Katherine Case and Andrew Moore hope their third attempt to move to Berkeley is the charm. In 1999 the housing crunch forced them to Lake Merritt and in 2001 to Richmond in their quest for affordable housing. -more-
The gorgeous staging alone is worth the price of admission to “Much Ado About Nothing,” the final production of the season at Cal Shakespeare. The costumes, with a good deal of flamboyant silk, place us in a vaguely but not obtrusively modern Italy (there is one silly joke about a cell phone, however). -more-
A three-judge federal panel Monday postponed next month’s election because it would involve the use of outdated and unreliable punch card ballots by almost half the state’s voters. -more-
To my progressive friends: -more-
Berkeley Rep’s new Roda Theater is a winner: Handsome and comfortable auditorium, good sight lines, a lobby with polished concrete floors and an elegant bar. There is a book shop. Even the bathrooms are pleasant. -more-
NAACP National Chairman Julian Bond addressed an early Saturday morning City Hall civil rights breakfast meeting mistakenly billed briefly as an anti-Prop 54 rally. -more-
I’m writing in response to some recent sensationalized headlines in the Planet that conveyed a very different story about what BOSS is going through than what I know the reality to be. -more-
Monday’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to delay California’s recall election was a victory, though perhaps short-lived, for UC Berkeley Political Science Professor Henry Brady’s two-year crusade against punch card voting machines. -more-
Polling only three percent in the runup to the on-again, off-again California gubernatorial recall and election campaign, conservative-turned leftist candidate Arianna Huffington has been waging an uphill battle. -more-
School officials are scurrying to relocate about 30 three- and four-year-old pupils after a suspicious fire roared through a wing of their preschool Saturday, one of two suspected arson-caused fires set just blocks apart. -more-
Governor Gray Davis now controls the fate of Berkeley residents who one day hope to zip to work along the waves of San Francisco Bay. -more-
Berkeley corporate accountability activists and coffee drinkers alike will be pleased to hear that a large coalition of organizations, including San Francisco-based Global Exchange, has won their campaign to force Procter and Gamble, the largest seller of coffee in the U.S., to start carrying Fair Trade Certified coffee. -more-
Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Michele Lawrence Board Meeting, will submit the final 2002-2003 budget Wednesday for the school board approval. -more-
Asian Indians in seven San Francisco Bay Area counties have a median family income of $88,540—24 percent higher than the total population and the highest of any Asian group—but there are severe pockets of poverty in the South Asian community in the region. -more-
My thirteen-year old friend Jernae wanted to open a lemonade stand on my front porch. -more-
Mix a rich ersatz cowboy and politics and you might get George Bush. Use a real cowboy who’s not so rich and you might get Jim Hightower, one of the nation’s leading progressive political commentators, and a real Texas cowboy in his own right. -more-
When I migrated from the East Coast to the Bay Area in 1983 I wound up living in a communal household on Margarido Street along the border of Berkeley and Oakland. Among my housemates was a graphic artist/raft guide/old car aficionado/baseball nut named Steve Kowalski. -more-
What might happen to California if we adopt Prop 54 and its race privacy? -more-
It may have felt like summer last week, but the birds know otherwise. The southbound migrants are on the move. -more-
Representatives of UC Berkeley’s student government, landlords of the Daily Californian, an independent paper aimed at UC Berkeley students, have declared war on the paper’s editors, threatening to evict the paper unless editors sign off on editorial stipulations in a draft lease renewal agreement. -more-
The following letter was addressed to City Clerk Sherry Kelly. -more-
The Berkeley Unified School District has killed plans to reschedule today’s beleaguered Berkeley High-Oakland Tech football game amid continuing questions as to why the game was put off in the first place. -more-
On Sept. 9, at City Council, Tom Bates acted in a way that will damage his political career as mayor of Berkeley. Before this date, few will remember that Bates, with former Mayor Hancock, U.S. Senator Cranston, and then-Legislative honcho Willie Brown—all key Democrats—worked hard to defeat a Palestinian West Bank sister city resolution in Berkeley in 1988. Backed by big money, some of it from the Rightist American-Israeli lobby which unquestioningly supports all Israeli policy no matter how egregious, the Democratic Party machine interfered in Berkeley politics to trash the Jabaliyah resolution put on the ballot by 19,000 citizens. “We have a better way” to peace, they wrote in their glossy mailers. But the rest of us—whether Jews, Palestinians or other Americans of goodwill—are still waiting for the party’s “better way.” That fraud reminds one of Bush’s Iraq policies. As we wait, presidential front-runner Howard Dean has said his views are closer to the Rightist Israeli lobby—which has given over $120 million to the Democrats in a decade—than to the broad Israeli peace movement which seeks a just two-state solution. -more-
After an hour-long closed door session Thursday evening, the Berkeley City Council emerged to announce they had picked Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz as the interim replacement for retiring City Manager Weldon Rucker. -more-
The school board has bristled at receiving a “report card.” However, report cards are important tools to help us assess how well students and the school district are doing. Unfortunately for the students and community, the California’s Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team, (FCMAT) gave the school board and district administration failing marks in major areas of responsibility, including maintenance. -more-
The Berkeley firefighters got to test out what could be new and important fire safety equipment Thursday: high-tech gadgetry developed by a UC professor and a handful of students to prevent recurrences of events that led to the deaths of so many at the World Trade Center two years ago. -more-
The Berkeley High School Girls Crew Team, desperate to make Aquatic Park the new venue to race their rowboats, squared off at the City Council meeting Tuesday against an environmentalist determined to defend the migrating seabird habitat at the park. -more-
The Berkeley City Council approved a HUD Section 108 loan guarantee of up to $4 million for the Jubilee Village development Tuesday after first readjusting the amount which the project’s developers must come up with. The loan is planned for the purchase of the property only, and will not go towards the development itself. -more-
One of Berkeley’s signature streets hosts one of the area’s signature street festivals Sunday—the always rambunctious Solano Stroll. -more-
Middle Eastern politics dominated Tuesday’s Berkeley City Council meeting as audience and Council polarized over two competing resolutions calling for Congressional investigations of deaths in the Israeli-Palestinean conflict. -more-
My husband and I were at a crowded party in Berkeley. We were glad to be there. He had been bedridden for eight weeks, but had just been given permission by his doctor to get up for a few hours each day. -more-
For the longest time, it’s been my belief that if Mayor Jerry Brown were more like Bill Clinton, Oakland would have a better record of downtown development. But maybe not the way you’re thinking. -more-
Pacific Gas & Electric is moving its Berkeley customer service office on Sept. 29 from 2111 Martin Luther King Jr. Way to 1900 Addison St. -more-
For anyone looking for a pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning, the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association invites ones and all to join in a climb up historic Charter Hill behind the UC campus. -more-
While the corporate record industry files lawsuits against 12-year-olds and Cal students for downloading music from the web, O-Maya, a group of former Berkeley and St. Mary’s high school students, offers their music for free on the Web and for sale on their debut CD this weekend. -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the last of a three-part series on the history of Memorial Stadium. -more-
MoveOn—the Berkeley based activist organization that’s been using the Internet to shake up the political scene—is calling together a flash mob to register voters in Berkeley Saturday. -more-
I’ve encountered coyotes in odd places—the men’s room of a park in Tucson, for one—but never, unlike a friend who knows his wildlife, in downtown Berkeley. He says it was crossing Shattuck Avenue, early in the morning before significant traffic. This shouldn’t have surprised me: I knew they were in the East Bay Hills (Tilden Park and Briones), and it was only a matter of time until they came to town. -more-
How to make up a $1.43 million Berkeley General Fund shortfall caused by the 2003-04 state budget? That’s the gloomy and wholly expected task the Berkeley City Council will take up at tonight’s regular 7:30 p.m. meeting at the Old City Hall. -more-
When searching a mainstream news Web site don’t be surprised if you find Muslims described as “ragheads” and “Islamofascists.” Just don’t expect Israelis to be subjected to the same sort of ethnic slurs—articles that contain derogatory terms about Israelis are forbidden. -more-
