Davos Newbies

Let me be the 17,000th blogger to lament how terrible the English-language commentary is for the World Cup games here in the US. It’s intrusive, unenlightening and generally ill-informed. When my son and I were watching the (woeful) England-Paraguay game ridiculously early in the morning, we switched to the Spanish-language coverage on Univision. Perhaps it’s because we can only understand a handful of words, but it was far less annoying.

I think there would be a great market here for someone to do a funny, intelligent radio commentary on World Cup games here. I know someone already owns the rights. But just as The Guardian and The New York Times do minute-by-minute commentaries online, a radio team could comment by watching ESPN and ABC’s television coverage and providing their own voiceover. When I lived in Milan in 1989-90 (including during the World Cup), Radio Popolare did just that. I used to put my radio next to the television because the radio commentary was both a wonderful, ironic send-up of sports announcing and highly informative.

I guess it was a mash-up using old technology. If someone tries it, let me know so I can escape the horrors of ESPN/ABC.

Regular readers may know that I’m obsessed with the neglect of public transport in the Bay Area. Bart is wonderful, but woefully underutilized. This morning, I discovered a quasi-public alternative.

The morning radio provided the alert that a power failure had closed the Transbay Tunnel, so Bart wasn’t connecting the East Bay and San Francisco. Great. This was one morning when I had to get into the city for a meeting. What could I do? Fortunately, there is an informal carpool system here. On the street next to our local Safeway, solitary drivers wait to pick up a couple of riders so they can have the privilege of speeding through the carpool lane on the Bay Bridge.

It worked wonderfully. I had no wait to find a ride and I travelled across the bridge in the comfort of my driver’s Lexus. He must have saved 30 minutes on his journey, with the non-carpool lanes very backed up at commuter hours. Why would anyone not pick someone up?