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Silverfarb’s Opinion

Bill Silverfarb weighs in on Bee-Eye-Enn-Gee-Oh and Ess-oh-bee-a:

On Monday, the Burlingame City Council unveiled the winning logo for an upcoming charrette aimed at boosting business on Howard Avenue. The south of Burlingame Avenue Destination: SOBA? winning logo was entered by someone named Bingo Steinhart. The logo features photographs of letters on some of Howard Avenue's prominent business signage such as Safeway and Walgreens. It's a fundamentally good design and worthy of winning. There's one small issue with this winning design, however. Bingo Steinhart is not a real person. The logo was designed by Burlingame City Councilman Russ Cohen who entered the contest under a fake name. It seems a contest wasn't really necessary and all the council really had to do was say, Hey Russ, why don't you design the SOBA logo.? It seems kind of weird the council would pick one of its own in this contest or that one from the council would even enter this contest, under a fake name, in the first place.

Going forward it appears Burlingame brass want Howard Avenue to be forever known as SOBA. I'm not sure I'm buying into that one but maybe in 20 or 30 years it will make sense.

– Written by Fiona

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8 responses to “Silverfarb’s Opinion”

  1. phil silverbarb

    Too bad ole Bill is so clueless about how the contest was run, who picked the winner and what’s really “weird”. Weird is letting a copyboy write columns on the side.

  2. Anonymous

    Sounds like Russ wanted to ensure that it was on the up and up and that’s why he entered under a psuedonym. As I understand it, the judges were members of the AIA and the Burl. Planning Dept. Why shouldn’t he have entered. Obviously he won, so he’s got a bit of talent in the design area. Just cause he’s a council member shouldn’t exclude him from the contest. He wasn’t a judge and he didn’t want any of the judge’s to knwo it was him. I say good for him!

  3. mary

    Why should anyone care what Bill Silverfarb buys into and what he doesn’t buy into? He has no standing in Burlingame. Heck, nobody has even met the guy.

  4. Anonymous

    I haven’t “met” many people who write on this blog – or have I?! But I still care what they think. Mr. Silverfarb’s opinion is just as relevant as ours!

    The other logo entries are on display at city hall. They are very elegant and it is worth a trip down to city hall to see them – even for Mr. Silverfarb.

  5. Lulu

    Will Mr. Silverfarb be issuing an apology to Mr. Cohen for assuming the worst about the selection of his design?

  6. Anonymous

    It must have been a slow news day……..

  7. Anonymous

    This is a silly* logo contest with an entry from a faked named councilmember.

    * The logo contest wasn’t silly, it was a great idea. It just became very silly.

    Lets get on to the important stuff … what can be done to make Howard Avenue a more successful part of Burlingame. The charrette will be our opportunity to exchange ideas and opinions.

  8. fred

    Opinionated disclaimer: Before I enter into defense of Silverfarb, I checked the meagan’s law list and he seems to be clean.

    No standing in Burlingame? That seems harsh. Maybe he travels in different circles, he might not be into radio drama (to each their own).

    His opinions have been pretty much on the money and not favoring any one group.

    He’s got standing as far as I’m concerned. He writes a column above which certain ‘da mayor’ letters as well as other opinions have been submitted by people with ‘standing’ in Bulringame.

    Now if his column were below the other opinions I might say his ‘standing’ was lower…

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