Tuyen's Blog

Jack London Market changes plans

The developers originally planned to open a public market in the building’s interior similar to the ones in San Francisco’s Ferry Building and Seattle’s Pike Place Market, but are now leaning toward attracting food manufacturing tenants to fill the space.
via bizjournals.com

The news of the Jack London Market seems to be the secondary story in this piece (though Haven is quite good and deserves much kudos). Sad to see that the dream of having a Ferry Building style market place in Jack London is going away. However, looking at the abandoned first floor of the building for the past 3 years has been a bit of a downer so I'd be glad to see anybody occupy that spot. If they plan to bring folks like Miette in with their baking operations and small store front, it could actually work out to be something similar to the original idea.

It was a pretty ambitious plan to begin with. Without the necessary foot traffic, it would have been pretty difficult for any market style business to thrive. Had they been able to rent out all of the office space above the market, it could have worked. Hopefully once/if that space is taken, they can revisit the idea of a market style section.

Carbon neutral cafe coming to Oakland – OaklandNorth.net

One of the more interesting experiments Thompson plans on trying is SMS-based room service for the 248 residential units inside the Grand building.
via oaklandnorth.net

The Grand is a new-ish apartment complex in the Uptown area of Oakland and having a cafe room service thing might be interesting. I hope the owner can still make money given all the bells and whistles he's bringing to his business. The ultimate question will be whether the coffee tastes good or not. I'll definitely give them a shot when they open next year.

What?! Facebook acquires Blue Bottle.

Lost in the news about Facebook acquiring Gowalla is the news that Facebook has bought the mini-San Francisco/Brooklyn coffee chain Blue Bottle.
via suyashs.com

Don't know how to take this. Blue Bottle is my current go-to coffee spot. I like them because 1) they make great coffee and 2) they are an Oakland based small business. Now that they only are one of these things (and I'm not sure if the other thing will continue or not), I'm not sure I want to support a mega-corp whose other service I don't 100% agree with.

Bay Area loses another legendary innovator - Raiders owner Al Davis dead at 82

"Al Davis was unique, a maverick, a giant among giants, a true legend among legends, the brightest star among stars, a hero, a mentor, a friend."
via m.espn.go.com

This phrase would hold true for Al Davis or Steve Jobs. The Bay Area, especially Oakland, lost another legendary figure today. One of the true innovators of American sports, Al Davis forwarded the game of football and helped make it the true national pastime and possibly the biggest sport in the world. Like Steve, he had a public persona - hard nosed, unyielding, always striving for excellence - and a private one people rarely knew about - loving family man, fiercely loyal, generous. Rest in peace, Mr. Davis.

Jack London Square heats up with expansion by Sungevity and fine dining from Daniel Patterson

Double dose of good news for Jack London Square today. First was that hot solar start-up Sungevity is leasing an additional 36,500 square feet in the mostly empty Jack London Market building. Sungevity is hoping to reach 400 employees by the end of the year which will give a great shot in the arm to the local economy. Even better was Sungevity CEO, Andrew Birch's commitment to growing in Jack London Square for the foreseeable future. The second piece of good news is that Daniel Patterson of COI fame has begun construction on his new restaurant Haven (also in the Jack London Market building). It's set to open in November of this year and will provide another great fine dining option alongside Bocanova and Ecuentro. Hopefully more businesses build/relocate/expand in the area and begin to realize that it's a great place to work and play.

How Mark Ruffalo and coffee showed me the value of Twitter over Google

I went to grab a coffee this afternoon at Blue Bottle in Oakland and the barista let me know a celeb was in the area - Mark Ruffalo. I have no real opinion about him as an actor. I think I've seen two movies he was in and thought he didn't add nor took away from my enjoyment of said movies. However, I'm always curious when movies or TV shows shoot in Oakland (Moneyball, Matrix Reloaded, etc) so I went to rusty-trusty Google and typed in "Mark Ruffalo Oakland". Nothing remotely relevant came up. Tried a few variations, adjusted some search parameters (only searches within 24 hours - one week) but still nothing that explains why Mark Ruffalo was in Oakland. I then popped over to Twitter and typed in the same keywords "Mark Ruffalo" and got these results:

Screen_shot_2011-07-11_at_2

As you can see, the 5th result down mentioned Mark Ruffalo and Sungevity, a solar startup down the street. Clicked on the link and BAM!, Mark Ruffalo sitting in a Tesla Roadster wearing a Sungevity hat. Looks like he was in the area not to shoot a movie but to pop into Sungevity for something or other.

This brings up my second instance where Twitter succeeded where Google (and other methods) failed to solve a problem/query. Over the July 4th holiday, I wanted to know if Blue Bottle was open on Monday, the 4th. Calling their number didn't help because it was a standard phone greeting offering hours of service during normal weeks but not holidays. Same for their website and any search I did about Blue Bottle and the 4th of July yielded no mention of hours. I then went over to Twitter and found Blue Bottle's account and BAM!, there you go.

Screen_shot_2011-07-11_at_2

Now these are just two specific instances and of course, I still do most of my general search on Google but it's been a long time since I last found the answer to a query outside of Google. It's a death by a thousand cuts for them as Facebook, Twitter, and others start chipping away at their defenses. Google looked unassailable, much like Microsoft 10-15 years ago. Today, there's only one product of Microsoft's that I use, Office. I've switched from Windows to Mac for my hardware, Windows Mobile to iPhone for my cell, and even Exchange to Google Apps for my businesses. The endless cycle of rise and fall in tech is unrelenting and no one is immune.

A great example on why you should shop locally...

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via oaklandnorth.net

This is great news. Saves me about half an hour when going to Target by avoiding the bad I-80 traffic. It can't be overstated the impact that big box stores have on a city's bottom line. Even though Oakland is splitting the tax revenues with Emeryville, it's still substantial what one store like Target can provide. There's a lot of debate about whether a city should invite big chain stores but folks need to realize that just because a store like Target isn't in your city doesn't mean your citizens won't still travel outside the city to shop at one which means your tax revenues just went to the city next door. As a Target shopper (and former employee), I'm happy my purchases will now at least benefit the city I live in.

A few items... New offices and short AT&T stock now!

It's been a long time since my last regular post. Lots have happened since - we moved into new offices, almost went to court and got a pet that slowly learns how to talk. To recap...

Centrro moved into new offices around November-ish. Still in Jack London Square about 4 blocks from the old office. Cool building with interesting architecture. Below are some pics...

(download)

And a very inventive shelving system we built with the help of Ikea and the USPS.

(download)

As for the court thing. Our old landlords over at The Commons were refusing to return our security deposit for damages. Interestingly, not for damage to the actual suite itself but for scuff marks on the stairs. What's even more interesting is that we didn't use the stairs to move our things out since we're on the 3rd floor and would be crazy to haul our stuff down two flights of stairs when there's a perfectly good elevator. After some back and forth including a filing with small claims, they sent us a check minus some bullshit minor charges. I'm still pissed but have spent way more time on this issue than I wanted to so we're dropping the claim. For future reference, I do not recommend doing business with Equistone Partners or their building management firm LCB Associates, which showed a total lack of integrity throughout the process. Oh well, live and learn.

Lastly, when we moved into the Ironworks Building, we were a little miffed to learn that Comcast wasn't available as a data option. Basically only AT&T came into the building so we signed up for AT&T phone lines and DSL. BIG MISTAKE. First, the DSL service was horrible - completely unusable. 6MB down and less than 1MB up for 8+ computers brought everyone's connectivity to a crawl. We were using Ooma VOIP phones at the old office but switched to plain land lines to avoid data congestion but even without VOIP across the lines, the service was just way too slow. On top of everything, AT&T service is not cheap. DSL came in at about $29 a month and each of our 8 phone lines costed us about $55+. With tax and fees our monthly bill was running about $550. After much begging and pleading with our new landlords, we were able to get Comcast into the building. Nice fat 50MB down and 10MB up data connection and 8 digital voice lines. Total monthly cost? Less than $300. It blows my mind why AT&T's landline and DSL business are still around. Not only am I paying half as much for better service, AT&T customer service has got to be one of the worst I've encountered. Once my wireless contract is up, I'll be moving that over to Verizon, as well. Farewell and good riddance, AT&T.