Sports
Oakland Tech finished off the OAL season with a 76-59 win over Castlemont in the league championship game on Saturday afternoon at Laney College. The Bulldogs will move on to the Northern California playoffs for the third consecutive time.
The Golden Gate Recreation Center could be close to receiving a much-needed upgrade to its facilities after securing a grant from the city, with more money from the state on the way if an application is approved.
On Thursday night at Actual Café, a stationery vintage Schwinn sat prominently at one end of the room. A bingo cage was strapped behind the seat, and rigged so riding the bike spun it and sent bingo balls spinning down its chute. Steffy Sue, hostess extraordinaire with a jet-black bob and blunt bangs, read out the numbers. “B1,” she said. “Be onnne with the universe.” The crowd giggled, and hastily placed markers on the cards in front of them. This is Bicycle Bingo, and it’s not your grandma’s game.
What matters most for boxing trainer and gym owner Charles King is not the fame or travel he’s garnered in the more than 30 years he’s owned a gym, but to have helped a kids looking for answers find something worthwhile. “You take a troubled kid from the street and bring him here, and all of a sudden, he wakes up,” he said.
Conceived as a preventative branch of the hospital’s already booming Sports Medicine Center for Young Athletes, the athlete development program centers on training kids and teenagers involved in a wide swath of sports. The goal is to not only make them more efficient and improve their performance, but to keep them injury-free.
In light of recent financial difficulties, the Oakland Ballet Company’s board of directors decided to postpone this spring’s Diaghilev Imagery program until funding needs are met. The OBC faces fiscal troubles after selling fewer tickets for the 2011 performance of The Nutcracker and receiving less money than expected during fundraising efforts.
Pioneer Bicycles is littered with bikes and bike parts. Most of them aren’t for sale. Near the front door of the shop, which is located on Rio Vista Avenue right off of Piedmont Avenue, there are dozens of bikes lined up in cluttered rows near the front door. Only two are new; the rest have been repaired and are waiting to be picked up by their owners. In the middle of the shop, there are boxes of new, unopened bikes…
Perhaps you’ve seen one around town. You might have caught yourself doing a double-take or stopping to ogle its long, supple lines, the graceful curvature of its frame, the straight-up beauty of something so simultaneously striking and functional.
City officials and bicycle advocates and riders gathered Friday to celebrate the addition of new bike lanes on Webster Street and Franklin Street in downtown Oakland.