Oakland Military Institute

Education agitator Steve Barr's many detractors will tell you that he's a megalomaniacal publicity hound. So why don't I feel dirty standing beside him, dutifully taking notes as he rhapsodizes about a sheet-metal warehouse in Watts? The building is as ugly as the pit bull pacing behind the rusted chain-link fence that protects it, but Barr sees only potential beauty.

Has the Moonbeam become a laser ray? According to aides at Oakland City Hall, Mayor Jerry Brown -- the former California governor whose dreamy political visions earned him the nickname "Gov. Moonbeam" -- suddenly has become focused on this troubled city's affairs as never before. Brown recently fired Oakland's popular city manager, with whom he had feuded over a proposed downtown baseball stadium.

For one brief moment they are all there--every Jerry Brown we've had the pleasure of watching for the past quarter century, all the incarnations of a man who has alternately delighted and confounded, annoyed and enriched, angered and engaged the American public. Everyone from the Philosopher Prince to Mayor Fix-It, all on one small patch of cracked asphalt.