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Ha! This is the beauty of being a local in Oakland and the Bay Area. Having friends who have old photos of you and them in action. In this case the photo below is one of Lars Frykman, Bill Boyd and myself on BART in 1975. (In case you're wondering where Bill is, he's the photog here.)

Bill found this photo and put in on his Facebook profile page; now it's on mine too. But I couldn't resist sharing it as it's a small window into the Bay Area of the past. I mean, I had a small "'fro" and Lars was sporting the Rolling Stones' hair look. But that was as much hair as I wanted; no longer. No big 'Fro for me!

The only place I can think of where we may have been going at the time was Berkeley and to the Federation Trading Post (FTP) on a weekend or San Francisco just to ride through the then-new BART tube. That was a store located within a building that's still on Telegraph Avenue between Blake and Parker avenues.

One could go the FTP for book like "The Star Trek Technical Manual" and costumes and replicas of set props like 'Phasers'. I'd bet money that's where we were headed, but I'm wondering if our friend Craig Pryor was with us too. I seem to remember that he was, sitting next to Bill in that lounge seat area.

As to our expressions we were probably talking about the business of the club; that's the only thing that could get all of us worked up at some point in a conversation. Ha. Funny thing is, Lars then looks just like his son Kyle today.

BART was new then. It opened in 1972 and transbay service (under the San Francisco Bay from Oakland to San Francisco) started in 1974. What was neat about BART at that time was everything was automatic: the doors opened and the train didn't even have the human train operators that are in each one today. As I recall, the problems didn't start mounting up until 1976. But even with that it was a smooth almost soundless ride; the tracks have worn so much that such an experience is a thing of the past.

Well, in any case, my same friends are the ones who joined me to see the new Star Trek Movie last May, on the day it came out. Here we are in front of the Grand Lake Theater, in this video singing the Star Trek theme after seeing the flick.



Wow. I forgot how big my glasses were back then!

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With BART's deadline to reach a new union contract or face a worker strike extended to July 9th but still coming up on us fast, I took to the streets to learn what the public thinks about this possible event.

What I found was that many claimed they didn't even know of the possibility, but of those who did they all believed it would "severely cripple" transportation service in the Bay Area. I didn't tell those I talked to that the average BART union worker's salary was $115,000, or that the public ridership took in an average of $55,000, as that would be leading the witness. I wanted to learn what was on their minds and you can see that in the video.

But people not being informed about this? That's crazy. But I encountered a frightening number of people who were not informed. It's not that they don't care, but I think they see themselves as powerless to do anything one way or the other, and so stay out of the debate. Many didn't know that BART workers wanted a three percent raise or that BART police couldn't strike for that matter.

This sets the stage for a massive public outrage when a group of people (us) that has been asleep at the wheel finds it can't catch it's BART Train in the morning. Then there will be hell to pay.

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For weeks now, BART management and labor have been arguing over who should give up what on the eve of the expiration of contracts with the five unions that represent BART workers. But there's a problem: the matter of the murder of Oscar Grant and the revelation that another BART officer used a racial slur, and this was captured in a new video, raise questions regarding labor's moral standing to strike.

While BART's police can't strike, as one officer told me, the unions essentially represent the labor issues for the police. Thus, the use of the racial slur by a BART officer with BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, coupled with the murder by Mehserle, opens the accusation that it was a hate crime. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it was officer Tony Pirone who yelled "Bitch-ass N__, right?" As he was hitting Grant while Grant was on the ground.

While Pirone claims he was responding to something Grant said, there's no record or video backing his claim. What I think happened was Pirone may have overheard someone else say this but as Pirone is white, it's not likely someone would use that terms against him, especially since he's a police officer. But Pirone leaves himself open to another interpretation: that he was saying to Grant he's a "Bitch-ass N__, and then used the term "right?" as a way of affirming his own comment about Grant.

If so, and I think it is, that's a clear hate crime. Period. End of discussion.

I don't think BART workers want to be associated with this kind of behavior, but that's a looming possibility. BART workers are already seen to be richer than their riders, many who are like Oscar Grant, poor. So here we are with BART workers unwilling to take payroll cuts to maintain service, asking for a three-percent raise when everyone in the public sector's trying to save their jobs, and now we have two BART police officers expressing the ultimate dislike for a passenger due to his skin color. It also opens this question: to what degree do BART police conduct racial profiling?

A good friend of mine in law enforcement told me that many of the people recruited to become officers are white, suburban in their upbringing, not experienced in working with or befriending people of color. That must change.

The Strike Threat and The Race Problem

It's already clear many riders I talked to are concerned about the possible loss of service, but just wait until they get wind of these racial problems!

If BART's unions are going to achieve any degree of credibility in this matter, they've got to have the police address their problems with racism and issue an apology to the black community. The unions have no right to threaten a strike that disproportionally harms the poor and minority after one of their own working partners, represented by two BART police workers, apparently expressed dislike for and then shot a man who was poor and African American, because was poor and African American.

BARTLabor.com

If you want to keep up with the BART labor issue as it unfolds, I recommend you visit BARTLabor.com, a good and comprehensive website explaining just what's going on with the BART Strike and providing news updates.

More at SFGate.com: “(01-12) 21:36 PST San Francisco -- A raucous crowd protesting the shooting death of a BART passenger marched through downtown San Francisco tonight, overturning trash cans, tossing traffic barriers and lighting small garbage fires.

San Francisco police in riot gear quickly moved in and closed off streets as the crowd broke up into smaller groups, scattering in all directions.”

-- I went down there at 5:30 PM, but unlike the Oakland Riot, it was hard to actually find the group at first. These incidents must have occured an hour or so later.