Here's a new brand of genius...

...courtesy of Ron Dellums and the Oakland City Council. They are refusing to allow a potentially new pilot for HBO to be shot in Oakland (the script is based in Oakland). "Not as high on 'Gentlemen [of Leisure]' is Mayor Ron Dellums and a few city council members, who said several months ago that they don't want to show filmed in Oakland because of its edgy subject matter." (http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_12966405) They don't want Oakland known as a dangerous, unsavory place? Uh, sorry, but when the only news of Oakland to make national headlines in the past several months or so are about people getting shot and killed (the 4 cops and the Bart station incident), people in the middle of Iowa aren't going to look at Oakland as a wonderful place to raise their kids or even a place to visit. If the city council still refuses, then all that HBO will do is film in Boyle Heights and South Central LA and pass that off as Oakland (the lack of historic architecture makes those neighborhoods [or at least what I've seen of them] much more unattractive than even the most decrepit parts of Oakland [where old, yet rundown, Victorians are still plentiful]). Besides, think of what this (the fees, tax revenues, etc.) could do for Oakland's coffers, which are so empty that the parking meter fees have just increased 75 cents per hour and operate 1.5 hours earlier in some places and 2 hours later everywhere than before (http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_12717359). But will the light bulb go on in the city council's collective head? Don't count on it...instead we'll just see an increase of taxes and LA being passed off as yet another city that it couldn't be more different from.