I go to a few concerts every year. Let me re-phrase that. I get dragged to a few concerts every year by my wife. Though I'm not against live music, my wife is the far bigger fan and I'm happy to accompany her. We recently saw The Shins at the Fox Theater in downtown Oakland. I have to admit, the two old-time venues in Oakland (The Fox and The Paramount) both look pretty darn good after their restoration. Specifically, the uniqueness and historic feel to both theaters is a win for the city. Almost every performer I've seen at either of these places, goes out of their way to comment on how beautiful the interior is. I'm not saying places like The Independent or The Fillmore don't have their own charm and rich history but there's a certain blandness to the interior of those venues. Stepping into the Fox or Paramount is like taking a step back in time to when the Oakland nightlife was more vibrant. Let's hope their restorations echo into the surrounding areas and bring Oakland's downtown back to the good old days.
 
Pardon the poor photo qualities. The iPhone camera leaves much to be desired in low-light situations.

10:14pm - Oakland, CA - 86F. All the windows are open including our sliding door to the balcony. My cat is parked right in front of the screen door. Too bad he can't take his sweater off.

So the wife and I were helping our friends Rich and Melinda of Stage Left Cellars yesterday during the 2nd Annual Passport to the East Bay Wine Trail organized by the East Bay Vintner's Alliance. We had a great time being on the other side of the table and met hundreds of really interesting folks on the tour. Stage Left Cellars is new to Oakland having moved up from Paso Robles in January and joins a ton of great wineries right here in Oakland and the neighboring cities of Berkeley, Alameda, and Emeryville. It's great to know there's a thriving community of small independent wine makers within 10 miles of us and we'll absolutely support them in the future. Thanks again to Rich and Melinda for letting us take part in the event!

Doing some work on the balcony today. It's a really nice day to be outside (especially with my balcony mate). We were hanging out with Rich and Melinda yesterday and they were remarking how it snowed in Seattle a few days ago. I guess we're pretty spoiled here in Oakland this time of year.

I recently got off veggie (had a couple of make-good days). One of the first places I headed to was Vien Huong in Oakland. After reading fellow Posterous-er Maggie Cheung's post about ramen, I was seriously craving noodles. My comment on Maggie's blog was that I'm still looking for a good ramen place in the Bay Area. However, for hu tieu (or ho fun for my Chinese readers), I stopped looking about 25-30 years ago. This was the place that my parents took me when I was a kid, this was the place I cut class and took BART all the way from El Cerrito for, this was the place I took dates to and if I noticed they didn't want to eat here more than once week I quickly dropped, this is the place my wife and I eat at most frequently, and this is the place I'll take my future children to eat every weekend. I won't go into detail regarding the food. Suffice it to say, it's good and I pretty much never eat hu tieu anywhere else save at my mom's. And lest you think I've overhyped the place and you end up going there and feel disappointed, that's ok. That means you won't come back and they'll be less of a wait for us regulars. If you do go, it's light on service and cash only.