Business
Members of the public burst into applause at the Oakland City Council’s Tuesday meeting when council members unanimously agreed to allow use of eminent domain to bring a large grocery store to West Oakland. “I’m tired of Oakland residents continuing to subsidize the surrounding cities at our expense,” councilmember Larry Reid said.
The largest medical marijuana store in California, previously named iGrow, re-opened on Sunday as a national enterprise called weGrow, attracting dozens of reporters and hundreds of visitors. Watch this video for glimpse of the megastore some wags have nicknamed the Walmart of Weed.
Think your Chardonnay has an oaky aftertaste? Try Oakland’s! Wine connoisseurs may focus on the vines of Napa County when touring California, but this weekend one group of out-of-towners found out the East Bay has a few wineries of its own.
Today would have been Nicholas Rotolo’s 24th birthday. Rotolo, a Berkeley High School student and club hockey player, stood a brawny 6’2″ tall, weighed 220 pounds, and had no apparent health issues. But on February 5, 2004, the 17-year-old suddenly collapsed on the rink at Sharks Ice in San Jose while competing in an exhibition for his San Jose Junior Sharks team.
While visual art enthusiasts usually stick to the galleries during the Oakland Art Murmur, this Friday the film-heads in the crowd may want to linger in front of the Great Wall of Oakland for “Behind the Pixar Screen,” a nod to the artists who work at the beloved Emeryville animation studio.
They come in droves to jump on the massive trampolines. They do backflips, play dodgeball, and dunk on a basketball hoop they couldn’t otherwise reach without some catapulting aid. Oh, and children can also be found doing these things at the House of Air, San Francisco’s first indoor trampoline park.
The smoky-sweet scent of barbeque wafted over College Avenue on Sunday during the fourth annual Rockridge Out and About Festival, as Oakland residents turned out in droves, despite the blazing hot sun, to sample local businesses’ culinary and artisanal talents.
Organic tofu burritos, newly smoked sausages, cold beer and popcorn—the vendors were not serving these at a famers’ market, but at the second night of the Oakland Underground Film Festival, which on Friday turned into a combination of live music, improvised video projection and outdoor film screenings at the Linden Street Brewery.
This weekend, Oakland movie theaters will host body slamming Bolivian women, an afro-sporting high school funk band, and break dancing. It’s all part of the Oakland Underground Film Festival, opening Thursday night at the Grand Lake Theater.