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“I bet you don’t even take the bus,” one West Oakland resident chided AC Transit planner Sean Diest Lorgion. “I take the bus seven days a week.” She was one of scores of Oakland residents crowding a room in the transit building in downtown Oakland Saturday, who had come to hear AC Transit’s presentation on a proposed 15 percent service reduction. Oversize, full-color foldout maps were distributed to all in attendance, detailing the proposed changes. Other handouts included comment forms…
Oakland teachers speak out about what the recent budget cuts mean for them. For many, it means buying essential classroom supplies with their own money, or not being able to get broken items repaired.
A neighbors’ uprising has helped kill any chance that that the old Parkway will be occupied by a woman who’d requested city permit to open a new business inside–a massage parlor. Story by Mario Furloni/Oakland North.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, AC transit’s Number 15 bus carried no more than a half dozen commuters at a time. But for some, this bus line—slated for closure as part of AC Transit’s massive service reduction proposal—is a lifeline. With public comment workshops starting this weekend, Richard Parks explores the proposed cuts in this story and video, and Oakland North invites the community to a live poll.
After 33 years, the owner of the Bread Garden bakery is considering closing down his shop. The bakery that in the 1970s helped ignite the Bay Area artisan bread trend is now in danger of becoming a victim of its own success.
Nearly ten percent of US workers were jobless this Labor Day. That’s a five percent increase in unemployment since December 2007, according to the Department of Labor. In the midst of global economic turmoil, the Alameda County Labor Council of the AFL-CIO held its annual barbeque at Shoreline Park in Oakland. Union officials, members and community groups gathered to celebrate and drum up support for what some say are major political battles to come: health care reform, passing a federal…
Romana was seven months pregnant, she told the congregation at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church on Sunday, when she walked for six hours from Mexico to the United States -– mostly without water, sometimes without shoes. She crossed through brush where sticks ripped at her skin, she said. Her brother and grandmother dragged her when she felt too tired to walk. When Romana and her family arrived at a tunnel where they thought they could rest, she said, US immigration workers…
The Art Murmur, Oakland’s monthly gallery walk, drew hundreds to the streets of downtown Oakland Friday despite the Labor Day holiday weekend and the closing of the Bay Bridge. New measures were undertaken by the Murmur this month to ensure safety and civility toward gallery walkers and neighborhood residents. Incidents involving disrespect toward artists and neighbors in recent months have precipitated the changes, which include a vendor check-in fee and the addition of patrolling security guards. These occurrences have raised…
Some come for the art. Some come for the chaos. But most come to the Oakland Art Murmur for a little bit of both. With nineteen galleries participating in the Murmur this Friday, there will be a wide variety of styles and mediums on display, from the traditional (paintings) to the unorthodox (skateboards) at what has become a monthly mob scene of art, culture, and debauchery. On the first Friday of every month, hundreds of gallery-goers converge at the intersection…