Living Above the Fold

I went camping for the first time two years ago with three friends in Lassen Volcanic National Park near Redding. We intended to enjoy a weekend roughing it in the wilderness, but the trip didn’t go as smoothly as planned.

The Path Less Traveled (The East Bay Monthly, June 2010)

Manuel de Paz is a short, bespectacled man from El Salvador with a scruffy goatee and a round, friendly face that belies his turbulent past. He’s lived in the United States for almost two decades, though he still speaks with a slight Spanish accent. Dressed in jeans and a black turtleneck, he looks casual as he walks around the basement offices of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, where he works as community outreach coordinator.

Sanctuary from the Storm (The East Bay Monthly, December 2007)

In a Concord backyard, Sandy (no last name) lugs an animal carrier into a small wire pen. She opens the door and four long, skinny animals slink out—Sandy identifies them as Puff, Hawley, Boo, and Walter Frederick “Fred” Ferretude. Puff, Boo, and Fred waddle around exploring, sniffing the ground, but Hawley doesn’t want to stay put. She scratches at the dirt with her long claws, hoping to dig her way out of the pen to explore the rest of the yard. These are ferrets: cute, clumsy—and illegal. California is one of only two states where it is against the law to own a pet ferret.

“Not everyone knows about ferrets,” Sandy says. Sandy can’t give her full name, because she’s harboring wanted fugitives. “But everyone in the ferret underground knows.”

Furry Fugitives (The East Bay Monthly, January 1 2010)

It’s a problem we’ve all faced at some point: What do you do if you have noisy, inconserate, sloveny neighbors? In this piece, I looked at some of the ways you can get your neighbors to behave.

The Dump Next Door (East Bay Express, June 8, 2005)

Those of you who live in the Bay Area probably already know about Emeryville — that weird little city that takes up about 2 square miles on the bay mudflats.  People these days know it mostly as the home of Pixar, but the city’s got a long and varied history.  For this article, I had a chance to look at the city’s strange and convoluted history, from its start as a collection of slaughteryards, gambling dens and brothels to its current incarnation as home to artists’ lofts and biotech companies.

Emeryville Unplugged (The East Bay Monthly, July 2008)