Deborah Schultz

Cocktails, cupcakes and food for thought..

A quick note to say thanks to Brady, Bre et al - for another great Ignite event.  Cupcakes were gorgeous and the talks were a blast.  I even got to express four years of "alley vs valley" in a compact 5 minutes!

Thanks to Sean

Seven years of reflection

Once again, as I have for the past four years, I woke up incredibly early, my subconscious prepped for a quiet solitude of sunrise reflection. I exchanged my annual phone and text messages with my fellow volunteers as I have every year on September 11th and then went about my day. 

Eight years is an emotional eternity and yet a blip in historical perspective - the world moves on and the event is a now a political pawn. The experiences of those who lived through the day are shared privately vs publicly and perhaps that is as it should be. I am always saddened by America's lack of history and ability to commemorate the fallen in a unified way - something akin to Israel's moment of silence on memorial day.  Now, more than ever this missing moment highlights the festering wounds.

My thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends who lost loved ones on that tragic day. They are the only ones who truly understand the cost of terrorism.

Some past reflections:

Six Years - and a lifetime

Four years later

Three years - view from the west

Day of: events of the day

[Photo credit: Absolutwade]

Alley vs Valley - the time has come

I gave in. I caved. 

Brady, Jen and I were chatting at a recent dinner in SF, and the SF vs NYC conversation came up as it so often does in my life - and, well - after a few drinks my resolve was weakened.  Finally after four years of various ad-hoc conversations among friends from both coasts, I will indeed do an "alley vs valley" bit at next week's IgniteNYC. 

If I am lucky and get this right - I will equally tick off friends on both coasts. And that is where you come in. 

I am way too earnest to hit all the right notes so - so please leave ahead on over to the brand spanking new new "Alley vs Valley" wiki and have at it! please leave your snarks/comparisons in the comment section below!!! [till i fix the wiki]

I only have 5 minutes - so this will be pretty visual stuff!

Can't wait to hear what you have to say!!

[Note: Nod to Fred for inviting you to join in on the fun!]

Addition - in googling I find this CLASSIC article from 1999 read it and weep..heh

In a Hugh kinda mood

I have always loved Hugh's stuff. Plus, he is a marketing genius. 

Lately, I just can't get enough.  Must be missing home (the snarky NYC vibe). Yeah that must be it.

For those unfamiliar - the man has a way of cutting through the crap - in business and life. A must read to keep you sane.

And Wi-Fi for all (in NYC, that is)

On a subject near and dear to me, my friend Andrew Rasiej is running for Public Advocate in NY.  Andrew and his team's first big effort is kicking off tomorrow on the steps of New York's City Hall. Having just spent the last two days attending Supernova, where many of the who's who of the digerati are discussing and debating the promise and future of technology, it got me thinking (again) about the Digital Divide.  No, not that one -- the one I am referring to is between the Valley and New York and Government and Technology; individuals who see problems and look for ways to solve them and those who think it has always been done this way and so it shall remain.  It reminded me why I love technology and technologist and  refreshed my memory on how different these worlds are from each other on SO many levels. 

So long Fairway

Last night I discovered Berkeley Bowl and I am in love!  To my NYC Upper Westside Crew - Berkeley Bowl makes Fairway look like Waldbaums. It is twice as big (as the 125th market) and has rows and rows of exotic fruit and veggies. And as for variety, for example, they don't just stock fresh mint - they stock four kinds of fresh mint.   The interesting - tho not surprising -- cultural difference is that BB focuses on more items for cooking from scratch and Fairway has more prepared gourmet items. They have three aisles of bulk food alone.

So, my apologies Fairway, I feel a bit like a disloyal Upper Westsider- but alas, you can no longer claim to be like "no other market".

It's quieter here

It is just plain quieter here on the left coast.

Over the past few weeks as I have been traveling back and forth it has dawned on me that there really is a lack of street noise - honking, people talking, fire engines roaring. I was on a business call from my NYC apt last week and my colleague stopped mid-sentence to comment about how she loves the sounds of NY. I paused and realized she meant the noise coming from my window thru the phone - sirens, buses, cars.

It reminded me that my old answering machine message had a siren roaring thru it - it went something like this, "Hi this is Debbie, ROOOOOAAAR, I can't take your call right now....." Every out of town friend thought I had set it up to fake a loud fire engine roaring thru my living room. I on the other hand hadn't even noticed it.

You don't realize how much noise we live with until you get out of Manhattan. Now I get it--all New Yorkers are basically sleep deprived from noise - that's why *we all seem so agitated.

Of course, I am torn--I like the quiet and I don't really miss the noise. What I do miss is the energy--there I said it - the cliche sentence every non New Yorker always mutters about NY that we all think is SO sappy.

*Note for the duration of this blog I will continue to refer to myself as a New Yorker. I just happen to be living in San Francisco.

Tribute in Light

Still gives me shivers. Thanks Ernesto - almost as good as being there.

September 11th - view from the West

I woke up excruciatingly early this morning—it’s as if my internal clock was pulling me back to New York. This is my first year being away from NY on September 11 – it is a bittersweet transition. Staring out into the tranquil pines of the Berkeley Hills – “The City” seems so very far away, and I simultaneously miss the cacophony and am content to commemorate from afar. CNN is maudlin and the US open is showing tennis clips—life goes on. I can hardly believe it has been three years. It feels like yesterday, it files like another lifetime ago. I have changed so much, NY and the world has changed even more. Innocence lost, lives lost, a constant dull drumming. My friend and colleague Anil Dash has also recently relocated from NY and he has very eloquently summed up my feelings. If you haven't lived through it - you never can truly understand it. Every year I see the faces of the people I connected and bonded with on the days and weeks following 9/11 and I relive some of the most difficult images, moments, and conversations from my volunteer stint. I wrote about it two days after the event and I re-read it every year.

September 11th will also always be linked to the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. At a time when I would have started to move forward and look ahead it yanked me back into that strange emotional limbo of loss and mourning. September has always been a month of change and renewal – Rosh Hashanah, a new school year, the smell of autumn in the air. Before 2000 it was a softly bittersweet month. Summer was over, but a new year was beginning. Now that soft transition is gone—it is a wrenching jarring reminder.

Only now, three years later – with perspective on both events, do I realize the deep impact this linkage has had on my life. My father was a man who believed in community first. He believed in doing the right thing and he demonstrated this daily. I dealt with my shock that day by volunteering at Ground Zero and although my intense daily volunteer work ended a few weeks later - I did not emotionally leave for months. I see now that in some strange way it was a way to stay connected to my father and climb out of the depression I felt after his death. I grew up twice on September 11th – no longer Daddy’s little girl, no longer an innocent protected American.

So, from across the country – I send each of you my thoughts and prayers. Take care of yourselves, I may be in California but my heart and soul is in NY.

Observations - East to West

I am going to attempt to keep a log of all my observations about the difference between East Coast and West Coast living. Considering I spent my entire life up until now living in Long Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan, this should be an interesting exercise. I will try to keep it fresh --not too much analysis (my friends can stop snickering now) --so, I can't promise these random thoughts will all be profound or even entertaining - but hopefully in the end they will be a fun compilation of how I am settling in to life on the Left Coast.

All of these observations will be logged under "From NYC to SF" --just click on the link to see the latest