Golden State Warriors: They are the darlings of the NBA

Stephen Curry / An affable MVP who makes his art look effortless.

Barely two months into the new pro basketball season, the Golden State Warriors once again are the darlings of the National Basketball Association. Nightly, the defending champions have been providing their fans with a highly-entertaining product that sells out the house at Oakland's Oracle Arena. Five games into a two-week, seven-city road trip, the Warriors are also dazzling fans across the country in cities like Salt Lake City, Charlotte, Toronto, Brooklyn and Indianapolis, too.

The Warriors are scoring lots of points thanks to shooting the lights out from 3-point range, playing stingy defense that forces opponents into committing costly turnovers and, most of all, they are winning. Great teams find all kinds of ways to win.

Recently, the Warriors set an NBA record for most wins at the start of a season -- 16 -- and the winning streak continues, reaching 23 on Tuesday night with a 131-123 victory over the Indianapolis Pacers. The Warriors became the first NBA team to open a season with 13 consecutive road wins, breaking the 12-0 record set by 1969-70 New York Knicks.

Draymond Green / The Warriors' power forward scored 22
points and added 9 rebounds and 7 assists against the Nets.

So, the perfect season lives on -- 23-0 and counting -- and when you consider the Warriors won their final four regular-season games last season, the Warriors have 27 consecutive victories, which ties the second-longest winning streak in the NBA's history. Next, the Warriors complete their seven-city road trip this week with games at Boston and Milwaukee on Friday and Saturday.

Last season, en route to winning the team's first NBA crown in 40 years, the "Dubs" achieved a franchise-best 16-game winning streak, going five weeks without losing a game. One of the reasons for the Warriors' success can be attributed to having one of the brightest minds in the game in head coach Steve Kerr. However, he's been sidelined this season while recovering  from two off-season back surgeries. At the start of this season, Kerr passed the reigns to one of his assistants, Luke Walton, and the interim head coach hasn't missed a beat.

Luke Walton / So far, he's made all the right moves
as interim coach of the Warriors.

So far, Walton has made all the right moves, and he's getting the most out of his deep roster of talented stars -- point guard Stephen Curry, shooting guard Klay Thompson, and power forward Draymond Green -- and "second unit" role players like Andre Iguodala, Ron Livingston and Leandro Barbosa, each who could start for any other NBA team.

Nobody has been able to stop the Warriors this season -- maybe for a quarter, but not for all 48 minutes. When the Warriors take the court, writes San Francisco Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins, they "have five players who can run, pass, set screens, rebound, play fiercely motivated defense and, most importantly, hit the three-point shot.

"They love playing together: the fancier and more unselfish, the better. Curry is being linked with the all-time greats and Green looks to be a certain All-Star."

As the accolades come pouring in for the Warriors, the national media has begun to take notice. The other week, I read an utterly fascinated feature about the affable Curry in The New York Times in which Graham Lustig, the artistic director of the Oakland Ballet Company, said "there's a certain musicality to the way his body works. It looks like he's moving to a slightly different dimension as everyone else. Incredible, unbelievable control. And that's what you want in a dancer."

With each three-point basket shot from way downtown and every spinning layup, the 6-foot-3 Curry is reinventing the game of basketball -- transcending the sport, if you will -- and turning it into an artistic performance. According to Lustig, "much of his aesthetic appeal was rooted in what ballet dancers seek most: to make their art look effortless.

"Steph doesn't really look like he's putting in a lot of effort, does he? I'm not suggesting at all that he doesn't use effort. It's just that he doesn't display it, and I think that's probably at the core of what this is about."

Stephen Curry / "When he's hot, he makes things happen,
says teammate Leandro Barbosa.

Far from effortless, Curry began the season by averaging a league-best 31.6 points per game to go with 6.0 assists, 5.2 rebounds and 2.5 steals in winning Western Conference player of the month honors for November. With his 44-point outburst Saturday at Toronto, which included 15 points in a seven-minute span en route to an 112-109 victory, Curry has scored more than 40 points in seven games this season.

"Steph knows he's going to be on the court for most of the game, and he's going to have the ball in his hands for most of the game," Walton said after Sunday's victory against Brooklyn.

"He can pick and choose when he wants to get aggressive and take over and when he wants to get his teammates involved. That's his call out there, and he does a great job judging when to do both."

Toronto point guard DeMar DeRozan told the San Francisco Chronicle: "He's a heck of a player, and he makes it look so effortless." After a recent win at Phoenix in which Curry scored 41 points by knocking home 11-of-20 field goal attempts -- including 9-of-16 3-pointers -- in just 31 minutes on the court, Barbosa said: "When he's hot, he makes things happen. We were just enjoying watching him play."

While Curry seems to be enjoying himself shining in the spotlight -- putting on a boffo show for the fans both at home and on the road, which have included hip-hop mogul Drake in Toronto -- and contributing to his team's success, where their wins this season are coming by an average of nearly 16 points per game, the basketball world can't seem to get enough. The Warriors are not only a hot ticket at the box office, sales of their team merchandise have skyrocketed this season, too.

The Golden State Warriors / Celebrating the team's first
NBA championship in 40 years. 

Collectively, the Warriors show no signs of letting up. They love the feeling of being winners and their confidence remains high. In their win over Indiana on Tuesday, it was Thompson's turn to shine. His 39-point performance included 10 three-pointers.

Winning motivates this team. There's no boredom or conflict. After the Warriors' victory in Toronto Saturday, Curry called the team's winning streak "surreal." He told the San Francisco Chronicle that it doesn't sound right when you say it out loud. "But we're very confident when we're out there on the floor. We're very comfortable, and we expect to win every night."

Their fans love a winner and Curry and the Warriors keep delivering victories.

A postscript: On Saturday, a night after a gut-wrenching, physically taxing double-overtime victory over the Boston Celtics, which elevated the team's win-loss record this season to 24-0 and winning streak to 28 games, the Golden State Warriors finally lost a game, 108-95 to the Milwaukee Bucks in Milwaukee. It was the seventh and final game of a two-week road trip across America and Canada. The streak had to end sometime.

Photos: Courtesy of Google Images.

Confronting protesters: Embarrassed and mad at Oakland

Beauty's Bagel Shop / Local Oakland business was vandalized but not looted.

I feel embarrassed to admit to my friends that I live in Oakland, Calif. And, it has nothing to do with the mediocrity of the hometown NFL Raiders and their dismal 1-11 record this season.

Instead, I live in a city in which the Oakland Police Department is afraid to confront protesters who willingly and brazenly break the law. It happened during the Occupy protests in 2011 and, again, in 2013, during the aftermath of the death of 17-year-old African American Trayvon Martin, who was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, in Sanford, Fla.

Once again, the Oakland protesters showed they're in charge. They showed no fear. For three consecutive nights last week, what started as peaceful protests against a Ferguson, Mo. grand jury decision that decided not to indict a white police officer, Darren Wilson, for the killing of an 18-year-old black teenager, Michael Brown, turned into chaos, vandalism and looting. By the third night, by all accounts, the streets of Ferguson were a safer place to be than Oakland's streets.

I stayed home, monitored the situation via local and cable TV news, Twitter and Facebook, and did not go out for three consecutive nights. I stayed away from the downtown Oakland fitness center I regularly use most early evenings after work. Even though I reside about four miles from the downtown City Center along Broadway -- Ground Zero for most Oakland protests -- I feared for my safety. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't get caught in traffic gridlock on the I-580 the first night when protesters on foot managed to shutdown a portion of this busy interstate freeway that cuts across a wide swatch of Oakland.

Shame on our lame duck mayor, Jean Quan. Sure, she pushed for police officers to show tolerance towards the hundreds of protesters who turned out each night last week before Thanksgiving, then moved on across the bay to San Francisco last Friday and Saturday -- and I am all for being tolerant. But when push comes to shove, I want our police to uphold the law -- not look the other way for fear of a lawsuit.

Sadly, local merchants and small business owners suffered the brunt of the senseless violence that befell Oakland for three consecutive nights. One of them was Beauty's Bagel Shop, which is located on a busy stretch of Telegraph Avenue, between West MacArthur Boulevard and 40th Street, in the city's Temescal neighborhood. I am friends with the owners, Amy Remsen and Blake Joffe.

Last Tuesday night, during a march up Telegraph Avenue from downtown, vandals tagged the front entrance of Beauty's (3838 Telegraph Avenue) with spray paint and wrote in big block letters: RIP MICHAEL BROWN. It could have been much worse as the protesters started a street fire less than a block away near the intersection of Telegraph Avenue and 38th Street before moving on up Telegraph where there were more acts of senseless vandalism and looting, too.

Fortunately there were no broken windows and no looting took place at Beauty's. Just graffiti. To its credit, the popular bagel bakery, which has been a local success story since it opened in August 2012, was open for business Wednesday morning just hours after the defacement. However, I can't imagine that it felt like business as usual after what took place the night before.

On its Twitter feed, Beauty's responded to its customers, tweeting: "We were luck enough to only suffer graffiti. Sending our thoughts to those businesses that sustained more damage."

I stayed away from Beauty's for a few days, then returned after Thanksgiving, as usual, early on Saturday morning to buy bagels and scones for the weekend. By then, the graffiti had been removed at Beauty's, and while things seemed normal and business was brisk, still, one wonders if they will be so lucky the next time there's an ugly protest.

There's a big difference between what's happening in other cities and what's happening in Oakland. I support the right to free speech and civilized protest. It's what sets my country apart from others less fortunate, less democratic. However, when people stop acting in a civilized manner and behave in a disrespectful way towards law-abiding citizens and deface public property, then it's time to for my city's elected officials to take decisive action and keep my city safe.

Photo: Courtesy of sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com

What a mural can tell us about our glorious past

Our glorious past / A mural depicts the famous Key System
electric trains that connected Oakland and San Francisco.

There are many colorful, vivid and fascinating murals that dot the urban landscape in my Oakland neighborhood. While some of them are reminders of the glorious past history of this East Bay city situated across the bay from San Francisco, in particular, one of them depicts the famous Key System electric trains.

Believe me, there's plenty we can learn from studying a single, neo-WPA mural.

The Key Route Plaza mural, a 23-by-14-foot colorful and historic mural created by local artist Rocky Baird in 2005, tells a story about a bygone era of transportation that once connected Oakland and San Francisco, two major northern California cities on opposite sides of San Francisco Bay.

The Key System electric trolley car company established its first transit depot at Key Route Plaza, at the corner of Piedmont Avenue and 41st Street in Oakland, in 1904. The orange and silver train depicted in the mural that is located on what formerly was part of the transit depot is Car No. 159 on the C-Line which, according to a historic plaque, made its final departure from Piedmont Station on April 19, 1958 at 6:45 p.m.

The quixotic creator of the Key Route, Francis Marion "Borax" Smith, is a larger-than-life giant figure shown in the mural. He was a Nevada mining magnate who made his fortune in borax before he lost much of it in transit. The key that he is holding "has three rings at its handle to symbolize three lines to Berkeley, Oakland and Piedmont. The long stem represents the Key Pier, which carried trains about three miles over the bay, and the teeth represent the ferry slip," wrote Sam Whiting in a 2005 San Francisco Chronicle article.

At its height during the 1940s, the Key System had over 66 miles of track and serviced the hills and dales of Oakland and Berkeley as well as other East Bay cities like Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, El Cerrito, Richmond and Albany.

A historic plaque at the site of Key Route Plaza.

According to the commemorative plaque at Key Route Plaza, back in 1939 it took the streamlined trains 27 minutes to travel from Oakland's Piedmont Station over the Bay Bridge to the First and Mission Station in "The City." Not bad considering that in 2014 it still takes 20 minutes to travel by light rail transit on BART from MacArthur Station in Oakland to Embarcadero Station in San Francisco.

The Key Route Plaza mural is filled with other symbolism, too. There are sections of the mural in which we see figures representing the Black Power and Women's Suffrage movements as well as a link to U.S. military might and our need for petroleum.

According to the artist, who was interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle about the mural, "the mural took two months of research and three months of painting." At a cost of $5,000 to create, Baird sold off the window seats in the train at $500 each to help raise funds.

Today, half of the depot sits idle while it awaits refurbishing into a cafe, while the other half has morphed into a popular municipal parking lot, which tells the fate of a train system that was displaced by the rise and popularity of the automobile.

To learn more about the history of the Key System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_System

To read more about the history of Oakland's electric trains: http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/Oakland-Magazine/January-2008/When-Trains-Ruled-the-East-Bay/

Photos by Michael Dickens ©2014.

A Canadian dish that's found a home in Oakland -- and that's no joke

Poutine / At Beauty's, French fries with cheese curds and
mushroom gravy ... What's not to love?

As a punch line, poutine has a lot going for it, wrote the American humorist Calvin Trillin, in a 2009 New Yorker article, "Canadian Journal: Letter from Montréal." He pondered the question: "Is a national joke becoming a national dish?"

You see, Trillin mused that "Canadians' fondness for poutine is often the basis of the punch line, since an outlander who hears a description of poutine in its basic form -- French fries with cheese curds and brown gravy -- is likely to think that it sounds, well, disgusting."

While poutine (pronounced poo-TIN rather than the commonly heard poo-TEEN) was invented in rural Quebec in the late 1950s, in recent years it's seen a rapid widening of its range. Canadian franchise restaurants like Tim Horton's and Harvey's routinely serve poutine on its menu, and even Burger King, the global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in Miami, has included it in Anglophone provinces and in the northern-most United States.

According to Wikipedia, the legend of poutine's origin dates back to 1957. "One often-cited tale is that of (restauranteur) Fernand Lachance, from Warwick, Quebec, which claims that poutine was invented there in 1957; Lachance is said to have exclaimed 'ça va faire une maudite poutine' (it will make a damn mess) when asked to put a handful of curds on some french fries, hence the name. The sauce was allegedly added later, to keep the fries warm longer. Over time the dish's popularity spread mainly across the province (and later throughout Canada), often served in small town restaurants, bars, as well as being quite popular in ski resorts."

I had my first taste of poutine at a Tim Hortons restaurant in Vancouver, B.C., during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. While it's an acquired taste -- so, too, is liver -- I was game and wanted to expand my culinary borders, if not my waistline. And, I wanted to feel Canadian.

Fast forward to this month, where I had my most recent taste of poutine. This time, it was memorable. Not lost or ironic was this: I enjoyed my delicious dish of poutine for lunch on a recent Saturday at Beauty's Bagel Bakery in Oakland, Calif., where the signature menu item is a Montréal-style wood-fired bagel. For the uninitiated, a Montréal-style bagel is hand-rolled, boiled in honey water and baked in a wood-fired oven. The result is a bagel that's texturally soft with a crunchy crust as well as a slight sweetness and just a hint of smoke. Varieties include: sesame, poppy, onion, salt, whole wheat, plain and everything. At Beauty's, they're baked in small batches and served fresh and warm, too. 

So, I thought to myself: What better way to complement one taste of Montréal (in this case a free-range egg and cheddar breakfast omelet sandwich served on a Beauty's Montréal-style whole wheat bagel) than with another -- albeit dubious -- Montréal staple, poutine? It was only later after talking with one of Beauty's owners, chief bagel baker Blake Joffe, who stopped by our table in desire of feedback for his newest culinary creation, that I found out poutine had been added to the menu just the day before.

At Beauty's, their beloved Quebecois dish is served with mushroom gravy, which may be the key to its taste and success. Joffe's attitude and that of his partner and co-owner, Amy Remsen, as expressed on Beauty's Facebook page the day poutine debuted, is simple and straightforward: "What's not to love?" 

Indeed, and love their poutine I did.

The mushroom gravy Joffe created made a wonderful fondue for the thick, hand-cut French fries. As for the the white cheddar cheese curds, they simply added to the pleasure of the dish. There was enough poutine smothered on the platter to share community-style with my two dining companions.

Which brings us back to Calvin Trillin. "Poutine might be an appropriate dish for a country that prides itself on lumpy multiculturalism," he says. "So what if it's also a punch line?"

I couldn't agree more. So what?

We have much to learn from the Canadians, and from a local bagel bakery which embraces their cuisine. Bon appetit!

Learn more than you ever wanted to know about poutine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poutine

To read more of Calvin Trillin's New Yorker article about poutine: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/23/091123fa_fact_trillin

Photograph of Beauty's Bagel Shop poutine by Michael Dickens, copyright 2013. 

2012 ~ My Year in Pictures

The beauty of nature / Dutch tulips at Floriade 2012.

I'm an avid photographer.

Most of you who follow this blog or are friends of mine on Facebook know this about me. And, as picture taking has matured from film to digital, the hobby of photography has become easier and more affordable. No longer do I have to buy and store film or worry about whether the roll of film I shot of the Eiffel Tower is in focus or not. Instead, I make it a habit to bring my camera (a Canon PowerShot A570 IS) with me wherever I go or travel. Thanks to the addition of an iPhone two years ago, I now have two sources for taking pictures.

As I have transitioned into becoming a digital photographer, it has allowed me to become my own editor. For instance, if I take a photo that I'm not happy with, I can easily delete it and re-shoot the photo, then edit it for clarity. And, thanks to social media like Facebook, uploading and sharing photos with a large group of friends has become fast and simple ~ and, a daily exercise to share with others "it's what's on my mind."

Each year, I take more than a thousand photographs of people, places and things. In revisiting the photo albums I've shot over the past 12 months, I've pulled together a group of 50 photos that I'm pretty excited about. They cover a variety of things important and interesting to me: Flowers and nature, sports, music and urban landscapes in cities like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. 

You may recognize some of these photos from appearing on my Facebook page.

I hope you enjoy the exhibit and I welcome your comments and feedback.

Cheers and Happy 2013!

Brussels / Le Botanique.

Brussels / Walking through Le Botanique.

Brussels / The Grote Markt (Grand Place).

Brussels / Le Cure Gourmande.

Brussels / Corne chocolatier in Galleries Royale
St. Hubert.

Brussels / Chocolate sculpture in
Galleries Royale St. Hubert.

Brussels / Colorful public art.

Brussels / St. Michael and St. Gudula
Cathedral.

Brussels / Hotel Bloom.

Paris / Notre Dame Cathedral.

Paris / Sculpture artwork at Notre Dame Cathedral.

Paris / Notre Dame Cathedral.

Paris / "Flowers That Bloom at Midnight"
Sculpture by Yayoi Kusama.

Paris / Arc de Triomphe at
Place Charles de Gaulle.

Paris / Le Tour Eiffel.

Amsterdam / Pop culture meets fashion.

Amsterdam / At the Bloemenmarkt.

Amsterdam / The Concert-Gebouw at night.

Amsterdam / Through the looking glass.

Amsterdam / In the courtyard of the
 Hermitage Amsterdam.

Amsterdam / Dutch tulips outside the Rijksmuseum.

Amsterdam / The Venice of the North.

At home / Pristine rose bud.

At home / Pristine rose bloom.

At home / Pristine rose bloom.

Seattle / Saturday breakfast French toast at Chinook's.

Seattle / The Space Needle.

Seattle / Monument at the
Fishermen's Terminal.

Seattle / Late summer sunset over the Puget Sound.

Seattle / Labor Day baseball at Safeco Field.

Portland / Whisper hybrid tea rose at International
Test Rose Garden.

Portland / The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
playing at the Doug Fir.

At home / Mr. Lincoln red rose
in black and white.

Portland / On the grounds of the International
Test Rose Gardens.

Berkeley / The Cal women's volleyball team
celebrates a victory and waves to the crowd.

At home / Queen Elizabeth rose bloom.

San Francisco / Seeing Glen Hansard
at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.

At home / Enjoying an autumn Queen Elizabeth rose
blooming in our backyard garden.

San Francisco / Grace Cathedral.

Berkeley / University of California women's volleyball
team in action.

San Francisco / Classic Converse Jack Purcell sneaker.

San Francisco / Giants World Series victory parade
along Market Street with team broadcasters.

Berkeley / Kat Brown of the
Cal women's volleyball team being
interviewed by the Pac-12 Network.

Oakland / Lake Merritt on Thanksgiving Day
standing on pier at Lake Chalet. 

San Francisco / SPCA Adopt-a-Pet display at Macy's
during holiday season.

At home / Late-season First Prize rose.

Albert Lea, Minn. / Fountain Lake view as seen
on Christmas Eve afternoon.

Berkeley / Court side view of Cal women's basketball
game against George Washington University.

Amsterdam / Classic bicycle that is everyone's
choice for transportation around the city.

At home / An amazing spider web that
I photographed on our patio deck.

All photographs by Michael Dickens, copyright 2013. All rights reserved.