Oakland Tribune Outtakes

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.

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 »

I thought it was interesting to read V Smoothe’s blog post on A Better Oakland about “scary public art” (Oakland sculptor Mario Chiodo’s Remember Them: Champions of Humanity”) coming to the new park in uptown.  Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the Westside everybody! After months of reading other blogs, I’ve finally decided to start one of my own devoted to news and happenings in West Oakland. I’m actually excited to have a place where I can post tidbits to engage (and probably sometimes) enrage folks, and I hope, get lots of energetic feedback. So give me a holler. What’s good, not so good or anything in between about your neighborhoods?

Oh yeah, talking about what’s good… thanks to the artists who created the fantastic “OAKLAND” sculpture I used in my logo. the pieces are made of wood and all sorts of found objects to form each letter, and plenty of messages within each one… It’s really fantastic, but don’t take my word for it. Check it out along the fence next door to Cornelia Bell’s Black Bottom Gallery on Pine at 10th street in the Lower Bottoms. And check out these great murals (pictured in photo at the left), also in the Village Bottoms cultural district on Pine Street. For art happenings around the neighborhood and at the New Black World Social Aid and Pleasure Club down the street check out Marcel Diallo’s website www.blacknewworld.com.

Read the rest of this entry »