Jeffrey McManus

Link: San Jose Improves Its Airport; Now, Just Flights Lag – NYTimes.com
“It’s true of everything we do in San Jose — we’re overshadowed by San Francisco,” said Terry Christensen, a professor of political science at San Jose State University. “It’s a matter-of-fact, working town.”
The headline for this dumb NY Times piece lacks a certain something. [...]

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Link: The Pour – Eat Local; Drink European – NYTimes.com
A surprising number of Bay Area restaurants, including many dedicated to cooking with local ingredients, offer wine lists dominated by European bottles. What gives? Is this hypocrisy pure and simple?
“We recognize that it’s a tricky thing, and it’s a little hypocritical, but we also recognize there’s [...]

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Link: California Embroiled in a Battle Over the Budget
Each August in California, there are several givens: Succulent heirloom tomatoes will overflow in farmer’s markets. A fire will rage somewhere. And state lawmakers will fight over the budget, weeks after the deadline for its closing.
Oh, those cheeky provincials, what with their conflagrations and their succulent agriculture [...]

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Link: A Taste of ’08 in Fight to Split Electoral Votes
"Ballot measures in California have long been proxies for local politicians’ hopes and dreams — just ask Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who rode a recall petition to the Statehouse."

Dear New Yorkers attempting to cover the occasional noteworthy news story that occurs in the western United States: [...]

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Link: The City of Napa, No Longer Willing to Be Left Behind
"The city of Napa is quickly catching up with its more famous neighbors farther north, like Yountville, St. Helena and Rutherford, adding wine-tasting rooms, upscale restaurants and hotels in its drive to remake itself into something of a Yountville South."

Yes: as everyone knows, the [...]

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Link: Georgia Rule – Movies – Review – New York Times.
"’Georgia Rule,’ in which Jane Fonda washes Lindsay Lohan’s mouth out with soap, might easily have been a tepid, sudsy puddle of easy sentiment and soft comedy….Small-town values triumph over flashy, big-city California relativism, as happens exclusively (and frequently) in Hollywood movies. You’ve seen it [...]

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Link: Highway Debris, Long an Eyesore, Grows as Hazard
"By dint of its climate, size, population, lengthy growing season, increasingly long commutes and, perhaps, its casual lifestyle, California is a road-debris leader. It is also home to the country’s largest number of registered vehicles — 32 million, twice that of No. 2 Texas — and roughly [...]

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Link: California Gains Clout With Earlier Primary
"In their travels the [presidential candidates] heard about, and talked about, issues that are dominating the politics of this polyglot state: immigration, stem-cell research, protecting public lands and — reflecting the acute concern of the influential Silicon Valley software industry — the Net neutrality debate over the allocation of [...]

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Link: In an Enclave of Serious Wine Lovers, a Mesmerizing Theft
It was perhaps the most Californian of crimes. Behind the electronic gates and freshly clipped hedges of an exclusive cul-de-sac, the thieves worked in the dead of night, ignoring watches, laptops and other ho-hum booty to cart away the ultimate prize: 450 bottles of wine, [...]

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