Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Hello Alameda!
You'll hear interesting, insightful interviews on a variety of topics from folks on our island & beyond right here ..
We aim to educate & illuminate while bringing Alamedans together around the question: How can we all contribute to making our city work better? .. Come & join in on the conversation.
Hello Alameda. This is Jeff Gould, one of the founding members of Island City Beat. I'm here with Thushan Amarasiriwardena Did I get that right?
Thushan:Yeah. You got that right.
Jeff Gould:And we're having a conversation as we walk the streets of Alameda. So Thushan, can you talk about yourself?
Thushan:So yeah, I'm Thushan. I've been living here since 2017. Fell in love with Alameda on the July 4. That was like my first real experience of it. We came for running the race before the parade.
Thushan:By the time I hit grand, was like, holy moly, this is my place. Not only because of the beautiful homes, but it was, it felt like a New England town, which is where I grew up in the sense of like half of Alameda was in the parade and the other half was watching it. And it was just like this Lake Wobegon kind of moment of like, oh, this is a real community.
Jeff Gould:Can you elaborate a little more on your startup?
Thushan:Yeah, we used to make apps for kids when the iPad came out. They weren't games. Our company was called Launchpad Toys. And the thing about toys is they're open ended. They're vessels for for kids to tell their own stories.
Thushan:And, and that was the sort of the angle that we were going after toontastic. Our main app was essentially motion capture for kids. Could move their characters on screen and recorded their voice and actions and made essentially the easiest animation tool ever. And I think 5,000,000 cartoons were made. It was it was just super cool to do.
Thushan:Yeah.
Jeff Gould:So you're using your family as the guinea pigs.
Thushan:I that was before I had kids. I actually haven't let my kids play with it Yeah.
Jeff Gould:Saw you at the no kings demonstration. Yes. Recently. I was there because I thought I needed to be.
Thushan:I think for a huge degree, was for my kids to see that how this system works. I don't like, there wasn't any like overt to like framing for my kids. I just wanted them to see the understanding of people coming out, fighting for something they believed in. That was actually my primary goal. But at a personal level, yeah, I was there, But but my belief is that, like, this this country is clearly going in a direction antithetical to what what it was founded on.
Thushan:That that we're country for the people, by the people, not by any one person. And that our decision making is made together, not alone by one. And unfortunately very much feels like we were heading in the wrong direction.
Jeff Gould:I would agree with that. And I think all 3,000 people that were there would agree with that. My understanding is that a lot of your thought is based on the concept of abundance. Yeah. Can you talk about that?
Thushan:Right. I would say that book abundance that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson recently released resonated pretty strongly with me. And I think a lot of my friends here in Alameda actually, in the sense of how, how are we living in what the, the strongest nation humanity's ever seen and one of the strongest cities or regions that the our our humanity's ever seen. And yet we have a litany of problems, you know, like when, yesterday I was in in Oakland and I think from a just a humanistic perspective, seeing the gap of the life that people like us are able to live and people just a couple 100 yards away are living is like not is just morally not okay. And I think I think that stems from some root issues of us not being able to make the things we need at the scale we need them, and at the speed we need them.
Thushan:And, and that I think government is a huge way of making that happen and that I would love to see it be more effective.
Jeff Gould:So it's kind of rooted in follow the money. Kind of.
Thushan:Would, maybe it's more like, maybe the lens I would put is what are the impediments that we have to do the things that I think everyone agrees we should have, which is like, everyone should be able to find, find the place to live in the places that they want to live, That they should be able to be, have the food on the table that, and to be able to work and have that dignity and, and maybe even more like why have the luxuries of great parks and schools are not a luxury, but great schools. I think maybe what I saw in my time in federal government was like, we made it very hard to go do those things because a lot of sliced well meaning ideas when you pile them together really leads to inability to take action.
Jeff Gould:Too many times the idea of follow the money means, you know, I get mine and, you know, I'm happy.
Thushan:Right, right.
Jeff Gould:Rather than, you know, everybody gets a share of the pie.
Thushan:Right, exactly. Yep.
Jeff Gould:Okay. That's a good way of thinking about abundance.
Thushan:Or maybe one other lens I would say is like, I think a lot of our problems come from fighting over the little. And if we can make more of it, those fights don't happen. I mean, there are some natural constraints land and things like that, but I think what, where we're about to walk and we're actually where we're walking right now. This is, these are new houses built in the past eight years. We're on Mulberry Street right now.
Jeff Gould:The old on one side and the new on the other but
Thushan:I know a lot of people who live in these and this used to be an old warehouse from what I can tell on Google Street View it is now a know a couple 100 people, families, young kids that are like thriving in Alameda. And, and it took will to make that happen. This was a contentious project. It's the one across the street that we're about to get to Clemensory again, contentious project. That's very dense house.
Thushan:Yeah. But you know, when you meet the people who like, again, my kids have a lot of friends that now live in these places, like, when you meet them, it's like, how can we not have them here in Alameda is my my view.
Jeff Gould:This Street Clement that we're on now has a huge bike lane. And, you know, the idea that the city has is to get out of your car and get on your e bike or your regular bike. Yep. You know, that's better for the environment. It's but then there's the access to the island itself.
Jeff Gould:And what are the improvements being done there? You know? There there's kind of an interplay plan in a way. How do you think that should be approached? Yeah.
Jeff Gould:Transportation issues around more density. Right.
Thushan:I think density allows a couple things. One density allows the in the ability to invest in in public transportation, for example, you that that is the only way it works. And so when we add more people now we are able to ensure that our public transit is not only funded but used and used to a degree that everyone wants to keep funding it. So I think that's one lens. I think here's another good example is like, these projects aren't just adding people to our town, they're adding value to our town.
Thushan:The one that we're walking right next to, they built a $30,000,000 seawall and parks here that are reflecting the city's need to adapt to climate change, for example. All these houses to our left, for example, aren't paying for that seat wall. So like that's an added benefit, but they also paid for this bike lane to happen. And I think when you have stuff like this, you start inviting people to go try alternative modes of transportation. I am not comfortable.
Thushan:I would never be comfortable with my kids riding this street without this bike lane, but now we do. I mean, that's me out of my car. And you go to the point, I think you have another good example, that new ferry terminal, again, paid by all that development. That's something that all Almenians get to use. And while it may not mean another car bridge, I don't think any like, I don't think that's ever gonna happen because we've tried that.
Thushan:Oakland doesn't want it either. So we're gonna have to move to alternative ways. And so and I think we are addressing it through through things like building ferry terminals and things like that. Even though more people are coming to the island, we're actually seeing less car usage in the past, years. And now that large part of it probably is because work from home, but it's a reality that we can say is actually happening.
Jeff Gould:What's it? What's your feelings about the carp? Is it enough? Is it adequate to address the problem we're facing?
Thushan:I think it's a compass and would I I don't think it's enough in the sense of, think we are at at a grave danger as, as a planet towards where we're heading and things. And in the sense that I think it we are pushed towards more concrete methods of measuring our progress and setting goals. I think that that's great. To know most of our problems at this point tend to be from vehicle emissions in Alameda because of our how we power our town. I think that's like been a really good change with our clean energy.
Thushan:And of course we could get that better. But I think I think what I would love to see is probably like more myopic focus on this this is our problem let's attack that quite quite hard on on how do we get our emissions our vehicle emissions down
Jeff Gould:right and you know in the case of incentives for electric vehicles Yes. We're doing some of that, addressing, multifamily properties and providing an avenue for those occupants, those tenants to go electric in their transportation has been pretty poor.
Thushan:Yeah.
Jeff Gould:That's one of the areas that needs a lot of improvement.
Thushan:Exactly. You mentioned those rebates, when I looked at it, I can't remember the specific number, but when I looked at the numbers of people actually taking advantage of those rebates, it was dishearteningly low. It's very low, yes.
Jeff Gould:Part of that is there's too many hoops.
Thushan:Yes, exactly. Right, right.
Jeff Gould:Regulations to qualify for such incentives is daunting, you know, for people. That needs to change.
Thushan:Right. And I would say like, to bring that back to the like abundance thinking is that that's one of the questions that are like, what what are the impediments that we are selves are putting in front of ourselves to hitting our goals? Exactly. If we wanna see more people in electric cars, let's make that goal very myopically simple. It's like, what what is the tipping point that gets someone over?
Thushan:And only that is maybe a lens to do. You're for a decentralized grid is what I'm sensing.
Jeff Gould:I was just gonna talk about that. You putting solar panels on your roof. Right. And using energy from those for your purposes. But there are forces in our midst that are saying, you know, the bankers, the energy industry, they're saying, no, you can't do that.
Jeff Gould:We're we're the ones that provide the service to you. You cannot say, you know, I'm making my own.
Thushan:Yeah.
Jeff Gould:That's not energy democracy. That's not a distributed power production grid. Mhmm. And that then granted that idea means that there'll be a lot of investments in managing that that type of, fine grained grid.
Thushan:Yeah.
Jeff Gould:But those investments need to be made. And they're not they're not being made for whatever reason.
Thushan:I also think that our insatiable appetite for energy means that what, even if we're like, maybe homes could be powered this energy, sorry, solar, as we- Rooftop solar. Right, rooftop solar. But as we get into more energy intensive things like AI or even things like just clean metal foundries and things like that just require crap ton of energy that just a solar would not be able to do.
Jeff Gould:Hydrogen production is another one.
Thushan:And so let alone like, I think if we find these solutions like cheap, clean energy, we can live in a world where we start doing things that we will come up with new uses that open more doors and we'll have some down downstream effects too, negative ones. I'm not gonna deny that either.
Jeff Gould:Let's move on to housing in Alameda. At Island City Beach recently did a interview with Doug Biggs of Alameda Point Collaborative regarding the wellness center over on McKay Street near Crab Cove, which is slated to open in March. Yep. Next year. What are your feelings about that?
Thushan:I think I'm so glad that that progress, that project is progressing and that is, that's definitely been in my timeline of here in Alameda is seeing that being debated to soon to be opened. And from what I can see from the street is like, it's a beautiful building. It's adding value to our community in the sense of like those empty buildings were not, but also it's adding value to actually helping people. I think that's a moral thing that we are are obligated to
Jeff Gould:do. And yeah, now the firefighters that deal with homeless individuals that are sick have some place to take these people.
Thushan:I don't think we should be outsourcing those problems. Like, and maybe that's not even the right word, problem. It's more, this is something that is part of the system of Alameda and we have to tackle it here. And I like what I've seen out of Alameda Point Collaborative is that they've been more innovative on things of like how to do these programs and.
Jeff Gould:Well, was a lot of community input.
Thushan:Yeah.
Jeff Gould:Doug Biggs did tours of the facility during the period where it was a proposed project. And it was very transparent, you know, that was sort of like the model for it. And I think everything that APC does is like that. That's something that we need more of in the city.
Thushan:Indeed. Here's what I know generally about things, or here's what I feel is generally about things is that things are rarely deliver as good as what it was promised. And things are rarely as bad as what people feared. And so it's just truism of both sides, but my, you know, we put in this, I think they call it the bottle parcel near target on that road over there, some transitionary housing as well. And I know that was an issue for neighbors there.
Thushan:To the degree that I've heard issues about it since it's come in, it's not maybe to any major veracity of like, oh, this this is so negatively affecting a neighborhood. Well, I live on
Jeff Gould:the on the West End. I've been there since 1988. So I've seen neighborhoods go up and down. Yeah. And right now, I think things are pretty good.
Jeff Gould:Yeah. I don't think there's a lot of crime in Alameda compared to the era when the Navy was in town, for instance. And, you know, to be criticizing this kind of project like that, based on, you know, the potential increase of crime, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. It doesn't really hold up.
Jeff Gould:Yeah. Reality doesn't go along with it right now.
Thushan:Right. I think one notion about supportive housing that I was like, we have definitely concentrated it on one end of town. Mean, there's the women's shelter that's not too far from where we just started walking, but I think great cities are the ones that where it's like this beautiful, mix of economic levels and industry and residential and to retail. And so the notion is like, we should make sure that no one area is taking only certain kinds of things. Granted like when it comes to industry, things like the point and the neighborhood that we're about to start walking in seem more sense for places like that.
Thushan:But on net, like you want a diversified portfolio across neighborhoods.
Jeff Gould:So what role do you see the techie culture playing in a transformation to a diverse, clean energy, hopeful world.
Thushan:So, so as a career, I've been a product manager most recently and a product manager is this person that is in a technical organization always, that is in many ways the voice of the user is the in house. But they're also the sieve of editorial lens on things. And that means like how we what resources do we apply to it? What problems are we gonna prioritize? How are we going to schedule this?
Thushan:Which might sound more project management, but I would more frame it as really like, it is an editorial lens on things. And I think the best things in life are editorial. I think the three of us are really into art and the notion of like what is art but something that just says something, it has a has a voice and a point of view. And as you both know, I'm very interested in governments, both what I just recently did for work, and to some extent still doing, but also I ran for local office here
Jeff Gould:City council.
Thushan:For city council. Yeah. And I think that kind of thinking would be useful.
Jeff Gould:It's an organizing tool.
Thushan:Yeah, it's an organizing tool. Yeah. And I think it brings us different lenses than maybe typically you see in government right now. I mean, but what does that viscerally mean? I think means lensing on like, are the outcomes we wanna see?
Thushan:What are the outcomes we don't wanna see and shaping things towards those outcomes. Now you can say that of any anyone in office or in government. So like, I don't wanna say that's not happening. But I also think like there's another lens that technology people tend to have, which is that technology is a tool that we can use to deliver like outsized outcomes. Like they're like a fulcrum and lever give more power towards the little might that you do have with the resources.
Jeff Gould:More transparency. Yeah.
Thushan:And so that would be good
Jeff Gould:if it provided more transparency for the process.
Thushan:Yeah. When you say that, where do you think we're in? Where in these photos do you see lack of transparency? See, at least here.
Jeff Gould:Well, we mentioned the CARP earlier.
Thushan:Yeah.
Jeff Gould:Climate Action Resiliency Plan. I think there's some issues with transparency in that. They're not being honest about some of the inventories that they're presenting.
Thushan:Okay.
Jeff Gould:They're leaning heavily on resilience rather than action that would mitigate climate change. Resilience being more seawalls and, you know, defensive actions rather than going on the offense and presenting an example of climate action. Yeah. Alameda has sort of taken a more conservative stance in that regard on climate, and other things too.
Thushan:What would you like to see happen that we're not doing?
Jeff Gould:Well, like I mentioned, more transparency, disclosure, more critical views of the depth of a problem. Mhmm. Not just surface oriented treatment. I think the city government a lot of times is motivated to just limit what they're disclosing to the public. And I understand some of that.
Jeff Gould:But in the major aspects of an issue, I don't think that's appropriate.
Thushan:So I'd love to add some other point dig in on on some of those transparency things would Go ahead. Yeah. But maybe add another point, like when we look at a doctor together or something, it's would love to feel out that problem.
Jeff Gould:It needs work. That's one of the ways that we can develop Alameda as a better place. You know? More input, more disclosure. Anyway, it's been a pleasure to Sean.
Jeff Gould:We'll wrap it up for now. Alright. Thank you for being on Island City Beat.
Thushan:Yeah. Thank you for the conversation. Really, really appreciate it.
Jeff Gould:So this is Jeff Gould signing off from Island City Beat.