Sucha Singh Banger had a hard summer, and life isn’t getting any easier for him. -more-

“Let’s all visit Berkeley for the first time,” Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) Chair Will Travis declared Saturday before a group set off on a downtown walking tour. -more-

The long-running saga of the Drayage is nearing an end with the sale of the West Berkeley building to the development firm Hudson McDonald expected to clear some time next month. -more-

We invite our readers to submit personal essays, short fiction, poetry and pictures for our annual Reader Contribution Holiday Issue. Selected submissions will be published in the Tuesday, Dec. 27 issue. Deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 18. Send us your material at holiday@berkeleydailyplanet.com or to 3023A Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705. -more-

Army National Guard Specialist Katherine Jashinski announced her opposition to war and refused deployment to Iraq last month at Fort Benning, Ga. -more-

So Gov. Schwarzenegger has hired Susan Kennedy, formerly a top aide to Gray Davis as cabinet secretary and deputy chief of staff, to be his own chief of staff. And in a little noticed corollary move, his wife and political confidant Maria Shriver has hired Daniel Zingale, another Davis deputy, to be her chief of staff. Sacramento is a pretty cozy place, isn’t it? Why are we not surprised? Well, for one thing, Justin DeFreitas did a prize-winning cartoon for this page, way back when, around the time of the recall election, which depicted Davis morphing into Schwarzenegger in the space of eight panels. We should just re-run that one reversed. As they say in France, plus ça change, plus la même chose: the more things change, the more they remain the same. -more-