California Today: The Cool Spectacle of Snap’s Spectacles

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/us/california-today-snap-spectacles.html

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Let’s turn it over to Katie Benner, a New York Times technology reporter based in San Francisco.

Over the weekend, Snap (formerly known as Snapchat) introduced its latest product — camera-embedded sunglasses called Spectacles — with an online video of millennial women goofing off in a Los Angeles skate park, recording fun moments of their sun-kissed afternoon.

If the Spectacles unveiling was pure L.A. cool, it contrasted starkly with the Google Glass debut four years ago, which was pure Silicon Valley geek.

Standing onstage at a conference in San Francisco, the Google founder Sergey Brin wore Glass, a camera-enabled metal band that covered one eye and looked like a “Star Trek” prop, while boasting about its life-changing potential.

Where Glass wanted to be important, Spectacle claims it just wants to have fun. That gulf tells you a lot about why Snap’s founder Evan Spiegel has kept his company in Venice Beach, near the ocean and studio lots that have shaped popular culture for decades.

The brand’s laid-back Southern California approach was first apparent in its messaging and media app Snapchat, where the messages quickly disappear.

The videos are short and sweet and have become a hit with young people who are wary of Facebook and Instagram with their permanent records of social media.

Just as Snap outwardly eschews the more earnest Silicon Valley ethos — technology should change the world — it has also sidestepped the biggest mistakes made by Google Glass.

Glass, which was shut down as a consumer product last year, didn’t show people when it was recording. Some techies didn’t care, but many found it a violation of privacy.

Glass was priced at $1,500, making it a vanity gadget for elites. At $130, a pair of Spectacles is a cool toy, and an indicator light shows when users are recording.

With a $19 billion valuation, Snap is one of the world’s most highly valued tech start-ups. It is changing the face of media and advertising, and it has put Los Angeles, often treated as a frivolous cousin to the Silicon Valley, on the map as a place where serious innovation can happen.

• The Dodgers clinched the division title with a walk-off home run, and provided a sweet send-off for Vin Scully’s last regular-season broadcast at Dodger Stadium. [Los Angeles Times]

• California home sellers are increasingly relocating to more affordable states like Texas and Arizona, an analysis of data showed. [The Wall Street Journal]

• Chinese investments in the United States, notably in California, are occurring at a dizzying pace. [Agence France-Presse]

• Apple and digital giants have developed potentially lifesaving technology to block texting while driving, but it’s still not being deployed. [The New York Times]

• Dede Wilsey has influence in the San Francisco arts scene. But her critics don’t always like the way she has used it. [The New York Times]

• Ten years after the governor signed a notable climate bill, much has changed — probably more than most Californians realize. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• A groundwater arms race has broken out in the San Joaquin Valley, where farmers are putting in wells faster and deeper than ever. [Sacramento Bee]

• The police arrested three people, including a 17-year-old girl, in connection with a triple homicide in Fullerton. [Los Angeles Times]

• In a fraught election year, Berkeley Repertory Theater is staging a play that imagines the election of an American demagogue. [The New York Times]

• Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that requires sites like IMDb to remove an actor’s age if asked to do so. [Variety]

• On Tuesday, Elon Musk, founder of the Hawthorne-based SpaceX, will lay out his vision for colonizing Mars. He has predicted he will be able to get humans to the red planet in the mid-2020s, with a goal of establishing colonies.

• The fall film festival season revs up this week. Four are opening in Southern California: one in Catalina, another in San Diego, and two in Los Angeles — the Valley and Sunscreen festivals.

• Oktoberfest is upon us. Among the places hosting festivals are Carlsbad, Chico, Monterey Bay, Oakland (Oaktoberfest), Oxnard, San Luis Obispo, Scotts Valley and Visalia.

• The three-day TwitchCon event starts Friday in San Diego. Every day, nearly 10 million people go to the streaming service to watch and talk about people playing video games.

On Friday, readers weighed in on Proposition 67, which asks whether the state should uphold a ban on disposable plastic bags at groceries. A sampling of their reactions:

The lemon festival was a lemon.

Please understand: We love Podunk. We were counting on the 25th annual California Lemon Festival, held over the weekend in Goleta, to involve crafts and Rotary Club concessions. But we also expected lemons. Lots and lots of lemons.

Maybe it was a light crop? There was lemon pie ($3 a slice), a stand where you could buy lemon-flavored beer, and, yes, lemonade. But that was about it, at least as far as lemony food and drink. Out of the 40-some tented booths dedicated to crafts and local businesses, only about five or six had anything to do with lemons (T-shirts, mostly).

There were a couple of fun bands. “Louisiana Saturday Night,” while an odd choice for a daytime festival on the California coast, is always a foot stomper. Ultimately, though, it was decided to drive up the road to Buellton, a.k.a. “The Home of Split Pea Soup.”

A bowl, please. And ice tea — with lemon.

— Brooks Barnes, New York Times Hollywood reporter

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a third-generation Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U.C. Berkeley.