Environment
What do the Chabot Space and Science Center, PGAdesign, Red Oak Realty, The Tip Top Bike Shop, Mr. Sparkle Window Washers, and Baja Taqueria have in common? They are all “green” businesses in Oakland.
Kelly Carlisle is the founder of the Acta Non Verba Youth Urban Farm, a program that teaches young people about growing food by using a garden as a classroom. The kids, most of whom are between the ages of 7 and 13, get to take the vegetables they grow home to their families, or donate them to the neighboring community.
Over 200 people gathered in the main hall of the cathedral on Saturday afternoon for a healthy holiday cooking class taught by celebrity chef Rahman “Rock” Harper,winner of the 2007 season of “Hell’s Kitchen,” who showed the audience how to chop, sauté, flip and whisk up a healthy holiday meal, just in time for Thanksgiving.
Every year, more than 700 million plastic bags are given away by stores and restaurants in Alameda County, but that could all change if a ban on one-time use plastic bags is approved in January.
Plans for the construction of a new, energy-independent biodiesel plant in West Oakland were approved on October 25 by the East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD) board.
The all-Latina members of an East Oakland cleaning cooperative enjoy financial security and business-ownership with the help of Bay Area micro-enterprise development firms.
This busy part of 8th Street is the site for one of the many proposed bikeways in Oakland. However, some Chinatown leaders said the city should think twice before adding bikes to the mix on 8th Street, as well as parallel 9th Street, which has a similar bustling vibe.
The Oakland Hills Fire may have started on the ground, but the Eucalyptus trees surrounding people’s homes in the Oakland-Berkeley Hills helped it burn more and spread even further. The highly flammable non-native species accounted for 70 percent of the energy released through combustion of vegetation during the fire, according to the National Park Service. Twenty years after the fire, Eucalyptus trees still surround many homes and live in many of Oakland’s parks, while residents debate whether they should be saved or removed as fire hazards.
Homes where families used to live, beloved pets left behind, a phoenix rising from the flames—a ceremonial visit to these hand-painted images, which adorn thousands of tiles at Rockridge’s Firestorm Community Mural Project, was one several Saturday events winding up the 20th anniversary week of the devastating 1991 Oakland Hills fire.