The sky begins to brighten behind the clouds, and as I stand here waiting for the bus I wonder what was here before the freeway cut my neighborhood in half. My apartment is on one side, with a nice view of 580...the bus stop is on the other side, on another one-way street going the other direction, with a cruddy view of the wall that hides whatever's underneath 580. Are old Oakland houses still there in some form? Would I even be here if it weren't for 580 cutting cleanly through?

The bus runs up Broadway, meandering towards the Macarthur BART station, and slowly, as it has done for hundreds of years, Oakland awakens.

I won't bore all you San Franciscans with the full list of Oakland and East Bay measures (two of each), but Oakland's measure Z bears mentioning.

"Title: Cannabis Regulation - An Ordinance that Would Require that the City (1) Establish a System to License, Tax and Regulate Cannabis (Marijuana) Sales As Soon as Possible under California Law; (2) Create a Committee to Oversee the Ordinance's Implementation and Disbursement of Revenue from Licensing and Taxation of Businesses that Sell Cannabis; (3) Adopt Law Enforcement Policies Related to Cannabis; and (4) Advocate for Changes in Laws to Support Implementation and Goals of the Ordinance."

The fun we'd had at Burning Man inspired Todd and I to keep playing together, culmnating in a near-perfect set at the Semiconscious Liberation Army's one-off funk event in Oakland. Unfortunately, very little from that night was successfully recorded. Todd caught a couple of our prior practice sessions on minidisc, which I've linked from here.