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More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I was reading the minutes from the August 27th Oakland Rockridge Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council meeting (a pdf file, not a link) and noticed the news that crime is up dramatically. Let's take cars as one example. There were 40 stolen cars in a 90 day period this year. The most commonly stolen cars are the Toyota Corolla, Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, and the Honda Civic. According to the Oakland Police, the reason most cars are stolen is because people simply leave the keys in them. "Lock it. Lock it. Lock it", is the advice given. Vehicle theft is a common problem in the Rockridge area. I used the Oakland Police " CrimeView Community website " to search for the number of vehicle thefts within a mile of 5600 College Avenue (see map below) and discovered that there were seven such crimes over the last 15 days. Almost one every other day.

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! YouTube , Yahoo , MySpace , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , StupidVideos , Sclipo and Viddler In the BART labor contract matter, one of the issues that's upset me is the union's request for a three percent wage increase. Now, I'm pro-union, that's not the issue, but we're in a terrible recession, perhaps a depression, and many people are unemployed or just trying to maintain employment. But even with that, we have BART's union workers asking for a raise! With such a request, we have the right to ask "Are you the BART worker giving riders the great service they deserve? Well, if the actions of this BART Rockridge station agent are any example, the answer's "no." I used BART to ride into San Francisco for a light dinner, and after parking at Rockridge, walked into the station as I always do, but noticed that the station agent booth was empty. I couldn't beli

Living in the O reports - Safeway stakeholders meeting canceled (or postponed?) « Living in the O : “I’ve been planning to write another long post about the College Avenue Safeway rebuild, but haven’t quite found the time. I did want to alert everyone who’s interested that the meeting that was planned for this Tuesday, December 9th has been canceled. Unfortunately, there’s no further info on Safeway’s site about when the next meeting will be or if there will be one so that’s all the information I have.” -- The main problem is still the scale of the development proposed. Plus, the process of design did not include the residents from the start, so in perfect Oakland fashion, they're going to clobber it until Safeway understands and changes the process.

Below is the agenda for the latest meeting on the over-sized proposal for the Safeway on College Avenue.  The meetings tonight; I'm traveling.  But for those who attend and want a recap of the first meeting held June 19, 2008, here's my video from that 300-strong event: Rockridge Safeway Stakeholder Meeting #5 Agenda November 12, 2008 Section I. Introduction/Context 7:00-7:15 Welcome, introduction, agenda review Review overall project objective and today’s objectives Review of Groundrules Review process for tonight’s meeting Section II. Reflection of ideas generated during Meetings 1-4 7:15-7:30 Review areas of agreement and open items Interior Exterior Landscaping Contiguous Neighbor buffer Parking Traffic Section III. Open dialogue with David Blair (architect) 7:30-8:45 Todd Paradis – opening and purpose David Blair presents a couple of ideas for each program element – a sampling of some of the important aspects related to landscaping, buffer, exterior, parking, etc.

Thanks to the Rockridge News.. D o you have an extra hour each week to help feed the Bay Area’s less fortunate   residents? Daily Bread can match you with a food source and needy organization, doing their best to find a convenient time and place for you. Your job will be to pick updonated food at donor sites for delivery to local storage. Some pick up sites are available in Rockridge. Got the time? Call Patrice Ignelgi, 526-3123, or e-mail her at patrice@ pcsyes.com .  Daily Bread also operates the Milk for Kids program, which provides milk donated by the Berkeley Bowl and the Village Market to children in need. To volunteer, or for more information, contact Patrice Ignelgi.

This is a video of the recent June 19, 2008 meeting to present Safeway's controversial plan to dramatically move and expand the current Safeway store at College Avenue and Claremont. The new store will be at 6310 College Avenue and roughly at what is now a corner gas station. The new 75,000 square foot store -- three times the size of the current facility -- will undoubtefly bring more traffic and also foot traffic closer to the center of Rockridge in North Oakland. That's the concern of the over 300 people who packed the room on that hot Thursday June 19th evening. The video features incumbent Councilmember Jane Brunner's presentation of the meeting, a talk with Patrick McCullough, who was Brunner's challenger in the last election primary (2008), a presentation by Dan Metzger of the Claremont / Elwood Neighbor Association, Stu Flashman of The Rockridge Community Planning Council, and Elizabeth Jewel, the planning consultant, as well as Todd Paradis, of the Safeway Rea

One good thing about being around here for awhile with an active memory is history. I remember when Dreyer's Ice Cream proposed its giant facility for Rockridge, and many, including for a time me, were against it. One reason for this was that the original plan called for a visible College Avenue presence that was just too out of scale with the neighborhood. I say that's true for the Safeway proposal before us. This is one of those stories that needs a video and one will be up soon, but for the present, what's neat about Rockridge is that there's not one long wall of building walls hugging the street. It's a parade of structures of varied heights, allowing Sun to reach the street and giving a small-town-in-Oakland feel. But Safeway's current proposal will destroy that feeling in my view. It calls for a building that does what's not cool: hugs the street and looms over it. It would drastically alter Rockridge and make it seem more like a retail downtow