Oakland Trader

The minds of some readers work in mysterious ways. A perfectly innocent tale of a school reunion, and the mention that a few females were in attendance has James pontificating:

I would have thought that females attending an all-boy school reunion would be limited to transsexuals.

Is there something you have left out of your bio, Cassandra?

To clarify, although most former pupils are all male, and in my day all were male, since 2011 girls have been allowed to join the sixth form, so we now potentially have alumnae attending these events, although numbers to date are small. 

Plus there have been female staff members over the years, as well as female administrative staff and some people feel it appropriate to bring their wives along to the event. 

To be clear, it is never appropriate to bring your wife along to events of this nature. Or anyone else's wife for that matter.

It’s not often I get non-spam comments on seven year old posts, but Mystereed had a question about the image (above) that I’d used to illustrate a post back in 2010.

Hello, do you happen to know where this picture comes from? I have the same sign in a snapshot I took during a brief stop in a small California town some twenty years ago.I did a google search to try and identify the town and found your image. Thanks and all the best!

This comment actually proved to be far more interesting than it should have been, and it was fun researching and tracking down the location of the picture.

Mystereed was actually mistaken about the location of his photograph being a small town in California.  

Although its inclusion in my post was as a rather clever word play in reference to the Oakland Raiders, who of course represent the city of Oakland in California, (although not for much longer), the image was actually from the small town of Oakland in Oregon. 

With an estimated population of 936 as of 2015, it is smaller by some distance than its namesake, and unlikely to be hosting an NFL franchise any time soon.

Here is the same Oakland Trader sign from the Historic Oakland, Oregon web site  

...and here are some more shots from various angles:

A very enjoyable exercise, and another place to check out on my retirement travels.

With Oakland (California) also losing the Golden State Warriors next year, it’s not a good time to be a sports fan in that city.

The Raiders are moving to Las Vegas, and that city is also home from next season to a new NHL team called the Vegas Golden Knights (not Las Vegas, simply Vegas).

American leagues change frequently, with every major league seeing team relocations or expansions since 2005, yet the idea of relegations / promotions is totally alien!