Dancers with the Oakland Ballet Company have spent the past month preparing for this year’s production of “The Nutcracker. The shows, which will be presented at the Paramount Theater, are scheduled for Christmas weekend, but you can listen in on a rehearsal in this audio piece.
After meeting resistance three years ago to a proposal for converting a lakeside parking garage into a 37-story apartment building, a local real estate developer is back with what he says is a greener, more innovative plan for the project.
This Wednesday, Oakland residents who follow the Jewish faith will join millions of people around the world in celebrating Hanukkah. The eight-day “festival of light” begins in the third month of the Hebrew calendar on the eve of Kislev 25, which falls either at the end of November or at the beginning of December on the Gregorian calendar. The religious holiday commemorates the triumph of light over darkness.
For anybody who drives a car, one Thanksgiving holiday perk, aside from the excess of food, is free time all day in a decent parking space. But this reward also has limits that can lead drivers to pay a heavy price. From this Thursday through Saturday, Thanksgiving Day itself is the only time visitors and residents are allowed to park for free in city-designated spots. The following day, also known as “Black Friday,” is not a parking enforcement holiday. Vehicles parked without meter payment will be ticketed.
November, for a number of Americans, brings Thanksgiving and the kickoff of the Christmas holiday season. But for the descents of the country’s first peoples, it also brings an entire month of heritage celebrations.
Thanks to a $4 million grant from the California State Parks Department, which City Slicker Farms was awarded on November 8, the parcel will soon be transformed into a community farm and park. Although the department allows organizations up to eight years to get their programs established, Finnin estimates that City Slicker Farms will break ground for the community farm at the end of 2011.
Hundreds of residents, workers, and commuters who visited the downtown fair during the busy work lunch hour. Community members representing a dozen East Bay Area nonprofit organizations had set up informational tables in the center’s walkway area to encourage residents to volunteer and make donations. Participating groups included the Alameda County Community Food Bank, Girls Incorporated of Alameda County, Habitat For Humanity of the East Bay, and Reading Partners, a national organization that uses volunteers to tutor children.
Gabriel Rodriguez sat in the student center cafeteria at Laney College the day after the legalization of marijuana in California went down in defeat. Rodriguez, who voted in favor of the initiative, sounded resigned saying that Proposition 19 probably wouldn’t have benefited everyone anyway.
The Oracle Arena was filled with powerful music Saturday evening, as Bay Area church choirs competed before an enthusiastic crowd of 10,000 in the annual “How Sweet the Sound” gospel choir competition.
Axis performed its unique style of modern dance last Thursday at Dance Access Day: A Day of Dance, Disability, Performance and Fun at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts in Oakland. Audience members included children as well as disabled adults and seniors. Watch the video of the local dance team performing and teaching people of all ages how to dance.
The 15th annual Creek to Bay cleanup day drew hundreds of Oakland volunteers Saturday to more than two dozen watery sites, where they yanked weeds, bagged up Styrofoam cups, and pulled golf balls and plastic bags from the water.
Local drug abuse treatment patients and providers are pushing the legislature to keep Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from cutting Medi-Cal funding for state-supported addiction services.
The volunteer group Habitat for Humanity, which helps low-income working families buy homes by investing their own labor in the construction, invited neighbors and first-time homeowners on Saturday to the completion of Habitat’s Edes Avenue development in East Oakland.
With speeches, signs reading “Make Big Oil Pay,” and lessons on useful protest tactics, Frank H. Ogawa Plaza was converted into a training ground Sunday afternoon for 50 environmental activists and organizers.