Business
At the beginning of the year, the Oakland City Council started preparing to merge parking enforcement services with the Oakland Police Department to save the city money.
Under the policy at the time, each parking enforcement employee would have been subject to the lowest level of background checks that all OPD employees are subject to, which stirred controversy.
Over the years, Fairyland has kept its focus on storytelling alive. Each week, the puppets go live in front of a crowd of children, telling classic tales like “Sleeping Beauty” and more obscure ones the puppet masters have borrowed from other cultures. “You don’t need a lot of technology to tell a story,” says C.J. Hirschfield, Director of Fairyland. “And it is how we pass along our culture – whatever it is – through the stories, through generations.”
All night, fighters will come and go, the post-apocalyptic backdrop will change, and, in the end, one person will be crowned the victor of the first “Fight Night” video game tournament at Oakland’s new Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment.
Superheroes, zombies, and comic book fans from all walks of life were the center of attention at the first-ever Image Expo this weekend in Oakland. The three-day fan fest commemorated the 20th anniversary of Berkeley-based Image Comics the independent, creator-owned comic book publishing company. “Our expectations were very modest coming into the event since this is our first,” said convention promoter and retailer Jimmy Jay. “We put the event together in less than three months, and we wanted to throw…
On Thursday night at Actual Café, a stationery vintage Schwinn sat prominently at one end of the room. A bingo cage was strapped behind the seat, and rigged so riding the bike spun it and sent bingo balls spinning down its chute. Steffy Sue, hostess extraordinaire with a jet-black bob and blunt bangs, read out the numbers. “B1,” she said. “Be onnne with the universe.” The crowd giggled, and hastily placed markers on the cards in front of them. This is Bicycle Bingo, and it’s not your grandma’s game.
What matters most for boxing trainer and gym owner Charles King is not the fame or travel he’s garnered in the more than 30 years he’s owned a gym, but to have helped a kids looking for answers find something worthwhile. “You take a troubled kid from the street and bring him here, and all of a sudden, he wakes up,” he said.
The East Bay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, SPCA, is hosting a spaying and neutering marathon on Saturday, February 28th, at both their TriValley and Oakland locations. Their goal is to spay and neuter one hundred Chihuahuas, pit bulls, and cats that belong to low-income families.
Following a late night shootout at a taco truck earlier this month, food vendors are organizing to respond to a surge in violent robberies of their businesses.
“The Art of Letterpress” exhibit at The Compound Gallery in Oakland showcases the work of more than 15 print artists from the Bay Area and other letterpress meccas in the U.S. These new wave of printers combine up-to-date design software and materials with printing techniques as old as the Gutenberg press.