Timothy Lesle

A lot of text, lately, on this blog, so I’ll keep this brief. This is a picture I took after some rain in downtown San Francisco. This is Maiden Lane, near Union Square, a stretch of high-end boutiques and shops. A pair of opera singers used to set up at one end and sing, but [...]

On Monday morning, I got to see a glimmer of Bloomberg’s San Francisco office. The office, on the second floor of a converted pier on the Embarcadero, was highlighted in August 2007 as the largest leasing deal to come along in San Francisco since the dot-com boom eight years earlier. At the time, the media [...]

This little news piece from 1981 is making the rounds. As the reporter notes, “this is only the first step in newspapers by computer”: So many things to love here: the “estimated two to three thousand home computer owners in the Bay Area” the newspaper guy saying “and we’re not in it to make money. [...]

In San Francisco this week, and back for a while, I think. I spent a chunk of November traveling: the Upper Valley in New Hampshire, Boston, and New York City. In the process, I accumulated a good amount of material, some of which will appear here. It’s easy to get frustrated with San Francisco, particularly [...]

Last week was Fleet Week in San Francisco. The most obvious element is the weekend air show, featuring the Blue Angels. I grew up among martial displays–air shows, uniforms, decommissioned jets and other combat vehicles sprinkled around military installations like garden statues. But I still get a kind of thrill seeing the Blue Angels and [...]

Not the primary. Chris Matthews on why San Francisco isn’t a newspaper town: “It looks like an Eastern city,” he says. “But it’s pretty hard for people to read newspapers when they’re riding a bike.” From last Sunday’s Times Magazine profile of Matthews. One of the funnier pieces of reporting I’ve read in any magazine. [...]

So I missed the big event in San Francisco today due to other commitments. But I’ve been hearing things over the ether. I’ve heard that the protest groups say they succeeded by creating such a ruckus that Mayor Newsom and the Chinese organizers had to sneak the torch onto a completely new route (supposedly at [...]

There are several interesting stories coming out of the crane accident in New York City. One was Susan Dominus’s portrait of the typical scene at Fubar, which occupied the ground floor of the destroyed townhouse on East 50th. Although the occupations of the regulars comes as a surprise (advertising, television cameraman, programmer) and doesn’t exactly [...]

In my last post, I mentioned that the spill isn’t just oil, but bunker fuel. What’s bunker fuel? It’s the stuff that runs big engines, like in an oil tanker or cargo ship. And it’s cheap, which is why these high volume users use it. Last year, I interviewed Dave Culp, an engineer who designs [...]

Keep your eyes open for an hour of voluntary darkness in San Francisco Saturday night. A “citywide conservation event” is scheduled from 8 to 9 p.m.; organizers from Lights Out San Francisco ask that all unessential lights be turned off during this time. Restaurants will serve by candlelight. They are getting a lot of attention. [...]

In June, the Chronicle ran a good story about a woman who discovered—and pursued—the person who had stolen her identity. It is engaging to read and a lucky score for the Chronicle, a story like that, one that unfolds cinematically and neatly. There are advantages to being the only show in town, as far as [...]

The Chronicle‘s Matier and Ross reported this morning that California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s official car was broken into recently. It was parked in San Francisco’s Civic Center, “Right across from City Hall, in plain view of the mayor’s office,” he told the Chronicle. Nearly everyone I know who owns a car in San Francisco [...]