Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Ha! This is the beauty of being a local in Oakland and the Bay Area. Having friends who have old photos of you and them in action. In this case the photo below is one of Lars Frykman, Bill Boyd and myself on BART in 1975. (In case you're wondering where Bill is, he's the photog here.) Zennie and Lars - 1975 Bill found this photo and put in on his Facebook profile page; now it's on mine too. But I couldn't resist sharing it as it's a small window into the Bay Area of the past. I mean, I had a small "'fro" and Lars was sporting the Rolling Stones' hair look. But that was as much hair as I wanted; no longer. No big 'Fro for me! The only place I can think of where we may have been going at the time was Berkeley and to the Federation Trading Post (FTP) on a weekend or San Francisco just to ride through the then-new BART tube. That ...

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...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! On YouTube.com I'm starting to get the impression that BART's workers are out of touch with the common person in the San Francisco Bay Area. According to BARTLabor.com the average union worker makes about $115,000 a year . By contrast, BART riders have an average income of just over $55,000. That means the striking union workers are doing well, and the average BART rider's just getting by in the expensive Bay Area. But with that, BART union workers want a 3 percent raise? Yikes! So let's say they strike after July 9th. That means the person who needs to use BART to get to that job interview in Concord from Oakland can't make the interview without paying money they can't afford for a cab to a place of employment that may not hire them. That's terrible. Why in Heaven's name would BART's workers who want to walk out if they don't get what they want even try to con...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! On YouTube.com With BART's deadline to reach a new union contract or face a worker strike extended to July 9th but still coming up on us fast, I took to the streets to learn what the public thinks about this possible event. What I found was that many claimed they didn't even know of the possibility, but of those who did they all believed it would "severely cripple" transportation service in the Bay Area. I didn't tell those I talked to that the average BART union worker's salary was $115,000, or that the public ridership took in an average of $55,000, as that would be leading the witness. I wanted to learn what was on their minds and you can see that in the video. But people not being informed about this? That's crazy. But I encountered a frightening number of people who were not informed. It's not that they don't care, but I think they see themselves as powerless to...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! YouTube , Blip.tv and Sclipo For weeks now, BART management and labor have been arguing over who should give up what on the eve of the expiration of contracts with the five unions that represent BART workers. But there's a problem: the matter of the murder of Oscar Grant and the revelation that another BART officer used a racial slur, and this was captured in a new video, raise questions regarding labor's moral standing to strike. While BART's police can't strike, as one officer told me, the unions essentially represent the labor issues for the police. Thus, the use of the racial slur by a BART officer with BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, coupled with the murder by Mehserle, opens the accusation that it was a hate crime. According to the San Francisco Chronicle , it was officer Tony Pirone who yelled "Bitch-ass N__, right?" As he was hitting Grant while Grant was on the ground. Wh...

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 Oakland Tribune : “OAKLAND — The family of Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old man shot and killed by a BART police officer early New Year's Day, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit for $50 million against BART in federal court Monday. The shooting prompted massive public outcry and protest in Oakland, and Johannes Mehserle, the BART officer who resigned in January rather than submit to questioning in BART's investigation of the shooting, is charged with murder in the incident. "This is the most egregious police shooting case that I've been involved in," said John Burris, the attorney representing Grant's family who has been involved numerous high-profile police-misconduct cases. Burris filed a $25 million tort claim against BART and Mehserle in January. He said he increased the dollar amount after learning more about what happened before and after the shooting, as well as learning more about the officers who were at the scene and about Grant and his family.” -- A...

More at SF Gate : “(02-06) 16:48 PST DUBLIN -- Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer accused of murder in the Jan. 1 shooting death of an unarmed man on the Fruitvale Station platform in Oakland, was released this afternoon on $3 million bail, authorities said. Mehserle, 27, posted bail at 3:45 p.m. and was released from Santa Rita Jail without incident, the Alameda County Sheriff's Department said.”

More at Oakland Tribune : “The attorney for Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer charged with murder stemming from a shooting on New Year's Day, entered a not guilty plea for his client in an Oakland courtroom Thursday. Attorney Christopher Miller entered the plea in front of a packed courtroom with extra security. In a red Santa Rita Jail jumpsuit, Mehserle, who could barely be seen behind a protective clear encasing, waived his right to a quick preliminary hearing. Miller then asked Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert McGuiness for a bail hearing, which was set for Jan. 26 in Oakland. Mehserle was arrested on a no-bail warrant, and no bail has been set. The full courtroom included Mehserle's friends and family and those of Oscar Grant III, the man Mehserle is accused of killing Jan. 1 on the Fruitvale BART platform. Sheriff's deputies carefully let different groups into the courtroom separately to avoid any problems with heightened tensions.”

More at SfGate : “(01-12) 21:36 PST San Francisco -- A raucous crowd protesting the shooting death of a BART passenger marched through downtown San Francisco tonight, overturning trash cans, tossing traffic barriers and lighting small garbage fires. San Francisco police in riot gear quickly moved in and closed off streets as the crowd broke up into smaller groups, scattering in all directions. No arrests were reported.” -- And I'm not sure if this constant drumbeat is going to help. The courts are the best way.

A hairline crack was found in the Oakland BART Y train track Thursday night, which caused a long delay.

Bloggers like Refin and Nancy Friedman have openly pointed to Oakland's chronic lack of retail venues during the holidays. Friedman writes... It's prime shopping season, and my fair city is in a world of hurt. The weekend before last I attended a town meeting convened by my city councilwoman at which a consultant delivered the depressing news that Oakland is losing $1 billion a year in potential retail sales to neighboring cities. (In the trade, that's known as "leakage.") Once upon a time, downtown Oakland was home to four major department stores, a big furniture store, and several swanky boutiques. The tide began turning in the 1980s, thanks to lackluster leadership, rising crime, and general cluelessness. The Loma Prieta earthquake, in 1989, delivered the coup de grâce. Some downtown structures were never repaired and remain vacant. Today Oakland, a city of about 400,000, has only one department store: Sears. To shop at Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, Home D...

From Rockridge News, which really needs to be in blog form. An interview with City Councilwoman Jane Brunner by Stuart Flashman, RCPC boardmember, and member, RCPC Planning and Project Review Committee In 1998, the city of Oakland updated itsGeneral Plan, the fundamental document defining the city’s land use patterns. Almost 10 years later, the city has not yet revised all of its zoning ordinance to fit with what the General Plan says. The Rockridge News talked to Jane Brunner, city councilwoman for North Oakland, about this zoning upd a t e process and what it might mean for Rockridge. Councilwoman Brunner will be an invited speaker at the RCPC’s October 18 General Meeting on the topic of the Rockridge/ Temescal Zoning Update and the future of Rockridge. Rockridge News: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me about zoning in Rockridge and Temescal. Let’s start with a simple question – what is zoning about? Jane Brunner: Zoning really is taking a look at how many housing units,...