Hiroko Kurihara is building the 25th Street Collective step by step—recruiting other entrepreneurs to share the space with her brand, making improvements to the interior, and fundraising on the collective’s web site. The collective will allow businesses to share space, resources, employees and feedback from fellow artisans.

With all eyes fixed on the North African nation, two Egyptian-born scholars drew a riveted audience at Mills College in Oakland on Wednesday night at an event dedicated to discussing the revolution’s finer points.

Oaklandish is on the hunt for its 2011 Innovators of the Year. Oaklandish, a non-profit organization that focuses on arts promotion and community building, gives out several grants each year to non-profit groups doing pioneering work in the community. Whether your non-profit focuses on art, education, technology, or business, this grant may be for you.

On Friday night, art and love enthusiasts hit up The Crucible’s Fireside Lounge event in West Oakland. The Crucible, an education facility specializing in industrial arts, welcomed the public in for an evening of art, music, libations, demonstrations by faculty and, of course, a kissing robot.

On Saturday and Sunday, Oakland’s Chinese community came out to buy, sell and celebrate at the New Year Lunar Bazaar. The bazaar, which was started by the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce in 1991, takes place every year at 9th and Franklin Streets in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza.

This morning, the Oakland Police Department released new details about the January 26 shooting of Martin Flenaugh, 19, by police. According to an OPD press release, police were investigating reports of gunshots fired near the 7600 block of Lockwood late Wednesday afternoon by two men in a red Infinity.  The police pursued a car matching that description, which ran a red light, crashed into another vehicle, spun out and burst into flames near the 8500 block of San Leandro. Jereme Brown,…

Mike Taft isn’t an artist in the traditional sense. But when his entire live-work apartment complex was having an open house art party on Friday—one that he founded and organized—he was of course going to find a way to entertain the crowd. “I’m grinding down a piece of plywood with an angle grinder,” the industrial designer said with a grin.

Sitting before a semi-circle of her peers at Chabot Elementary, fifth-grader Nyah read aloud from her story, Alia and Andrew and the Story of the Odd Objects. It’s a novel, and she wrote the whole thing this fall. Her audience, consisting of nine fellow classmates and instructor Sondra Hall, were gathered on a Tuesday for the semester’s last session of “Take My Word For It!,” an afterschool workshop developed by Hall.

Supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage must now wait for the results of Monday morning’s Proposition 8 hearing before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The hearing from the crowded courtroom in San Francisco was broadcast live on C-SPAN and streamed on the Internet.

Oakland police have arrested a man in conjunction with a shooting that took place last night, December 1st, near the 1500 block of Madison Street.

Oakland brought World AIDS Day, recognized globally every December 1, to the local level on Wednesday with an evening of recognition at Allen Temple Baptist Church. Members of local health nonprofits, activists and concerned neighbors gathered at the East Oakland house of worship to trade information and to shine a spotlight on a disease that has plagued this city and many others for decades.

The Oakland Police Department released sketches of two men suspected of robbing and sexually assaulting three women in West Oakland. Police and Crime Stoppers of Oakland are offering up to $30,000 in reward money for information leading to the suspects’ arrest.

On Monday, the Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Press released its annual City Crime Rate Rankings list, which ranks cities from highest number of crimes reported to lowest. Little has changed since last year—the top five remain the same—and Oakland, California, is still one of them. The good news, sort of, is that Oakland has dropped out of third place and is now No. 5.