Brooklyn Goes to San Francisco

I'm up in the bay area this week for the Vloggercon Volunteers meetup on Friday at Maxfields Coffee House (see the map for location. I'll post some video from that soon. I also shot some video of the Hotel Mosser and will be adding that to the map too.

There are many coffee shops and resturants near the vloggercon site and all along Market Street. I'll try to profile several in future posts.

San Francisco is a very hip town and many visitors may be suprised (and hopefully delighted) at the wild things that often go on in this big city.

Making friends in this town is easy as long as you remember one little thing: NEVER, EVER refer to the city as "Frisco".

Many folks in the Bay Area seem to have a bad reaction to that. I once did so by accident and was nearly tarred and feathered by an angry mob of hippies.

Here's a fun Archive video from 1947 of Brooklyn native Phil Foster as he tours San Francisco and comments on many places of interest.

I love the line "San Francisco streets go in six directions, North, South, East, West, Up and Down!"

I hope you enjoy. Click the pic to view the vid.

A Vlogger Tour of San Francisco

I was looking for videos related to "San Francisco" on the Internet Archive for use in Vloggercon promos and I ran into this little gem. It shows the northern route into the city on a beautiful day.

What is so funny for me, is that I first searched all videos for "San Francisco" and sampled a few random items on the first of many pages. Little did I expect that I would pick a video posted by one of the good friends I have made during the past year of videoblogging. There were so many videos, the odds of picking one from someone I knew seemed very small (or are they?).

Here is a video that Chris Ritke posted for his kids and I hope he does not mind my pointing it out. I have come to know Chris a bit (we now work together with Outhink.com and 49Media.com) and I can say that this video gives both a great view of the Bay Area and Chris' passion for life, motorcycles and, perhaps most importantly, great hamburgers.

I hope you enjoy both views and come and meet our good friend Chris Ritke at Vloggercon. He is definitely one of our best local experts on finding a good burger, if that's your interest.

BTW, here's a tip for out-of-towners: you generally only have to pay bridge tolls when coming INTO San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge is $5 if you are not car pooling. Be sure to select a lane that makes change if you need it or they will toss your car over the edge and make you ride a bike (Editor's Note: he's just kidding folks).

San Francisco and Vloggercon 2006

I have always loved the city of San Francisco. I love it for more reasons than I can enumerate here, but some include the food, the culture, friends, memories, favorite places, the bay, the bridge and the romance of this place.

And now I have another reason. Vloggercon2006. I am so excited about this event and, again, for many of the same reasons. This will be a great opportunity to meet both "new" and "old" vlogger friends and to reach out to the community and share our passion for videoblogging.

I have several ideas about how I want to participate in Vloggercon. This goes far beyond the interesting "Interactive Videoblogging" panel discussion that is already beginning online between the panelists.

First, there is the question of getting to San Francisco. I don't want to just stop in for a few days and flop in a hotel. It is my plan to sublet a place near the conference site and to share that space with a few fellow vloggers as we attempt to reconnoiter the community as Jan has phrased it. We hope to use the time prior to the conference to become more acquainted with the local community in order to both assist our visiting friends with first hand, fresh and up-to-date information, but also to help us understand the community that is hosting our conference and how we might best interact with it from the stand point of "art and commerce" as both Jan and Dave put it so aptly.

Second, out of love for my vlogger friends, geek curiosity and the constant drive for experimentation, I have set up a mapping application (as in Google Maps) that will allow conference participants to better navigate in the city, rapidly communicate and archive position related information and to keep the conference conversations going. The mapping application can be found at http://map.etitio.us. This map application is in an early phase and it is my hope that it will grow into an interesting social application as we get nearer to the conference.

Third, I am overwhelmed by the vast number of videos about San Francisco that are available through Ourmedia and the Internet Archive and so I'd like to share many of the gems I find as a way to lead up to the conference. "Video! It's just like being there!"

Last, but not least, we will be posting to this vlog as a way of providing a feed for the mapping application. We will post about new map items so everyone can keep up to date with news about the conference. We will also post related items and what are hopefully useful tips and nuggets of information. If you have some San Francisco videos or stories you would like to share and that might be of interest to visiting vloggers (i.e., things that show interesting local sites, restaurant reviews, history, etc). Please leave a comment we'll add you as an author to this vlog so you can post it.

Regarding this vlog, the header photo of the San Francisco skyline was found on Flickr and is by ka12en.

So here we go with our first real post ...

The first video is a fun little ditty that brings up an important point for the first time traveler to the "Golden Gate": BRING YOUR COAT! As Mark Twain is supposed to have said: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." If you have ever experienced one of the Bay's many and diverse microclimates, you know the truth of Mr. Clemens statement. I can personally vouch for this. It can be darned cold in the summer.

Here's a quick newsreel story from 1950's fashion show that was staged on a runway set up in the middle of Union Square Park. Many of the scenes could make for some good promos and remix videos. You can find high quality versions on the archive details page. It's from the Prelinger Collection at the Internet Archive and in the public domain. Click the picture to view the video. I hope you enjoy.