Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I just read there's going to be an Oakland DUI (driving under the influence) checkpoint tonight at "an undisclosed location in Oakland" . Great. But why? Everyone knows there are only a few areas where cool and safe (can one be cool and not safe?) bars and restaurants are in Oakland: 1) Downtown at Broadway and Grand where its "First Friday" Art Murmur night. 2) Downtown along Telegraph from 16th to 20th Street. 3) Grand Avenue and Lakeshore Avenue where Lake Park serves as the connecting street 4) North Oakland along College Avenue 5) Piedmont Avenue from Monte Vista to 51st and Pleasant Valley. First, it's not good to drink and drive, but this quasi-militaristic, secret agent style approach is really too much with this "undisclosed location" stuff. I'd prefer the Oakland Police think creatively and actually provide alternat

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com YouTube , Yahoo , MySpace , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , StupidVideos , Sclipo and Viddler College Football's back and ESPN's Lou Holtz thinks The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame will be in the BCS National Championship Game. He's wrong. But the Cal Golden Bears will beat the USC Trojans October 3rd in Berkeley, 20 to 14. Notre Dame lacks team speed At 29 wins, 21 losses this is Notre Dame Head Coach Charlie Weis ' make-or-break year. If he wins seven games or more, he's in the clear and gives Irish fans and boosters a reason to expect better years ahead. But if he losses 7 games or more, he's in trouble. My prediction is for another six win season. Why? Notre Dame's chronic lack of team speed. The Fighting Irish have a problem drawing the fastest players at all positions. The states that generally produce the fastest talent - Florida, Cal

I just got this message at my Facebook page: I'm sure you've been following the awful story about the disappearance of Hasanni Campbell. His foster mother is a very dear friend of mine, Jennifer Campbell. She is expecting a child, while desperately searching for Hasanni, and had to go back to work at "Shuz" in Rockridge today, the site of Hasanni's disappearance. She will probably only be able to work a short while but as she is paid mostly on commission, she needs to sell a lot of shoes. The media coverage of this whole tragic situation hasn't made it any easier. I am beseeching you to please visit "Shuz" on College Ave. in Rockridge. Ask for Jennifer Campbell. Buy some shoes. Please. Where's "Shuz" exactly? It's at 6012 College Avenue (map below) and has great reviews on Yelp! Jennifer's had a rough time; give her your support! Buy some shoes! Here's the map for Shuz in Oakland within the Rockridge District!

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com The blog Eater via SFGate's Scoop reports that the famous sky high restaurant The Carnelian Room at the top of the Bank of America building at 555 California Street is scheduled to close but not until Christmas. If you've never experienced the view of San Francisco and the Bay Area from that space I encourage you to do so. It's been too long for me but given how breath-taking it is, I can't understand why it's not doing well. You may respond that it's too high, but I disagree because of the terrific interior that awaits patrons. Curious, I Googled "Carnelian Room rating", clicked on " Carnelian Room User Reviews " at San Francisco Citysearch and got my answer: it's the service. This is one of many negative reviews placed there: This place is criminally bad. Lets cover the one good thing first; the view. Nothing else is goo

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Two weeks after a string of protests, a Grand Lake Theater meeting, and much noise about the Oakland Parking fee increase and extended enforcement hours and we still have the problem of the $80 ticket. Grand Lake Theater's parking protest has zero impact But what we have in addition are reports of Oakland parking enforcement officials plainly treating Oaklanders terribly, with nasty remarks and plain abuses of power. Michael Caton has a story that is worth reposting over and over again. The owner of the blog An Oakland Citizen and guest blogger at Oakland Focus has posted a stemwinder of a story at Oakland Focus and reposted with an explanation at my blog seat at SFGate.com Read it with a click here: Michael Caton's fed up with Oakland

I have a note to add to the farewell-to-Oakland parking post I left on my own blog some time ago. To the merchants who feel like the City of Oakland is hell-bent on destroying local businesses with draconian parking policies, I can add a personal experience that has removed me from the Oakland economy permanently. I moved to San Diego last week to start medical school. For one day, I had the U-Haul trailer I'd rented parked in front of our building - the three story one at the corner of Broadway and Oceanview. There is a stretch of red curb there that is a) out of the way of traffic and b) always, always used by everyone moving into or out of the building. You already know where this is going. I was riding the elevator back up to my floor, and, tired and sweating from dragging furniture out to the truck, I happened to glance down to the street out through the clear wall to see the parking enforcement vehicle pull up in front of my worldly possessions. I got off and hurtl

Lake chalet Oakland , originally uploaded by jimmyjaymz78 . I saw this cool photo by Jimmyjaymz78 on Flickr.com and had to post it. It was taken at The Lake Chalet which opened two weeks ago.

Lake chalet Oakland , originally uploaded by jimmyjaymz78 . I saw this cool photo by Jimmyjaymz78 on Flickr.com and had to post it. It was taken at The Lake Chalet which opened two weeks ago.

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I saw this at the blog "The Daily Clog" by The Daily Californian and it reports on a cool event held at the very comfortable Morrison Library within Doe Library at Cal in Berkeley this Thursday. It's called simply "Lunch Poems" and starts at 12 noon. According to the website for Lunch Poems , the series is hosted by Robert Hass , who served as America's Poet Laureate of The United States (POLTUS) from 1995 to 1997 and is a Pulitzer-Prize winner. Joining him Thursday will be members of the UC Berkeley English Department reading their own work. They are: Melanie Abrams, C. D. Blanton, Vikram Chandra, Eric Falci, Mark Goble, David Landreth, Namwali Serpell, and Emily Thornbury. Visit Morrison and get there early to grab a couch before they're taken. Almost like the old Parkway in Oakland!

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I just happened upon Berkeley professor and dweller, Robert Reich's blog and a post title that caught my eye: "The Guns of August and Why The Republican Right Was So Adept at Using Them on Health Care" and a particularly true statement he wrote: "The Left had ideas; the Right has discipline" Prof. Robert Reich The former professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and former Secretary of Labor is right. I'm stunned over the almost "Borg-like" efficiency the right brings to the effort of getting out a message consistently, and getting its members to follow the cue cards chapter and verse, time after time. (Oh. The Borg were characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation who were part machine and part human and ran by a central computer system.) Now, if one thinks about my Borg analogy, they might say I'm

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I happened to run upon an article in today's edition of "Editor and Publisher" which reported that the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper ( SFGate.com is the Chronicle website) was planning more layoffs after Labor Day. It may not happen, let's pray not, but staff reductions could come as soon as next week. Apparently, even after the last round of job cuts about two months ago or so, the newspaper is still losing $1 million a week or about $4 million a month, or a whopping $48 million-a-year loss. That's really, really sad news as a paper is nothing without the personalities who made it, but I think there's something that can be done to at least save some jobs and stem the tide of revenue losses. There are as of this writing 2,780,000 pages that make up SFGate.com. My idea is simple: add a donate button to each one of them. The button would

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com In a blockbuster development, Ecuador Judge Juan Nunez, the key legal figure in the Chevron Ecuador environmental damage case, is captured in a video shown here explaining that he plans to rule against the oil giant and for an award of $27 billion "more or less". The judge explains that the verdict will happen and that Chevron will be blocked from filing an appeal of his ruling. In that segment of the video, the Judge explains he's only there to talk about the verdict, not about "the other stuff" which refers to a $3 million payoff request. Later in the video its implied that Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa will benefit from the bribe amount. On video today I talked to Chevron Media Relations representative Sean Comey about the video and Chevron's investigation. In the video Judge Nunez, Aulo Gelio Servio Tulio Avila ("Avila"), an

San Francisco Peninsula Press Club: No numbers yet in next round of layoffs

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com On Saturday, the New Orleans Saints clobbered the Oakland Raiders 45 to 7, and it could have been worse were it not for one dropped pass in the end zone in the second quarter. One item of good news is that only 32,585 people saw the beating at the Oakland Coliseum. But the bad news is that only 32,585 people saw the beating at the Oakland Coliseum, and that causes me to ask this question: Will the Oakland Raiders' Monday Night Game against the Chargers fail to sell out thus preventing the Bay Area from seeing the game? The Bay Area economy is in terrible shape and it seems with all of the plant closures, the Raiders blue collar fan base is being harmed. The Washington Post reports that NFL sources point to the Raiders as one of the teams that could have problems selling tickets this year. Now, the Bay Area's unemployment is at nearly 10 percent, with rates over 9

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Last night I happened by the Conga Lounge Tiki Bar in Oakland's Rockridge District and the owners Mano and Michael Thanos treated me to a great Mai Tai and a cool t-shirt, and informed me that on Sunday (today) they're having a party to celebrate the creation of that tasty cocktail. The party runs from 5 PM to 10 PM at 5422 College Ave (above Cafe Rustica), and Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan (At-Large) will arrive to official read the proclamation proclaiming The Mai Tai "The Official Drink of Oakland" but here's some background. According to Mano Thanos, the Mai Tai was created in Oakland in 1944 by Victor Bergeron, the owner of the famed Trader Vic's Restaurant chain. His experiment, which you can read about in detail on the Trader Vics's website , and the growth of his restaurant chain led to the word-of-mouth re-creation of the dri

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com The new Lake Chalet restaurant is really changing the vibe around the nearby intersection of 14th and Lakeside Drive in Oakland, but even with the new eatery, that corner and its area are still dangerous. I write this not to dissuade anyone from visiting what has become a gastronomic center of Oakland culture, but to explain what to do if you use your car to get there. Have their valet service park your car. Why? Well, my good friend's car was broken into Friday night as she parked along 14th not far from Lakeside Drive. The Lake Chalet , where she was headed, is on Lakeside Drive, and so close to 14th Street and the Oakland Public Library that one can comfortably walk to the place after parking along 14th. Trouble is, 14th's still sketchy from Lakeside to Broadway. Let's be honest in our assessment of that stretch: while a couple of apartments have opened

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com   Mary and some of her colleagues in the 40s As I write this I'm sitting here watching the funeral for Senator Ted Kennedy and preparing myself to attend the memorial service for Mary Morris Lawrence. This is a hard day. To start, it's a day that marks the passing of two incredible people; one I never got to personally know, the other I did personally know. Both changed the society they were in. It's hard for me to accept the passing of Mary because her spirit was so powerful I can't see her as anything but here and alive. I suppose that's why it took me so long to write anything about this moment. Aside from the fact that this has been my sixth memorial or funeral this year, it's just something that's plain hard to acknowledge. Mary was America's first female photojournalist , and one who knew many, from Orson Wells to Humphrey Bogart.

Maria Muldaur I had the wonderful pleasure of befriending legendary singer Maria Muldaur last year during the 2008 presidential primary and through a mutual friend and Obama supporter, Brent Turner and Joel Jaffe of Studio D in Sausalito, CA.  For those of you who have not heard of Maria, you may have heard of the classic song Midnight at The Oasis , it was she who wrote and sang it in 1973, around the time Lars, Bill, and I were kids using BART to get around . Last year the Marin County dweller created this cool song, a tribute to then-Senator Barack Obama called "Yes We Can" ; I created this video around it for her: After Obama's presidential win, Maria, now in her 70s but looks to be in her 40s, continued to perform concerts at local venues around the Bay Area. Today, she sent an email annoucing that she's returning to her "Jug Band" roots in her new CD and fall concert tour called "Maria Muldaur and her Garden of Joy". Maria explai