News

Residents are opposing a proposal by the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to construct a six-story office building on a sloping one-acre plot of land and pave over a nearby valley to build a parking lot. Many of those neighbors came out on Monday to take a tour guided by LBNL officials as part of the scoping process, a preliminary step required before a draft environmental impact report can be done on a project. -more-

TUESDAY, JULY 8 -more-

Discussions about the future of Berkeley are often built around cherished myths, fiercely debated without recourse to fact. -more-

TUESDAY, JULY 8 -more-

If laughter heals all wounds then children's laughter is the most magical of elixirs. Watching a few dozen boys and girls laughing, shouting, flirting and chasing each other around on a basketball court can cure whatever ails you. Such laughter can heal children as well. For the last 20 years or so, Berkeley-based BORP (Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program) has been providing a hefty dose of Saturday feel-good medicine for hundreds of Bay Area children with physical disabilities. -more-

INFILL PROJECT -more-

After five years of debate and dozens of public meetings, UC Berkeley and the city planning staff have come to a tentative agreement on the future of the area just south of the university campus, according to a Planning Department memorandum. -more-

Although I had heard some rumors about a building going up on the Oxford Street Parking Lot in downtown Berkeley, it was not until I read the article by Rob Wrenn that I knew what was being planned. Mr. Wrenn wrote: “Resources for Community Development (RCD) together with Equity Community Builders, has been selected as the developer for the City of Berkeley’s Oxford Street surface parking lot. The planned mixed-use project will include approximately 90 apartments, a majority of them below-market units. The plan includes 28 three-bedroom units and one four-bedroom. If built as planned this would be the largest amount of affordable family-oriented housing built in Berkeley for many years.” -more-

Hundreds of students, teachers, parents and education advocates will converge on Sacramento on Wednesday to pressure the state board of education to hold off on administering the high school exit exam, which they say unfairly punishes students who do not have access to quality education. -more-

Your June 27 editorial “It Could Get Worse” closes by urging the newly formed Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club to take “as part of its mission finding better Democrats for California races, so that we won’t be stuck with embarrassments like (Governor) Davis in the future.” We certainly intend to do our best to meet such a challenge. But you, like us, know this will be no easy matter. The challenge in getting better politicians into office lies in organizing and mobilizing a majority that will elect them. This might be relatively easy in Alameda County, but we’re not doing as well at the statewide level, or in most of the country. Indeed, we are witnessing a rightward shift that is fueled by an administration that is masterful at manipulating people’s fears and obfuscating the issues. -more-

Residents who are cited for code violations—from parking junkers on city streets to illegally converting their garages—will now be able to appeal their citations a lot sooner. But they may also face higher fines if they’re found guilty. -more-

Jim Schevill was born in 1920, in a woodsy hillside Berkeley home that barely survived the great fire of 1923. His father was creator and chair of the romance languages department at UC, his mother an artist and a scholar of Navaho culture and mythology. Despite the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler, Jim might have been expected to live a quiet life, like his father and his neighbors, in the security of academia, or, at most, deviating from that path to a career in opera. (“A dream. I had a light baritone, and asthma.”) In either case, a fortunate birth, a comfortable, if not wealthy future.   -more-

“I think I’m predisposed to really love books,” said Indigo Som. “I mean, we’re in Berkeley, right? One of the reasons I live here is because you walk down the street and you look in everybody’s windows and you see massive bookshelves and books overflowing. Right? You can see people walking down the street, reading as they’re walking down the street. You know? I love that.” -more-

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The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) presents Summer Noon Concerts 2003, a unique series of nine free concerts, Thursdays at noon in June & July, beginning June 5th. From Rhythm & Blues to Brazilian capoeira, these concerts at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza (Shattuck Ave. at Center St.) are a showcase of the culturally rich performing arts in Berkeley. This outdoor summer celebration of Berkeley-based musicians & dancers is just a small sampling of the performing arts happening nightly in clubs, cafes, schools, theaters and concert halls in Downtown Berkeley. -more-

The state Legislature’s failure to pass a budget on time is creating short-term financial headaches for public and private agencies in Berkeley and could lead to the temporary closure of a local community college and the elimination of vital health care services if the stalemate lingers into the fall, according to education and health care officials. -more-

FRIDAY, JULY 4 -more-

Just after we took on the job of resurrecting the Berkeley Daily Planet, Mayor-elect Tom Bates got some bad publicity for trashing copies of the Daily Californian which endorsed his opponent. Wags opined that if he’d recycled them instead, it would have been less shocking to Berkeley. Friends suggested to us that the first edition of the revived Planet should be headlined “Steal This Paper,” homage (for those of you too young to remember) to yippie Abbie Hoffman’s “Steal This Book.” The idea made us laugh, but we didn’t use it. -more-

FRIDAY, JULY 4 -more-

On the south end of People’s Park, California indigenous plants meld with living sculptures, dinosaur tracks and Andean potatoes due to the work of a group of volunteer gardeners. -more-

The man police pulled from the bay at the Berkeley Marina early Monday morning was severely beaten, not shot as originally believed, and still recovering from severe head injuries at Oakland’s Highland Hospital Thursday afternoon, police said. -more-

FREEMAN MEMORIAL -more-

The state jobless rate for teens has climbed to 19.8 percent, the highest in a decade, and those looking for jobs this summer are finding that even the low-level job market, usually open to students, has been saturated by adults. -more-

Arleen Goodwin and Joan Kloehn founded the small Berkeley nonprofit Senior Medi-Benefits in the mid-eighties hoping to assist seniors with the paperwork generated by illness, so that people whose medical bills and insurance claims were piling up would get some help. People assumed that such nightmares would slowly recede as health providers joined networks with interconnected billing, and more claims would be submitted electronically. -more-

A divinity student at Berkeley’s Pacific School of Religion (PSR) was crowned Miss California last weekend, winning $12,000 and a trip to the storied Miss America pageant. -more-

For more than 10 years, I have been proud to be employed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Although I know that some in the community object to some of the lab’s actions, I have generally been pleased with the lab’s activities over the past decade, have enjoyed my time there, and I know that our research has been top-notch. -more-

Despite signing a new contract that provides University of California lecturers with pay hikes and increased job security, some instructors are still feeling vulnerable and undervalued by a system that caters to tenured and tenure-track professors. -more-

This is the second in a three-part series on Berkeley’s housing boom. The final installment will be published next Friday. -more-

When Erick Mikiten, the architect who designed the recently opened Adeline Street Apartments, set out for the Bay Area in the late 1980s to attend UC Berkeley’s graduate school for architecture, he didn’t count on the scramble ahead of him. -more-

Despite pleas from riders not to cut bus lines, the AC Transit board of directors voted Wednesday to reduce or eliminate service on 74 lines throughout the East Bay, a plan that includes scaling back Berkeley’s 17 line. -more-

“Let me get this straight,” said my brother, leaning across the table and looking at me with a bit of interest for the first time in 42 years. “When you go to New York City you stay with a kid you taught in fourth grade? Have I got that right?” -more-

Since the wave of shootings that began in mid-June, Berkeley police have been working with community members to try to track down suspects in the recent shootings, with neighbors providing anonymous tips to the department’s violence suppression team. -more-

If you were anywhere near Oakland City Hall this week—or near a news broadcast, for that matter—it was impossible to miss the buzz around the abrupt firing of City Manager Robert Bobb, and the just-as-sudden, simultaneous resignation (supposedly for personal reasons) of Parks And Recreation Director Harry Edwards. -more-

The south wall of the Grove Liquor Store on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Ashby Avenue will soon serve as an artistic representation of South Berkeley—a collaboration between neighborhood activists and nearby Epic Arts Studio. -more-

Hong Kong—An hour before the anti-government rally in Causeway Bay, a district crammed with elegant Japanese department stores, boutiques and clubs, I was having dim sum with friends. They were all dressed in black, the color of protest on July 1, the sixth anniversary of Hong Kong's Handover to mainland China. -more-

A North Berkeley resident who wants to stop the city’s plan to install cell phone antenna on the roof of Starbucks Cafe is badgering the city to take down the mock antennae that have been erected on top of the building. -more-

Attacks on American troops in Iraq are not letting up. The Bush administration blames “Saddam Hussein Loyalists,” and has launched a military offensive, Operation Sidewinder, to root out these supposed American enemies. But Sidewinder so far has been a bust, as an organized body of Saddam Loyalists is proving to be as difficult to find as weapons of mass destruction. -more-

The Zoning Adjustments Board last Thursday approved the final environmental impact report (FEIR) for the Durant Street Apartments, removing another hurdle in developer Ruegg & Ellsworth’s efforts to demolish the historic Ellen Blood House in order to construct 44-unit, mixed-use project. -more-

“Hot Prowl” burglary -more-

The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) presents Summer Noon Concerts 2003, a unique series of nine free concerts, Thursdays at noon in June & July, beginning June 5th. From Rhythm & Blues to Brazilian capoeira, these concerts at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza (Shattuck Ave. at Center St.) are a showcase of the culturally rich performing arts in Berkeley. This outdoor summer celebration of Berkeley-based musicians & dancers is just a small sampling of the performing arts happening nightly in clubs, cafes, schools, theaters and concert halls in Downtown Berkeley. -more-