Classic motorcycles sprouted from the lawn of the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay on Saturday May 3 as enthusiasts, mostly old white men, drooled over immaculate bikes of almost every brand and decade.

At Legends of the Motorcycle (aka International Concours d’Elegance), an annual event in its third year, contestants enter their meticulously restored motorcycles into one of several categories, from early production models from the turn of the 19th century to modern custom bikes, and then each category is awarded prizes.

Every year, there has been a focus on a particular brand, this time honoring Italian manufacturer MV Augusta and British Norton. As judges toured the golf course-like lawn, these bikes had the chance to rumble alive as many 70+-year-old men stared like children at a new toy under the Christmas tree.

The foggy morning started in the Dainese (a motorcycle apparel and helmet manufacturer) Tent with the unveiling of new safety technology and a collaborative effort with AGV (an Italian helmet) to unveil a limited edition Giacomo Agostini helmet.

“This protective gear inflates in 30 milliseconds,” Cafaggi told us. The air bag looks like a boomerang pillow for business-class air passengers, which inflates just under the helmet to completely protect the upper spinal column.

The “Ago” helmet revealed and signed underneath the tent later auctioned for $5,000, which was donated to charity.

Inside the hotel, there was a photo exhibit by Timothy White of actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s ride around the world on two BMW GS 1150’s. The trip took them 115 days, starting in London, heading east and ending in New York City. Some of the pictures were from small villages in the Himalayan Mountains, showing the actors and bikes covered in mud as local children surrounded them.

On the other side of the hotel, Bonham and Butterfield hosted an auction of about 75 rare bikes, some reaching close to $100,000, like a 1906 Indian, but others, as a ’76 Honda CB400, for a mere $4,000.

At around 5 p.m., this motorcyclist’s paradise started clearing out as giddy faces headed back to the hundreds of bikes parked outside the luxury hotel’s gates. Although many wished to ride away in a classic Ducati or Harley, they seemed happy to return to their loved bikes and head home on scenic Highway 1.

At the San Francisco Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office an emergency protest and a call for justice was held on May 5th in a response to condemn last week's raids where 60 immigrant workers were detained by the ICE. People gathered at the protest to call an end to these raids that tear apart families and criminalize the important work immigrants are doing in the community. Of the 60 workers who were arrested, some have been released, but must wear an electric ankle bracelet while they wait for deportation hearings. "Estamos aquí y no nos vamos" ("We are here and we're not leaving") was one of the many slogans chanted by the passionate and diverse group of protesters at the event.

Participating organizations included: East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Bay Area Immigrant Right Coalition, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Pride at Work, and San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network.

Somewhere, maybe in a moldy gym locker or a clandestine liquor cabinet, a brilliant game plan for big league success has sat untouched for more than a quarter century.

Were talking about "Billy Ball," the late Billy Martin's blueprint for righting the ship of moribund baseball franchises. It was last used in Oakland in the early 1980s.

The A's were the last team of dubious talent that Martin managed to meld into winners. He took an Oakland club that had lost 109 games in 1979 and led them to the American League Championship Series within two seasons with essentially the same personnel.

Martin may have been a kook of momentous proportions, a guy who drank and fought like a pirate - a real pirate, not the Pittsburgh variety. But he knew how to light a fire under a ball club and get it back on the winning track.

Billy took four major league clubs with losing records (Minnesota, Detroit, Texas and Oakland) and turned them instantly into winners. He also increased attendance by his presence alone - and what percentage of ticket sales do you think current A's manager Bob Geren and Giants skipper Bruce Bochy are responsible for?

Employing a ramped up style that resembled sand-lot ball (some would prefer the term "bush league") Martin led clubs would blitz opponents by using everything from double steals and hidden ball tricks to literally falling down on the job.

"My favorite was the 'first and third play," recalled Shooty Babitt, an infielder on Martin's 1981 Oakland club. "Billy loved to steal home. So if he had runners on first and third would have a guy like Wayne Gross, who was probably the least athletic guy on the club, take a good lead off first and then suddenly fall down. Right, away and the pitcher would throw to first base and the guy at third would walk right in. We thought he was crazy when he told us to do that, but lo and behold we scored a few runs by doing that."

Once a particular recipe for success has worked in professional sports - Bill Walsh's West Coast offense, for example - other teams desperate for a winner will run it into the ground. So why it is that no one has adopted Martin's strategies?

One word: fear.

In 1980, the A's were downright suicidal on the base-paths and on the mound. Starting pitchers hurled 94 complete games, including 22 straight by Rick Langford. How cavalier was that? Last season Oakland starters went the distance all of four times.

The club stole home seven times, as well as pulling off 14 double steals and one triple steal.

"We spent a lot of time drilling on those plays, finding any way get that extra run, I say we won at least 5-6 games a year just by pulling some of the "Billy Ball'' stunts; that can win you a pennant," said Dave McKay, a infielder on Martin's Oakland clubs from 1980-82.

If a manager attempted some of Billy's stunts today, everyone from the G.M. to the scouting director to player agents would be lined up on the dugout's steps taking turns wringing his neck. Plus, he'd be accused of "showing up" the other clubs.

But Martin never let outside influences get in the way of winning.

Of course, Martin could be as vicious as a snake and many of his players loathed him. Martin once said his secret to success was "too keep the five players who hate you away from the four who are undecided."

But he saw results in the standings. After going a baseball worst 54-106 in 1979, Oakland brought in Martin. In his first season on the job the A's went 83-79 with much the same personnel. In 1981, the A's made the playoffs.

"He was fun to play for. Billy wanted guys that played hard and didn't make mistakes. He was a motivator. He pushed hard, real hard and some guys resented that," said McKay.

Added Babitt: "Billy was all about competition, on the field, in the clubhouse, on the airplane. Guys were constantly fighting for playing time, but [that] kept you hungry. Billy had that had the type of presence that whatever he required on the field from his players he normally received it. This was a club that had lost a bunch of games, franchise-record type losses, and when Billy he brought a different approach and attitude and it was enough. Yeah we bought into it."

Twenty-five years after the fact, some of the players recall "Billy Ball" as some of the best ball of their careers. Even those who played against the A's.

"It's was always fun and entertaining when we got to play oak it always kept you on your toes," said former Baltimore outfielder Gary Roenicke. "You had to pay attention, because if you weren't you would be embarrassed. When you got caught by Billy it was something you would remember for awhile."

Carbon dioxide, deforestation, and nitrous oxide all shoulder their share of the blame for Global Warming. But what about Lee Elia?

Now, you won't find Elia's name mentioned in any Al Gore lecture. He's not a greedy corporate bigwig, an eco terrorist, or a clueless oil tanker captain - just a curmudgeonly baseball lifer.

But 25 years ago this week, during a highly unsuccessful two-season stint managing the Chicago Cubs, Elia emitted the most extreme, paint-peeling meltdowns in the history of sports.

When he was done blasting away at Cubs fans with an obscenity-laced rant that included a jaw-dropping 36 F-bombs over the first three minutes, Elia surely had released enough green house gasses to liquidate massive mountain glaciers and multiply the thermal expansion of upper ocean layers from Pacifica to Antarctica. .

A quarter century later, Elia's diatribe still ranks as the No. 1 outburst in the history of sports - eclipsing Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy (I'm a man! I'm 40!"); Indianapolis Colts coach Jim Mora (Playoffs?! Are you kidding?! Playoffs?!) and any number of profanity laced diatribes by former Dodgers skipper Tommy Lasorda.

The Legend of Elia rant has grown so much over the years, that every April 29, sports radio broadcasters from coast- to- coast gather for a moment to celebrate "Lee Elia Day" - popping multi-generational copies of the tirade into their Monrantz tape decks and laughing hysterically.

After dealing with mounds of monotone sports clichés on a daily basis, Elia's rant allows beleaguered sound bite gathers a moment to smile. Obviously, because of Elia's unrestrained profanity, only carefully edited versions of Elia's adult content diatribe have ever made it to the public airwaves.

Now, thanks to the internet of course, Elia's diatribe can be heard in all its profane glory.

The hapless Cubs were off to a typical dreary start to their '83, settling into last place in the National League East place after a 4-3 loss to the Dodgers at Wrigley Field that afternoon.

As the Cubs exited the field and the 9,391 fans in attendance filed out of the grand stand, a couple of jerks pelted Chicago's Keith Moreland and Larry Bowa with stadium trash.

"About 85 percent of the (f-ing) world is working," Elia growled into the microphone of Chicago radio man Les Grobstein, one of a half dozen reporters to witness the rant first hand. "The other 15 come out here."

He was far from finished.
Moments later, Elia's season-long slow burn escalated into an inferno. He lit not only into the debris flinging morons, but each and every Cubs fan that had ever skipped school or work to take in a mid-week day game at the "Friendly Confines."

Elia continued for several more profane moments spewing enough expletives to make George Carlin blush.

San Francisco Giants broadcaster and former Cubs pitcher Mike Krukow recalls that Chicago fans during the early-1980s were an extremely passionate and occasionally rowdy lot, and understands Elia's frustrations. But he said the former skipper broke the cardinal rule of baseball that day.

"After a fan buys a ticket it's their right to scream and yell and criticize - you learn that your first day in the minors. (Elia) said some things that were cruel and that he didn't mean," Krukow said. "He was just protecting his players, but he did it in a way that was insulting to the fan base and he said some things he shouldn't have said. Lee broke the code and he knows that and he's still trying to say he's sorry for it."

Besides being arguably the crudest monologue ever introduced to tape, Elia's rant offers a fantastic time-travel back to a time just prior to the vanilla-ization of major league baseball's managerial chair. Several salty characters (Earl Weaver, Billy Martin, and Frank Robinson) still occupied managerial positions. Today, more and more of those slots are filled with low-key personalities who wouldn't dare create a public stir.

"Managers are more PR conscious, and media conscious today. A big part of their job is satisfying the media and I don't think their going to take on the city that they work in," said Marty Lurie, the long-time host of the Oakland A's radio pre-game show, "Right off the Bat" (1550 AM). "In today's world, the manager wouldn't last 10 seconds if he talked like that. Today he would be on CNN International by nightfall."

That said, wasn't it still a bit shocking that Elia remained at the Cubs helm for another four months, despite telling his paying customers to essentially to go to hell?

"Back then you could do it and no one thought much of it in the organization because you weren't alienating the whole country against your club," Lurie said.

After leaving the Cubs, Elia went on to manage the Philadelphia Philles and served as a coach with five different organizations.

Now 70, and a senior adviser with the Seattle Mariners, Elia has recently tried to mend fences with Cubs fans.

Elia, a survivor of prostate cancer has been active with Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities. To help raise funds for the charity, Elia has begun to market an autographed baseball with "PRINT IT!" embossed on it. The ball also comes complete with an audio-chip featuring Elia's unmistakable raspy voice.

This time around, instead of telling Northsiders to attempt an unnatural act, he offers encouragement and the hope that the Cubs end their century-long World Series championship drought this season.

He's planning on attending Tuesday Cubs at Wrigley Field on the silver anniversary of the day he spewed a million expletives.

"How can you ever say anything (bad) about Chicago Cubs fans?" Elia recently told the Associated Press. "One of the few pure things left in this business is the Chicago Cubs' fans."

Now, if Elia can make good with Cubs fans, maybe he can do something about those melting ice caps.

A couple Thursdays ago I went on the Johnnie Walker Journey - a traveling tasting show of Johnnie Walker's five blended whiskies. Only now can I process this odd event.

First a quick note, I am often fairly cynical about these tasting events -- whether they are put on by a liquor company, or whether they’re part of festivals that bring together a number of companies. I can think of a few at bars that have been joyous events (see: those held at Elixir), but often they take place in sterile rooms, and completely reduce the enjoyment of a liquor.

While The Johnnie Walker Journey, which took place at Fort Mason, fell into the latter category, it was so over the top it may have shot the moon. How do you turn the tasting of five liquors into something special? You build it into an overhyped multimedia event that is far bigger than it deserves to be.

The evening started off pretty lackluster. First we waited in line to "donate" five dollars to charity -- which one they didn't say. Then we waited in line to fill out a survey with one of the Johnny Walker Girls (much more wholesome than you’re picturing).

After a half hour, an announcer intoned that the time for the tasting was now. Again we waited in line, this time like we were entering Universal Studios. The email I had gotten about the event described it as a multimedia event. When I asked Travis Rexroad, the marketing guy who was helping organize this, what could be multimedia about a tasting event, he wasn't much help with details.

After herding us together once again, we filed into the back room. Four groups of five rows of long white, soft benches faced the center, turning the normally dingy Fort Mason into something resembling a futuristic gathering of the elders.

Then came out the emcee. This guy, who looked like Richard Karn, had the job of stretching out the drinking of a total of 2 oz of liquor over an hour and a half. But his first job was to tell us where the exits were in case, in the middle of the show, we had to use the bathroom.

The emcee was full of the typical platitutdes desgned to sell. The Yellow Johnny Walker: "I always think of this whiskey as a celebration whiskey." So after he asked if any one was celebrating we all lifted our 5 deciliters of liquor to Ronnie's 23rd Birthday.

This went on through all the liquors. The only major exception was that for the Green label, they went heavy on green nature imagery -- because, as the emcee said, its an earthy blend.

I would like liquor tastings to become more social events, that are essentially drinking in a bar with a rep from the company. If Madison Avenue is going ot push them in the complete opposite direction to over-hyped glossy multimedia affairs, well, I won’t say no, but I’m not sure it works.