Business
Early morning rain didn’t stop thousands of people from swarming into a 96,000-square-foot warehouse for the annual preview of the White Elephant Sale, benefiting the Oakland Museum of California. Bargain-hunters scoured the donated goods–from bundles of utensils and slightly charred frying pans to vintage jewelry and ‘80s-style clothing.
When it comes to groups that fight poverty, the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t immediately come to mind. But the CEO of Alameda County’s First 5 program, which funds efforts to support families with young children, says the IRS provides an overlooked service to low-income families, boosting their incomes substantially with a tax credit.
In a light-filled spacious kitchen, Jeff Gallishaw slices open an orange, squeezes out all the juice and adds it to a cup of homemade soda water mixed with simple syrup. He is working in your typical commercial kitchen, complete with refrigerators, sinks, a stove, griddle and oven. But at the end of the day, he can start up his engine and drive this kitchen away.
As the market for eco-friendly vehicles grows, car dealers across the country are seeking new ways to capture the attention of green-minded drivers. Honda of Oakland has made a bid to attract those drivers as they shop for their next car on Oakland’s Auto Row by opening the nation’s first showroom dedicated exclusively to the hybrid and alternative-fuel cars of a major car company.
Thirty-five Oakland restaurants are participating this week in Oakland’s first Restaurant Week, a project of Visit Oakland, the city’s official marketing organization. Lauren Callahan reports.
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.
Workers at the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse were robbed at gunpoint Tuesday evening when two men forced two of the store’s employees, who were in the process of closing for the day, to hand over money from the cash register as well their own wallets.
Typically when people think of scones, they think of the muffin’s inferior pastry sibling—a dry, crumbly thing that tastes like flour. But Remedy Coffee is serving up scones that are not typical. With flavors like huckleberry cream, cheddar scallion and blood orange along with a texture that’s buttery and flaky, they melt in your mouth more easily than a cupcake.
Every morning Ronald Robles gets up and hand-grinds different kinds of fresh pepper—white, Sichuan and black. He also hand-makes three types of mayonnaise; there’s garlic-flavored, chili and regular. Robles is the owner and chef of Fiveten Burger, one of the newest food trucks to come out of Oakland, and he’s dishing out what he calls “America’s favorite food”—the burger.