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More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Speaking, er, writing of Councilmember Jean Quan and her pursuit of the office of Mayor of Oakland, she's having one of those exploratory meetings I referred to. I an email from Maggie Kostoff of The Grand Avenue Breakfast Club which reads: You are invited to join us- District 4 Councilwoman, Jean Quan, is considering running for Mayor of Oakland. I have scheduled an opportunity to meet with Councilwoman Quan. I personally do not promote any candidates, but feel that this is rare opportunity to share your opinions with a potential candidate. She is meeting with Oakland citizens to discuss how you view the office of the Mayor, and to discuss your priorities for this important office. This meeting is an open discussion for our local community. When: Saturday, September 26, 1:30pm-3:30pm Where: Lakeview Library (located across the street from Gold's Gym on Gra

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com The infamous Conga Lounge MaiTai  Which you'll need after getting a ticket in Oakland! (Just don't drive after you've had it!) I just got an email from Emmanuel ( Mano) Thanos, the owner of the famous (or infamous if you've had one of their Mai Tai's) Conga Lounge . He's responding to my video and blog post on the Oakland City Council's decision not to toss out the current parking enforcement system. If you didn't see the video, here it is: Here's Mano: This is Mano here from the Conga lounge and Pizza Rustica Cafe. It is a shame that the Oakland City Council has decided not to listen to the people of Oakland. We used to be quite busy after 6pm. Now folks stay away until 8pm when they can park without having to pay the high hourly fee of $2 or the fine of $55! This parking policy is extremely short sighted and has caused trem

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Yesterday I blogged on how the Oakland City Council got its ass chewed out by angry Oakland business owners and residents Tuesday night over the new parking enforcement process, especially the $55 tickets and the 8 PM daily end time. I promised a video; here is the first of a set of them: It features Grand Lake Theater owner Alan Michaan explaining that he wants the Oakland City Council to "rescind (the parking plan) or (be) recall(ed)" and Chinatown Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Carl Chan explaining that his well-organized group (which will be more of the focus of my second video), has no such intentions. The video at nine minutes long also features the angry rant of Oakland retailer Steve Salazar, who accuses the City of Oakland of "predatory parking ticket" practices. But I want you to notice the African American gentleman in the backgroun

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com The Oakland City Council got its ass chewed out last night, and I'm not sure there's much left this morning. This is an account best told with video, and I've got a lot of it coming today. The meeting, at least for the issue of rolling back parking enforcement times from the current 8 PM ending to the old 6 PM stop point, didn't itself end until 12:29 AM. I've attended well over a 1,000 Oakland City Council meetings going back to 1987, but I can't remember one where several people were as red-faced angry as they were last night. Oh sure, we've had our "Hugh Bassett" moments, where the Oakland school teacher would blast Councilmember Larry Reid (District 7 East Oakland), but nothing like this. Only video does it justice. Grand Lake Theater owner Allan Michaan is threatening to start a recall of the Oakland City Council after it failed t

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com My YouTube friend "EASTOAKLAND106" sent a message informing me of the Discovery Channel TV series called "Oakland Gang Wars". Part2Pictures created the controversial series, which aired September 14th at 9 PM. The show has reports to a fair degree of detail regarding the gang problem in Oakland. There are, for example, over 10,000 gang members versus a special unit of just eight cops. Now, Oakland's a city of about 150,000 adults - the rest are kids. So that means if half of those members are adults, then about just less than 3 percent of the adult population is a member of a gang in Oakland. Shocking number. Plus, the gang members are concentrated mostly in East Oakland. I've got to check into that estimate, but that's what the show announcer says. Here's a video "EASTOAKLAND106" created of the first episode of the show:

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Thanks to Miley Cyrus , Susan Boyle , Erin Andrews , and Megan Fox , President Obama, politics, celebrities, Oakland, and the NFL Draft, My YouTube channel Zennie62 is now over 8 million video views (not channel views) at 8,133,111 views as of this writing. Today we are at between 18,000 and 24,000 views a day and earlier this year we hit over 100,000 views daily.  Even at low end of the current view rate, that's 760 video views an hour each day.  It's not my objective - I am aiming for the 100,000 view mark we were at - but its a sign of progress.  My channel was established in 2006, (and its not the only one I have as I'm on several more video systems thanks to Tubemogul ) but its grown by 6 million views in just the last year, with my video " Susan Boyle: Who is Susan Boyle " gaining over 1 million viewers in its first month of life.  Since then my blu

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com I was reading the minutes from the August 27th Oakland Rockridge Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council meeting (a pdf file, not a link) and noticed the news that crime is up dramatically. Let's take cars as one example. There were 40 stolen cars in a 90 day period this year. The most commonly stolen cars are the Toyota Corolla, Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, and the Honda Civic. According to the Oakland Police, the reason most cars are stolen is because people simply leave the keys in them. "Lock it. Lock it. Lock it", is the advice given. Vehicle theft is a common problem in the Rockridge area. I used the Oakland Police " CrimeView Community website " to search for the number of vehicle thefts within a mile of 5600 College Avenue (see map below) and discovered that there were seven such crimes over the last 15 days. Almost one every other day.