Mason loves his shades, originally uploaded by Keturah & J.J..

Sending this from my treo

My pics can be found on Flickr

Ryan Kuder’s are are also on his Flickr account.

And Francine Hardaway published hers to Facebook.

Thank  you to everyone who came out to the coast. I really enjoyed finally meeting Francine Hardaway and spending some time chatting with Shel Israel, Robert Scoble, Steve Gilmore, Ryan Kuder, Jason Ayers, and Jonthan T (Ryan’s business partner). It was the perfect way to spend the day after the 4th of July.

With the holiday weekend ahead of us, Francine Hardaway and I decided to try to pull together (possibly the first?) tweetup for the Coastside area of Half Moon Bay, El Granada, Moss Beach, and Montara.

This isn’t just limited to folks who live on the coast.  Of course everyone is invited! Here’s the general plan.

We’ll be meeting at Cafe Classique in El Granada at 11 am on Saturday, July 5.  You can get your fill of coffee and pastries there if you haven’t already done so.  Around 11:30 or so, we’re planning on heading out to the world-famous Mavericks surf spot (a very short jaunt from Cafe Classique).  Pic of Mavericks is below

More info on Cafe Classique here: http://www.cafeclassique.com/

Their address is 107 Sevila Ave, El Granada.

Google Map to Cafe Classique (warning: Google Maps gets pretty confused about the Coastside towns.  It’s not sure El Granada exists. You’ll see.)

This is a family and pet friendly Tweetup.  Feel free to bring them along.

We hope to see our Coastside Twitter friends on Saturday and also hope that our friends in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and all the points in between and beyond join us for a fun Tweetup by the ocean.

By the way, I’m jjtoothman on Twitter.  Feel free to follow me, if you aren’t already. 

This tweet from Ryan Kuder reminded me that it’s time to tell a recent story of reconnecting and discovery.

It started back around March, probably.  I started following Chris Perkett (@missusP on Twitter). I’m not exactly 100% sure how it started, but it was probably due to a reply that Aaron Strout (who I had met at SXSW) tweeted her way about the Red Sox.  I’m pretty much a sucker for any kind Red Sox chatter, online or offline, so anyone talking Red Sox on Twitter is someone I’m going to start following. 

My virtual friendship with Chris evolved from there. Reading and commenting on a blog post or two that she wrote, a nice exchange about what Superman and/or Clark Kent would be tweeting if they were online, friending each other on Facebook…you know how it goes.  One day you’re exchanging tweets, a week later you’re sharing pictures of your kids with each other.

I’ve yet to ask Chris about how the next set of events were initiated.  Holding out because I’m traveling to Boston in September and hoping to hear the story in person at that time. But a couple weeks ago I received a Facebook new friend notification in my email inbox.  Turn out it was from Chris’s husband and it said:

Hi JJ, I see that you’ve connected with my wife and her PR firm…small world since we graduated from GHS together in ’89…hope all is well”

Yup, turns out @missusP is married to Rich Perkett, who I went to school with in Glastonbury, Connecticut and graduated from Glastonbury High School with in 1989.  It was that same year Rich and I got into a police chase while trying to perform some silly senior prank and only escaped Johnny Law by hiding motionless in the woods for about a half hour.  At least, that’s sort of how I remember the story. 

So yeah, small world huh?  OK, that’s just the first part of the story. 

Second part of the story starts with Rich’s Facebook profile and discovering that there’s a network setup for Glastonbury High School.  Who knew there was high school networks in Facebook? Certainly not me.  So I start navigating through the pages looking to connect with some forgotten friends only to see the name of another person who I recently met at SXSW. Who at the time, I had no idea I went to high school with.  Who just happened to graduate GHS in 1990, a year after Rich and I did.  The Queen of Twitter herself, Laura Fitton, aka Pistachio on Twitter is a fellow GHS graduate.  

Laura, I remember meeting you in Austin, but sorry…no idea if we crossed paths in Glastonbury.  Who knows?  Maybe we were in a class together.  Maybe we were on the same U.N. Club bus trip to New York City (that club was all about getting out of school for a day to go to NYC, right?).  Or maybe there was a boring Glastonbury Saturday night that we were all in the McDonald’s parking lot looking for stuff to do.  I know Rich and I spent more time than we would care to admit in that lot doing absolutely nothing.

We’re all starting to have similar stories of reconnecting.  As much as I’m enjoying making friends in far away places like Bucharest and Tokyo, the emergent possibilities of reconnecting with social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are equally, if not more, satisfying. 

It has me thinking of Rob Gordon in High Fidelity.  If Rob had Facebook and went to find the members of the “all-time, top-five most memorable breakups” group, he wouldn’t have to use the phonebook to find Charlie Nicholson.

There’s no way for me to avoid watching the NBA finals that start tonight and flashback to my 80′s youth and watching all the memorable games between the Lakers and Celtics.  And of course the rivalry between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.

In fact, I’ve been rooting for Lakers – Celtics final this year for the sole reason that it means a ton of highlight of those games from the 80s.  We’ll be saturated with the obvious ones – Magic’s baby hook, McChale’s clothesline of Rambis, the Heat Game in the Boston Garden – but I’m also anticipaitng to see glimpses of Worthy’s tomahawk dunks, Chief’s rainbow jumpers.

But let’s not kid ourselves and think that this year’s final will emulate those great games of the 80s.  First of all, the teams aren’t nearly as good.  Kobe and KG are greatness.  Gasol, Pierce, Allen, and a few others on the current teams have careers to be proud of.  But those 80s Lakers and Celtics teams were just STACKED.  How many hall of famers passed through that rivalry?  Plenty.  Bob McAdoo was a hall of famer on the Lakers who didn’t even start!  Same with Bill Walton on the Celtics.  Get past the star studded cast of Kareem, Magic, Bird, Parish, Worth, and McChale.  The support players on todays teams don’t hold a candle to the role players on the Lakers and Celtics of the 80s – guys like Dennis Johnson and Jamaal Wilkes.

Anyway, if you want to see the greatness that passed though that rivalry in the 80 check out the boxscore of every game that Larry Bird and Magic Johnson played against each other.  There should be a DVD box set that has all 38 of these games. 

As for who I’m pulling for this year, it would be the Celtics.  I’ve always gravitated towards players, not teams, in the NBA.  For whatever reason, the abilities and styles of the individuals is what drew my attention.  This is unlike other sports that I follow, where team accomplishments in college basketball and baseball are what I admire.  In the 80′s I was a Magic Johnson fan.  In the 90s, it was Tim Hardaway and Hakeem Olajuwon.  This decade, its Kevin Garnett who I admire.  Go Celtics.