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Michael Fitzgerald
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Monthly Archives: November 2009
Happy birthday, KSTN-AM
The Stockton radio station turned 60 over the weekend.
The station bucks a couple trends. First, it is the last independenty owned station in the Stockton market (though the LaRue family tried to sell it last year). Second, KSTN never went all-talk like most AM stations did. It plays ‘classic rock” in between local sports broadcasts.
It even boasts [...]
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The hypocrisy of J. Clark Kelso
J. Clark Kelso, the prison receiver seeking to foist three new prison facilities on Stockton, issued a statement recently characterizing Stockton as unwilling to negotiate.
“I remain hopeful that the litigants will come to the table with reasonable requests during the settlement talks,” Kelso said in a press release explaining his petition to move a lawsuit to stop [...]
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CBS visits Stockton to guage the recovery
The Dow has topped 10,000, the banks report fat profits, but is the recovery reaching ordinary Americans? CBS News today features an opinion piece by a Mother Jones contributor who visited Stockton, “a city not lacking in desperation” to find out.
What I find remarkable about such stories is the dubious reporting of top industry porfessionals. [...]
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Marooned at Old Navy
I was unable to participate in the Black Friday madness because I had to stay home and watch my son, who took ill. For which I was profoundly grateful. The feverish shoppers in my family returned with this report from the front lines:
Hundreds of shoppers began lining up outside Old Navy as early as midnight [...]
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The dumbest thing I might do
Here’s a real bad idea: Black Friday.
Scudding along the bottom of The Great Recession, lining up outside an electronics store all night for a crack at some pricey gizmo strikes me as the dumbest thing you could do.
That’s because buying nothing is appropriate. Or buying little. Yet buying — something, anything — is the default drive for [...]
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Goodbye, ancient Chicano pastrami
Alas, The Hole in the Wall Cafe, a downtown sandwich shop, is closing. The story said it was known for its turkey. This is baloney.
The Hole in the Wall was one of the few places in town that served a decent pastrami sandwich. It wasn’t New York style. That is asking too much. It was pastrami and cheese on [...]
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Local boy makes funk
Back when the Bull ‘n’ Bear was open on Pacific Avenue, 10 years ago or so, I used to hang out there on weekend nights.
I remember sitting in a booth in the back room, hunched over a beer and a shot, when this guy set up a MIDI music computer and started to play the [...]
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Tend your own #2%! lawn
The story in today’s paper about East Bay Municipal Utility District’s shabby parkway through Stockton bothers me for two reasons.
First, it’s their easement. Why should Stockton’s pay to spruce it up?
Two, I addressed this blight with EBMUD a dozen years ago. High-ranking executives promised me they would do plantings and keep them looking nice — as well they should, [...]
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FPPC may sue Kelso