By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher

[I wish I had a week in every day...I'm so far behind]

Thursday evening, Nick Aster, our chief media architect, and our newest editorial contributor Lucaso (Luke) Maroney, and I ventured out into the rain swept streets of San Francisco and headed to Cafe Du Nord for Salon.com's tenth anniversary celebrations.

I had met Joan Walsh, the editor-in-chief, in New York in the summer when I was on a panel with Joe Trippi. Joan and the team have done a great job putting Salon.com back in the black, and they are hiring.

Joan said the San Francisco celebration was a better party than the New York anniversary party Salon threw last week. [She might have been just sparing poor San Francisco's feelings...we can take it :-)]

Lots of stories Thursday about Salon, in the SF Chron and SJ Mercury, thanks to Salon's publicist, New York based Andy Plesser, of Plesser Holland Associates. Andy is a veteran at such things and has specialized in working with media companies, such as Wired, Red Herring, ZDnet and others. He also helped organize the Thursday evening celebration.

It was an interesting crowd, a lot of old San Francisco courtesy of the dynamic Hambrecht family and its chief dynamo Bill Hambrecht. The family was well represented at the event--as they are within Salon.com--as investors and as hands-on managers.

Hardly any geeks in this SF social crowd, although Craig Newmark of Craigslist wandered in from the rain. Craig had recently returned from a trip to Oxford, where he and his CEO Jim Buckmaster spoke at the Oxford Saïd business school.

Charlotte Grimshaw and her colleagues, have done a great job in luring Silicon Valley's leaders to speak at the school. Please see The Silicon Valley comes to Oxford

Craig said he was hoping to pick up a title of nobility while in the UK, viscount, he said, would have been his choice. But he didn't. At least now we know what to get him for Christmas.

Lucaso, Joan Walsh and ...

Some of the watchers...

One of the Hambrechts....