Bloggathon.

What can I say -- homegirl is makin' moves.


From left to right:
Burrito Justice, Mission Mission x3, Plug2, StreetsBlog.
I watched the third guy on the left scarf down fried chicken in 15 seconds.


From L to R:
Burrito Justice, Mission Local, What I'm Seeing, Streets Blog


I have recently become a Young Urbanist. What that means is I purchased a membership with the local think tank SPUR (SF Planning and Urban Research). I know I was already a young urbanist before the membership card, but now I can attend SPUR events with a printed name tag - very legit. This group has been around since the 1950's, and is an institution here in SF in regards to urban environment and land use policy. With that, I attended one of their Young Urbanist panels last night about Blogging in SF.

This meeting was like the who's who of SF blogging; a culture I was unaware I am so involved with. With the explosion of Twitter in the recent weeks I have begun to notice how much I am apart of this blogging culture - I tweet, I read, I blog, I tweet again. However, unlike most of America, I started doing these activities organically, from word of mouth or mistaken fortune, but not because I saw it on GMA.

I sat in the audience and listened to the blogger round table, and if the bloggernauts (like juggernauts?) weren't on the panel, they were hidden in the audience. These people represented blogs that I read on the daily, specifically:

Burrito Justice
SF Streets Blog
What I'm Seeing Dot Com

In the audience, blogger's included:
Mission Mission
Hack Your City
Bikes and the City
Muni Diaries

This discussion was more than blogging in the city, it strayed into topics about gender and the future of blogging, even proposing to rename the activity. Burrito Justice, known as Johnny0, was the moderator and asked the panelists how blogging has effected public policy. My initial reaction was 'it doesn't,' but the discussion began to address how blogging mobilizes individuals, and more so, how it can help vocalize or identify a point of view. Plug1, of What I'm Seeing, stated that blogging causes people to be aware of opinions they didn't know they had at the time. The American Apparel results were addressed often in this discussion, when local mission blogs began reporting on American Apparel's attempt to move shop into the neighborhood -- and through blogging, and thus mobilization, that was stopped. The panelists even noted how they blogs began to depend on eachother for information, dubbed: co-blogging.

The debate arose over the name, Blog. Most people think its a silly name and that it takes away from the significance of the reporting being done. Should there be a difference between blogs and news sites? Brian of Streetsblog noted that for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, over 124 blogger's were awarded Press Passes. So it should be dubbed a news site? Brian continued saying that blogs are now the innovators of news, the leaders, and they determine the path of certain stories. Where local television used to follow the lead of newspapers, now they follow stories being reported on blogs. Brian used to work for KCBS (CBS channel 5, SF) for eight years. As noted by an audience member, also a member of SPUR, mainstream media reports is "Top Down" news, where as Blogs are "Bottom Up". But then you have Burrito Justice, which started as a place to voice one man's infatuation with the offerings of his favorite Taco Truck, among all the other culinary offerings in the Mission.

The concern of over saturation arose. Plug1 noted that blogs will engage in a natural selection of sorts, and that the strongest sites will survive. Another audience member mentioned that 'niche blogs' will be the ones that weather the saturation storm. Niche blogs are sites that have a specific agenda, reporting on neighborhoods, or specific sports teams. This can be seen with sites like, Mission Mission, which reports on street art and local happenings in the Mission. Burrito Justice is also a Mission blog, but started as one man's fascination with a taco truck, and taco truck discrimination.

I would like to add in that twitter was name dropped twelve times, 4Barrel and Ritual coffee spots were also mentioned, sans Bl.Bottle (hehe). Turning Valencia street into a park was proposed, diva-diners were dubbed "Noutritionista's", and the concern for the lack of a female presence on the panel was also pointed out. Hmmmm, sounds like the perfect entrance for Eco-Royalty.net. :)