Are Jaffa Cakes really biscuits?

Plus: how to eat jaffa cakes.

Ascii map of where I live

Why I am living in the USA

What would it take to create a Silicon Valley outside of the US? Why are Appple and Google here? It's simple according to Paul Graham. Plus the obligatory cute quote:

European public opinion will apparently tolerate people being fired in industries where they really care about performance. Unfortunately the only industry they care enough about so far is soccer. But that is at least a precedent.

Best music writer

Pound for pound, who is the best current music writer? I say it is Sasha Frere-Jones. He writes for the New Yorker, but despite that he likes pop as well (like the fabulous Girls Aloud). His blog is good too. A recent New Yorker piece talks about which British acts work in America. From an online-only followup piece:

We like the moody types, such as Radiohead, but we don’t like it when somebody says, clearly, “This bad thing happened and I have a theory as to why, and also we are from England because you can hear my weird accent and I just talked about takeaway curry and you’ve haven’t the foggiest.”

Positive article on San Francisco schools

Another positive Chronicle article that mentions Miraloma Elementary School.

Always move forwards

Green from Scritti Politti:

"It's that Bob Marley thing, remember? An NME journalist went on the road with Marley. They flew into Miami, checked their bags at the hotel and then went to the soundcheck. And afterwards the journalist said 'Are we going back to the hotel now?' and Marley said, 'No, we're going forward to the hotel.' I always liked that."

Now which cardboard box at home contains Cupid & Psyche '85?

A new play by Gavin Kostick

Kostick's new production, Olive Skin, Blood Mouth is a loose adaptation from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The play explores major themes of love, greed, war and loss. The cast are unleashed into the wild and enact a physically engaging and challenging drama.

My Top Ten Bookshops

Two interesting pieces on independent bookstores. Can they survive? This Village Voice piece is pessimistic, while this Guardian survey thinks there are still niches. In San Francisco A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books is for sale, and the Berkeley Cody's is set to close.

Like record shops, bookshops used to be valuable and important places. You could judge a neighbourhood by whether it had a bookshop. Before the net, bookshops were the gateway to information.

And so, my Top Ten bookshops:

1. Compendium Books (now closed), 234 Camden High Street, London, UK. The best left wing bookshop ever. Great music selection plus my first sightings of RE/Search and Semiotext(e).

2. Dillons (now Waterstones), Gower Street, London.
3. Stacey's in San Francisco.
4. Bookland in Chester (where you can shop in a 13th century crypt built). Maxine Reed worked there once.
5. Cody's in Berkeley. The San Francisco store is new and nice but soulless.
6. WH Smith in Chester. OK, it isn't cool but I liked it as a kid.

7. Skoob the Best Secondhand Bookshop in London (but there's not much competition). It was better before it moved to the Brunswick Centre (which featured in Blake's 7 once)
8. Green Apple a great secondhand store in San Francisco.
9. Forbidden Planet on Denmark Street, London. Now a major corporation.
10. Blackwells in Oxford and Cambridge. The best academic bookshop I have seen. Now a small chain.

Bay to Breakers 2006

This year my time in Bay to Breakers was 1:06:57 and I placed 1474th. This is better than last year (1:22:00, 6150th) but that is partly because last year I had to stop to use a portaloo. I would like to be able to do it under an hour, after all, would you want to live in a city where the Mayor is faster than you?

The only bad thing about trying to run as fast as possible is that I didn't see as many of the costumes this year. I did see the Salmon (who I love). And I did see this porcupine (?)

There seemed to be fewer bands and soundsystems this year. Most of them seem to play classic rock and funk which goes well with running.

Frank Chu was there of course.

As well as someone in costume as Frank Chu:

There are some quite elaborate constructions:

As it is San Francisco there were some political jokes, like this:

and this:

Quite a nice set of pictures here.