by MELANIE MASON and HENRY JONES Dec. 1–While retail sales the day after Thanksgiving exceeded expectations, most independent retailers here in North Oakland were removed from the spending frenzy of Black Friday. It wasn’t because of the economic troubles, necessarily—they typically miss out on the action. “Everyone gets drawn away to the big stores,” said Carlo Busby, president of the Temescal Merchants Association and owner of Sagrada boutique, of Black Friday. “As an independent business, we can’t do the deep…
Named after a Rockridge pediatrician who was murdered a decade ago, this free service brings volunteer doctors to children who need them. Click here for the story.
by SAMSON REINY A few times a year, Liz Maxwell drives from her home in Rockridge up to Calistoga, in the Napa Valley. For the past 40 years, she has walked the scenic little town for inspiration. She’ll bring a point-and-shoot camera and snap everything around her. “It might be a cracked road, moss growing on rock, or the patterns that are left on a wall from dead ivy leaves, they all give me ideas,” she says. But sometimes she…
by LINNEA EDMEIER Nov. 18 – On a grassy hillside in Oakland, overlooking the bay, survivors and loved ones gathered this morning to unveil memorial stones to honor the lives of more than 900 people who died in the Jonestown tragedy thirty years ago today. In 1978 the news from Guyana was unfathomable. A group of people had carved out what was supposed to be a utopian existence in a South American jungle community, and then died all at once,…
by MAGGIE FAZELI FARD Nov. 21–A bicyclist was mugged and threatened four doors from her Locksley Avenue home last week in an incident that police call “a random act,” but that worried neighbors and may have been the second attack on a local cyclist in recent weeks.
by MELANIE MASON Nov. 15–“Are you happy not to have to cross the bridge for justice today?” That was the question posed by Richard Wright, an Oakland-based blogger and activist, to an estimated 500 Oakland residents this morning, as they gathered in downtown’s Frank H. Ogawa Plaza to protest Proposition 8, the ballot measure to amend the state constitution to prohibit gay marriage, which passed by a 52-48 margin.
by ANNA BLOOM Nov. 14– Alongside whooping football fans glued to flat-screen TVs, and above the excited murmur of someone’s birthday party table, young Democrats crowded into Arsimona’s bar in downtown Oakland last night for a festive gathering of their own. One week and two days since voters named Barack Obama U.S. President-elect and Rebecca Kaplan Oakland city-councilwoman-elect, they had reason to ring up their bills with good cheer. Among the crowd were spokespersons from the city attorney’s office, a…
by SAMSON REINY Nov. 14–In a packed auditorium at Montera Middle School last night, Oakland Police Cpt. Anthony Toribio commended both the Montclair neighborhood and Oakland officers for capturing two suspects believed to have been involved in a number of forced-entry burglaries in the Oakland Hills throughout September and October. Charles Langley and Kevin Simmons are charged with multiple felonies, and as more forensic evidence becomes available, more charges will likely be added. On Oct. 28, officers apprehended the duo…
by LINNEA EDMEIER Nov. 13–Shouting through megaphones and chanting “No more cuts,” protestors crowded the entrance of the state building in downtown Oakland today. Brandishing multi-colored posters and hand-held signs in Korean, Mandarin, Spanish and English, the protesters stood, or leaned on walkers or sat in wheelchairs to deliver their message to the office of State Senator Don Perata: more cuts to human services are not the answer to the state’s budget woes. “These are not extras we are asking…
Let eight artists loose on a very tight deadline (eight minutes!) for a very good cause–and OK, there’s some mess to clean up afterward. Click here for the story.
As the drama neared its crescendo on Nov. 4, Mary Green-King faced one big challenge before 8:00 PM: Would her aged, ailing aunt be able to cast her vote? Click here for the story.
Around local houses of worship, some ministers spent the first days after the election grappling with the spiritual message to be taken from Barack Obama’s victory. Click here for the story.
by OAKLAND NORTH STAFF Starting at 9:01 on November 4, and for the next 14 hours, Oakland North reporters Christina Salerno and Linnea Edmeieir presided from our newsroom over a live conversation among the community–with input from other O.N. readers as far-flung as Switzerland. From the first polling place lines to the street celebrations as the deciding electoral votes were announced, what follows is one real-time chronicle of history unfolding in our neighborhood. 9:01: ON Welcome to Oakland North’s…
by ISABEL ESTERMAN Nov. 13–Nanci, 50, a teacher living in Montclair, hardly ever uses her front door. She and her family just go in through the carport. But one bright Tuesday afternoon in September, a burglar came right through it. “They just broke the door,” says Nanci, who asked her last name be withheld because of the recent burglary. The deadbolt was locked, she and her husband say, but their hollow-core door barely slowed the burglar down. It gave way…
“Just like the body can be sick from being exposed to hot and cold,” the Reverend Roland Stringfellow said today, “my soul was sick from being exposed to jubilation over Obama’s election and defeat from the passage of Prop 8.”
By OAKLAND NORTH STAFF Nov. 6 – Before Dan Lopez left his house Tuesday night, he didn’t check to see whether a hot iron was plugged in or a pot of water left to boil over on the stove–he double-checked the digital video recorder. He needed to make sure he’d gotten it all. Lopez drove to the Rockridge BART station to pick up his wife, Meghan. Meghan was trying to ignore her cell phone, buzzing with text messages from friends…
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