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  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Coliseum BART Station rendering with connector When BART was opened in 1972 one of the first station stops was at the "Coliseum", a station called Coliseum BART for the well-known sports complex. Almost from the day the station opened many asked why the BART line didn't have a spur to serve Oakland International Airport. These questions continued through the 70s, 80s, and then in the 90s a group of Oakland business leaders strongly pushed for "an airport connector" of some design. It was listed as an objective by the 500 Oaklanders who attended "Oakland Sharing The Vision" or as a few friends liked to call it, "sharing the ham sandwich." Then when BART approved the San Francisco International Airport extention, a number of people in Oakland (including myself) just hit the ceiling. Why them and not us? At any rate, there was always a constituency for the project and it was neve

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! YouTube , Blip.tv and Sclipo Wow, sorry I was away, but I spent all of Thursday traveling from Atlanta to San Francisco, then covering Bay to Breakers events, and finally just taking time off. Pretty fried, frankly. But the World turns on. Each Saturday, my new television show is on. It's called The Blog Report With Zennie62 and features the use of my video blogs in a weekly 30-minute format broadcast and co-produced by CoLoursTV in Denver. The start time is 3:30 PM Pacific Time, 6:30 PM Eastern Time and the show is replayed at 11:30 PM and 2:30 PM respecfully. Then it is replayed on Sunday at 12 noon pacific and 3 PM eastern. No TV?, go to Zennie62.com . The third installment of The Blog Report with Zennie62 features the introduction of a new documentary film made by Sierra Choi and about SF Bay Area journalist Josh Wolf. I met Josh and Sierra in 2006 when both was working for The Peralta Community College District&#

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Not too long ago in Western culture it seemed we had this mostly unwritten rule that when a performer was at work, we didn't rush the stage to be with them or follow them around, unless of course they asked us to. Well, in this Internet age the act of rushing the stage and stalking has become all too commonplace, with the latest victim being American Idol star Adam Lambert; pop culture icon Britney Spears faced the same incident just two weeks before. And the act of stage rushing isn't limited to popular singers on television; a duo named Matt & Kim from Brooklyn were rushed at the annual multimedia event "South by Southwest" (or SXSW) in March. Who's next, Susan Boyle? In Spears' case the stage crasher, 20 year-old Kyle King , was a man who was whisked off and arrested by security after Britney let out a scream. By contrast, Lambert laughed the whole deal off - you can hear him - as authorit

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Like other supporters, I received this email letter from U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, but this one was pointed right at one of my favorite subjects: "Who should be Justice David Souter's replacement on the Supreme Court?" After not much stewing on the matter, I would guess, Senator Boxer wants it officially known: President Obama's choice must be a woman and she's taking to the Internets to make it known. I still favor Kathleen Sullivan for the job so no harm there; this is what Senator Boxer wrote: Dear Zenophon, Women make up 51% of our nation's population. Yet only 17% of the seats in Congress are held by women. Only 3% of corporate CEOs are women. And just one out of nine Supreme Court justices is a woman. President Obama can change that. Send an email to the White House now — and urge President Obama to nominate a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court! Since Sandra Day O'Connor's retirem

Ok. A lot of people have been writing that they don't want to see surface parking at the lot next to the Fox Theater in the Uptown District. The tower Forest City Development was to build is going to be stalled in this economy for a good, long time. So we have a lot. Yuck. But the reason we have that, and not an alternative plan beyond it, and a lot of "stuff" from staff is that we don't have an overall development plan and regulations specifically for the entire Uptown Area; regulations that could govern signage, sidewalk design, and transportation. We've allowed the area to just sort of grow with piecemeal development projects as opposed to a full, overall plan. Don't blame me folks; I pushed for one long ago, but lost that battle too. What to do about the lot? Well, we could have a party on it! Seriously. Why not have a good, old fashioned Saturday public potluck right out there on that land, just to show that people will actually walk to s

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed can kiss the Oakland A's goodbye! Mayor Reed opened up and let fly the one sentence Lew Wolff and Major League Baseball don't want to hear: "Make us millions" or words to that effect, and "pay for your own stadium" or words to that effect. I don't know what the guy was smoking but look, I want some. What the heck, they'll probably legalize it anyway! The bottom line truth is in this recession the A's want someone to pay for the stadium now, and they will kick in money when the economy gets better. That "someone" is the government, because the Athletics sure don't have the money to do it and have lost over $24 million on the effort to date. After all that, they can't be hungry to build a privately financed stadium at all, regardless of their statements now or next week beyond this post. The Oakland A's are counting on a city to get stimulus money, but they'll have to stand in line behin

Greetings from Georgia, where I'm visiting my Mom. (Humid here.) I ran across a cool website called Beer By BART and it has some rather interesting listings but what's more curious is what was left out of the website. But first, what is it? It's a simple site that you can use to find where to go to get beer near a BART Station. In Oakland's Rockridge District, for example, the site lists just two places: Ben and Nick's and Barclay's and that's it. In reality, there's The Hut just across from Ben and Nick's and closer to BART than Barclay's, as well as Zachary's Pizza which is on the way to Ben and Nick's. So why those two made the cut's a wonder to me. Berkeley BART? Same problem. List just Jupiter and Triple Rock, forgetting "Downtown" which is on the way. What is this, the anti-yuppie beer site? Well, visit the site and give Steve Shapiro & Gail Ann Williams your views. Regardless of the omits, it'

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Last weekend's installment of "The Blog Report with Zennie62" features the 16th District Delegate Election that was held in Alameda in January. The show segment, which is shown here, covers the election process and why its important to the political future of the Democratic Party in the Bay Area. But the real stars of the show are Oakland's young political activists who are bringing a new energy to the scene here. East Bay Young Democrats President Frieda Edgette, union leader Dan Rush, and Peralta Community College Trustee Abel Guillen are just some of the faces interviewed in the second Episode of "The Blog Report." Personally, I think Frieda Edgette's the one to watch. The leader of the East Bay Young Dems and " MixitUp East Bay " has a unique combination of energy, intelligence, empathy and direction to rise to the level of congressional representative or senator, and I'm not

I'm getting a bunch of emails on the happenings in the Oakland Mayor's Office just days after my decision to expell the bad food that was in me: dealing with Oakland's mess of a sports politics situation, of which the Oakland Athletics - not Mayor Dellums - have created. The latest news is David K. Chai, Dellums Chief of Staff is on his way out and possibly but at this point not certain that Dellums' executive assistant Marisol Lopez would take the top spot. One email described the situation like this: his (Dellums') choices for COS (chief of staff) (wonderful at first with Dan Boggan, then unproductive with David Chai, and now completely disorienting with Marisol Lopez his most likely choice) are distancing him from even his own, most loyal supporters. The emails have also allowed me to see why our current Sports and Entertainment Task Force was being undermined by Dellums' dealings to create a new baseball task force: no consistent mayor's staff conta

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! YouTube , Yahoo , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , StupidVideos , Sclipo and Viddler Today, I saw Star Trek with my longtime friends Bill Boyd and Lars Frykman at matinee showing at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, thus following through on a plan we formed almost a month ago and I wrote about a few days ago. It was a cool reunion as I'd not seen Lars for just over 30 years and Bill and I get together for lunch maybe twice a year. Regardless of how little you see of each other, there's something about the friends you had when you were a teenager, especially when they last as long as ours has. Star Trek was always a rallying point for us, so today's meetup was a perfect way for the originators of the Bret Harte Star Trek Club to reconnect. We're all fans of the original series, and consider ourselves experts on it. What we liked about J.J. Abrams version was the attention to detail in referencing certain

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! I'm often surprised by the number of people who don't catch on to the fact that for me making videos is much more than a hobby, it's a job I earn a living from. I recently created a video on the Star Trek movie that pointed to its depiction of the San Francisco skyline as unrealistic because of the size of the buildings relative to The City's culture of demanding "a human scale" of structures, and Star Trek's new generation of fanboys coupled with Internet trolls jumped all over me, saying "Get a life" and stop making videos, all the while contributing to the 43,000 times my creation was seen..and to my pocketbook. That's because I'm a YouTube Partner or "YTP". The YouTube Partner's program was established in late 2007 as a way to For YouTube to share its advertising revenue with its most popular video producers like Renetto and Lisa Nova , as well as frequent contri

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Today the long awaited Star Trek movie is out and like any nerdy Trekker, I'm excited. I got our tickets 10 days ago and didn't have to stand in line, contrary to what you might think. But the real story here is that on Saturday, May 9th, I'm going to see Star Trek with my long time friends Bill Boyd and Lars Frykman. This is an Oakland Trekker story in brief. Bill, Lars, and I met in Oakland in 1976 when we were 14 years old at what was then called Bret Harte Junior High School, now Bret Harte Middle School. I was new to Oakland, having moved with my mom to the city from Chicago as my mom was in search of better schools for me. How times have changed! The Bret Harte Star Trek Club I was a big Star Trek fan and wanted to start a club at Bret Harte. I had no clue how to do this, so my friends said "You should talk to Bill Boyd or Lars Frykman!" So I was introduced to Bill, who at 14 had the deepest voice

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Folks this is the letter that - coupled with the course of events I described in yesterday's blog post - caused me to write the post explaining why Oakland Athletics Minority Owner Mr. Guy Saperstein is wrong. It's more powerfully worded that what Guy wrote to John Russo and very insulting of the Haas Family, who owned the team long before Lew Wolff's group ever got it. I posted this video response and my blog post is here: BLOG I present it here in the hope that Mr. Saperstein will see his words in a public forum and issue apologies where appropriate, starting with the Haas Family. This is the blog post I wrote, here, and here's a video I posted as a response: April 2, 2009 Senator Barbara Boxer 1700 Montgomery St. Suite 240 San Francisco, CA 94111 Dear Barbara: As you know, Jeanine and I have long supported you and we plan to continue doing so. However, we were very disappointed about the let

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Ok. On the A's stadium issue I've read a lot of stuff from a lot of different people, sat in on my last Mayor's Office Sports and Entertainment Task Force Meeting (I quit), read and published John Russo's letter , and now I'm going to give the "once over" to Oakland A's Co-Owner Guy T. Saperstein's letters (plural) that have been bouncing around the Internet. I'm starting a plain old bare knuckles brawl here, as I'm throwing another set of punches to add to John Russo's Ali-like jabs of last week, only my punches are not jabs; I'm going for the knockout. A lot of people aren't going to like what I'm about to write, but others are going to be happy someone said it. Before I turn my anger to Mr. Saperstein, I have to give a tongue-lashing to three people: Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Oakland Planning Commisssioner Doug Boxer, and Oakland Chamber of Commerce Executive D

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! Pican Restaurant is in the middle of the revived Uptown in Oakland. Ok. After blasting the organizers of the previous Oakland Blogger's Party for not inviting me and for it being an " All Whites gathering " Oakland Blogger VSmoothe ( A Better Oakland ) was cool enough to invite me to last Wednesday's party, and you know, it was a good event with some diversity in the house. My only misgiving is that the folks' of color were not all active Oakland Bloggers like me or Michael Caton ( An Oakland Citizen ), or...VSmoothe or the good folks who write the Myrtle Street Review , who didn't make it but I'll get them to the next one! (That's a bit of a prod to get it going, folks!) But that written, it was a total blast! I'm happy to see that Oakland has a vibrant culture of people who care enough to write about what's happening in it. I love that they're engaged and it's good to see

Assistant Alameda County District Attorney Chris Lamiero discusses the grand jury indictment of Yusuf Ali Bey IV for ordering the killing of journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men.

More at Inside Bay Area : “OAKLAND — Business and civic leaders tried to sound a hopeful message Friday as they met to take stock of Oakland's economy in the midst of a national financial crisis. Their meeting at the Oakland Marriott marked the second anniversary of the creation of a public-private initiative called the Oakland Partnership, designed to attract 10,000 jobs to Oakland over a five-year period. Mayor Ron Dellums joined others in saying the partnership has seen success despite the economic doom and gloom, and that the Obama administration's stimulus package could give Oakland a significant boost.”

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! On Saturday, May 3rd, my new television show starts. It's called "The Blog Report With Zennie62" and features the use of my video blogs in a weekly 30-minute format broadcast and co-produced by CoLoursTV in Denver and on Channel 9407 nationwide on the DISH Network , but it's on Comcast in Florida, and Fox and Insight cable systems. The start time is 3:30 PM Pacific Time, 6:30 PM Eastern Time and the show is replayed at 11:30 PM and 2:30 PM respecfully. If you don't have a TV you can see the live stream at CoLoursTV.org . or Zennie62.com This first show focused on selected events that occured after the shooting of Oscar Grant by BART Officer Johannes Mesherle on New Year's Day. It opens with my walk through a riot-ravaged downtown Oakland where I talked with many people about what happened, including a group of kids who were some of the rioters and that was eye-opening. Then we focus on the words

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! In an article written by none other than Academy Award-Winning Actor Leonardo DiCaprio , Oakland's Van Jones was just named one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. DiCaprio writes: When Van Jones was tapped to serve as special adviser on green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality earlier this year, the appointment was heralded as a significant development for the green movement. And for good reason. A pioneer in fusing economic opportunity and social justice with environmentalism, Jones, 40, represents an important progression in our country's perception and thus our approach to combatting global warming. It's incredible and, well, just plain cool to see Van rise from Oakland to the White House where he works as Special Adviser on Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and be rewarded for something he would have done and has done without fanfare for years

  More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! YouTube , MySpace , Blip.tv , Stupid Videos , Sclipo and Viddler Supreme Court Judge David Souter plans to retire at 69 years of age, according to Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio and which she announced today. President Barack Obama has a great opportunity to begin to remake the Supreme Court by installing a real legal scholar who's work and life has impacted many people. That person is Professor Kathleen Sullivan . Professor Sullivan, like President Obama, is a constitutional law scholar which means she focuses on the interpretation and implementation of the U.S. Constitution. The importance of that can't be understated as we see a flurry of new laws to control speech and behavior (think laws curbing the use of "cuss" words for example) and their conflict with civil liberties. And as the Supreme Court is the place for the consideration fo the U.S. Constitution, it's logical to have a consti