Oakland Tribune Outtakes

If you’ve ever enjoyed a stroll or biked or walked your pooch on the Mandela Parkway/Bay Trail in West Oakland, there are three people, Stefanie Parrott, Ellen Wyrick Parkinson and Bruce Beasley (and more) to thank. Today’s Tribune has a story about the parkway so check it out.

As my dear, late mother would say: ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease.’ And all the squeaky, squawky drivers who wrote, called and emailed their elected reps to protest the new parking fees, fines and hours, have been heard.

Both Councilmembers Pat Kernighan and Ignacio De La Fuente are ready to sponsor legislation to do away with the 8 p.m. meter enforcement, rolling it back to the previous 6 p.m. cutoff (hooray, I say!).

“We have to admit when we made a mistake,” De La Fuente told me earlier today.

“After hearing from a great many outraged constituents, I have concluded that the City Council tried to impose too much at once regarding parking fees and fines… Consequently,  I favor rescinding the 8 pm enforcement and going back to 6 pm. ,” wrote Kernighan in an email I just received.

Nothing can happen until the council gets back from break in September. And a word of warning: that revenue the city would have gotten has to come from somewhere. My advice: enjoy the moment of victory, it could be short-lived.

Thanks to LOTS of public pressure from assorted bloggers (dto510, Becks from Living in the O, etc…) and downtown neighbors, Oakland’s elected leaders decided late Tuesday night that maybe a temporary (until June 2011) surface parking lot with only 110 spaces wasn’t perhaps the best use of a prime piece of property on Telegraph Avenue next to the Fox Theater. Especially since it was gonna cost $400,000 or $500,000 (paid by developer Forest City) and be months before it would be ready for use.

Besides the wealth of alternate ideas that folks had for the space were just so darn great (park, plaza, large sculpture space, pee-wee golf), the council couldn’t help but take notice, apparently.

So last night the council voted to give the community two weeks to develop a plan to transform the dirt lot into a spot to display large public art, a la Burning Man-sized creations. Like IT by Michael Christian??? How cool would that be???

Could great art like this be headed downtown? Stay tuned.

Starting Friday, May 1 and continuing through late June, parking along the west side of Lakeshore Avenue at Lake Merritt will be severely restricted while the contractor demolishes the sidewalk and replaces it with a new multipurpose pathway.

It’s one of many improvements to the lake that Oakland voters were promised when in 2002 they approved Measure DD, the $198 million Trust for Clean Water and Safe Parks bond. 

The sidewalk work will be done in stages from E. 18th to El Embarcadero. By Wednesday, May 6, the entire length should fenced off and no parking will be allowed on the west side of the street.

The good news? Joggers and walkers will be able to use the new shoreline path, although access points will be limited the Pergola and the E. 18th Pier and a couple of other spots. Also, the city is suspending street cleaning on the east side of the street during the construction.

For more information, contact Lyle Oehler, the city’s capital improvement project coordinator at 238-3389.

Check out Waterfront Action or the city of Oakland website for project descriptions and updates

So, I was driving down Seventh Street in WO the other day, past the future home of the Mandela Foods Cooperative, and the window sign was down and I admit I thought the worst. But after poking my head inside I was happy to see that the interior is almost completely finished! The sinks and stove, bathrooms, display cases, etc… are all in and the painters were busy with finishing touches. 

Painters put finishing touches inside Mandela Foods Cooperative

In one of the largest Ecstasy seizures ever in California, 45 kilograms of the drug with a minimum street value of almost $2 million were found at a West Oakland house Friday during a series of law enforcement raids from Willits to the East Bay, authorities said Tuesday.

Besides the powder form of the drug found in Oakland, a huge manufacturing lab was dismantled in Willits in Mendocino County, and at least nine people, including the ringleader suspect from El Cerrito, his brother and two Emeryville residents, were arrested.
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I’ve watched and written about the closure of a number of popular downtown nightclubs that catered to an African American clientele… Mingles, Simone’s, Zazoo’s, Sweet Jimmies, @17th. But it’s still a shock to hear that Geoffrey Pete, a well-respected Oakland insider who could operate a school in how to run a successful nightclub, is throwing in the towel.

He would only say Tuesday that Geoffrey’s on 14th Street is closing and he plans to lease the space to a church and non profit. For what purpose, he didn’t say.

Pete has been going back and forth with the Oakland police department over the unruly and sometimes violent crowds leaving his club after the monthly First Saturdays events, which tend to draw a younger scene. There have been fights and gunfire, and 30 cops plus Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies were called out early Sunday morning to stop  fights and disperse a crowd of about 500 people in the intersection of 14th and Franklin streets in front of Geoffrey’s. At least that’s what the police log said.

Pete said “OPD didn’t do anything,” that his security team dealt with the incidents before the police arrived, and that he runs a safe club. That’s true. Nearly all the violence that led to Sweet Jimmie’s, @17th and Mingles closing down had happened outside, usually after large crowds converged at closing time.

Why is it that folks can get along inside, where the liquor is flowing and everybody is dancing, but forget about being a law-abiding citizen once they hit the streets?

Dorothy King from Everett and Jones Barbeque (her spelling) said that some of the younger people hitting the clubs nowadays don’t care and don’t respect the way things used to be.

If that’s true, then why is it that Kimball’s Carnival, Maxwell’s, Air Lounge and several other downtown caberets, including King’s own Q lounge, which showcases jazz and blues on weekends, manage to run their clubs and send their patrons out in a happy, not fighting, mood?

Just asking.

Some folks are up in arms over word that HBO is filming a series about pimps, based in Oakland. They are worried that it’s portraying Oakland in a bad light, a la The Wire, HBO’s primo series about political graft, drugs, homicides in Baltimore and the often-flawed cops that investigate and solve the crimes.

Well, get ready, cuz pimps and the prostitution trade aren’t the only topics filmmakers are interested in.

A documentary film crew funded by the Discovery Channel has been prowling around West Oakland the past month for a three-hour series on gangs, interviewing folks and filming funerals.

They are focusing on the impacts from the deadly feud between the Acorn and Ghost town gangs that culminated in a big-time raid in June and the arrest of more than 50 gang members, including the alleged ringleader of Acorn, Marc Anthony Candler.

The film makers plan to come back to Oakland for more footage next year. So much for Oakland’s image.

If you see some weird (beauty’s in the eye of the beholder) gigantic sculptures traveling down Interstate 880 this morning, it’s because NIMBY is on the move to its new East Oakland warehouse on Amelia Street.

You can check out my earlier post or story to get the smoky details, but in a nutshell, an untended candle sparked a fire that ended up with inspectors crawling around NIMBY’s longtime arts space on 28th Street in West Oakland.

(Michael) Snook, owner and founder, found a new, bigger space that complied with all fire codes, etc… in East Oakland. He had to raise $36,000 for the move in costs, but that’s done and starting today, all the great Burning Man sculpture, torches, and other stuff that’s been  packed up in shipping containers is finally heading to their new home.

The new place is going to have a far-out sculpture garden with pieces like Michael Christian’s IT.

After several years of flying under the radar, thanks largely to the no-man’s land Dogtown neighborhood where it was located, NIMBY is moving this month from West Oakland to East Oakland.

NIMBY, for those who don’t know, is a warehouse/studio space that catered to Burning Man artists, painters, and tinkerers who really like fire. Founder Snook was forced to look for a different spot after someone left a candle untended and it sparked a smoky blaze. The blaze also sparked a series of inspections, which uncovered a few violations, such as no sprinklers, etc. Read the rest of this entry »