Heavy winds carried the scents of marinated meats and roasted garlic, with a slight hint of propane. Dogs of all sizes trampled on peoples’ feet as they weaved their owners through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Despite the noise around them, children napped in strollers with sunshades, guarding them from the sudden spurts of heat on an otherwise perfect Saturday.

Oakland is encouraging gluttony this weekend as the city hosts two festivals, flooding the streets with thousands of locals and out-of-towners eagerly waiting to sample the various treats.

The three-day Eat Real Festival at Jack London Square focuses on cooking healthy, affordable meals with sustainable local ingredients, while the 23rd annual Oakland Chinatown Streetfest, a two-day event on Saturday and Sunday, showcases traditional Chinese delicacies with a cultural backdrop of performers and informational booths. Groups of people have been trekking the traffic-ridden six blocks to get from one festival to the other.

“It think the festival is a good thing,” said Jenny Ong, executive director of the Chinatown chamber, as she watched satisfied business owners packing up their booths at the Chinatown StreetFest late Saturday afternoon, only to set up again early Sunday morning. “It’s to promote the economic vitality of Chinatown, to celebrate the local Asian culture.” Ong said nearly 100,000 people have so far attended the event over the weekend.

Susan Coss, director of Eat Real, estimated that by the end of Sunday, the same number of people will have passed through during the three-day festivities just overlooking the waterfront at Jack London Square.

Although this is only its second year, the Eat Real has attracted a substantial following of businesses wanting to showcase their culinary capabilities. Nearly 200 vendors—including street food trucks, restaurants, and information booths—participated at each event. Each one added their own touch to the gluttonous experience.

Anna Ming, co-owner of Gerard’s Paella, spent nearly two and a half hours combining a cornucopia of ingredients for the catering business’ most popular item—chicken and seafood paella, made with chicken, Ecuadorian white shrimp, mussels, rice, saffron and smoked paprika, roasted red bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, green beans, lemons, and garbanzo beans. The dish is made entirely with organic ingredients, unless requested otherwise. Ming, and fellow co-owner Gerard Nebesky, find themselves slaving over the paella pans year-round.

“We travel coast-to-coast making paellas,” said Ming. “We’re all over the place. We cook almost seven days a week.” Aside from a lull in business during the months of January through March, Ming and Nebesky, alongside two other chefs, are sometimes booked for up to four events in a single day. But the cooking isn’t the only daunting task for the four-person crew. Each of the custom-made paella pans they travel with is about as big as a queen-sized bed.

Another vendor specializing in catered events was Global Soul Street Eats, owned by Jessica Phadungsilp and Christina Aviles. Only four months into the business, both have already established a following, with customers leaving the booth shouting praises about their jambalaya. As of midday Saturday, nearly half of the pre-prepared 60-gallon batch of jambalaya was already settling in the stomachs of a few hundred happy festival-goers.

Aviles said she spends an hour and a half constantly stirring the concoction of orzo, tomatoes, all-natural sausage, organic chicken, tomato paste, and the “holy trinity” of garlic, onions, and celery. “It’s slowly stewed with lots of love.”

Adding to the global food experience was Soul Cocina, a San Francisco-based restaurant. Co-owner and chef Roger Feely provided more than just his bhel puri, a rice dish mixed with diced vegetables. He let people witness the special way in which the dish’s sauce of garden mint chutney is prepared, using a bike-powered blender A young man was happily pedaling the blue one-wheeled bike, watching the blender—that sat atop the wheel, between the handlebars—form the forest green chutney paste.

“We didn’t want to use any kind of electricity,” said Feely, as he worked alongside his wife and co-owner, Desiree. “Everything is 100 percent handmade.” In addition to the homemade chutney, the dish had Indian puffed rice, fried lentils, cilantro, green chilies, boiled potatoes, and yellow, red, and green heirloom tomatoes. As he doled out the remnants of one batch, Feely scurried to the back table in the tent, determined not to keep his customers waiting. After eyeing the measurements of each ingredient, which were all raw—with the exception of the rice, lentils and potatoes—Feely tossed together the colorful vegan creation.

Katie McKinstry, a mechanical engineer from Oakland, was just as impressed with the food as she was the bike-powered blender. “I like the combination of the mint with the crunchy aspect of the puffed rice,” she said. “It tastes like summer.”

In nearby Chinatown, grills ran strong as thick cuts of meat were slapped onto the grill and served on skewers, buns and paper plates. Though the primary language was Cantonese, evident by the chatter of thousands of locals, people didn’t need to know the language to understand what good food was.

At Saigon BBQ, based in San Francisco, owners Helen Nguyen and her husband Khoi Xa served up their signature barbecue sticks, which were finely cut pieces of chicken slathered in their homemade barbecue sauce. They even offered sugar cane juice, made fresh using two-foot long pieces of sugar cane stems and running them under a large steel rolling pin, forcing the sweet liquid out and flattening the stems until they resembled torn corn husks.

Across the way, Happy Dumplings served up its own rendition of the kebob, adding a spicy kick. The husband-and-wife team of James Kerson and Shuhui Jiang sprinkled a medley of spices on their cumin-based lamb kebobs. Also on the menu were the restaurant’s signature item of water fried buns (shui jin bao), available in chive and pork, and cabbage and pork, and vegetarian—with freshly chopped carrots, tofu, pickled vegetables, mushrooms, and ginger. Kerson prides himself in being able to make the pastries on demand.

Attending the festival for another year, 13-year-old Kenny Yu, of Alameda, stopped by Happy Dumplings with his father, in search of something to munch on as he strolled through the rest of the fair.

“It’s quite good,” he managed to say, while nodding and tearing the tender lamb meat off of the two skewers in his hand.

Though the Jack London Square and Chinatown food trucks will be gone by Monday morning, there’s nothing to worry about; they’ll be back on the streets at their usual locations. And anyone craving for a dish from the restaurants that labored under small tents and over portable grills can now enjoy the same food—trading in the picnic benches and paper plates for a booth and tablecloth service.

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes “good eggs” and knowing the source of your meat.

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In one corner of Oakland’s second Eat Real Festival, the annual Jack London Square celebration of locally produced food, the very scrappiest of the sustainability enthusiasts challenged the public to take the movement home. And they didn’t mean starting an herb garden.

Instead, these local farmers and butchers paraded out animals, both alive and not, urging consumers to look their food in the face.

“Your great-grandmother probably went out and killed a chicken for dinner every night,” said Novella Carpenter, author of the food memoir Farm City, who was selling produce at the festival and talked about her chicken culling demonstration — that’s humane slaughtering and cleaning — scheduled for Sunday. “What we do is get people in touch with their meat,” Carpenter said. “The demonstration is to empower people, but it’s also to remind people of our heritage.”

Chickens, goats and bees all made an appearance Saturday, as did many of the local food movement’s best-known personalities. For those who want to get in touch but aren’t quite at Carpenter’s level, David Budworth was on hand with a lower-key alternative. Budworth, aka Dave the Butcher, chatted with a crowd of 300 to 400 people about the evils of factory farming while he and his colleagues from Avedano’s Holly Park Market butchered a goat.

On a stage in the festival’s “Urban Homesteading” section, Budworth suspended the newly dead, skinned animal from an anchor-shaped hook attached to metal scaffolding. He deftly broke it down into sections and explained each step, all the while encouraging the crowd to move away from mass-produced “boneless, skinless, chicken breasts” and try something different from their local butcher — like goat.

“A lot Americans don’t eat goat, even though it’s lean and protein-rich,” he said, and placed his hands on the animal’s hindquarters. “And they won’t eat tongue, for example, but they’ll eat this,” Budworth said. “It’s a lot of mental stuff people need to work through.”

Later, Budworth talked about the recently invigorated local food movement. “People are moving away from the whole 24/7 Safeway thing that was so popular in the ’70s,” he said. “People have been wanting to source more locally in the last few years.”

Budworth is happy to help, whether by butchering meat for his clients or teaching them to do it themselves. Avedano’s offers monthly classes that teach basic knife and butchery skills, that Budworth says “will help people break free of their fear of this.”

For the less carnivorous animal enthusiast, Eat Real provided ample information on rearing chickens for eggs, goats for milk, and on beekeeping. Ken Kirkland and Mario Klip manned an impressive booth designed to walk the urban farmer through each step of housing backyard chickens. Kirkland, owner of Woolly Egg Ranch, provided a vast selection of the birds, which customers were able to purchase on the spot.

Kirkland’s chickens put the red hen that graced barnyards of yore to shame — today’s urban farmer has gone designer. These “heritage birds” come in a variety of colors and sizes, sport froufrou plumage, and cost $15-$30 a pop. According to Kirkland, the more familiar White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds are bred for mass egg production and can range from difficult to downright mean. “The heritage birds breeds are not as productive but are better backyard birds,” he said. “And the eggs they produce are better than store-bought eggs. They’re all different colors: green, champagne, speckled, brown, and pink.”

Naturally, these couture chickens need couture housing, and that’s where Klip comes in. As the owner of a small business called Holland Hen Houses, Klip says his motivation was to give the urban farmer an alternative to the unsightly chicken coop. In 2009, Klip started selling his “attractive, European cottage-style, locally-made hen houses” to the public, and thus far, he said, business is booming.

“Chickens are very popular, especially in this area,” Kilp said. “I read somewhere recently that it’s the fastest growing hobby in the U.S.” And though he’s doing business stateside, the Netherlands-born Klip paid homage to his homeland by naming different cottage models after Dutch cities and artists — “Utretch,” “Amsterdam” and “Rembrandt,” among others.

Once you’ve purchased your chickens and made them a home, one looming question remains: What next? Heidi Kooy, who lives in Excelsior with her husband, two children, two goats, two chickens, a dog, a cat and a rabbit, has the answer. At her “Backyard Chickens 101” presentation, Kooy addressed everything from vaccination to chicken feed, and she was frank about the downsides.

“You have to do some pretty gruesome things,” she said. “I’ve had to stick my hand up a chicken’s backside. But it’s not that bad, really!” Kooy also addressed the legality of backyard farming. “You can only legally keep two chickens in San Francisco, but the city is on a complaint basis,” she said. “They’ll only bother you if someone complains about noise or smell. So, the key is being on good terms with your neighbors.”

Frankie and Jeannie Morrow, who gave Eat Real’s presentation on goat milking, said they’re on such good terms with their neighbors that many of them help care for the couple’s six goats in exchange for milk. Why? “It’s the closest thing to human milk,” Frankie Morrow said of goat milk’s health benefits. “It’s easier to digest, and it makes it easier to digest other food, too.” The Morrows also make goat cheese and ice cream, but say the rewards of goat ownership extend far beyond food. “Because goats have been with us since the dawn of time, we’re really comfortable around them and they are really comfortable around us,” Frankie Morrow said. “We think of our goats as pets. Each one has a distinct personality.”

Marina Shoup, Vice President of the San Francisco Beekeepers Association, added “escape” to the list of benefits urban animal rearing provides. “It slows me down,” she said. “I get to pay attention to forces greater than my own.” That tone of deference was palpable in the language and attitude of every Eat Real vendor and presenter, especially the ones working with living creatures. Responsible animal ownership set the tone for the day, as did a focus on proper care, preparation and respect. Heidi Kooy put it plainly, “If you’re not sure about this, don’t do it,” she said. Or, if it’s just the final product that appeals, start with a trip to your neighborhood butcher shop.

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes “good eggs” and encourages a weekend of street fair gluttony.

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With nearly 550 million eggs being pulled off grocery shelves nationwide during one of the largest egg recalls ever, and with thousands of people infected with salmonella after eating contaminated eggs, the idea of eating eggs can seem a little daunting. But not all eggs are created equal. The eggs involved in the recall are from just two large-scale factories in Iowa, whereas “if you look at a regional food system, you don’t have that same kind of impact,” says Eat Real festival director Susan Coss. This is a point that she and the other organizers of this weekend’s festival hope to make at the second annual three-day event that will showcase locally produced foods, including eggs.

Eat Real beer mugs. Photo by greenkozi via Flickr Creative Commons.

The festival kicks off on Friday in Oakland at Jack London Square, where approximately 90 food vendors will sell their specialties, ranging from Jamaican jerk chicken to lobster rolls to Guittard chocolate crème brulee. There will also be a beer shed with 30 breweries, a wine barn, cooking demonstrations on topics like how to fillet a fish, and jamming, pickling and brewing contests.

But more than just showing off gourmet fare, the Eat Real organizers’ broader goal is to show people that good food is locally accessible, healthy and affordable. “Having these major food recalls this week drives home why we love doing what we’re doing at Eat Real,” says Coss. “Ultimately what we would like to do is reinforce this idea of why regional food systems are important.”

Part of the idea behind Eat Real is to introduce people to locals who are growing produce, raising animals and brewing beer on a small scale. One of the farmers on hand at the festival to talk about small-scale chicken farms will be Eric Koefoed. He and his wife, Alexis Koefoed, own Soul Food Farm, where they tend to 1,200 laying chickens—which produce 600 to 900 eggs a day—and 6,000 meat chickens. Their chickens do not live in coops and are free to roam all over the property, which is located in Vacaville. “We’re a small diversified farm and our chickens are outside all day long doing what chickens do, which is chasing bugs and eating grass,” says Alexis Koefoed. “As small farmers, we are trying to create a better model and cleaner food, by animals that are treated better and are living in better conditions.”

Additionally, Wooly Egg Ranch, which is based in Mill Valley, will have live chickens for sale along with a chicken-raising starter kit and tips on chicken keeping.  Right next door, a “Good Egg” booth will be set up with local egg farmers, including Koefoed, available to talk about the egg recall, egg safety and how small-scale production is different than factories like those in Iowa.

In the large-scale factories, up to 1 million chickens can share one facility, with six or seven chickens living in one cage under artificial light, eating feed laced with the hormones and antibiotics that gets them to produce two to three eggs a day. “When you have a large density of animals in the hundreds of thousands, you’re going have constant outbreaks of disease,” says Alexis Koefoed, “because you’re not going to be able to meet health and food safety standards.”

A laying hen. Photo by Phae via Flickr Creative Commons.

Alexis Koefoed says that what happens in factories also changes the nutritional and flavor components of eggs. “All of those things that are happening in an industrial model—with chemicals and an aggressive laying cycle—all of that stuff ends up in their eggs,” she says. “It’s a sad reflection of what an egg should be.” When her chickens lay eggs, she says, it’s on their own time frame. What is produced, she says, is a “completely different version of an egg.”

Both Coss and Koefoed believe that the egg recall is creating the perfect opportunity to talk about the industrial food system. “It’s shining a spotlight on industry farms and how the system needs to be re-hauled and re-imagined,” says Koefoed. “I’m excited to think that this might turn millions of people towards their farmers markets.” Coss agrees, and points out that when eggs are produced and sold on a local scale, the possible spread of any disease is minimized. “That’s not to say salmonella doesn’t exist on these small farms—it does—but you’re not recalling millions of eggs,” she says.

At Eat Real, the farmers in the “Good Egg” booth will talk to people about handling eggs when they’re preparing food, along with egg safety and how to take care of eggs. They will also have different types of eggs on display and information on how to buy local, pasture-raised eggs from small-scale farms. “We as a society have drifted so far from where food comes from that we do not have any relationship with it,” says Coss. “It’s exciting to do a event that’s all about that.”

The Eat Real festival runs from Friday, August 27 to Sunday, August 29. For more information on the vendors, schedule and activities through the course of the festival, visit their website.

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes knowing the source of your meat and encourages a weekend of street fair gluttony.

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On a chilly and overcast Saturday evening, in a parking lot surrounded by chain link down the street from Broadway Auto Row, Hilary Schwartz beamed in satisfaction. She was standing beside a little folding table covered in breadcrumbs, and she’d sold off the last of her jars of coconut custard spread.

“They told us we would sell out, but I didn’t believe them,” she said, laughing. It was her first try at selling the Singaporean treat, a recipe she cooked up with her partner Marcia Ong after visiting Ong’s family in Singapore. By the end of the evening, she was left with just enough custard for free samples, served on thinly-sliced white toast.

Laura Miller from Sidesaddle Kitchen next to her signs for her tartes.

Schwartz wasn’t the only one manning an empty table in this parking lot in Oakland’s rapidly-changing Uptown neighborhood. Despite mediocre weather, hundreds of hungry people turned up the East Bay’s first Underground Market, a food event somewhat akin to a farmer’s market except it’s only for members, and – more significantly – it doesn’t require vendors to have permits or to use commercial kitchens.

They ate everything in sight: steaming paella with mussels and shrimp, pulled pork, heirloom tomato salad, quail, braised skirt steak, pork buns, vegan black bean tamales, gourmet mac and cheese, and at least four different styles of cupcakes.

After signing up as a member and paying $2 to enter the lot, one could also taste an abundance of jams – including spicy jalapeño, peach vanilla bourbon, and absinthe Bing cherry – hot pizza and calzones cooked on site, unbaked goods like raw, vegan chili chocolate torte and “living food” raw cupcakes. Actual baked goods were also available: fresh bread, Florentines and other cookies, items that looked like cookies but were called bars, and things that looked like bars but were called cookies.

Iso Rabins, an aspiring chef and wild food proponent, founded the Underground Market in 2009 to promote the food creations of those who found it too difficult or too expensive to get their fare into a farmers’ market. It’s been serving foodies in San Francisco ever since, and on Saturday, it came to Oakland for the first time.

Jam samples.

Farmers’ market rules vary depending on the city, but vendors can be required to prepare foods in commercial kitchens and to secure insurance, in case someone gets sick from the food. For the Underground Market, vendors pay 10 percent of their sales to participate and have to pass food auditions.

The market’s officially a “club,” and eaters have to sign up before entering the market, so the city’s food restrictions don’t apply. Anyone can join online, for free, by agreeing that they will, as the Underground Market’s website puts it, “have the option to consume products that may have been produced in a space not inspected by the health department (we need to say that to stay out of jail).”

Oakland-based Venga Paella Catering.

Some of the vendors on Saturday have sold their wares at places that require licenses, like Fresh Bite Baking’s founders Cindy Tsai Schultz and Terry Betts, whose baked items sell at the Lafayette farmer’s market. Based in Berkeley, the bakers have a $1 million insurance policy and a health permit. But they’re small and still interested in selling Underground.

On Saturday, Betts and Tsai Schultz were serving cookies, pork buns, and a savory vegetarian “pastie,” a baked turnover from Cornish tradition. The women have started a weekly bakery box. “Instead of a CSA it’s a CSB, with two sweet and two savory items,” Betts said.

Last week’s box had baked polenta with fresh corn and mozzarella, pesto focaccia, chocolate banana bread and strawberry “not-pop” tarts. They’re planning to sell their goods out of Ashby Marketplace, a small new grocery near College Avenue.

Vegetarian pastie from Fresh Bite Baking.

Other vendors had more dramatic food, like “Pizza Hacker” Jeff Krupman, who was rapidly pulling pizzas from a homemade, portable wood-fired oven.

Really more of a modified Weber grill than a proper wood-fired oven, Krupman’s oven burns wood like a traditional pizza oven, but it’s far lighter, made of concrete that Krupman cast himself, and optimized to bake pizzas in just a few minutes. (See a video here).

Unlike the standard ovens, this one heats up quickly and can be disassembled, cooled off, and plopped into a pickup truck to be taken to catered events, markets, or the park. “I was looking into building an oven in the backyard, something portable,” Krupman said. He started reading about oven design and tinkering with ideas in about January 2009 and launched a working oven last summer. Now Krupman is working on commercializing it.

Jesper Jensen, a baker helping out with the nearby Bread Project table, was watching Krupman as he sweated by the hot oven, which itself was more of a curiosity than the pizza it was cooking. Jensen pulled out a remote thermometer and aimed it at the interior wall of the oven  — 720 Farenheit.

Also hot at the market – with the longest line – was Mission Cheese, with a special cheese melting device that toasted individual servings of raw cow’s milk raclette, right off the top of a large cheese round. Heated until it began to bubble and brown, each serving was scraped off the top onto a pile of Yukon potatoes with pickles. By the end of the night, the table had gone through about 30 pounds of cheese, according to Sarah Dvorak, Mission Cheese founder.

Melted raclette (cheese) scraped to top potatoes, prepared by Mission Cheese.

To the live tunes of Oakland-based Beat Beat Whisper, Saturday’s market featured plenty of cooks from San Francisco, but more than half were East Bay locals, with a smattering hailing from other cities, like Santa Cruz and even Los Angeles.

Julie Perez drove up from L.A. to serve moist cakes with a heavenly texture, made with aromatics like orange oil and enhanced with a little help from alcohol. “In the middle of these there’s this luscious little sweet spot where it’s been soaking in liquor and butter and sugar,” Perez said about her cakes, which she’s selling under the name Immaculate Confections.  “People love the liquor,” she said.

Also popular was a delicate, pink, strawberry-habanero salsa, called Strawberry Xibalba, made with homegrown chilies and served on vegan black bean tamales by Hella Vegan Eats, a young, West Oakland-based trio.

These three cooks, who are also roommates, are currently working on bike delivery in Oakland and regularly serve up their self-proclaimed “cruelty-free” tamales at Art Murmur. Constantly developing new recipes, the three conduct their own version of a favorite competitive cooking show on Bravo.

Hella Vegan Eats crew serving tamales, salsas, and vegan ice cream.

“We’re really inspired by Top Chef,” said Hella Vegan Eats member James Rauschenberg. He and his two roommates set challenges for each other, budgeting out their own meals, cooking, and inviting friends to come over and judge their three-way competitions.

The next East Bay market hasn’t been advertised yet, but events are posted here, as well as on Twitter here.

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In the shade of large, leafy lettuce and kale and tall stalks of beans, approximately 150 Bay Area residents met Saturday at the Saint Martin de Porres Elementary School garden to show their support for the nonprofit organization that planted it to give Oakland students a chance to learn about nutrition. The Oakland Based Urban Gardens organization kicked off their third-annual art and garden tour and main fundraiser by showing off just what their students have accomplished in North Oakland.

Oakland Based Urban Gardens, or OBUGS, provides in-school and after-school programs and summer camps for children ages 2 to 16 in eight different Oakland schools or day care centers. Seven of the program’s nine gardens are in West Oakland; the Saint Martin de Porres campus hosts the only OBUGS garden that serves students in North Oakland. The program serves about 700 youth a year, giving them a chance to learn proper nutrition habits and to grow and cook their own food. “We’re another [after-school program] option,” said Erin-Kate Escobar, OBUGS’ volunteer and internship program coordinator. “Like you can do football or band or basketball, you can do OBUGS.”

The organization funds itself primarily through grants, but uses the annual garden tour as its main fundraiser and to get community members involved. Attendees paid $65 before the event or $75 at the door (bicyclists paid a discounted rate of $40), which admitted them into the Saint Martin de Porres student garden in Oakland and three private home gardens in Lafayette. Many garden aficionados attended, as did friends and family of the founders and staff; all were encouraged to stop by the Oakland student garden first before driving or taking BART to Lafayette.

The Saint Martin de Poores school garden boasts an overflowing herb section.

The Saint Martin de Porres garden sits in a tiny lot in front of the school on 40^th Street, and served as the first stop on Saturday’s tour.  The students and OBUGS staff and volunteers have transformed what used to be an empty, concrete lot into a green haven, blanketed with mulch below. A purple chain-link fence protects the vegetables, which are planted in raised beds. Fruit trees, including cherry, persimmon, apple, fig and pear, line the inside edge of the fence, and a butterfly garden graces the front of the garden nearest 40^th Street.

Brightly colored signs stood out amidst the plants to identify what is currently planted, including strawberries, tomatoes, winter squash, zucchini, lettuce, cucumber, eggplant, carrots, beans, kale, spinach, and corn. An herb garden sits near the entrance; students are harvesting parsley, chives, tarragon, thyme, sage, lemon verbena, cilantro, oregano, sorrel, and mint. A bin with other colorful signs was placed near the gate, a reminder of other vegetables that had been planted in the past or in another season.

OBUGS staff members had placed colorful signs with children’s faces around the garden to show attendees who they were supporting and how the organization helps them. Students had written out answers to questions, such as “What is your favorite thing about OBUGS?” (“When we get to have pet snails,” wrote second-grader Haley) and “What has OBUGS taught you about growing food?” (“About plants and how plants have babies,” wrote third-grader Kelly.)

“We’re mainly emphasizing healthy eating,” Escobar said. “We’re not here to emphasize vegetarianism or veganism or anything like that. It’s more like, are you getting fruits and vegetables? Are you able to eat a balanced meal? A lot of [our students] don’t have that much access to this sort of knowledge or this plethora of fruits and vegetables surrounding them. So that’s really what we’re stressing with kids: Try everything, try to get a balance, try to eat a rainbow of colors in every meal. You’ve got to have as many colors as you can in every meal that you’re eating. And we talk about what those colors do for our bodies, how they affect us in different ways.”

Colorful signs help students and visitors alike navigate around the Saint Martin de Porres school garden, a project of the Oakland Based Urban Gardens.

OBUGS was founded in 1998 by longtime friends Margaret Majua of Lafayette and Dorothy Noyon of San Francisco after a discussion they had about how they could help other families. “We were talking about how the plight of single moms and how hard it was to be a single mom. From that conversation we started thinking, ‘Well, maybe we should try to do something to help families that aren’t as fortunate as our families,’” said Majua. “Since we’re both gardeners, and we met gardening, we’re passionate about gardening. We decided to do some kind of program in a garden setting.”

“We knew that a garden is an extraordinary place where many things can happen,” said Noyon. “Not just gardening, but peace and happiness to the children and the adults. It can be used for many, many purposes.”

They chose West Oakland as a starting place quite by accident—not knowing much about the differences in Oakland neighborhoods, they put their roots in the neighborhood closest to Majua’s office in Jack London Square. Their first garden opened in 1998 at the Lafayette Elementary School on 18^th Street and Market, with Majua and Noyon teaching the after school classes themselves.

Students take a hands-on approach in the gardens in all of the programs OBUGS offers; in fact, staff and volunteers consider the gardens to be the students’. The program works with the host schools to provide a science-based curriculum that focuses on nutrition. The after-school and summer camp programs also focus on nutrition, but allow students more time to spend in the garden planting, harvesting, and cooking their own food.

“At first we didn’t realize the importance of nutrition,” said Noyon. “Very quickly we realized we needed to focus on the importance of nutrition in a neighborhood that is very poor, that has very few stores and very bad food habits. So little by little we have put much more emphasis on nutrition.”

Regular OBUGS volunteers, like Debbie Lindemann of Oakland, were on hand to guide visitors through the garden and then on to the day’s next events, which included viewing professional architects’ gardens at their homes in Lafayette. She and her family got involved two years ago as a service project affiliated with her daughter’s Oakland high school.

“We got involved because we like eating healthy. The programs that they offer through the elementary schools, the community gardens, and the school gardens we thought [were] in line with how we think people should think,” Lindemann said. “And we liked the school programs, where it’s not just having the gardens, it’s teaching the children about the gardens.”

Visitors who had never seen an OBUGS garden before Saturday strolled slowly through the plots, and some, like gardener Paula Delehanty of Fairfax, took notes for their own home gardens. “I’m just really impressed, not only with what they’re doing for the kids but with how beautiful this garden is,” she said. “Not only is it that the plants look beautiful but the place looks beautiful. They created a space that looks very pretty and aesthetically pleasing, too.”

For Majua, that pretty garden is the first step in making a difference for the children who come into her gardens each day. She hopes that they will take the knowledge they’ve gained about the Earth and the food they eat—as well as the food itself—to their families and friends.

“You know, it’s very corny and very simple, but the goal of OBUGS is just to change the life of one person who might change the life of another person who might change the life of another person,” she said.

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Richard Lee is president of Oaksterdam University, a cannabis trade school located in downtown Oakland. He’s also a driving force behind the November state ballot initiative, Proposition 19, to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana in California. Oakland is also considering raising the business tax rate for pot-related businesses from 1.8 percent; voters would decide in November whether to raise the tax.

This week, the Oakland City Council approved on first read a city-wide plan for the cultivation of medical marijuana in four new large-scale factories. If the ordinance passes next week, production permits would be issued in January.

Lee recently spoke with Oakland North’s Sam Laird for this audio podcast.

You can listen to other podcasts on Oakland North Radio.

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As the 2010 midterm elections approach, Obama supporters are trying to get Oaklanders to think positively about the healthcare reform bill signed into law this past March. Organizing for America, the grassroots network that helped elect President Barack Obama, held a healthcare teach-in for Oakland residents and community organizers at their downtown office on Tuesday evening, July 20.

“People are out there trying to change or repeal the healthcare reform bill,” Linda Leu, an analyst with the statewide healthcare advocacy group, Health Access, told the standing-room only crowd of some 80 people. “We need to be out there letting people know what’s good about it,” she said.

The hard-fought Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—the country’s first major healthcare reform in nearly 100 years—continues to take hits from both sides of the political spectrum. Conservatives have called for a repeal, saying the law amounts to socialized health care, and will eliminate patients’ right to choose providers and services. On the left, some have criticized the law for failing to ensure healthcare for all Americans through a single-payer system, and for not doing enough to curb skyrocketing health care costs.

At the teach-in on Tuesday, healthcare reform advocates said the law wasn’t perfect, but a step in the right direction. “We’re expanding coverage, we will have better benefits, we’ll begin to control costs,” said Ellen Schaffer, co-director of the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health, a San Francisco-based, public health advocacy group. “We’re not going to do all of that this month.”

Leu and Schaffer explained key points of the healthcare reform law to the crowd assembled in the Organizing for America office, which included a mix of Obama supporters and Oakland residents hoping to understand how the reform will affect their families. Attendees sat in rows of folding chairs, and stood against walls tacked with campaign maps, activity calendars

and a large, pixilated sketch of a smiling President Obama.

Schaffer explained how and when different interest groups will be affected by the new law. As of January, small businesses that provide health benefits to their workers have been eligible for tax credits worth up to 35 percent of the employer’s contribution to employees’ insurance plan.

As of June, seniors who are covered under Medicare will receive a one-time, tax-free check for $250 to help close the so-called “donut hole”—a coverage gap that forces many seniors to pay full-cost for some prescription drugs—for the rest of this year. Next year, Medicare recipients facing the donut hole will receive 50 percent off their brand name drugs.

In late September (for healthcare plans and policies that begin on or after the 23^rd of that month), young adults will have the option of staying on their parents’ healthcare plan until they turn 26 years old. Currently, young adults represent one of every five uninsured people in the United States, according to HealthCare.gov, a government website that provides information about the reform.

Also starting September 23, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny coverage for children age 18 and under because of a pre-existing condition. This rule will expand to all age groups by 2014.

Until then, California will cover residents who are unable to get insurance in the private

market under its newly expanded Major Risk Medical Insurance Program. Under the program, participants pay premiums that are subsidized by the state. California has offered this coverage since 1991, but limited funding has led to a long waiting list for eligible patients. New federal funding will help quadruple the number of high-risk Californians covered under the program from the current 7,000, according to Health Access. The state plans to begin taking applications for the program in August, with coverage beginning in September, according to Leu.

Also for health plans beginning in September, insurance providers can no longer rescind coverage if they determine a patient failed to reveal a preexisting condition, except in cases of outright fraud or when an insurance applicant intentionally misstates the facts on his or her application. Plus, all new health plans must cover preventive services without charging a deductible or co-pay, although the list of covered preventive services has yet to be finalized.

Addressing one of the main concerns of health reform opponents, Leu said Tuesday night that people who are happy with their existing healthcare plans will not be forced to make changes. “The president said over and over and over again, if you like it, you can keep it,” she said.

Nevertheless, when a woman in the audience later asked Leu and Schaffer if the law would guarantee she could keep her doctor, Schaffer was less conclusive. “Managed care was tried in the 1990s and I don’t think people will put up with that,” she said.

In fact, insurance companies are already piloting plans that provide reduced premiums in exchange for a more limited selection of doctors and hospitals, according to a recent article in the New York Times. Under these plans, patients who wish to see doctors outside of established networks may pay more or all of the cost. Whether or not these plans will catch on is yet to be seen.

Participants at the teach-in shared their healthcare nightmares.

Audience member Quenby Morrow brought up a second, longstanding debate about healthcare reform—how much can the law actually do to cap insurance costs to consumers? Morrow said she’s currently covered under COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act), a government program that extends health benefits for workers who lose their jobs and accompanying health benefits. Her COBRA benefits are set to expire in November. If she can’t find a job with health benefits before then, Morrow wondered how she would get health insurance for herself, her 11-year old daughter, and her husband, who was recently diagnosed with a heart condition.

“Is there anything?” asked Morrow, who lives in Montclair. Her insurance provider can’t drop coverage for the family after her COBRA benefits expire, explained Leu and Schaffer, but there are no limits on how much it can charge for continued coverage.

Still, several bills currently in the California legislature would put limits on rate hikes. One, AB 2578, would make insurance companies get state approval before raising premiums, deductibles and co-payments. Another, AB 2042, would limit rate hikes to one a year for individual insurance companies and other benefit providers.

After Leu and Schaffer concluded their presentations and took a series of questions, meeting attendees broke into groups by neighborhood to share their own healthcare woes, and to strategize regarding how to talk to others about the reform act. Conversations were loud and animated—a testament to the passion sparked by the issue.

Gerhart Kneisse, who lives in Hiller Highlands, in the North Oakland hills, said he came to the event for both political and personal reasons. “These discussions come up [about the healthcare reform act], and I want to be able to combat all the false rumors out there,” said Kneisse.

Kneisse said his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer 14 years ago, and was subsequently refused long-term healthcare three times because of her pre-existing condition. She has since recovered, and has health benefits through her employer, Apple. But Kneisse said his wife, who’s 63, can’t afford to retire because her health care costs would be too high.

“I hoped she could retire before 65 so we could do things together,” said Kneisse, who’s 75 and retired. “We’ll have to wait for Medicare,” he said resignedly.

—

For government information on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, visit http://www.healthcare.gov

For information on healthcare bills in the California legislature, and how the federal healthcare reform affects Californians, visit http://www.health-access.org

For information on the Major Risk Medical Insurance Program for high-risk Californians, visit http://www.mrmib.ca.gov

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In a lively, standing room only meeting, the Oakland city council voted Tuesday night to approve on first reading a city-wide plan for the cultivation of medical marijuana in four new large-scale factories.

After three hours of debate, which included 125 speakers during the public comment session, the council voted 5 to 2 in favor of the plan, with North Oakland’s councilmember, Council President Jane Brunner, abstaining. Councilmembers Jean Quan and Nancy Nadel voted against the plan. If the ordinance passes next week, requests for proposals would be submitted to the city this fall, with marijuana production permits being issued next January.

Under the plan, which was co-written by Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid, the city would issue cultivation, manufacturing and processing permits for large-scale facilities that grow cannabis for medical purposes. The ordinance, if passed next week, would make Oakland the first city in the country to authorize wholesale pot cultivation, ahead of other California cities currently debating similar measures, including neighbors Berkeley and Richmond.

“I support this. It’s a growing industry,” said councilmember and mayoral candidate Jean Quan, who later voted against the ordinance because specific eligibility criteria for the facilities was not included in a resolution to be voted on by the council. Referring to Proposition 19, which will appear on the November statewide ballot and if passed would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, Quan said, “If you’re going to have a growing use in the state, even if the state proposition doesn’t pass, the volume of medical marijuana and high-quality marijuana that is regulated is going to grow. Oakland has been a pioneer in this area.”

Facilities that apply for and receive the city’s cannabis permits would not be limited in square footage—meaning they could grow as much cannabis as their facility would hold. City staff estimate approximately 6,000 pounds of cannabis were produced in the city last year in approximately 45,000 square feet of cultivation space.

Jeff Wilcox, a local businessman, plans to open a 7.4 acre complex near the Oakland airport that could produce as many as 21,000 pounds of cannabis annually. He argued the large-scale factories would provide jobs and income for the city, but only if the city acted quickly.

“Do you want to be the Silicon Valley of cannabis?” Wilcox asked the council. “The issue is, you’re late. If Oakland wants to do this, you’ve got to do it. Berkeley is starting. Other cities are looking into it. If you don’t start this, other people are going to.”

People who spoke in support of the ordinance spoke to the city’s growing debt as a reason to vote to pass the measure, saying that taxes on the new businesses would raise city revenues. The cultivation, manufacturing and processing permits would cost $5,000 per year. In addition, each facility that received a permit would be charged a regulatory fee of $211,000 and be required to carry at least $2 million in liability insurance. Oakland currently receives 1.8 percent in sales tax from the sale of medical marijuana.

Oakland’s four permitted dispensaries generated $28 million in profits in 2009. The dispensaries paid local growers $18 million for the marijuana they then distributed throughout the state.

“This issue is about jobs and taxes,” said Dan Rush, a statewide director for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local #5. “The city has the opportunity to put 80 police officers back to work, to reopen libraries, to put city workers back to work, to do a real good job to put debt to bed. We should do everything to create those jobs.”

But residents who support small- and medium-sized cannabis farming spoke against the plan, saying the ordinance would put them out of business.

“I speak for the small and medium-sized growers who have faithfully provided medical marijuana even in the face of prosecution,” said Steve DeAngelo, the executive director of Harborside Health Center, the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the world. “They’ve done the best they could to grow marijuana in responsible ways. They are decent people with families to support. They need to pay their rent. They’ve been coming to me terrified, asking me to do something to stand up for their interests so that legislation is not passed that will take their livelihoods from them.”

Other small cannabis growers told the council they would be “excited” to participate in the permit process. “This absolutely needs to be regulated,” said Jesse Lyons, a residential farmer. Small cannabis growers, he said, are “excited to come out of the closet.”

Small cannabis farms would be eligible to apply for the permits if they formed collectives with other small farms; nevertheless, they can still remain in business, as long as their grow operation is no bigger than 96 square feet. But medium-sized cannabis farms, which are often for-profit entities, would have a harder time becoming eligible to apply. Another ordinance will be introduced to the Public Safety Committee this fall to address providing permits for medium-sized growers.

Stricter enforcement for cannabis farmers is also included in the ordinance. Much of Oakland’s cannabis is currently grown in private homes or large factories, oftentimes illegally. City officials estimate that a rise in electrical fires in Oakland, from 133 in 2006 to 276 in 2009, is directly related to indoor residential cannabis cultivation. Increased robberies, burglaries and homicides related to cannabis cultivation were also stated in the ordinance as concerns of city safety officials.

People who apply for the facility permits would be subjected to many of the same requirements as the marijuana dispensaries have been: background checks, tests of legal knowledge, a business plan review and a site and planning review. The applicants will be ranked by a point system; the city plans to issue four facility permits during the first year the ordinance is in effect and would reevaluate the program and potentially distribute more permits after the first year.

A major point of contention, both in public comment and during the council debate, concerned taxing the facilities. The city council will deliberate in a special session Thursday night whether to increase the business tax rate for cannabis businesses, which is currently $18 per $1,000, or 1.8 percent. An initiative will likely be put on the November ballot to raise the tax rate, which Oakland voters would have to approve. The new rate to be placed on the ballot will be debated by the council and determined Thursday night, but speakers on Tuesday warned the city council not to consider raising the tax too high.

“If you want to start the Silicon Valley of cannabis, don’t set tax rates so high that you kill the baby before its born,” said James Anthony, of Harborside Health Center. “You’ll need to maintain some level of regional tax parity or Oakland will lose business to surrounding cities.”

The criteria for determining who would receive a permit was also a source of debate in the meeting, with councilmembers Brunner, Quan and Nadel asking council staff to draft a resolution stating specific criteria for eligibility. Other councilmembers declined to do so, saying that getting too specific in a resolution would force the council to open the matter again in a council meeting if they needed to change anything at a later date. Quan and Nadel ended up voting against the plan, largely because of the absence of such criteria, while Brunner abstained from the final vote.

The council will hear the second reading next Tuesday morning, July 27, and officially vote on the plan before they recess for the summer.

California voters passed Proposition 215, the California Compassionate Use Act, in November 1996, which allowed patients and their primary caregivers to cultivate cannabis for their own medical use. In January 2004, state senate bill SB 240 allowed medical cannabis collectives or cooperatives to be established and provided the guidelines for how much cannabis a person can cultivate. The city of Oakland allowed four city-wide dispensaries to begin distributing cannabis to patients in February 2004. Three of those dispensaries are still selling medical marijuana.

In 2005, Oakland voters passed Measure Z by over 60 percent, which allows for the licensing, taxation and regulation of medical marijuana within the city. Oakland voters also passed Measure F in June 2009, which allows the city to tax its medical marijuana dispensaries.

This summer, Oakland became the first city in California to institute a pot tax.

Thursday’s  special session of the Oakland City Council will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the council chambers.

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Are you just about done with all the summer squash coming out of your garden? Or been eyeing the neighbor’s plum tree, wishing you had some of your own? There’s a bench in North Oakland’s Mosswood Park where you can trade away your excess harvest and pick up something else you like.

The Mosswood plant and produce exchange offers a space for neighbors to barter herbs, fruits, vegetables, seeds and plants with their fellow gardening buffs. Several members of the Greater Mosswood Neighborhood Association organize the weekly, Saturday morning exchange, which began just a month ago. Already, there are big ideas for the future.

“We hope it’ll get bigger and some day be a farmers market-type thing,” said Karen Hancock, one of the organizers.

Participants in the Mosswood produce exchange discuss the items up for barter.

For now, the exchange is refreshingly informal. Shortly after 11 a.m. on July 3, Hancock and three other gardeners sat in the patio of the abandoned building adjacent to the Mosswood community garden, offering donut holes to incoming exchangers. Along the garden side of the building, a long wooden bench served as the barter table. Jars of dried herbs flanked a wooden tray displaying green beans and two types of squash. There were bags of plums, snap peas, homemade potpourri sticks, and even a jar of vinegar made from the popular fermented drink, kombucha.

Two more women walked in with a bag of lettuce, a handful of lavender stems and some squash blossoms. Soon, everyone was out of their chairs and perusing the items on the bench. Gloria Bruce, who recently moved to the neighborhood with her wife, examined the potpourri sticks.

“I’d be happy to trade you one for some squash blossoms,” said Diana Young, who made the sticks, along with the kombucha vinegar, and a tangy sauerkraut that she later spread on crackers for the exchangers to sample. Done deal. The two women swapped their wares.

The exchanging went on casually among talk of gardening and neighborhood happenings.  Soon, Theresa Halula walked in and plopped down a shallow, blue bucket full of pepper and tomato seedlings—extras from a friend who owns a nursery. Minutes later, she and Hancock left the marketplace and began preparing the dirt in a nearby garden bed, to plant some of the seedlings. Hancock, who’s been unemployed for a year, plans to start gardening the raised bed with local teens.

In fact, the actual exchanging of produce is just one part of the weekly event.

“Even if there’s not a lot of produce getting exchanged, we’re getting together and talking about things,” said A.J. Benham, who’s a nurse practitioner.

“It’s nice to organize around something positive,” said Andrea Snedeker, who chairs the Greater Mosswood Neighborhood Association.

“Yeah,” agreed Benham.

“Not fighting against anyone,” added Snedeker, who described herself as “very vocal” in community affairs.

Karen Hancock (left) and Theresa Halula (right) do some impromptu gardening at the exchange.

Talk wandered from gardening tips to the nearby Kaiser expansion. Hancock handed out fliers for two upcoming trainings on emergency preparedness. Soon it was well past the two hours allotted for the exchange. The remaining participants began to divvy up the unclaimed produce.

“Does anyone want these last snow peas that are left?” asked Hancock.

“I’ll trade you for the green beans,” said Benham. Done.

Ultimately, Hancock said, she hopes to organize the neighborhood’s backyard gardeners and get them more involved in the community garden at Mosswood. She’s also thinking about organizing garden work exchanges, where neighbors volunteer to help each other out with pruning, weeding or other garden chores.

“I never thought of myself as a community organizer, but that’s what I’m doing,” said Hancock, who, after a year of unsuccessful job hunting, is thinking about retiring at her 61 years of age. A barter-style Mosswood farmers market may be coming soon after all.

The Mosswood plant and produce exchange happens every Saturday from 11 am to noon at the Mosswood community garden, on the corner of Webster Street and MacArthur Boulevard.

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Big bikes, small bikes, kid’s bikes and tall bikes — they were all out in force on Sunday. It was Oakland’s first Oaklavía—an event that closed down the Broadway corridor, from Grand Avenue to Jack London Square, to all cars. Bikes, pedestrians, unicyclists and rollerbladers cruised up and down the street checking out the booths and activities on the sidewalks.

Map of the Oaklavia route.

Oaklavía was put together by Walk Oakland Bike Oakland which partnered with the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, Oaklandish, Oakland YMCA, Cycles of Change, and other Oakland organizations to create their version of San Francisco’s “Sunday Streets.” They hired a production crew and worked with the Oakland Police Department to come up with the best way to block off the streets. “I’m so excited, it’s like a dream come true,” said Kassie Rohrbach, the executive director of Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, as she watched people coast up and down Broadway. “Everything just feels so colorful in the street.”

Among the activities lining the street were a “Kids Bike Town,” which helped little ones learn how to ride bikes better, bands playing everything from hip-hop to jazz to rock, bubble blowing machines, hula-hooping classes, food carts, bicycle advocacy organizations and even a Michael Jackson-style dance class where anyone could join in and learn the famous “Thriller” dance.

A few elected officials showed up, including Alameda county supervisor Nate Miley and board members from AC Transit and BART. “I came to get to see this in action in Oakland,” said Bob Franklin, vice-president of the BART Board of Directors. “It’s great to run free in the streets.” Oaklavía also had support from the Oakland City Council.

Oaklavía is modeled on Ciclovía, which is a yearly festival where people take to the streets in Bogotá, Columbia. Ciclovía began in 1976 and now cities all over the world—including Cleveland, El Paso, Miami, Melbourne, Australia and Mexico City—have followed suit making their own car-free recreation events in city streets. The overall goal of these events is multi-fold; it’s to get people outdoors, show people there’s an alternative to cars, to foster community and also showcase local businesses.

The entire event cost $30,000, which, according to Rohrbach, was done on a shoestring budget. “San Francisco did two ‘Sunday Streets’ their first year and then did nine this year,” she said. “We’re hoping we’ll have a similar growth rate.” She plans to have the next Oaklavía in Fruitvale, and then possibly another one that stretches from Oakland to Berkeley on Telegraph Avenue. “I can’t wait to do the next one,” she said.

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