experienced two neighborhoods in two different housing experiments: I spent 3 years living in a loft in Lower Potrero/Dogpatch and 2 years living with some guy friends in a dilapidated Mission District Victorian. I've met tons of amazing people and been to great parties and seen some incredible things. I'll certainly miss my incredible SF friends (August, Owen, Bethany, Allyson , Bryan, Andy, Jen, Deneb, Derek, Leanne, John, Shannon, Daniel, Mici, and everyone else I'm not naming) and I'll definitely be back to visit, but it's time for a change. 4. I actually like Los Angeles. Here's what I wrote about it in my blog back in November 2001. (Four years ago!) I hope that I'll still like LA now that I'm five years older. We'll hafta see. I'll be sure to blog about it as always. 5. My dog and I are fans of warm weather. Bocce, my tiny fruit bat of a dog -- though velvety -- is practically hairless (and fat-less!). San Francisco weather -- though temperate when compared to Boston -- is still not warm enough for this little dog to go running on the beach. I also enjoy wearing flip-flops every day and walking barefoot in the sand. Do you love or hate Los Angeles? How about San Francisco? Do you have any tips for me? Well-wishes or anything to add? Labels: commute, la, moving, sanfrancisco, santamonica, sf, work, yahoo posted by Jess Barron @ 5:40 PM 
|
| January 27, 2005 | Los Angeles, I'm Yours(?) |
|
"There's a city by the sea A gentle company I don't suppose you want to... Oh what a rush of ripe elan Languor on divans Dalliant and dainty Los Angeles I'm yours..." -the Decemberists "Los Angeles, I'm Yours" (a bitter love letter to the city off of a decent album) "Are you moving to Los Angeles?" several friends emailed and called to ask me this week, after reading Wednesday's LA Times article about Yahoo!s new office in Santa Monica. Though I am not among the group of Yahoo! folks who have been told they must relocate to LA -- you know how I like to keep you all guessing. As you know, I love San Francisco and my friends here but the truth of the matter is -- though I live in San Francisco, I don't work in San Francisco. Sunnyvale is such a long commute -- 2 hours each day down the traffic-encrusted, ugly 101 freeway that runs through the middle of Silicon Valley. When you work 12-hour days and then commute 2 hours round-trip on top of that, it really doesn't leave you with very much "life" left for experiencing the city, seeing friends and going to movies, or well, anything except maybe sleep and sometimes eating. The only time I see my friends and go out in the city is on the weekends. And even that is so tough -- because by the time friday rolls around mostly all I want to do is curl up in my bed and not go out to a club see a band. So, the option to live in Venice or Santa Monica and work at an office in Santa Monica seems rather appealing to me. As does the ability to be part of the group of people building Yahoo!'s editorial, news, and content realm. As someone who's worked in an news programming job at Yahoo! for the past 3 years, it's awesome to see the company getting behind the ideas of media and content, once again (after a bit of a hiatus after the dot-com downturn). Plus, as you know, dear readers -- unlike most people who love San Francisco, I also love Los Angeles. By doing this, I am breaking one of the cardinal laws of San Francisco, which is "You must look down dismissively at Los Angeles." I'm sorry -- but Los Angeles is much more of a cultural center than Sunnyvale, California. And Silicon Valley has at least as many ugly strip malls as LA. And plus, the housing and rental prices are still (a bit) cheaper down there. These are things I am thinking about. Labels: commute, dotcom, la, sanfrancisco, santamonica, sf, web, yahoo posted by Jess Barron @ 4:47 PM
|
| November 19, 2003 | Broken Down Beetle Blues |
|
I almost certainly would've died on the freeway this morning if my friend and co-worker Andy hadn't asked me to carpool with him down to Sunnyvale to the office this morning. About 5 minutes after picking Andy up at his house on Dolores St., we were driving at 35 miles per hour up the hill near Dolores Park and my car just went completely dead in the left lane. Luckily I was able to get it halfway over into the side lane before we lost all velocity. If I hadn't have driven across the Mission to pick Andy up and had just been driving by myself to work, I already would've been one the wily 101 freeway in the busy morning traffic going 70 miles per hour at that point. There is no way I would not have been hit. I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised. I mean, this is the same Beetle that exploded on me in Los Angeles right after the 2-year warranty ended. So, we turned on the hazard lights and we called a tow truck from the cell phones. They told us they'd be there in about an hour. And then we called our bosses. And then Andy got out of the car to go to Muddy Waters to go get us coffee. When he climbed out the passenger side of the car, he said, "There's a lot of liquid spilling out of your car." It was gas. "You should get out of the car," Andy said, "because if someone comes speeding up this hill and clips you from behind, it could be dangerous." I watched CHiPs when I was little. I'm afraid of exploding cars. So, I waited sitting on the sidewalk and people driving up Dolores glared at me for having a car that died halfway in the right lane. Then Andy returned with coffees and pastries and took pictures of me and the blue, blue Beetle with his cell phone camera. The tow truck guys thought we were on crack. Labels: andy, beetle, commute, sanfrancisco posted by Jess Barron @ 1:38 PM
|
| October 31, 2003 | 'A Girl As Brave and Dangerous as Aeon Flux' |
He said, "I want a girl as brave and dangerous as Aeon Flux." I said, "I dressed up as Aeon Flux for Halloween one year." After that it was silence, and sometimes I think I just don't get it. Today Andy and I drove to work down the 101, and it was cold and there were enormous clouds everywhere all around us. It felt so strange -- like a completely foreign planet. It's been sunny and warm forever now, so when I saw the clouds they made me feel weird. There was even a patch of rain, and I realized I hadn't seen rain in months. Rain -- even 30 seconds of drizzle -- snapped me out of the amazing, sunny, warm and seemingly neverending California summer we had this year. (Unusual for San Francisco.) As you would imagine, rain is completely out of place in Sunnyvale. Up until today our daily weather was pretty much always this. Labels: andy, commute, costume, halloween, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 4:07 PM
|
| April 4, 2003 | The Party Car |
|
About an hour ago I entered my apartment building and I walked into the elevator along with my neighbor. We were both coming home after at the conclusion of our day's at work. "I don't always carry half full bottles of beer in my gym bag," I said when he looked down at my half open duffle bag and noticed the Pete's Wicked Ale poking out between my sports bra and my running shoes. "I've just come from the party car!" He just looked at me quixotically. This evening -- after spending the past two years riding caltrain round-trip from San Francisco down to Silicon Valley almost every day -- I found out about the "party car," which apparently has been in existence for the past 8 years. Tonight I left work on the 5p.m. shuttle from Yahoo campus to the Sunnyvale caltrain station. I never usually leave as early as 5 p.m., but now that I'm starting work at 6a.m., I'm making an effort to leave on the 5 p.m. shuttle. So anyway, on the shuttle, everyone's all rowdy and talkative 'cause it's Friday (usually everyone's pretty quiet), and I meet this girl Jen, and she goes, "So, are we all getting on the party car?" "Ummm, what's the party car?" I asked. "On the 81 north train the front-most car is the party car. People bring beer and snacks and they play music and it's a party car. They even have a website," she said, "partycar.com" "What?! I didn't know you could drink on the Caltrain?!" I exclaimed, somewhat shocked. I had never seen anyone imbibing on the train before. Everyone on the Caltrain -- myself included -- always reads the newspaper, types on their laptop, or sends emails on their Blackberry and/or Palm. People don't often talk with the others around them, and no one ever has a flask, beers, or a bottle of wine... "I must experience this party car," I said to Jen, still doubting its existence. At the Sunnyvale station, we boarded the train in the front car. Jen told me that most of the party car peeps get on around Palo Alto. Sure enough, people boarded and started cracking open beers, and within five minutes they asked us, "Hey, do you ladies want a beer?" Jen and I met all the party car peeps and drank a few beers, and I hafta tell you, the hour-long train ride went by really fast. If you take the caltrain, I highly recommend you try out the party car. You won't be disapointed. Next time I'm bringing beer and snacks to share. The message of the story, dear readers, is never let the work-week get you down. There is often an unexpected party car somewhere on the horizon, just waiting to be discovered... The party car has even inspired some phat rhymes from its many attendees. It really doesn't surprise me. The artist behind this one, breaks it down about why the party car is far uperior to driving in your ass up the 101 freeway home to the city: driving on the 101: Mack truck on your rear head on collision traffic frustration mortal fear flirting with death stewing about some thoughtless ass getting cut off by a stupid jerk death wish insanity CHP ticker getting flipped off being stuck in a rubber-neck delay scream and shout breaking down with a car riding in the party car: joining in our weekly cheer ale vs. lager decision friendly conversation Tecate beer TGIF relaxing with Harp and Bass winding down from a hard week at work beer buzz serenity Schlitz Malt Liquor tying one on getting home the partycar way Guiness Stout fortifying with vitamin R Labels: commute, sanfrancisco, sf, siliconvalley, work posted by Jess Barron @ 8:26 PM
|