Business

The flip side at the Chandra Cerrito Contemporary

Tucked away between a Subway sandwich shop and a boarded up storefront on Grand Avenue is Mercury 20, a large, one-room art gallery. And upstairs, hovering above it all, is the Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, a small room currently showing the work of three professional art-installers, who happen to be artists themselves.

A day with AC Transit

  Ever since I moved to Berkeley from Japan a year ago, my friend, Josh Allen keeps asking. “How can you survive without a car?” Allen,  an associate movie producer, who drives his three-year old Mercedes convertible everywhere he goes, will never understand. But those who ride the buses and need the buses do. AC Transit serves more than 230,000 of us a day. When Privately owned Key System started its streetcar and bus services in East Bay in 1903,…

OAKTOWN EATS: Injera and Berbere Sauce on Telegraph

By ALEXIA UNDERWOOD (Shilanda Woolridge and Ayako Mie contributed to this review.) The proliferation of Ethiopian and Eritrean restaurants along Telegraph Avenue is one of North Oakland’s less celebrated features.  Yet, once you’ve tried it, who can turn down a soft, spongy handful of slightly sour Ingera (flat, pancake-like bread) combined with a thick, spicy Berbere sauce (made with ground red chili peppers, cumin and other spices), often served on a communal ‘family style platter?  Better yet, what adult would…

Safeway talks bigger, Piedmont wonders if it’s better

Residents gathered Thursday at the Chapel of the Chimes Mortuary on Piedmont Avenue for a second meeting  called by Safeway officials to talk  about the store’s plan to redo the shopping center in Pleasant Valley. “Obviously, it is a corporate sponsored meeting,” said Eric Edwards, a resident of the Rockridge Manor condominium next to the shopping center, referring to the Safeway brand foods and beverages offered those who attended. Safeway, which also has a development plan underway at its College…

OAKTOWN EATS: La Calaca Loca

  Chips and salsa can make or break a Mexican meal. While Las Palmas or Cactus Taqueria might bolster healthy Mexican cuisine -they fail to match the quality and quantity of these triangle corn appetizers. This is where La Calaca Loca quietly excels. The restaurant fries their corn tortilla chips ($1.50) to perfection. With the hearty chunks of tomato and a dash of cilantro and onion, this appetizer might be confused for a meal of its own. You can enjoy…

Decoding the buzz around Mama Buzz

The Morning Shift. The flat, wide stretch of Telegraph Avenue that runs through the Koreatown-Northgate district is mostly empty when I arrive at Mama Buzz café a few minutes after 7:00 a.m.  A man pushes a shopping cart and some bags of bottles and cans down the sidewalk. A lone woman loads up her car with groceries in the parking lot of Koreana Plaza Market.  One helmeted biker has already beat me to the door of Mama Buzz; he tries…