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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

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com On YouTube.com In the ongoing gaga of the Parkway and Cerrito theaters in Oakland and El Cerrito respectively we have read or heard the views of many people over the past seven months except two: Catherine and Kyle Fisher, who created both the Parkway Theater in Oakland, California and the Cerrito Theater in El Cerrito, California.  I was honored to be given the exclusive first video interview with the Fishers over brunch at the Lakeshore Cafe in Oakland.   They talked with me on video for 19 straight minutes - nothing edited - about what happened that led to the closure of the Oakland Parkway Theater and that led to the current very messy relationship between the Fishers and the El Cerrito Redevelopment Agency (ERA) regarding the Cerrito Theater, a situation which saw the Fishers lose that business too , and watch as the owners of the Rialto stepped in to take over.  Firs

From LakeViewFriends on YouTube. (I wish these video channel owners would let me know when they put out a video!) who wrote: "This is a short video about the history of Lakeview Library, near the top of Lake Merritt in Oakland, California"

From Contra Costa Times on YouTube - The Oakland Women's Rowing Club (OWRC) has been rowing on Lake Merritt since 1916. The Ladies of the Lake as they are known, row every Wednesday morning. Their ages range from 50-80s.

Lake Chalet interior The Lake Merritt Boathouse is being transformed into what will be one of the Bay Area's most popular restaurants: The Lake Chalet . The new restaurant will be the focus in part of a ribbon cutting ceremony Thursday, August 6th at 2 PM reopening the historic boathouse. According to conversations I've had with employees, the new outdoor waterfront eatery setting will be just plain awesome. The creators of the Lake Chalet are known for the landmark Beach Chalet and Park Chalet in San Francisco at Ocean Beach.

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com YouTube , Yahoo , MySpace , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , StupidVideos , Sclipo and Viddler Thursday, President Barack Obama held a "Beer Summit" , as some have called it, with Harvard Professor Henry Lewis Gates, Jr., Cambridge Police Sergeant Officer James Crowley, and Vice President Joe Biden, bring an end to an unfortunate but necessary event in American Cultural history, and starting a new chapter in American race relations. It was the first time in American and world history a sitting president met publicly with a white police officer and the person the officer arrested, a black man. And to add to the moment, the president is African American. I think the teachable moment President Obama referred to was that two gentlemen of seemingly different stripes but of one culture can not only meet, but (as they agreed to do) meet again and again.   Sgt.

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com On YouTube.com Yesterday I posted a blog entry which contained set of videos from the YouTube channel of "EASTOAKLAND106", and contained scenes that were shocking. One showed two young black men basically exacting an ugly form of "street" justice on a white man in East Oakland. The other videos were created during "The Sideshow", an activity featuring muscle cars revved to full-throttle by their drivers, spinning donuts in the middle of the intersection of 106th and Mac Arthur Blvd. The YouTube channel contained other videos that together gave the viewer a real picture of what was going on (or "going down") in that part of Oakland. I made the decision to create the blog to get the attention of the normally placid blog reader, tossed a steady diet of texts about celebrities, sports, and Erin Andrews . These videos showing the rea

I'm writing this from the comfort of a suburban Atlanta home office, listening to Darrel Carrey talk to the Oakland City Council regarding the need for jobs and the importance of redeveloping the Army Base. He is one of 75 speakers and 165 speaker cards (double-counting plus?) and there's a lot of emotion. While the favorite to win the right to negotiate with the Oakland Redevelopment Agency is AMB/CCG over Federal Oakland Partners, it seems in failing to communicate with the Oakland Film Center people, Phil Tagami, who represents the developer team, has angered a ton of folks and they've come to the Oakland City Council to express their anger. Well, not Darrel. Long-time Oakland activist Joyce Roy asked how a developer could get this far without talking to the Oakland Film community. Yikes. This is going to be a long agenda item. After about 50 speakers, the council's talking. Even with the film community's issues with how they perceive Phil treated th

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com It was only a matter of time. Just a matter of a few years before the crime we read about and see in the mainstream media news outlets hit the new media circuit, specifically video distribution services like YouTube and now it's a regular happening, largely ignored by the blogs. No more, at least here in my blog network. I warn you. What you're about to see are a series of videos created in Oakland, California that are violent but give a real view of what's happening in East Oakland. The YouTube channel creating the videos in this case, there are other examples, is called "EASTOAKAND106" which is to give the location that's the focal point of their vlogging activity: the neighborhood around 106th avenue and Mac Arthur Boulevard in East Oakland and the nightime (and some times, daytime) "sideshows" that take place. The sideshow is a va

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com To some the title of this blog may seem like a turnabout considering that I suggested mixing the development teams with AMB/CCG as master developer and Federal Oakland Associates working for them in redeveloping the Oakland Army Base, and it is just that. After a lot of thinking about this matter I decided to go with the AMB / CCG team flat out. My initial reasons for suggesting a mix of the teams were borne of my concern that the Federal Oakland Assocates / AMB/CCG organizations show a racial split - the first black and of color, the latter far less so when AMB Properties is considered. But with that, and I've noted this before, the AMB/CCG team brings credibility and California Commercial Investments President Phil Tagami has worked hard to bring to Oakland a billion-dollar organization that normally would have looked past our city. Give Phil credit for his hard wo

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com In the story that will not die, we now learn that John Edwards, the former North Carolina Senator and VP running mate to John Kerry, now reportedly has a sex tape. According to Rush & Molloy, the gossip columnists of the New York Daily News , Edwards former aide Andrew Young just finished a book proposal that described first, that he is not the father of the child of Rielle Hunter, John Edwards mistress, second, that Young just happened to see a sexually-explicit videotape as he was unpacking after moving to California from the East Coast, where he lived with Rielle Hunter, Edwards' mistress, and Young's wife and family. The story is known by now: in August of 2008 , after the heat of the Democratic Primary had cleared and just before the Democratic National Convention, former Senator Edwards admitted he cheated on his wife Elizabeth starting in 2006, while she

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com A few weeks back I took a hard look at the proposals for the redevelopment of the Oakland Army Base and concluded that given the weaknesses of both, AMB/CCG (AMB Partners with California Commercial Investments) lacking really good cash flow analysis, and Federal Oakland Associates not having as much fiscal firepower but a complete proposal, and the racial split between them, that the two groups be combined. Well, two days later I received a rather curious phone call from someone who said "Zennie, for the purpose of this call, I can't tell you who I am, but I read your column and have some information for you. I'm going to send it to the San Francisco Chronicle Oakland office for you." Well, the person who called didn't even leave his phone number for me to call, let alone meet him " on the bottom level of an underground garage just over the Key Br

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Apparently someone was paying attention to my call for videos from last week's Richmond City Council meeting where I reported that California Attorney General Jerry Brown visited a packed council hearing room and got passed a resolution to allow him to get involved in the issue of the stopped Chevron plant construction order. A number of comments on my blogs pointed to video links but then out-of-the-blue, Chevron itself stepped forward with their video, and it's a good one: The video shows the workers impacted telling their stories in much the same way that laid off plant construction electrician Dennis Roos told his story to me. The video was apparently created last Tuesday, at the Richmond City Council hearing. One worker in the video said "I've got a family. I've got four girls. I've got a house payment. A car payment. I was really depend

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com On YouTube.com This Sunday, August 2nd (yikes, two days before my birthday!) The San Francisco-based Richmond / Ermet AIDS Foundation ( REAF.org ) features the 15th annual presentation of "Help Is On The Way: No Business Like Show Business." I've attended this gala over the last four years and I've got to tell ya it’s a load of fun; a mix of a little serious, a lot of energy, and a ton of talent. (The video above is from last year's event, where San Francisco luminaries like Harry Denton were holding court in the pre-show auction lounge, joined by "Austin Powers" , "Dean Martin" , and others.) Before I explain why you should attend, let me give you some background. REAF was founded by Barbara Richmond and the late Peggy Ermet in memory of their sons, John Richmond and Doug Ermet, who both lost their lives to AIDS. In 1995, t

The new tax is the focus of this video featuring At-Large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan

I saw this at the YouTube channel of EASTOAKLAND106. who wrote: 2 Thug Azz Niggaz went dumb on a addict i mean dayam only in oakland. But if you sell bad dope and you get caught its bad for the seller. But if you going to sell dope make sure its real or be simple about it DONT MESS WITH IT! LOL Then the white due tried to jack a homeless person in a wheele chair on 99th and E-14 i dont know why he did that. That was a big mistake. But why they decided to make a video of one of them hitting a man on the street is beyond me, but it shows the other side of Oakland not captured by the blogs, but it should be. Between this and the Oakland Salon Beating, also on YouTube, it's becoming a small habit of posting assaults on the video channel.

In the wake of the Oscar Grant shooting and the Crowley / Gates racial profiling incident , Oakland bloggers and vloggers should be writing about how we can move beyond that problem. Some of the blogs here are one-note wonders, when they could be valuable voices for social advancement.

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com YouTube.com , Yahoo , MySpace , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , StupidVideos , Sclipo and Viddler What started as a calamity threatening to divide America has seemingly ended in a planned beer bust at the White House, courtesy of President Barack Obama himself. The ill-advised ( in my opinion ) arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Lewis Gates by Cambridge Police Officer Sgt. James Crowley four days ago caught the attention of the nation, but it was President Obama's comment that the Cambridge Police "acted stupidly" and the rather terrible response by the Cambridge Police Union at its press conference , which created a much-needed national conversation about race, law enforcement, and American culture. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, there's no doubt that it has been the political talk of the day, even if much of it was disjointed, nas

I found this on YouTube and its worth a good look. Here' what was written at ckellogg05: The personal development teacher at the 2009 Berkeley/Oakland AileyCamp at Cal Performances, Shawn Nealy, talks about the class and shows examples of the campers drawings about their role models. The nationally acclaimed youth program, conceived by Alvin Ailey, founder of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and locally produced by Cal Performances, combines ballet, jazz, modern and African dance instruction with personal development and creative communication classes and field trips. The camp is tuition free and admits under-served middle school students ages 1114 from the Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond and Albany Unified School districts; the camp is located on the UC Berkeley campus.