Search Results: community photo

OAKTOWN EATS: Injera and Berbere Sauce on Telegraph

By ALEXIA UNDERWOOD (Shilanda Woolridge and Ayako Mie contributed to this review.) The proliferation of Ethiopian and Eritrean restaurants along Telegraph Avenue is one of North Oakland’s less celebrated features.  Yet, once you’ve tried it, who can turn down a soft, spongy handful of slightly sour Ingera (flat, pancake-like bread) combined with a thick, spicy Berbere sauce (made with ground red chili peppers, cumin and other spices), often served on a communal ‘family style platter?  Better yet, what adult would…

Decoding the buzz around Mama Buzz

The Morning Shift. The flat, wide stretch of Telegraph Avenue that runs through the Koreatown-Northgate district is mostly empty when I arrive at Mama Buzz café a few minutes after 7:00 a.m.  A man pushes a shopping cart and some bags of bottles and cans down the sidewalk. A lone woman loads up her car with groceries in the parking lot of Koreana Plaza Market.  One helmeted biker has already beat me to the door of Mama Buzz; he tries…

Local artists in residence speak at Kala Art Institute

Three vastly different young artists presented their latest work Wednesday night at the Kala Art Institute’s new studio space on San Pablo Avenue near the Berkeley-Oakland border. About 30 artists, instructors and community members gathered in a small, high-ceilinged room off of the main studio to drink wine and participate in a discussion that ranged from globalization, existentialism and Derrida to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and psychological issues about self-control. Favianna Rodriguez, 30, an Oakland native whose parents immigrated from Peru,…

Rockridge residents contemplate going solar

Renewable energy was the topic of the Rockridge Community Planning Council Town Hall meeting on Thursday night; namely, how and why to go solar. After two short power point presentations, Eric Nyman of Berkeley-based Sun Light and Power and Evan Raymond of Renewable Artistry (both of whom install photovoltaic solar energy panels on roofs as well as solar thermal equipment) fielded questions from the 16 Rockridge residents in attendance. Some reasons to install solar equipment that Nyman listed included reducing…

Art project celebrates local history, seeks to bring communities together

The parks in Oakland are alive.  At 7:30 a.m., more than a hundred people lift their hands in unison, moving with slow, controlled energy as they practice the ancient Chinese art of Tai Chi. A few feet away, six older women and one man practice their line-dancing steps, hopping and skipping to the tinny sounds emanating from a hand-held boom box. Two women play badminton without a net.  Welcome to Madison Square Park on Jackson Street, in Oakland. Any day…

I scream, you scream, we all scream on College Avenue

At the age of eight, Adrienne Wander is already a food connoisseur. “As far as quality goes, Ici is the best, Tara’s vanilla is great,” said the elementary school foodie licking her favorite Dreyer’s Fudge Track. She knows her ice cream, in part a result of living near creamery row on College Avenue. The commercial corridor is home to Dreyer’s, which created Rocky Road in 1929 after the stock market crash,  Ici Ice Cream, the hip and gourmet  parlor, which …

A bike, a kid, and a welding gun

Ismael Plasencia is one of those lucky people who considers his job, “a dream come true.”  Among his other responsibilities at West Oakland’s The Crucible, Plasencia manages the incredibly popular bike program.  The bike program offers eight bike fix-a-thons a year, where anyone can bring their bike to get fixed, as well as youth classes in bike mechanics, Earn-a-Bike, and frame alteration, Hyphy Bikes. The Crucible, an industrial arts school and community outreach program in West Oakland, was looking for…

Manifesto: Not your everyday bike shop

The bike store Manifesto has a Flickr photo account, “Our customers rock,” which is full of photos of people posing with their bicycles. People smiling standing next to their bikes, slowly riding by, triumphantly raising the bike over their heads — all photos of Manifesto’s customers with their new bikes. Each photo is captioned with lines like, “Austin sealed the deal on a red Schwinn that many were coveting on opening day,” “This beautiful Mercier, nicknamed Pierre, is now Casey’s…

Oakland recognizes local leaders in AIDS prevention

by ANNA BLOOM DEC. 1—Guests at a City Hall World AIDS Day Community Awards Ceremony got an early glimpse tonight of a 50-foot long bronze monument planned for a new city park in downtown Oakland.  “We are here as a testament of what is truly important and that is us, the livelihood and survival of our community,” Vashone Huff, deputy of intergovernmental affairs for the city of Oakland, said before a scale version of the statue, less than one-tenth the…

The Big Day Archive: live from the neighborhood

by OAKLAND NORTH STAFF Starting at 9:01 on November 4, and for the next 14 hours, Oakland North reporters Christina Salerno and Linnea Edmeieir presided from our newsroom over a live conversation among the community–with input from other O.N. readers as far-flung as Switzerland.  From the first polling place lines to the street celebrations as the deciding electoral votes were announced, what follows is one real-time chronicle of history unfolding in our neighborhood.   9:01: ON  Welcome to Oakland North’s…

Prop 8 foes grapple with the blow and joy of Nov 4

“Just like the body can be sick from being exposed to hot and cold,” the Reverend Roland Stringfellow said today, “my soul was sick from being exposed to jubilation over Obama’s election and defeat from the passage of Prop 8.”

New owners struggling to resurrect Eli’s Mile High

Story and audio slides by MARTIN RICARD It was a little after 7 p.m. on a recent Monday night at Eli’s Mile High Club, and a slow, celestial song by the British space rock group The Telescopes was blasting over the speakers to an empty room. Jason Herbers, the assistant to Eli’s owner, who manages the day-to-day operations of the club, was visibly frustrated by the lack of customers as he strolled back and forth throughout the place.