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LakeFest Street Fair in Oakland, CA - August 1st 2009

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com On YouTube.com LakeFest is a street fair that was held last Saturday and Sunday August 1st and 2nd on Lakeshore Avenue between Lake Park and Mandana near the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. After a long absence, it's back for its second year and with great bands and vendors selling clothes and representing everything from the new Lake Chalet restaurant to "Friends of the Oakland Public Library." I talked with a number of Oaklanders about the festival because there was a long period of time that, well, there was not an event of this kind at this location. That is until Helen Wyman stepped in. Helen Wyman is an event producer currently best known for the first, successful Uptown street fair held June 18th of this year. She explained that this event has nothing to do with the version of year's past and is brand new. "'LakeFest' was a concept we

Oakland: Lake Merritt People On A Saturday

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Have you ever walked by a group doing something interesting and yet never stopped to, or perhaps feared to, inquire what they were doing?  If so, this video-blog is for you .  I'm in Georgia as I write this and visiting my Mom, but two Saturdays ago I saw a YouTube video of people playing drums under the "Columns" at Lake Merritt in Oakland, where I live for those of you reading this in, er, Japan.  I said to myself, and wrote on the Oakland Focus Blog , that if I ever encountered that group I was going to have my camera at the ready and interview them (if they let me of course). Well that's what I did on that Saturday morning.  The group is called "Emeryville Taiko" at www.etaiko.org , and as Sensei Susan Horn informs us in the video, they were located in Emeryville, but are now at 27th and Harrison St, near the Whole Foods Market and near Lake Merritt.   But on Saturday's they have this Taiko c

"Save The Parkway Theater" Oakland Meeting Of 3-29-09

On March 22nd, the Parkway Theater in at 1834 Park Blvd in Oakland played its last set of films to a large audience, then stopped after 12 years of operation and a lot of memories. This is the video story I made from that night: A victim of the economy and a landlord seeking higher rents, Parkway Owners Catherine and Kyle Fisher made a decision to close the legendary business just four days before the last opening night. But no sooner did that happen than a group of concerned Oaklanders sprang into action. They set up a website called http://iliketheparkway.com and a facebook page called "Save The Parkway Speakeasy Theater", then held now three meetings. This video presents much of the action and talk from the second meet: a large event at Roos Cafe on Park Avenue, just three doors from the Parkway itself. Here's the video from the meeting: The meeting attendees divided into several sub-groups and determined possible future programming and business models fo

The Grand Lake Guardian Is In A Coma - Founder Said To Have Given Up

The once popular news site "The Grand Lake Guardian" is in a coma and according to my source, it's not coming out of it anytime, soon.   "He's gone on to other things" my source said, "He's not done anything in a while." That's for sure.  The topmost post is dated "2008-02-13" which was last year before Valentine's Day.  It's too bad for the area around Lake Merritt, which came to adopt the site in a way, if only because Jim Ratiff, the founder, had collected a group of some of Oakland's most involved Lake citizens. But as happens with blogs from time to time, the people lose interest.  A blog must be updated each day just to keep fresh.  And that's the problem.   Jim's site was more of a website than a blog, which causes more work just to update.  I can see why he may have tired of the whole effort: he used the wrong kind of platform. If you're going to do this you have to make it easy on yoursel

Robbery at Gunpoint On Euclid Between Lagunitas and Van Buren, Adams Point

This was from the Yahoo Adams Point Message Board: A friend called this a.m. to say he and two others were walking home yesterday mid-evening and were held up at gun point by one man: black, wearing black hoodie and black pants. This occurred on Euclid between Lagunitas and Van Buren. Thankkfully, no one got hurt. He will post more details himself when he gets to a computer with Internet service, but in the meantime, I wanted neighbors to be alert.

Nemekhbayer Gaitav, 42, found stabbed to death in Oakland apartment

More at SFGate.com : “A man was found stabbed to death in downtown Oakland, police said today. Nemekhbayer Gaitav, 42, was found inside an apartment on the 1400 block of Jackson Street near Lake Merritt about 10 p.m. Monday, authorities said. He had been stabbed and was pronounced dead at the scene. No arrests have been made.”