Economy
Kayoko Akabori and Yoko Kumano, friends since college, recently opened a new store called Umami Mart in the heart of Oakland’s historical district, where they offer unique merchandise as well as their insight about cocktails and Japanese cuisine.
With the new school year approaching, Oakland North sits down with the newly hired Oakland Education Association (OEA) president, Trish Gorham. In this wide-ranging interview, the new head of the teachers’ union discusses school closures, the small schools movement, inequity among Oakland schools, the Lakeview protest, the challenges facing Oakland’s teachers and much more.
In the last few years, the Temescal District has been heralded as one of the most culturally diverse communities in the city. Its growing popularity has resulted in increased interest from business owners and residents who are vying for a space within the community. But over the last few months, the number of robberies and thefts that have been reported to the Temescal Telegraph Avenue Community Association and the Temescal Merchants’ Association has shown an increase, the members of those associations say, leaving local merchants frustrated and asking for more help from the police and the city.
It’s Wednesday night, and just over a hundred people had filed into Lakeside Park—just off of Bellevue Avenue—to see The San Francisco Mime Troupe perform “For The Greater Good, or The Last Election” during it’s annual run through the city. The play transformed the Occupy protests into a melodrama. Its narrative, filled with the tensions of Occupy—protests, an encampment, and death—also played on morality and the nature of fate.
The Oakland Police Department has announced plans to adjust its operations and hire a full-time Information Technology manager after a recent audit of its technology department found that the city spent nearly $2 million on failed policing information technology projects with at least three Bay Area start-ups that have since gone out of business.
Hundreds of Oakland residents woke up Saturday morning to put on a surgical mask, lace up their boots and get their hands dirty during the second annual “Throw Down for the Town,” a service festival that gave Oakland residents 34 options to transform their neighborhoods.
The sound of jazz—a melody, harmony, rhythm, or timbre—hadn’t filled the lobby of the California Hotel, just off San Pablo Avenue, for more than a decade. And as over a hundred people filled into the hotel on Wednesday—Billy Strayhorn numbers setting the mood—for a groundbreaking marking the city’s decision to revitalize the historic hotel, passersby, many of them with iPods, didn’t know the hotel was a venue for the most preeminent figures on their playlists: James Brown, Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, Sly Stone, Aretha Franklin and Big Mama Thornton.
Every Wednesday between 10 a.m and 2 p.m., an organic farmer’s market appears, tucked between the Cathedral of Christ the Light and the Kaiser Permanente offices near Lake Merritt. Operating since May, the Ordway Organic Farmer’s Market, a petite selection of just over a half dozen booths selling fruits, veggies, plants and other fare, is the new kid on the block on an array of farmer’s markets that dot Oakland. However, it is unique because it is among the few that take place midweek, mid-day and and are all-organic.
From the time she was a sociology graduate student at University of California, Berkeley in 1990s, Kathy Pimpan has been fascinated by the relationship between people and things. Now her Oakland-based business, Total Estate Liquidation, helps clients dispose of things they’ve collected over a lifetime and find hard to part with, or assists families when they are overwhelmed by dealing with their late grandmother’s cluttered residence.