Development
By Elise Craig and Melanie Mason/Oakland North
Upstairs, cell phones are charging. In the kitchen, snapshots of kids in football jerseys plaster the fridge. And in the living room, auctioneer Danny Green is selling this family home to the highest bidder.
Public art works in Oakland live the good life. While city-commissioned sculptures and murals in San Jose and San Francisco have been targets of graffiti and vandalism, curators working in Oakland’s public arts program say that here, people are mostly content to admire public art without adding their own editorial flair. But even though passersby aren’t a problem, there is another threat lurking the streets.
In tough economic times, you’d think 99-cent stores, pawnshops and thrift stores would be thriving. They’re not. Behind the counter of 41st Discount, a 99-cent store on 41st and Telegraph, stands store owner Omar Alrahimee, surrounded by phone cards, incense oils, microwave popcorn, “God Bless the USA” bumper stickers, and cigarettes (his best selling item). He holds up a stack of bills he hasn’t yet paid. “Today is the 12th, I have not paid the rent, I used to pay…
Loren Partridge has until February 28 to vacate Cunningham Partridge Gallery and Framing, the Piedmont Avenue business she has run for seven years. “I’ve seen it coming for months,” Partridge said last Saturday afternoon. “Then January came, and boom.”
By Samson Reiny/Oakland North It was off with their heads-the parking meter heads-that is. At the end of 2007, the City of Oakland replaced its traditional coin-eating car meters with automated payment kiosks in the most congested parking areas, allowing people the convenience of paying for parking time by credit card and cash rather than change. In order not to confuse motorists, most of the old meters’ heads were removed. But for many bicyclists, especially on busy College Avenue, that…
By Elise Craig and Melanie Mason/Oakland North On the corner of 34th Street and Market Street in Oakland, a Coldwell Banker sign is attached to a chain link fence in front of a house with graffiti-covered boarded windows. Beside it, a black arrow on a yellow plastic sign points to a real estate auction up the street. A few doors down, Alain Pinel Realtors is selling the house with the red steps, where plastic toys in primary colors lie…
by ANNA BLOOM Dec. 20–Snow on Mt. Diablo was one thing, but ice skating in Temescal… without ice? The Temescal Telegraph Business Improvement District is making no small plans to attract holiday shoppers to their neck of North Oakland this weekend. Beyond the usual good cheer, Santa and Christmas carols, the district’s first annual Holiday Skate and Stroll will feature an ersatz ice rink at 49th and Telegraph. Saturday and Sunday, as many as 30 will be able to glide,…
Golden Gate residents complain the proliferation of group care facilities hurts the neighborhood–and that nobody would try this in, say, Rockridge. Click here for the story.
In these commentaries, Oakland North writers weigh in on 1) keeping Black Friday in perspective; 2) keeping certain kinds of humor in the back room, where maybe it ought to stay; and 3) how the new secretary of state selection looks through the eyes of a journalist raised in West Africa.