Discussion of Firms and Life in SF/SV

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Pie??????

Pi is today. Happy Pi Day.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by NotFromHere
The reporters and cameramen all said hi to him and knew him by name.

I should hope so. A well-placed source tells me he was the sanest daily fixture outside the Scott Peterson trial. No joke.

That's a long fucking walk from the Embarcadero.

[Atticus Grinch]

Two SF lawyers just lost a bitter PR battle with a punk-ass pro per college student. FROM KENT STATE.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
I should hope so. A well-placed source tells me he was the sanest daily fixture outside the Scott Peterson trial. No joke.

That's a long fucking walk from the Embarcadero.

He lives in Oakland and takes BART to work, so maybe he just got himself a Caltrain schedule or something.

[Atticus Grinch]

Not of enough general interest for the Death Pool thread, but this feels like the end of an era locally for anyone who grew up here.

If you were a kid in the Bay Area in the 1970s, you had your clock radio set to Dr. Donald D. Rose and his intrepid traffic reporter, Jane Dornacker (also RIP). Afterwards half of us went to KYUU and the other half to KRQR, but we all had Dr. Don to start.

[Spanky]

My father used to complain that when he walked down the hallway of our house in Palo Alto that in every room all he heard was Dr. Don Rose. My dial never left 610 and I wondered why anyone used FM. In fact my parents stereo only played FM, and to me that made it useless since you couldn't listen to the Dr.

At some point I became to "cool" and "mature" to listen to the Dr. and started listening to Dr. Demento and KOME.

But up in till that time, he sure brightened up my childhood.

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by NotFromHere
There were reporters filming something on Market last Friday. The reporters and cameramen all said hi to him and knew him by name. He filled them in on some bruhaha at one of the hotels and the new picket lines.
I had never heard him talk before.

They were filming Rent, set in New York City in the '80s, in San Francisco. I'm sure it made sense to Chris Columbus.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Spanky
Dr. Demento and KOME.

Don't touch that dial . . .

[ltl/fb]

[whoops, sorry, posted before I realized I said I'd leave voluntarily.]

[NotFromHere]

Anyone see the actual Craigslist posting?

Shearman & Sterling is trying to root out the identity of someone -- it suspects a current or recent employee -- who posted a "highly offensive" message about a firm staff manager on community Web site craigslist.org.

The New York-based giant sued a Jane Doe in San Francisco Superior Court late last month based on a copy of the craigslist posting she allegedly e-mailed to the manager.

"This was a hateful and racist e-mail that verbally assaulted one of our staff members. And we have a responsibility to protect our staff and to respond appropriately," said Shearman & Sterling spokeswoman Jolene Overbeck.

A lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights in cyberspace, says suits against anonymous Internet users are common now. Most often, the plaintiffs sue for defamation for something posted on an Internet message board, then use subpoenas to try to figure out the author's identity, said Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney at the San Francisco-based nonprofit.

Shearman & Sterling's suit is a little different. Rather than focus on the posting under craigslist's Rants and Raves section, the firm is basing trespass and breach of contract claims on the e-mail its staff manager received -- at his "shearman.com" account. By sending the e-mail to a Shearman address, "Jane Doe deliberately and wrongfully misused and caused the continuing misuse of Shearman & Sterling's Internet resources," the suit contends. The firm also claims she breached a contractual promise not to use those resources -- or cause someone else to use them -- for receiving, delivering or storing e-mail that's "abusive and harassing, or hateful toward an individual … on the basis of race or sexual orientation."

"We have a clear process for following up on any activity of that sort through our HR department," said Shearman's Overbeck. "We expect that it will be resolved within the firm." Craigslist founder Craig Newmark says his company is "passionate about the Bill of Rights, but equally passionate about dealing with bad guys." "If somebody asks us to breach privacy in any case, we do insist that due process be followed," Newmark said, and that usually means a subpoena.

It's usually easy for a plaintiff in a Doe case to issue one, though the anonymous person can ask a court to quash it if they know about it, say Opsahl and Suchon Tuly, an associate at Perkins Coie who specializes in Internet law.

In Opsahl's observation, when trial judges in Santa Clara County (home to Yahoo.com and its share of Doe suits) have considered such motions, they've "widely followed" principles like those in Columbia Insurance v. Seescandy.com, 185 F.R.D 573. U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen, of the Northern District of California, wrote in that 1999 opinion that the need to provide injured parties with a forum for addressing grievances "must be balanced against the legitimate and valuable right to participate in online forums anonymously or pseudonymously."

While Opsahl said Web sites commonly alert users if they're the subject of a subpoena, he voiced concern about what might happen if someone isn't notified. "Then you have a situation where they would have a right to quash it, but no opportunity."

link here

[Atticus Grinch]

• About 50 feet away, [Gavin] Newsom was at the foot-cleaning station, rubbing down a homeless man's feet with a rag and chatting him up. Fenske noticed as she paused for a moment and shook her head in amazement.
  
  * * *
  
  The chief aide for Supervisor Chris Daly, who led a Monday hearing at City Hall critical of the mayor's homeless initiatives and called the monthly gathering needlessly redundant with existing programs, was still unimpressed.
  
  In a phone interview Thursday night, John Avalos said it was great for the volunteers to interact with homeless people, but ultimately, it was all "more like an opportunity for the mayor to showcase his policies."
  
  Link.

DALY ISCARIOT:
Woman your fine ointment, brand new and expensive
Should have been saved for the poor.
Why has it been wasted? We could have raised maybe
Three hundred silver pieces or more.
People who are hungry, people who are starving
They matter more than your feet and hair!

NEWSOM:
Surely you're not saying we have the resources
To save the poor from their lot?
There will be poor always, pathetically struggling.
Look at the good things you've got.
Think while you still have me!
Move while you still see me!
You'll be lost, and you'll be sorry when I'm gone.

[Aloha Mr. Learned Hand]

Hi all. Going to be in your general area for a family wedding in a few months and we are planning to tack on a 3-4 day mini-vacation in Napa/Sonoma on the end of it.

Would appreciate any recommendations for spas/hotels (prefer B&B's when not in a really urban area)/winery tours and other activities. Thanks in advance.

[NotFromHere]

Originally posted by Aloha Mr. Learned Hand
Hi all. Going to be in your general area for a family wedding in a few months and we are planning to tack on a 3-4 day mini-vacation in Napa/Sonoma on the end of it.

Would appreciate any recommendations for spas/hotels (prefer B&B's when not in a really urban area)/winery tours and other activities. Thanks in advance.

The coolest winery tour by far is Jarvis.
Jarvis
It is also pricey. All other winery tours pale in comparison.
Most of your "Hollywood" types stay at the Mission Sonoma for spa stuff. Apparently Cameron Diaz shows up every couple of months.

One of the coolest grounds (beautiful Zen garden) is at Ferrari Carrano. Clos Pegase has some very interesting "yard art" and has a rotating art exhibit inside the tasting room. Once there was a huge Chihuly hanging above the barrels.

Of course, there is always Calistoga for mud baths.

Can't help you out on the B&Bs since we never stay overnight. You'll probably want to go to Sonoma 1 day and Napa on the other. Restaurants are mostly in Napa.
French Laundry, Tre Vigne, Mustards (which I didn't like, but is hugely popular) and Brix.
Pick the wineries by the wines you like. Or, PM me for other details.

If you want a map of Napa wineries, check here.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Aloha Mr. Learned Hand
Hi all. Going to be in your general area for a family wedding in a few months and we are planning to tack on a 3-4 day mini-vacation in Napa/Sonoma on the end of it.

Would appreciate any recommendations for spas/hotels (prefer B&B's when not in a really urban area)/winery tours and other activities. Thanks in advance.

In terms of tasting, a lot of money has been put into "the Tasting Room experience" in Napa. These places now charge money (flat fee or by the glass) because they are tourist destinations in their own right. Some of the big-money beverage conglomerates have built recockulous French chateaux on the hills of Napa and Sonoma to make it look like they've always been there. In fact, it's all been in the past 15 years. Domaine Carneros is kind of the classic example of this --- it's like they rebuilt Vaux le Vicomte in the middle of farmland.

Very few Napa-side wineries are still doing tastings The Way It Used to Be. For old-school surrounded-by-oak-barrels style tasting, I recommend Cakebread and Grgich Hills. These are nor tours, per se, but you'll get an idea of what winery visits used to be like.

ZD makes an excellent Chardonnay. Silver Oak is good for Cabernets, and has a cool Spanish mission style tasting room. As for tours, I've heard good things about Beringer's and Mondavi's tours,* but actually the process of making wine is pretty boring in comparison to the process for making champagne. I recommend Domaine Chandon for a champagne tour. (Their tasting room is just meh.)

FWIW, they say Sonoma is a much less snooty experience --- you might actually get to talk to the vintner in the tasting room, rather than a glorified waiter. There are also places in Sonoma that still do not charge for tasting. Good luck finding anyplace in Napa that doesn't. (V. Sattui doesn't count since they found mice in the panini, and besides their wines are for shit and always have been.)

*ETA: I have also heard good things about Niebaum-Coppola but haven't personally been there. Unlike many of the other chateau tasting rooms, the Niebaum estate is legitimately old skool.

ETFA: As a native and resident I am unqualified to recommend B&Bs.

ETFFA: I agree with NFH --- Mustards sux. But be warned: you have no prayer of getting into the French Laundry.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by NotFromHere
One of the coolest grounds (beautiful Zen garden) is at Ferrari Carrano.

Agree that it's a pretty fantastic Sonoma-side estate, but it's got two strikes against it:

(1) It's in west Sonoma and WAY the hell away from anything else worth going to; and

(2) It's got the ugliest fucking label in the business. Which matters, because you shouldn't be an epicure without being an aesthete.



Odious. Unspeakable. Vile. You can't bring that to a table without vomiting.