Business
Among the dilapidated housing, the abandoned, weed covered lots and graffiti marked walls of West Oakland sits the Mandela Foods Cooperative, an organic grocery store. It’s an ideal place to start an organic grocery store and nutritional education center, said Stephanie Camus. “There hasn’t been a real grocery store here for 30 years.” Camus is one of eight workers and owners of the cooperative that opened at 1430 7th Street earlier this month. “We’re trying to provide healthier food for…
About 200 people braved the chilly summer evening and brought their lawn chairs, dogs and sleeping bags to 49th and Telegraph on Thursday night, for the kick-off of the second annual opening of the Temescal Street Cinema series. The event started off small. At 8 p.m. several empty plastic chairs were set up facing a brick wall and the popcorn popper wasn’t working properly. A couple, draped in blankets, ate take-out Mexican food and waited patiently for the sky to…
With 400 artists to choose from and more than a few in North Oakland, it was difficult to decide which studios to drop by on the last Saturday of this event. I didn’t want to waste my time driving around – it’s not often that you get the opportunity to chit-chat in your artist-neighbor’s living room or garden while eating cheese with toothpicks and checking out their ultra-private oeuvre. I chose to comb over a small square of the crowded…
By STEVE SALDIVAR Commuters said Friday that the BART and AC Transit increases that will go into effect on July 1 are unfair and unaffordable. “We need to get more help from the government, not less of it,” said Mahvash Nasehi. “Most people who use BART are low income people, they can’t afford to buy cars. They’re losing their jobs and now an increase in BART? It’s just not fair,” said the Brentwood resident. Nasehi uses the BART sparingly but…
At Bay Bridge Auto Center, Mike Khugiani is Chrysler’s latest casualty. “Chrysler decided to discontinue the dealership with us,” said Khugiani, the general sales manager. That means fewer cars to offer at the dealership that also sells GM and Nissan. On the other side of the street at Honda of Oakland, the long decline of the U.S. auto industry has only added customers, said Raymond Kwan, sales manager Honda of Oakland. Detroit may be 2,400 miles away, but the U.S….
Across the street from the City Center where professionals work purposefully on laptops and Blackberries, a different scramble unfolds inside the Old Oakland Bank building. There, a portion of Alameda County’s 80,100 who are unemployed—10.3 percent, in April compared to 5 percent at the same time last year—shuffle through literature on how to sharpen resumes and and interviewing skills.
It’s all part of an evening’s work at the Oakland City Planning Commission meeting. by SHILANDA WOOLRIDGE
The City Council voted 6 to 1 in favor of the ordinance allowing Oakland to have a City ID program – as long as council members Ignacio De La Fuente and Jean Quan can do their math homework. De La Fuente and Quan received strong support from a packed hall but council members Desley Brooks and Larry Reid were vocal about looking at the economics of the program-especially given Oakland’s $83 million budget deficit. “You are forcing it down our…
At the age of eight, Adrienne Wander is already a food connoisseur. “As far as quality goes, Ici is the best, Tara’s vanilla is great,” said the elementary school foodie licking her favorite Dreyer’s Fudge Track. She knows her ice cream, in part a result of living near creamery row on College Avenue. The commercial corridor is home to Dreyer’s, which created Rocky Road in 1929 after the stock market crash, Ici Ice Cream, the hip and gourmet parlor, which …