content magazine beta issue by Content Magazine

contentmagazine Shapers Daniel Garcia – Cultivator daniel@content-magazine.com Sarah Garcia – Marketeer sarahg@content-magazine.com Morgan Kalakosky – PolyThoughterist morgan@content-magazine.com Marc Cardenas – FaceBridger marc@ content-magazine.com Keith Hendren – GenerTech keith@content-magazine.com Nathan Jensen – AnthroTect nathan@content-magazine.com Sarah Hale – Sustainer sarahh@content-magazine.com Words Jon Havens – Wordster jon@content-magazine.com Shadd Williams – FreelanceGenius shadd@content-magazine.com Ruben Escobedo III – StoryMaker ruben@content-magazine.com Michelle Nicole Sodergren – TheaTixer michelle@content-magazine.com Events Jessica Havens – TrendBuilder jessica@content-magazine.com Food Sarah Kompelien – Flavorite sarahk@content-magazine.com Visiuals Brian Jensen – VisualImprinter brian@content-magazine.com Matt Hale – Scribbler matt@content-magazine.com Amy Iniguez – Grafista amy@content-magazine.com Jessy Dewi – Queen-le-Grafix jessy@contentmagazine.com

Suzanne Hodson – SpaceShaper suzanne@content-magazine.com For advertising information please contact: advertising@content-magazine.com Submission and contributions are welcome. Please read through requirements.

Content magazine is a bi-monthly on-line publication about the life and style in San Jose, California. Reproduction, duplicating, distribution and remixing are encouraged provided you give credit to the material source and artists and allow the same condition to your contributions. You can find out more about our copyright license at creativecommons.org.

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Contributers Black & Brown Road Trip 3 iJigg Sharks fan, eh? Sky Mall Foodtrek Flipped: Fashion Shoot Things We Like 2008 Gas Prices Human Trafficking

Contributors

Sarah Garcia-Marketeer is an investigator by hobby and a sleuth by trade. Sarah enjoys discovering the best deals, websites, recipes, and little known tidbits of information. She is invigorated by productivity, saddened by apathy and inspired by ingenuity. While not searching around for the next great thing, she is wearing one of many hats-but none that she loves more than being a wife to an amazing husband, and mommy to the greatest two kids. Jon Havens-Wordster is a mid-twenties hearbreak of a man. While not envisioning himself a successful author of fiction, he loves to travel, read, write, play music and cast vision for his life. Though he currently hops from job to job searching for that perfect fit, he believes he will someday (when the time is right) become a teacher. Graduating from a private college in Northern California with no relation whatsoever to writing, he moved back to his home town of San Jose where he took up residance for a year before taking up his new residence in Santa Cruz. He is currently wondering where the wind will take him next. Jon Havens is a blogger but claims that he “got into it” before the fad took off and people started designing posters of monkeys in front of keyboards with clever quips placed above. jonhavens.blogspot.com. Ruben Escobedo III-StoryMaker was born is 1888, in Topeka Kansas. When he was 26 he invented a time machine out of a car, a wind up clock, and a potato. With this he traveled to the year 3000 and purchased a drink that would allow him to look eighteen forever and he wound never die. He then preceded to travel to 1980 and lived through the decade, four times. When he was about to go back for the fifth time, his time machine broke and launched him into the year 2005, and three years later he decided to use his knowledge of the future for good and write for content, writing about events that were going to happen, although to avoid suspicion of him being from the past and the future, he decided just to write about things after they had happened.

MAKERS SHAPERS

Sarah Hale-Sustainer often keeps the train of content moving. Sarah believes that one should give more than one takes. Native to San Jose Sarah has been seen climbing pyramids, and riding camels in Egypt, and Safariing in Tanzania. Sarah is currently workimg on completing some sort of degree at SJSU. Meanwhile, she continues to be active mentoring youth and defining and redefining herself peacefully mysterious behind blue (or are they green) eyes. Jessica Havens-TrendBuilder grew up in a household where there was always music playing and has been attending concerts since high school. “Sometimes music is the only thing that makes sense in this crazy world. Seeing a band live just gives me a rush that I can’t even explain and i hope through content I can share my love and excitement for music.” Daniel Garcia-Cultivator has spent most of his life preparing for this collaboration of content magazine. Born and raised in the Bay Area, San Jose has been his home for 96.2% of his life. And after several years of roaming from Oakland, San Francisco, Fremont and Spain, now lives downtown with his gifted wife and two talented kids. He has been heard saying, “ I will die here” and would rather ride his bike to a coffee shop downtown than vacation in Hawaii. He seeks to display his love for his home by giving a platform for the diversity and ingenuity that is here through content Magazine. Michelle Nicole Sodergren -TheaTixer was born in 1988 and raised in sunny California. She grew singing, dancing and loving the theater since she was 6 years old. Her admiration of the arts never faltered as she came into her 20’s last summer. She takes any chance she gets to see the latest movie in town. Today, along with her love for the entertainment business she has developed a deep love for children. Michelle works in an athletic club’s daycare and volunteers at a center to help elementary school level students with their homework. She desires to eventually become an elementary school teacher.

Amy (aka Aimee) Iniguez-Grafista was born and raised in Brisbane, (not Australia.) After living in Southern California for a year and running into one dead end job after another decided to move to the San Jose area where she finally saw the light and decided to jump head first into the graphic design field. Right now she is attending class at C.C.O.C. and working part time in retail, and also finds time to hang with her amazing friends who remind her how fun life is suppose to be. Matt Hale-Scribbler is a college student, living in San Jose, CA. He enjoys drawing “out of the box” pictures that communicate messages as well as entertain the audience. Matt plans to be a Business Marketing major so that he can use his understanding of people and his creative expression to properly, honestly, and yet effectively advertise whatever his assignment is. He will use his drawing skills at content by creating comic art about current issues. Brian Jensen-VisualImprinter is a graphic designer. His life is steeping in all manner of popular and alternative culture and you’ll often find him talking about film, music, typeface, pumas, wanderlust, fixed gears, Belgian ales, indexing, live performances, second hand books, and public transportation. He lives in Santa Cruz and wakes up most mornings struggling to differentiate between dreams and reality. Keith Hendren-GenerTech is a designer trapped in the body of an engineer, with unusually good hair and the wit of a raven. He spends his free time trying to discover the veiled and dreadfulbeauty that abounds in and around us, that seems to be the constant daunting whisper in his ear. There is a yearning in his chest to contribute to that beauty, but he is secretly unsure if that will happen. One day, he would like to be a part of a band named “Braile”. Their first album would be called “Ondine’s Curse”. Morgan Kalakosky-PolyThoughterist, a writer and DJ has lived in San Jose since 1997, first on the East Side then Willow Glen and most recently Fruitdale. He can tell you where all the best Taquerias and Pho noodle houses are. Morgan is the creator of www.cinequesting.org, a blog devoted to San Jose’s annual reason to visit downtown. He also curates cloudsinthehead.org, a mix depository that is updated about as frequently as the menu at Original Joe’s. Nathan Jensen-AnthroTect is a graduate from Cal Poly, SLO and working for a local achecturial firm. Recently,

married he still has not found a facial hair (beard-stash) combination that is pleasing to his wife and his bohemian inner voice. Suzanne Hodson-SpaceShaper is enjoying her early-soon-to-be-mid-twenties with her hubby. She recently graduated with an architecture degree from Cal Poly and loves all forms of good design. She hopes to illustrate children’s books when she “grows up.” She enjoys spending time with family, designing and window-shopping for furniture, playing with arts and crafts, and chatting with old and new friends over big mugs of hot chocolate while playing board games and listening to good music. Sarah Kompelien-Flavorite was raised in the South Bay and is currently working as a chef in Mountain View, CA. As a vegetarian, she has always been interested in food and the arts; specifically the intersection of the two. Early influencs involve corn starch, water, and green food coloring. Sarah was married in 2007 and has a border collie named Rory. Marc Cardenas- FaceBridger is San Jose, 1st generation Mexican-American and is left handed. He enjoys baseball, dark beer in the winter and light beer in the summer, rice and beans, sandwiches, U2 and hip-hop. Marc is in process, Marc is content. (CONTRIBUTORS NOT PICTURED) Jessy Dewi-Queen-le-Grafix was born in Singapore, raised in Jakarta and Shanghai before coming to the US for college. She loves reading random articles from Wikipedia and thinks that it’s the best thing ever since the internet. She also has an obsession towards anything Japanese and is striving to learn the language. Jessy is currently pursuing her master degree at Academy of Art University. Jessy loves design. Thinks in shapes and stories with color charts and wheels dancing in CYMK layers. Too kind to be militant, she too, is Sans Serif. Shadd Williams-FreelanceGenius is a writer, producer, filmmaker and father of three, Shadd doesn’t have tights or a giant “S” but is still Uber and moves, thinks and converses faster than a speeding Amtrack. Those who know Shadd, always say, “he is one of the most talented people I know.” Oh, did I mention, he sings (and, has a great wife.)

CONTRIBUTORS DEVELOPERS

Black&Brown by MARC CARDENAS

There are two types of people in the world: One type that dream lofty dreams and do nothing with those dreams; the second type are the ones that chase down their dreams and make them happen. I recently sat down with two dream chasers, Irene Kim and Monisha Murray, the co-founders of a local buy-sell-trade clothing store, Black and Brown. Our conversation centered around their original motivation and future hopes for their store. Their story is as eclectic as their products.

Thank you for having us here in your boutique , we really appreciate the opportunity to meet you and to highlight your business, but also to highlight the different and unique things that both of you as co-founders/owners are doing here in the community. CONTENT: I’d like to start by asking both of you to share the history of Black and Brown and what led you to start this business together? BLACK AND BROWN IRENE: We have known each other for about ten years now, we met when I started working at CrossRoads--from there we became really good friends and have lived in different cities together. We moved to Santa Cruz together and then to San Francisco and that’s where the idea came to be. Monisha moved to New York, but before she moved she knew that she wanted to open a store. BLACK AND BROWN MONISHA: I moved to New York and was conspiring to open a store in New York and just realized that for myself that I was more of a West Coast person-plus I didn’t have family in NY. I bought a bunch of stock from a great hook up in New York and brought everything back to San Jose. My original partner opened a store in San Francisco. I wanted to open up a store in San Jose. My friendship with Irene and our mutual feeling that SJ needed something like Black and Brown was the genesis of our partnership. CONTENT: When you say you felt like San Jose needed something new, something different—what made you feel it was a new fashion venture that was needed? BLACK AND BROWN MONISHA: I have always just had a knack for fashion and ownership/management. I worked for a company for a few years doing the same exact thing

and then straight away worked at an airport and then went to NY and found myself doing the same thing and moving up in management. It just showed me my potential of what I could do and then I just figured I needed to bring it here. Both of us were born and raised here so we’ve seen a lot of shops coming and going: there was Channel 1 on the Alameda and it was amazing, it was huge and had events and hosted bands, along with a coffee shop. We have a lot of heart and we have a lot of passion for what we do—we love what we do—it makes sense that we’d do it here. BLACK AND BROWN IRENE: I think too that fashion can go so many different ways. I think that just being a buy-sell-trade company, we never get tired of seeing these pieces and when we see vintage pieces we go “oh my gosh”—we still get excited. I think that’s how you know you’re doing what you love. CONTENT: What makes Black and Brown so unique? BLACK AND BROWN MONISHA: Well, what we’ve created here is our skills that we’ve learned as well as brought ourselves to the table. I feel like that’s what makes us unique is adding that element of ourselves. For myself working for a corporate it was very structured and we could only buy certain things. And then working for an independent in NY it was a free for all. It was like the things I was told not to buy, it was like “buy this, its amazing and this is great”. So, it really shook me up and opened my eyes at the same time, and it opened myself up to so many amazing things. I feel like what we’re bringing is are experiences. We both lived in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, definitely San Jose, and then me going out to NY, its like we always say, “we collected from every city and we are bringing that here. So we’re feeding a lot of different types of styles. We just collected things we’ve seen that were missing in these other places and made it all cohesive into one. CONTENT: You do take in garments and then trick them out?

CONTENT: How have things changed and how have things stayed the same? What’s still true from day one?

BLACK AND BROWN MONISHA: Oh yeah, we’re crazy. We were laughing the other day because that evolved from being poor. We were laughing because we were going through our own little timeline and sketching through just saying “wow”. “Flipping” is one of our main focuses: reconstructive vintage, whether it is altering it or shortening it, it just gives it a whole new fresh look, it gives it a practical wear. Things back in the 70’s were really long or odd lengths so it makes it a bit easier for girls to function and work with if it’s a little bit shorter and more modern. We did it very minimally—just making a few pieces and our customers really liked our “flipped” stuff—they really caught onto it; now it’s the staple of our store. It’s a bit of a higher price point but nothing crazy because we are really about being practical, but we are investing a lot of our time along with running a business to give these special elements to our customers.

BLACK AND BROWN IRENE: Well I definitely feel like the essence of the store, just our original idea of what we wanted has stayed the same. We still want to provide something unique and different to our customers along with mainstream options. Definitely the actual space has changed a bit. Since we opened we’ve doubled the size of our space. We acquired the backspace and we knocked down the walls ourselves. I think it was a blessing that it happened—it wasn’t something that we planned for but when the opportunity arose we definitely went for it. CONTENT: It’s a beautiful store THAT OUR READERS SHOULD CHECK OUT. You are not only about fashion (clothing, shoes, and accessories); there is a very unique aspect at the back of the store: the art studio. What’s the reason behind having an art studio in the store?

BLACK AND BROWN MONISHA: When we opened, we added the elements of art. We’re around so many creative people that it was just something we wanted to add as an element. They are so intertwined, FASHION AND ART, you know, they are forms of expression and that expression is limitless. So, I think that’s part of why we added the gallery. When we didn’t the gallery space, we had a wall and we featured local artist’s work. And when we expanded it was like whoa now we have a 1000sq.ft. gallery. We’ve actually built a reputation now, a following for our gallery. Last year it was booked all year—which was a first. I feel like our studio is for up and coming artists, artists that maybe didn’t go to school but are amazing; it’s a place for them to put their work up and let it be shown, and we have had a lot of success with it. BLACK AND BROWN IRENE: I think that when artists have art shows here, it feels like home. It is a very comfortable environment and I feel like as people we are very open to all different types of art and genres. I feel that is one reason the skating community has made us their outlet for art. We make it easy for them: put it up and then we’ll have an art reception—it’s organic and really comfortable and fun that way. Visit Black and Brown Boutique at 1225 West San Carlos St. SJ, Ca.

RoadTrip By Marc Cardenas

Have you ever had a wild hair to go on a road trip? You know, the kind that leads to an incredible adventure, lots of MySpace moments you can’t really post, and usually a misdemeanor in a couple of states? Well what if the road trip was in search of doing some good, for someone else? Not such a wild time after all, right? I recently spent some time with a young, innovative artist who came to the West Coast in search of doing good. Imran Siddiquee packed his Honda Accord and set out on a 2,000-mile journey that brought him to San Jose, Ca— a long way from his hometown in Illinois.

Imran, neo-renaissance man, who’s passion is writing, came to the Bay Area to work for City Year, Inc. City Year unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of fulltime service, giving them the skills and opportunities to change the world. Imran’s typical week while a City Year corps member consisted of 50 hours of community service in a local elementary school. Imran focused on providing school-age children with much needed academic support. Siddiquee helped children increase their reading and

comprehension skills as well as increasing their self-esteem. While serving as a corps member, Imran was compelled to start a writing club for students. The club was an effort to give the students an outlet for self-expression. With the majority of public schools focusing time and attention on standards, creative clubs like Imran’s are a welcomed intervention. What would motivate a college graduate to leave his family and friends to serve a population that he’s never met? Worth. Imran believes passionately that individuals have tremendous self-worth and wants to unlock human potential. He sees the beauty and the untold stories that most overlook. His ethos is what motivates Imran as a creative writer. Imran discovered writing as a means for self-expression and creativity—it’s no wonder why he would want to give the students he served the same opportunity.

His arrival in San Jose is not without some irony. He originally sought to move west to pursue his creative writing endeavors—LA to be exact. He came across national service and ended up in San Jose not knowing that there was a City Year location in Los Angeles. He candidly admits that had he known about the LA site, he’d gone there. It goes to show that a person’s story is never penned in permanent ink. His flexibility lends to a more robust life. Imran’s influence extended beyond the school community he was serving. His leadership permeated the community of peers he served alongside. Many of the corps members looked up to Imran and sought him for wisdom beyond years. As you spend time with Imran it’s obvious that he’s committed himself to personal enrichment. He’s a bright, critical thinker, open to new ideas and opinions. This approach has shaped him into a well-rounded individual and writer. Hearing Imran’s passion to create a better world is inspiring. In a time where most people look to serve themselves, it’s refreshing to see an individual forgo the comforts of life to help others. His experience as corps member led Imran to join the City Year staff in San Jose as a Program Manager this year. He will lead a team of young idealists as they unlock the same human potential that Imran seeks to unleash.

Web Traffic

Content Magazine Feature on

Starting a new website is like spitting into a hurricane. Inspiring visual, isn’t it? Even the phrase: “spitting into a hurricane,” appeared on the internet one hundred and bother you. You spend months designing a layout that is simultaneously unique and readable. You labor for weeks tweaking art and cajoling freelance writers for contributions. Nevertheless here you are: ready to add another voice into a chorus of 1,463,632,361 singers.

Nearly everyone I know uses the internet to generate content of one form or another. It enters our homes on phone lines and through cable boxes. Some of us carry it on designer smart phones and laptops. We’re building a shared narrative; describing movies, swapping music, reviewing local taquerias and Twittering Sharks’ game playby-play for our friends living on the East Coast. The (ironically much written about) death of print media is giving way to the construction of individual stories using the internet. Each chapter begins when you check your email over morning coffee. It then spirals out across a dozens of websites, each contributing their own tangential paragraphs. Then, after a midnight raid in World of Warcraft and one last blog entry, the tale concludes with treasures obtained and alliances secure. For tonight at least. Calling the internet ubiquitous in 2008 seems naïve, without it many in the Bay Area would be out of work and under-entertained. Popular social networking sites seem near essential for keeping in-touch with friends and family spread out across the valley, state and world. Silicon Valley is the home to a number of the businesses whose websites we think of when we think of what the internet “is.” According to Alexa.com, 5 of the top 10 most visited websites are physically located here. Yahoo, Craigslist, YouTube and Google all call the Bay Area home. EBay’s Whitman campus (their global HQ) is a few blocks from my house. It’s vaguely strange to

regularly drive by a place that so many people only know as a disembodied website. As people shift more and more of their personal and business identities online the barrier between the two blurs. Constant access to email and VPN connections to work computers allow us to stay connected to the office regardless of where we are. Bay Area businesses are slowly warming to the idea of incorporating social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook into project management and communications. Conversely, we should all be aware that employers both future and present can easily find whatever trail of digital crumbs we happen to leave along the way. This rapid exchange of communication and data gives users instant access to knowledge, analysis and endless parodies of both. Even the act of sharing links with each other is ripe for parody. “Rickrolling” is the internet version of a bait-andswitch, feed your friends a link to an unreleased Radiohead album and they end up watching a clip of Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up. Even stranger still is when these internet memes cross over into the “real world,” as the Rickroll inexplicably did on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. So back to your original dilemma: you’ve started your site but what now? Without visitors your site idles on the launch pad. Your friends and family are already sick of your extended emails about the site. You’ve posted flyers in the school quad, indie bookstore and at the local coffee shop. Emails to editors at TechCrunch and Gawker are going unanswered and your hosting bill is two weeks overdue. What now? Maybe you can submit to linkblog sites like Digg, Boingboing or Buzzfeed. Create a clever enough

article (Top 10 Spatulas for Mom this Xmas) and get some time on their front pages. Your web traffic stats will skyrocket the moment they link to you as their readers are herded your direction. This will provoke second and third tier bloggers to add you to their linkrolls and tumblr feeds. Your unique visitor count goes up again. Now with dozens of sites linking back to you (lots of Spatula enthusiasts are also rapid bloggers) and maybe you’re noticed by the omniscient link crawling Google robot. All of this attention brings with it a tide of visitors, jamming the network to your little server, crashing the site entirely while you fork out a few thousand for larger bandwidth and server capacity. By the time your newly buffed-up website comes online the linkblog’s front pages feature a new topic and the spatula bloggers are Twittring about the new 2009 Hello Kitty shaped models. Your traffic has fallen back to normal and your web stats look like a stock chart for Citi Group. You’re back to square one and the hosting bill is twice what is was just a week ago. Still jazzed about this brave new digital world? We sure are! Not ever newly minted website follows this dramatic rise and fall. Occasionally a clever and (gasp) useful website escapes this dire fate. It takes hard work, a little luck and, in the case of San Francisco-based iJigg.com, some help from the Thai government. We spoke to iJigg’s lead designer Zaid Farooqui about his experience launching a music recommendation website in March of 2007. Zaid designed web sites with his brother since age 13 and the sleek interface of iJigg combined music discovery with social networking features. Tech websites like Digg and TechCrunch were impressed and wrote articles recommending users check out the site. Some of the commentators questioned the legal liability of unrestricted music sharing but nevertheless iJigg was “on the map” and it’s web traffic grew steadily based on this crosstalk discussion.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, two seemingly unrelated events affected iJigg’s web traffic significantly. The first was the release of the dance version of Ting by Thai pop artist Air, a sugary homage to late 90s europop artist Kylie Minogue. The second was the Thai government blocked access to YouTube because of concerns over access to subversive materials. Thai youth clamoring to hear Air and other pop music searched Google and found only one website that catered to them. iJigg found their user base. Today over 75,000 visitors from Thailand, about half of their online population, visit the website on a daily basis. Appropriately, iJigg are focusing their energy on increasing their presence in the Thai market and plan to add SMS (text messaging) features for their users sometime next year. Can your new website pull off the unlikely, and like iJigg find an audience in a place you’ve never visited? Or maybe, like this publication currently on your screen, you’re aiming for some place closer to home. How do we get there? Maybe by understanding the vehicle to bringing users to us. Like it’s automotive-based relative, web traffic is a necessary byproduct of the electronic transmission of information and data through an ad-hoc network of computers connected over land and wireless connections. What any of that means to you: the blog browsing, mp3 downloading, status updating, bargain hunting, photo uploading, mmorpging, and rickrolling internet reader/ writer is unclear. Just as a healthy economy means roads jammed with cars and trucks, a healthy website means an exchange of ideas between readers and writers. It means worthwhile stories about of our community and residents. It means content and above all: what’s inside matters.

Sharks fan, eh?

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Q: Which Shark is one away from having 700 assissts? a. Patrick Marleau(12) b. Evgeni Nabokov(20) c. Jeremy Roenick(27) d. Mike Grier(25) A: C

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Q: Which team is considered one of the biggest rivals to the Sharks? a. The Los Angeles Kings b. The Anaheim Ducks c. The New York Rangers d. The Toronto Maple Leafs A: B

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Q: If the sharks are playing the Chicago Black Hawks, at who do you boo if they get the puck? A: Brian Campbell(51)

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Q: If the sharks are playing the Anaheim Ducks, at who do you boo if they get the puck? A: Chris Pronger(25)

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Q: Who is the goalie of the Dallas Stars, that you as a Sharks’ fan should despise? A: Marty Turco(35)

Are you a true San Jose Sharks fan? Think you’ve got what it takes to say that you are a true sharks fan? Here’s a quiz to prove it. 1. Q: When is it ok to get up and get out of your seat? A: When the puck is not in play. 2. Q: Who are the best people to ask for directions for inside and outside the pavilion? A: The blue coats. 3. Q: Who is allowed to go down to the ice during the pregame practice? A: Everyone, no matter where you are sitting, is allowed down on the ice. Match the player’s nicknames to their real names. 4. “Nabby” Jeremy Roenick(27) 5. “J.R.” Patrick Marleau(12) 6. “Pickles” Evgeni Nabokov(20) 7. “Gouch” Marc-Edouard Vlasic(44) 8. “Cheech” Jonathan Cheechoo (14) 9. “Patty” Devon Setoguchi(16) Answers to above: 4. Evgeni Nabokov(20) 5. Jeremy Roenick(27) 6. Marc-Edouard Vlasic(44) 7. Devin Setoguchi(16) 8. Jonathan Cheechoo (14) 9. Patrick Marleau(12)

10.

Q: Who is the captain? a. Jonathan Cheechoo (14) b. Jeremy Roenick(27) c. Milan Michalek(9) d. Patrick Marleau(12) A: D

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Q: Who are the two assistant captains? a. Marcel Goc(11) and Marc-Edouard Vlasic(44) b. Jeremy Roenick(27)and Evgeni Nabokov(20) c. Torrey Mitchell(17) and Jody Shelley(45) d. Joe Thorton (19) and Mike Grier(25) A: D

Sky Mall -by Keith Hendren

I’m there, stuck, sitting on a plane contemplating how to solve this whole global debacle we’ve seemed to have gotten ourselves into: rising gas prices, inflation, dwindling resources...your typical apocalyptic fare. Nothing is really coming to mind, and it’s keeping me from getting sleep. Staring forward in a glum stupor, I realize that the widget holding up my tray table is pointing downwards, seeming to coo a little whisper, “hey, I’ve got just what you need...” Panning down, my eyes catch upon the corner of something red. There, protruding from between the beige safety card and an empty peanut wrapper is my own complimentary copy of SkyMall Magazine. The cover, wrinkled and torn at the corners, makes me think that marketing had one of those run-down 80’s strip malls in mind when they coined the title. Pictured at center is an attractive woman laying in an airy looking bedroom that’s bright, inviting, and totally unlike the careening vessel I’m contorted within at present. I look around and subtly recline my seat back, but can’t quite seem to conjure the same effect. She is reading from one of those electronic books you can’t use during take-off or landing, but looks

fantastically fun to use at home. Someone has defaced her room with pen marks, which must have happened in an act of lunacy, or at best forgotten reverence. Flipping in beyond the first page, I am stunned to encounter the most shameful collection of ad hoc land fill fodder that I’ve ever set eyes upon. There are special widgets for cleaning light-bulbs, remote controls to control other remotes, sports shoes that promise to resurrect dreams that should stay dead. But the coup de grace, truly, has to be the electronic butter warmer for a one-time payment of $49.95. There’s something about this device that particularly irks me, and I can’t quite settle on the main reason. Is it that we’ve made an electric device to take something back to room temperature? Or maybe it’s the use of stainless steel--a material better suited to contain industrial acid than curdled milk. Or it could be the fact that for twenty bucks less, it would have made a great mother’s day present. The truth of that matter is that the collective mentality of consumerism is fundamentally, irresponsible, is fundamentally broken. There’s a temptation to label this mindset with the precursor American, but that can no longer be justly claimed. After years with the United States as a self-proclaimed “beacon of prosperity”, other

countries have found us worthy of emulation and drawn near our resource-devouring flame. There have been attempts to mathematize this effect on the planet: plots skewed left and right, up and down on special log-scales. And the word “sustainable” is thrown out without restraint as the unilateral panacea for our ills. But with all the verbosity and posturing, the fundamental equation is very simple: If we deplete more resources than we invest, we will eventually run out. The challenges to this claim are relatively few. For one, you have to trust a fancy thing called the law of conservation of mass, or, “you can’t get something from nothing.” A caveat to the conservation law is that you consider earth a closed system—which, technically, it is not. But unless meteor countertops become the next new craze, we don’t receive anything from our universe of very much worth…anything except for sunlight. A quick aside here: if the only thing entering our planet in “mass quanities” is light energy, doesn’t it make sense to invest in solar technology? Shouldn’t that be at the top of every list for sustainable energy development? It seems pretty evident to me. Still, there is much confusion about how to

proceed more responsibly. I submit that the 80’s mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle” should have been given priorites like the foodpyramide. The only one of these processes which is not energy/resource intensive is reduce. Stop using things. Stop buying new things you don’t need. We can all do without much of what we buy. All of which brings me to why I’m on a plane. I’m flying to China to work on the production of a new laptop computer. It’s one that offers some environmental improvements, but looks cool enough and has enough performace tweaks to get people to buy it. I understand if you sense some hypocracy here. However I’ve always thought there were two ways to change something you dislike: protesting from without, or rolling your sleeves up and trying to fix the system from within. It’s not that I’ve made any monumental improvements…but I do make a concerted effort to reduce parts and increase the recycleability of every part I design. That said, if you already have a computer, please don’t buy one of our new ones. But if not, well, then I guess you can consider it. After all, it is a whole lot more useful than a butter heater.

FOODTREK by Sarah Kompelien

The weather as been so nice lately, that my mind drifted to summer: fresh produce and backyard barbeques. What could be better, you imagine, than grilled steak and asparagus, crunchy potato chips and melt-inyour-mouth ice cream? Well, plenty. Take a closer look at labels and you may become envious of the world traveling your food has done to reach your grocery basket. These days, everyone wants to save the environment. We run around the house turning off lights like mad people, scolding our loved ones yet again and reminding them that we’re in an energy crisis, and, could you please be more aware? Turning away, we toss our Pepsi cans into the recycle bin with a selfsatisfied grin, and that night sleep in peace. Frankly, it’s time for us to wake up and smell the gasoline fumes.

The truth is, American food culture is over-processed. On average, each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled about 1,500 miles before it reaches your plate. (source) Picturing the way some of us look after a cross-country flight, let’s be thankful that our fruits and veggies don’t have faces! Let’s take another look at our typical market fare. “Fresh” green beans on your Thanksgiving table? You’ve got it…oh, but they will be from Mexico… or farther. Bananas year round? We wouldn’t have our lunchboxes any other way! Oh, and, uh, those will be imported from Ecuador. By presupposition, these are reasonable requests: All we want is to have a humble barbeque with asparagus, grapes, and potato chips. By standards of reality, we are lunatics. Why? We want what we want and, for the most part, we get it. Asparagus is well past its California growing season, and most grapes are being imported from South America (where it’s Autumn). Potato chips seem to spend more time traveling on a truck than the potato itself spent in the ground.

One of the most overlooked food products when it comes to long-range travel are bananas. Most bananas loaded onto grocery store shelves in California are imported primarily from Central America. We may be inclined to believe that the food we purchase from developing countries is beneficial for its farmers. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

If you’re picturing Farmer Juan and his family gratefully wiping sweat from their brows when you buy that Ecuadoran banana, picture this instead: the CEO of Dole, Inc. in his air conditioned office in Westlake Village, California. He’s worth about $1.4 billion; Juan gets about $6 a day. Much money is made in the global reshuffling of food, but the main beneficiaries are processors, brokers, shippers, supermarkets, and oil companies. -Excerpt from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Hopp, 66

For thousands of years, humans have been trading and bartering goods and services. With the progression of technology and the advent of various transportation methods, what was once out of reach is now accessible. However, it begs the question: Is more, better? In California, we have one of the most desired, temperate climates in the world. We have asparagus in early April, leafy green kale growing quietly along the highways, and the most beautiful heirloom tomatoes you’ve ever seen or tasted. Here’s the kicker: you don’t have to drive more than 100 miles to find it. Realization of such bounty was the seed that sprouted the concept of the 100 Mile Diet. The 100 Mile Diet has developed out of a community’s desire to revive their local food culture. It is a movement which encourages us to consume deliberately from the same places we work, live, drink the water, and breathe the air. It’s a culture based upon knowing your farmers and neighbors. Eating locally starts with actions as simple as stopping at a farmer’s market to sample to

local fare to trading lemons from your tree for a neighbor’s home-grown cherry tomatoes. Think about it: local agriculture is one of the best ways to support our local economy and reduce our carbon footprint on the environment. As demand for locally grown foods increase, accordingly so will the money that is pumped back into the greater Bay Area community farms. Eating locally will help keep money in your pocket, too. If you buy produce and dairy from local sources and prepare simple meals from scratch, it will cost you far less money on average than preprepared meals bought through a greasy window or that require coaxing out of a deep freeze. Additional benefits include the ability to control what goes into your body, consuming fewer calories, and foregoing unpronounceable ingredients in processed foods. So, why aren’t we there already?

The main barrier standing between ourselves and a localfood culture is not price, but attitude. The most difficult requirements are patience and a pinch of restraint— virtues that are hardly the property of the wealthy. These virtues seem to find precious little shelter, in fact, in any modern quarter of this nation founded by the Puritans. Furthermore, we apply them selectively: browbeating our teenagers with the message that they should wait for sex, for example. Only if they wait to experience intercourse under the ideal circumstances (the story goes), will they know its true value. “Blah blah blah” hears the teenager: words issuing from a mouth that can’t even wait for the right time to eat tomatoes, but instead consumes tasteless ones all winter to satisfy a craving for everything now…Waiting for the quality experience seems to be the constitutional article that has slipped from the American food custom. -Excerpt from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Kingsolver, 31

For everything there is a season, and so it should be embraced. Lest we live in disappointment all year round, taking the moments necessary to see what arises from our own soil is imperative. You may be surprised what youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find.

make-up danielle randleman production manager sarah hale model theodora, halvorson models model ian, san jose resident location hotel de anza styling monisha and irene from black and brown

Vintage Brown Framed Mirrored Sunglasses - $12.00 American Apparel Zig Zag Pink Tee - $14.00 Velvet Dark Blue Blazer - $36.00 Cheap Monday Dark Denim Jeans - $65.00 J.S.S.N Couture Leather Patchworkwith Grommet Chain - $42.00

FLIPPED Denim One-Piece Jumper with Orange Leather Detail - $45.00

Vintage leather tie up boots - $2.00 Sea green fringe purse - $28.00 Multi- colored stones charm bracelet - $14.00

Yellow American Apparel Tank Bodysuit - $8.00 Black Fedora Brimmed Hat with Red Feather - $28.00 J.S.S.N. Couture Black and Gold Chain linked with owl pendant - $35.00 High-waisted black and white checked pants - $13.00 Red pumps - $18.00

Vintage Black Frame Clear Lens Glasses - $26.00 Creme Long Sleeve Shirt - $10.00 Grey Skinny Tie - $10.00 Vintage Christian Dior V-Neck Pullover - $18.00 DC Skinny Jeans - $16.00 Black Wingtip Shoes - $26.00

Available at Black & Brown Vintage Boutique 1225 West San Carlos St. San Jose, Ca. Photography: Daniel Garcia

Light Brown Straw hat with Brim - $24.00 Camel colored Leather Bomber Jacket - $42.00 Black and White Tie Dye Tee - $14.00

80â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sunglasses - $18.00 J.S.S.N. Couture Gold Chain with Pearl and Gold Ball Pendants - $48.00 Vintage Black and White Asymmetrical Dress - $28.00

Things We Like San Jose City Hall 1. great design (architects Richard Meier & Partners) 2. great natural light inside

Cafe San Jose for Breakfast 1. fresh ingredients 2. creative menu 3. the best coffee house coffee

Highway 280 1. top 3 highways in CA 2. good scenic route to SF 3. never too much traffic

MVP Sports Arena 1. baseball batting cages (45mph - 80mph); you have the option to change the pitch height and location which gives you a more realistic feeling. 2. softball batting cages (slow and fast pitch)

Alameda Recycle Bookstore 1. cheap vintage/used books 2. bigger than Campbell Recycle bookstore 3. knowledgeable staff

Light Rail 1. gets me close to everywhere i need to go 2. bike rack section 3. on-time 4. eco-friendly

Slavery with a capital by Shadd Williams

The first direct contact I had with

Slavery was in September of 2007.

My lifelong friend, musician Justin Dillon, asked me to help him with an

undercover shoot at a “massage parlor” in San Francisco where he believed the girls, who were offering far more than massage, were under age and not free to leave. A group of students from the University of San Francisco, under the leadership of their

professor, David Batstone, had surveilled a location in the downtown Union Square luxury shopping area of San Francisco where they believed the “massage parlor” was actually a brothel. And the prostitutes were actually slaves.

Slaves. Being forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence; being economically exploited and unable to walk away. These girls were under lock and key. The madam and the bouncer would leave at night and come back in the morning but none of the girls ever saw the light of day except through a window covered by bed sheets in the fourth floor of a building that also housed a couture wedding dress shop.

What I found out that day is that Slavery is not obsolete. It often goes by another name: Human Trafficking, which I find somewhat lacking in description. “Trafficking,” in this context means buying and selling. It comes off almost euphemistic when it is applied to “humans.” Make no mistake--this is more than people moving across borders illegally or some kind of voluntary servitude. This is good (good meaning bad) old fashioned slavery. The kind you thought was abolished in 1865.

The headline grabbers are the sex slaves but there are more labor slaves worldwide than anything else. Farm workers, domestics, hotel and food service in western culture, factory workers in the far east and Africa. The reality is that there are over 27 million slaves in the world today. That number is the one the UN is willing to publish. In other words, that’s the safe number. It could easily be double that. No one really knows. It’s an insidious reality, an underground economy that fuels and drives more of the above-ground economy than you or I would care to realize. The next time I sat down with Justin was to look at what he’d been doing over the last year. We were living in New York at the time but I had been aware for several months before our undercover shoot that he was making a film that he was calling “The Concert to End Slavery.” Justin’s a musician and had some great musical acts onboard, performances already in the can. He pulled out his PowerBook and showed me some of the gorgeous black and white footage of the Cold War Kids, Imogen Heap, Matisyahu and Natasha Bedingfield to name a few. I was blown away by the songs and the performances. It was the filmmaking part that was a big question mark...for me and for Justin. It was one of those things he never set out to do but ended up doing anyway. Justin has a remarkable grasp of what is happening in culture and an uncanny ability to see not only what’s happening next but what SHOULD be happening. In his own life, his own study, his own experience, he discovered this horror happening, learned more about it, and knew he had to do something about it. For Justin it all started several years ago while on tour in Russia. The interpreter assigned to him and his band (Dimestore Prophets at the time) was a seventeen-eighteen year old girl who was very excited to be working with Americans and said

again and again how much she loved the United States. In fact, she was moving there shortly, that a job was waiting for her. Justin found out that she had paid an agency of some sort $2500 American to secure a job for her at McDonald’s. Obviously, this didn’t sound right to Justin. After just a few more questions, he learned that she knew nothing about the agency, the job, the travel arrangements, the place she was going and where she was to live. But the “agency” had a detailed application from her with all of her vital information including the names of family and friends and their addresses. All she had was a phone number. Justin dialed the number. It was a fax machine. Justin had read about girls like these from columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, one of the first voices to cry out about the tragedy in Darfur, who was now crying out about the global tragedy of Slavery. Justin warned the girl and left Russia with a new and alarming understanding of how real and how broad human trafficking is. He wanted to do something about it. He wrote a song called “Baby Blue.” But he wanted to do more so he tried to figure out a way to have a benefit

concert. Halfway down that road, he figured out the way to get more people to see that concert was to film it. From there, he realized he needed some information for people--that it couldn’t just be music, it had to inform a largely unaware world of the situation. And that’s where I came in. We sat down in a coffee shop in Menlo Park. Justin showed me hundreds of pages of transcripts from interviews he’d conducted with people like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and US Ambassador John Miller (the first US Ambassador for Human Trafficking). Actor Activist Ashley Judd and UN Goodwill Ambassador Julia Ormond. He looked at me across the table and said, “You’re a storyteller. Help me tell this story.” One year later, the film was released in theaters across the country as “CALL+RESPONSE” on October 10, 2008. Justin distributed it himself, working out of a small office in Oakland with a couple of paid staff and a bunch of passionate interns. It’s one of those things that had a life of its own. As far as the quality of the film itself, I’ll leave that to others to decide. I’m far too close to it to be objective. But one thing I can say objectively: when people learn about Modern Day Slavery, they want to do something about it. Now that you know, what will you do? Go to callandresponse.com to learn more about the film, the movement, and how to get involved.

An estimated two million women and children are sold into sex slavery around the world every year. Forced labor is most prevalent in five sectors of the U.S. economy: prostitution and sex services (46 percent); domestic service (27 percent); agriculture (10 percent); sweatshop/factory work (5 percent); and restaurant and hotel work (4 percent). Traffickers are selling children in India for amounts that are often lower than the cost of animals –Reuters Nearly 200,000 people live in slavery in the US. –US STATE DEPT The states with the largest incidence of slavery are California, Florida, Texas and New York. Over 1/3 of all prostitutes in South and East Asia are children. 65% of all tourists to South and East Asia last year were men traveling alone, and 1/5th of them traveled to their destination expressly for the purpose of sex tourism. –World Vision Fewer than 1,000 victims have been assisted through the efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement since 2001, when services for trafficking victims were first made available. Every 10 minutes, a woman or child is trafficked into the United States for forced labor. Sex traffickers use a variety of methods to “condition” their victims including starvation, confinement, beatings, physical abuse, rape, gang rape, threats of violence to the victims and the victims’ families, forced drug use and the threat of shaming their victims by revealing their activitLTH AND HUMAN SERVICES