Quick Links for March 3rd

Now that we got all the backlogged links out of the way, let’s get to the timely shit in today’s Quick Links!

Ready to lose all faith in the justice system? (Paywall warning)

Remember Mallard’s? They were that high end Brookside restaurant that suddenly closed amidst allegations of fucking over pretty much everybody in their path.. They even fucked over their innocent employees by giving them no warning, writing bad payroll checks, and not paying for unemployment benefits that resulted in their jilted workers being unable to collect benefits while they began their impromptu job search. Long story shot, the Sangs (Mallard’s owners) are World class pricks.

Luckily, after a long legal battle, it looks like they’re finally going to get their comeuppance. Two members of the Sang family plead guilty to unemployment insurance fraud with their sick daddy expected to follow suit. The consequence of fucking over your employees and customers in such a blatant fashion? Restitution and 5 years probation. So they have to pay back the state for all the money they withheld from them and get told to never do it again despite, you know, having a history of doing shady shit like this. And paying back the state really does nothing for the dozens of employees left jobless during a time when the economy was well on its way to the lowly status it’s attained now. Thanks justice system! If Papa Sang doesn’t do any jail time then this is a fucked up world we live in. We need to build those prison hospitals so that ailing fuck can get what should be (but probably won’t be) coming to him.

Stockton blogging is all the rage now (More paywall, sorry)

You know those lame features that always grace the front page about semi-interesting/quirky things that become infinitely less interesting when you realize it’s a wire article from some Orlando paper? Well the Record ditched that for once and actually featured something from Stockton! Today they featured local blog Evil Chef Mom, a cooking blog that I don’t visit nearly enough because I can barely make Pastaroni without fucking it up. I can’t really add much besides this half-hearted endorsement of the site, but it’s nice to see some Stockton love on the otherwise inconsequential LENS section. Matt Beckwith and Rod Villagomez can’t hog all the local blog stories. I do have to add that it’s disconcerting that Evil Chef Mom is getting heat for some of her extra curricular comments on her blog. If those people read this site, their heads would explode. Of course, that’s why I only get indirect mentions in the Record.

The day the booty died

Like many sad, lonely, socially-retarded men on the internet, I kill a lot of time on craigslist. A lot of time. I blame it on that one time I nabbed a 40-inch HD TV from the free section. More often than not I’ll take a cursory glance at the personals section. I never expect much because it’s mostly scammers and porn bots on the women’s end, but it’s always fun to check out the missed connections to see what people even lonelier than myself do when they run into a good looking person who smiles at them.

Of course, any good round of craigslisting always results in a visit to the venerable casual encounters sections. For women, this means the comedy gold mine that is a bunch of ugly dudes living at home posting poorly worded pleas for pussy while posting pictures of what they claim is their dick. For guys, well, we get more porn bots. And the occasionally heavy set woman looking for her very own fat chick thriller. I’ve personally never answered one of those ads because I’d prefer my penis not rot off, but I still found the entire section to be a decent time killer.

But then something happened, no postings have appeared in the w4m section since February 18th. I’m aware there’s one guy who gets really pissed as if he just learned craigslist isn’t always on the up and up who started flagging every scammer and working girl on there, but even he can’t flag posts that fast. So the only conclusion is that Stockton chicks just aren’t horny anymore. At least not to the point where they’ll post spread eagle shots with the caption “come and get it” to random strangers. And that’s just sad. So let’s get to the bottom of this together. The future of hilarious, grainy, and revealing cell phone pictures taken by people who have no business taking pictures with that little amount of clothing on depends on it!

Quick Links for whatever day I happen to post this

I sincerely apologize for the erratic posting lately. I pride myself on posting multiple times a week and I haven’t even been doing that lately. It’s mostly laziness on my part, but there’s also jack shit going on. Plus, I’ve been gearing up in real world land for my upcoming vacation and as we all know real world land gets priority over this place. But before I completely check out with visions of my drunken visionquest dancing through my head, let’s finish up last week’s news with these thrice delayed Quick Links!

Here we go again (Paywall warning. Non-paywalled at Siders’ blog)

So yeah, the budget still blows. Luckily carving out $14 million should be a little easier than $31 mil. Especially since last year’s cuts (and department restructuring) have kind of simplified where to cut.

If the city were a person with leprosy, last year we were covered in sores and we carefully cut around them but still generally kept it together. This year, while there are less open sores, there’s also less area for them to cover. So instead we’ll just have to cut the offending appendage off. Sure, that’s a gross analogy, but considering we’re discussing shuttering two libraries, it’s apt.

But before we get to turning City services into the Black Knight from Monty Python, we have months of posturing to deal with! Yes, it’s time to dig in and essentially beg the PD and Fire unions to extend the expiring labor concessions that account for a little over half the budget overage (Not to mention FD’s over the current budget by another $4 mil). Of course, like last time, they’re being total dicks about it.

I would love to empathize with them because they do great work that often goes unappreciated (especially in the case of PD. Although ramping up enforcement like they appeared to do the other day isn’t going to win them any supporters), but it’s fairly cut and dry here. This isn’t like other organizations (that will remain nameless) that make cuts based on profit margins to appease higher ups. We have no money. We’d love to pay PD as much as they wanted and have 80 cops for every 1,000 residents, but it’s belt tightening season and everybody has to make cuts. Well, unless you’re the Fire Department and cut a deal with a lame duck Council that didn’t give a shit.

The point is, the city’s finances are very public. They’re not trying to pull the wool over PD’s eyes to make a quick buck. They said it in the City Council meeting, even if shut down everything but PD and Fire we’d still have a budget problem. Of course, in that scenario we would assume that counts as everybody else taking their lumps and FD and PD would stick to their word and negotiate cuts right? Hey, why are you laughing?

Nosky Goneski (Paywall warning. Non-paywall here)

Well, the City Council has once again pushed away someone who helped drag us out of the legal hellhole Mark Lewis and the Podesto Council put us in by questioning pretty much everything they do and have ever done. This time it was City Attorney Ren Nosky who decided to call it a day and will return to private practice in March.

Now, Nosky wasn’t perfect, he was accused of sexual harassment way back in April of 2009 (although we questioned the veracity of those as far as we know unresolved claims), he also backed the flawed legal language in that whole Maxim’s debacle, and he played a prominent role in the whole Johnny Ford debacle advising the City Manager Gordon Palmer.

Of course, it’s easy to point out the bad stuff because that’s the shit that gets reported on. Plus, it’s the stuff that we remember. We forget the shit that’s either boring or we don’t understand, but Nosky had a full plate to deal with on most occasions. As noted in Siders’ article (and earlier in this post), upon arrival he was charged with cleaning up Mark Lewis’ mess which included dealing with Arena developers that that eminent domain thing that popped back up fairly recently. Not to mention he helped negotiate whatever that “green” General Plan thing that was all the rage last year.

But perhaps the thing that gained most of our respect was being the guy who has to explain everything to the City Council, a job that increased in difficulty in recent years with the new Council pretty much questioning everything he said. The most cited instance of this being the time the City Council rebuked Nosky’s advice to pay for legally required legal assistance to Palmer and HR head Dianna Garcia for their roles in that pesky Johnny Ford thing while simultaneously approving legal counsel for themselves. Then, an independent lawyer came by and said “No really, you have to pay for this” and Nosky’s been mentally choking Dale Fritchen with his eyes ever since (well, at least in my mind).

So while it hasn’t been the cleanest of roads for Nosky, as he said in the Siders article, he left it cleaner than when he got there. Which is really all you can ask, even if that’s not really saying much considering it couldn’t have gotten much worse. I hope he gets a cooler party than Pinkerton got. And I can’t wait to laugh at the new guy as he gets asked a bunch of credibility insulting questions about medical marijuana.

Quick Links for Feb. 23rd

Good Lord it was a packed weekend. Extortion details dropped, the misery index seems to have adverse affects on Mike Fitzgerald, and Canadians! Let’s cover all the hilarity in today’s Quick Links!

Welcome our new Canadian overlord you hoser! (Non-paywalled here)

Remember last week when we said no news happens in February? Despite the events of the past couple days, that still rings true. While the sale of the Thunder brings the end of the City’s ill-advised bid to appear on the new TLC show “Flip This Team”, the actual sale isn’t exactly exciting because it’s essentially business as usual for the Thunder. The new owner is keeping the entire front office in tact and, as we said a year ago, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that the team would move when sold. So essentially all that’s changed is the signature on the checks. Of course, that didn’t stop The Record from commissioning two front page articles, video, multiple blogs, and live Twitter updates about a press conference that essentially repeated everything David Siders had already reported on the previous day. You know February is a slow news month when hockey news gets dragged out over multiple days. But hey, puff pieces about how much of a working class, salt of the Earth, blue collar man the new owner is won’t write themselves. Good Lord, all they were missing to push that angle was an impromptu Styx concert (we also would have accepted Rush performing “Working Man”).

On the bright side, instead of having some entitled rich kid owner spending daddy’s money as the Thunder owner we have an oil man in charge now (albeit his daddy’s oil). For this site’s sake I hope he turns out to be a Canadian Jerry Jones just for entertainment value. I’m pulling for a ridiculously large HD Jumbotron that blocks a majority of the cheap seat sightlines to be constructed in the Arena any day now. Hey, it’s better than a fucking sound tent blocking our view.

Sadly, since he is from up north, he’ll probably just be a folksy pushover that rarely visits. On the bright side we should be able to swing that merchandising deal in our favor now by politely asking over some Molson’s and a shot of maple syrup.

I will never look at the movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks the same again (paywall warning)

(Ok, before we get started, how many blogs do you know reference 40-year old Angela Lansbury movies? How many of you know Angela Lansbury did movies? The lesson is, I have a wealth of useless movie knowledge and am incredibly white.)

So we finally found out what my commenters have been telling me for weeks now. Sam Fant is a wuss. He’s also allegedly a freemason, bisexual, friends with cops, easily frightened by innocuous photos of himself, and not very good at making gay jokes. Either way, this Murrilo/Reyes/Fant “extortion” story has “typical Stockton drama” written all over it.

It turns out that the photo activist Ramiro Reyes was carrying around at all times like it was a picture of his child was just a picture of Fant talking with some cops outside of the Flamingo club. He wasn’t doing anything illegal, but according to Reyes it “doesn’t look good.” Which begs the question, what the fuck is up with Stockton and photos that don’t depict any illegal activity causing people trouble lately?

Of course, the bigger question is why Fant saw thought he needed to take action after Reyes requested some political favors in exchange for not making a fool out of himself in front of everybody. Sure, it pissed him off, but he wasn’t thinking out of the box. If he really wanted to get back at him the best course of action would have been to call his bluff.

If Fant’s anything like me he has plenty of drunk photos floating around. Hell, my current Facebook picture is me passed out clutching a beer can in a Lodi hotel room. I would have told Reyes to go for it and then grabbed a front row seat while Reyes busted out the slide projector at the City Council meeting (or whatever his master plan was). It would have been great. Reyes could have gone all doom and gloom only to pull out a picture of Fant smoking a stog outside the Flamingo Club while talking to a security guard or something. It would have been hilarious. But no, Fant had to go ask Dale Fritchen for his expert advice on embarrassing pictures.

Amazingly enough, he didn’t echo our advice to post them on Facebook, instead he came up with the solution that wastes the most tax dollars. When everybody is bitching about the diminished number of cops on the street, it’s probably a bad time to play FBI and wear a wire so you can incriminate a guy who clearly has a few screws loose. I understand Fant’s pissed, but if Reyes didn’t have anything incriminating doesn’t that kind of eliminate him as a threat? Quit using our tax dollars to fund eliminating your minor annoyance Mr. Fant. Just tell a clearly crazy man to piss off and go about your day so he can get back to being the World’s worst blackmailer.

Now you’ve just given him and his fringe political friend a chance to hurl wild accusations at you. Which is fine, I enjoy a good broomstick sodomy accusation as much as the next guy, but it’s wasting tax dollars. The guy isn’t a threat, he’s just a sad old man trying desperately to maintain some sort of relevance. Which is otherwise known as “The Tocan Nguyen special”.

Oh, and this guy (Last letter. And yes, letters to the editor being paywalled is dumb considering the readers write them) is insane. The coverage has been perfectly balanced and that mugshot doesn’t resemble Morales at all. Even if it did, it’s not like the Record can control that. They would have printed it even if he looked like the love child of Hilter and Bin Laden.

What a shitty situation

I have nothing really to add to this story. I just really wanted to use this headline. But I guess I should add that my most prolific pot smoking friend has IBS and it does jack shit for her shits. So take that for what it’s worth.

It’s that time of year again…

February sucks. Not for the whole cliche Valentines Day reason, but because shitelse goes on during the shortest month of the year. How do we know this? People are pretending the Winter Olympics are actually interesting. It’s like we decided to ignore that the Winter X Games just happened. Essentially, February is fucking annoying. Last year we spent February fighting the idea that Stockton was miserable, highlighting Lori Gilbert’s Grandpa fetish, and we watched in horror as Mike Fitzgerald nickel and dimed his way through the budget deficit. Some things never change.

Yes, 2010 is shaping up to be a lot like 2009. As a city we’re once again forced to make tough decisions to bridge a budget gap and as news of the deficit is just sinking in, David Siders comes by to let us know that none of our publicly owned venues are making any money. Of course, as Siders notes, they were never intended to make money. They’re just losing more money than we initially thought they would. And when you juxtapose two stories like those naturally people are going to take both of those stories and try and fashion some sort of makeshift solution from them.

Mike Fitzgerald twice took a shot at this last year. (and probably more than that). First he floated the idea Stockton should declare bankruptcy despite not actually being bankrupt so we could open up those pesky IFG/Thunder contracts. This horrible idea was almost immediately discredited when Dale Fritchen actually brought it up in a meeting, killing a bond sale that would have solved Stockton’s budget problems for a whole year. Sure it would have been a temporary solution but this year we have to make even deeper cuts to break even. If Fritchen doesn’t bring up an out of touch columnist’s shitty idea we’re making last year’s cuts this year and not as much since this year’s deficit is roughly half of last year’s.

But if that wasn’t enough, Fitz then saw the news that Michael Reinsdorf was putting the Thunder and the corpse of the Lightening up for sale and decided it was another great opportunity to solve the Arena losses problem. You all know the story by now (especially since we’re still pursuing a version of it), Fitz wants us to buy the teams and become Gods of Thunder or something because it would allow us to rewrite those pesky contracts that make those teams so valuable. This coming from a guy who was pissed the City was spending money on complimentary coffee.

But that was all last year, we’ve covered that shit. His great idea this year? Fuck it, let’s just shut it all down! Which would be an interesting prospect if it wasn’t the dumbest idea of all time.

Obviously he’s not advocating shuttering all the venues we spent most of the last decade building/renovating, he’s just wondering outloud what would happen if they decided to close one or two of them. Fortunately for me he did our work for us and got Ren Nosky to explain why the current lease situation makes the entire premise of yesterday’s column a bad idea. Namely, we’re contractually obligated to provide those venues to the Thunder and Ports and breaking that obligation would cost more than what those venues lose annually. The Bob Hope/Fox doesn’t have any allegiances to a sports team, but they have history and any serious talk about closing that place is just a thinly veiled attempt to extort more money out of Alex Spanos to save the venue he had named for his friend.

All of those issues (aside from the Spanos thing) are the reasons Fitzy presents as to why his idea won’t work (which makes you wonder why he went through with the column in the first place), but he ignores the biggest one of them all. Closing all of those venues would only save us $3 million. I hate to use the word “only” in front of millions, but if we cut all of those venues and just let them rot we still have $11 million to account for and a bunch of pissed off taxpayers who’d rightfully be pissed they’re being charged and Arena tax for a venue we can’t even use.

I know I’ll be saying it a year from now but if I have to repeat it every year until the City decides to stop being coy, demolishes the whole area, and builds a massive downtown casino (because, you know, they’re all about the money) I will, publicly owned entertainment venues are not moneymakers. That’s not their job. Hell, their job isn’t even to entertain us. It’s to get people downtown. Consider the Arena a $2 million chunk of powerbait. The revenue those venues generate can’t be measured by operating costs alone.

Of course, it would help if IFG booked shows anyone wanted to go to. But that’s another post for another day. I guess what I’m trying to say is Mike Fitzgerald needs to stop trying to fix Stockton. It’s not as broken as he thinks it is, and even if it was, his solutions are always the equivalent of using a band aid to treat a decapitation. I can’t wait until next year when he suggests we just sell all of our venues off to private investors.

Finally, the Real Stocktonian of 2009

Sometimes this site is more of a burden than a fun little hobby, picking a Real Stocktonian this year was one such case. The criteria for this prestigious award is undefined and that’s by design. The only real rule we have is it has to be awarded for accomplishments that occurred during the past calendar year. One of the things that pisses me off most about the actual Stocktonian of the Year is that the recipient usually hasn’t done anything that year besides play canasta at the country club and that’s total bullshit. Anything “of the Year” should be of that year, not a freaking lifetime achievement award.

But I’ve begun to understand why they do it that way because, even with only one simplistic rule, picking one person/story/thing out of all the shit that went down in 2009 was really tough.

2009 saw a largely brand new City Council that spent the majority of 2008 campaigning against the then current council and pretty much all City politics as a whole. Then 2009 came around and they realized they actually had to work with the people they just spent the past 6 months campaigning against. That situation had to be more awkward than the ending of Fat City. No wonder the “Freshman Four’s” biggest accomplishment was making Gordon Palmer spell out every budget option, you can’t exactly get much done when you’re trying to explain why you called your peers clueless assholes during the previous year.

Johnny Ford dominated the headlines for a good portion of 2009 and we gave him some consideration but nothing he did seemed “real”. His whole argument just seemed completely convoluted, mostly because he never actually claimed he was discriminated against. He just let his friends fight his battle for him. Stockton’s a town of fighters, hiding behind your more articulate friends isn’t fighting. He was just along for the ride and came off like a giant, whiny pussy.

Last weekend I thought I had this post all sewn up. I thought about the story that brought me the greatest sick sense of joy in 2009 and immediately thought of Paragary’s attempt to quietly sneak out of town. Something former Redevelopment head Steve Pinkerton swore would never happen. I actually ran with this one for a while and wrote most of the post. I even came up with a cute nickname for Paragary and his BFF Mike Fitzgerald (Fitzgeragary) and was going to co-award Real Stocktonian to them and their cozy, conflict of interesty relationship.

But as the days went on, something felt off about that post. I’d research more, tweak it, go back for links, and the whole thing just seemed forced. I slowly realized that post resembled pretty much every anti-Paragary’s rant I’ve written over the past year and a half. I feared I was becoming some sort of sad self-parody, and I don’t want to be that. That’d make me Mike Fitzgerald. So I’d get frustrated, turn off my computer and go drink and try and forget I ever decided to start this damn website. Hey, you have your creative process, I have mine.

After about a week of this I finally realized what was missing from the Fitzgeragary post. I was forcing it. It wasn’t organic. It wasn’t real. Stocktonians pride themselves on being themselves. Stocktonians are real motherfuckers and make no apologies for it. So I began thinking, which local newsmaker was unapologetically themselves regardless of the consequences? And the light bulb finally lit up. So without further stalling, the Real Stocktonian of the Year is:

David Harzoff!

Harzoff, you may recall, was the cantankerous Redevelopment director that was fired near the end of 2009 and was promptly thrown under the bus by pretty much everybody who ever talked to him. We’re not here to argue that he’s not a dick, by all accounts he was an abrasive prick. But that’s what we like about the guy. He was himself, even if it severely limited his ability to perform his job.

But let’s get to that job, because it may explain why he was the way he was. He had to follow noted visionary Steve Pinkerton, which was no small feat. Especially since Pinkerton conveniently took off just a month before the Sheraton took a giant dump in the middle of downtown back in 2008. Forgive me for the over the top negativity from that post, but that’s how shit was back then. Downtown redevelopment was the most polarizing subject at the time. Ann Johnston got elected campaigning against Paragary’s for fuck’s sake. It was so bad some jackass actually suggested the cops paint police cars pink and yellow to seem more friendly and approachable. Harzoff wasn’t exactly walking into the best situation. He was essentially cleaning up Pinkerton’s poorly planned mess.

But that’s 2008, this is Real Stocktonian of 2009, which coincidently was also the year Harzoff was hired.  Yes, he was hired and fired within the same calendar year. Quite a feat really. He was apparently that hard to deal with. His predecessor had a famously cozy relationship with the media (namely Mike Fitzgerald), Harzoff didn’t roll that way. He had to literally be chased down by our man Fitz for an impromptu interview and even famously told one reporter that he had to go because he had “deadlines coming out of my god damn ass!” That sounds like a man who is in a shitty situation, knows it, and isn’t pulling any punches. Did it hurt his ability to get the job done? Absolutely. But again, he wasn’t exactly handed a quality situation.

It’s hard to get any sort of support when the venerable Paragary’s decides to put itself up for sale just four months into your tenure. The Lexington/Sheraton closing down just three months after that (yes, again) also doesn’t help. Then there was that whole Marina thing that also wasn’t really his fault. Downtown revitalization was failing before our eyes,  Harzoff was there in the thick of it. And that’s before we even get to that time he bumped a parking garage attendant with his car and attempted to take off because he apparently had better things to do. That last one is our favorite (even if we can’t find the story link). What screams “Stockton” more than the awful driving that has besieged our city for decades?

We’re not here to argue that David Harzoff should have kept his job. He did himself zero favors. But when the calendar flipped to 2010 I heard a lot of people say “good riddance” to a shitty 2009. Few Stocktonians had a shittier 2009 than Harzoff. He didn’t get fired because of some ticket misunderstanding or because his bosses bickered like school children. He got shitcanned because he got put in a shit position and reacted the way a lot of us would in the same situation. He just kind of sat back and went “Aww, really?” for about 10 months straight. In hindsight, the guy never had a chance. He may have been difficult to deal with, but he was handed an incredibly difficult situation. He was fighting for a flawed downtown and was taking solid upper cuts every 3 months or so. When you take that many hits that early on, you stop giving a shit pretty quickly. Harzoff knew the hand he was dealt. No amount of Fitzgerald ego stroking was going to fix the problems that were handed to him by his predecessor so he just kept it real. Only being real for him was being kind of a dick. But again, being nice about shit wasn’t going to stop the Lexington from closing. And that’s why David Harzoff was the Realest Stocktonian of 2009.

Letters…weeee get letters!

So Greg Bahr e-mailed me and Andy Pinasco the following e-mail. We don’t necessecarily agree with what’s written, and Greg has an obvious vested interest in the subject matter, but we’re all for positive stuff for Stockton. We just don’t necessecarily agree that the Record should rank good vibrations over newsworthiness (not that anything particularly newsworthy has been going on lately). Either way, here it is, bolded (and sic’ed) since we didn’t write it (have we distanced ourselves from this enough?).

Hello David Siders & Record Staff,

It was good to see you at last weeks City Council.

 I’m sure your still adjusting to the new resident in your home.  As always, I also read your blog from the meeting.  I thought it striking that there was no mention about the unique and trailblazing partnership between the City and UOP and many others in the median project at Pacific Ave & the Calaveras River.  The fact that UOP donated $86,000 to pay to create a shovel ready project isn’t something commonly seen here.  This is good news that the Record should be covering.  It is a source of never ending frustration that important things like this are often neglected, passed over, or dismissed.

 The Record plays an important part in our community.  Stockton suffers a bad self-image, and this springs up from many issues, such as; crime, education, and unemployment.  However, the Record also shoulders some of the responsibility for our low self-esteem.  If the Record were to embark on a “what is great about Stockton” campaign, and create a noticeable, focused, and consistently positive effort at promoting this community, it would go a long way to garner good will equity with the community.  A lasting effort to promote the positives of our community would help to spur economic development.  And, this part is for the business end of a newspaper, growth in economic development would increase potential advertisers.  

I’m trying to do my part to improve the quality of life here.  What is the Record doing?

Please be more mindful of important opportunities to report news-worthy events such as the public/private partnership between the University of the Pacific, Stockton Beautiful, the Miracle Mile Improvement Dist., & the City of Stockton.

Greg Bahr
Co-Chair University Neighborhood Renaissance Committee

Remember, you too can guest blog for us or send us your rejected letter to the editor. If it’s not borderline hate speech, we’ll print it, even if we don’t agree with it. Just e-mail us at reclaimingthetitle@gmail.com.

Quick Links for Feb. 4th

Sorry for the tumbleweeds lately. Been encountering a bit of writer’s block with Real Stocktonian. So, to tide you over until I finish pounding out that post, here’s some Quick Links!

Smooth as an Eggman?

City Council meetings just aren’t as entertaining without racial tension boiling over. Sure, Lester Patrick is still making his weekly pilgrimage to City Hall, but even he seems to just be going through the motions now.

Things have gotten so pedestrian that the highlight of Tuesday’s City Council meeting was the Lincoln High School student that asked if any Council members had the cojones to shave their heads in support of cancer research. Nobody stepped up to the plate (although Vice Mayor Miller did make the “sacrifice” of offering to do the fun part).

But after sleeping on it (and with some cajoling from the Stockton Twitter Mob) Susan Eggman relented and offered to bear her skull if the St. Baldrick’s Day fundraiser can top $5,000, thus opening herself up to plenty of egg smoothness related puns that we’re sure she’ll never tire of hearing. We’ll throw up donation info once we get it because we really want this to happen. Mostly because Dale Fritchen really needs someone to relate to after losing that now infamous 70’s mane.

Dear “Dealman”, eat a dick. (Paywall warning)

Since Paragary’s was recently in the news, the guy charged with unloading it has been popping up in various places to ensure that even after the place gets sold, you’ll have his phone number memorized based on repetition alone. I’m not sure if Shawn “The Dealman” Mileham is the guy who made the chicken shit call to quietly put Paragary’s up for grabs on SF Craigslist, but even if he isn’t that doesn’t change the fact that he sounds like a total douchebag.

But he saved his douchiest move for good ol’ Mike Fitzgerald. The man may be lame enough to (we assume) self-appoint a nickname and put it on a vanity plate, but he knows lure people in. And he bagged Fitzy hook, line, and sinker. How? He suggested it would be a great idea to replace an out-of-place, “classy” joint like Paragary’s with a ritzy French restaurant. His reasoning? It works in South San Francisco. Yes, he’s comparing downtown Stockton to San Fran-motherfucking-cisco. Digest that for a minute, I have time.

Done? Ok, besides a Governor, restaurants with unpronounceable names, and copious amounts of crazy, what in the blue hell do we have in common with The City? We’re a working class town with a substandard average annual income and SF is white-collar businessmen, hippies, and skyscrapers. There is zero comparison. None. And Shawn should know that, he’s allegedly from Lodi.

Have we learned nothing over the past 5 years? Mike Fitzgerald started off 2010 (paywall again) by essentially calling downtown redevelopment the failure of the past decade. While I’ve thrown the word “failure” around a lot when referring to downtown project, I don’t actually believe it’s failed. I just like to talk/write in gross exaggerations for comedy’s sake. It’s like when (for example) I referred to someone as the world’s most expensive tape recorder. I don’t actually mean they’re the world’s most expensive tape recorder, I’m just breaking balls.

I don’t think downtown has failed by any means. Redevelopment is going to be a long, drawn out process. Results aren’t going to be immediate, but downtown redevelopment was never for us, it’s for future generations. If we’re lucky we’ll live to see a downtown where nobody gives a shit that a bunch of kids are hanging around the movie theater doing nothing in particular. But if we don’t learn from the mistakes we’re making early on (like ignoring a report that says the Paragary’s space needs to be occupied by a tenant that appeals to “risk taking youths.” Whatever that means), then downtown truly will be a failure.

One lesson we can learn from all of this is we need to stop comparing Stockton to other towns. What works for South SF, San Antonio, Carmel, or whereever won’t necessecarily work in Stockton. Stockton isn’t any other town, Stockton is Stockton. Quit trying to make it into something it’s not.

And “Dealman”, quit putting ideas in Fitzy’s head to try and move that property as soon as possible. Everybody and their grandmothers is screaming for a brewery of some sort to be put in that spot. So quit looking to make a quick deal, and look to make the right deal. Then maybe you can work on earning that ridiculously cheesy nickname.

How dare Barnes and Noble not continue to frivolously bleed money

We realize Fitz has a narrative he has to stick with, but has anybody told the guy we’re in an economic downturn? I don’t really understand how a college bookstore can lose money when they charge/rape students what they do for textbooks, but apparently the Stan State Stockton campus’ bookstore is in the red. Considering past the first few weeks of school the main purpose of the bookstore is to kill time between classes and as a place for stoners to buy replacement pens and candy, I’m not too shocked Barnes and Noble went with the limited schedule. Most students worth their weight in tuition know to buy their textbooks at a more reasonable price online anyway. But what’s just a sign of the times to us is apparently another sign that the State of California is totally trying to shaft Stockton by eliminating the Stanislaus campus. Sorry Fitz, there’s no fire where this smoke is, that’s just the smokers area.

BEARD OFF!!!

We’re late to the game on this, but the Record is in the midst of a good ol’ fashioned winter beard off. So far the only confirmed participants are Ian Hill and Daniel Thigpen, but we look forward to seeing how this all plays out. But until then, we’re off to find the Zoltar machine that turned Ian Hill into the small child we all knew he actually was (I’m going to feel like a dick when we find out he actually has Benjamin Button syndrome).

Caption contest!

The thing I like about high school girls, I get older, they stay the same age.

David Siders posted this hilarious photo lifted from Dale Fritchen’s Facebook page (yes, this is/was his legit profile pic) and we felt it’d be fun to have a caption contest since I wasn’t able to get the promised Real Stocktonian post out today.Post yours in the comments, e-mail us, or @reply us your captions for this photo on Twitter. I’ll update this post later with some of the highlights.

Quick Links for Jan 28th

Holy shit, have we had a post every day this week? My God, we have. Sure Monday’s should barely count and Tuesday’s was an abortion of epic proportions, but they’re there! Let’s keep the good times rolling with today’s batch of Quick Links!

Just in case yesterday didn’t scare you off from ever running for public office… (Video warning)

As new pappy David Siders noted in his blog yesterday morning, we still have no money. This time around we have about $14 mil to cut, unfortunately the Fire budget (which eats up a big portion of the General Fund) is off-limits. Considering we had to cut some meaty parts of the budget last year to break even (most notoriously the tree trimming budget which comes back to bite us on the ass every time it gets particularly windy), the City’s going to have to get creative this time around.

In a move has to make the #stir folk proud, Susan Eggman has taken to the social networks to ask residents plugged into Facebook and Twitter what City services they feel are most important. So far people have been pointing to things that are basically bulletproof (roadwork, FD, etc), but at least people are involved and learning how this shit works.

$14 million doesn’t just fall out of the sky. You can’t just slash the coffee budget and call it good. Some very real cuts have to be made, down to (and including parts of) the bone. Maybe Allen Pettet and his cyborg army can run the libraries for a while.

First Avatar, now the iPad, how will our world be “revolutionized” next!?

Now that yesterday’s tongue-in-cheek Applegasm is over, we can get down to the nitty-gritty of Apple’s latest “must have” product, the iPad. Noted iPhone fan Kirk Barron set down his camera long enough to crank out a highly recommended blog post on the announcement. The biggest issue is that it’s essentially a big ass iPod Touch. My biggest issue with the unfortunately named product is the lack of basic computer functions like the ability to multi-task and the lack of Flash support. I’m not the biggest techie in the world so, again, you should check out Kirk’s post if only to motivate him to write more. Now if only we could motivate him to grow back that epic mustache.

Bris Isaak is going to be thrilled (h/t to @apollosfyre)

Apparently someone with really thin skin is offfended by the devilish connotations of Mt. Diablo and would like to change that. Not only does he want to rename it, he wants to rename it for the Gipper! Yes, for some reason Arthur Mijares thinks it would be a great idea to name the tallest mountain in one of the most liberal parts of the country after Ronald Reagan. I’m not against commemorating Reagan somehow, and nothing says “fuck you” to Bay Area hippies quite like renaming their highest peak after the most revered Republican of all time, but claiming that the name Mt. Diablo is offensive is itself offensive to my intelligence. It’s a fucking name, deal with it. That childhood saying about sticks and stones is around for a reason. So if the “Diablo” part really offends you, grab a rock and chuck it at the mountain and hope it doesn’t magically transform into rubber and make you glue.

The race card is officially worth $250,000

Finally some real news that makes the paywall kind of worth it. When we last left Johnny Ford, the Council had agreed to refer the matter to private mediation and we assumed the issue was dead. Never have I been so happy to be wrong because today we actually did get closure, only it was the kind of closure that makes you want to put your fist through a wall.

Let’s get one thing straight, (paywall warning) Johnny Ford doesn’t deserve a quarter of a million dollars (actually half a mil with all the extras, the 250k was just “damages”). This wasn’t “You were right, we were wrong” money, this was “For the love of God can we just get this whole thing behind us” money. I can understand that logic, not only from a litigation costs standpoint but a PR point of view as well. Taking this final PR uppercut now is a lot better for the City Council than a long, very public court battle, which would be the equivalent of getting peppered with multiple body blows.

So yeah, I understand it, but it still pisses me off. For one, while this issue may now be firmly in the rearview mirror for most of us, the main players are busy planning a reunion tour. Local NAACP head Bobby Bivens is planning on filing a complaint with the Attorney General and Lester Patrick pretty much said anything short of job reinstatement wasn’t going to fly. And this is after the Ford Report found that racial discrimination played zero part in the Ford firing.

Johnny Ford getting his job back would have been the worst possible scenario. It would have been incredibly awkward and he would have been insufferable upon return. Like Ari Gold buying out his old agency and firing people via paintball gun insufferable. He could’ve theoretically printed up a literal race card, kept it in his wallet, and then instill the fear of God in everybody who gives him shit just by reaching for his back pocket. Ok, maybe he’s not that clever, that’s just what I’d do in that situation. Either way, forcing Kevin O’Rourke to rehire him would have been dumb and undone all that awesome team building work the Council did at their retreat a few weeks ago.

Long story short, there was no good ending for this. There wasn’t an option the Council could have gone with that would please everybody, just a myriad of progressively shittier options. Nobody wins in this situation. We can only hope that this situation is used as a learning experience. What was learned? That despite mounds of evidence to the contrary, if you lose your job you can have your friends make weekly slanderous comments about your boss being a racist and somehow get paid in the end. The system works!