About This Blog
It’s a music blog!
It’s an urban planning blog!
Stop, you’re both right!
When I first launched All The City Lights, it was strictly a music blog—a place for a former entertainment journalist to keep writing about the bands, singers and songs that excited him and to explore the Bay Area’s music scene.
After four years, my interests have evolved. 1. The demands of parenthood have kept me from attending very many live concerts (or, for that matter, writing more than three blog posts a year). 2. As I have started down the path toward a degree in urban planning, much of the time I used to spend staying abreast of the latest buzz bands has been devoted to reading all about the issues facing cities in the 21st century. I found myself looking for an outlet for writing about these issues, but I also didn’t want to give up writing about music occasionally.
“Should I launch a new blog?” I asked myself.
“Well,” I replied, “All The City Lights already sounds like an urban planning blog.”
“Does it make any sense to have a combination music and urban planning blog?”
“Not really. But has tradition or a need for coherent branding ever stopped you before?”
And so here we are. All The City Lights will continue to have posts about music—maintaining a focus on Americana, nerd rock, obligatory list-making and the Bay Area (the East Bay in particular)—but it will also have posts about the field of urban planning, including issues related to revitalization, gentrification, transportation. You know, all the big “-tions.” There may even be occasions when the two subjects overlap, and you better believe that’s going to get blogged about.
Not that any of this repositioning really matters, because I’m still only going to have time to write three posts a year. And updating this “About” page counts as one.
Bill Chapin is a former full-time journalist, current full-time grad student and occasional freelancer based in Alameda, California, who occasionally writes about himself in the third person. For a more in-depth but extremely out-of-date overview of his fabulous career, visit his badly-in-need-of-an-update homepage.
Speaking as a Bay Area native who has fully embraced post-Katrina New Orleans, it’s good to see people who can appreciate things without having to be painfully hip about it. Oakland is a good town – I liked living there better than in San Fran in some respects – and I hope you enjoy exploring it. Your banner photo makes me homesick for my apartment there (out of the left frame, down off Lakeshore). Take care, good luck in your job search, Kelly Nicholas
Thanks for stopping by, Kelly. It’s very gratifying when random Internet strangers stumble upon this blog and have nice things to say. It inspires me to keep going. (P.S. – My apartment’s just out of the left frame, too.)
Drifted here after doing a Google search for Decemberists lyrics. Kept reading more posts and really enjoyed your site. I’ll be catching you in my feed reader from now on.
Thanks for your site! I’m a fellow Oakland resident. I appreciate both the music recommendations and the planning writing.