Last Thursday evening culminated in an exciting victory for The Ramblers, for Red House and the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, and for the Lafayette Art and Science Foundation (LASF).  It was the final showdown of the Classic Covers Cup 2010, a battle of the bands and charity event for LASF, in which 16 bands faced off for a shot at the trophy, bragging rights, and a $1,000 gig at the Lafayette Art & Wine Festival.  The competition Thursday included Pladdohg, ML Crisis, The Ramblers, and Brik; the winners from each of the preliminary rounds, and took place in front of a completely packed house.

The Classic Covers Cup was first held in 2008.  But this year it had a twist…

“The idea was simple,” began Raja Singh, owner of Red House.  “The chamber took the money that they would have paid a band at the festival and offered it as prize money. Then we took the ticket money that Red House would have profited from and pledged it to LASF.”

All told, $1,250 was raised for LASF over the course of the five weeks.

“I’ve played a lot of gigs in front of a lot of people, and I know you have your good nights and your bad nights.  Let me just begin by saying that you all brought it tonight.”  Voiced Enchant bassist Ed Platt after the bands had all played their 35 minute sets.  Platt and Brian Aiello from the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce judged each of the bands on musicianship and showmanship, and offered their constructive comments before the results were announced.

All of the bands truly played their hearts out, and the score was as close as the evening was intense.  But in the end the Ramblers, a blues band, took the gold, and the spot at the Lafayette Art & Wine Festival main stage on September 18th.

Congratulations Ramblers!  Hope to see you all there!

Yesterday was National Night Out. 

What is National Night Out?

It’s America’s Night Out Against Crime!

The “27th Annual National Night Out” (NNO), a unique crime/drug prevention event sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch (NATW), was held yesterday, August 3, 2010.

2009’s National Night Out campaign involved citizens, law enforcement agencies, civic groups, businesses, neighborhood organizations and local officials from over 15,000 communities from all 50 states, U.S. territories, Canadian cities and military bases worldwide. In all, over 36 million people participated in National Night Out 2009.

NATIONAL NIGHT OUT is designed to:

• Heighten crime and drug prevention awareness;
• Generate support for, and participation in, local anti-crime programs;
• Strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships; and
• Send a message to criminals letting them know that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back.

Here is what you missed:

• The Lafayette Rotary Club was at Plaza Park handing out free DNA kits for parents to collect needed materials to help identify their children. 
• The Chamber was there and invited Nibbler’s Restaurant to hand out FREE food and Cover2Cover, a local band, entertained the attendees. 
• The Lafayette Police Department was there and you could have met the Chief, our new Sergeant and many of our sworn and non-sworn officers.  Your Mayor, members of the Crime Commission and a City Council member were there to meet and greet the public.  McGruff the crime dog was there too. 

My point is the community had a chance to meet their police department and their neighbors.  The event was not well attended, and we missed a golden opportunity to get to know each other a little better and to share your concerns about your city. 

When the Art & Wine Festival comes around, please take a few minutes and get to know many of the people that work behind the scenes to make Lafayette such a desirable place to work and live.  Our Police will be present on foot and would enjoy meeting the people they serve.  Our city staff and City Council will be on hand to answer questions.  Over 30 non-profit organizations will be on hand to share their story.  And if you see me schlepping stuff around the event, please say hey!  It will give me an excuse to stop for a couple of minutes.

When we prepared the new chamber website, the BLOG was a big deal.  A valuable component to the overall experience when people logged on to our site. We can link it to everything else we do and it will drive people to our site.  It was deal maker or breaker. 

Now it is four months later and I have done just what Linda (our wonderful Office Manager) told me I would do. Never get around to posting blogs because she knows how busy I am.  I live in a 3 bedroom – 1 bathroom house with my wife and two of my three daughters.  So, again I find myself at 5:52am in the morning waiting for my turn in the shower.  So I thought I would use the time productively and add another interesting submission to this site.  If you are the first person to email me at jay@lafayettechamber.org and use the code word SWORDFISH in the subject title, I will send you two tickets to the TASTE OF LAFAYETTE coming up on May 18th.  This way I will know that at least one person has logged on to read this.  This is a primitive version of Google Analytics.

It’s a busy month in Lafayette.  My challenge will be to somehow make it to all of the Downtown Specific Planning Meetings and all the Chamber events, and still have time to watch my Lakers and our Sharks in the playoffs. 

Friday, we honor Dave Simpson and the Lafayette Book Store as our 2010 Small Business of the Year.  That’s something to cheer about.  This month is also Restaurant Row month in Lafayette.  Restaurant Row was a diabolical marketing scheme that our City Manager Steve Falk came up with.  The idea was, we have some wonderful restaurants here in Lafayette. They bring people to Lafayette.  If we call our main drag “Restaurant Row” more restaurants will come.  And they did.  We now call home to some of the BEST eateries in the East Bay.  Don’t take my word for it.  Go out to eat tonight.  You will be happy you did.  There will be no dishes to wash.  You will be supporting our local businesses and you can avoid that argument at the dinner table with the kids.  They usually don’t act that way in public.

Peace out…

When I first arrived in 1982, Lafayette was quiet semi-rural town.  It was known for its green hills and great schools.  Hey, wait a minute. I guess things have not changed much.  I’ll get back to that in a minute.

This morning I received an email from one of our members.  Why he sent this to me, I will never know, but it is worth a look and a laugh.  The subject is “guy catches really big catfish.”  Check it out…  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyaPytuKB1A.  It reminded me of the stories I kept hearing about an alligator living in the Lafayette Reservoir.  I think it made the 6 o’clock news back in the mid 70’s.  Now that is a BIG story for Lafayette.  Another big story was the rumor that the Beatles (after completing their last public appearance at Candlestick Park) took a helicopter ride across the bay and landed at the old heliport next to the Hillside Motel. Is it possible that the Beatles slept here?  Further research indicates that they flew to L.A. that same night. 

Well, I am going to start another rumor, right here, right now.  And for the 3 of you who will actually read my BLOG, you will be the first to know.  We can’t get the Beatles, but we have come pretty close.  If you have been to the Lafayette Art & Wine Festival over the last few years, you may have been introduced to the SUN KINGS.   This local ‘Beatles” cover band has become one of the Bay Area’s favorite bands.  Yes, they will be back again this year.  Not once but twice! 

It is with great pleasure to announce THE SUN KINGS, performing at the very intimate Town Hall Theatre in a special performance “being for the benefit of the Town Hall Theatre.”  Remember there are only 185 seats in our historic theatre.  Tickets are $50 and $75. If you buy the Gold Circle $75 ticket, it includes a private “meet & greet” with the band, front row(s) seats, a private champagne reception and sit in during the “sound check.”  There will be a special live and silent auction to participate in as well.  http://www.the-sun-kings.com/  http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=XRL6wHzy7_s&feature=related

OK, back to our semi-rural city.  So we have this Downtown Strategic Planning Process rolling on and perhaps coming to crescendo later this year.  It hinges on things like the height of buildings, downtown housing, view sheds and vistas, landscaping and parking, new parks and preserving creeks.  The Lafayette Chamber of Commerce has been following this process all the way.  And it will be a battle to work out some of the differences that members of our community have on these issues.  The chamber does support some growth without losing the city’s character.  If you have not been involved in the process up until now, you might want to start paying attention.  Future Planning Commission and City Council meetings will be deciding on what plan to support and implement that will set a course for development and planning over the next 20 years.  For me, it has been almost 30 years in Lafayette. Some changes have taken place.  I remember a story Earling Horn told me about the owner of Fleet Feet coming to town back in the early 80’s, looking for sites.  He said he would not recommend Lafayette. Couldn’t even find a deli sandwich for lunch.  Nothing going on here.  I remember Mt. Diablo Blvd. as a really unattractive strip, surrounded by the beautiful hillsides.  There is fear that Lafayette will change too much.  We just went through a period of time where our economy could have produced major changes.  What has been built in Lafayette in the last 20 years?  A Library.  A Veterans Memorial Builidng.  The Mercantile.   Town Center.  That’s it! Now it’s up to our commissions and elected officials to find a balance between growth that will be good for the community while still preserving our semi –rural feel.  28 years later and we are still known for our green hills and great schools.  And the Beatles are returning to Lafayette.  Life is good…  jay

http://www.thtc.org/              Town Hall Theatre
www.ci.lafayette.ca.us        City of Lafayette (info on the Downtown Specific Plan)

In January, the city of Lafayette asked Godbe Research to do a scientific public opinion poll of 400 people with the purpose to determine whether residents would vote to convert Lafayette from a general law city to a charter city.  The results from the poll clearly showed that about half the residents what were polled did not have are a real understanding about what a Charter City is and how it would change the way we do business in Lafayette.  For more information, you can go to the city website, www.ci.lafayette.ca.us and review all the findings.  But here is what surprised me…

A number of questions were asked about how our community gets their information about the city.

It needs to be noted that here in Lafayette we have three local newspapers!  Most small cities don’t even have one paper reporting on local news.

They also asked if Social Media was used in their home.  51% of our residents say they don’t use Social Media.  That means 49% are using some form of Social Media.  Here is what they say they use:

When we launched our new website this last month, we knew we had to build the social networking tools into our model.  We know we have members and visitors that only get their information form sources we were not using.  But it is obvious that our community is al little behind the curve.    Stay tuned, because this will change.

In order for the chamber to have a “fan” page on facebook, I had to set up a personal account.  Well, somewhere back in 2007 I must have set up an account.  When I found my way back to my page, I had one (1) friend. Thank you Melissa Mazzoli!  Now I have like 90 friends, and I have been found by old employees and old girl friends.  The hardest part about facebook is just keeping up with all the messages I receive.  By the way, I have no idea what “Mafia Wars” are and I don’t think I want to.

Back to the survey.  Here is the “feel good” part of this story…

97% of the survey respondents said they were very (81%) or somewhat (16%) satisfied with the overall quality of life in Lafayette.  Pollster Brian Godbe said that, in his 17 years experience running hundreds of polls for cities, he had never seen such a high number.  Atherton, at 96% was the previous high satisfaction level he had seen until he came to Lafayette.

Our residents may not know what Charter Cities are or what a Property Transfer Tax is, buy they do know they really like where they live.

Blowing up your website and starting over is no easy task. Once we finally got serious we formed a committee (that’s what organizations do) and we took 6 months “breaking it down.’ Who is our customer? What are people looking for when they visit our site? How could we use this website to help our members and give the community a resource they could use? Well, after much discussion and thought we picked a developer. However, like all of you, we got busy with events and programs and members and kept putting off the final decisions.

Anyway, a year later, here it is! So go ahead and take it out for a drive around the block. Kick the tires, and let us know what you think. If we missed something, we want to know. Please drop me a note – jay@lafayettechamber.org and let me know what you think.

When you come back and visit this part of our website you will find articles and news that we think might be of value to you. If it’s true that “no news is good news” then I will come up with something to make you laugh or cry. I may be a little old for “blogging”, however, I’ll keep writing stuff with lots of KEY Search words like opportunity, commerce, economy, sales tax base, business development and fiscal responsibility to get people to find our site. If I add words like Bayou and crawdads maybe we can trick the folks from Lafayette Louisiana to visit our site too!

Seriously, we will keep you posted on what’s happening around here. And we’ll push all this stuff to our facebook account and linkedin and twitter. Then you can get Lafayette Chamber 24/7. I promise I will not report what I’m eating for breakfast.

-Jay