Business
Festival celebrates Juneteenth, location of new Phat Beets market and plans for a collective kitchen
Saturday’s celebration combined the re-opening of Phat Beets Produce farmers market at its new location, the opening of a new on-site community kitchen collective and the observance of Juneteenth, a US holiday honoring African American heritage and commemorating June 19, 1865, the day many slaves in Texas learned they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
Jorge Salinas woke up shortly after 2 am Thursday to what sounded like something exploding. He then looked outside and down Mandela Parkway from his house on 3rd Street, toward the West Oakland BART station where he saw a huge fire which he estimated to be at least four stories tall.
As of 9:30 am, BART is still reporting a total shutdown of service between Oakland and San Franciso due to an early morning building fire that broke out at a senior housing center near the station which caused track damage. The agency states that it hopes to have single track service running between the two cities by the afternoon, and in the meantime urged passengers to take other forms of transit to work including ferry, casual carpool or bus service….
From Tuesday through Friday, Oliveto Café and Restaurant in Rockridge will offer four nights of notable seafood dishes for its 11th Annual Oceanic Dinner. The meals will include historic San Francisco seafood recipes like cioppino made from local fish and shellfish, Crab Louie, Hog Island Oyster Po’Boys and salt-roasted black sea bass with Romano beans. The focus on seafood is a part of the restaurant’s continued interest in expanding the use of locally sourced products. The large menu, with over 20 options, is transparent, listing where every fish was caught and how.
The Port of Oakland is facing “significant financial challenges” according to Pamela Calloway, the president of the port board of directors of the fifth busiest container port in the country, and as a result the Port has asked the union for concessions in talks for a new contract. The union representing port workers who do maintenance, janitorial and security work at the port disagrees, and for the last year the two sides have negotiated but been unable to come to an agreement.
What would you do right now to prepare a children’s hospital or pediatric ward for an earthquake? This was the question posed by conference organizers to the health professionals and emergency center managers who attended the California Neonatal/Pediatric Disaster Coalition Conference in downtown Oakland last week to review strategies to improve emergency preparedness procedures for neonatal and pediatric patients.
Residents, city employees and anyone interested in the future of the Broadway-Valdez district, which is located just north of downtown, gathered to ask questions of a panel of local experts at Temple Sinai on Monday night for an event called “Catalyzing Change: Revitalizing the Broadway-Valdez District in a Post-Redevelopment Era.”
Software developers and web designers from allover the country met in Oakland Friday through Sunday for 48 hours of non-stop competitive design and programming to develop applications that could solve some of the most crucial challenges in the adoption and utilization of solar energy.
Tech Liminal in downtown Oakland bills itself as a tech “hotspot and salon.” It’s a shared office space for professionals who work at home and a DIY workshop for office workers. Tech Liminal is one of two “coworking” spaces in Oakland registered in the Coworking Wiki, a world directory of these alternative offices.