mrsth and I are looking forward to heading out to the opening of The Vintage Eye, East Bay Signs and Scenes show opening tomorrow night from 7-9pm at the Fingado Art Gallery in El Cerrito.

The group show features five Bay Area photographers: Devil Doll, Ken Duffy, Lila Banuelos, Neo Serafimidis and Doug Donaldson.

The show will be on display at the gallery through August 21st. The address of the gallery is 7025 Stockton Avenue in El Cerrito. As an avid photographer of neon signs myself, I’m looking forward to seeing the printed work of these other great photographers.

Those of you who know me know that I hate censorship in most forms that it takes. I think that free speech is an important part of a free society. While Government censorship is perhaps the worst kind (and certainly folks living in places like China have it a lot worse than we do) I really hate all censorship. The worst censors though, I think, are the ones that employ censorship to censor political speech. So I was especially disappointed to read yesterday about several Bay Area and Los Angeles based TV news outlets refusing to sell air time for a 30 second commercial about the marijuana legalization debate. While I personally support the legalization of marijuana and the tax revenues that such an initiative might bring, I don’t think that is really the issue here. I’d be just as offended if these same media outlets refused to sell advertisement time to opponents of the legalization of marijuana.

Although the media are private companies and are not legally required to remain uncensored, I think it’s very bad form when they actively engage in censorship, especially censorship of this type. I think that when a media outlet is granted the privilege in our society of controlling a large chunk of public attention that they owe it to us all to remain politically neutral when it comes to paid advertisements. The ad that was rejected can be seen above. I’d encourage you to check it out, fave it on YouTube and share it with other people on your blog, on places like Twitter and Friendfeed and in other public forums. The ad is not offensive. It’s an honest attempt by a political organization to present an opinion that now is the time for California to consider legalizing marijuana.

Despite this honest attempt at public discourse though, the media outlets named in the headline of this post, KGO and KNTV in the Bay Area and KABC, KTLA and KTTV (Fox) in Los Angeles have refused the ad above. Interestingly enough several other media outlets including CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, KPIX, KXTV, and KRON are currently running the ad.

Anthony Citrano has also written an insightful post over at The Huffington Post where he give more details about this unfortunate act of media censorship.

I had a great evening out yesterday evening photowalking with a group of employees from Pandora. I’ve been a huge fan of the online music service since very early on when they started up and it was fun to meet a number of their employees yesterday in person. I’ve discovered some great music using Pandora.

We met up at Jack London Square and then shot along the traintracks down in West Oakland ending up finally at Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon for a beer. Heinold’s is the oldest business in Oakland and the oldest bar in California. Jack London used to tend bar there back in the day.

Nice getting to meet you all from the Pandora team and they’ll be more photos of mine to follow down the road. To see my photos and others from the walk, check out the tag photowalking070709.

According to the Consumerist, the NY Attorney General’s office announced recently that it has closed down two stores completely, fined seven different shady retailers a total of $655,000 plus $100,000 legal fees, and forced more stores to overhaul their work practices with future monitoring.

More details from the NY BBB here.

The complaint by the Attorney General pretty much accurately described my own experience with Price Rite Photo back in 2005.

“Attorney General Cuomo’s investigation revealed that these seven companies would advertise consumer electronics, such as cameras, camcorders, projectors, and related accessories online at prices significantly lower than their competitors to induce consumers to place orders via the internet. Once an order was placed, the companies would call consumers and try to sell them additional or “upgraded” merchandise at inflated prices. If the consumer refused to purchase the additional merchandise, the companies would cancel the sale or claim the item was backordered for months. If the consumer did agree to purchase the additional merchandise, the companies would send them lower quality merchandise than what was promised, or merchandise that the consumer never ordered in the first place. When customers tried to return the items, they would either be denied or be slammed with undisclosed fees. “

Good work on the part of the NYAG.

Thanks, Eddy!