SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: Yoga influences local painter's work

All right, this was the last article I contributed to the Herald during my internship. It's an interview with local artist Susan Summerfield Kozak about a new exhibit she had at the library. After this, it was a weeklong road trip up to Oregon, then I started DVC and I'd be happy to fill in the gaps to anyone else who wants to know. Needless to say, when I had my last day at the Herald, I really thought that was going to be it. I didn't think I'd ever be returning to the paper, and I certainly didn't think I'd be returning on a much bigger level. However, that's a story for another day.

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: Published standalone pictures

I have exactly one article left to post, but I'll hold off on it for now. Today, I'd like to post some of the pictures I took that weren't part of any articles but rather were used to fill space.

The "Everybody loves a carnival" package has an interesting story behind it. On my way to work, I noticed what looked like a mini-carnival. I told Marc about it, and he had me go back out and grab some pictures of it. It was part of a summer camp put on by Benicia's Parks Department, and I got information on it from the coordinator.

The other three pictures came from a day when I wasn't really doing much, so Marc sent me out to shoot as many pictures of First Street as I could, and he'd publish them whenever he needed to fill space. I think the "Views of Benicia" pictures were actually published after I'd left. (By the way, the offer to take pictures and send them to beniciaherald@gmail.com is still valid. We do like having visuals on the front page.)

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: Oh, those skateboarding rascals!

First of all, that is a terrible picture of me. I don't think there are any good pictures of me from this period, but I have to wonder what trick they were pulling to make my eyes do that.

Anyway, one of the requirements of my internship was to write an opinion piece on a city-related issue. I didn't have quite as much knowledge of city-related issues at that point, so I decided to do mine on the strict skateboarding laws. I'm quite happy with how this turned out, especially the research that went into it (I even talked to then-Councilmember Mike Ioakimedes, but it doesn't look like he made it into the article.) I should point out, however, that with a lot of my opinion pieces, my views evolve over time or I no longer feel the way I used to feel. This is one of those instances. Anybody nowadays trying to accuse me of encouraging reckless youth can relax. I don't feel as strongly about this now as I did back then (and I'm not sure how strongly I felt about it back then.) Still a good read.

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: High-speed chase leads to arrest

This was a crime story, and I don't remember a thing about writing it. Not a thing. I think it might have been a fleshed-out Police Blotter item, but covering this story left no impact on me.

Also, "frelonies"? Really, Nick?

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: View from over there

You know how every election, somebody says "If the candidate I don't like wins, I'm moving to Canada/England/etc."? It's mostly a bunch of empty talk, and few people actually do it. This guy, however, did. Chris Reed, a Benicia High School graduate and resident of Davis at the time (probably still is. I don't know), actually moved to France after George W. Bush won the 2000 election. What's more: he stayed there until Bush's second term ended in 2009. However you feel about his reasoning, you have to admire him for his commitment.

Upon returning to California, he wrote a book about his experiences in France, and I got to interview him. It was quite interesting.

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: Police Blotter, Week of July 2, 2009

One of the ongoing features of the Herald has been the Police Blotter. This provides a summary of the more interesting bits of police activity from the past week, and it is always published on Sundays. In the summer of '09, I was in charge of this. It involved a lot of combing through the police log, looking up criminal codes, and putting the information into easy-to-understand sentences.

I'm not going to post all of these, but I will post one chosen at random to provide an idea of the kind of work I was doing as well as the kinds of crimes Benicians were committing that week. Eggs were thrown, people complained about an annual bike festival...it was quite a week.

"Apparently, it was some kind of scam."

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: Passion for People

This was an article about a Benicia High School student who got to go to a nursing camp. I don't have a whole lot to say on this one except I later got a very nice letter from North Bay Healthcare thanking me for writing the article. I think this was written during my first week, but I can't confirm the dates for any of these articles.

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: Love Comes to Town

First of all, yes I did come up with that headline. I generally don't consider myself very good at coming up with those, but sometimes I get lucky, and I consider that to be one of my better ones. It's actually a reference to the U2/BB King collaboration from Rattle and Hum, but I'm not sure how many people picked up on it.

This was one where I had most of the story written but didn't publish it right away because I was still waiting to hear back from Edna Love. I finally did early in the morning on a weekend, but I was still willing to get that interview done, and I was quite happy with it. I always like writing stories about music, and this was no exception.

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: Leaving a Mark

This was my interview with Fred Schlatter, a local artist most famous for developing many of the signs for businesses around town. His style is very unmistakable, so it was nice to put a face behind the man who'd been creating all those signs.
Probably the most interesting thing about covering this story is that when I went to interview Delando Pagan (Yes, I spelled his name wrong in the article) of The Rellik Tavern (which I think had been open for only a few months at this point), Christi had to go inside and bring him out because I was still under 21 at that point. All in all, this was a fun story to write. Fred was a very nice person, and as far as I know, he's still creating art, but I'm not sure if he's created any more signs.

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: Tannery undergoes major changes

This was one of three story ideas I pitched when I got the job. I don't remember what the other two were, but Christi suggested I flesh this one out. This was at a time when it felt like the historic Tannery building was really feeling the sting of the recession. A good number of its businesses had moved elsewhere on First Street or just shuttered completely. For a while it was looking like the Tannery would never recover and would be foreclosed upon at any minute. Thankfully, it seems to have bounced back. Char's moved back to its original location, and they've acquired a number of new tenants to keep it operational. However, the Tannery Grill that I kept mentioning in the article never actually opened. To this day, I still don't think that space had been filled.

This was the first semi-investigative piece I'd done, and I'm quite proud of how it turned out.

SUMMER OF '09 ARCHIVES: Still probing, powerfully

   This is the first article I had published, and it ran on the front page below the fold. Of course, a lot of the paper's content is always slated for the front page, but that was a big deal for me at the time. I remember getting comments from people who didn't know I was interning there to say "Hey, I saw your story in the Herald!" I felt like a local star.
   Anyway, this was an article about an Arts Benicia exhibit. I interviewed the curator Mark Eanes, who I believe is still a member of Arts Benicia, but I haven't actually talked to him since. There's really not a whole lot to say about this one, except it was a good introductory piece for me.

But I'm not done with this blog yet!

   Yes, I've found a way to keep this blog busy.

   I'm not sure how many readers know this, but this is not the first time I've worked at the Herald. I was an intern right after I graduated high school. How did that happen? Let me set the scene.

   The year was 2009. Many countries were experiencing an economic recession, Barack Obama still had dark hair, and America just couldn't get enough of the Black Eyed Peas *Gag*. At that point, I was just wrapping up three years on my high school's student paper, The Paw, my senior year of which I had spent as one of two editors-in-chief. One day, my teacher Steve Gibbs (who has been a columnist with the Herald for more than 30 years) told me there was an intern position available at the local paper where I would be able to write stories. I told him I was interested, and he placed a call to then-editor Marc Ethier. Marc's response? "Send him over when he's ready. I'd like to meet with him."

   I went over to the paper's office with a portfolio of my strongest Paw articles to meet with Marc and the paper's then-assistant editor, Christi Chidester. We talked for a bit, and a few days later I got a call from Christi telling me that I had gotten the job. I was very excited to get my foot in the door at my local paper.

   The job was pretty straightforward. I wasn't paid, and I came in on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays while the other intern hired for that summer, Macy Williams- who I had worked with on The Paw the previous year- would come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (Macy now writes for the entertainment site PopSugar, by the way). I basically wrote stories that were assigned to me, which turned out to be good practice for the real world. On The Paw, I would write about whatever I felt like, and only a handful of my articles had t do with Benicia.

   The paper did not have a website at that point (They would finally establish one about six months after I left), so this is the first time the stories I wrote that summer will be appearing on the web. I've scanned all the articles that I had saved (There was one big one that I had only saved half of, and it was a big one. It was an interview with then-school board trustee Dana Dean, who was about to run for re-election. Maybe there's another copy of that paper lying around the office) and plan on posting them here. I'll be updating on Saturdays and Mondays (AKA, the days when the Herald doesn't publish) and posting attachments of my articles as well as brief preambles on the stories behind the articles, if I can remember them. I didn't save the dates in my clippings, so I can't remember exactly when these articles ran, but I have a good idea of when I was working on them.
   It's important to note that I was 19 years old at that time and had not started college yet. Therefore, my writing was not quite as strong back then as it is now, but that's to be expected. I still find this stuff fun to read, and if you were living in Benicia in the summer of '09, perhaps you will too.

Enough rambling though. Let's get started.