To the delight of environmentalists and the dismay of anarchists, artists and dog-lovers, the Albany Bulb is one major step closer to joining the Eastshore State Park. -more-
Some neighbors of the old Berkeley High School East Campus say they are afraid that a BUSD school board decision last week on whether to close a block of Derby Street might mean the campus will long remain an abandoned, empty lot instead of the promised multi-purpose athletic fields and community park space. -more-
Praised by citizen activists in Richmond, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) got a less than friendly reception Thursday night in Berkeley. -more-
Without granting a hearing, a superior court judge Friday denied the petition of three Berkeley residents, including a city councilmember, seeking to ultimately undo a settlement agreement reached last week between the city and UC Berkeley. -more-
A Los Angeles mega-mall developer is pushing forward with his plans for an up-scale shopping complex and a hotel at Golden Gate Fields. -more-
Recent actions at Peralta Community College Trustee meetings may be signaling a new era of increased financial scrutiny within the four-college district. -more-
The Zoning Adjustment Board ruled Thursday that the cottage resting atop a weathering plywood shell that dominates the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Emerson Street, known as the “flying cottage,” now complies with city zoning laws. -more-
If you have flown the polar route, from London to San Francisco, you may have had the opportunity to look down on the arctic ice cap from 35,000 feet. In the summer the vast span of perennial sea ice—some 1.7 billion acres—begins just west of Greenland a nd extends for hundreds of miles, ending in a span of open water off the coast of North America and Eurasia. The next time you fly this route, take a long look at this endless expanse of whiteness. Before the end of the century the ice cap will be gone, a victim of global warming or, more precisely, the anthropogenic forcing of global climate change. -more-
I read in the paper that front row tickets for the upcoming Rolling Stones concerts are selling for over $5,000 a piece. That’s a lot of money to shell out to see four geezers prance arthritically around on stage. -more-
We got lice. We got staph. We were temporarily brainwashed by an amateur cult leader. We paid our own way, took semesters off to travel and took in homeless veterans. We learned that, sadly, sometimes things do need to get worse before they get better. -more-
Thanks to the Daily Planet, it has now become an open secret that Tom Bates is extending his heavy hand to thwart the efforts of the Berkeley Unified School District to begin construction of the transportation facility that was to be located on Sixth and Gilman streets. (A faded poster containing the formal legal announcement of the district’s plans for the project is still affixed to the anchor fence on the site.) -more-
For the past 10 years California population has grown at an average rate of 1.3 percent a year, with the result that the state is now adding almost 500,000 people per year. However, from 2000 to 2003 (the years for which I found data) Alameda County grew by only 0.4 percent per year, and Berkeley actually shrank at a rate of 0.3 percent per year. There are many in Berkeley who have fought hard to achieve this. We have a zoning ordinance which limits new building heights to one-half that of some existing buildings. We have people who appeal to have buildings landmarked in order to block development plans. We have people who protest when plans trade-off an increase in units against a decrease in parking places. We have people who want an environmental impa ct report for any large, or medium-sized development. We have succeeded in halting growth in Berkeley, despite the growth in the state as a whole. -more-
I’ve been hearing a lot of foolishness and hypocrisy about parking in Berkeley. -more-
As a fan of the Berkeley Daily Planet, I was worried when I learned that Knight Ridder was starting a free daily newspaper in the East Bay. I had just finished reading Davis Merritt’s new book, Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy at Risk. The story he tells does not inspire faith that, when Knight Ridder moves in, good journalism will prevail. -more-
One hundred years ago poet George Sterling arrived in Carmel on the cusp of a storied era for the Monterey Peninsula. -more-
Gothic columns of petrified motion, -more-
The wild turkeys continue to expand their presence in the Berkeley hills. Some of their new neighbors have mixed feelings about these large untidy and sometimes aggressive birds. And the turkeys may be impacting other species, either through predation (on salamanders and the like) or displacement. -more-
A deal that Mayor Tom Bates and UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau heralded Wednesday as ushering in a new era of town-gown tranquility continues to stir controversy in Berkeley where several councilmembers and neighborhood leaders insist the city got a bum deal. -more-
Before Berkeley and UC signed a deal making settlement negotiations secret, Mayor Tom Bates sought a confidentiality agreement with the UC Berkeley Chancellor. -more-
The Berkeley Unified School District took an enormous bite out of its union problems last Tuesday, reaching tentative agreements with its teachers, bus drivers, custodians, instructional assistants and office workers. -more-
After almost four years of trying to negotiate a new union contract, workers at the Claremont Resort and Spa voted Wednesday to go on strike if an agreement is not reached by June 1. According to the union, 94 percent of the workers voted in favor of walking out. -more-
Overriding the pleas of preservationists, Berkeley Planning Commissioners passed changes to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) Wednesday night. -more-
Promising to attract some of the best scientific minds in the country, the UC Board of Regents voted Thursday to compete for the management of the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons research and development laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico in partnership with Bechtel National, Inc. -more-
When Robi Damelin’s 28-year-old son was killed while serving as an Israeli soldier in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, she didn’t know what to do. She was overcome with a mixture of anger, sadness and confusion. Her son was a peace activist and nev er wanted to serve. She couldn’t figure out who or what to blame. -more-
With the blessing of city officials, the owner of an illegal West Berkeley live/work warehouse where 15 tenants refuse to leave has formulated a plan to speed up evictions and safeguard the value of the property. -more-
In an effort to decrease the number of vacant storefronts around town, the Berkeley City Council Tuesday eased parking requirements for new businesses that open on commercial streets. -more-
Berkeley gardener and traffic circle advocate Karl Reeh is learning the hard way: Never negotiate with terrorists. -more-
Parking will no longer be free for local BART riders beginning in January. -more-
Oakland developer Alan Dones told Peralta Community College trustees Tuesday night that he “came to be a partner, not an adversary,” and was withdrawing his controversial proposal for an agreement to develop Peralta-Laney College lands. -more-
Panoramic Hill will become Berkeley’s newest national landmark, a federal official said Thursday. -more-
If you’ve been traveling south on Interstate 880 from downtown Oakland recently—on your way to the A’s game, for example, or maybe to cruise International Boulevard after you’ve perused the offerings in redbook (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll explain some other time)—then you’ve probably noticed the new Bud Lite billboard next to the overpass just before the High Street exit. It shows two teenage-looking female models—one Latina, one African-American—dressed invitingly, staring out indifferently at the passing cars. I think their look is supposed to represent some sort of challenge—try us out if you’re up to it, man, but you’ve got to bring your A game. Anyway, far up on the right-hand corner of the billboard, away from the two young women and the oversized Bud Lite logo, is the message: “Serve Chilled.” Serve chilled? Is that supposed to mean that the best way to break down these young women’s icy looks is to get them beer-drunk? Or does the message mean that it is the women themselves who are supposed to be served—properly cooled-out, of course—to the would-be male consumers driving by in their cars? I think one of our clever friends at the ad agency made this deliberately ambiguous. -more-
The Berkeley City Council, strong-armed by Mayor Bates and the city attorney, has held a series of secret meetings and secret votes about a secret document, culminating on May 24 when the council secretly met and finally voted on a secret final document. Unbelievable! -more-
I am the chief of the cardiology division of Kaiser Richmond where I have worked for 24 years, and I am a resident of Richmond. I rollerblade on the Bay Trail between the Richmond Marina and Point Isabel. I tell my patients to exercise there as well. I rollerblade past the Campus Bay property, a beautiful marshland, sadly contaminated by toxic chemicals. I have been a part of the community movement to demand a safe cleanup of this site. -more-
Aidan Delgado, an Army reservist who witnessed multiple war crimes at Abu Ghraib, returns to the Bay Area May 29, 6 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. Joined by other nationally known war resisters—Camilo Mejia, Tim Goodrich, Jeff Paterson, Stephen Funk, along with family members of servicemen killed in Iraq—Delgado will present a slide show of atrocities he himself observed in Iraq. Delgado spent six months helping to run the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. -more-
Damp weather and wind flay away at the paint and tin of an old Quonset hut in San Francisco’s Presidio. And, near the foot of its door, there’s a stone with a message carved onto it. The stone commemorates the work of 60 students and teachers, mostly Americans of Japanese descent, who trained and taught here as linguists and translators during the outbreak of World War II. -more-
New mid-intersection traffic circles have been sprouting up in central Berkeley like mushrooms after a rain. -more-
Well, we don’t take many trips, and it’s a good thing for the public interest that we don’t. Every time we leave the country, it seems that something happens. We were in France when Watergate broke. We were in England during Tianamen Square. We were in Italy at the time of 9/11. And those are just about all the vacations we’ve taken in the last 30 years, so we sometimes feel that we’re influencing the course of world history every time we go somewhere. -more-
Here is an instant critique of the UC-city settlement. While one should be humbled by Theodore Roosevelt’s dictum that it is not the critic who counts, but the man in the arena, in a democracy critics (especially those who volunteered to participate but were excluded from the arena) have an obligation to speak up. While the passage of time may bring greater perspective, at the moment one asks if the city is worse off with this settlement than if they had never filed the CEQA lawsuit in the first place. T he city has limited its future environmental and fiscal options notwithstanding changes in the law—such as the Cal State Monterey Bay case pending before the California Supreme Court that could give the city a CEQA opportunity to exact full mitigation for UC’s impacts—and obtained little prerogative or improvement in return. -more-
