Health
As the era of a storied Oakland Chinatown restaurant comes to an end, a new stage will be ushered in for the community’s access to healthcare. Silver Dragon, the banquet hall and restaurant at 9th and Webster Streets, is set to close in the coming months. The iconic building will become home to a brand new, state-of-the-art medical clinic run by community organization Asian Health Services.
Two ordinances aimed at reducing waste in Alameda County moved a step closer to implementation on Wednesday afternoon. The Alameda County Waste Management Authority board voted unanimously to introduce an ordinance at a planned meeting January 25 that would ban single-use checkout bags for many retailers in the county. The board also voted Wednesday to introduce a mandatory recycling ordinance which would require businesses and managers or owners of multi-family buildings to recycle at that meeting and put it before a vote.
CERI is a non-profit organization that provides mental health and social services to refugee and immigrant families, mostly Cambodians. All of the girls in its support group have parents who are Cambodian refugees, and they all live in high crime neighborhoods in the East Bay. Many of them know other girls—friends, former classmates—who have become involved in “the life,” a term for the underground world of prostitution.
Fred Thompson was 18 when I met him, and I had never seen a body so large move so fast, and with such agility. He was what makes quarterbacks wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Sunday would have been his 20th birthday.
In October, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a crackdown on medical marijuana facilities. The four U.S. Attorneys for California began sending out eviction notices to various medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the state.
As the new year approaches, Oakland officials are preparing residents for a new ordinance that will require certain property owners to replace their leaking sewer pipes. The regional Private Sewer Lateral (PSL) program—already in effect in Emeryville, Piedmont, El Cerrito, Kensington and Richmond— will start in Oakland on January 16.
The parents of Hiram Lawrence, the one-year old critically wounded in a West Oakland shooting last week, said Wednesday that their comatose son is “still fighting,” and pleaded for more time to see whether he might regain consciousness.
East Bay eating disorder specialists are concerned that the graphic representations of symptoms and behaviors in the upcoming Lifetime reality series, “Starving Secrets with Tracey Gold” could be detrimental to vulnerable audiences.
Although tradition in some Oakland and other Bay Area African American communities calls for honoring the dead with burial funerals, cremation is gaining popularity as a simpler, less expensive alternative in financial hard times.