Finally...A Story About the Fruits and Nuts of Berkeley
In the LA Times. In hindsight, I did enjoy the olive bar a wee bit too much.
Labels: Only In Berkeley
posted by Armen Adzhemyan at 10:07 AM
Monday, September 22, 2008
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35 Comments:
My favorite two passages:
Raphael Breines, who was ejected last year for eating on the premises, said he couldn't decide between two types of apricots, so he sampled both. Security stopped him in the parking lot, where he was photographed and required to sign a no-trespass agreement. "Technically I was stealing, but I wasn't trying to hide anything. I was just deciding which type of apricot to buy." Breines, a longtime customer, sent an apology letter, asking to be reinstated. His request was denied.
Then later in the article there is this passing remark from store founder, owner, and operator since 1977, Glen Yasuda:
Five mornings a week, usually before 3 a.m., Yasuda rises to scour several wholesale produce markets, hand-selecting the fruit and vegetables that will soon fill his shelves: Barhi dates, Gravenstein apples, Flame seedless grapes, Idaho pears.
Yasuda, whose father and grandfather were Los Angeles produce farmers, wants to handle the merchandise. "Before you buy anything," he says, "you have to smell it, taste it."
It's not a double standard. It's just Berkeley.
no double standard. when it's wholesale, it's courtesy to the trade. when it's retail, it's theft. see?
Did that reporter even visit BB before writing the article? The description is nothing like the BB I know and love.
I have never heard or seen any indication that sampling is not permitted there. In fact, the store provides trashcans around the produce section for people to discard peels and pits. Of course if someone "samples" a cookie out of a bag or eats two apricots, that's a whole different ballgame (it's stealing).
The place can be a madhouse during peak hours, but people are generally friendly and accommodating.
If I select a loaf of, say, semifreddi's walnut levain, and i tear off a mouthful of bread on the way to the cash register, have i violated their policy?
When is someone going to write an article about how un-Berkeley it is to shop at Berkeley Bowl? I mean, seriously - very limited local organic produce selection, a workplace that is relatively hostile to unions (see here, here, and more radically, here), and what appears to be a rather strict policy about how much you may actually interact with your food prior to purchasing it.
I guess it's only the spirit of being accosted at the door with petitions that matters around here.
Anyone who shops at Berkeley Bowl knows that they have a very reasonable product re: sampling produce.
My favorite passage, damn lawyers guzzling sake in the supermarket:
Store manager Larry Evans says the policy is a fair response to doctors, lawyers and college professors who help themselves to bags of cookies, nuts and vitamins, stick their fingers in pies and guzzle from bottles of sake, assuming the rules don't apply to them.
I've been shopping at BB for years, and I have to say, this article strikes me as wildly exaggerated.
I avoid shopping at the BB since I can never find parking, the store is messy and dirty, and many of the shoppers look like they haven't bathed in weeks. This story does not surprise me at all. There are much better places to shop!
How about taking the bus to Berkeley Bowl? Also, if you go on a weekday between 10am and 4pm, parking really isn't that difficult.
The store is a bit chaotic, but not dirty. There is no other store where you will find such an amazing selection of produce and for so cheap. Produce at Andronicos and Whole Foods is generally 2-3x as expensive and not nearly as good; produce at Safeway is 2x as expensive and pretty awful. For example, tomatoes at BB generally range from 59 cents - $1.19/lb. At Andronicos they're generally $1.99-$3.49/lb. There is simply no comparison on price -- BB has amazingly cheap, excellent quality produce.
Don't even get me started on selection. Maybe people who don't cook a lot or who value an extensive and cheap frozen foods section will fare better at Safeway, but there is no better place to buy produce than BB.
Or you could try a farmer's market...
i don't know, i have yet to find a farmer's market around here with produce as cheap as the BB's.
I prefer Monterey Market to BB. Same great produce, less angst.
The owner disliked the article's tone, so he banned the author for life: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/09/john-glionna-ba.html
Wow. I guess free speech is not always free.
Wow, can I get a "NO SOUP FOR YOU!"
NEXT!
The thing that is so badass about the Berekeley Bowl's policy is that there is absolutely no concern for the effect it may have on future business. Nor, really, does there need to be.
Re. Call Backs:
If you send e-mail thank you notes and they respond, is that usually a good sign?
No.
Since when is Berkeley Bowl about politics? Why are people attempting to paint the owner and the store's policies as hypocritical? I doubt people shop there because of its organic selection or depending on whether it's run by communist hippies. BB offers the cheapest, best produce around. That's all there is to it.
Can we get a post about our TERRIBLE performance in securing judicial clerkships? I don't know if this is just a factor of our student body's relative quality, of the CDO's poor help in the process, or of our faculty's lack of contacts in the judiciary, but this is absolutely ridiculous (only four confirmed appellate clerkships so far, v. 58 for Harvard, 27 each for Stanford & Michigan, 25 for Virginia, 20 for NYU, and 18 each for Chicago and Penn).
See: http://lawclerkaddict2009.blogspot.com/
A lot of people chose Berkeley over some of those other schools with the expectation that we'd have similar career options. Pretty devastating to see that this is simply not the case anymore, at least to the extent that the last two years' clerkship stats are any indication.
RE: clerkship numbers
I think a thread is warranted, but not at this time. Those numbers don't include a number of people I can name off hand. We'll wait to see how it shakes out, and we'll do a thread at that point in time.
I don't know if waiting will make the results any better. From what I hear, most appellate clerkships--and really all desirable ones--are filled by now. Many MANY were filled before the hiring plan timeline even commenced. I'd bet that was a huge part of our poor performance. CDO assistance with applications outside the confines of the hiring plan was all but non-existent. They even openly discouraged us from submitting early applications.
Anyway, I don't know why we'd wait to talk about it. The only openings at the appellate level are probably in the 10th Circuit or something. Not likely to boost Boalt's numbers.
3:26/4:06 - I think you missed my point.
The numbers on that blog don't accurately reflect the offers already extended. Hence, I'm not saying that we're waiting for more people to receive offers. I'm waiting for that blog to update its numbers.
It only lists 6 clerkships for Berkeley. I can name at least 3 more (and I have no dog in this fight). I imagine there may be a couple more out there.
3:26/4:06 - go grab a beer and relax a bit. Pretty high strung today?
agreed. I don't think that following the numbers given by a blog, that requires people to submit information on the clerkships they have received, is an appropriate method for determining how well berkeley is doing in securing clerkships. Not only am I willing to bet that the blog is run by someone connected to Harvard (a school with 500+ students in each class), but I also think that any number that doesn't consider the percentage of people who applied vs. percentage of clerkships received is an appropriate measure.
Quick question. This past summer I worked for a firm that doesn't give offers to 1L's and I never really talked about it with them because I have no desire to return to work there. However, when you fill out the paper work for some of the big law firms they ask if you received an offer from the firm. I simply jot down that they don't give offers to 1L's and that is all.
Should I try to talk to somebody about this and explain it to them in person or do you think that it happens with enough frequency that they are familiar that many smaller firms don't give offers to students who clerked for them as 1L's. Thanks for the help.
Did you get an offer to come back next summer, as a 2L associate?
If so, then say that. Otherwise it sounds like they didn't like you last year. If you didn't get an offer to come back as a 2L, then keep doing what you are doing.
That's how I would handle it, but there are wiser heads than mine here, who might disagree.
5:47, the answer is in your question. If your position was a "law clerk" at a small firm, then there's really nothing to explain. The position doesn't result in an offer to return as a 2L or for full time employment. But if you were a summer associate, then conventionally such a position results in either an offer to return as a 2L. You're not the first person to work for an hourly wage (typically) at a small firm your first year. I wouldn't worry too much.
*I was asking if you received an offer to be a 2L *summer* associate, of course.
But if you were a summer associate, then conventionally such a position results in either an offer to return as a 2L.
Add "or full time" at the end of that.
Thanks, yeah it was a law clerk position and I was paid hourly.
Just wanted to ask because I didn't know how frequently firms did it this way as opposed to firms who always give an offer or no offer to their summer associates.
I know this varies firm to firm, but what how long does it usually take to get an offer? One week, two weeks?
As an alum who failed to secure a clerkship until after I graduated, I agree that Boalt's clerkship "support" is quite lacking.
First, Boalt professors rarely volunteer to contact judges on students' behalf. This puts students in the very awkward position of having to broach the subject. Clerkship hiring is based largely on personal connections. It's increasingly rare for students to secure an interview without knowing someone who knows the judge.
Second, many (if not most) Boalt professors seem willing to go to bat only for very highly ranked students. I worked very hard as a GSI for a professor, only to have them reach out to their judicial connections for a higher ranked student who did not serve as their GSI. I have heard similar stories from my classmates. As a result, the very highly ranked students (top 10% and above) tend to do extremely well while the marginal candidates (top 25-15%) tend not to. A student outside the top 10% will rarely get looked at by a judge without someone reaching out to the judge on their behalf.
Professors should get pushier about helping students secure clerkship interviews. A few years ago I attended a conference which had dozens of federal judges in attendance. I watched Yale faculty members introduce students to judges at the cocktail reception. Our esteemed faculty clerkship coordinator, who was also in attendance at this conference, did not even make an effort to say "hello" to the Boalt student attendees.
Third, Boalt does not have a very good alum network. The Career Office should do a better job of fostering alum networking. ES in the CDO has done a very good job of hooking current students up with Boalt alums. I have made a personal commitment to try to help Boalt students in any way I can, and hope others will do the same. An application has a much better chance of getting pulled from the pile if it mentions a former clerk's name in the cover letter.
Fourth, the school should study and re-evaluate its policy of ranking students for clerkship purposes. The new OSCAR system makes it too easy for judges to filter applications by class rank. Schools that do not rank their students are non-filterable.
I would also question the way every students' application is sent to the judge in one envelope. Unless the judge is going to give ALL of the interviews to Boalties, they'd seem to decide to pick the very top ones and pass over everyone else. Then the top 3 in the pile get offered more interviews than they can handle and the rest get none.
Honestly, if I had it to do over again, I'd abandon the CDO paper process and spend $2 sending the paper applications first class mail on my own. If they arrived early, I hear from most clerks they will either be read early or simply saved until September 3. Not tossed in the garbage or anything. And then you don't have to go DIRECTLY up against the higher ranked students in your own class.
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