GreenDay star a resident of Oakland's Rockridge District

From the Rockridge News and by Claire Isaacs Wahrhaftig

I saw this article, and thought I'd grab a part of it...read on just for FYI. The rest is at Rockridge News

It’s all Gravy’s fault. For three years this kitty with the tinkling name tag has been prowling my home and purring my lap. The grey furball has attached himself to me like Velcro in the absence of his master, my neighbor. But Gravy turned out to be my own personal gravy train, a ticket to the stars.

Actually, Gravy’s master IS a star. He is Mike Dirnt, bass guitar player for the numero uno rock group, “Oakland’s own”
Green Day. From garage group to Grammy Rock Album and Rock Single of the year to eight MTV awards, Green Day is on top
these days. I’ve never actually met my neighbor Mike. My beloved late husband Bill once described him as “tatooed, punctured, thin, polite, and quiet, really quite nice.”

Oakland's Rockridge District hit by crime wave

From The Rockridge News

For some reason this is suddenly happening in an area of Oakland better known for good food, not bad crime.

by Janet Somers Rockridge, North Oakland and the city as whole are in the midst of a robbery wave, according to North
Oakland police commander Lt. Lawrence Green. Green said that as of mid-November (the last date for which
statistics were available) year-to-date robberies were up 31% in North Oakland and 27% in Oakland. (He said
overall crime was down 77% here and 2% in the city, with a reduction in car break-ins accounting for much of the decline.)
In Rockridge, there were 11 street and inhabited-home robberies during the first two weeks of November, up from only one incident during the last two weeks of October, according to crime reports available on Green’s public website,
www.northoaklandpolice.com.

Recent incidents have included armed and strongarmed robberies of pedestrians on College Avenue and side streets including Taft Avenue and 62nd Street, some before dark; a patron at an ATM machine who was robbed at gunpoint; a BART patron who was asked to hand over her wallet at 9 a.m. in the BART parking lot; and a home invasion robbery on Ayala Street in which two masked assailants entered a home through an unlocked front door and accosted its elderly resident, one holding him down on the ground while the other ransacked the house (he escaped through a window and sustained only minor injuries).