Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

Many Lake Merritt / Adams Point residents have complained of the lack of safe ways to walk from downtown Oakland BART to the neighborhood. One man was recently mugged at night just at 19th and Broadway and after leaving the BART station. Well, I propose an idea I call "Walk Pooling." It's like carpooling, but you don't get in an automobile. Instead, when you get out of BART station and are headed toward the Lake, you introduce yourself to anyone in general and say "Anyone for a Walkpool?" There's usually more than one person getting off at 19th Street, so chances are you will have some "takers." Moreover, you'll meet people from the area and because there's safety in numbers, you reduce the chance that someone -- including yourself -- will be harmed. The pool can then walk to the Lake, and people can split up whereever they wish, but it gets each person closer to home with a group of people rather than alone. Walk-pooling. Try it.

In brief. I was talking to a nice woman recently who -- she's white -- strongly asserts that the reason for West Oakland's gentrification is that yountg white couples came in and bought out black home owners. I don't think this is exactly true, not not far off. I think some of the reason is due to new home construction -- lofts and apartments -- and not so much any "buy out" at all. Moreover the new housing is affordable. More on this later.

This from the Yahoo! Message Board. A pattern of juvenile crime is unfolding in the Adams Point Neighborhood. Where are the parents of these kids? Mugging on Van Buren near Staten on Friday, June 30. An acquaintance of mine was driving along Van Buren at approx. 2:30 p.m. She told me she had seen a young Asian woman picked up and roughly thrown to ground by mugger who successfully grabbed her large purse. Victim screamed loud enough to catch the attention of several neighbors, as well as this driver. A terrific neighbor on Staten chased the culprit on foot but couldn't catch up before he got away. Meanwhile, my acquaintance followed the man to where a car + driver was waiting for him on Staten below Van Buren. She saw culprit get into a taupe colored, new-looking, shiny American-made sedan. Car then turned onto Belmont and got lost from view. She called police but Oakland 9-1-1 line was busy. Finally, she turned over info on get-away car to concerned neighbor(s), as she was on wo...

I saw this on a Yahoo! Message Board. I removed the writers name to protect their privacy. Anyone know what happenedd around 1:30AM last night? We heard what sounded like 4 gunshots, a man shouting, and saw a parked white car zooming down Van Buren in a hurried pace. Given that there's no victims on the road, it could be that a passenger in the car was shot. Just wondering if someone had more infomration on it. According to Police emergency, they've had several calls on this incident.

On June 19th, Oakland Council President Ignacio De La Fuente gave a concession speech at his headquarters and after learning that Ron Dellums secured enough votes to become Mayor-Elect of Oakland. De La Fuente pledged to keep working hard for Oakland, and indeed has done so, presiding over last night's Oakland City Council meeting, where the council approved the plan for a new Kaiser Hospital complex. Here's the InsideBayArea.com video:

In both a funny commercial and a good use of the Internet, Jerry Brown's record on crime in Oakland is attacked by his Republican AG opponent Chuck Poochigian. The commerical compares Jerry Brown to such fictional crime fighters as Batman and Dirty Harry, and not in a favorable way. It's totally funny. But it's also a weird kind of boost for Jerry in that it uses his name rather than Poochigian's, who's name recognition is far lower than Brown's. It goes like this: "There have been some classical fictional crime fighters: Batman, Dick Tracy, Sherlock Holmes and Dirty Harry. But for sheer audacity, one stands alone ... Jerry Brown. During Jerry Brown's time as mayor of Oakland, burglaries are up 9 percent, robberiesup 18 percent, auto theft up 84 percent, and homicides up a staggering 54 percent. And now this caped crusader wannabe says he wants to do for all of California what he's done for Oakland. ... Holy scary thought, Batman!"

I remarked to a friend that a visit to the Oakland Lake Merritt Farmers Market -- and to stores on Lakeshore -- revealed something I've never seen before: very few African Americans. It was the first time in all my life that I was able to look into a place like the Lake Merritt Cafe and see not even one black person for a time. The friend remarked that Oakland had more white people than black -- so I found this article below. And while it may not be accurate, it does seem that the flight from San Francisco's high housing costs have produced this dynamic. And it also may -- in fact I assert that it does -- explain the rising level of racism in the City's core neighborhood. Oakland historically has been the most diverse and less segregated city in America. I fear that era may be coming to an end. To be sure, the picture is more complex. There are more interracial couples than in the past, but the city itself seems to have divided into black, Latino, and white areas, wi...