My theory is that Californians are so used to open spaces, wide sidewalks, highway culture and laidback living that they simply are not accustomed to dealing with the dense environment of a bar. It’s the same reason people here don’t move to the back of a crowded bus or get onto or off of a subway car with any sense of dispatch: they don’t think (whether consciously or subconsciously) about the effects of their behavior on the other people around them, since in most situations there just aren’t so many people around them. For the same reason, going running on the sidewalks here can be hazardous: pedestrians will suddenly change direction without even looking behind them to see if anyone is there.

When you grow up in a big city like New York, all of this becomes second nature. You get what it’s like to live constantly surrounded by other people. From an early age you develop the instincts that come from living in a densely populated place where you will be called out (or worse) for breaching the norms of communal survival. You learn to expect that someone will be behind you on the sidewalk at all times, and to act accordingly. You learn to make room for other people to get on the bus. And you learn to function in a crowded bar without spilling a beer all over someone else’s arm.

But the bigger issue is what Mayor Mike has done to democracy. I voted against Bloomberg in 2001 because i didn’t like the idea of a billionaire coming in and buying the mayor’s office without any political experience. But he governed well, showing leadership on issues like the smoking ban, and he won my allegiance. In 2005 I wrote his name in on the ballot, so that I wouldn’t have to vote Republican. This year, however, I would not vote for him if I could (I am now registered in San Francisco). Although I have been and generally remain opposed to term limits, Bloomberg’s gambit — overriding the city’s term limits law to allow himself to serve a third term, with the City Council’s pathetic assent – exemplified a disregard for the rule of law and the legitimacy of the democratic process making him wholly unfit to serve as mayor. The decision to exploit a loophole in the law, by which term limits were extended from two terms to three, reeked of self-interest and paternalism.

Bloomberg has made the disingenuous argument that by running again he only expanded voters’ choice. This is untrue as a matter of practice, insofar as his re-entrance into the race scared away other people who had a legitimate shot at winning (above all, Anthony Weiner). His decision to run again actually produced an election that everyone knows will be as lopsided as the last one.

But even if it were true in some sense that extending term limits gives the voters more choice, and even if it were the role of the Mayor and the City Council to make that determination, there was a better way to go about doing what they did: they could have extended term limits to a maximum of three terms, but made that extension take effect in the future — i.e., exempted themselves from the law’s application. In other words, Bloomberg et al could have make a decision on principle rather than on self-interest. This Bloomberg did not do, and he will pay the price for it. It won’t cost him his reelection, but he has already lost most if not all of whatever veneer of moral rectitude he had. A man who initially campaigned as being above politics and special interests–as being beholden to no one–has proven what many of us suspected from the first: that being a self-righteous billionaire is as much danger to, as it may be qualification for, public office.

The bottom line: no one owns Michael Bloomberg, but Michael Bloomberg now owns New York, the City Council, and the city’s weak-willed electorate. And the man himself, no less than the city he allegedly serves, will be the worse for it.

• Espress Yourself
• Sufficient Grounds
• Brewed Awakening
• Muddy Waters
• It’s a Grind (apparently a chain)

I can’t remember ever seeing any fun coffee shops names like this in New York (or Berlin, for that matter).  Perhaps New Yorkers are too jaded, too focused on the bottom line, or, from their own perspective, simply too sophisticated for such wordplay?

Admittedly the San Francisco Bay is pretty darn big, and the bridge itself runs 4.46 miles, not including its approaches. That’s a long stretch of roadway over a big body of water. But this is 2009. In California. In the United States of America. And we, our government, our society, can’t make sure that there’s a bridge that people can drive across without having chunks of metal fall down upon them?  This doesn’t even get into the fact that half of the bridge is not safe in the event of an earthquake–twenty years after a chunk of the bridge collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, the rebuilt eastern span remains at least four years away from completion. Twenty years! And Loma Prieta wasn’t even the “Big One” that many expect to hit NorCal in the next 30 years. Someone I know refuses under any circumstances to ride over the Bay Bridge until the eastern span is replaced. Someone else I heard on the radio tonight reported that her friend, a former Bay Bridge worker, has the same personal policy–he will take the BART, or drive dozens of miles out of his way, to avoid taking the bridge until it is safe.

All the same, normally I take a bus over the Bay Bridge every day between San Francisco (where I live) and the East Bay, where I go to school. It’s cheaper, prettier, and besides, I’m not sure I much prefer the idea of being in a rail tunnel underneath the Bay in the event of a major earthquake. What would be nice is to have a bridge we can drive or ride across without fearing for our lives.

It’s been more than two years since the I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Who knows how many other bridges and overpasses in this country are on the brink of failure? Will Obama make this more of a priority? Will Americans wake up to this challenge, or ignore it like we have so many others, until bridge collapses and other infrastructure failures become just another accepted facet of 21st century life?

Note this quote from Jeff Porter, owner of C & C Custom Tees, which has sold 800 religious T-shirts supporting the cheerleaders: “I understand that the majority doesn’t rule, but it seems unfair that one lady could complain and cause all of this to stop.” It’s odd to hear someone claiming that in America, the majority doesn’t rule. Tell that to any member of a disaffected minority group, from Latinos to gays to Muslims. This is still, despite the limits imposed by the Constitution and interpreted and applied by the Supreme Court–and despite the corruption and “special interest” influence in Congress–a democracy.  But I wonder how widespread this feeling is, and whether this quote sheds light for us NY Times-reading liberals on how disempowered (whether rightly or wrongly) people in the Bible Belt/Glenn Beck country feel about America today. It’s good for citizens to realize that the majority can’t do whatever it wants, in violation of minority rights. But it’s potentially problematic if people come to think that, as a result of those limitations, the government is no longer theirs at all.

In grad school, success is measured not by grades, but by what your professors think of you. In law school, first-year grades (at schools where they still give grades, anyway) are of the utmost importance to lots of things (summer jobs, clerkships, law review, etc.). In grad school, from almost day one, professors know your name, and you call your professors by their first name. In law school, there’s often a huge gulf between students and faculty, especially in the first-year courses, and professors are to be called Professor.

In grad school, you are expected to explore whatever interests you and find your own path; creativity, independent thinking and self-motivation are what counts at the end of the day.  (Indeed, on our first day, one poli sci professor memorably told us, “We’re not paying you enough to not do what you love.”)  In law school, you are expected to tow the line, from taking the same basic classes and learning the same cases that everyone else has learned and is learning, to interviewing for law firm jobs, to cramming the exact same material for the bar exam as thousands of other aspiring lawyers.  In grad school, other students are sounding-boards and interlocutors, but not really competitors.  In law school, everyone is moving in the same direction, pursuing the same or similar goals and positions (whether in school, or in the legal profession).

In sum, grad school is superficially easier than law school (less memorization, grades matter less, you study and write about what really interests you). But on a long-term, substantive and even existential level, it’s infinitely more challenging.

I felt like telling the protesters that they should have been aborted, but continued on my way to get a bagel for breakfast.  I was surprised, however, that in Berkeley of all places there were no counter-protesters.  Sure enough, on my way back through the plaza, a chain of about 20 or 30 people had gathered, arm-in-arm, in front of the photos (blocking the protesters, but not the photos themselves).  They were chanting, in a fairly passionless manner, “My body, my choice!” over and over again.  A few young men joined in, but the chanters were mainly young women. One woman in the middle held a NARAL poster. As they chanted, they moved around the photo display.

I was glad to see people fighting back against these bozos who had resorted to the most extreme, in-your-face tactics on a very difficult and complicated issue. But at the same time, I was a bit let down by the counter-protesters’ chant. Their point, to some extent, is a valid one–women should have control over their bodies as a general matter. But if one believes a fetus is a human life, then it’s not merely “my body” that the woman is controlling.

When I walked past the plaza a few hours later, both groups were still there; this time, for whatever reason, the counter-protesters were chanting, “My life, my choice!” Had they read my mind? Had someone else pointed out the same flaw? Or were they just varying it up? “My life” seems preferable to “My body” in this instance–both rhetorically and substantively. The bigger issue in keeping abortion safe and legal is allowing women to exercise not merely control over their bodies, but over the course of their lives.  And yet, even this slogan seems to fall way short of an effective response to those who continue to believe abortion is murder. It’s a complicated issue, and maybe there’s no rally chant that would be effective and accurate. But how about something like, “My conscience, my choice!”?  Isn’t that the core of the issue here, that this is a question so personal and unclear that no one should be able to tell another how to decide it?