Community
In an abbreviated meeting on Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) unanimously passed a proposal to change their short-term financing in order to reduce long-term risk. EBMUD will be moving from “extended” back to “traditional” commercial paper, according to Dari Barzel, EBMUD’s principal management analyst. What does that mean? “Commercial paper is by far our lowest-cost financing,” Barzel told the directors, citing a 30-day interest rate of about 0.09 percent. “You can’t beat it.” Commercial paper…
Oakland North reporters went out to different locations across Oakland on Thursday, October 22, between 11 a.m. and noon to observe what happens throughout the city on an ordinary weekday morning.
The rising sun cuts deep contrasting shadows across the face of each civil rights leader, etched in dark, rugged steel, staring down onto each onlooker gazing up to the metal monuments in Henry J. Kaiser memorial park in downtown Oakland. This park, only half a city block long, is more than a casual area for dog walkers, pot smokers and office workers on lunch break. For many, this park is a reminder of the influential individuals, predominantly leaders of color, who…
A collection of free mobile Medicare clinics staffed by volunteer pharmacists and students are helping residents navigate their healthcare plans.
Golfers teeing it up on Thursday morning at Lake Chabot Golf Course must count themselves among the luckiest people in Oakland. Or perhaps not. “Golf is like a love affair,” the sportswriter Arthur Daley once wrote. “If you don’t take it seriously, it’s no fun; if you do take it seriously, it breaks your heart.” Golf has come a long way from its modern origins as a diversion for Scottish sheepherders in the 15th century to a $70 billion per…
Frank Ogawa Plaza at the lunch rush.
Thursday, 11 a.m. at Koreana Plaza Market was quiet. The fish-stocker went about his daily routine, organizing the freezers and cleaning the crab tanks. An elderly couple, a man and a woman, shuffled their way to the ice-filled buckets laden with the fresh catch of the day – wide-mouthed catfish, red-eyed snapper, slimy black eel. The couple had a mission: To find the perfect salmon. As the fish-stocker nestled jars of clam meat into the ice chips, the woman began…
Weekday mornings in Temescal Alley are quiet. The clinking of a spoon against the side of a coffee cup can be easily heard over the faint hum of traffic from nearby Telegraph Avenue. The occasional burst of male laughter or the sound of a buzzing electric razor escapes through the barbershop’s open door. A small handful of people, some on vacation, others perhaps taking a day off a la Ferris Bueller, walk languidly past the little shops, some with coffee…
Trains rumble through the West Oakland BART station every five minutes, some packed with people, squeezing together like little sardines, en route to San Francisco, others nearly empty, with just a few stragglers aboard heading toward Fremont. As each train’s doors slide open, three or four people board. Some pull suitcases and others wheel bikes. Almost everyone is enthralled by the screen in their hand, glancing up only occasionally, eyeing the distance between the screen and the yellow paint lining the…