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I found this video serendipitously and had to post it. It's totally funny. It reads that it's from the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, but I can't see Joe Haraburda, the Chamber's executive director, approving anything that has the comment "Well, that's cause you're a dumb-ass." Check it out:

This was posted at the Adams Point message board Dearest neighbors of the Cleveland Cascade, Our design team has been working hard and they're now ready to unveil the proposed Master Plan for the Cleveland Cascade for your input and comments! Please join us -- and the Oakland Public Works Agency -- for a Public Meeting on Monday, August 28th, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Lakeview Branch Library 550 El Embarcadero The landscape architects will present the proposed Master Plan that would guide the first phase of construction and site rehabilitation, funded by the $300,000 of Measure DD money allocated by the city council. This meeting is as much our opportunity to learn from you as vice versa. Please come, share you reactions, praises, criticisms, and hard questions. Your input will make this project stronger and better. It's your money and your Cascade. We'll be taking careful notes. And please stop by our updated web site at http://clevelandcascade.org

Click on the title of this post to read the blog post over at SBS NFL Business Blog.

Last Saturday as I was walking down Lakeshore, someone asked if I would sign a petition to force the Oakland City Council to adopt a new plan for the development generally called "Oak To 9th." According to the group sponsoring the petition drive, the Oakland City Coucil didn't keep a promise to preserve the gigantic 9th Avenue Terminal on the site. I signed the petition, but remarked that with just one week ago, I didn't see how they were going to get the 10,000 additional signatures they needed. But they got them. Here's the total story: Oak to 9th critics say referendum drive successful Group collects enough signatures to force council to reconsider approval of development proposal By Quynh Tran STAFF WRITER - MONTCLARION With 30,000 signatures in hand, critics of Oak to 9th development hope to force a new plan along the 64-acre swath along the Oakland Estuary. The signatures were submitted to the city clerk's office on Thursday. "We're extremely

And on top of all this, we've got more great farmers markets than ever before. Oakland attempts to woo gourmet food industry By Marton Dunai STAFF WRITER - MONTCLARION Karen Robert Jackson always wanted to get into the food business. A successful filmmaker at Pixar with such hits as "Toy Story 2" under her belt, Jackson decided to realize her dream two years ago and teamed up with her husband to buy Crunchy Foods, the San Francisco-based makers of Suzy's Biscotti and other fine bakery products. "We were looking for the next thing, a company that wasn't necessarily high-tech, but we could do some process improvements through better planning, tracking, forecasting," she said. To make these changes would require moving to a place double the size of the San Francisco location, she said. The problem: There was no suitable and affordable place in San Francisco. So Crunchy Foods relocated to Oakland last year, joining a recent throng of small- to medium-sized

John Flores deserves a city-wide party for how he's steered Emeryville, over the years. I first met John when I got out of Berkeley's City Planning grad school and about one-year after I worked at the Oakland Redevelopment Agency. He hired me as a young consultant and I did an analysis for he and the Emeryville Redevelopment Agency. What I did tell John was that one of my first jobs at the Oakland Redevelopment Agency as an intern was to develop an economic argument for the placement of a shopping mall, rather than an EBMUD wet-weather storage facility, at what is now the East Bay Bridge Shopping Complex in Emeryville, but in Oakland's redevelopment area for West Oakland. My next times with him were in a different role: as columnist for The Montclarion, and fighting Kaiser's proposed move to Emeryville in 1994. I wish John all the best. When John started, Emeryville barely had a population -- it was just over 4,000 people and many of them were more in Oakland than

A sad story. This is where my stepfather's funeral was held. (Click on the title to learn more.)