Sports
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.
Behind a small grey non-descript house near San Pablo Avenue and 60th Street in the Golden Gate neighborhood is a different kind of bicycle shop. As you walk down a path alongside the house, you pass chicken coops, Birds of Paradise and a vegetable garden full of beets, bok choy and broccoli. Past the garden, a door leads to a clean little studio full of tools and bikes. This is where Dan Woloz just opened a service-oriented bike shop called Bike Man Dan.
The Oakland Running Festival is in its second year, and 7,284 runners representing 35 states and six countries registered for one of the weekend’s five races – the marathon, half-marathon, 4-person team relay, 5K, and kids’ fun run – up about 20 percent from last year.
After a successful return of the Oakland Marathon last year after a 25-year hiatus, Oakland is ready to host the second edition of the city’s Running Festival this weekend. “The revival of the Oakland Running Festival is one of the many signs of Oakland looking more forward,” Mayor Jean Quan said at a press conference on Thursday. She hopes that the festival will introduce the projected 7,300 runners to Oakland’s diverse neighborhoods and scenic beauty.
The Oakland School Board meeting began last night with a cheer. Literally. The Sobrante Park Elementary cheerleaders have returned from a first place finish in the statewide competitive cheer competition in Los Angeles, and they saluted the board and meeting audience with kicks, twirls and pom-poms.
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.
In the 2011 season opener for the Oakland Outlaws, Oakland’s own roller derby team, the Outlaws face off against the Berkeley Resistance, the newest team to be added to the B.ay A.rea D.erby (B.A.D.) Girls Roller Derby league.
Turfing was born in Oakland in the early ‘90s, but it wasn’t until a 2009 YouTube video called “Dancing in the Rain,” produced by YAK Films, that turf dancing started receiving national attention. To bring turfing back to the local level, and to encourage local dancers of all skill levels to start, the Eastside Arts Alliance’s Oakland Hip Hop Institute is offering a six-session workshop.