From the Editor

School’s Out and the Future Is Bright

    Traditionally, Alameda Magazine devotes a huge chunk of the May/June issue to celebrating outstanding high school seniors, and that’s exactly what’s in store for readers this year.
    Area high school counselors nominated two graduating seniors (a boy and a girl) from Alameda high schools, and associate editor Daniel Jewett dug through their nomination forms for supporting details, turning out a lively read, “Great Graduates,” about a group of kids—12 in all—who possess amazing scholastic prowess, unmatched ambition and a commitment to succeed.
    Most of the class of ’08 in these pages are stellar overachievers, but there are a couple of teens who faced incredible challenges—drugs at home, dropping out, fatherhood—on their road to success, tribulations that make their academic accomplishments that much sweeter.
    Photographer Craig Merrill is the man behind the lens who spent a considerable amount of energy whipping the kids into a frenzy in his effort to depict his young academic all-star subjects as the type of fun-loving, goof-for-the camera teens they really are. They can get serious again this fall.
    A serious topic on everybody’s mind today is Bay Area real estate. Homes generally are consumers’ largest investment, so it’s only natural that East Bay homeowners have formidable worries about the East Bay housing market and how their houses will fair in the ever-worsening economic downturn. Is now the time to buy? Should you sell? What’s a body to do?
    We asked Jeff Swenerton, former editor in chief of EQUITY, a magazine for California homeowners, to contemplate the heady real estate meltdown. In his article, “Bay Area Real Estate Survival Guide,” he assesses the local real estate landscape, explains how the Central Valley became foreclosure central and presents some ideas about what makes East Bay real estate less volatile than tailspinning locales like Stockton, Tracy and Vacaville.
    The bottom line, he concludes, is that real estate is an old-fashioned investment, one to make money over the long haul and definitely not a modern-day ATM. And when homeowners factor in the East Bay’s diverse economy, its colleges and neighborhoods, its limited housing and pockets of good schools, they find there’s not as much doom and gloom as they anticipated.


Judith M. Gallman
judy@alamedamagazine.com