Took a walk down to Barnes and Noble in Jack London. Decided to snap a few pics along the way.

Here's a few shots of the area right outside of B&N.

Next took a walk down to check out the new Jack London Market. Last shot is of Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon near the base of the Jack London Market; an old school bar - 126 years old to be exact!

Here are some shots of the new Jack London Market itself. Still not yet open for business as the economy has derailed some of the tenants that were hoping to move in this summer. As such, final interior work has been greatly delayed as the landlords figure out who is going to occupy the lower market floors, as well as the upper office space. When we first were looking at office space a year ago, word was that office space would top $4 per square foot. Fast forward a year later, that number is down to about $3 but still no takers. One of the reasons is that they want to rent large blocks of space (25K minimum) instead of opening it up to smaller tenants. I give them another 3 months before that attitude and the price changes.

Exterior shots of the Northern side including shots from the top of the stairs.

Eastern side with the roll up doors for food vendors to bring in their goods.

The interior of the ground floor where all the small market vendors will be situated.

Shots of the Amtrak station and walking bridge across from the Eastern side.

Southern side of the building. Third shot is of an art piece done by Roger Stoller, a Silicon Valley product designer turned sculptor.

Western side of the building with a similar set of stairs to the Northern side.

Interior shots of the second floor. This is where the many restaurants and coffee shops will be. As you can see, very unfinished.

We were visiting friends yesterday in the South Bay for dinner and a movie. We ended up hanging out at Santana Row before the movie (specifically for Pink Berry). I'm actually quite amazed at how many people were there eating, drinking, shopping, etc. Guess the recession hasn't really hit Santana Row that much. I've noticed attendance at other mix-use malls like Emeryville's Bay Street has gone down compared to a few years ago.
 
I was thinking how much this place reminded me of a Vegas theme hotel, specifically the Venetian. Maybe it was the live music, the promenade, or the formulaic restaurant/bar/clubs. Actually, it was probably all the girls in skimpy dresses sloppily/drunkenly coming out of the bars.

If you want hilarious, intelligent writing then look no further.
 

The news regarding $165 million in bonuses paid to AIG executives has been making the rounds. A lot of people are trying to come up with solutions on how to get back some or all of that money. There's a lot of legal back and forth about whether it's even possible or that doing so would hurt AIG by having "good" executives leave (are there not a lot of "good" executives currently out of work that couldn't fill their spots?). Since I'm a solutions oriented guy, I have a suggestion that might solve everyone's issues. Just reduce the next bailout payment by $165 million. Believe me, $165 million may sound like a lot but compare that to the billions we've given AIG so far, it's really not that big of a deal. More than anything, it's a public relations issue and not an operations issue. So to soothe the public's concern, just deduct the bonus amount from the next payment and call it a wash. It'll be a lot easier than lawsuits and grand standing but maybe to all the politicians the publicity was all they cared about.

UPDATE: More craziness has insued.  From a special surtax to executives allegedly being asked to commit ritual suicide.  Again, in my opinion, it's an opportunity for certain politicians to cash in publicity-wise on the outrage by the taxpayers.  However, towards the end of the article, there is mention that the Treasury would try to restructure the next bailout payment to recoup the bonus amount.  That's probably the most frictionless way to do it.

In Las Vegas for a couple of days for LeadsCon 2009 at the Mirage. We're staying at Paris. Got a couple of free rooms for the team. It's crazy to see LV so empty. Believe me, there's a reason they gave me free rooms (I'm no baller).

Last month, I wrote a post about California's absurdly high unemployment rate (9.3%). Today, news is released that the unemployment rate is now up to 10.1%. I guess my hope that last month was the bottom was wrong. Another thing wrong was my calculation of how many people were actually unemployed. I originally said 3.5 million Californians were out of work (9.3% multiplied by the population of California or 35M). However, it seems the EDD calculated the number for January as 1.7M and the number for February as 1.8M. What I should have done was multiplied the unemployment rate not by the total population but by the labor force. Still, 1.7M and 1.8M people not working is a huge number.

This is a great video. Created by Jonathan Jarvis and on his website www.crisisofcredit.com. Check it out and send him a donation!

By the way, I just finally figured out how to embed tags within my post via the subject line.  Also, gotta give much props to Posterous for making embedding video so easy.  I just put the URL of the Vimeo video in the email body and bam, there it goes.  Used to take me a while to embed YouTube videos just right when I tried blogging on my own platform.