San Francisco Chronicle Magazine

Life at the Pump

Articles — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 02:03:00 -0500

When I first got interested in oil it was the far-away places that supply our oil that dazzled me: Venezuela, the Middle East, Africa, Alaska, even Texas seemed alluring and mysterious. I wanted to get on a drilling rig or glop through the muck in Azerbaijan. But when I started to write about the culture of oil, I realized I had to address the culture at our end of the pipe too, which meant hanging out in gas stations. What I found in the station was that American oil consumers are exotic creatures -- ruled by snacking impulses and so… more

Against Gentrification

Articles — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 08:56:00 -0500

Marcel Diallo is at war. It’s a war he thinks he has about 18 months to win. As he walks the sidewalks of a neighborhood known as "the Bottoms" in West Oakland, he points out his enemies with a spoon, between dips into a pint of strawberry soy ice cream.

There are the punk rockers, who thought they’d found an industrial neighborhood where no one would mind their loud parties. There’s "the Indian cat and his partner from Palo Alto," who got a deal on one of the neighborhood’s many Victorians. There’s the "speculator" -- a white guy in a… more