SAN FRANCISCO -- What a luxury. I walked 10 minutes from my apartment Saturday night to see the San Jose Earthquakes play the Houston Dynamo (a.k.a. the Old Quakes) for an exhibition game at Kezar Stadium, once the proud home of both the 49ers and the Oakland Raiders.

And now that the feeling has come back to my fingers (game-time temperature: 45 degrees with serious wind chill), here are some news and notes I picked up after the scoreless draw:

• Dwayne De Rosario (above right) is still a favorite of Quakes fans, even though he’s been the best player on the back-to-back champion Dynamo since the team left San Jose after the 2005 season. “It’s nice to see these fans again,” he said after the game, Houston’s second of the week against the new expansion Quakes. “They deserve to have this team.”

There’s going to be loads more pressure on the Canadian Rasta man to help his own team this season, especially with the Dynamo’s sudden thinness in the front line after Joseph Ngwenya and Nate Jaqua both bolted for Austrian clubs. In his midfield role, which is more like a deep striker, DeRo is still the most dangerous scoring threat in Houston’s lineup, but even he’s hoping the team will bring in some help for him and No. 1 striker Brian Ching.

• “This is worse than Norway,” joked a shivering Ramiro Corrales after the game. Corrales played his first game back in a Quakes jersey Saturday since returning to MLS from SK Brann of the Norwegian league. The 30-year-old played six seasons in San Jose and is thrilled to be back home (he’s originally from Salinas, just south of the Bay Area). With his veteran smarts and experience, he’ll be a great addition to the new Quakes -- here’s hoping his awful showing in the U.S.-Mexico friendly was an aberration.

• The Earthquakes have put together a smart, capable veteran defense, but with only two forwards on the official roster, it’s pretty clear what the team’s biggest need is. GM John Doyle bought into the latest fad by MLS clubs -- a prospecting trip to South America -- and told me the team is set to sign Argentine attacker Federico Arias this week. The 28-year-old (nickname: “The Torpedo”) has played for Argentine clubs Velez Sarsfield and Rosario Central and did an unremarkable stint in England at Southampton in '03 under current Celtic boss Gordon Strachan.

• Dynamo sources say there’s no truth whatsoever to the rumors that U.S. national-teamer Benny Feilhaber is headed to Houston on loan from England’s Derby County -- apparently not even head coach Dom Kinnear knows where that one surfaced. It’d be hard to find space in the Dynamo’s crowded midfield for Feilhaber anyways. Maybe those Chivas USA rumors are closer to the truth?

• The Quakes will play three home games this season in Oakland’s McAfee Coliseum to accommodate bigger crowds: Their April 3 home opener against the Chicago Fire (sure to bring out thousands to see Mexico’s Cuauhtémoc Blanco) and on June 14 and Aug. 3 against David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy. The latter two will be a great chance to rekindle what I think was MLS’ best rivalry, but sources within the Galaxy organization are seething over what they see as an unfair homefield advantage for their Northern California rivals -- at full soccer capacity, McAfee can hold around 45,000 fans.