Community
Yossi Offenberg is a die-hard fan of ball hockey, which is like roller hockey, only in shoes. He’s 48 and grew up in Toronto, where he and his friends would wait eagerly for the Saturday morning synagogue services to end so they could they rush home for lunch, and then out to play ball hockey in the streets.. They did this until the stars came out and Sabbath was over. Offenberg says those cold winter days were some of the best days of his youth.
The Oakland Housing Authority opened the first phase of a lottery for public housing and voucher program waitlists this week, receiving more than 10,000 applications in the first two days.
It’s close to 3 p.m., and Bakesale Betty sold out of its last sandwich a little over an hour ago. The shop’s co-owner, Alison Barakat, who also goes by “Betty” while she’s working, is not wearing the trademark blue wig that customers have come to recognize.
For the two years since Jean Quan was elected mayor in Oakland’s first ranked-choice voting election, the voice of her administration—through multiple turbulent situations—has been Susan Piper, who retired last month as Quan’s official spokesperson.
This weekend’s Oakland Underground Film Festival (OUFF) showcases local, independent films and new international works. The four-day festival begins Thursday at the Grand Lake Theater and continues at two other venues throughout the weekend. About 60 films will be screened, a mix of shorts, features and documentaries.
McDonald’s started posting calorie information on its menus at restaurants and drive-thrus around the country. In California, this practice began in January 2011.
At Lincoln Elementary School and nearly 50 other Oakland schools, the custodians, nutrition staff and faculty have banded together to use lunchtime as an opportunity to teach students how to compost.
Oakland residents registered to vote at a special Tuesday event called National Voter Registration Day, a nationwide nonpartisan campaign to sign up as many new voters as possible in a single day.
Amidst the clamor of construction and downtown traffic Tuesday, a crowd of patients, nurses and doctors met outside of Kaiser Oakland’s pediatric building to support National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Adorned in school bus-yellow t-shirts emblazoned with “Little Kids Get Cancer, Too,” health care providers and families gathered outside the hospital’s pediatric unit in downtown Oakland. Together, the group rallied to promote childhood cancer awareness and celebrate patients’ personal triumphs against the disease. The gathering was conceived by Clarence Berger-Greer,…