Development
The Oakland Athletics will open their 2011 season Friday at the Coliseum with a three-game series against the Seattle Mariners. Despite an offseason loss Tuesday, many predict 2011 could be the team’s best season yet. But Oakland fans are still anxious that they may lose the A’s to San Jose, where owner Lew Wolff continues to try to move the team.
Oakland urban homesteading celebrity Novella Carpenter could face fines from the city for unpermitted agricultural activities and lose the animals she keeps at Ghost Town Farm, a West Oakland garden that helped make local, sustainable food popular in the East Bay.
Members of the Longfellow Community Association gathered on Saturday at the North Oakland Community Charter School to celebrate the first anniversary of their neighborhood group and look ahead to future projects.
Gourmet and Modern Bride magazines went under. US News and World Report has gone digital-only. Apple launched a new iPad that lets people read National Geographic and The New Yorker online and also watch live TV. You might worry anything made with paper is … well, doomed. A stop by Issues magazine store, however, might quell those fears.
Facing a $21 million deficit, along with employee layoffs, service cuts and the probable closing of facilities, AC Transit doesn’t have a lot of breathing room. On Wednesday, the agency’s board of directors decided it can’t finance the estimated $625,000 it would cost to offer discount youth bus passes for Oakland Unified School District high school students over the age of 18.
The Oakland Marathon will get off to a running start on Sunday, March 27 with a handful of other race events and activities on Saturday preceding the principal competition, as part of the second annual Oakland Running Festival.
Jorge Leon was removed at an A’s game last year for holding a sign that read “Wolff lied, he never tried” to protest the move. Reporter Evan Wagstaff sat down with Leon to ask what he’s done since then to keep the team in Oakland.
The sanctuary of East Oakland’s St. Louis Bertrand Church was filled with house keys on Saturday morning—keys on string encircling the room and hanging from the balcony, keys in jars, in pockets and around necks, keys in hands being jingled in uniform outrage, all because there are fewer house keys in Oakland than there used to be. The display of keys was a symbolic part of Saturday’s rally as over 1,200 people protested the recent wave of home foreclosure.
Futures Elementary in East Oakland has raised test scores by more than 100 points since 2007. But according to state law, it does not matter: Every single teacher and administrator at Futures is facing the possibility that he or she will be laid off in May.