Berkeley lost a legend this week. Frank “Buddy” Spenger Jr. died of natural causes Sunday in the apartment in which he was raised, one flight above the seafood restaurant he helped make a Berkeley institution. He was 87. -more-
This issue of the Daily Planet is being to distributed to about 20,000 additional readers, including incoming students and their parents who will be attending the University of California’s “Caltopia” event. We’d like to welcome you to our city, and to say a few words about Berkeley present and past. -more-
Welcome to Berkeley! -more-
Despite vehement opposition from neighborhood activists and City Hall, the Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday night to move its Adult School from a dilapidated building on University Avenue to an old elementary school site just a few blocks away. -more-
Berkeley’s nonprofit Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS) may be reaching out to the homeless, but workers say they are shortchanging their own employees. -more-
“Let us be honest and ask, at the outset, what it is that we wish to achieve? We have all been impotent in changing the past behaviour and human rights record in Iraq. Let us therefore redouble our efforts to make sure that we are not powerless now. Let us seek results. Let us make a difference a real difference for the people of Iraq. I cannot think of a more noble and worthy cause.” -more-
The City of Berkeley and the Downtown Berkeley Association will mark the grand opening of the Downtown Arts District with a celebration Sunday Aug. 24 on the 2000 block of Addison Street, between Milvia Street and Shattuck Avenue. -more-
People who adopt do so for a variety of reasons, but the bottom line is that nearly all adoptive parents love their adopted children like their own offspring. -more-
A former Berkeley schools employee who allegedly doubled as a hooker pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor charge of soliciting prostitution. -more-
Berkeley Police are asking the public’s help in locating the hit-and-run driver who fled after striking a motorcycle officer Wednesday on Ashby Avenue. -more-
Every college campus ‘cross the country is infested with street-side greasy spoons and fast food-product storefronts. Fortunately for Cal students, North Berkeley is also home to the California cuisine revolution, which features fine locally produced foods at reasonable prices. -more-
I still remember the taste of my first scone. It was in 1969 at a bed and breakfast in the south of England. Like my first kiss, the scone was a bit dry but, nonetheless, a thrill. -more-
Starting college is adventure enough without the added complications that come from mastering the ins and outs of a strange new community. We just don’t know the spots: where to get the best slice of pizza, who’s got the best vinyl selection, or where to find the best three-dollar breakfast. -more-
Once, when I was in my early 20’s, I borrowed a friend’s Camaro, drove it out to a country road and took it up to 100 miles per hour, not for any special reason other than to find out what it felt like to go 100 miles per hour. It was not an experience I have ever felt the need to repeat. I don’t do roller coasters or bungee jumps, either. Speed, I have discovered, is not one of my addictions. -more-
In a joint operation with U.S. Customs officers and Postal Inspectors, Berkeley Police raided an apartment at 1710 Ward St. Thursday afternoon, seizing five and a half pounds of hashish and nearly $8,000 in cash, according to Berkeley Police Narcotics Detective Jack Friedman. -more-
TUCSON, Ariz.—As the number of undocumented, would-be migrant workers found dead in the deserts of the Southwest since last October climbs into the 100s, why does a multi-million dollar European clothing company want me to dress like a Spanish-speaking laborer? -more-
If you’re looking for sports, Berkeley and the surrounding East Bay offer a host of opportunities. And while definitions of what constitutes a work-out vary—from just “a walk in the park” to a full blown adventure—there’s no end to the activities available near campus. -more-
Although best known for his mid-to-late 19th century landscape design work on the East Coast, Frederick Law Olmsted created his first residential subdivision in Berkeley, centered on Piedmont Avenue—the first of his signature curvilinear parkways with divided roadbed and landscaped median. -more-
While Berkeley merchants offer an incomparable range of recorded music from Electronica & House to Dvorak and Vivaldi, serious students can find instruments, sheet music and some of the most obscure ethnic titles. -more-
Asked what he thought would be Jim Slemp’s biggest challenge as Berkeley High School’s new principal, BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan responded, “managing a small city.” -more-
On my way to the BART station earlier this summer, I noticed an unfamiliar bird skulking in the shrubbery near the tennis courts at the corner of Martin Luther King and Russell. It was pretty nondescript: bigger than a sparrow, smaller than a robin, pale grayish-brown with vague streaking. But it had this furtive look about it. -more-
In 1994 Josh Kornbluth got hit with what was, for him, an enormous tax bill. He suddenly owed Uncle Sam and the state of California a combined total of $27,000. -more-
Rosa Parks Elementary School received failing marks and Washington Elementary School got an incomplete on the latest round of state testing, overshadowing an otherwise solid performance by Berkeley students on the California Standards Test. -more-
The Board of Education is poised to formally decide on Aug. 20 whether to move the Berkeley Adult School from its present West Campus location on University Avenue to the School District’s Franklin site on Virginia Street. -more-
Mark Twain, who chronicled America’s Gilded Age in the 19th century, joined the digital age this month when UC Berkeley researchers put 700 of his letters online. -more-
Alameda County’s first West Nile Virus victim has survived her encounter with the deadly disease—contracted not here but in Colorado—say local public officials who remain deeply concerned about the virus’s spread into California. -more-
Clusters of tall white wind turbines spin gracefully atop green hillsides. Solar photovoltaics (PVs) are integrated into windows and rooftops of modern homes, factories and office blocks. Even the old renovated seat of government is fitted with solar panels. -more-
All you recall junkies, listen up. -more-
Ah, this is the life. To be on vacation near the ocean, sunning on the beach by day, and, by night, hearing Hardball’s Chris Matthews, of all people, repeatedly liken Bush to Ted Baxter, the obtuse anchorman on the old “Mary Tyler Moore Show.” As I eat fried calamari and striped bass, I get to see Matthews, hardly a friend of progressives, hammer Team Bush over their serial lying about weapons of mass destruction and yellowcake. Was Bush such a clueless puppet, sputters Matthews, that he simply read whatever Cheney or Rumsfeld put in front of him and told him to sell to the nation? Why, I must be in Margaritaville. -more-
After my husband’s bicycling accident on Claremont Avenue, our lives turned topsy-turvy. I spent six months at home taking care of him, but to pay our bills, I had to go back to work. Five years later, after his health stabilized and the stock market went gangbusters, I quit my job and set out to make our house more wheelchair accessible. -more-
As the Silicon Valley economy sputters, the ubiquitous H1-B engineers who came to the United States on temporary work visas have become a vanishing breed. Their impact on the cultural landscape, however, is here to stay. -more-
After three years rooted in leafy North Berkeley, with occasional escapes to even leafier Seattle, a week in Paris and four more in small-town Britain proved a salutary shock to the system for a commentator on East Bay buildings. -more-
Peter Jennings has tossed a Molotov cocktail into a bitter Upper West Side real-estate battle. The ABC newsman is charging that Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in America, is pulling strings to destroy the character of his neighborhood by erecting a 14-story residential building on West 70th Street next door to its synagogue on Central Park West. -more-
With its curvy shape, sleek long neck and rounded butt, a wine bottle kind of looks like a voluptuous Marilyn Monroe. But there’s more than meets the eye—there’s utility. -more-
A Stanford dropout who won a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature, John Steinbeck began his life in Salinas on February 27, 1902. His life’s journey ended when his wife Elaine and his son Thom took his ashes to the shore at Whalers Bay south of Monterey for a last visit to his favorite place and a memorial service on Christmas Eve, 1968. -more-
If your parents are springing for tuition and room and board during your first semester at Cal but not for a Honda Element, don’t be bummed—Berkeley’s many public transportation options combined with the city’s bicycle friendly atmosphere make driving seem so 20th century you might even consider joining the Green party. -more-
