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Paper Route Redux: Delivering my old Chronicle route
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In addition to working as a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and critic for the past decade, I was a Chronicle paperboy from 1983 to 1985. In an attempt to celebrate the newspaper's past while embracing its multimedia future, I decided to deliver my old Chronicle route one more time.
The greater goal is to make Paper Route Redux into a series, as a vehicle to tell stories about interesting Bay Area people. If you're a former San Francisco Chronicle paperboy or papergirl, and you'd like to deliver your old route, send an e-mail to phartlaub@sfchronicle.com. Let me know about your old Chronicle route, your ties to the Bay Area, what you do now and anything else you think is relevant. Include a photo of yourself past and present if you'd like -- or send me a link to a YouTube video explaining why you'd like to participate. I'm hoping to shoot Episode 2 later this month. If we get enough e-mails, I'll speak to my editors about compiling some of the stories into a feature for the newspaper.
I'm looking forward to your responses. More on Paper Route Redux: Episode 1 below ...
1. You can watch this in HD. It's definitely a superior format to watch me chuck papers into bushes and then fish them out. Just adjust the definition in the bottom right-hand corner from 360p to 720p.
2. Yes, I strapped a video camera to the handlebars. The HandlebarCam (tm) appears at the 3:23 mark. We duct taped a small Canon HD camera to the front of the bicycle basket. Nearly an hour of HandlebarCam footage was taken, but when we were editing the video, director Isaac Pingree and I agreed that less would be more in the finished product. I've included a few HandlebarCam outtakes in the video below.
3. That pink document really is my paper route contract from 1983. My father saved it and gave it to me in 2000 when I started my job as a Chronicle reporter. You can see it up close here.
4. The Chronicle no longer has paperboys or papergirls ... and hasn't had them for at least 12 years. I've heard that newspapers in Davis and Novato still use young carriers, but others in the greater Bay Area have long since switched to adults in cars, trucks or traveling by foot.
6. The bike was not my sister's. We needed to edit the first part down, and it sort of gives the impression that I rode a bike that used to belong to my sister. I actually borrowed it from my friends Justin and Jenny. For this, they get an executive producer credit. Special thanks to Phil Bronstein and his contacts in circulation, who delivered 65 papers on my doorstep at 5 a.m.
7. You should hire Isaac Pingree. Pingree, who shot this video, is a very talented Bay Area filmmaker who had already made a feature by the time he turned 21. (He's 24 now.) If you're looking for a videographer who is flexible, has experience directing people who are new to broadcasting and works at a reasonable rate, please consider Isaac. He's shot everything from music videos to a promotional video for an attorney. See his work, buy his movie or contact him at www.lagoonside.com.
HandlebarCam (tm) outtakes below ...
PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of this parenting blog, which admittedly sometimes has nothing to do with parenting. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhartlaub. Your questions answered on VYou at www.vyou.com/peterhartlaub.
| January 12 2011 at 05:12 AM
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