Scary Times

The news wasn’t really that much of a surprise. The Chronicle has been losing millions for quite some time now. What was a bit of a shock was to hear that the paper might actually disappear. Like almost every paper in the country, The Chronicle has reached a breaking point. It’s do or die time. Figure out how to survive or call it a day.

It wasn’t that long ago that the paper was doing quite well. When I worked at the Chronicle in 2000, the Hearst Corporation was in the process of buying the Chronicle and unloading the Examiner. Back then, The Chronicle was turning such a good profit that Hearst basically gave the Examiner away to the Fang family with an added bonus of $66 million as a thank you gift. I guess $66 million paled in comparison to what they would be making with the acquisition of the Chron.
For a while after the sale, it seemed as if their purchase was a wise one. Staffers were traveling and the Christmas party in 2000 was huge. It was held at the Museum of Modern Art. They had fortune tellers, live music, endless amounts of food and drink. Sharon Stone was even there with her now ex-husband Phil Bronstein. It was a real good time.
Then, along came Craigslist, killing ad revenue, and the internet with its free content and the downward slide began.

I can’t imagine San Francisco, a city with a population of over 750,000, without a daily newspaper. Sadly, this could be a reality. It breaks my heart that people don’t see a value in what goes into a newspaper and how important newspapers are to our democracy. Without papers, who will be the watchdogs to make sure government serves in the best interest of the citizens? Who will uncover things like the BALCO steroids scandal? What will we start fires and wrap fish with?

All kidding aside, I think there are a lot of people out there that don’t understand where this type of in depth reporting comes from. Well, if you don’t know, newspaper reporters come up with these stories. TV stations do some, but for the most part it is a recycled story from a newspaper. Same goes with radio. Listen to KCBS on any given day and a good percentage of their stories are right out of the morning paper.
The news about the Chronicle hits close to home for me. Well, it actually hits my home. My girlfriend is the Director of Photography at the paper and with yesterday’s news came the realization that she and many of my friends could be unemployed very soon. It is, in a word, frightening. Even though we have been thinking and talking about what would happen if one of us lost our job, it still is a rude awakening when the possibility becomes closer to reality. A flood of fear hits your body as you think about mortgages, car payments, food and utilities.

I hope the Chronicle can fight their way through this. People need their jobs and San Francisco needs a newspaper.

Lance Is Back

I realized that my seat belt wasn’t on as Santa Rosa Press Democrat photographer Kent Porter merged onto highway 101 in Santa Rosa, burying the tachometer on his late 90’s Honda Civic. I’m riding shotgun and Arleen Ng is crammed in the backseat sharing her space with a big storage box. We’re trying to get ahead of Lance Armstrong and his bicycle racing team as they train on the roads of western Sonoma County.
Lance is making his big bicycle racing comeback and has joined Team Astana. The team, which includes top riders from around the globe, is conducting a training camp ahead of the Amgen Tour of California which starts on Sunday the 15th of February. Today, they are going on a leisurely 105 mile ride.

I know very little about bicycle racing other than Lance has won the Tour de France many times and that Floyd Landis dude losing his title to alleged drug use. Other than that, I have no idea who most of these guys are. Thankfully, Lance is wearing a different color outfit than the rest of the team. It would be impossible to pick him out of the pack otherwise. The whole team has the same bikes, the same outfits and the same general physique. Are these guys really human?

Arleen (who was shooting for EPA) and I were lucky to team up with Kent since he knows all the back roads of Sonoma County. We would have been totally lost. We also learned a lot about Kent’s career as we drove down windy roads towards the coast. We were treated to a mini history of stories that Kent had covered over the years. He pointed out the spot where he had to cover the kids who were murdered in their car and the little dirt road he took to cover a wildfire a few years back. He said “I did a portrait of a woman right up there a few weeks ago” as we passed a house.

The trivia wasn’t limited to things he had covered either. We learned all sorts of things about the area and the news stories that the small towns produce. The most gruesome was the one about the two kids who broke into a house near Jenner and shot an elderly couple 60 times for no apparent reason.

After driving for over an hour, we finally found a spot to shoot the riders coming up a hill. We found a hill to stand on and waited for the riders to come. We waited about 20 minutes or so before they arrived. At this point they were probably 50 miles into the ride. None of them were winded and they carried on casual conversation as they pedaled up the hill. Within seconds, they were gone. We hopped back in Kent’s company car and raced back down the hill in hopes of catching the pack one more time. After a few minutes of Arleen being quiet in the back seat I asked if she was susceptible to car sickness as Kent was whipping around the turns on the narrow winding road. She said she was fine but would let us know if that changed.

We made it to the coast and were able to find another vantage point to catch the riders one more time before heading back to Santa Rosa. They again passed us by on an uphill, none of them breaking a sweat. I don’t know how those guys do it. I was just riding in the car all day and I was tired.
Back at the hotel, a small group of bicycle racing fans waited for Lance and the team to return from their journey. The riders tried to cut through the crowd and some took detours on paths leading to the hotel entrance. I was walking to the area where they park their bikes and almost got run over by Lance. Kent had to give me a heads up. He came out of nowhere. That would have been a bummer if we crashed into each other.

A Free Lunch

Who said that there is no such thing as a free lunch? Well, it wasn’t technically lunch, but, Denny’s fed millions of people a Grand Slam breakfast today – free of charge. The chain restaurant delivered on its promise in a Super Bowl ad (which is funny as hell - Nanerpuss) to give anyone a Grand Slam breakfast for free today between 6am and 2pm at all of its stores in North America. Maybe they should have thought of this promotion during the World Series. Grand Slam? Football?

It was insane how many people were lined up at the Denny’s in Emeryville, California. I got to the restaurant at about 10:30 and the line was wrapped around the side of the building. One guy told me that he had been waiting for about an hour. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure that a free Grand Slam could compel me to forfeit an hour of my life.
I have to give the staff at this particular Denny’s credit, this event was well organized. The line was orderly and names were put on a list to make sure that people were let in at the appropriate time. Wait staff passed out deep fried doughnut balls to people as they waited. People seemed happy.
The waitresses were slammed but all of them kept their cool. They were smiling and laughing and not getting pissed off when I would get in their way, which was often. They even took it in stride that people weren’t tipping. That would tick me off.
The cooks were churning out a record number of plates with eggs, pancakes and bacon. The kitchen was a disaster. It looked like a bomb had gone off, but still worked like a well oiled machine. The cooks seemed to be on autopilot as they slung eggs and hotcakes.
People kept asking me to take their picture. I think they thought I was affiliated with Denny’s or something. The official Grand Slam photographer. One guy asked me to take a picture of him and his 80 something year-old grandma. He put his arm around her and put on his best grin just as she had shoveled a big heaping forkful of eggs in her mouth. Her hand went up immediately. The picture was delayed.
I stayed at the Denny’s for over an hour. The people just kept coming in. When I left, the line was longer than when I went in. After seeing all that grease flying in the kitchen, I bet Denny’s could have made up for the lost income by selling Tums at the register.