Business
California taxi divers face a new frustration: booming competition from companies like Uber and other app-based taxi companies that have recently entered the market with new services, systems and often better cars. Standing close to his cab in a taxi garage, Ben Ezeokoli, a driver who works at the Oakland Airport, says he has been in business for nearly 30 years. Back when he started driving his taxi, the business was paying off—there were a lot of customers and few…
The Oakland housing market has gotten so high-priced that some residents have decided to think creatively and chosen a shipping container as their home.
On a Thursday morning just before lunch, 40-year-old Eugene Hamilton is looking at one of the two-year-old boys in his daycare. “You’re going to behave properly and not like a baby if you want to get back in there,” he says. The young boy wears a clean and snazzy orange flannel shirt, but is delivering a cross between a whine and a cry, the specialty of the walking, but not yet articulate, toddler. Eugene, dressed in crisp Nike casual sportswear,…
In her first appearance as Oakland’s mayor-elect, Libby Schaaf held a press conference wearing a striking red dress, a necklace of the Oakland tree, a bamboo earrings and riding — unforgettably — in a fire-snorting snail-shaped chariot. All of these were made in Oakland, and all of them had a story.
In 1923, world-renowned escape artist Harry Houdini came to Oakland. He hung 112 feet above the ground from one Oakland’s most iconic buildings—then nearly brand-new—to entertain thousands of spectators as he escaped from handcuffs and a straightjacket. Ninety-two years later, the Tribune Tower continues to be one of the main attractions in the city’s downtown skyline; it overlooks the Port of Oakland, Lake Merritt and Oakland City Hall. The tower was built between 1922 and 1923 by Joseph Russell Knowland,…
The fire-engine red sheath on our mayor-elect: it was Made in Oakland too, just as Libby Schaaf said. But the character who gave the dress its name would make for a slightly terrifying chief city executive.
The assembly of those bamboo trees on the new mayor’s earlobes was an Oakland production, start to finish — and one small product of the local “maker” culture that inspires the earrings’ designer.
“Way beyond the water source to millions of people downstream, and water to irrigate farmland, the river is a wildlife sanctuary,” said landscape artist Julie Trail, speaking about the mystical Mokelumne River. Trail is one of the 50 artists participating in an exhibit organized by AmadorArts, currently on display at East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) in downtown Oakland. The exhibit focuses on the Mokelumne River, which extends about 90 miles from the Sierra Nevada to the East Bay, and…
The lines started early. One man asks if this is the queue for ticket holders, hoping that he is in the wrong one. To his disappointment, it’s the right line, so he waits, his anticipation growing to get a glimpse of the trophies inside. This is the 48th California International Antiquarian Book Fair. For three days, the Marriott Convention Center in downtown Oakland is transforming itself into a treasure trove for some of the most rare books in the world….