Wake Up America, Oakland A's Have Something To Crow About

Despite a disappointing 2-5 road trip, the A's have a lot to be happy about.

We're almost one third of the way through the 2013 season, and I would like to praise the Oakland Athletics. They are by no means perfect - having gotten shellacked by the Texas Rangers the other night in Arlington, 9-4 - but over the past 162 games, they have played to a record of 101 wins and 61 losses, and that's something to crow about.

The A's, that little scruffy team of no-names that plays in a lousy sewage-overflowing concrete stadium all year across the Bay from big beautiful AT&T Park and the World Champion San Francisco Giants, have built this record against all teams, not just the Astros.

Some cold, hard facts, America. On June 25 last year, after playing their first 74 games, the Oakland A's had a record of 36 wins and 38 losses, They had just beaten the Mariners 1-0 in Seattle. Since that day, their record for the next 162 regular season games has been 101-61, including last night's 9-4 loss to the Rangers!

Numbers don't lie. After they beat the Giants a year ago, the A's played 58-30, a winning percentage of .659, for the rest of 2012. They finished 2012 94-68 and won the American League West Division on the last day.

After 77 games in 2013, the A's are atop the division again, with a record of 43-34. They have done this with injuries to Josh Reddick, Yoennis Cespedes, Coco Crisp and Brett Anderson. They have reached deep into their young, maturing selves and found patience, persistence and performance.

If those commentators in New York, those national baseball writers with the Reds, Cardinals, Giants, Yankees, Tigers and Red Sox take a look at the first two paragraphs above, they might scratch their heads and say, whaddya know, these guys are one of the top teams in baseball, in either league.

We have learned that a team's season performance is not a predictor for how they will perform in the playoffs, under pressure. The Cardinals won the 2006 World Series with a .516 season record, the Orioles lost the 1969 World Series to the Mets after winning 109 season games, and let's not forget the Mariners who set a season record with 116 wins in 2001 and didn't even make it past the Yankees in the ALCS to the World Series.

Still, for regular season play, where Oakland is and has been for the past 162 games, the A's deserve recognition as a special and remarkable young ball club.

Look at the ERA of their starting rotation, look at their bullpen, look at the little guys like Adam Rosales tearing around the bases for a homer, Eric Sogard stealing bases, Brandon Moss hitting .229 and homering twice to beat the Yankees. Patience, persistence and performance. These guys are for real.

The Joy Of Oakland

The Joy of Oakland is like the Joy of Sex - so many ways to discover excitement and pleasure where you least expect it.

Okay, so that maybe that's a little much - at least I got your attention though! But, seriously, there is a lot to discover and enjoy here, as a friend of mine learned recently.

An old journalism buddy visiting from London was used to the delights of Berkeley and San Francisco on previous trips. But this time he learned there is much more to the Bay area than just San Francisco.

In downtown Oakland he discovered the joy of Pican's fabulous Tennessee whiskey margarita; on Shoreline Drive in Alameda, he devoured a parade of sushi and sake at the Sushi House, and his first baseball game EVER, watching the A's in a come from behind victory at the Coliseum.

I've talked about Pican before, and the grilled scallops and alligator fritto mist worked well with the pan roasted catfish. Oakland, you rock!

Afterwards, we drove up Fish Ranch Road to take in those epic views from Grizzly Peak Boulevard down across Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges and the SF skyline.

It's so easy from this side of the bay to disabuse people's notions about what they expect to find in the East Bay.

The clincher was a glorious Sunday afternoon at the O.Co Coliseum. Right from the start, the tailgate BBQ aromas carried us into the ballpark, and in the hot sun, fresh lemonade just hit the spot. Let the A's fall behind to add some drama, claw back a couple of runs on stolen bases, and cap it off with a Cespedes thunderbolt homer.

Just another sampling of the Joy of Oakland. I love this town.

EBMUD Questions Our Questions, But Only Muddies The Water

I got an email from The East Bay Municipal Utility District the other day. Seemingly polite, the "between the lines" message was a little unsettling.

The email from EBMUD (pasted below) seems to question facts in my previous post about a no-bid deal they got from Oakland City Council for Recology to build a food waste preprocessing plant onto their West Oakland wastewater plant site.

It's easy for them to offer a tour and say "this is an opportunity to get the facts", but I think we'd all like to know - which facts do they question, which facts do they challenge? Why throw "mud" at my blog posts without getting specific?

Just to be transparent, I'll post their email here, as well as the tour invite.

If anyone wants to go on their tour, I'm sure it would be interesting, but it's hard to tell whether or not their "facts" will clear the air or just further muddy the water.

---

From: "Chan, Gregory"
Date: May 1, 2013, 2:39:47 PM PDT
Subject: Tour Information for the EBMUD WW Treatment Plant

Dear Mr. Newhouse,

FYI, attached and below is information about various tour dates to EBMUD’s Wastewater Plant — with a particular look at water recycling, food waste and energy production.

For those members of your reader base that have read your recent blog and have expressed concerns -- this is an opportunity to get the facts.

Contact information and the reservation process are contained in the attached flyer as well as below.

Gregory L. Chan
Public Affairs Office
East Bay Municipal Utility District
375 Eleventh Street (MS 802)
P.O. Box 24055
Oakland, CA 94623-1055

Office: (510) 287-0135
Fax: (510) 287-0149
e-mail: gchan@ebmud.com
website: www.ebmud.com

TOUR EBMUD Wastewater Treatment Plant and Food Scrap Processing Facilities

Twilight Tours 5:30 pm
• Tuesday May 7
• Thursday May 23

Saturday Tours 10 am
• Saturday May 11
• Saturday June 15

Making sure that pollutants do not enter San Francisco Bay is a job we all share. Find out more about how EBMUD and our customers work together to conserve energy and water, and protect natural resources.

Tours will last about one hour and are limited to 10 people per tour. Participants must be able to walk one mile. Please wear comfortable clothes and closed toe shoes.

Location:
EBMUD Wastewater Treatment Plant
2020 Wake Avenue
Oakland, CA

Parking:
Park in small parking area at front gate

To reserve a spot, contact:
Allison Garrett
(510) 287-1445
agarrett@ebmud.com
www.ebmud.com

I'm still watching this Recology thing...Are You?

Something still stinks here.

For those who may have forgotten, the laudable goals of Recology and San Francisco - to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills - have turned out to raise some serious questions about the city's and company's claims, and Recology's credibility.

This is not the first time that I've heard or written about Recology and waste issues in Oakland and San Francisco. Nor is it even the second time (that was back here).

What this episode with EBMUD raises are more questions, especially if you want to trust the credibility of a waste company from San Francisco that has operated there without competition for 80 years and now wants to increase its activity in Oakland.

In January a state appeals court reinstated a lawsuit brought by a former Recology employe who says the company made fraudulent overpayments in its recycling program and fired him for reporting it to superiors and police. The lawsuit was filed last year brought by Brian McVeigh, a former Recology manager turned whistle-blower. It has not gone away, it has been reinstated by a state appeals court, and McVeigh's lawyers claim the alleged fraud schemes in over-reporting could cost Recology $10 million in fines.

Remember as well, that a national waste industry publication, Waste 360, also raised questions about the credibility of claims by Recology and San Francisco that the only sends 20 percent of its waste to landfill and the rest is diverted to other purposes - recycling, energy to waste, composting, etc - all laudable goals. Except that Waste 360 points out San Francisco sent 440,000 tons of waste to landfills last year. If that is only 20 percent of the city's waste, then the city would have generated 2,220,000 tons of waste, about 2.73 tons of trash for every man, woman and child in the city. If that's true, it would be more than three times the national average.

Who was it that said "trust but verify"? Yeah, well - I think the time for trusting is over. I think we need to go straight to "watching these guys like a hawk."

Do we really want to be making deals with guys who look like they have a history of pulling fast ones?

A Good Omen for this A's Fan!

Regular season is FINALLY here! Life Has Meaning Again!

Yes, the Oakland A's had a good spring, yes they beat the World Champion Giants two out of three in last weekend's Bay Bridge series, but the real omen for their success in 2013 was found unexpectedly in a Walmart in San Leandro where yours truly and his girlfriend went for a new A's hat.

As my relatives, friends, clients, and fellow denizens of coffeehouses & saloons will find, that prominent symbol of white, gold and green will be evident every day for the next six (and hopefully seven!) months through this season. So spotting a bright adjustable hat in Walmart for $14.97 (maybe twenty bucks less than at the Coliseum) was a pretty good sign. And when it went through the register for $3.28 (!!), that was definitely an omen of great tidings. No questions, just a smile and "good luck" from the register girl.

Yes, after last year's amazing season, we've said goodbye to Johnny Gomes and Brandon McCarthy, and seen the backs of Cliff Pennington, Brandon Inge and Chris Carter, but our team is hitting Opening Night against the Mariners in high gear. The Cactus League saw the A's win 17 and lose 13. While that is normally pretty meaningless, it's worth noting what the A's did in their last 10 games - they won 8, tied one and lost one, including playing three games in front of 113,000 fans at the Giants AT&T Park (where they won 7-3 and lost 3-1) and at our dusky old Coliseum, where Yeonis Cespedes hit another tremendous home run for a 4-3 victory.

Tough to see Jemile Weeks go down to Triple-A, glad newcomer Hiro Nakijima has time to recover from his sprained hamstring, and a Big welcome to -- Jed Lowrie, Chris Young, John Jaso, Chris Respo and Nate Freiman -- may you be infused with the spirit of Moneyball!

Play Ball! See if you can get one of these A's hats for $3.28 - what a way to start the season!

Something Stinks in EBMUD...Stinks Like a Back-Room Deal.

Is anybody else fed up with toxic freeway pollution and garbage stink that hits you coming off the Bay Bridge from San Francisco?

Commuters driving on 880, 80, 580 and 24 catch a whiff of the stench that residents of Emeryville and West Oakland gag on every day where those freeways converge near the expanding waste complex that EBMUD operates in the Port of Oakland.

Now the Oakland City Council has given Recology, the San Francisco waste company, an exclusive contract to bring up to 600 tons a day of waste from San Francisco and the Bay Area to a new food waste preprocessing facility Recology will operate on EBMUD land. There is a lot about this deal that has not been explained or discussed in public.

All year we've heard about the ambitious West Oakland Specific Plan to bring in new jobs and housing while protecting the neighborhood. Polluting metals recycling facilities are headed to the former Oakland Army Base. This area got wacked in 1989 by an earthquake that collapsed the Cypress Freeway. For the past 25 years dozens of plans promised to make this area more livable, end illegal dumping and fix up the broken window syndrome in West Oakland.

Does that mean it's okay to start piling in again with more garbage trucks, more composting, more food waste that stinks up the area without even holding proper public hearings at City Hall, avoiding the need for a specific CEQA Environmental Impact Report that would discuss all of these issues in detail?

Recology has had a monopoly on garbage collection in San Francisco for 80 years and spent $1.75 million last summer to defeat a city referendum to open waste collection to competitive bidding. Now, Recology has won a no-bid exclusive contract to build a facility in Oakland for trash from our city and anywhere else their trucks can deliver garbage from! 600 tons a day, seven days a week, is almost 220,000 tons a year. Recology and EBMUD put forward a laudable goal, to convert food waste to methane energy. But EBMUD's anaerobic digester can handle only 100 tons a day, and Recology can bring in 600 tons a day! Does anyone care what happens with all this extra traffic into EBMUD/Recology and where will the extra 500 tons a day go after that? Does anyone care?

The Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) says there is an "significant and unavoidable risk" which the Recology food waste facility will pose to existing pollution cancer risks already facing West Oakland residents. The City Council never discussed the EIR in any detail, and the city's own Public Works Agency supervisor told the council not to worry: "This is a land use restriction within the Port of Oakland so it’s not within a land use restriction with the City of Oakland. Yes it is a deal between Recology East Bay Organics and East Bay MUD."

They didn't. The Council voted 6-2 to approve Recology's facility on February 5, 2013. Only Larry Reid and Desley Brooks opposed. No one wrote about the decision. No one seems to care. Sounds like a backroom deal.

Reid's last comment before the vote was: "I’m just gonna say this, I’m going to vote no, we’ve often made mistakes in the past and this is another one that we’re making, and we’re going to live to regret it."

In Praise of an Older Man (Leonard Cohen @ Oakland's Paramount)

Leonard Cohen is 78 years old and still giving everything he's got.

I was learning how to ask a girl out for a date in high school when this unkempt Canadian with a gravelly voice was strumming a guitar and singing about Suzanne.

If you said Leonard Cohen wasn't the coolest man alive, I'd say you were wrong.

Cohen gave two shows this weekend before two sell-out crowds at Oakland's priceless art-deco Paramount Theatre, treating 3,000 fans each night to more than three hours of his gracious, intimate and inspiring poetry and music. He was here in 2010 for a series of concerts at the same venue.

By all accounts, he is even more energized and more gracious. In the intervening two years, of course, he had to testify against his former manager, Kelley Lynch, before she was jailed for stealing more than $5 million from his accounts while he was in a Zen monastery.

That's him there, on the left, I think.

So this is a singer, entertainer and cult icon who is back to work on a 19-city tour with nine musicians and a big back-up team, and he is gracious, tender and generous in giving himself to his audience in marathon performances such as the two he gave in Oakland this past weekend.

He opened Sunday night's concert with a tilt towards his mortality and an affirmation of his state of mind: "I don't know, friends, when we’ll ever meet again – no one can know that – but tonight we'll give you everything we've got."

If you have a chance, between now and April 21, Cohen will appear at 17 venues across North America.

We in Oakland have been so fortunate to be on his radar. Rolling Stone pretty much has got it right in its write-up of Leonard Cohen singing here in Oakland.