Business
A new pilot program championed by Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Jane Brunner would begin to legitimize Oakland’s largely underground street food businesses. And despite of years of contention, supporters and critics of mobile food seem to agree that the proposed program could be a boon to business, bolstering the mobile food industry while minimizing competition with dine-in restaurants.
Families flocked to the 12th annual Comcast America’s Children’s Holiday parade, lining Broadway from 20th to 11th Streets and stretching all the way to Lake Merritt, where a short while earlier, a religious processional had brought walkers from East Oakland to the the Cathedral of Christ the Light.
The Nightcap is a series that features a favorite Oakland drinking establishment every Friday afternoon. This week, it’s Heart and Dagger Saloon, a beer and a shot, rock ‘n’ roll bar in the Grand Lake area.
Although tradition in some Oakland and other Bay Area African American communities calls for honoring the dead with burial funerals, cremation is gaining popularity as a simpler, less expensive alternative in financial hard times.
One year after construction began, has the controversial, $484 million Oakland Airport Connector project created the jobs it promised? “It requires a lot of physical strength and it wears on the body,” said Tiffany West, 31, of her work as a carpenter’s apprentice. Every Monday through Friday, from 7 am to 3:30 pm, West is somewhere along Hegenberger Road between the Oakland Coliseum and the airport shoveling debris, fine-grading sites for paving or building the footings for the connector’s elevated guideway.
On any given day, close to 90 clients come to God’s Gym for personal training from 49-year-old Gary Shields. Some clients lift heavy weights and work on their massive physiques. Others have more modest routines, toning or rehabbing injuries. The two-story storefront on the corner of Broadway and 25th Street is painted jet black from top to bottom. Images of two posed, flexing bodybuilders fill the front windows. One is a silhouette of Shields in his prime. Centered between the bright, bold white words of the gym’s name, is a painting of a buff, black Jesus breaking free of chains.
What do the Chabot Space and Science Center, PGAdesign, Red Oak Realty, The Tip Top Bike Shop, Mr. Sparkle Window Washers, and Baja Taqueria have in common? They are all “green” businesses in Oakland.
The Nightcap is a series that features a favorite Oakland drinking establishment every Friday afternoon. This week, it’s Luka’s Taproom, which was one of the only bars in Uptown when it opened in 2004.
This December, a “pop-up” neighborhood is coming to Old Oakland: three downtown blocks of hip—albeit temporary—retail shops that showcase local designers, artists and goods…just in time for holiday shopping.