Posted on December 21, 2009 by Becks
A surprising number of people have been reaching my blog in the past few days by searching for “oakland holiday gift guide” or something similar to that. The problem is that all the events in my Oakland holiday shopping guide have now ended, and it’s clear many people are still looking to shop locally.
At this [...]
Filed under: Berkeley, Oakland | Tagged: Awaken Cafe, Oaklandish, Piedmont Springs, Rockridge Home, shopping, Telegraph Holiday Street Fair | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 20, 2009 by Becks
As you can probably imagine, the weekly events listing takes a fair amount of time to put together, and since there’s not much going on in the next couple of weeks due to the holidays, I thought this was as good of time as ever to take a two-week break. I will resume the events [...]
Filed under: Community, Oakland, Politics | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 18, 2009 by Becks
I had hoped to write a real blog post yesterday or today, but yesterday flew by and today I woke up with a nasty cold and I can’t really focus. So you won’t get a super-excited post from me about City Attorney John Russo’s opinion, issued yesterday, that clearly states that the Council must implement [...]
Filed under: City Council, Economy, Election, Medical Marijuana, Oakland, Politics | Tagged: budget, Desley Brooks, Ignacio De La Fuente, instant runoff voting, Jane Brunner, Jean Quan, John Russo, Nancy Nadel, Pat Kernighan, Rebecca Kaplan | 6 Comments »
Posted on December 16, 2009 by Becks
Somehow I totally missed this when putting together the weekly events listing, even though I was looking for it, but there’s a special budget meeting tomorrow, Thursday, December 17th at 10am. I might have missed it because I naively thought it would be held in the evening, when working people could attend, especially after many [...]
Filed under: City Council, Economy, Oakland, Politics | Tagged: budget, Jean Quan, mayoral race | 6 Comments »
Posted on December 14, 2009 by Becks
Tomorrow’s committee meetings are going to be packed with some exciting, forward thinking transportation projects, including an update on BRT and another discussion of the citywide parking study at the Public Works Committee. But the transit item I’m most excited to will be heard before the Community & Economic Development Committee (CED) – a free [...]
Filed under: City Council, Community, Economy, Environmentalism, Oakland, Public Transit, Urban Planning | Tagged: Broadway shuttle, CED, DASH, downtown Oakland, Jack London Square, Los Angeles, Uptown | 17 Comments »
Posted on December 13, 2009 by Becks
Wednesday, December 16h – AC Transit Meeting on Service Adjustment Plan
At AC Transit’s regular Board meeting, the Board will be voting on final approval of the service adjustment plan. They also will be voting on changing transfer policy so that transfers would be valid for 2 hours, instead of the current 1.5 hours. This was [...]
Filed under: Entertainment, Medical Marijuana, Oakland, Politics, Public Transit | Tagged: AC Transit, Americans for Safe Access, BART, Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, East Bay Young Democrats | Leave a Comment »
Posted on December 10, 2009 by Becks
UPDATE: If you’ve procrastinated a bit on holiday shopping, not to worry – I’ve put together a last-minute holiday shopping guide for Oakland.
This holiday season, there are a myriad of holiday local shopping opportunities – so many so that it might be hard to keep track of them! So I thought I’d write a brief [...]
Filed under: Art, Blogoaksphere, Community, Economy, Oakland | Tagged: Blogoaksphere Virtual Food Drive, Holiday Buy Night, Oakland Unwrapped, The Crucible | Leave a Comment »
Posted on December 9, 2009 by Becks
UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, the BART Board voted earlier today 7-1 to approve the project.
Tomorrow, the BART Board of Directors will vote on approving the contract to begin construction of the Oakland Airport Connector. And believe it or not, the project has gotten even worse.
Remember at that late night City Council meeting in October when BART and [...]
Filed under: Activism, City Council, Oakland, Politics, Public Transit, Urban Planning | Tagged: BART, Oakland Airport connecter | 21 Comments »
Posted on December 8, 2009 by Becks
Tonight’s Council meeting will cover a large array of issues, some of which I’ve described below.
Item 14.1: Eleven Mills Act Contract
Ignacio De La Fuente has forged an uncommon alliance with historic preservationists to propose the approval of eleven properties under the Mills Act two-year pilot program and the expansion of the Mills Act. Via the [...]
Filed under: City Council, Economy, Environmentalism, Oakland, Politics, Urban Planning | Tagged: Desley Brooks, Ignacio De La Fuente, Jane Brunner, Mills Act, Rebecca Kaplan, solar financing, stimulus | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 7, 2009 by Becks
This guest post was written by John Klein, a resident of Oakland for over 23 years. His sense of ethics was formed as full-time volunteer for 12 years during the 70’s and 80’s with Nyingma Centers, a Tibetan Buddhist community in Berkeley and Sonoma County, and more recently as a legal assistant in large Bay [...]
Filed under: City Council, Oakland, Politics | Tagged: John Klein, Lobbyist Registration Act, Public Ethics Commission | Leave a Comment »