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The iPhone comes with a bunch of interesting ringtones, including “Bark”. It turns out its bark is worse than its bite, as evidenced by this video staring our own Ika Zaru.

Of course as required by my Apple cult membership, I had to shoot the obligatory photos of an iPhone unboxing (purchased from the Apple store in Burlingame, CA).

UPDATE 1: Check out John Gruber’s great iPhone write-up on Daring Fireball.

UPDATE 2: Eric Butterfield of PC World did some stress testing with the iPhone. It preformed really well.

The Burlingame Apple Store went through two shipments of iPhones this morning, selling out by 10:30am. I was able to get there just in time.

Data Robotics, the company that makes the super cool Drobo data storage robot (here’s my Drobo write-up), had a Drobo Invasion Party last night at Varnish Fine Art in San Francisco. The party, which had a really great sci-fi film theme, was the official launch of the Drobo and some of the Data Robotics guys I talked to were hinting about other innovated products that are currently in development. Here’s my full gallery of photos from the party.

UPDATE: T.J. DeGroat was also at the party and did a great write-up for bub.blicio.us.

Last Gasp Publishing and The Team Penny Avon Walkers have joined forces for a Breast Cancer Book Fair which takes place tomorrow, Saturday, June 30th, from 11am to 3pm at the Last Gasp warehouse located at 2948 20th Street in San Francisco. If you can’t make the event, but still want to donate, you can do so online.

LAST GASP PUBLISHING
AND THE TEAM PENNY AVON WALKERS
UNITE FOR THE 1st ever BREAST CANCER BOOK FAIR
buy books for yourself, or as presents to be used throughout the year, while supporting this wonderful cause!!

THIS SATURDAY: JUNE 27th
11 am - 3pm
@ the Last Gasp warehouse
2948 20th street (at the corner of 20th street and Florida)
Having trouble finding us? call: (415) 824-6636

*refreshments will be provided*

40% of all proceeds will go to the Avon walk for Breast Cancer. The walk raises money for research, medical, social service and community-based organizations, each of which makes a unique contribution to helping patients or advancing breast cancer research.
A rare opportunity to shop at the Last Gasp warehouse where you can find over 12,000 books from 600 publishers around the world. Children’s, young-adult, gift books, modern fiction, graphic novels, art books, popular culture, and classic literature. Many “hip modern” toys are also in stock. For a better idea of what you can find, please visit www.lastgasp.com

For those of you who did not know Penny, she had a Master’s of Fine Arts and was an art dealer. Her company was called Perlmutter Fine Arts. She single-handedly “discovered” several California women artists and publicized their works. So the fact that people will be buying art books is something she would appreciate. To learn more about the Team Penny please visit our site.

Today Apple will start selling their new iPhone at 6pm local time at Apple Stores around the country. Kristopher Tate, Thomas Hawk and Robert Scoble are at the front of the iPhone line at the Palo Alto Apple Store and they are streaming live on Zooomr TV via Ustream. Thomas has been taking some great photos of the iPhone line as it mutates and evolves.

Thomas also shot some photos of the boxes of iPhones as they were being unloaded from the UPS truck behind the Palo Alto Apple Store.

Yesterday Revesion3 was there, shooting a new Diggnation episode with Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose.

Amanda Kelso has some great photos from the iPhone line at the SOHO Apple Store in New York, which iPhone Launch TV has been streaming live via Mogulus

More iPhone line coverage:

- Justin.tv will be streaming live from the line at the San Francisco Apple Store via their new Gizmodo channel

- Ryan Block is doing a iPhone multi-city lineblog on Engadget.

- Gizmodo has been posting photos from iPhone lines across the US.

- Mahalo is coving the line at the Santa Monica Apple Store.

- Ars Technica is covering the line in Cincinnati.

UPDATE: Jeremy Toeman calculates that the iPhone lines cost US over 10 years of productivity.

I stopped by Lunch 2.0 today, which was hosted by Jumpcut at Brickhouse, Yahoo’s new San Francisco office that operates outside of Yahoo’s main operations, with a start-up style environment that has created projects like Yahoo! Pipes. I took the camera out briefly while I was there and shot a few photos.

Ok I thought I have seen it all, but I was wrong. My good friend Chicken John (John Rinaldi), renown showman and master of chaos, has just officially announced that he is throwing his hat in the ring and is running for Mayor of San Francisco. The election takes place on Tuesday, November 6th and Chicken needs 10,000 signatures by July 26th in order to be a registered candidate. Here’s the petition (page1 & page2), just print it, fill it out and email Chicken so he can arrange for their pickup. Ok people, I have faith in you to make this happen.

For campaign updates, subscribe to Chicken John’s mailing list.

Here’s Chicken John’s official announcement of his candidacy:

So. There is a lot of stuff to talk about. But lets get something out of the way: running for Mayor of San Francisco isn’t something you do as a prank. As a joke. It would be an insult to the people who supported you and I think that making a mockery of the political system would be tameritous. Elections and other bodies of governmental working should be sacred, taken very seriously

There are many of us who came here to San Francisco from somewhere else looking for something. Seeking, if I may. Those who find it, never leave. They then become stewards of our city, allowing tolerance and experimentation of all levels so that other people who are seeking can come here and find what it is that they are looking for. They in turn become stewards… and so on. I have been thinking of leaving San Francisco. The billionaires have all come and kicked the millionaires out. Every day I see more construction. We exist in these micro bubble economies. Which is how I got to where I am in my thinking. Drawing a parallel between the SF of the 1800’s and now is very similar. Boom towns. A boom town economy is well documented. I think it would probably be a good time to leave a boom town while it’s still booming. Don’t wait for it to all dry up. But I feel a responsibility to SF. I feel a duty. That I have to serve this town that so many people with such a broad stroke of differences can come to agree on nothing else except the SF is a great place. I can’t just leave. Not without trying my best to fix it. And why not just go right to the top. I will now ask for your help in my next endeavor. In order to be on the ballot to compete with Gavin Newsome and the 22 other candidates for Mayor of San Francisco, I need to collect 10,000 signatures from registered voters. Or pay $5,000. I have the forms here:

http://www.chickenjohn.com/mayor_1.pdf
http://www.chickenjohn.com/mayor_2.pdf

It needs to be one piece of paper. Like, printed on both sides or they won’t accept it. It’s a petition. If 100 of you download 10 copies of the petition and get 100 people to sign it, that’s 10,000 signatures. But the signatures have to be of registered voters and the person collecting the sigs needs to be registered. There is a mountain of paper work that I am sifting through. There is matching funds for campaigns. There seems to be a very astute staff of the Dept. of Elections, in the *basement* of city hall. It’s all pretty neat.

My platform? What’s my platform, you ask? The bed of 1975 GMC pick ‘em up truck that runs on coffee grinds. Party affiliation? I like to party. Party hardy. Issues? What about the issues? We’ll get to that later. For now, I need to get on the ballot. I need your help. Here’s how this works:

You download the pdf forms FRONT AND BACK ON THE SAME PAGE. 2 DOWNLOADS ON 1 PIECE OF PAPER OR THEY WON’T ACCPET IT. Ahem.
You get friends or whoever you can to sign it, follow the instructions.
You yourself need to be a registered voter in SF WITH A VALID VOTER THINGY WITH YOUR CORRECT ADDRESS.
You get as many people to sign as possible, 10,000 signatures is a lot. Only people who are registered voters in SF can sign. They check.
You write me email or call me and drop off the signatures before the 25th of July. They are due on the 26th.

This community that is so powerful and so *together* rises to the occasion and with little effort gets 10,000 signatures from registered voters. I get on the ballot, then we change the way politics is done by using our secret weapon: art & innovation. After we do that we stop *greenwashing this city* and I hold a raffle to see who gets to drive the truck that knocks down that fucking bow and arrow thing on Embarkadaro that insults each and every artist in SF. We shed some light on the fact that the Art Commission of SF has a $9 million dollar budget and spends 90% of it on administration costs and consultant fees. In our *green* city, Builders Resources (SF’s Urban Ore) is being squeezed out. Whatever. There is a giant land grab going on and none of it is being earmarked for temporary sculpture or anything like that. Slowly, it all gets nailed down and if you’re ‘in’ you can get a piece of the action. If you’re not ‘in’, then you get a form letter. I single handedly produce 50 times what the SF Art Commission does and I couldn’t get the director to answer a phone call for 4 months. Civil servant my entire ass. And on and on… there are things that affect us that we can defend that will be of benefit to all San Franciscans. And it’s all really easy.

My little visit with Berkeley politics with the closing of the Shipyard really rattled my cage. It was like trying to do the butterfly stroke in a swimming pool of cold maple syrup. It literally sucked life from me. There is no way things have to be that hard. It was actually disgusting. There must be comedy. There must… or all is lost…

There is no doubt that Gavin Newsome will likely be our next Mayor. But there is value in fighting the good fight even if ‘winning’ isn’t your main objective. I have engineered my entire life around the embrace of the amateur. To live life as art. Mediocrity is not an option. Samuel Beckett’s quote fills me with possibility and adventure: “Fail again. Fail better.” I honestly feel that right now San Francisco, the city of Art and Innovation, lacks whimsy. It lacks a decision making body that results in the manufacture of ‘Units of Interesting’. We need there to be a Units of Interesting factor in some of the decisions. The acronym sucks, or it would be the new catch-phraze. UoI. Whatever.

I will have forms here and there for people to pick up and I will (obviously) be using this list to promote and update. Stay tuned.

here we go….

chicken

Some of Chicken John’s projects have included Circus Redickuless, You Asked For It!, The Odeon Bar, Ask Dr. Hal, Lost Vegas, BORG2, Cafe Racer Woodgas Pickup Truck, The Mechabolic (Burning Man 2007) and many others. For more on Chicken and his world, check out his website.

More coverage of Chicken’s run for Mayor:

“City in a bottle”
The Economist

“In Re-election Bid, a Mayor Versus a Cast of Characters”
Jesse McKinley, New York Times

“Chicken John who would be mayor”
Cecilia M. Vega, San Francisco Chronicle

“Chicken Run: From B2 to City Hall in One Easy Step”
Future Boy, Business 2.0 Beta

“The Billionaires Have Kicked the Millionaires Out”
Dylan Tweney, Epicenter, Wired Blogs

“Finally, a real Chicken takes on Newsom”
Steven T. Jones, San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Who’s Running For Mayor: The Chicken And The Wolf”
Rita Hao, SFist

“Tech geeks have two long-shots for mayor”
Nick Douglas, Valleywag

UPDATE: Chicken John has launched his campaign blog: voteforchicken.com

Open source geek and DNA Lounge owner Jamie Zawinski (jwz) has some great photos from last weekend’s 25th Annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade.

Eric Harvey Brown was there as well and shot some wonderful photos, including some of the radical NY marching band Rude Mechanical Orchestra.

photos by Bonnie Natko

photos by John Brian Silverio

photos by Tom Vu

photos by Wally Gobetz

Hugh D’Andrade and Mati McDonough have a new joint art show, “Where We Overlap” at a.Muse Gallery in San Francisco. The opening is this Friday, June 29th and the show runs through July 21st. Hugh’s the artist who did the amazing Laughing Squid illustration that we will be turning into a poster for next month’s Paradise Lost event.

Make Magazine and Craft Magazine are doing a series of weekly Maker Saturday Webcasts from The Phyllis C. Wattis Webcast Studio at The Exploratorium in San Francisco. The half hour webcasts, hosted by Make/Craft editor and publisher Dale Dougherty, will take place every Saturday at 1pm and run through August 4th. You can come down to the studio and watch the program in person or live on the web. The first Maker Saturday Webcast is this Saturday, June 30th featuring Paul Cesewski and his “train car”.

Yesterday internet radio had a Day of Silence and the fight continues this Sunday, July 1st with a Benefit to Save Net Radio at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco.

SomaFM, Pandora, SonicLiving, reapandsow, BAGeL Radio & Bottom of The Hill are throwing a benefit to help generate money and awareness in the final 2 weeks before the CRB hearing on July 15.

For info on why you may not have access to streaming radio from services ranging from Pandora to SomaFM, go to http://somafm.com/crb

Raffle w/ prizes from SonicLiving (Chromeo tickets!), The Owl Mag (5 CD set of rockin’ music plus a Banner ad on their Home Page!), Griffin Technology, Peter Ellenby (Exclusive photos of the Shins & Death Cab for Cutie), Live365, WilloToons, Logitech, show posters by Jason Munn and many others….

- food (chili!)
- bake sale
- Live Music from Ted of The Heavenly States, Matt of The Herms, HIJK, Miyako Ueki of Peloton, and more…
- DJs (Elise Nordling from SomaFM & Ted Leibowitz from BAGeL Radio)

$3-$5 suggested donation to SaveNetRadio.org at door

learn more about saving net radio, visit http://savenetradio.org or http://somafm.com/crb

PC World lists Laughing Squid as one of their “100 Blogs We Love” under the “Arts and Culture” category. We’re honored to be in such good company.

Laughing Squid: San Francisco is a place where art and technology frequently merge to form something interesting and, because of the Internet, accessible. Laughing Squid documents many of those mergers.

The current issue of Business 2.0 (July 2007) features an article by Chris Taylor about Burning Man as a business enterprise: “Burning Man Grows Up”

America’s biggest counterculture jamboree is also a $10 million business. Now it’s trying to leverage its brand — and save the planet by — by (gasp!) inviting corporate participants.

The article, which features a great photo of Larry Harvey and Marian Goodell with Burning Man in a business suit looming large in the background, talks about how for the first time in its history, Burning Man will allow “green friendly” companies to exhibit their products (in general, Burning Man does not allow any kind of commercial influence or commerce). I think this might shake up the beehive a bit.

The article also includes a photo of my old buddy Chicken John and his “Cafe Racer” Wood Gas Pickup Truck.

Thanks to M2 for the tip!

The excellent video sharing service Vimeo just launched a beautiful new re-design (Version 5). The login screen alone is gorgeous. Awesome work guys!

via » Marshall Kirkpatrick via » Chris Van Patten