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The new Oakland shuttle just pulled up at the stop by my office. Pretty darn convenient. Only had to wait about 5 minutes (it runs every 10 minutes or so during peak hours and 15 minutes every other time). As you can see, it looks like a standard bus and is serviced by AC Transit. Hopefully this catches on and serves its purpose of spurring more business in Downtown Oakland. Otherwise it'll be a pretty short lived experiment.

This is great news. The current issue with Downtown Oakland is that there are pockets of cool places but they aren't necessarily next to each other. Jack London Square (where Centrro resides) is up and coming while the Uptown area has its own bustling restaurant/bar scene. The free shuttle that will run up and down Broadway from JLS to Uptown (and all points in between) will help get more cross pollination of people between these two areas. Plus, it'll be a great way to move people from BART to their respective destinations. I'm toying with the idea of walking from my place in Rockridge down to Uptown and taking the shuttle the rest of the way to JLS. Would be a great way to exercise and save on gas/pollution/etc.

I may be biased because I live here but I don't know why more tech entrepreneurs don't view Oakland as a viable place to build their start-ups. It's centrally located, close to public transportation, and real estate (both commercial and residential) is less expensive than the usual start-up hotspots of San Francisco or Silicon Valley. Not to mention the fact that a lot of folks who work at tech start-ups live in the East Bay and have long commutes. I've done the East Bay to SF/SV commute before and it used to take me 45-90 minutes one way each day to get to work. Compare that to my current 10-15 minute ROUNDTRIP commute and it's a no brainer. What could you do with an extra 2-3 hours every day? Over the course of a work year (about 250 days), that's almost a full month you've wasted on the road.

Granted, Oakland has its fair share of issues. The one that usually comes up is that Oakland is perceived to be a crime-ridden city. Sure, there's crime here but like any large city there are areas where crime is high and others where it is not. I don't propose you bring your tech start-up and plop it down on Seminary and International just like I wouldn't make the Tenderloin or Hunters Point my company HQ. My first company was in what's now known as the Uptown area of Oakland, home to such little known start-ups like Pandora. We currently reside in the Jack London Square area which recently brought in Sungevity, a solar start-up.

Getting to the point of this post, I'm trying to cobble together some tech start-ups who are looking for office space in the Jack London Square area. The building we're in is newly renovated and very well maintained. We occupy a small suite but are getting to the point where we are considering more space. Conveniently, there is a larger suite across the hall that's been decked to the halls with all the latest goodies (professional cubes, CAT 6 cabling, etc). Only catch is that it's huge and much larger than we can take at this time. My grand idea is to have an informal tech cluster sharing this space. A few start-ups working in close proximity to each other, sharing ideas, mingling, etc. Plus we would offer the flexibility that a standard lease would not have - month to month, taking more space, taking less space. So if anyone out there is interested, drop me a line. Even if you're not interested, drop me a line anyway. I'm always glad to meet new entrepreneurs and share ideas.

It's a slow but nice President's day. Weather is perfect here in Oakland. About mid-60's, sunny, very light breeze.

So have a few free moments after returning from Chicago. Lots of folks have been asking for a quick breakdown on the trip. In short, it was a great trip. Chicago is a great metropolitan city with all that you would expect (great food, shopping, sites) and some things you wouldn't (very nice people and surprisingly very affordable).

We flew in to Midway on Thursday and headed straight for our hotel. We stayed at the Palmer House Hilton ($75 a night from Priceline!) on Monroe and Wabash. Super conveniently located hotel in the middle of the city. It has an L stop right outside and is only a block away from Millennium Park, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Chicago Harbor. Plus there's a 24 hour CVS across the street and a Dunkin' Donuts around the corner. Just for shits and grins, I toured a high rise condo across the street from the hotel, the Park Monroe. Super luxurious with amazing views of the water, the city, and the park. What was crazy was how cheap (relatively speaking) these were. A 2BR, 2BA 1400+ square foot unit with water and city views was selling for only $600K. The salesperson even hinted I could bid much lower and probably have my offer accepted. A comparable location in San Francisco would be the Embarcadero Plaza area just outside the Financial District and the same unit would probably sell for twice the price. Even crazier were the 1BR, 1BA 900+ square foot units which were only selling for $300K! There are condos in Oakland that are smaller and more expensive than that! I guess it just highlights how out of whack Bay Area real estate still is.

On to the food. We did our share of high-end and normal food. On the high-end side we hit Alinea and Blackbird. Both good though I have a hard time justifying the cost of Alinea. I guess it's one of those "do it once" type of places. Impeccable service and definitely high on the creativity scale. We opted for the monstrous 35+ course tasting menu (a 4.5 hour meal!). Though I definitely felt as if some of the dishes were more about the flash than the actual substance. Blackbird, on the other hand, was much more reasonable and the flavors were very good. We also hit Miller's Pub a few times. Just a no nonsense pub with very good food. It's right next to the Palmer House so we were able to sneak over whenever we had a craving for a midnight snack or drinks. They're open until 4am and seemingly always busy. Great buffalo wings and a pretty decent fish and chips. Sausages with peppers and onions was not bad and though I didn't have it, they are known for their Canadian baby back ribs.

All in all, I'd have no problem vacationing in Chicago again. If I had the dough, I'd even consider owning one of those condos and renting it out!

Taking a stroll in the old hood. Dinner at Tachibana and then dessert at Tara's Ice Cream. Really interesting flavors. I ended up getting Chocolate, Turkish Coffee, and Tasmanian Honey. Wife got Sage, Saffron, and Pink Peppercorn. I even tried Lemongrass! Not my favorite but interesting to see the experimentation.

So I'm back on the bike today. My short term schedule will be Mon, Wed, and Fri with basketball on Tues. Once I'm in better shape, I'll add Thurs to the mix. Bad news was about 15 minutes into the ride, it starts to drizzle. Not a ton of rain but enough to fog up my glasses which was a pain.

Good news though is that I found a new route to work which has fewer cars. I basically hit Webster at 51st and ride it all the way down to about 29th Street where Webster hits Broadway. I then cut over to Telegraph till it ends at about 16th Street. I went down Clay the first time around but that had its issues. Today, I went two streets over to MLK and took that all the way down to 2nd. Far fewer cars but slightly longer. Also there's a nasty little hill on Webster by the hospital. No worries though, in time, I'll be able to power through it.