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Last week this blogger wrote that Chevron and Richmond needed to "kiss, make up, and think. Well, it seems all the time both parties were doing just that. Communications from the Richmond Progressive Alliance and from Chevron report the completion of an amicable agreement that stops the chance that Richmond will lose millions due to a June ballot measure that looked like it was going to pass, and Chevron stopped paying out $15 million more than it had annually given to the City of Richmond. The Chevron press release neatly bullet-points the resolved issues: • Chevron will pay an additional $114 million to The City of Richmond over the next 14 years. • The City of Richmond will stop its ballot measure to change the Utility Tax and Chevron will remove its proposal. • The City of Richmond will drop its appeal of the Measure T Ballot measure, which was ruled unconstitutional. • Chevron would wave $1.2 million it sought from the City related to Measure T. • Chevron will ma...

Dallas Braden  The Oakland Athletics Dallas Braden became the 14th player in Oakland A's history to throw a no-hitter or a perfect game, and just the second A's player to pitch a perfect game - the other being Catfish Hunter in 1968. Braden led the A's to a 4-0 win against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in Oakland on Mother's Day. Now lost in all the celebration is what a "perfect game" in baseball is. It's not a "no-hitter"; it's beyond that. It's a game where no player from the opposing team gains a hit or gets on base in any way, even by a walk or a hit batter. Nothing.  Nada.  Zip. Here's the video : That's what Dallas Braden did today. Braden's the first Oakland A's pitcher to throw a perfect game in 42 years. That's incredible. Much has been made of Braden's feud with The New York Yankees' Alex Rodriquez, who's behavior has been rather salty since he was dumped by Kate Hudson afte...

Suburban Atlanta, GA - Happy Mother's Day everyone! I can't remember missing celebrating Mother's Day and it was vitally important for me to give my Mom the gift of my help here in Georgia. See, my Mom still insists on working, and I see that as a personal failure on my part because I believe if I made enough money she would not have to work. I give her money each month, as of this writing it helps but not enough to compel her to just stay at home. Yet as I write this, i'm not sure that would keep her at home cooking and tending garden. While she does do that - tend garden and cook - I really think working around people is Mom's way of staying connected. She's a United Airline retiree but if United called, she'd answer it in a heart beat. Mom's tried working for me but following Internet trends can be boring if you really like being out and about with folks. Not that I don't, but that's my Mom. It's good therapy for the passing of ...

This isn't something that calls for the amount of time that Oakland Local's given to it , but there's someone in Oakland who has this silly idea that Oakland Local's going to "gentrify" the web. The idea is that Oakland Local will take traffic away from his website. Well, there's one answer: make a better site. The web is a wide open space. Not that there's room for everyone, but there's a lot of room. If the person who's concerned about losing traffic wants to have more of it, all they have to do is learn Search Engine Optimization. And if they're concerned about Oakland Local, study how the site is designed and go from there. But calling Oakland Local a name or saying that it's going to "gentrify" the World Wide Web is just plain silly. Not something to Rock The Casbah about.

The battle between Waste Management and Recology for garbage supremacy in San Francisco has an interesting twist. To recap, Houston-based Waste Management has owned the contractual right to collect San Francisco's waste and dump it in a place called the Altamont Landfill, which is located in Livermore, California. NorCal Waste, now called "Recology,' has been the company that collects garbage in San Francisco, then hands it over to Waste Management for storage in Livermore. But Recology wanted to have the piece of the business Waste Management held for years. To that end, the upstart San Francisco-based firm submitted a bid for the contract this year, and to the San Francisco Commission on the Environment, and to the surprise of many, beat Waste Management. So it's all over, and Recology gets to work, right. No. Both Recology and the San Francisco Commission on the Environment unknowningly swatted a giant bat at a hornet's nest of interlocking interests c...

The Oakland Museum on 10th Street next to Laney College in Oakland, California had a great all-night block party that was a ton of fun. You know it was a perfect Oakland event when you run into people you know from all over the town, as was the case for this blogger. Before I install the video from that fun event, this post was necessary if only to gush about how nice it was to see a free Oakland event that reflected the true sprit of the City. Yes, the Museum looked great, but the people looked even better. The drinks flowed, the food was good considering much of it was either free to cheap, and the artwork was excellent. I didn't stay all night because my dear friend insists on getting up early to do her endurance training. Were it not for that, I'd have stayed until 3 AM; the party closed at 6 AM. We spent time with Susan Mernit and Amy Gahran, and Editor and Publisher and Senior Editor of Oakland Local (who had staff all over the Museum) as well as a number of ...

The annual May Day march in Oakland began at the Fruitvale BART drew an energized crowd that grew to over 3,000 by early afternoon. Filipino Advocates for Justice Executive Director Lillian Galedo was a featured speaker facing a crowd who gathered under the slogan, "We are all Arizona". On stage, organizers invited City Councilmembers Jean Quan and Jane Brunner to announce their proposal for a city boycott of Arizona and Arizona-based businesses. (The full City Council will consider the proposal this Tuesday at a 5:30 p.m. meeting at City Hall, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza.) But talk soon turned to national immigration reform issues. Lillian Galedo addressed the congressional immigration reform proposal introduced late last week, which emphasizes enforcement over legalization. A move, Galedo said, "basically puts legalization on hold". According to an article in today's Washington Post , the proposal takes a Republican "secure the border" approach. ...