– Carl Bidleman

Natalie Zee Drieu is the Senior Editor of Craft magazine and spends way too much time online. But when Doug invited her to log off and come outside, she picked one of her favorite places to play…San Francisco’s beautifully rejuvenated waterfront near the historic Ferry Building…and brought her terminally cute dog, Lulu, along for the fun. Good choices. To watch the video, “click to play” beneath the photo.

Take a little break and consider northern California’s Mt. Shasta.

Photo by Stacy Geiken

Click here for the 6:31 video version of this vacation.

– Doug McConnell

Yesterday morning I joined thousands of other people in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for the California Academy of Science’s annual “Run Wild” 5K and 10K run and goofy costume contest. “Run Wild” is a fund-raiser for the Academy which is building an amazing new facility in the park, the largest “green” public museum in the world. It’ll be open in October 2008 and we’ll have some behind-the-scenes stories here and on my television series Bay Area Backroads on KRON Television.

My “Run Wild” role, as it has been for the past fourteen years or so, was “Grand Marshal.” Sounds really important, but it’s entirely focused on having a good time and lots of laughs with the costumed runners and comes with absolutely no real power. Do you remember Marshal Tito? Now he had real power. My marshaldom comes and goes without any fanfare or notice. But there’s always next year, and I urge you to show up on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving for a good time for a good cause and a year from now you’ll probably be able to go in the new building and see exactly what you’ve supported. You’ll be impressed.

Downieville, CA photo by Stacy Geiken

All of this got me to think about tradition and history, and the Academy has both. Its legacy stretches back to the decades immediately after the Gold Rush. California in fact has quite a bit of fascinating history that it honors and celebrates in many ways and in many places. If you’re looking for historic spots to visit on video and/or in real life check out the stories in OpenRoad.TV’s history category. Click on history in the column right next to this blog.

– Doug McConnell

It’s the day after Thanksgiving and the weather here in the Bay Area is nothing short of spectacular. Bright blue skies, a gentle warmish wind and fabulous visibility. I’ll get outside a little bit today but too many chores will keep me from adventuring around the neighborhood the way I’d like. I’d love to be on foot, on a bike, on a horse, in a kayak….somewhere….anywhere….exploring and enjoying the outdoors. But in that responsibilities call and I’m chained to imposing tasks, I’ll have to simply imagine the outdoors and plan for another day. We’ve got a pretty good menu for imagining in the column next to this blog. Click on the active adventure category, for example, and it’ll take you to a host of stories from around the West. Join me and go for a virtual video adventure today and a real one tomorrow.

Doug has a delightful chat with Mindy Roberts, author of The Mommy Blog, and hears about her notion of a perfect day around the San Francisco Bay.

Click to play

– Doug McConnell

We are very lucky to have some extraordinary people adding their knowledge, insights, humor and passion for travel to OpenRoad.TV. One of them is the increasingly legendary Janice Nieder. She does wonderful work for many good causes, knows the food scene of Northern California like the back of her hand and is firmly committed to trotting the globe in search of culinary and cultural adventures. Not only that, Janice is very quick and funny in person and a delight to read. She just got back from a taste of the real Morocco. If you can’t get to Africa immediately, or even if you can, here’s her report. Read on.

Thanks, Janice.

— Janice Nieder

After a week long cooking class where I learned how to make world’s best Bastilla, Couscous, and Tajine….(if I do say so myself!) in a gorgeous riad, (a private home turned into boutique hotel) conducted by a top local chef, in exotic Fez (Check out this and
other wonderful cooking vacations at www.mediterranean-kitchens.com), I came home dying for some All-American Food and immediately went to try the new organic Fish & Farm restaurant that had opened in my absence. (review to follow next week)

However, I really got hooked on Moroccan cuisine and at the moment am too busy to cook my own…so was happy to find Tajine, my fave Moroccan restaurant in S.F. It’s a no-frills, inexpensive spot on Polk street where the chef/owner cooks down-home Casablanca “soul” food. Start with the mezze of salads, and then perhaps a kebab or couscous….but whatever you do you must share an order of the Bastilla-baked fillo dough stuffed with chicken, almonds, egg and topped with powdered sugar and cinnamon. It’s almost as good as mine!

Tajine
1338 Polk Street SF, CA 94109.
(Between Bush and Pine),
San Francisco

– Doug McConnell

Carl Bidleman and I recently interviewed David Ibsen for our new video blog series, “Life Outside the Box,” which premiered on November 5th with David Pescovitz and the Musee Mechanique in San Francisco. David was delightful and he gave us some excellent tips about exploring the lovely seaside community of Cambria, just south of Big Sur along the California coast. David spends a lot of time in Cambria, and understandably so.

Photo: Robert Holmes Cal/Tour

Thinking of Cambria, a haven for plein-air artists, reminds me of Hearst Castle just up Highway One a couple of miles to the north. These days, William Randolph Hearst’s hilltop castle, slowly constructed for more than 30 years (and never fully completed) is a California State Park and is open for all of us commoners to visit on tour. Check it out right here and get there whenever you can. If you’ve never been, you’ll be amazed, astounded and totally entertained, if you’ve been once, go twice or more because there are many different tours offered and many faces to the Castle and its extraordinary grounds.

William Randolph Hearst was the grandest and most flamboyant media titan of his time. In this era of Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone and mega-media consolidation, it’s instructive to turn the clock back a century to see what Hearst and others were up to. Was the news always fair and balanced? Not necessarily. Did the media sometimes cheer-lead us into preemptive wars? Remember the Maine. The more things change, the more they seem to remain the same. The Castle raises many questions, and for me at least, some remain unanswered. I’ve always wanted to know who did all the dusting. Next time, I’ll have to ask.

– Doug McConnell

Those of us who work on OpenRoad.TV are always clear about a couple of things.

First, we always have and always will keep a big and insurmountable barrier between editorial content and advertising. Nobody can pay us to do a story about them or their institution. We follow old-fashioned journalistic standards in our work. We choose what stories we want to do, what tips we want to give and what opinions we want to have. We can’t and won’t let anyone’s money influence our editorial decisions. We believe our value to you is in our independence, integrity and credibility. We want to be a source you can trust and we want you to pass along your best and most credible stories, tips and suggestions, too.

The second thing we’re absolutely certain of is that I’m not the star here. I’m just the lucky guy who gets to meet the real stars of our videos almost every day. Our job has always been to find the bright, fascinating, funny and passionate people who have stories to tell about places they know and love, and who have good information and interesting ideas to share. Our collective talent at OpenRoad is our ability to find these people and then get out of their way. It’s not about me, it’s about them and they fill this website. Andrea Mead Lawrence, the first American woman to win two gold medals in the winter Olympics, and a defender of the Sierra Nevada. Keller Laros, who taught me how to scuba dive years ago and has a passion for seeing and caring for manta rays off the Big Island of Hawaii. Helen Smith, who has spent much of her adult life interpreting and restoring a Scandinavian retreat on the shore of Lake Tahoe, Vikingsholm. And Foggy Gomes, who volunteered for a lifetime to keep the fragile village of Mendocino safe from fire. They are the stars of this show and we urge you to join them.

– Carl Bidleman

David Allen Ibsen is a San Francisco-based marketing guru and author of 5 Blogs Before Lunch. When he’s not online, David loves to spend time in the coastal community of Cambria, California. The beauty of the town and it’s surrounding environment has inspired David to self-publish several books of his photographs of the area through a company he advises, blurb. In this episode, David talks with Doug about Cambria, photography and his dog Gracie.

– Doug McConnell

Islands have closed. Beaches are contaminated. Fisheries are shutdown. Birds are soiled. Tempers are short. Fingers are pointed. Hearts are broken. Nearly 60,000 gallons of oil follow the currents around San Francisco Bay and out through the Golden Gate into the Gulf of the Farallones. Prime wildlife habitats are under assault and it’s not at all clear how far the catastrophe will reach and how long its consequences will last.

Photo: Carl Bidleman

I don’t claim to have any great insights. But I recommend a number of organizations to you and you may know others you’d like to post here as well. I’m a big fan of the San Francisco Bay Keeper and the worldwide network of bay and water keepers. Locally, Save the Bay and The Bay Institute are fine and knowledgeable institutions which advocate for the understanding and protection of the entire bay and its far-flung watershed. I’m sure the Marine Mammal Center, Wildcare in Marin, and the Peninsula Humane Society are good sources of information, too.

If I weren’t so wrapped up in helping build OpenRoad.TV, I’d be much more involved in trying to figure out, as a reporter, how all of this happened and what could have been done to prevent or at least corral the spill. As a citizen, I’m reserving judgment until more facts are in but I am stunned and amazed at how poorly we were prepared for a spill. We have millions upon millions of gallons of oil and other hazardous materials coming and going through the Bay every day. This small body of water is one of the busiest in the world and one of the most vulnerable to the slightest human or technological failings. We’ve had spills here before. Did no one see this coming? Why was there not an instant response from all of the affected communities and agencies? Oil in the Bay, in huge or small amounts, should be an immediate “all hands on deck” emergency, but it surely doesn’t appear as if it were treated that way.

I covered the Exxon Valdez tragedy in 1989. The ship ran aground on Bligh Reef in calm weather. The oil seeped into the sea but could have been contained for several days had there been an adequate response capability. By the time serious oil containment efforts were underway, the weather had changed. The winds blew, the seas became rough and the currents carried the oil and their awful effects far and wide for hundreds of miles. The damage was done. People were left with the sad chores of counting dead animals, saving a few and uselessly and perhaps harmfully scrubbing rocks and sterilizing beaches. It was an exercise in near futility.

The San Francisco Bay spill looks to me like a microcosm of the Exxon Valdez calamity. Human error compounded by inadequate response. Those who depend upon the sea, mammals, birds, fish and fishers are left to bear the burden. Those of us who love Angel Island, Alcatraz, Marin Headlands and the beaches, wetlands and waterways in this region are left with broken hearts.