The Shattuck Hotel, once one of the toniest hotels in Northern California, is headed for a new era of grandeur, thanks to the partnership of owner Roy Nee with Starwood Hotels—considered by many the world’s leading hotelier. 

Anyone who meets Nee, a long-time Marin County resident who moved to Berkeley seven years ago, quickly discovers that he’s downtown Berkeley’s biggest booster, willing to wage an eight-figure gamble on the city’s future. 

Starwood, whose brands include the St. Regis (including the namesake hotel in New York), ITT Sheraton, The Luxury Collection, W, and Four Points, will operate the hotel under the Westin label. 

The Westin Berkeley, as the refurbished hotel will be known, will offer 199 upscale rooms, convention and meeting facilities, a spa, rooftop gardens and terraces, a wedding suite with a private courtyard and a presidential suite with its own terrace and a restaurant. 

The biggest change in the building’s exterior will be a two-story addition to the currently undistinguished Hink’s Annex building on the west end of the structure on Allston Way. 

The building will be resurfaced, and its four-story skyline will resemble the main hotel building. Ground floor spaces will continue to be used by the U.S. Post Office and YMCA, Nee said. 

A remarkable family 

Restoring the building is going to be a long, expensive process, but Nee said he feels up to the task, thanks to assistance he’ll have from an extended family that seems to epitomize the concept of over-achieving. 

Nee moved to Berkeley because his spouse, Blanche, was a principal scientist at Chiron. Frustrated with her job, she decided to go for an M.B.A., enrolling in a joint program offered by Columbia University and the Haas School at UC Berkeley. 

After graduating late last year at the top of her class and quitting her post at Chiron in March, she’s now fully immersed in the project. 

“They say husband-and-wife teams are difficult, but it’s working out great,” said the 55-year-old Nee. “She’s my business partner, along with my nephew and my son, Darin.” 

The younger Nee graduated with a physics degrees from Stanford and had been accepted into the Yale physics program to work on quantum computing, an emerging technology based on one of the most baffling of natural phenomena. 

“He turned them down and went to Turkey on an archaeological dig, and from there, he went to Egypt,” his father said. “Now he’s decided he wants to be a doctor.” 

His nephew, Kyle Harris, is the private chef to Barry Levinson, one of Hollywood’s leading lights. “He’s cooked for all the big stars,” Nee said. 

Another nephew is also involved, a Harvard graduate who is the son of Nee’s older brother, Victor, who is a department chair at Cornell. 

“If there’s such a thing as a family enterprise, this is it,” said Nee, smiling. “What I have on my side is brain power but no hotel experience—but we’re up to the game.” 

Nee’s academic background is more modest. He started college at UCLA, then moved to UC Santa Cruz a year after it opened, but his radical political activities kept him occupied in the Bay Area, so he finished his mathematics degree at San Francisco State. 

After college, he began work as a carpenter. “I worked at all the shipyards, and made journeyman,” he said. Then it was on to contracting. 

His best-known property is the Tea Garden Spa in Mill Valley, a popular facility that employs Zen principles in its offering, hence the name of the corporate entity—Zen Spa. 

With a staff of 50, the Tea Garden will offer its expertise in running the smaller spa Nee plans to install in the basement floor beneath the hotel. 

Berkeley Film Festival plans 

Nee’s MIll Valley holdings also includes the offices of the popular Mill Valley Film Festival—an event that Nee loves. 

As the new owner of a hotel building that includes a major theater, he’s already put out feelers to both the Mill Valley festival organizers and Landmarks Theaters, which in addition to the Shattuck Cinemas operates the Act 1 and 2 and California theaters in downtown Berkeley. 

Nee said the Mill Valley festival organizers are excited about the prospect of teaming up with Berkeley. 

Landmark, which operates 208 screens in 57 cities, makes a logical partner, said Nee. 

Part of 2929 Entertainment, a firm owned by Internet entrepreneur Todd Wagner and billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Landmarks is a leading showcase for independent film and is switching all its theaters to digital projection. 

“Mark Cuban is a logical partner, and we’ll be asking him if he’d give up one or two of his screens for a few days,” Nee said. 

A Berkeley film festival makes sense, he said, since the city was home to Pauline Kael, perhaps the greatest film critic of the 20th Century. Her husband once ran an art house of Telegraph Avenue, and after their divorce opened the Fine Arts Cinema at the site now occupied by Patrick Kennedy’s Fine Arts Building at the southeast corner of Haste and Shattuck. 

Challenges ahead 

Nee knows that making his biggest-ever investment in downtown Berkeley is a challenge, but he’s convinced that the new hotel will represent a major force toward revitalizing the city’s core. 

With ownership consolidated for the first time in two decades, Nee said now’s the time to move. 

“Mayor (Tom) Bates is right about championing the downtown image,” he said. “You need to have partnerships to work together to changes people’s opinions. 

“We want to foster people’s best efforts to help bring about the change, and taking an historically significant block and bringing a great hotel to the city is a good start.” 

Nee believes the hotel will help attract the kind of retail the downtown needs to make it commercially viable. 

“Right now, it’s not the right mix.” he said. “We have wonderful things like Berkeley Rep, and the Shattuck Cinemas is the Landmark’s largest grossing theater in the Bay area. Now we need to bring in the right kind of retail.” 

Once Nee formulated his vision for the property, it proved sufficiently contagious to attract several major hoteliers. He settled Starwood because of the group’s long-term management expertise. 

“They’re in it for decades,” he said. 

Unusual allies 

In a city where developers often charge that preservationists and the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) are their biggest enemies, Nee can’t offer enough praise to both. 

Leslie Emmington, both an LPC member and an employee of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, can’t stop praising Nee either. 

To her, Nee is restoring one of the city’s most significant landmarks to it’s original intent—a four star hotel that will reflect well on the city. 

Nee is bringing his project to the LPC Monday for a first look after working closely with a three-member subcommitte on which Emmington serves, said the commissioner. Emmington added, “It’s a wonderful project.” 

Because the building is a city landmark, the exterior designs must pass muster with the commission, which is charged with making sure that the refurbishing of the existing building is carried out properly, and that the expanded annex building has details that differentiate it subtly from the original construction. 

UC Hotel competition 

Neither Nee nor Westin were frightened off by the ongoing negotiations between UC Berkeley and hotelier Carpenter & Co. to build a combination high-rise hotel and conference center just a block to the northeast at the corner of Shattuck and Center Street. 

“I looked at UC’s study and I commissioned one of my own from a hotel company, and I’m convinced that there’s room for both hotels. UC attracts plenty of meetings and conferences, and we’ll be able to keep them in the city,” Nee said. 

UC has twice extended their talks with Carpenter, while Nee has been able to find a premiere operator less than a year after buying the property, so he’ll have a significant head start. 

Original vision  

The Shattuck was built by former gold prospector Francis Kittredge Shattuck in the wake of the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, when residents of that city, terrified by the disastrous fires that followed the quake, began packing up and moving to Berkeley. 

“The building was built of reinforced concrete and was fireproof, something they stressed in their advertisements,” Nee said.  

The hotel opened on Dec. 15, 1910 and proved so successful that an annex filling out the rest of the block along Shattuck, making it the longest structure in Northern California at the time. 

Berkeley was in the midst of its biggest boom at the time, and the university was starting its meteoric rise. 

Shattuck sold out to William Whitecotton in 1918, and the new owner ran it as the Whitecotton Hotel. It reverted back the Shattuck name in 1942 and has retained it through several changes of ownership and management. 

The property was split up after a bankruptcy in the early 1980s when it was seized by the government and auctioned off. 

“Now it’s a lot like when the hotel was first built,” Nee said. “Berkeley is going through a renaissance and the community is becoming friendlier to businesses, who stayed away for three decades starting in the 1960s when the city gained a radical reputation. I like to think that we’re restoring the hotel to its original vision.”

In what the University of California is calling “the most severe and comprehensive disciplinary action that UC Berkeley has taken against a fraternity in several years,” the fraternity accused in last spring’s pellet gun hazing attack on a Berkeley street will be disbanded and forced to reorganize. 

But criminal charges have yet to be filed against suspects for allegedly shooting an unidentified 19-year-old Pi Kappa Phi pledge last April with an air pellet gun and forcing him to consume alcohol and marijuana. 

The Gamma chapter of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, which had been in continuous operation on the Berkeley campus since its founding in 1909, must suspend all operations for one year, and will have all current members placed on inactive alumni status. 

When it is allowed to reopen in the fall of 2006, the fraternity is expected to operate under what the university calls “a host of conditions, restrictions, and close oversight by the campus administration and the fraternity’s national headquarters.” The national fraternity will decide if any current chapter members will be allowed to join the reorganized chapter. 

The punishment, which is just short of a complete disbanding of the 58-member chapter, was decided in an agreement reached between UC Berkeley officials and the Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

The fraternity must also pay a $4,000 fine, perform 750 hours of community service, and produce a seminar on the dangers of hazing. Fraternity and sorority hazing is banned by UC Berkeley campus. 

Pi Kappa Phi Chief Executive Officer Mark E. Timmes said in a statement that “our investigation indicated a culture of alcohol, drugs, hazing and lack of respect for others which is unacceptable.” 

UC Berkeley Dean of Students Karen Kenney added that “the offenses in this case were especially shocking and disturbing. Strong disciplinary action was called for and is appropriate.” 

A UC Berkeley press release said that the fraternity punishment “also addresses a March 4 incident in which the chapter held an unauthorized party involving various alcohol use violations, including the serving of alcohol to minors.” 

Berkeley Police Public Information Officer Joe Okies said that the April 8 pellet gun incident is “still under investigation” and declined to give a figure as to how many suspects are being investigated. 

Bay City News (BCN) reported this week that 15 fraternity members took place in the hazing, with three members shooting him multiple times with what they described as two BB guns. UC Berkeley describes the weapons as pellet guns. BCN said the 15 fraternity member figure came from Okies, but Okies said by telephone that he has never given out an exact number of those allegedly involved in the incident. 

This is not the first time that a Pi Kappa Phi chapter has been cited for hazing. 

In 2001, three Chico State Pi Kappa Phi members pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor in the alcohol overdose death of Adrian Heideman, and eight fraternity members agreed to pay Heideman’s family $500,000. 

A year later, the chapter reached a confidential, undisclosed settlement with the Heideman’s family over a lawsuit in which the Heidemans charged that he had died in a hazing incident. The Chico State chapter later disbanded.›

Seeking to restore stability to Alameda County’s much criticized public hospital system, hospital trustees are negotiating with Dr. Samuel Ross of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Tex., to become the system’s next CEO. 

Although a deal to hire Ross, Parkland’s senior vice president and chief medical officer, hasn’t been sealed, the two sides are in exclusive negotiations, said Alameda County Medical Center Board President Dr. Ted Rose. 

The medical center includes Oakland’s Highland Hospital, which serves most of Berkeley’s trauma and emergency cases. Also in the public hospital network, required to treat the uninsured, are San Leandro’s Fairmont Hospital, John George Psychiatric Pavilion and three outpatient clinics 

Last year, with the medical center facing a $50 million deficit and having fired its ninth chief executive in 11 years, county lawmakers turned over management to Nashville, Tenn.-based consultant Cambio Health Solutions. 

With Cambio’s management contract set to expire on Aug. 7, the absence of a new leadership team was one of several criticisms lodged at the board of trustees in a Alameda County Grand Jury report released in May. 

The grand jury also charged that the board, despite receiving $70 million from a county sales tax increase, appeared unable to balance its budget, make tough decisions on layoffs and service reductions, curtail the power of unions and reduce borrowing from the county. 

“The grand jury report was bogus, a real hatchet job,” said Brad Cleveland of SEIU, Local 616. 

Kay Eisenhower, the chair of pro-labor Vote Health, challenged the timing of the report, released nearly two months before the annual grand jury report. She said insiders believed the early release was timed to complicate the search for a new CEO and keep Cambio in charge of the hospital. 

Eisenhower also said the grand jury foreman was a former associate of County Sheriff Charles Plummer, who, she said, first recommended the county bring in Cambio. 

“It’s suspicious when last year a doctor was murdered, there was a $50 million deficit and the hospital was threatened with decertification, but the grand jury report came out as scheduled, but this year, there is a balanced budget, no threat of decertification, but the grand jury feels the need to issue its report in May,” she said. 

Cleveland said that Plummer had written the grand jury a series of letters critical of the medical center and that some of the letters “looked suspiciously similar” to the grand jury report. 

A case in point, he said, was the grand jury’s findings that on any day 25 percent of employees are on paid leave. He said that figure came from Cambio reports, relayed from Plummer to the grand jury, that combined vacation and sick days with medical leave. 

“It was interesting that misinformation provided by Cambio was picked up by the sheriff and ended up in the grand jury report,” he said. 

The trustees, preparing a formal response due to the grand jury Monday, also challenged the report. 

“A lot of their information was outdated,” said Board President Dr. Ted Rose. “We knew in March we were heading towards a balanced budget.” 

Last week, with the help of $70 million from the sales tax hike approved by voters in 2004, the board passed a budget with a projected net income of $253,028 without laying off workers or reducing services.  

Public hospitals in the state have been hard hit by lower fees paid by Medicare and Medi-Cal and an increase in low-income residents without insurance. Rose said between 40 and 50 percent of the medical center’s patients were uninsured. 

He added that the board wanted to steady the hospital’s finances through running a more efficient operation rather than cutting staff. 

“The question is, how do you reduce staff without reducing services,” he said.  

Rose also defended agreements with unions signed last year that gave workers 3 and 5 percent raises as necessary to retain skilled employees. 

County Supervisor Keith Carson said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the medical center’s future, but cautioned that it had to make further service and billing reforms so it wouldn’t be so dependent on the sales tax increase.  

“Given the depth of the challenges, they need to make structural changes,” he said. “I haven’t seen that yet.” 

As far as the medical center’s preferred new leader, Ross could not be reached for comment on his possible appointment to the helm of the county hospital system. A native Texan, he has been a mainstay for the past 12 years at Parkland, best known as the facility President John F. Kennedy was rushed to after being fatally shot. 

Ross has degrees in medicine and medical management from the University of Texas. When he was promoted to his current position in 2003, Parkland CEO Dr. Ron Anderson said of Ross: “His interest in community outreach, indigent health care and public health has led to increased patient volume and revenues and more than $3 million in grant programs for community clinics.”  

State regulators are threatening to strip E-Z Stop Deli, the liquor outlet nearest to Berkeley High, of its alcohol license after police cited it for selling beer to minors for the third time since last March. 

“Three strikes is not very common. We take it very seriously,” said State Alcohol Beverage Control District Administrator Andrew Gomez.  

Rather than stripping the shop of its alcohol license, Gomez is negotiating with E-Z Stop, at 2233 Shattuck Ave., about transferring the business to a new owner at the site, he said. If negotiations break down, an administrative hearing would be scheduled that could result in the shop losing its liquor license.  

State law calls for shops to lose their alcohol licenses after three verified violations within three years. Gomez said he was negotiating with E-Z Stop over transferring the license, “as an option to settle the case as soon as possible.” 

Losing its liquor license would be a severe blow to E-Z Stop, said its owner Ali Erakat. 

“It’s a very big part of the business,” he said. 

Erakat said he couldn’t comment further on the investigation, but added that he had fired the two clerks caught selling alcohol to the decoys. E-Z Stop is continuing to sell alcohol while negotiations proceed. 

ABC is also seeking to revoke the license of Berkeley Market, at 2369 Telegraph Ave., Gomez said. The convenience store has also been cited three times for selling to minors. A hearing for Berkeley Market has been set for August, Gomez said. 

Just last year, E-Z Stop was praised as a model of self policing by neighborhood leaders who successfully fought to keep a newly arriving Longs Drugs from selling beer and wine. 

School Board Director John Selawsky, a leader in the fight against Longs, continued to defend the convenience store. He said E-Z Stop had met previous district demands that it not sell alcohol during the school lunch period or between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. when students are leaving the high school. 

“I think they have been very accommodating with us. I don’t see them as a liability,” Selawsky said. “My concern with Longs was that it was not a family owned business and would not have the proper controls.” 

E-Z Stop has failed every test authorities presented over the past 15 months. On March 19, 2004, a clerk sold beer to a 17-year-old decoy who did not present identification, Gomez said. On March 2, 2005, the same clerk sold beer to a 19-year-old who offered a driver’s license identifying him as a minor. On Sept. 27, 2004 a different clerk sold beer to an 18-year-old decoy without asking for identification. 

The Berkeley Police Department executed the stings through a $50,000 state grant. The decoys, Gomez said, typically come from local colleges or students involved in anti-alcohol groups. 

Recent police operations have apparently resulted in liquor stores cleaning up their act. During the sting this March, E-Z Stop was the only store out of six that sold to minors, Gomez said. 

A police sweep on March 19, 2004 found six of the 15 targeted stores willing to sell to minors, Gomez said. The usual violation rate on decoy operations is about 10 percent, he said. 

Visitors to Edwina Perez’s West Berkeley apartment are greeted by a sign that reads, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  

The sign is still appropriate for Perez, a self-made preacher and pastor of Berkeley’s New Birth Church, but thanks to what she sees as divine intervention, her house has returned to the service of her family. 

On a recent Sunday, Perez, after nearly 14 years of preaching in a living room that would struggle to fit two sofas, christened her church’s new home: a 10-foot-by-22-foot nook on San Pablo Avenue. Her friends filled all 24 chairs they could squeeze into the building, fanning themselves, during the two-hour service.  

“The training wheels are coming off,” she said. “To move from your house to your own building is every pastor’s dream.” 

A former security guard at Bayer Pharmaceutical, Perez has overcome illness and long odds to lead a church of her own. Born in Cuba, she was raised in San Francisco as a Catholic, and when she moved to Berkeley with her two sons in 1979, she started attending mass at St. Joseph the Worker Church. 

Then in 1991, at a time when an arthritic condition in her legs required her to use a wheelchair, Perez sensed that God was calling her to preach the Bible. 

Since women can’t become priests, she talked about starting her own church with then St. Joseph Pastor Father Bill O’Donnell. 

“I told him I felt this calling in my life and he blessed me to go try it,” she said. “Once I made the decision, there was this overwhelming peace that came over me.” 

Perez was ordained in 1991 by an uncle, a Protestant Bishop in her native Cuba, and returned to Berkeley to lead her first independent service to a congregation of two people. Noticeably absent that first Sunday were Perez’s two sons, who chose to remain Catholic. 

Homespun ministries are not uncommon across the country or in the East Bay, and Perez counts among her heroes local women who also started small churches. Ernestine Rheems, the founder of Center of Hope Church, started preaching in a flatbed truck, Perez said, and Cynthia James, a Bishop in the Church of God in Christ, started preaching on the bus on her way to work. 

Perez’s ministry has always placed a focus on helping her immediate community near Ninth Street and Bancroft Way. When she first moved into her apartment in 1983, she said, she was disappointed to see the drug activity that induced her to leave her previous homes was just as prevalent in her new neighborhood. 

She started her community outreach by heading up her neighborhood watch, but Perez, an expert at doing a lot of work in very little physical space, soon expanded from fighting crime to providing services. She held Saturday tutoring sessions in her building’s front parking lot, where Cal students helped local kids with their school work.  

The parking lot has also hosted a twice-annual hot dog day, where police and community members, including known drug dealers, were welcomed to eat hot dogs cooked by Perez. 

“I remember going to her apartment and being impressed that she really seemed to be going out of her way to help people,” said former Mayor Shirley Dean, who helped Perez hand out turkeys to families in need during the holidays. 

As her church grew, Perez took in several families she said were shunned from their congregations because they had a family member on death row. She has led several prayer sessions from the hallway of San Quentin and has prayed at the bedside of sick people she didn’t know.  

One of those who came to services on Sunday was Nancy Jonathans, who met Perez four years ago in a hospital room where Jonathans’ husband was in a coma after suffering a stroke. Perez dropped by the hospital room at the request of a friend to pray for him. 

“She would visit just to make sure my husband had company,” Jonathans said.  

Two year’s later, in 2003, Perez was diagnosed with breast cancer. Despite a regular Sunday congregation of 35 people, she was too traumatized and disbanded the church. 

“I had to worry about me,” she said. “Being a minister is lonely. We don’t have a safe place to talk about our problems.” 

Perez joined an Oakland church, and after her second ten-week radiation treatment that ended last April, her cancer went into remission. 

Given a clean bill of health, she didn’t plan on resuming her ministry until just January, when she received a call from Vera Baggett, an 87-year-old missionary getting ready to preach in Europe. 

“She told me the Lord said you need to get off your chair and get back to work,” Perez said. Shortly thereafter, another friend, Henrietta Harper, offered her help in rebuilding her church. 

“I just believed it was time for her to start up again,” Harper said. 

Soon Perez was back to preaching in her living room. And, although the number of regular parishioners had shrunk to around 25 every Sunday, rents in West Berkeley had dropped as well—low enough that the church could afford a home of its own just two blocks from Perez’s apartment. 

“I don’t just want this to be a building for prayer but a place where people can get their needs met as much as we can,” she said. Already she plans to revive the Saturday tutoring program and to begin a coffee sale to raise money for breast cancer research. 

“I’m so grateful for everything that has happened,” she said. “We’re in an area that I feel we are going to be so productive.” 

›

The latest incarnation of Ozzie’s, the beloved soda fountain at the southwest corner of the College Avenue and Russell Street intersection in the Elmwood, has expired. 

Operator Mike Hogan served his last sandwiches on June 29, and scooped his last ice cream as he cleaned out the following day. 

Victoria Carter, who holds the lease on the former Elmwood Pharmacy, is searching for a new tenant to the run the institution that has been at the center of neighborhood life for decades. 

But for regulars like writer Marty Schiffenbauer, Hogan’s departure “is really sad.” 

For years a regular on Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Schiffenbauer has made Ozzie’s a hangout even during periods in the past when the counter was closed and between operators. 

“It’s a great neighborhood institution,” he said, “and anyone who takes over will become an immediately celebrity.” 

He said, “You really need someone very special, because there’s no real money in it.” 

Times have been hard for both Ozzie’s and Carter. Faced with the minimal profit margins forced by HMOs and insurance companies that have left the prescription drug business in the hands of large merchants who can make their profits off other merchandise, Carter was forced to abandon her prescription business early last year. 

Since then, she has been restructuring her business to offer non-prescription medicines and gift shop items. 

Carter recently signed a new five-year lease with increased rents, and she, in turn, offered Hogan a lease with a modest increase that he realized he couldn’t pay and have any chance of making a profit, something he’d not been able to do since he reopened the shuttered fountain business. 

Hogan insisted that expanded hours offered the one hope for the soda fountain, allowing him to sell to the breakfast and lunch crowds, while Carter insisted that the main reason he couldn’t make a go of it was a lack of practical business sense. 

John Moriarty, proprietor of 14 Karats, a jewelry shop a few doors south of Ozzie’s on College, noted that expanded hours weren’t enough. Hogan made his hot food offerings on a Teflon coated electric griddle, but without a professional grill and hood—an investment of as much as $250,000—Hogan couldn’t serve enough to be profitable. 

The final days took an edgy turn, with Hogan offering customers a sheet offering his version of the reasons he was closing, followed by Carter’s demand that he stopped handing out the sheet, followed by her issuance of a written account of her own. 

Proposed mediation fell through, the lease expired, and Ozzie’s closed. 

There has been an Elmwood Pharmacy in the building since 1921, and a small soda fountain for most of those years. But it was Charles Osborne, who took over the soda fountain in 1950, who made the place a landmark institution. 

A World War II fighter pilot and ace, Osborne drifted leftward after arriving in Berkeley, and the fountain became a favorite hangout of Berkeley leftists. 

A 1982 announcement of radically increased rents mobilized the regulars into a campaign for commercial rent control that became the nation’s first when voters approved it that year. 

The institution lasted seven years before a court decision struck it down. Faced with higher rents, Osborne called it quits. By then he’d been serving the grandkids of some of his first customers. 

Carter’s father, Charles, consolidated his former College and Ashby pharmacy with the Elmwood in 1960, closing his old store in the process. After 26 years, he handed the business over to his daughter four years after Osborne’s departure. 

Others had tried before Hogan, and the regulars recruited Hogan after the business had been shuttered after the previous operator left. 

With the fountain once again closed, Carter is looking for a new operator and is asking other Elmwood merchants to help. 

If she has her way, Ozzie’s will be reincarnated yet again. 

For Hogan, closing was hard. “A lot of people came out,” he said. “They were very supportive and a lot of them were upset.” 

Hogan’s next step will be a move to Sacramento, followed by a period of recuperation before he heads on to his next venture. 

“I’m always optimistic,” Schiffenbauer said. “I’m not giving up totally, but I’m not very happy.”›

July 4 Calm, But Several Other Fires Keep City Firefighters Busy  

A blaze ignited by a discarded holiday party barbecue proved costly Friday for a Berkeley firm once chaired by the late PowerBar co-creator Brian Maxwell. 

Before it was quelled, the blaze had inflicted more than $2.1 million in damage, destroying the structure and all its contents, said Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

But if there had to be a fire, the timing couldn’t have been much better, said Tom Oliver, a former colleague at PowerBar under the Maxwell regime and president of Coolsystems, Inc. 

“We were planning to move in August, and this just speeds things up,” he said Thursday morning. 

The flames began after the grill, with coals still smoldering inside, was tossed into a trash bin next to the Coolsystems, Inc., warehouse at 929 Camellia St., said Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

The coals ignited the contents of the dumpster, and the flames quickly spread to the building. 

The call came in to the emergency switchboard at 7:01 p.m. and before the blaze was controlled at 8 p.m., 35 firefighters, including two chiefs, as well as 12 engines and trucks, were engaged in the battle. 

Units from other cities were placed on availability to cover any other fires that might have sprung up while all the city’s crews and trucks were battling the West Berkeley blaze, Orth said. 

No one was injured in the blaze. 

It was the second multi-million-dollar blaze in West Berkeley in eight days. The first, on June 28, did $2 million in damage to the Berkeley Repertory Theater’s scene shop at Fifth and Gilman streets, just two blocks from the scene of Friday’s fire. 

Theater officials announced Wednesday that the troupe’s production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town will open as scheduled on Sept. 9, even though they’re still hunting for new quarters to make the sets. 

After selling PowerBar in March, 2000, for $375 million, Maxwell remained active in the Berkeley business community after he acquired Coolsystems, a company started by NASA space suit designer Bill Elkins, who wanted to apply extraterrestrial design to terrestrial problems. 

Coolsystems GR Accelerated Recovery technology uses high tech cooling units similar to those used by astronauts for treatment of sports injuries—both human and equine—and to ease symptoms of multiple sclerosis. 

“It’s a particularly appropriate name at the moment, since we’re making an accelerated recovery after the fire,” Oliver said. 

The cooling units, which also speed healing by periodically increasing pressure on injured joints, have been adopted by more than 68 professional teams (including the Eagles, Nets and Giants), 118 universities, and 320 individual pro athletes (including Warren Sapp and Corey Maggette) have purchased systems, said corporate, said Dax Kelm, a Jackson Hole, Wyoming, publicist retained by Coolsystems. 

The U.S, Olympic Training Centers, Navy SEALs and the San Francisco Ballet are Game Ready users, and athletes can get Game Ready treatments at physical therapy clinics across the country, he noted.  

Major investors include retired professional football players, including former San Francisco 49ers Steve Young and Jerry Rice, former Seattle Seahawks quarterback Warren Moon, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, Buffalo Bills and Washington Redskins defensive end Bruce Smith and former Buffalo Bills quarterback and 1996 GOP Vice Presidential candidate Jack Kemp. 

Oliver said the fire—which did most of its damage in just ten minutes—won’t affect business operations. The Camellia warehouse contained only a few items of inventory. 

The lion’s share of equipment is still at the manufacturing plant,” Kelm said. 

The corporate spokesperson also said that while the company’s computers were destroyed by the fire, all the data was safely backed up in off-site units, so ordering and other business functions are continuing and the phone system is up and running. 

One reason for the minimal impact was that Coolsystem’s lease was running out and the firm was preparing to move. 

Oliver had been completing negotiations on a vacant plant at the northeast corner of Fulton Street and Dwight Way, where a reporter caught up with him Thursday morning. 

“We’ve been doing very well,” Oliver said. “We had record sales in June of both our GR and GRE models”—the “E” stands for equine. “That set us up for a record second quarter.” 

Fortunately, insurance will cover the losses, and Oliver and his team will be moving into their new home as soon as all the necessary signatures are one the lease. 

“It’s just a matter of days,” he said. 

Tilden Park fire 

Berkeley firefighters were called in at 7:06 p.m. Saturday to help East Bay Regional Parks District crews battle a brush fire that scorched a half-acre of brush and eucalyptus near the Tilden Park merry-go-round. 

The blaze was quickly controlled, and parks district investigators are working to determine the cause, said Berkeley Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

Burning pit 

Berkeley avoided the usual spate of July 4 fireworks blazes, but that didn’t stop someone from igniting a pole vault pit at UC Berkeley’s Edwards Field. 

The fire, which started about 11 p.m., did an estimated $35,000 in damage. 

Second hills blaze 

A belated burst of celebration in the wee hours of Tuesday morning did lead to a fire that consumed nearly four acres of grassland near the Lawrence Hall of Science. 

The fire, reported at 3:33 a.m., resulted in a second alarm before the fire was fully controlled at 4:07 a.m., said Orth. Had the fire happened a month later when vegetation will be drier, the fire could’ve posed a major threat to homes, he said. 

Burned out bottle rockets were found at the scene. 

Stuart Street fire 

Just four minutes after firefighters extinguished the hills blaze, they were dispatched to 1633 Stuart St., where they arrived to find a tenant trapped in his second-floor unit by a blaze on his porch. 

Firefighters were able to extract him through a window, but not before the fellow had burned his hand on an unexpectedly hot front doorknob. 

Damage was estimated at $5,000, Orth said. 

Third fire in two hours 

The morning’s third fire was reported at 5:16 a.m., sparked by a floor furnace in a residence at 2419 Bonar St. The fire was quickly quenched and cause little damage. 

Fence fire 

Berkeley firefighters rushed to 2222 Durant Ave. at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday where they arrived to find a fence on fire that was scorching the outside of an apartment building and sending smoke inside, disrupting the tenants. 

The fire was extinguished without incident, leaving the fence in serious repair and the building needing a touchup.

An apparent miscommunication has Fire Chief Debra Pryor in hot water with Berkeley hills residents. 

As part of its cost-saving plan to rotate fire company closures, the department Wednesday temporarily closed Fire Station 7, the main hills fire station at 2910 Shasta Road.  

Just last week, Pryor had told the council that engine companies serving the Berkeley hills would be immune from closures until the close of fire season in December. 

When neighbors realized Wednesday morning that the fire station was empty, they immediately lodged complaints and ultimately forced the city to reactivate the station’s lone engine company at 5 p.m. The station was closed for a total of nine hours during which time there were no major fires reported in the hills. 

To save $1.2 million in fire department overtime, the city starting July 1 began rotating closures of up to two fire companies when the department was not at full staff. For stations with just one fire company like Station 7, the company closure effectively shuts down the station. 

Under department directives, the closures are to be spread throughout the city, with special provisions made for the fire-prone hills when weather conditions presented severe fire risks. 

But that’s not what Pryor told the council, according to Councilmember Betty Olds, who represents a section of the hills covered by Station 7. 

“She didn’t say it would only be during critical fire times,” Olds said. “She said for the entire fire season. We won’t accept anything less.” 

In response to the confusion, Deputy Chief David Orth said Station 7 will not be closed Friday as scheduled, and that the department will review its schedule for future closures. 

Besides Station 7, Station 3 at 2010 Russell St. and Station 4 at 1900 Marin Ave. and The Alameda also serve hills residents. 

To save money, Berkeley reduced minimum firefighter staffing from 34 to 26. Rather than pay overtime to maintain 34 on-duty firefighters, the city chose to close two three-firefighter companies before shelling out for overtime. 

The reduction was not expected to result in frequent company closures, but the combination of summer vacation time, two recent workers compensation claims and retirements have left the department shorthanded, Orth said.  

During the first six days of July, the city has closed two companies for three days and a single company for two days. The only day the city had full fire service was July 4 as a precaution for Independence Day fireworks. 

Orth expected closures to decrease dramatically by the beginning of next year when vacation time is minimal and the department expects to hire 12 new firefighters. 

Although Berkeley has seen a big increase in major fires over the past month, Orth said call for service volume for 2005 was slightly below average. 

Berkeley police revealed Tuesday that they’d arrested 56-year-old Berkeley resident Paul Mitchell four days earlier in connection with the 1997 rape of a 39-year-old Berkeley resident. 

Mitchell was tied to the crime through a match in the state DNA database, said Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Police said Mitchell broke into the apartment in the 1900 block of El Dorado Avenue in the pre-dawn hours of May 18, 1997 and pinned the victim to her bed with a pistol. The woman was sexually assaulted multiple times and raped during the attack, Okies said. 

The state Department of Justice notified police on May 25 that they’d matched Mitchell’s DNA to the crime, and a six-week investigation followed, in which further evidence was developed tying Mitchell culminating to the assault. 

Sex Crimes Sgt. Alyson Hart praised the Justice Department’s database for its instrumental role in breaking the cold case. 

“The use of new technology combined with effective investigative tools has helped to identify Mitchell as the suspect in this brutal attack and hold him accountable for his crime,” she said. 

Prosecutor John Adams of the Alameda County district attorney’s office worked closely with the Sex Crimes Unit in developing the charges filed. 

Mitchell faces counts of rape and burglary as well as multiple counts of sexual assault, Okies said. 

According to a 2004 Daily Planet story about his eviction from a Berkeley duplex, Mitchell has a bachelor’s degree in English from Cornell University and a Master’s in Education Psychology from Santa Clara University. 

He lived on a disability pension stemming from a leg injury and had served at least one sentence in the Santa Rita Jail by the time the story was written. 

He was living in a van at the time the story was written following his eviction and the potential loss of his 70 percent housing subsidy from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

As a result of the story, Mitchell was able to obtain a housing voucher and a apartment in Berkeley, which he then rejected in favor of a residence in Oakland. 

He was living in Berkeley again at the time of his arrest.›

Long-time Berkeley resident Herta Bregoff died peacefully in her home on June 26. She was born Herta Maas in 1922 in Karlsruhe, Baden Province, Germany. 

Her family had lived there for several generations and had a comfortable living situation. Although they were Jewish, they were not religious and considered themselves thoroughly German. Therefore when Hitler came to power, Herta’s parents, Rolf and Dora, did not see themselves in danger and continued to live in Karlsruhe. Herta’s older siblings, Eva, Henry and Trudel, did not share this view, and since they were all young adults, made their way to the United States. 

So Herta was left alone with her parents and then when she was 16, was expelled from school due to her Jewish heritage. This was a very difficult time for her, since her future was uncertain, and her parents were powerless to help the situation. Rolf and Dora did not want Herta to worry, so they did not discuss the political upheaval in Germany with her. It wasn’t until 1971, when Herta was reading her father’s papers, that she learned that Rolf had worked diligently during this time to arrange for them to leave Germany, but was unsuccessful.  

When Herta was 18, the Nazis came to her house and gave the family 20 minutes to collect their belongings; they were forced to board a train out of Karlsruhe. Unlike most German Jews, the Jews of Baden were not shipped to Poland, but instead to southern France. They spent the winter there in a camp called Gurs, living in barracks, having to bathe at an outside spigot, and unsure of their destiny. It rained a lot that winter so the camp was usually a sea of mud. Herta’s father died of dysentery in Gurs and was buried there.  

Meanwhile, Dora’s older children, who were already in the United States, were working hard to have Dora and Herta join them. After many months, sponsors were found, forms were completed, and fees paid to officials. 

Dora and Herta, along with others with American sponsors, were allowed to leave Gurs and took a train to Marseilles. There they stayed in hotels while they tried to get visas. They then took a train to Lisbon, Portugal, and boarded the ship Nyassa to New York City. Many Karlsruhe families had already settled in Berkeley, so Herta and her mother went directly there, where they were reunited with Eva, Henry and Trudel. 

Although Herta had not been able to graduate from high school, UC Berkeley allowed her to attend there. She graduated from UC with a B.S. in Chemistry. At UC she met Bill Bregoff, who had just finished his Army service in the Philippines. They were married in 1948. Herta went on to get a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis, while Bill earned his dental degree there. They returned to California and settled in the South Bay. Bill started a dental practice in Hayward, and they soon bought a house in Castro Valley. Herta had her first daughter, Naomi, in 1954. In 1958, Miriam was born. In 1965, Herta earned her teaching degree from Cal State Hayward and soon started teaching elementary school.  

Herta and Bill decided to move back to Berkeley in 1969, where they bought a house in the Elmwood District. Dora lived five blocks away, and they visited her often until her death in 1971. The same year, Bill and Herta separated, but they would remain friends throughout her life. Herta decided to change careers, and started nursing school at the age of 50. She worked as a registered nurse at Fairmont hospital for 17 years. 

Due to the painful memories of Germany, for 30 years Herta did not return, although her siblings made several trips back. Herta made a very brief trip with Bill and her children in 1971. In 1976, a childhood friend came to Berkeley, and convinced Herta to visit her in Switzerland, which she did in 1979. In 1986, her former elementary school classmates from Karlsruhe had a 50th class reunion, and they paid for her trip there. Herta had a wonderful time and made several more trips to Germany and other parts of Europe. She corresponded with many of her former classmates for the rest of her life. 

Herta had two grandchildren, Forrest and Esther, from her daughter Miriam in Alaska. She saw them yearly, either in Berkeley or in Alaska. They looked forward to packages from her, which always included chocolate. On one trip to Alaska, she taught herself to cross-country ski, as she hadn’t had the chance to learn while growing up in Germany.  

Herta’s experience in Nazi Germany caused her to always feel that nothing in life was certain, and to try to help others less fortunate than herself. She was very generous to her family and friends, volunteered at St. Vincent de Paul, and gave to many charities. She spent very little money on herself, and rarely asked others for help. As her health began to fail, her friends called her often and tried to help her as much as she would allow. Although petite in size, she had incredible inner strength, and will be missed by all who knew her.›

http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Works

TERRORISTS, ANARCHISTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

You know, I actually predicted you would choose the “terrorist” word for a headline if you ran my admittedly pointed opinion piece. So I wasn’t surprised. The actual title of the piece I submitted was “Landmarks Meeting of June 27th”—just a bit less vivid. 

Your choice of that word was both inaccurate and needlessly inflammatory. I chose the word “anarchist” carefully, because of my belief that the LPC had taken profoundly anti-democratic positions, and never considered that “terrorist” was an accurate description. Suicide tactics are indeed employed by some terrorists—but also by others, including Buddhist monks. I did not describe an ideology, only a choice of tactics, as you well know. 

I know controversy sells papers—even free ones—but deliberate distortion is not your duty as an editor. 

I therefore hereby request that you publish a clear clarification that the choice and use of the word “terrorist” was yours as an editor, not mine as a writer. Publication of this letter unedited would be an acceptable alternative. 

Alan Tobey 

• 

LANDMARKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Alan Tobey’s July 1 commentary: Was the LPC’s decision anarchy or a courageous protest against rather transparent power plays in support of a pro-development agenda over the past four years? Whereby it is now learned that a few minor changes to the ordinance would have made it compatible with the Permit Streamlining Act (PSA)? Instead of tweaking the ordinance, the PSA became the excuse and created the opportunity to gut the ordinance.  

The current composition of the LPC is different from that which approved the revisions a year ago. Also different at the meeting was the absence of the city’s staff attorney Zack Cowen. Staff was quiet, and the commissioners convened, deliberated, and heard each others’ well-reasoned opinions.  

The LPC’s decision also comes in response to the Planning Commission’s bold attempt to demote the LPC, remove some of its powers, placing those powers in the hands of a commission with no expertise in architectural or historical landmarks, i.e. the Zoning Adjustments Board.  

The LPC’s action is welcome especially in light of the city’s bold notice to the public that the ordinance revisions are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Historic resources are a protected resource under CEQA, and proposed changes to the ordinance will reduce those protections. The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association’s (BAHA) attorney argues for environmental review.  

The city’s management and many of the elected council members have a pro-development agenda that is becoming increasingly obvious. Development is one thing, but at the expense of neighborhoods is another. Preservation is a neighborhood issue and not just an aesthetic issue. When a building is demolished, it is usually to put up something larger and more population dense. 

Finally, I wonder if Mr. Tobey’s condemnation of the LPC is a bad case of sour grapes since his recommendation (submitted for that meeting) was not endorsed, and barely considered, by the commission.  

All these examples add up to illustrate the importance of leaving politics out of the ordinance revision process. Toward that end, the city should adopt the LPC’s recommendation and hire an outside expert.  

Janice Thomas  

Director, BAHA 

• 

SLAVERY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor wants schools to present more on the impact of African slavery in this country. Good idea. Malcolm X lectured on the topic, and Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale were encouraged during their formative months for their Black Panther Party by the responses to the presentations they gave in Oakland on slavery, and other aspects of black history. But the history lessons in the 1960s were tied with strong analysis of the daily impact of racism upon the black public of that tumultuous decade. The problem was defined as slavery AND the pigs. 

In 2005, an analysis of slavery needs to be tied to the policies since the 1960s that have held back and even regressed African America. Today’s school children need to know that a whole lot more than slavery is the cause for today’s disproportionately high representation of black people among those pushing shopping carts and holding out the tin cup.  

Ted Vincent 

• 

SCHOOL NAME SIDESHOW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many thanks to J.Douglas Allen-Taylor for further flapping on our favorite school name sideshow. I’m shocked, simply shocked, to read Mr. Taylor’s enthusiastic endorsement of recent “honest and serious discussion about American slavery, its ramifications, and its implications,” alongside his spoilsport conclusion that this discussion would continue only if Berkeley begets an elementary school formerly known as Jefferson. 

I must caution Mr. Taylor against his disastrously deterministic view on the place of historical slavery in such current issues as how to educate black youth, how (or whether) to close the achievement gap and/or lift the education of all students. The invocation of an antiquated, mechanistic view of the Big Bang is simplistic and misplaced: We will not now find our way by approaching slavery as a singularity with a predictable trajectory to our current condition. To do so is to deny the diversity of experience, views and ambitions that Taylor finds on display in the occasional honest, serious, and difficult conversation among ordinary people. To do so is to hand over a pluralistic and exploratory educational endeavor to dogmatic zealots. Yet again. 

J. Tharp 

• 

TERM LIMITS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have to disagree with Zelda Bronstein (“Commission Reform,” July 5) and support a strictly enforced eight-year term limit for commissioners.  

Gene Poschman is only part of the problem. On ZAB alone, there are two members who have been entrenched for what seem like decades, and they both consistently work against the environment.  

It definitely is undemocratic for these people to have so much influence on decisions about Berkeley development just because they have unlimited free time to devote to city government.  

Let’s open up the commissions to reflect the diversity of opinion in Berkeley and are not dominated by a few entrenched people. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

TRAFFIC CIRCLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“People seem to be confused about traffic circles,” claims Colleen McGrath’s July 5 letter. Really? The only confused parties seem to be a couple of planners in the city’s Transportation Office who keep deploying these unwanted devices, and a handful of neighborhood traffic NIMBYs who encourage them. 

The rest of us have figured out traffic circles just fine: They’re an inconvenience and a hazard to nearly everyone. They delay emergency vehicles, distract and baffle drivers, and force cars out into crosswalks and bike lanes. 

Their proliferation will probably cause the very accidents they are supposed to prevent, and harm the pedestrians (like me) and cyclists in whose name they were installed. 

Marcia T. Lau 

• 

BERKELEY HONDA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley Honda on Shattuck Avenue has joined America’s race to the bottom. Its striking workers are requesting customers not to patronize the establishment until their labor dispute is settled. The workers fear that this Berkeley institution is being turned into an automotive Wal-Mart. The Berkeley dealership has refused to honor the union contract. Instead, 15 employees were fired, including some who are close to retirement. Younger, far less experienced workers have replaced them. Also their pension plan and health insurance have been downgraded. 

Please don’t patronize Berkeley Honda and urge your friends and neighbors not to do so as well. If the community cooperates, these striking workers can have their jobs restored with dignity. 

Harry Brill 

El Cerrito 

• 

GRAND JURY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a long-time Daily Planet reader, I was very disappointed to see your out-of-date and unexamined front-page article on the bogus Grand Jury report attacking the Alameda County Medical 2 and other local media commented on it by quoting hospital and union responses, as well as noting that its two-month early issue was unusual. The Planet also failed to notice that that same week last May a proposal was floated to appoint Sheriff Charlie Plummer to the hospital Board of Trustees. A speedy campaign by SEIU, Vote Health and other community activists halted this action, also reported in other local media. 

Context is all: It was Plummer who first recommended the Tennessee consulting firm Cambio to take over management of ACMC some 18 months ago, over the fierce opposition of labor and community activists. Since their hiring, the sheriff has regularly attended hospital Board of Trustees meetings, often accompanied by uniformed subordinates in what many hospital workers took as an attempt at intimidation. After these meetings the sheriff would then send poison-pen letters to the Board of Supervisors and to the Grand Jury trashing the trustees and the unions. On the day of the clinic walkout last summer—which the Planet did cover—Plummer hoisted a Cambio budget document in a public meeting and claimed that it revealed that 25 percent of the hospital workforce wasn’t working on any given day, supposedly off on workers comp or long-term disability. This was false, but Cambio officials failed to correct their sponsor. 

The foreman of the grand jury is a former high-ranking employee of Sheriff Plummer. If you look at Plummer’s poisonous notes to the Supes and the grand jury, you will note almost identical themes found in the grand jury report. You can get the letters, as we did, from the county.  

One has to ask, from whom did the grand jury get its bad information? Cambio officials called the notion that 25 percent of their staff are out on workers comp “an urban myth” when asked to explain the figure by County Supervisor Gail Steele at a public meeting on May 18. Cambio verified that the figure includes normal vacation, holidays, sick leave, and other paid absences, with only 44 employees actually out on workers comp. Why would a grand jury investigation not check directly with the agency personnel department it was examining? 

The grand jury report, led by Plummer’s friend, praises Cambio, his protégés from Tennessee, for its horrendous management (surprise!) and claims that ACMC is facing a fiscal crisis, although they just passed a balanced budget without any need for layoffs, as Plummer demands. They foolishly blame the unions for nurse staffing ratios, apparently unaware that those are set by the state (remember our governor being chased around the state by nurses when he tried to change the ratios?). 

There are many other “mistakes” in this tainted report, but I don’t have room in your column. Readers should check out the Oakland Tribune for continued updates. 

Kay Eisenhower 

Chair, Vote Health 

Oakland 

• 

DOWNTOWN PARKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I find it difficult to sympathize with the Downtown Berkeley Association when they complain about insufficient downtown parking. 

We already have enough parking downtown. 

A few years ago, the city and UC jointly funded the Traffic Demand Management (TDM) study. It concluded that there would be plenty of parking spaces if people knew where spaces are available and if so many of the spaces were not filled by business owners and employees who park there all day. 

Downtown parking should be reserved for short-term use: shoppers and visitors. 

The TDM study said that with improved signage, and a “modest” shift of all-day parkers to using public transit, there is ample downtown parking right now. 

Perhaps the DBA would like to act as a distribution center for bus passes, for the use of business owners and their employees. 

Steve Geller 

• 

MORE ON PARKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Quoting a study conducted by UC Berkeley Staff and students in fall of 2002, “parking shortages are caused in large part by overtime parking, facilitated by broken parking meters and by meter feeding by employees; the effective supply of on-street parking could be increased by better enforcement. Enforcement, in turn, would divert some street parkers to garages and others to less expensive walk, bike and transit modes.” (Deakin, Elizabeth, et. al., Dec. 2002) 

Studies conducted by and for the City of Berkeley show hundreds of parking spaces empty and available in the downtown parking garages, varying during times of day and days of the week, between 1997, 2000 and March 2005, numbering between 100 and 300 empty spaces in the Center Street structure alone. Several other lots add many more available spaces. 

The lack of downtown parking is a myth. Customers of downtown merchants complain they can’t find a parking space. They would like to park close to or in front of the business they are frequenting. But many of the spaces close to the businesses are either: 1) taken by employees or owners of the businesses themselves (observed by study); or 2) taken by meter-feeding patrons who violate the time-limit (about 30 percent of vehicles in the study!). Many metered spaces have had broken meters, up to an average of 32 percent.  

The City of Berkeley’s Transportation Office is in the process of piloting new parking (meter) stations, which seem promising in the solution of meter-feeding and overstaying of time limits. Enforcement will be a more realistic activity with properly functioning parking meters. Once street parking is under better control, with better meters and enforcement, on-street parking violators will be nudged to better utilize the parking garages and/or transit, bicycling and walking modes. It has been estimated that this could open up 50 percent of on-street parking spaces currently occupied on an average day. 

Better parking meters are one of the solutions on the way. The Transportation Office is proposing real-time signage to help drivers find parking and better utilize existing parking spaces; and staff has been working with major employers to support employee use of transportation alternatives.  

Parking spaces are extremely expensive to build: Estimates get higher with each new lot that is built. Surface spaces can cost about $25,000 each, while parking garage spaces can cost upwards of $50,000 per space, or more. 

If one were to think about this situation logically it makes sense both economically and environmentally to allow solution measures time to have an observable outcome, before spending millions of the public’s money to encourage more vehicles to drive and park downtown. 

Marcy Greenhut 

• 

GATED WILLARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am very dismayed to see that BUSD is now adopting the “gated community” look for Willard Middle School. As this interminable construction continues —what was supposed to last two months and continues unfinished now for 14 months—BUSD is now installing a custom wrought-iron fence and gate, buttressed with over a dozen brick pillars. At the same time as this out of control spending goes on (they should be forced to publish the bill for all their starts and stops), BUSD continues to rattle its tin cup, crying poor. Teachers and students are being moved out of classrooms as administrators are forced to use classrooms as offices since, apparently, there’s no money for portables. Our kids in the cooking program are using 40-year-old stoves, many of which don’t have working ovens and are missing knobs. Two years ago, a major local store generously donated five brand new appliances to the Willard Cooking Program, and to date, not one has been installed. Superintendent Lawrence waxed eloquently at the Berkeley Public Education Foundation Luncheon about the importance of food and nutrition for students, yet there’s no staff or money to install free quality appliances. But there seems to be no end of funds available for their “gated look.”  

You build healthy schools from the foundation up, not from the curb in. There’s something very wrong with BUSD’s priorities and spending. I can’t wait to see what BUSD is charging on my next property tax bill. 

Dan Peven 

• 

FANCY FENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Heh, I hear that the school district wants to turn Willard Middle School into a gated community—brick pillars, custom wrought-iron fence. The school’s not doing great on test scores, ranks only a 5 (mediocre) on state wide school rankings, but heh, let’s build a fancy expensive fence and gate instead. Now that’s education! 

Marc Fulton 

• 

BART SECURITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We are all grateful there is no BART strike just now. 

But BART announced above-ground restrooms will be closed, because of raised security after bombings in London. The underground restrooms have been closed for years. There is no indication any of the London bombs were placed in restrooms.  

I spoke with a BART spokesperson and asked how many bombs have been placed in BART restrooms. He said that in his employment at BART since 1971, there have been none, to his knowledge. 

I work with disabled people, who often need access to public restrooms. They also use public transportation more often.  

As an aside, I asked about the coin-operated lockers that were in BART stations until the first Gulf War, when we were told they would be removed because of potential terrorist threat. And we were told, they would be replaced after the war. I am still looking for them. The BART spokesperson said he does not recall ever seeing lockers in BART stations.  

Kevin McFarren 

Oakland 

• 

ANTI-DEMOCRATIC 

Mal Burnstein is at it again, defending the indefensible (Letters, June 24). You might remember Mr. Burnstein as Tom Bates’ lawyer in the infamous Daily Cal trashing case. Now, according to Burnstein, Zelda Bronstein is being naïve and ill-informed when she dares criticize the secrecy with which the City Council deliberated and then approved the settlement with UC. That’s the way the city always deals with lawsuit settlement talks, says Burnstein. “If that is anti-democratic,” he writes, “it is surprising that it took Zelda so long to find out about the practice (reported in all local papers for as long as I have lived here—approximately 50 years.)” 

If Burnstein is right, then his good friend and sometime client Tom Bates was as naïve and ill-informed as Bronstein when he promised BLUE (Berkeleyans for a Livable University Environment) that members of the public would have an opportunity to comment on the terms of the settlement before the council made a final decision. 

If Burnstein is right, why did City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque even bother to sign a confidentiality agreement with UC (also in secret) pledging that the details of the settlement would not be made public until after the deal had been signed and sealed? 

Whether Burnstein is wrong or right, what the mayor, the City Council and the city attorney conspired to do was indisputably anti-democratic. 

Richard Spaid 

• 

MARRIAGE EQUALITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Molly McKay and Equality California, her gay-marriage organization, aren’t interested in real equality; they just want to gang up with the heterosexual marrieds in sticking it to the unmarried minority.  

These gay-marriage advocates are like some light-skinned Blacks in the Jim Crow South who weren’t opposed to discrimination, per se, they just wanted to be classified as white so they didn’t have to suffer it themselves. I guess Equality California likes its equality Animal Farm style, where everybody is equal, but married people are more equal than others. 

Why should married people of any gender combination be awarded any privileges, rights, benefits or other advantages that favor them over unmarried people? Ms. McKay’s desire for gay marriage is scarcely more principled than those who want to reserve marriage exclusively for straights. Both of these selfish groups want to set themselves on a pedestal above the unmarried and then claim special treatment because of their self-exalted status. Ms. McKay should be calling for the inequities of marriage to be eliminated, not merely extended to favor her special-interest group. 

It’s really something to watch gay and straight couples squabble over benefits that they are both perfectly happy to deny to singles. You’d think that with marriage being such a purportedly fabulous thing that they’d be thrilled just to be married. But apparently that’s not enough for these greedy people. 

The heterosexual married majority and the gay wanna-be-marrieds also see fit to vote themselves special privileges and public moneys for being so special. And all of this is at the expense of the unmarried, who are denied economically valuable privileges and who pay taxes that subsidize substantial marriage perks while receiving none themselves. 

If Ms. McKay and Equality California were truly equality-minded they would call for the elimination of all the invidious distinctions that governments and corporations make between people based on the happenstance of their sex lives.  

I won’t hold my breath. 

S. Smiths

The Draft Ron Dellums Movement that is currently sprouting wings and flying all over town has generated the most excitement in an Oakland mayoral race since, well, let’s see...since Jerry Brown announced his plans to run some eight years ago. 

For those who don’t read the news so much, a group of progressives and black political leaders recently began a campaign to convince Mr. Dellums—the former congressmember—to run in the 2006 election to succeed Mr. Brown. From all indications, Mr. Dellums is giving it serious consideration. 

From a distance, the 1998 Brown candidacy and the potential 2006 Dellums candidacy have some superficial similarities, particularly the idea that a nationally known political figure would be expected to bring star-power attention to an unappreciated Oakland. Remember when Jerry Brown was going to put Oakland on the map? Has that been long enough that we can now call it a back-in-the-day thing? 

Anyways, the similarities between what Mr. Brown has done and what Mr. Dellums might do pretty much end right there. 

One is in the area of race, but it’s more complicated than the obvious fact that Mr. Brown is white and Mr. Dellums is black. 

No one is expecting that Mr. Dellums—one of the few (if not the only) black politicians in the nation’s history to win repeated re-election from a political district that was not majority black—would suddenly reverse course in the latter stages of his life and start building a black political power bloc at the expense of all other groups. 

And Mr. Brown is not accused of being an anti-black racist, if by that term we mean someone who either hates black people, or thinks they are not his equal. (Mr. Brown probably thinks that few people are his equal, but that makes him arrogant and elitist, not racist, which is another thing altogether.) 

When he first ran for mayor in 1998, Mr. Brown did ride the wave of underlying feeling in some areas of Oakland that there had been enough of black rule—the Wall Street Journal reported in an August 1999 article that “in his campaign for mayor, Mr. Brown…promised to dismantle the African-American-dominated political machine that presided over much of the city’s decline since the 1970s.” And while Mr. Brown’s attacks on the black sideshow youth have not been overtly anti-black, they have often strayed very close to the edge in their appeal to anti-black stereotypes. 

Still, Mr. Brown retained some of the black presence within Oakland government that was there under Mayor Elihu Harris. Mr. Brown retained the African-American Robert Bobb (for a while) as city manager, replacing him with another African-American, Deborah Edgerly, when he and Bobb could no longer get along. Mr. Brown also replaced one black police chief (Joseph Samuels) with another (the since-departed Richard Word) in one of his first actions as mayor. 

Some of Mr. Brown’s black appointments or attempts at appointments have been—to say it charitably—somewhat peculiar (Harry Edwards as Park and Rec chief and the time the mayor wanted either Angela Davis or Maya Angelou to come on as head librarian—while both of them had read books and written books and even taught from books, neither of them, it appeared, had actually worked in a library. Still, it cannot be said that the mayor swept Oakland’s decks clean of black faces. 

But that has not kept black political activists in Oakland from worrying. 

In the years when this city had an African-American mayor and a majority African-American school board and the local assembly district was regularly sending an African-American member to Sacramento, Oakland was one of the centers of black political power, both in California and in the nation. Given the change in the city’s demographics, it is doubtful that any ethnic group will so dominate Oakland’s elective offices in the near future. (A look at the present racial composition of the Oakland City Council is a better indication of the type of racial-ethnic balance we will probably continue to see: three whites, two African-Americans, two Asian-Americans, one Latino.) 

But the Draft Dellums group says that their major concern is for further down the road, and if there will be enough young and upcoming black political talent to fill the available slots. While Latinos and Asian-Americans are beginning to build strong political organizations in Oakland—and white folks, as always, are holding steady—some black insiders are concerned that the pool of gifted young black politicians is drying up. 

Working for a state legislator or a congressmember is the farm system of politics, where potential young politicians gain name recognition and learn the political ropes. Former Assemblymember Dion Aroner built up her political resume by working for Tom Bates while he was in the assembly, and members of State Senator Don Perata’s team are salted in government positions throughout Oakland and Alameda County. During the time when he was in national office, Dellums did the same, and made certain that at least some of those protegés were black. At least two of them—Congressmember Barbara Lee and County Supervisor Keith Carson—continue to play important roles in Bay Area politics. 

Dellums did not confine his mentorship to up-and-coming blacks, of course, but he certainly included a lot of up-and-coming blacks, probably more so than any other local politician. Members of the Draft Dellums group are hoping that if he returns to local politics, Dellums will revive that training ground for young black politicians, which has virtually dried up since Ms. Lee succeeded him. 

Another area where the Draft Dellums folks think a Mayor Dellums administration would be significantly different from a Mayor Brown administration is in the area of regional cooperation. 

Few of the problems of a modern California city can be solved within the city itself; they need a regional effort (that’s an issue we’ll have to explore in detail in a future column). Because of its size and its geography, Oakland should be the natural political, social, and economic leader of a regional coalition spanning the coastal East Bay, an important section that stretches from Richmond to the north, through Berkeley, Emeryville, and San Leandro down to Hayward to the south, with Piedmont to the east and Alameda to the west. But under Mr. Brown, no such coastal East Bay coalition ever materialized. 

The major reason is that in a coalition, every party must get enough recognition to satisfy its own constituency. No one party can dominate, or the coalition falls apart. But Mr. Brown, who clearly only saw his time in Oakland as a stepping stone back into state or national politics, needed to get full credit for every major Oakland initiative in order to build (or rebuild) his political resumé. He wasn’t too crazy about sharing any of the credit with other Oaklanders, much less the mayors and city councilmembers of other cities. 

There is hope that Mr. Dellums—who, after all, cemented his legacy long ago—would have both the stature and the ability to smooth over the political egos and head up a coalition effort to attack some of the common problems in the region, from economic development to education to transportation to health care, and beyond. 

Will Ron run? I’ve got no inside track on the decision. But I do know that just the thought of a Dellums candidacy has gotten a lot of people excited in what they hope will be a new turn in Oakland politics. And that may end up having an effect on the 2006 mayoral race, whatever Mr. Dellums eventually decides to do. More on that in another column. 

GTGC 

It was a vehicle theft, but it doesn’t fit as a GTA—grand theft auto. Instead, it would have to be called a GTGC, for grand theft golf cart. 

Berkeley police discovered it when they made a pedestrian stop just before 2 a.m. last Friday near the intersection of Prince and Ellis streets when they spotted an electric golf cart belonging to UC Berkeley. 

The drivers, a pair of minors, were booked on suspicion of grand theft, said Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Shoplift Becomes Robbery 

When employees of Eastern Supplies at 2900 Shattuck Ave. stopped a 50-year-old man they’d spotted boosting paint brushes during the lunch hour last Friday, the shoplifter turned his misdemeanor into a felony when he fought with his captures. 

He compounded his crime when he gave a false name to police officers when they arrived, a crime in itself. 

One of the employees sustained minor injuries during the scuffle, which were treated at the scene by firefighter paramedics. 

Women’s Rat Pack 

Rat pack attacks—robberies staged by a band of assailants—typically involve young males, but it was a distaff crew of anywhere from four to eight young women who robbed three other women near the corner of Parker Street and College Avenue shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday. 

When last seen, some of the assailants were high-tailing it away in a red sports car, said Officer Okies. 

Domestic Knife Attack 

A family disturbance turned into assault with a deadly weapon and spousal abuse when a woman pulled a knife in her apartment just before 4 a.m. Saturday. 

Police arrived moments later and booked the 49-year-old woman on the two felony charges. Her partner, who had received a minor knife wound in the scuffle, declined medical help, said Officer Okies. 

Belated Report 

Police got a call at 7:40 a.m. Sunday from a nurse at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Oakland, telling of a 20-year-old South Berkeley man who had come in with a knife wound. 

Arriving at the hospital, the young man said he was attacked by a pair of men near the corner of San Pablo Avenue and Jones Street the previous midnight. 

Backpack Theft 

A 25-year-old man called Berkeley police shortly before midnight Sunday after a group of men strong-armed his backpack and its contents near the corner of Sutter and Hopkins streets. 

Solo Deuce of Fourth 

July 4 turned out to be a pretty dull day, and police think that’s just fine, said Officer Okies. Only one drunk driver—a deuce in police parlance—was taken to the hoosegow, and he was popped near the corner of Ashby and Claremont avenues when the day was just two hours old. 

About That Security 

Police were called to Econo Gas at 950 University Ave. at 10 a.m. on the Fourth to investigate a grand theft. 

Turns out it was the station’s security cameras that were swiped. 

Knife For Wallet 

A man with a knife relieved a 35-year-old pedestrian of his wallet near the corner of Adeline and Stuart streets just before 1 a.m. Tuesday. 

GTAntiques 

A woman who had lived on Wildcat Road called police Tuesday to report the theft of four antiques worth $24,000. 

The woman told officers that she had paid a Berkeley man to ship the valuables just before she moved several months ago, but they never arrived at their intended destinations. 

Police are investigating the incident, said Officer Okies. 

Gun Gang 

Four men, including at least two who were packing pistols, robbed a 19-year-old man of his wallet and cell phone about 6 p.m. Tuesday near the corner of Ashby Avenue and Otis Street, said officer Okies. 

Real GTA, Finally 

Police arrested a 48-year-old man in the 1600 block of 63rd Street after they stopped him driving a set of hot wheels.

In my June 28 commentary entitled “Historical Preservation: It Takes A Community,” I wrote that proposed changes to the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO), due to come before the City Council on July 12, would (among other problems) remove state prot ections that encourage developers to work with the community. The state protections to which I referred are those provided by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  

CEQA was passed in 1970, when “environmentalism” was the people’s enterprise—local as well as global, urban as well as rural, cultural as well as natural. CEQA arose from the same impulse that a few years later created our Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance and the LPO. In those days, that was called “progressive.” But how things have changed! Berkeley claims to be a “green” and “progressive” city, but any city determined to avoid environmental protection and public participation is neither.  

Our planning department apparently views CEQA as a stupid law designed to create a divis ive debate, and to throw roadblocks in a developer’s path, after a project design is in its final phases. Thus CEQA is to be avoided at all costs. The result is anger and bitterness on all sides—and bad projects. But this is only because our planning depa rtment does not use CEQA as intended.  

Properly implemented, CEQA is a smart law designed to create early public input into development projects in order to minimize adverse environmental impacts. In so doing, community input and energy is channeled into constructive collaboration on what becomes a much better project.  

CEQA says, “the Lead Agency shall encourage the project proponent to incorporate environmental considerations into project conceptualization, design, and planning at the earliest feasibl e time” (CEQA §15004b3). “Early preparation is necessary for the legal validity of the process and for the usefulness of the documents. Early preparation enables agencies to make revisions in projects . . . before the agency has become so committed to a p articular approach that it can make changes only with difficulty” (CEQA Guidelines).  

What does “early” mean? For public projects, CEQA says that environmental review should start before a site is even purchased! In addition, CEQA states clearly that env ironmental review shall occur “concurrently” with the development application process, not afterward. 

In other words, environmental input from the community should not primarily respond to a project design; it should and must inform the project—and the e arlier, the better. Yet in Berkeley, the project applicant and staff essentially “create” a project together and “finish” it well before the community has even heard about it. Then both applicant and staff hunker down to protect their substantial investme nt from outraged neighbors. Such is the result of violating the intent, spirit, and often even the letter of CEQA. 

Developers’ private property rights do not override protection of the cultural and historical commons. If it comes to this contest, the community should win. But with the right approach, we can make such either-or decisions rare. 

Used properly, CEQA provides one of life’s few real opportunities to “have our cake and eat it too.” This is because one of CEQA’s most brilliant provisions is to require, in environmental impact reports (EIR), consideration of “alternatives” that accomplish the goals of the project while minimizing damage to the environment and surrounding community.  

This is simply a way of forcing people to think creatively. It is nowhere more beneficial than in the case of historical resources, where usually the community and developer are able to ultimately reconcile the old with the new. And it is almost always true that the resulting development is more imaginative, more at tractive, more contextual, more to-scale, and certainly better for the community than it otherwise would have been. And frequently it also turns out to be better for the developer. It’s a win-win all around, and has worked many times in Berkeley. 

Smart d evelopers voluntarily pursue alternatives that respect the community, its values, and its resources, but for those who don’t, CEQA provides two “sticks” that force the developer in the right direction. One is the aforementioned EIR requirement to look for alternatives. The other is the cost of doing an EIR, the mere threat of which often drives the developer to cooperation. In either case, however, lacking municipal policy incentives, the only incentive for the developer to work with the community in Berk eley is CEQA. 

This is where the LPO comes in. Many of the proposed revisions to the LPO are an attempt to neutralize historical resources as a factor mandating environmental review under CEQA. How the proposed LPO revisions do this is too technical for t his commentary, so let’s look at the why, which is even more important to the typical Berkeleyan. 

An acknowledged goal of our planning department is to seek exemption from CEQA review whenever possible. Staff is helped in that goal by state laws promotin g infill development through more and more “categorical exemptions” to CEQA; such exemptions permit projects to be built without consideration of environmental impacts. But, because of the importance and irreplaceability of historical resources, a project’s impact on them trumps all CEQA exemptions. If a historical resource is threatened, there must be environmental review.  

If staff can find a way to legally neutralize historical resources under CEQA, not only can they much more easily demolish the pesk y old buildings that stand in the way of development, they can legally avoid any environmental review for some new infill projects—no matter how large, ugly, dense, or damaging. In addition, and perhaps worse, they must approve projects much faster—within 60 days instead of the longer period required if environmental review is mandated.  

Can we create good developments, especially large ones, within 60 days, especially in the absence of any incentive for the developer to interact with the neighborhood? N o. It takes time for neighbors to intelligently address development issues, and effectively communicate their concerns to decision makers. Such a short fuse, especially for a naïve neighborhood taken by surprise, effectively prevents public input or objec tion, not just on historical issues but on any issue (traffic, parking, aesthetics, etc.). This is exactly what developers and city staff want.  

It has become apparent to me that the attitude that “neighbors” are an obstacle, whose participation is to be avoided (along with CEQA, which mandates it), is the very heart of Berkeley’s planning problems. The LPO has nothing to do with it.  

Nonetheless, the rewriting of the LPO is now offered up as a “solution” to conflict resulting from lack of early and gen uine community engagement in development projects. Why? Nothing in the LPO prevents any well-meaning applicant from—on his own—talking to the community and researching potential project impacts, including historical ones, at any time, with the goal of res olving, not belittling, community concerns. This could occur long before major investment in development plans. And staff could facilitate this with their considerable power and resources. 

But instead, the “solutions” to be considered by the council on J uly 12 are directed not at developers who refuse to work with the community, and not at revamping entrenched planning policies and attitudes that, despite lip service to the contrary, discourage such cooperation. No, all the major changes being considered are aimed squarely at weakening the public’s ability to preserve Berkeley’s heritage, and at circumventing the community’s CEQA protections.  

This is no less than an assault on Berkeley’s interesting and lovely historical character, and all the citizens who cherish it. Why would those whom we have elected with our votes, and whose salaries we pay with our tax money, to protect us and our city, even consider damaging our urban environment in this way? 

Sharon Hudson is an advocate for improving urban quality of life.n

Suicide bombers? Anarchists? That’s not my impression. It’s hard to believe that Alan Tobey (Commentary, July 1) and I both attended the same Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) meeting on the evening of June 27. 

I understand that Mr. Tobey has committed much personal time and energy to the issue at hand and that his disappointment is deeply felt. I share the same frustration. 

The special LPC meeting of June 27 was held to examine our existing Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) and two proposed sets of revisions— independently crafted by the Landmarks Preservation and Planning Commissions—and to formulate recommendations to City Council. The original charge of the LPC was to revise the LPO to conform to the timing constraints of the Permit Streamlining Act. 

The LPC unanimously raised specific concerns regarding each proposal and chose not to endorse either proposal at this time, without first resolving these concerns, best done with the aid of an impartial third-party, preservation and regulatory expert. Sometimes it is appropriate for responsible individuals to “pull the brake” and “slow the train.” This is one of those times.  

Mr. Tobey likened the LPC to “suicide bombers, blowing up their own proposal in order to prevent the normal cooperative workings of a democratic government.” Throughout the Planning Commission proceedings of the past year, new information has raised serious concerns about the increased workload the LPC proposal—and analogous sections of the Planning Commission proposal—would create for the commission and city staff and the burden it would place on many homeowners attempting to alter their homes. It is one issue that certainly deserves in-depth discussion. 

Mr. Tobey also states that the Commission “asked the Council to throw out five years of effort and start over.” Although individual commissioners may advocate that the LPC “start from scratch,” the full LPC did NOT state that in its final motion and recommendation to the City Council. 

As a Certified Local Government (CLG), the city is required to consult with the state Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) on any proposed ordinance revisions. The OHP has not yet provided final written comments and recommendations arising from its review of the proposed revisions. It is improper for the Council to move to adopt LPO revisions without the OHP review. 

No commissioner threatened lawsuit as Mr. Tobey states. The commission chose to alert the City Council that the LPC and the Planning Commission have received correspondence that suggests that the city may be exposing itself to threat of lawsuit if the city proceeds with substantive revisions to the LPO—which appear to weaken existing provisions—without first conducting the appropriate level of environmental review. The council can turn to the city attorney’s office to assess the degree of risk.  

My hope is that we can resolve our concerns without anger, and without the inflammatory language present in Mr. Tobey’s editorial. 

The LPC’s motion can be found as a late item in the City Council’s package for the July 12 meeting. It is also posted on BAHA’s website. 

Jill Korte is chair of Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commmission. 

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The Mexican comic strip character “el negrito” Memín Pinguín has been put on a series of postage stamps. The character is bug eyed, fat lipped, has enormous ears and looks like a black rubber mask compared with the white people in the cartoon, who are drawn with the realistic precision of the old “Prince Valiant” strip. Compared to the whites in the strip, Penguin is Bugs Buggy in the movie Roger Rabbit. 

The White Chicks of the Wayans brothers were 10 times more realistic than little black Memín. Lil’ Memín has a loving rubber-faced handkerchief-head mother. Lil’ Memín can’t speak good Spanish, his white friends tell him. Considering the above, one wonders why the Memín Pinguín postage stamps have drawn little criticism from within Mexico. And most of what there is merely complains that it is insensitive to give “the cute kid” the international exposure of a stamp, considering how “oversensitive” people are on race in some other countries. Bold defenders of the Pinguín stamps are numerous in Mexico. One declared the U.S. critics of the cartoon are agents of the imperialists who are trying to dominate the world culturally as well as militarily. Another commentator said that we up north should mind our own business, adding that “Mexico never had separate water faucets for white people.”  

Defense of the cartoon is long on Menín Pinguín’s honor and good nature and short on answers to the issue of racial stereotyping. Anti-black racism is rarely discussed in Mexico, out of a belief that the nation solved that problem long ago. Mexico abolished caste law at independence in 1821 and eight years later abolished slavery. Mexico has had presidents with African heritage and one with pure Indigenous roots. Mexico’s slavery revolt leader, Gaspar Yanga, has a city and county named in his honor. What does Nat Turner have? Yanga also has a children’s coloring book. Curiously, the cover is adorned with “Topsie” look-a-likes, bug eyed, messy haired, squirly and big-handed lil’ blacks. The author, a left-wing historian, was surprised when told that the “Topsie” depictions would be considered racist in the United States. 

Perhaps if there were more people in Mexico with African appearance there would be less of the stereotyping, but the African population that two centuries ago was counted 10 percent of the nation is now mostly mixed into “the mestizo nation,” as is the case with the majority of the Indigenous. Despite the assimilation, there are still Indigenous beggar women with their emaciated children on the sidewalks of cities all over Mexico. 

A major cause of Mexico’s blind spot on race is that the same independence decade that saw caste and slavery washed away in a mass movement previewing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also previewed Ward Connelly. Action to deal with race met action to outlaw race. First came the 1821 independence war peace plan of Iguala which declared “All inhabitants... without distinction to their being Europeans, Africans or Indians are citizens...with the option to seek all employment according to their merits and virtues.” Law 279 of independent Mexico’s first congress codified this clause. But there was a twist. Instead of “Europeans, Africans or Indians” the equality was extended to all from “whichever of the four corners of the world one may come.” This congress was out to abolish mention of race. Law 313 prohibited references to race in any Mexican government document, or in the records of the parish church.  

Law 303 prohibited any elected official from “speaking disparagingly of anyone’s origins,” which at first glance was an anti-n word law which Dr. King might have supported, but in interpretation meant it was not proper to mention anyone’s origins, either positively or negatively. The congress came close to passing a law to make it illegal to utter the word “Indio” in congressional debates. 

Over the past two centuries the class focus has led Mexico to more years of serious class revolution than almost any other nation. Faceless masses under a sea of sombreros march for leaders and lieutenants who, with a few exceptions, have mention of their race relegated to obscure tomes. But the muralists during the 1910 revolution discovered that they could focus upon history and put color and race in their works. Diego Rivera, for instance, took racial information from his and Frida Kahlo’s exquisite personal library of obscure tomes to publicize African and Indigenous heroes. Today, people privately identify with Rivera’s assortment of heroes of color, who evoke memories of Grandmother’s long Indian braids, or Grandfather’s dark brown skin. It could also be said that a similar quiet personal identification is made with the actor Cantinflas, who clearly has non-white roots, and with very little imagination, an African root. Cantinflas often played the quick-witted, uneducated, poor guy who gets into the society ball. Memín Penguin was a cartoon version of Cantinflas, outwitting the stronger, better educated of the world. 

However, Pinguín’s physical appearance, shoddy clothing and awkward speech are hard to excuse, and these factors are probably a reason that the number of newspapers carrying the 50-year-old comic strip has declined steadily from the early 1960s, as the issues of race raised in the civil rights and black power movements of the U.S. seeped into Mexico. Today, the strip has less than a twentieth of the circulation at its peak. Among the recent defenders of Memín are those who concede having not read the strip in years, and attribute their fondness for the “little black” to their long ago youthful identification with a boisterous and imperfect youngster.?

One of the living treasures of Berkeley is the Kala Art Institute. Now that this facility is over 30 years old, an exhibition of about 80 works by 71 artists can be seen at the Artists Gallery of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at Fort Mason acros s the bay. The exhibition stresses works on paper, created in a very wide range of processes, from woodcut and etching to digital photography, and includes sculpture, books and video works. It presents an overview of some of Kala’s multifarious activities. 

In 1974 two adventurous young artists, Archana Horsting and Yuzo Nakano, met at a famous international workshop and forum of ideas in Paris. They decided that it was the right time to start a community workshop, which would be based on the production of graphics. First located in a garage in San Francisco, they came to Berkeley where they opened the institute in the former Heinz ketchup factory in 1979. 

Kala became a place where artists meet and work and exchange ideas. In addition to prints, artists at Kala have made work in all imaginable new and old media. Selected artists from this country and abroad are awarded fellowship residencies. The international flavor is important. Kala has also organized exhibitions in Italy, Switzerland and even, in 200 3, in Uzbekistan. Catalogues are produced. Kala has also been in the forefront of sponsoring performance art in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its 8,500-square-foot studio in Berkeley includes an art library, an extensive print archive and a consignment sale s department. Most importantly, it never closes for the artists who come there to learn, experiment and take risks toward new ventures. 

The exhibition at Fort Mason gives visitors an idea of the creative energy which exemplifies Kala. This show will be followed by a large retrospective of work from over 30 years of Kala’s work, which will be accompanied by a book, now under consideration by Berkeley’s favorite publisher, Malcolm Margolin of Heyday Books, a house which is also 30-something years old. 

On Wednesday, July 13, Archana Horsting will give a gallery talk and present a brief history of Kala, at Building A at Fort Mason, where the exhibition will continue until July 29. An anniversary dinner reception and silent auction will be held at 5:30 p.m. July 17 at Green’s Restaurant, Fort Mason, Building A, San Francisco. Tickets are $150; call 549-2977 to reserve tickets.

The Domestic Crusaders, a new play by Bay Area-native Wajahat Ali about the reactions of three generations of a Pakistani-American family in the wake of 9/11, will be staged for three performances only, July 15 and 16, at the Thrust Stage of Berkeley Repertory Theater. 

Presented by Oakland’s Before Columbus Foundation, and produced by celebrated author and Before Columbus co-founder Ishmael Reed, The Domestic Crusaders is directed by Carla Blank and features a cast of South Asian actors from the Bay Area. 

The play originated when Ali was a UC Berkeley student in a writing class that Reed was teaching in 2001. 

“After Sept. 11, he disappeared for awhile,” Reed recalls. “There was hazing of Middle Easterners on campus, a bad atmosphere.” 

The Domestic Crusaders started out as a 20-page short story assignment in the class. 

“I asked him to turn the story into a play,” Reed said. “He has a magnificent ear for dialogue. He’s right up there with the best, in terms of family drama. ... A major new voice.” 

Ali said of his play, “I wanted to make something extraordinary out of the ordinary. Not an ethnocentric play that would exclude everyone else, but something in which those who see it would recognize aspects of their own family in a culture they’d never seen anything about before. The familiar in the unfamiliar. And hear what everybody’s got on the tip of their tongue, but doesn’t want to say.”  

Reed touts Ali’s play as “something all could relate to—Irish-American, African-American—but it’s not comfort food theater.” 

All the characters in the play have different sympathies, and different ways of analyzing the situation, he said. 

“The younger immigrant generation, like in all immigrant families, resists the language, the old culture, the food,” Reed said. “They’re on the way to becoming a classic American family. And they have a few secrets, like any family in any ethnic group. ... It’s finally optimistic and sprinkled with humor. There were waves and waves of laughter at the staged readings we had in Newark. There’s satire about the software industry and the media—and the family’s own prejudices, getting indignant over being mistaken for Afghanis! It’s kitchen drama, and brilliant, taking people back to their roots, where they’re coming from.”  

Wajahat Ali wrily recalls Reed referring to the “Muslim-bashing” of post-9/11 as “one man’s getting pummelled in the ring, and the referee’s not stopping the fight.” 

Going on about the “bunch of hustlers” who have made this “a very prolific industry,” Ali mentions Pat Robertson, who on his website “is adamant in his belief that Muslims worship some sort of moon god.” Ali decries the “cookie cutter allegories” of a “Hollywood unable to portray the spiritual lives of Americans” and “the media’s horrible job of conveying world religions, much less different cultures in America.” 

But talking about immigrant families, Ali notes: “Second-generation South Asians don’t know much about their families’ culture. They have to prod the older people, who often don’t want to talk. They’ve seen too many horrible things. The kids, then, are often embarrassed, don’t want to speak—then later ask their second-generation parents, ‘Why didn’t you teach us?’”  

Director Carla Blank recalls the actor who plays the father, Shahab Riazi, “who’s a little bit young for the part, saying ‘This is like a cautionary tale for me,’ warning him of what he might become. At the staged readings, his mother was telling people, ‘My son isn’t really like that!’” 

The cast includes two non-Muslim South Asian actresses, Nidhi Singh and Vidhu Singh, as well as Sadiyah Shaikh, and Saquib Mausoof as the grandfather. 

“The cast was very generous in educating me about their culture,” Blank said. “Together, we figured out the most honest way to present this material at the staged readings last year. At the Mehran Restaurant Theatre in Newark, we had somewhere between 300 to 400 people—and turned half that many away. The South Asian community really got the word out—and seemed amazed at how well Wajahat captured the different generations onstage.” 

Mehran Restaurant is providing Pakistani delicacies as part of the admission price for the show at the Thrust Stage. 

Other readings of the play were staged at last year’s Arts and Soul Festival in Oakland, and in the auditorium of the Main Branch of the Oakland Public Library. The Before Columbus Foundation is presenting this showcase of The Domestic Crusaders as part of its mission to promote contemporary multicultural literature. 

Ali, now a law student at UC Davis, is writing a “sequel/prequel” that will place The Domestic Crusaders in a trilogy, taking the family that debates 9/11 from the Partition of Pakistan and India in 1947 to the present. His background, both from Pakistan and in America, gives him direction, he said. 

“In old Middle Eastern culture, a storyteller was more valued than a swordsman,” Ali said. “He gave their history to the people of the tribes. Translate that onto stage with a couple of other people, it’s a play, but still storytelling. I know exactly where I want to go, but I don’t rush it; I let the characters speak for themselves. They’re not just mouthpieces to move the plot along.” 

The Domestic Crusaders plays at 8 p.m. Friday, July 15 and at 2 and 8 p.m. July 16. Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison St. $20-$35. For more information call 647-2900 or see www.domesticcrusaders.com.

FRIDAY, JULY 8 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Thousandth Night” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. 2 and 7 p.m., through July 24, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $36. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Central Works, “The Grand Inquisitor” by Dostoevsky. Thurs - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at The Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through July 31. Tickets are $9-$25 sliding scale. 558-1381. www.centralworks.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Anything Goes” Cole Porter’s musical, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Aug. 13 at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

“Livin’ Fat” a comedy about an African American family struggling over a financial blessing, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m., through July 30, at Sweets Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $12.50-$35. 233-9222. 

Shotgun Players, “Arabian Night” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. until July 10. Tickets are $10-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Oaklahoma” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland. Through July 17. Tickets are $20-$33. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Insomnia” Ten artists collaborate on one painting, from midnight to sunrise. Reception at 7:30 p.m. at Boontling Gallery, 4224 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. boontlinggallery@hotmail.com 

FILM 

For Your Eyes Only “Black Sunday” at 7:30 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Laurie R. King introduces her new novel, “Locked Rooms” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jason Martineau, Tina Marzell & Ellen Hoffman Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Jazz, 4000 Meters High, with pianist Johnny Gonzales from Bolivia, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$13. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick & Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Thomas Banks & Cultural Gumbo, N Focus at 5:30 p.m. at Baltic Square, behind 121 Park Place, Point Richmond. 223-3882. 

Beth Waters with Adrianne at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

In Harmony’s Way, a capella CD release, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Viva K, The Cushion Theory, Tiny Power, Gosling at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Los Nadies in a fundraiser for Just Cause Oakland at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Donation $5-$20. All ages event. 

Kathleen Grace Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

DJ & Brook, jazz trio, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Bobby Jamieson Quintet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Cecil P-Nut Daniels at 7 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 548-1159.  

Mingus Amungus at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Parallax, No Turning Back, Internal Affairs at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Robben Ford Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 9 

THEATER 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose St. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

Woman’s Will, “Richard III” Sat. and Sun. at 1 p.m. in John Hinkle Park. Free. 420-0813. www.woman’s will.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

Huichol Indian Art Show with yarn paintings, beadwork and jewelry from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Gathering Tribes Gallery, 1573 Solano Ave. 528-9038. www.gatheringtribes.com 

FILM 

Pre-Code Hollywood “Freaks” at 7 p.m. and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” at 8:25 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chant for Peace with Snatam Kaur, Thomas Barquee & GuruGanesha at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Cost is $20-$25. 1-888-735-4800. 

Hideo Date, Bobi Cespedes & Social Club Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Carribean Allstars at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Eileen Hazel, songwriter showcase, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Jon Roniger, singer-songwriter, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Geoff Muldaur, Larry Hanks, American home-grown music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Kugleplex, Klezmer music at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Facing New York, Before Braille at 8:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Extensions Jazz Quartet with guest Khalil Shaeed at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Rhiannon with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña. Conversation with the artists and Susan Muscarella at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Smith Dobson Family Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Rev. Rabia, urban blueswoman, at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Real Sippin’ Whiskeys, The Bittersweets, Firecracker at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Jinx Jones Trio, alt jazz rock,at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Voetsek, Widespread Bloodshead, Brody’s Militia at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JULY 10 

CHILDREN 

San Francisco Circus Theater, “Elevations 63” at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $5 children, $10 adult. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

THEATER 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose St. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

California Watercolor Association “Summer Small Paintings Show” opens at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. 848-1228. www.giorgigallery.com 

Matrix 217: Haim Steinbach “Work in Progress: Objects for People/Snapshots” opens at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. Artists talk at 4 p.m. 642-0808.  

FILM 

Eyeing Nature “Darwin’s Nightmare” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Blind at the Museum” Gallery Talk with John Dugdale and Beth Dungan at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Chilufiya Safaa introduces her new book “A Foreign Affair” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. Co-sponsored by the International Women’s Writing Guild. 559-9500. 

Poetry Flash with J.P. Greene & George Davis at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, traditional music and dance from the southern Philippines at 2 p.m. at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Bancroft at College Ave. Cost is $1-$4. 643-7648. 

Americana Unplugged: Pete Madsen, blues, at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Misturada with Michael Golds at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Adrian West, one-man string quartet, at 10 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Teka, Hungarian music at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Hitomi Oba Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

“Take Me Home” a benefit to support the filming of this documentary about children caught in the foster care system at 5 and 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $20 adults, $12 youth. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

P-Nut & The Apocolypse at 7 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Go it Alone, Blue Monday, Right On at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, JULY 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Transformations” A New Life for Recycled and Found Objects by Toby Tover-Krein opens at LunchStop Café, Bort Metro Center, 101 8th St. Oakland. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Actors Reading Writers: “Unwise Decisions” Stories by O. Henry, Lynne McFall and Saki at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Free. 845-8542, ext. 376. 

Aurora Stories, tales from the Arabian Nights at 7:30 p.m. at Aurora Theater, 2081 Addison St., Donation $20. 843-4822. 

Amy Butler Greenfield traces the history of cochineal dye in “A Perfect Red” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Track Maintenance, a benefit party for Watchword Press, with readings and music at 7:30 p.m. at Café Van Kleef, 1624 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5.  

Poetry Express with Marvin Hiemstra at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

East Bay Blues Benefit for East Bay Cancer Support at 7:30 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, JULY 12 

CHILDREN 

Colibri An interactive journey through Latin America with traditional instruments and song, at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

FILM 

Eyeing Nature “The Great Art of Knowing” and “Skagafjordur”at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sam Davis on “Designing for the Homeless: Architecture that Works” at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Free, but please RSVP 643-8465. 

Bakari Kitwana explains “Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiffers, Wannabes and the New Reality of Race in America” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Nicole Henares and Anise at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Swamp Coolers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

The Karan Casey Band, Irish progressive traditionalists, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50- $18.50. 548-1761.  

Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Mark Goldenberg at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

YMP and the Jazz Masters Benefit at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$22. 238-9200.  

Barbara Linn at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

WEDNESDAY, JULY 13 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Vanishing Species and More” recent mixed-media paintings by Rita Sklar. Reception for the artist at 4 p.m. at the Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. 464-7773. 

ACCI Gallery, “2005 New Member Show” Reception for the artists at 6 p.m. at 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

“Transformations” A new Life for Recycled and Found Objects by Toby Tover-Krein. Reception at 4 p.m. at LunchStop Café, Bort Metro Center, 101 8th St. Oakland. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 

FILM 

For Your Eyes Only “ Saboteur” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Arab Women Film Festival “Hollywood Harems” and “Benaat Chicago” at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Donation $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Faith Adiele talks about her journey to become Thailand’s first black Buddhist nun in “Meeting Faith” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

Café Poetry hosted by Kira Allen at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ned Boynton/Jules Broussard Trio at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Bernard Anderson & The Old School Band at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. West Coast Swing dance lesson with Nick & Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

La Verdad, salsa, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Sat Tan Trio, heavy dub, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Fiamma Fumana, Italian folk fusion, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50- $18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Fourtet Jazz Group at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Pete Escovedo & His Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, JULY 14 

EXHIBITIONS 

California Watercolor Association “Summer Small Paintings Show. Artists reception at 6 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. 848-1228. www.giorgigallery.com 

“Fire & Light” The Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival at 6:30 p.m. at 1260 7th St., Oakland. Tickets are $75. 444-0919. www.thecrucible.org 

FILM 

Pre-Code Hollywood “Female” at 7:30 p.m. and “Heat Lightening” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Writing Project’s Young Writers will read at 7 p.m. at Moe’s Bookstore, 2476 Telegraph Ave.  

“On the Wall: The Art of Collecting Photography” A panel discussion sponsored by Pacific Center for the Photographic Arts at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Free, donations accepted.  

Helen Oyeyemi introduces her novel of a child torn between the worlds of her British father and Nigerian mother in “The Icarus Girl” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

“The Photographc Legacy of Claude Cahun” with Sandra Phillips, SFMOMA, at 6:30 p.m. at Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $4-$6. 549-6950. 

Word Beat Reading Series with Cherise Wyneken & Tim Nuveen at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert with The Hipnotics at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza. Sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Association. 

From Bastille to Bush, labor musicians, including Anne Feeney, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Jug Free America at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jason Davis & Jazz Pirates at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Natasha Miller at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Welcome Matt, Demons Defeated at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

Debbie Poryes/Glenn Richman Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. ?

FRIDAY, JULY 8 

“Peace One Day” A documentary film by British actor/director Jeremy Gilley describing how he persuaded world leaders to have the U.N. declare Sept. 21 an International Day of Peace, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2296 Cedar St. Wheelchair accessible. Cost is $5. 527-0450. www.peaceoneday.org  

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers monthly meeting at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Ave., Kensington. The July meeting will be a Fly Tying Extravaganza. GPFF’s most accomplished tiers will demonstrate their techniques, and help less advanced tiers improve their skills. There will be extra tools and materials available for beginners who wish to try this fascinating craft. Everyone who has tools and materials is encouraged to bring them. 547-8629. 

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Digital Cameras with Alan Stross, photographer, at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Salsa Dancing at “The Beat” Dance Studio at 8:30 p.m. Lessons with Joseph Gallardo. 2560 9th St. at Parker. 472-2393 www.wildsalsanights.com  

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

SATURDAY, JULY 9 

Berkeley Path Wanderers’ Cerrito Creek Walk to explore Indian, Spanish and early El Cerrito history, as well as recent restoration work. Meet at 10 a.m. at the north end of Cornell St., south edge of El Cerrito Plaza shopping center. 848-9358. f5creeks@aol.com 

Sick Plant Clinic UC plant pathologist Dr. Robert Raabe, UC entomologist Dr. Nick Mills, and their team of experts will diagnose what ails your plants from 9 a.m. to noon at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755.  

“Herbal Desserts with Lavender” Learn to make lavender ice cream and cookies. For ages 6-13 at 1 p.m. at Spiral Garden, 2850 Sacramento. Reservations required. 623-0882. 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $5-$7. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Kids Garden Club For children 7-12 years old to explore the world of gardening. We plant, harvest, build, make crafts, cook and get dirty! From 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233. 

Pastors for Peace Send-Off for the Peace Caravan to Cuba at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. 528-5403. 

Celebrate Early Literacy at 10 a.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Pollution Solutions with a focus on indoor air quality from 1 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $8-$10. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Oakland Airport and North Field. Cost is $5-$10. For details call 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Mediterranean Gardens for the Bay Area at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose St. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

The Political Cartoons of Ward Sutton at 7 p.m. at the AK Press Warehouse, 7674-A 23rd. St., Oakland. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

Summer Vocal Jazz Workshops for singers at all levels with Richard Kalman, Sat. at 12:30 and 2 p.m.. through Aug. 6 at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin St. 524-6797. http://richardkalman.com 

SpiritWalking at the Berkeley Warm Pool Ability to walk on land not necessary. Sat. from 10 to 11 a.m., to Aug. 11. Cost is $3.50 seniors/disabled, $5.50 others. Bring a towel and deck shoes. 526-0312. well-being@pacbell.net 

Children’s Books for K-5 Teachers with Walter Mayes at 2 p.m. at Cody’s Books, on Telegraph Ave. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Sistaz N Motion Business Mixer from noon to 3 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, Madeline Whittlesey Community Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. http://sistaznmotion.tripod.com 

“Parasites of the Body of Energy?” a lecture with Samuel Sagan at 3 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 882-0042. 

Meditation, Chanting and Music with Kali Ma at 6:30 p.m. at Inner Heat Yoga, 64 Shattuck Square. DOnation $10-$15. 540-9642. 

Basic Manners for Your Dog, a six-week class on Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $125. Registration required. 525-6155. 

SUNDAY, JULY 10 

Year of the Estuary Hike in the hills of the Miller Knox Regional Shoreline. Meet at 1:30 p.m. in the first parking lot off Dornan Drive near Pt. Richmond. Bring a sack lunch and water. 525-2233. 

Green Sunday meets to discuss “Green Candidates, Green Officeholders and Lessons Learned” at 5 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th in North Oakland. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Mountain View Cemetary. Cost is $5-$10. For details call 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Hands-on Bike Maintenance Learn how to perform basic repairs on your bike from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $85-$100. 527-4140. 

“Take Me Home” a benefit to support the filming of this documentary about children caught in the foster care system at 5 and 7 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $20 adults, $12 youth. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Campfire and Sing-a-Long Meet at 5:30 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center and we’ll walk uphill to the campfire circle. Bring hot dogs, buns, marshmallows and long sticks. Dress for fog. Call for disabled asistance. 525-2233. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose St. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

Social Action Forum with Dr. Robert Gould from Physicians for Social Responsibility, at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

“Darwin’s Nightmare” A film about the introduction of Nile Perch into Lake Victoria in Tanzania, which led to the endangerment or extinction of native fish, and famine in the area. At 5:30 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way, at Bowditch. Cost is $8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/calendar/index.html 

C. Clark Kissinger & Travis Morales on their new book “The World Can’t Wait. Drive Out The Bush Regime” at 6:30 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Basic Pet Rat Care Learn about habitat, handling, hygiene, diseases, food and water. Meet the rescued rats looking for homes. At 2:30 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Donations appreciated. All proceeds go to Bay Area Rats Rescue & Care. 525-6155.  

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

MONDAY, JULY 11 

National Organization of Women, Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. The speaker will be Jeffrey Mittman, the PATRIOT Act Campaign Coordinator for the Northern California Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. 287-8948. 

Strokes with Dr. Loron McGillis at 10:30 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

The Guru-Student Relationship at 6:30 p.m. at the Oakland Dharma House, 52 Hamilton Place. Cost is $36, preregistration required. 836-7544. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, JULY 12 

Rally for Youth Vote Join Berkeley teenagers in support of a meausre that would allow 17 year olds to vote in school borad elections in Berkeley. At 1 p.m. in front of the Berkeley BART station. 883-9091. 

“Ideas that Sustain an Unjust Economy” A conversaation with Terry O’Keefe at 6 p.m. at Café de la Paz, Shattuck at Cedar. Sponsored by the Sustainable Business Alliance. terry@sustainablebiz.org 

Road Cycling for Women Covering rules of the road, bike choice, clothing and accessories, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org  

Buddhist Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at The Dzalandhara Buddhist Center. Cost is $7-$10. For directions and details please call 559-8183. 

Kundalin Yoga six-week class, Tues. at 4:15 p.m. at Studio 12, 2525 Eighth St. Cost is $42. 841-4339. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Don Worth will lead a current events discussion at 11 a.m. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 13 

Save the U.S. Supreme Court Rally at 5:30 p.m. at 14th and Broadway, Oakland to protect our rights and civil liberites. Sponsored by the National Organization for Women, Oakland/East Bay. www.oebnow.org 

Insects for Kids A free class for children ages 5-10, at 9 a.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. www.barringtoncollective.org 

The Wonderful World of Worms We’ll learn how worms “see,” where they live, what they eat. For ages 8 to 12 at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. We’ll be digging in the dirt so dress to get dirty. Cost is $5-$7. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Climbing Mt. Shasta Tips for first-time climbers with Eric White, climbing ranger with the U.S. Forest Service at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Arab Women Film Festival “Hollywood Harems” and “Benaat Chicago” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Donation $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Raymundo: The Revolutionary Film-Makers’ Struggle” A documentary on the life and work of Raymundo Gleyzer, at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. 

Track Maintenance, a benefit party for Watchword Press with readings and music at 7:30 p.m. at Café Van Kleef, 1624 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5.  

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Action St. 841-2174.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes. 548-9840. 

Artify Ashby Muralist Group meets every Wed. from 5 to 8 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, to plan a new mural. New artists are welcome. Call Bonnie at 704-0803. 

“Searching Within” A free 9-week course, Wed. at 7 p.m. at 2510 Channing Way. Call to reserve a place. 652-1583. bayarea@gnosticweb.com 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

Stitch ‘n Bitch Bring your knitting, crocheting and other handcrafts from 6 to 9 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198. 

THURSDAY, JULY 14 

Where the Wild Things Live A nature program for 8-12 year olds to discover who lives where and why. At 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Fee is $5-$7. Registration required. 525-2233.  

“Rescuing Asian Black Bears in China” A lecture with Jill Robinson at 7 p.m. at the Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Rd, Oakland. Cost is $8-$10. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

Parenting Class: Yoga with Baby for new and expecting parents at 10 a.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Registration required. 658-7353.  

“The Lost Boys of Sudan” A documentary following two Sudanese refugees on their journey from Africa to America, at 7 p.m. at the James Irvine Foundation Conference Center, 353 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Reception at 6:30 p.m. Free. Sponsored by the Piedmont Diversity Film Committee. 835-9227. www.diversityworks.org 

Nonprofits and Grantwriting Workshop from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. freeskoolyes@yahoo.com 

Steps to Buying Your Own Home at 7 p.m. at Shaw Properties, 400 45th St., Oakland. Includes the process of pre-approval for financing, including income requirements and credit issues, and finding a realtor. www.barringtoncollective.org 

World of Plants Tours Thurs.-Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botan 

ical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Cost is $1-$5. 643-2755. http:// 

botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

“Eating for Health: A Family Plan” with Ed Bauman, Ph.D., Director of Bauman College: Holistic Nutrition and Culinary Arts at 5:30 p.m. at Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy, 1744 Solano Ave. 527-8929. 

FRIDAY, JULY 15 

Celebration in Opera and Song for Options Recovery Services with Lisa Houston, mezzo-soprano, Daniel Lockert, piano and Leland Morine, baritone at 8 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Suggested donation $30. 666-9900. www.optionsrecovery.org 

Contientious Projector Film Series will show “Beyond Treason” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitraian Universalist Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. 528-5403. 

Harry Potter Midnight Costume Party to celebrate the release of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” at 12:01 a.m. (Sat.) at Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Harry Potter Book Release Party at 8 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, Bay Street, Emeryville. Crafts, trivia contest. Come dressed as your favoirte character. Book will not be released until 12:01 a.m on the 16th. 655-4002. 

Thinking of Becoming a Doula? at 2 p.m. at Change Makers, 6536 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Free. 728-8513. 

Salsa Dancing at “The Beat” Dance Studio at 8:30 p.m. Lessons with Joseph Gallardo. 2560 9th St. at Parker. 472-2393 www.wildsalsanights.com 

Berkeley Chess Club at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. July 11 at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/Creeks/default.html 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., July 11, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., July 11, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/peaceandjustice 

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Mon., July 11, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/landmarks 

City Council meets Tues., July 12, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., July 13, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Don Brown, 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/disability 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., July 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Planning Commission meets Wed., July 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., July 13 at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/policereview 

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed. July 13, at 7 p.m. at 2940 Benvenue Ave., Jackie Y. Griffin, 981-6195. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/library 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., July 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Angel- 

lique De Cloud, 981-5428. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/earlychildhoodeducation  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., July 14, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Kristin Tehrani, 981-5356. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/health 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., July 14, at 7 p.m., at the West Berke 

ley Senior Center. Iris Starr, 981-7520. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/westberkeley  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., July 14, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning  ?

The pursuit of fitness in nature continues, as does the Trails Challenge. This month we shift from the redwoods of the East Bay hills to the East Bay shore, exploring Point Isabel and Point Pinole. 

Fido has seen your Trail Log and wants one of his own. He’s also seen that bright green T-shirt and expects a leash of the same color. There are many opportunities for dog excursions along the 1,150 miles of trails within the 65 East Bay Regional Parks. But, like most things in life, there’s a right way to go about taking Fido along. 

A hiker needs to be in good condition to enjoy the trails, and the same goes for your dog. Before you leave home, evaluate his condition and that of the outdoors. Dogs absorb heat through fur and paws and can’t cool down as easily as humans. On warm days, opt for shade and rest stops. Paws can be damaged on rocks and hot pavement; they need to be toughened slowly. All in all, consider the length of the hike and start slow. 

Safe drinking water may not be available so carry your own; dehydration can come on quickly. Also carry a supply of plastic bags. Respect fellow hikers and the environment and act responsibly. Pick up your dog’s waste and deposit it in a trashcan. Don’t leave bags by the side of the trail. There is no “poop patrol” to pick them up. 

Dogs are usually permitted off-leash in undeveloped areas within most parks but must be under your control and a leash must be at hand. Ultimately, it’s your responsibility to know where they are allowed off-leash; negligence could result in a fine of up to $160. Your responsibility extends to knowing if your dog should be off-leash, how he interacts with other dogs and people. Always be aware of non-dog walkers approaching. Be courteous: call your dog until they pass. 

At the end of a successful hike check your dog for ticks and foxtails. Dogs can succumb to Lymes disease and arrow-shaped foxtails easily will work their way below the skin. Always check ears, eyes, nose and between toes for both of these pests. 

Trails Challenge #2: Point Isabel Regional Shoreline: 1.7-miles, rated easy, dogs permitted off leash.  

This park is a good test for you and your dog. The trail is short, the dogs are plenty and you’re never far from your car.  

Eye-pleasing views are standard fare at Point Isabel. The open blue of the bay with the Golden Gate Bridge and Angel Island will draw your attention. So will the myriad assortment of people and dogs sharing the trail.  

Start at the Isabel Street parking lot and follow the paved path along Hoffman Canal, across the bridge and onto the north section of the park. You’ll pass open grassy fields and depending on the tide, either water or mudflats. Beware; access areas are frequent for a refreshing swim or mud bath. Don’t despair; Mudpuppy’s Tub & Scrub is conveniently located next to the parking lot for an inexpensive solution. Remember, you’re both there to have fun! 

Trails Challenge #3: Point Pinole Regional Shoreline: 4.2-miles, rated easy, dogs permitted off-leash in undeveloped areas.  

Point Pinole is peaceful today. Twelve miles of trails meander through 2,147 acres of rare coastal prairie with quiet vistas along San Pablo Bay. But take a step back in time to before 1960 and peaceful would not have served as a descriptor.  

Between 1880 and 1960 four explosives companies in the area manufactured over two billion pounds of dynamite. Farmers and ranchers originally co-existed with the Nitro Powder Co. Forty years later Giant Powder Co. created its own town, complete with railroad station, schools, housing and recreation. Today only their footsteps remain in oddly shaped foundations, sunken bunkers, raised earth berms, wood pilings and partially visible railroad ties. 

This Trails Challenge hike is a gentle loop out to the point on Bay View Trail, returning via Marsh and Cooks Point Trails. Bay View Trail, accessed to the left after crossing Badger Bridge, leads out to the shoreline, through stands of eucalyptus, rolling grasslands and past marsh plants in vivid green and orange. This wide, mostly level trail has lots of shade as well as a cooling breeze off the water. A gravel base ensures dry boots on a rainy day. 

Hues are subtle but no less appealing, a palette of soft greens, tans and browns among the grasses and long strips of peeling bark off eucalyptus trunks, revealing interesting patterns below. Exposed mudflats reveal an assortment of driftwood, shells, algae and a stalking egret. 

Diversions are many. Benches are strategically placed and beach access trails lead down to the shore for relaxation and exploration. At the Packhouse trail marker, you come upon a raised earth berm, looking like a Point Pinole Pyramid with its cement foundation, massive wood beams and topping of native grasses. Nature can find a niche almost anywhere. 

As you approach the point and fishing pier the Bay View Trail winds right through an enticing picnic area, leafy and green. At the main road, turn left and head toward the pier, passing two Interpretive Panels. Built in 1977, the popular pier extends 200 feet over the bay. Bring your rod or watch hopeful anglers anticipating a catch of sturgeon or perch. Alongside, the Old Wharf pilings are all that remain of the shipping dock of Atlas Powder Co. 

The pier marks the halfway point of the hike. From here foot-weary hikers can catch the shuttle back. Trail Challengers can head back on Marsh Trail (follow sign “To Owl Alley.”) The meadow landscape is familiar, now with views to the north. Dabs of color stain grasses, birds sing, lizards soak up the sun—it’s hard to equate this peaceful scene with its bustling past. 

After a half a mile, a hidden treasure appears on the right, a lovely fresh water pond rimmed with cattails, reeds and benches. Coolly refreshing. From here the meadows widen; look closely to see foundations of the Giant company town. 

At the intersection with Cooks Trail, turn left for the Press House, home to the black powder press, the brawn behind Hercules Powder Co. Using 4,000 pounds of pressure, this press turned charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur into explosive material. 

Young eucalyptus serenade you along Cooks Trail. Tall and slender, a gentle breeze sets them swaying and creaking. Hopefully these moans are not a reflection of your own aches after 3.5 miles.  

The final leg of the hike takes you through the major picnic and recreation area of the park. Here broad lawns, shade, a small playground and ample picnic facilities entice you to end your day with a plate of BBQ, a chilled drink and a smile on your face. 

For more information see www.ebparks.org or call 562-PARK. Trail maps available. 

Point Isabel: From I-580 or I-880, take Central Ave. west to Point Isabel. Open 5 a.m.-10 p.m., no fee. 235-1631. 

Point Pinole: Take I-880, exit on Hilltop. Go east on Hilltop, right on San Pablo, Left on Richmond Parkway and right on Giant Hwy. Open 5 a.m.-10 p.m. Fees: $5/car, $2/dog. Shuttle operates daily 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. except Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 237-6896.i

The most sought-after confidential document in recent Berkeley history is now public, but debate continues over an agreement which added a layer of secrecy to recent settlement talks between the City of Berkeley and the University of California. 

In response to a request under the California Public Records Act, the Daily Planet on Thursday received a copy of the confidentiality agreement signed April 22, five weeks before the city and university settled a lawsuit over future university expansion. 

For Berkeley, the settlement negotiations were a high-stakes enterprise. The city ended up dropping its demands for more information about the university’s long-range plan to add 2.2 million square feet of new space, and the deal fixed university payments for city services over the next 15 years. 

Mayor Bates had promised neighborhood leaders a chance to see a proposed settlement before the City Council voted on it, a practice which has not been common in Berkeley but has been part of settlements of lawsuits under the California Environmental Quality Act in other places. But the confidentiality agreement, which the parties claimed was itself confidential, changed the rules of the game. 

It was interpreted by city and university attorneys to bind both parties to secrecy and to prevent citizens from reviewing and commenting on the proposed settlement agreement before the council acted on it. 

A week before the settlement was approved, the university rejected a last-minute city request, made under pressure from residents, to waive the confidentiality agreement and make the deal public. 

Attorneys who have been critical of the city’s position offered a variety of interpretations of the agreement provided to them by the Daily Planet Thursday. 

“There is not one word in there that required the settlement agreement to remain confidential once the negotiation of it was complete; nothing there that unlawfully would prohibit the City Council from releasing it for public review before being voted on,” said Antonio Rossmann, a land-use attorney and lecturer at UC’s Boalt Hall. 

Rossmann charged that City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque “severely misread” the agreement and that UC Berkeley “had absolutely no right to invoke this agreement to keep the settlement from the public before the council vote.” He called the city’s position “a successful if not commendable frustration of public opinion.” 

Terry Francke, general counsel of the open government advocacy organization Californians Aware, took issue with the agreement, but concluded it effectively precluded the council from allowing public review of the settlement. 

“This document seems to me to set it up in a way that if UC wanted to they could walk away from the settlement if it were sunshined,” he said. 

State law does not require the city to disclose a proposed litigation settlement before voting on it. 

City attorney Manuela Albuquerque said that she sought the confidentiality agreement to ensure that all settlement related discussions couldn’t later be used against the city at a trial. Although the text of the agreement acknowledges that state law already prevents such disclosures from being used against parties at trials, Albuquerque said the confidentiality agreement afforded the city greater protection than offered under state law. 

“Statements made in public would not have been protected in any other way,” she said. “We wanted a wide ranging and candid discussion without it coming back to haunt us.” 

E-mails obtained by the Daily Planet show that councilmembers were alerted in March that the city was seeking such an agreement, although several said they never formally voted on signing one. The agreement document was signed for the city only by its outside counsel, Michelle Kenyon, not by any Berkeley elected official or staff member. 

Confidentiality agreements that keep parties from revealing offers made by their own attorneys during pre-trail settlement negotiations are common, according to Francke. But he questioned the interpretation by city and university lawyers that offers which had already been delivered from one side to the other during negotiations were confidential as well.  

“It’s a bit illusory,” he said, arguing that both sides are required to honor requests to disclose such documents. “They can’t simply agree to disregard the rules under the Public Records Act,” he said. 

“One wonders if this was created to leave the impression among certain city councilmembers that they had to keep their mouth shut,” said Francke. The agreement says that it “binds all employees, agents and representatives of the parties.” He said that it’s unclear whether that language applies to city councilmembers.  

Councilmember Dona Spring has said councilmembers received an e-mail informing them that commenting on the proposed settlement violated the confidentiality agreement. 

Albuquerque claimed councilmembers were bound by the agreement. She also said that state law protects the city from having to release any documents pertaining to ongoing litigation. 

Trying to get a copy of the agreement even after the settlement has been difficult. When Stephan C. Volker, an attorney for residents contemplating a lawsuit against the city over the settlement, requested a copy, he received a letter from Albuquerque telling him that the agreement was “not retained once the final settlement was concluded.” The Daily Planet CPRA request was made before the settlement, however. 

Albuquerque said a deputy city attorney later managed to find a copy that had been attached to a cover memo.  

In an effort to prevent controversy over future agreements, Mayor Bates and Councilmember Kriss Worthington introduced a proposal last month to require future confidentiality agreements dealing with major land use lawsuits to include provisions that allow for public review and comment before the council acts. 

Last week, however, the mayor temporarily withdrew the proposal, according to his aide Cisco DeVries, because he was concerned that the City Council could not legally set a policy which would bind future councils. 

One week after the contentious and narrowly rejected petition to change the name of Jefferson Elementary School split both the Berkeley School Board and the Berkeley community in general, the board voted unanimously Wednesday night to rescind the district’s school renaming policy until a new policy can be worked out. 

The job of writing a new policy now goes to the Board Policy Committee, which consists of Vice President Terry Doran and Director Shirley Issel. Doran voted to support the Jefferson name change petition while Issel voted to reject it. 

BUSD Superintendent Michele Lawrence said that Miriam Rokeach, president of the nonprofit Center for Youth Development through Law of the UC Berkeley School of Law, will be hired as a consultant to assist in the new policy development. 

Once the new policy proposal is written, it will be submitted to the board for discussion and approval. No timetable was given for that action, but Lawrence estimated that with the board out for a month-long summer break, consideration of the new policy is likely to take place sometime in the early fall. 

Meanwhile, no new school name change petitions can be initiated in the district. 

Board President Nancy Riddle said she expected the committee to “survey other schools and come back with a variety of alternatives that we can weigh.” 

Director Joaquin Rivera said that he thought the 20 percent threshold to initiate a school name change “might be too low.” Under present policy, the name change process is initiated by a petition signed by 20 percent of present school constituents. 

Rivera also said that while he had no concrete suggestions on how the new policy should be written, he said it should answer complaints—voiced during the Jefferson debate—that the larger Berkeley community, including the board itself, is left out of the debate until a short period at the end. 

When the Jefferson issue finally came to the board two weeks ago, President Riddle said that board members had “specifically kept out of the debate” in order not to be seen as influencing the initial vote by Jefferson Elementary staff, students, and parents and guardians. 

“There should be room for earlier board input,” Rivera said Wednesday night. “And we should somehow involve the larger community. The community owns the schools, and have a vested interest in the outcome.” 

The question of what constitutes a “school community” was pursued by Director John Selawsky. 

Under the now-suspended district policy, the board makes the final decision on a proposed name change only after an initial vote by what is called the “school community” of the school directly affected. That “school community” is narrowly defined as present students and staff at the school, and parents or guardians of presently-enrolled students. 

“The Jefferson vote raised the question of what constitutes a school community,” Selawsky said. “In all of our other processes that affect a particular school, we always bring in the surrounding neighborhood for input. Don’t they also have a stake in the school name?” Selawsky also said that he “wasn’t sure” that the school community should be confined to people who are connected to the school at the time of the vote, a definition that leaves out school alumni. Selawsky said that he did not yet have any answers for how that might be done practically. “I don’t have any answers for that,” he said. 

Student Director Lily Dorman-Colby said that while it is easy to define students, staff, and parents or guardians, deciding who constituted the school’s neighborhood community would be infinitely harder. 

“How much weight will be given to neighborhood organizations?” she asked. “And how will we reach people who might have an interest, but don’t necessarily attend meetings?” 

Only Vice President Doran said he didn’t necessarily advocate many changes being made in the name change policy. 

“I’m not very disturbed by our present policy,” Doran said. He only suggested that the policy should delineate what criteria the board should use for upholding or denying the vote taken by the school community. In the case of the Jefferson vote, Doran and Selawsky voted to uphold the Jefferson decision, stating that their only criteria should be to determine whether the school vote properly followed policy. In denying the Jefferson vote, directors Riddle, Issel, and Rivera said that the board should take the school opinion under advisement, but should retain the right to cast their own vote based upon whether or not they felt the school name change was best for the district. 

“I think the vote of the school community should supersede any other advice we receive,” Doran said. “The decision rightfully resides in the present participants at the school. That should be the heart and soul of the decision.” 

But Doran agreed with other board members that the decision should be made with input from the larger community, and that input should come earlier in the process. “The larger community should get the chance during the period when the issue is being debated within the school itself,” Doran argued, “rather than only during the pressure-cooker of the intense, hour-long debate when the board is making the final decision.” 

Doran said following the meeting that the new name change policy should make more provision for formal community presentations to school community members on a proposed name change before the school community takes its vote. 



Berkeley’s strong lead in the competition for the first new ferry terminal in the East Bay weakened this week with an announcement from Toyota Motors. 

The Japanese automaker is looking for a site for a larger importing facility to offload vehicles from the specialized cargo vessels that haul them across the Pacific and warehouse them prior to distribution to dealerships. 

Richmond, which already has a smaller Auto Warehousing Company importation facility in the Port Portero shipyard terminal, jumped into the competition with plans to lease the automaker two Marina Bay terminals. 

That put Toyota on the top of the city’s agenda, sidelining plans for a ferry terminal and adjacent parking lot that would occupy part of the same site. 

When Toyota announced Tuesday that they’d selected Benicia because of its great rail access, the ferry terminal project was back on the front burner. Richmond’s bid is given weight by $45 million in funds authorized by voters last year. 

The San Francisco Bay Water Transit Authority (WTA), created by voters and funded by increased Bay Area bridge tolls, is looking for new ferry terminal sites, though they only have enough cash to pay for one. 

“We’re going to build a terminal somewhere in the East Bay,” WTA Chief Executive Officer Steven Castleberry told the Daily Planet last month. “It could be in Berkeley, Albany or Richmond.” 

While a site in Albany would preclude one in Berkeley and vice versa, whichever site survived the selection process would be in competition with Richmond for the first East Bay Terminal. 

The WTA has already set aside funds to create ferry service to the Berkeley area, minus a terminal building which would have to be funded locally. But without a strong push from the City Council for a specific site, Berkeley could lose out to Richmond, said WTA Public Affairs Director Heidi Machen Friday. 

Mayor Tom Bates has been a major backer of a Berkeley Marina site, but aide Calvin Fong said Friday that no vote on selecting a possible site has been set. The city’s Waterfront and Transportation commissions also declined to specify a preference. 

The WTA will pick a firm Sept. 22 to conduct an environmental impact report, and without a specified preference all sites will be given equal weight initially. 

With Richmond back in the game, their bid is sweetened by last year’s Measure J, the $45 million sales tax increase authorized by Contra Costa County voters to fund ferry service for the western edge of the county. 

Berkeley’s push for the terminal has been moving forward through city commissions, which have been calling for a selection process that includes all potential sites: two either end of the Golden Gate Fields and a third at or near the Berkeley Marina. 

An April WTA poll found the strongest support for a Berkeley Marina site, followed by a site at the end of Gilman Street and a site at the base of the Albany Bulb at the end of Buchanan Street. 

Environmental groups are lobbying hard again the latter two sites, which they see as a potential threat to wildlife. 

Castleberry told a recent Berkeley Transportation Commission meeting that the WTA would prefer a site recommendation from the city, noting that a nod toward one by the city council would carry weight when it came time for the WTA to decide. 

Albany Mayor Robert Lieber has noted that both the Gilman and Buchanan sites would require extensive dredging while a Berkeley Marina site would not. 

“Berkeley better get its act together,” said Waterfront Commission Chair Paul Kamen. “Otherwise we’ll miss out on a wonderful amenity.”N

The Alameda County Medical Center—the only option for Berkeley’s 10,000 uninsured—continues to run up deficits despite a $70 million county bail-out last year, according to a recently-released report from the Alameda County Grand Jury. The report lays the blame on the center’s board of trustees. 

The grand jury is a 19-member citizen body selected by superior court judges to investigate county governmental issues. 

“Instead of grasping the concept that the medical center is facing a dire financial crisis, the board of trustees has spent the last year preoccupied with infighting...” the grand jury reported. 

The medical center includes Oakland’s Highland Hospital, which serves most of Berkeley’s trauma and emergency cases. Also in the public hospital network, required to treat the uninsured, are San Leandro’s Fairmont Hospital, John George Psychiatric Pavilion and three outpatient clinics. 

Especially troubling to the grand jury was the fact that the medical center remained in the red despite a bail out designed to reorder its finances.  

Last year, with the medical center facing a $50 million deficit, county voters approved Measure A, a half-cent sales tax increase that delivers the medical center $70 million a year. But despite the influx of cash, the medical center remained $3 million in debt last year and costs are expected to increase by $10 million this year. 

“The medical center board of trustees seem to have taken the passage of Measure A as a signal to engage in irresponsible spending,” the grand jury wrote. 

Public hospitals in the state have been hard hit by lower fees paid by Medicare and Medi-Cal and an increase in low income residents without insurance. 

The Medical Center, however, has been rife with dissension and mismanagement, the grand jury found. After going through nine CEOs in 11 years, last year the county brought in Tennessee-based Cambio Health Solutions to run the center and get its finances in order. 

The Grand Jury praised Cambio for improving efficiency in collecting payment for services and criticized the board for refusing to implement the consultant company’s plan to lay off 120 employees. Instead of layoffs, the board sought to cut staff by attrition and gave employees “across-the-board increases in employee salaries and benefits,” according to the report. 

Employee unions have “gained unprecedented control over hospital operations,” the grand jury wrote. Medical center work rules “give employee groups the right to veto or to prevent management from taking action.” 

For instance, a nurse cannot be reassigned from one patient ward to another even if the proposed ward is understaffed, the grand jury wrote. “Instead, the medical center must hire a temporary nurse at a substantially higher cost.” 

The board must either eliminate jobs or reduce services, but the board hesitated to do either, according to the grand jury. 

“Shockingly, the medical center has not even reviewed the question of whether the scope of service it provides should be reduced to balance its budget,” the grand jury wrote. 

The grand jury also blasted “a culture of failing to accept personal responsibility” it blames for a workers compensation crisis at the medical center. On any given day, 25 percent of employees are not at work because of an on the job injury or long-term disability, the grand jury found. 

Without making specific recommendations, the grand jury urged the board to make cuts, “even if it means laying off employees or reducing the scope of medical services it provides.” 

In its annual report, the grand jury also criticized the Alameda County Board of Education for failing to prevent financial crises in several local districts in the county and for not fully complying with open government laws. 

The board’s agendas “don’t fully inform the public of the substance of issues coming before the board and in some cases were misleading,” the grand jury found. 

Also, board minutes were found to lack information on the substance of controversial issues. 

The grand jury criticized Oakland for a contract that gives one tow company, A&B Auto Company, a monopoly on towing services with the city. 

The grand jury also found fault with the soon-to-be-closed Oakland city jail for poor conditions. County detention facilities, including Juvenile Hall and Santa Rita jail, scored higher. 

A copy of the annual report can be found at www.acgov.org/grandjury/final2004-2005.pdf. 

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What’s in a name?  

Plenty, for the members of Berkeley’s chapter of Disabled American Veterans, who are being required to pay fees to continue to meet at the Berkeley Veterans’ Building. 

“It’s a slap in the face for sure,” said Ed Harper president of DAV, Post 25, which meets once a month in a 10-by-12-foot Veterans’ Building office. “The veterans’ building is for veterans and it’s been that way since 1928.” 

Not so in Berkeley. The 77-year-old seismically unsafe art-deco building is home to a men’s shelter and homeless service center in its basement, a substance abuse recovery program in its main hall, and several nonprofits, including the Berkeley Historical Society, on the ground floor. 

Housing so many agencies in a city-owned building isn’t cheap. Last year the maintenance and utility bills cost Berkeley roughly $70,000, according to building manager David Poock, and the agencies chipped in a minuscule amount.  

Starting next year, Berkeley wants to change that arrangement. The city is requiring each group, including the DAV, to indemnify the city for potential liability and sign a license agreement paying for a share of maintenance and utility costs. Under the current estimates the veterans would pay $290 per year for maintenance and utilities, while larger groups like Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (BOSS), which runs the homeless program, would pay $20,000. 

For years veterans and the city have not seen eye-to-eye over the dilapidated building that Berkeley took over from Alameda County in 1988. But the demand to pay for use of a building built in their honor has taken relations to a new low. 

“The veterans come with the building,” said Mark Chandler, Secretary of Alameda County Veterans Affairs Commission. “The city is treating us like black sheep. There isn’t another jurisdiction I know of that has ever tried to make veterans pay to use a veterans’ building.” 

Chandler claims the city’s demand is illegal. He cites the 1988 agreement transferring ownership of the building from Alameda County to Berkeley, which reads that, “The city will preserve the rights of veterans to continued use of the building for activities protected by the military and veterans code.”  

The state veterans’ code states that cities can charge tenants other than veterans, when those groups don’t “unduly interfere with the reasonable use of the facilities by veterans’ associations.” Yet it doesn’t specify that a city can’t charge veterans or require them to take out insurance to indemnify the city. 

“There are no restrictions on the use of the Veterans’ Building that requires us to give anything for free,” said City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque. 

The city wants the license agreements to codify what has been an informal arrangement with Veterans’ Building tenants. “We don’t have leases with any of them,” said City Manager Phil Kamlarz. As for the veterans, the key issue is their ability to carry insurance so the city won’t be liable in the case of an accident. 

“Right now we’re the deep pocket in case something happens,” Kamlarz said. 

Tom Edwards, past president of the Berkeley Historical Society, said insurance costs his group $500 through an alliance of state historical societies. “If we didn’t have the umbrella group, we probably wouldn’t be able to afford insurance,” he said. 

Harper said the DAV didn’t have money for insurance or rent. The organization, he said, which counts 125 members but typically hosts meetings of 15 people, gets $800 a year from the state to spend on “worthy causes for veterans.” 

“We don’t make a penny and we get barely enough to mail out our monthly meeting notices,” he said. 

Boona Cheema, executive director of BOSS, suggested that the veterans could be insured under the policies of one of the bigger agencies at the veterans’ building or by the city. 

“I think the city should back off,” Cheema said. “I don’t think collecting from nonprofits will solve the city’s budget problems.” 

It’s rare for BOSS and local veterans leaders to be on the same side of a veterans’ building issue. Last year Chandler wrote to city officials and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), lamenting that the building had been turned over to social service agencies, limiting the DAV to their one meeting space and a storage room. 

For decades the building’s ornate first floor auditorium was home to civic galas, according to Ken Cardwell of the Berkeley Historical Society.  

But the building slowly fell into disrepair under the county’s watch and suffered further damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. As a safety precaution, after the earthquake, the city sealed off the second floor of the building because there was no emergency egress. The floor had been assigned to veterans as part of a deal with Berkeley when the city took control of the building. 

After the earthquake, the city turned the building over to social service agencies which needed cheap space. The homeless shelter moved into the basement in 1992 and were later joined by Options Recovery Services, a program for substance abusers, who occupies most of the first floor. 

Restoring the building to its original splendor appears for now to be a long shot. In 2002, the city estimated repairs would cost $12 million, and with the city’s budget still in the red, there is little political support for a bond measure. 

Chandler said the county and other cities have put more resources into their veterans buildings. Oakland recently renovated its building and turned it into a senior center, which, he said, brings in revenues to maintain the building and allows free space for veterans. The county-owned veterans’ building in Fremont, he added, still hosts special events to pay for its maintenance and utility costs. 

Albany’s building has also been upgraded, Chandler said. In 1990, after the Loma Prieta earthquake, the local chapter of The Veterans of Foreign Wars moved from Berkeley to Albany. 

Harper said the DAV would be welcome in Albany or could just as easily hold meetings at a member’s house, but they didn’t want to leave. 

“We don’t want Berkeley to have a veterans’ building where veterans have no part of it,” he said. “We don’t want to just come by on holidays to raise the flag.” 

Members of the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) don’t like what they see happening with parking in the city center—there’s less of it all the time in an era of expanding development hoping for a commercial revival. 

“Over the last 10 years, the number of spaces has shrunk by 600 to 800,” said DBA Executive Director Deborah Badhia. 

The city finds itself caught between two forces: merchants who say that easy access parking is the key to downtown revitalization, and foes of the internal combustion engine, who would like to see even fewer spaces to encourage reliance on public transportation, bicycles and walking. 

The DBA’s immediate focus is on the Oxford Plaza project, which is slated to replace the city parking lot facing UC Berkeley across Oxford Street with two major buildings, the five-story David Brower Center and the six-story Oxford Plaza affordable housing building. 

The merchants want to see the existing lot replaced by two levels of underground parking beneath the buildings, while existing plans call for only one. That would mean another net reduction in downtown parking. 

“Nobody lives up to their word on parking,” said ZAB member Dave Blake, “and downtown Berkeley was born to get screwed.” 

For Blake and Badhia both, the issue is replacing existing parking that is being taken for a construction project. 

Both pointed to the history of the Public Safety Building adjacent to Old City Hall on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

“Originally, the city promised to replace the existing parking lot on the site and provide all the additional spaces needed for the building,” said Blake. “But when the plans came back, there was no replacement and insufficient parking for the new use.” 

ZAB members voted 6-1 to oppose the new plans, but the City Council overruled them and “what was supposed to be temporary city parking on Center Street became permanent,” Blake said. 

Badhia noted that because of the failure to provide adequate parking for the building, the city is allowing city workers and police to park in other neighborhoods and provides shuttle service to bring them to their jobs. 

“We want to recover enough parking spaces so we are back to the 2,000 baseline,” she said. 

While the Oxford Plaza lot now offers space for 130 vehicles, a single-level underground garage would offer only 80. 

“That’s also the lot for the California Theater,” Badhia said. 

The DBA wants a second underground level, in part because the city Transportation Department has estimated that the lot will need 25 spaces for employees of the two buildings, she said. 

Blake also pointed to the loss of the two-level parking structure at the Library Gardens construction site behind the Main Public Library on Kittredge Street west of Shattuck Avenue. 

Developer “John DeClerq (of TransAction Companies) had promised never to build on the site without replacing the parking,” Blake said. “But his building was approved” falling far short of replacing the 100 spaces lost when the structure was demolished. 

Blake noted that the end of the Oxford Plaza surface lot marked the end of city-owned surface lots. The former public lot on Berkeley Way is now reserved for city vehicles, he said. 

“We’re really concerned” said Badhia. “A lot of wonderful things are happening downtown, but access is the key issue.” 

Badhia said the DBA is pinning its hopes on ZAB. 

“The downtown has been really hit by regional competition, especially from malls that don’t charge for parking,” she said. At the very least, she said, the city—which initiated the Oxford Plaza project—ought to offer more parking.›

Bus drivers and custodians, classified employees, and supervisory personnel represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21 all received 3.2 percent pay-and-benefits package increases from the Berkeley Unified School District next year, while teachers and administrators received total compensation raises of 2.1 percent. 

That information was contained in five separate labor agreements ratified last Wednesday by the BUSD Board of Directors. 

The tentative agreements were announced earlier this year by BUSD Superintendent Michele Lawrence, and have been approved by the Alameda County Office of Education. 

Their ratification ends a contentious year of labor unrest in the district, in which teachers staged a months-long work-to-rule job action and held several demonstrations preceding board meetings in the plaza in front of Old City Hall. 

The district’s 325 classified employees will see the lowest actual increase next year, with salary and benefits package raises amounting to an average $1,556 per employee. 

The district’s 200 bus drivers and custodians will see a $1,734 total compensation raise, the 540 teachers a $1,757 raise, the 38 administrators a $2,661 raise, and the 13 Local 21 members a $2,892 raise. 

In all, the total salary and benefits increases will cost the district $1.9 million over year’s budget, an amount that has already been factored into the 2005-06 budget passed by the Board of Directors last Wednesday.e

For newspaper fans who would rather browse through a paper than a website, the world just got a whole lot smaller. 

Bay Area residents, if they’re willing to pay a premium, can now get same-day home delivery of nearly 300 papers from the U.S. and abroad, nearly all of which either couldn’t be found on newsstands or arrived days after they were published. 

“It makes me feel a little closer to Japan,” Tanami Fukada, who pays to get her hometown Yomiuri Shimbun delivered to her home in San Francisco. 

The service comes from NewspaperDirect, a six-year-old Canadian company that is the largest distributor of digital newspapers in the world. The company receives PDF files from newspapers as they go to press and then prints the entire edition on tabloid-sized paper for customers from Dubui to Kathmandu. 

Last month, the company sold a Bay Area franchise, My Global Newspapers, that delivers to eight local newsstands as well as hotels and private homes. 

“We think with so many folks from out of state or out of the country the Bay Area is a great market,” said Fassil Befekadu, who along with his partner Paul Fiorello bought the rights to print the papers in Northern California.  

Although they know Internet competition will be fierce, they are counting on customers who prefer the feel of a newspaper and the full content that isn’t always available online. 

Three weeks into their venture they are printing between 70 and 120 papers each day. 

The roster of available titles is enough to make readers salivate. Nearly every major daily from 50 countries is available, including the Times of London, La Republica, El Pais, Le Monde, Pravda, the Hindustan Times, even the San Francisco Chronicle. 

But same-day access has its drawbacks. Since NewspaperDirect doesn’t get advertising revenue and must pay royalties to the papers they publish, the editions aren’t cheap. Prices range from about $3 for weekday editions to over $7 for some Sunday papers. 

NewspaperDirect, which prints about 250,000 papers per month, has traditionally focused its market on high-end users on cruise ships, hotels and embassies. Steven Townsley, the company’s vice president for publishing, said the most popular papers have been London dailies, a testament, he said, to the service’s wider popularity among Europeans.  

“Americans seem to be satisfied with USA Today,” he said. 

Townsley said the service has been most popular in areas with little access to foreign newspapers, especially in the Middle East and Africa. “Zambia came on line for us at the same time as San Francisco,” he said. 

The jury is still out on the Bay Area experiment. 

Befekadu said that immigrant neighborhoods haven’t shown as much interest in the papers as they had hoped, so the entrepreneurs are concentrating their efforts on tourists at hotels and conventions.  

Newsstand sales have been mixed. At DeLauer’s Super Newsstand in Oakland, the service has more than doubled its offering of 250 papers. 

“It’s really great because air freight has gotten so expensive on the standard deliveries we had to stop some of them,” said General Manager Bud DeLauer. He added that the service had increased his ability to serve customers. 

Previously, he said, a customer interested in an out-of-town newspaper had to place an order two weeks in advance. “Now they can come here and say they want a paper and it will be here tomorrow morning. It simplifies the entire process.” 

DeLauer said the newsstand sells about 15 to 20 papers each day, with the two most popular being the International Herald Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor. 

John Valantini, owner of Cavalli Italian Book Store in North Beach, said he was selling about 15 papers most days and up to 75 papers every Monday to soccer-loving Italian sports fans who wanted their favorite Italian sports editions that recapped the weekend games. 

But Fadi Berbery, owner of Smoke Signals in San Francisco, said he was selling about five editions each day. “When people see them they get excited, but when they find out it’s $3.50 a paper, they usually put it back.” 

East Bay residents interested in picking up a paper can find them at DeLauer’s Super Newsstand, 1310 Broadway, Oakland. To inquire about home delivery, call My Global Newspaper at 764-1828. 

After a stormy beginning, members of the citizen’s group appointed to advise the state on toxic waste issues at Richmond’s Campus Bay said Thursday night that they want a bigger role. 

The meeting in the Richmond Convention Center was the first gathering of the Community Advisory Group (CAG) selected to advise the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) on the cleanup of Campus Bay. 

Richmond activist Ethel Dotson originally petitioned the agency to form the panel to advise only on the upland portions of South Richmond Campus Bay site, where developers planned to build a 1331-unit high-rise condo and low-rise apartment complex on the edge of San Francisco Bay. 

But other panel members at the meeting said they wanted their jurisdiction to include other sites as well, including: 

• Restoration of the Campus Bay’s shoreline marshland. 

• The still-contaminated UC Berkeley Richmond Field Station (RFS) toward the northwest. 

• Investigation of potential pollution in the air around and ground beneath the so-called “downwind” business district to the southeast. 

• The abandoned and potentially contaminated Blair Landfill southeast of the business district. 

• The former Liquid Gold federal Superfund site east of the landfill. 

• Neighboring and lead-contaminated Richmond Gun Club range. 

• A former Pacific Gas & Electric maintenance facility to the north which DTSC says needs to be tested for residual contamination. 

• The BioRad medical manufacturing plant west of the Field Station, which produces equipment, manufactures chemicals, distributes microorganisms and cells and other biological material. 

• All or part of the Marina Bay complex to the west. 

The East Bay shoreline of Contra Costa County has long been recognized as the most contaminated section of the county, a fact confirmed by the sheer scale and number of contaminated sites listed for the group by Barbara Cook, DTSC’s manager of Zeneca and RFS cleanup operations. 

The meeting started with an introduction from the DTSC’s Diane Fowler, the public participation supervisor for the agency. 

Controversy erupted after Anderson concluded and CAG member and Richmond City Councilmember Gayle McLaughlin moved to elect member Celeste Crystal, of the Parents Resources and More group, as temporary chair of the first meeting. She was seconded by Sherry Padgett, the spokesperson for Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development, which played a major role in organizing opposition to Campus Bay cleanup operations started under supervision of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. 

“Wait a second,” declared Dotson. “I think we need to wait on that.” 

Dotson, who grew up in housing built for African Americans on contaminated sites in Richmond, was angry because the state agencies involved in the process hadn’t informed the community group of their ongoing meetings. Her voice was so loud that several in the audience asked her to tone it down. 

First to offer support was her brother and fellow CAG member Whitney Dotson, an environmental activist, who said it was “premature to appoint someone nobody knows. I am very upset with some people in the community. We can’t appoint a chair because some other things have to be dealt with.” 

At that point the other CAG members rose to introduce themselves and state their principal concerns. 

The 25-member panel includes two other political figures besides McLaughlin—Contra Costa County Public Health Director Wendel Brunner, who wasn’t able to attend, and Richmond Redevelopment Agency head Steven Duran, an early proponent of plans to building housing atop a massive buried chemical waste pile at Campus Bay. 

Dotson, McLaughlin and Padgett have been outspoken critics of those plans, which some city officials have seen as a major new source of property tax revenue. 

CAGs are given great latitude in self-organizing, with the DTSC serving only in an advisory position. Three representatives, including Crystal, come from local non-neighborhood organizations, three from the local business community, including Padgett, two from local environmental groups and 14 from local neighborhoods. 

Part of Dotson’s anger was directed at the state Department of Health Services (DHS), which has been meeting with Brunner at both Campus Bay and the Richmond Field Station to assess potential health problems. 

Dotson blamed both DTSC, which was present at the DHS/County Health meetings, and DHS for failing to formally notify the Community Advisory Group of their gatherings, which she said she had learned of only through newspaper accounts. 

Dr. Marilyn Underwood, a DHS physician who has participated in meetings at RFS and the neighboring businesses, promised that her agency would cooperate with the CAG and provide whatever information it could, and if requested would notify advisory group members of meetings. 

Since by statute the CAG’s role is advisory only, the panel can’t make decisions binding on DTSC or other agencies. The group is responsible for asking for specific information they need to formulate their opinions. 

Cook and Fowler also promised to give the group what they requested, because, as Cook said, “it will help you give us the best possible advice.” 

By the end of the two-hour-plus session, steps toward consensus had been taken and the group’s scope had been significantly extended. The selection of the first chair will take place during the first hour of the CAG’s next meeting, on July 28. Ô

AC Transit reached a deal with its largest union Friday on a two-year contract that gives its 1,800 bus drivers and mechanics a 3 percent raise. 

The contract with The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192 also calls for AC Transit to contribute $3 million a year to a medical trust fund to help defray health care costs for retired employees. 

AC Transit also reached a one-year deal with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3916, which represents about 400 management and clerical staff. That contract includes an annual contribution of $300,000 to a medical trust fund for retirees. 

—

Shortly after her election as student director on the Berkeley Unified School Board last year, Berkeley High’s Lily Dorman-Colby outlined an ambitious plan to mobilize students against unpopular board decisions. “I want to be a politician,” she told the Berkeley Daily Planet’s Matthew Artz. “I want to change the world.” In addition, the senior wrestler announced that she was going to put a stop to the board’s habit of extending meetings late into the night. 

“These meetings are ending at 10 p.m.,” she said. “If they have questions I’d tell them, ‘Talk to me before the meeting, I’ve got a tournament tomorrow.’” 

Dorman-Colby failed miserably on the late-night meeting issue. In a year filled with ongoing budget problems and a contentious teacher job action, board meetings often went past the 11 o’clock hour, and once or twice she had to request items be taken out of turn so that she could participate in the debate and then get home to get enough sleep for an important test the next day. 

And during her last speech as student director at Wednesday night’s School Board meeting, the Berkeley High graduate and incoming Yale freshman admitted, a little sheepishly, that “I couldn’t do all of the things I wanted to do on the board. There’s so much process. Things take a lot longer to get done than I thought they would.” 

It was not for lack of trying. 

In her nine months as student director, Dorman-Colby established herself both as the voice of Berkeley Unified’s students and as the conscience of the school board. She took her role seriously, never acting as either obstructionist or token place-holder but as a full participant, despite the fact that by state law, student directors have only an advisory vote. Her questions on obscure budget line-items or seemingly-minor entries in staff reports often highlighted the ways that broad policy decisions have impact on real people—particularly her student constituents—and her impassioned speeches at key emotional moments more than once left the other board members in the oddest of positions for a politician—speechless, themselves. 

Probably Dorman-Colby’s most memorable moments on the board came during this spring’s teacher contract dispute, when she often chastised teachers—many of them her own instructors—that their work-to-rule action was having a devastating effect upon students. “We need you,” she once said of teachers, tears rolling down her face. “We need you answering questions at lunchtime, and helping us after school. How many students will miss making it to a major college next year because of education time lost? We just don’t know.” 

“Berkeley education changed my life,” she said in her closing remarks to the board Wednesday night. “Without it, I could have ended up in the street. So I wanted to give something back to Berkeley education.” 

She absolutely did. 

The controversial radio devices coming to Berkeley this August won’t be arriving in San Francisco anytime soon. 

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget Committee voted 4-1 Thursday to reject the library’s request for $680,000 to begin phasing in the technology. 

With two anti-RFID supervisors not on the committee, RFID opponents appear to have a majority of the 11-member board of supervisors. 

“This vote will have far reaching implications,” said Peter Warfield of the anti-RFID Library Users Association. “I think the more people learn about RFID the more they understand how bad it really is.” 

RFID is a hi-tech alternative to the traditional library bar code. Instead of a code, RFID’s are palm sized radio antennas that emit a frequency read by specially designed machines. 

The technology, used in numerous types of industries, is advertised to boost self check-out rates at libraries to 90 percent, thereby freeing staff to perform other jobs. 

But privacy advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, fear the devices could ultimately be used to track library patrons rather than books. 

Last year Berkeley spent $650,000 to convert to RFID and will roll out the system next month. 

The San Francisco vote would funded the first phase of RFID implementation at the city’s 26 branches. The entire RFID program for San Francisco was estimated to cost $3 million.r

http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Works

FIRE STATIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

I have been a citizen of Berkeley since 1961. I have seen the number of fire stations reduced, the number of men on each engine/truck reduced, and now we see the number of fire stations reduced! How much more reduction will ensue? Will we soon contract out fire service for our city to anyone who has a fire truck in their garage? 

With the recent three-alarm fire at Gilman and Fifth streets —and the recent article in the Daily Californian about fire station brown-outs—the City of Berkeley is asking for disaster and probable lawsuits from future fire victims who will claim, and rightly so, that the response time of any fire engine company will be delayed—and in fire, there is no mercy—seconds and even minutes can mean disaster and even death for said victims. 

The Fire Department serves every citizen in the city 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Why doesn’t the city cut funding to those programs that serve only a small (but bothersome) minority of the city ‘s population and are of considerable cost to taxpayers and adn to the energy of city employees, like the mental Welfare Department who serve all the homeless people in Berkeley. Homeless people stay in Berkeley because we serve them so much—you do not see them in Albany—these people do not pay taxes, are hard on the eyes, and live in our parks and church yards throughout the city. If the city is so hard-strapped then such “luxuries” as homeless-police should be abandoned. If the services for the homeless were removed, the homeless would move elsewhere....so let them. When San Francisco altered its homeless management, many of them came to Berkeley and have strapped our services to the bone. Which would you rather have? A fully manned Fire Department of seven engine companies or homeless and the homeless-police who tax all of us in more ways than one. You know what my vote is—cuts need to be made, so make them, but do it for the benefit of all in the city and not for what’s politically correct. 

Karl Jensen  

• 

HONDA DEALERSHIP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley Honda owners can call 1-800-999-1009 to let American Honda Motor Co., Inc. know how displeased they are with Tim Beinke, the new owner of the Honda dealership in Berkeley. 

As I tried to impress upon the complaint department, mistreatment of employees sullies not only the Berkeley dealership but the Honda name. 

It was only a minor consideration which sent me to Honda after driving a Toyota for 20 years. If I were in the market for a car today, Honda’s shameful treatment of long-term employees would send me right down the road to Toyota. 

Jeanne Burdette 

• 

TRAIN WHISTLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

First let me say what a good paper this is. 

In reference to “West Berkeley Residents Demand Quieter Trains Whistles” (June 14), I would like to point out that part of the problem is that it is not a whistle. 

About 10 years ago it was a whistle and although it was still a little loud, it wasn’t obnoxious as is this very, very loud truck-like sounding horn. 

To Union Pacific: Bring back the ol’ train whistle and turn it down a notch. Show consideration. Your new idea of a loud horn, unlike a train whistle, is causing residents who have always lived near the railroad to lose sleep. 

Joanne Wohlfeld 

• 

TOM AND SHIRLEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m no fan of Mayor Tom Bates, but it’s ironic that former mayor Shirley Dean is now criticizing Bates for “giving away the store” and not gaining bigger concessions from the university. 

Mrs. Dean was mayor for eight years before Bates, and I don’t recall her ever saying to the university, “Enough!” As a well-paid employee of the university for many years while on the City Council, she could have used the bully pulpit to gain their attention, but chose not to. 

Kevin Wong 

• 

UC SETTLEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mal Burnstein’s June 24 letter provides an insightful explanation of the City Council majority’s decision to accept the university’s deeply flawed Long-Range Development Plan. He gets to the underlying reasoning for giving up a CEQA law suit on the one hand to gain increased payouts from the university on the other hand.  

It is good that the underlying reasoning is finally out in the open. We might finally get to the heart of the matter.  

He is representative of the wide-spread belief that CEQA is toothless with respect to the university, that the university can do what it will on the basis of “overriding considerations,” and that the city is helpless in the face of the university’s extraordinary powers. These folks would undoubtedly be grateful for increased payments in exchange for a lawsuit that, in their opinion, would bear little fruit.  

On the other hand are those of us residents who have been protected by CEQA, who have engaged the courts, engaged the university, and engaged past mayors, councilmembers, and city staff, and found effectiveness, power, and influence by standing together.  

It is therefore altogether shocking for those of us who value CEQA to find it devalued and dismissed especially knowing the gross misrepresentations in the 2020 LRDP environmental impact report. It was ripe for legal challenge. 

The LRDP EIR identified four alternatives to the university’s preferred plan and any of which would have been preferable. These are as follows:  

Alternative L-1: Lower Enrollment and Employment Growth. 

Alternative L-2: No New Parking and More Transit Incentives. 

Alternative L-3: Diversion of Some Growth to Remote Sites. 

Alternative L-4: No Project. 

A new EIR could have gotten us one of the preferred alternatives each of which is less environmentally harmful. Yet by the city’s caving in, the university’s most expansive long-range plan remains in effect and citizen complainants are left standing alone on this and all future UCB developments.  

Estimating the costs of this plan and trying to negotiate increased fees and payments appears to have been the city’s self-congratulatory accomplishment. The city focused on money for the price of this 15-year development project. Many residents in the campus vicinity would have appreciated instead a lobby for constraints on unreasonable and disruptive development, which is an inherently sound approach from a fiscal and civic perspective. This is not pie in the sky, but the process already set up under CEQA.  

Citizens have a right to be angry. Whether or not the dollars and cents favor one approach or the other, it is the nickel and dime attitude that offends and reveals an impoverished mindset devoid of meaning and value.  

It is neither a progressive nor a moderate issue, but a matter of social and environmental justice. Perhaps it would be clearer if residents of Berkeley were from an underdeveloped country and the University was the unelected tyrant.  

Janice Thomas 

• 

BLAME NEWSWEEK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I guess everyone is right: Education in the high schools is sorely lacking these days. A case in point is Piedmont High grad Christian Hartsock’s column in the June 28-30 edition of the Daily Planet. Of course, attributing to unnamed “liberals” the views of the Communist Party USA (Really! Does it still exist?) is hardly original. It is an old tactic lifted from the Red Scare days of the 1950s when “Reds”—for those too young to remember—did not refer to people who lived in Republican states.  

But if one is going to dispute the CPUSA’s thesis that Christianity is a violent religion, one shouldn’t make up non-existent massacres and say that the fact they didn’t occur proves one’s point. It is the equivalent of taping a “kick me” sign to one’s own butt. Christians have committed massacres, and not all of them are ancient history. 

For example, the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres in Beirut in 1982, although abetted by the Israeli army under Sharon, was carried out against Muslims by Maronite Christians. Or one could point to the Srebrenica, Bosnia massacre of 1995, in which more than 7,000 unarmed Muslims were systematically murdered by Christian Serbs. In Nigeria Christians and Muslims are engaged in escalating retaliation. In 2004, more that 300 Muslims were massacred by Christians in the Village of Yelwa. Similarly, in Indonesia, Christians and Muslims have been slaughtering each other, and Muslims claim that thousands have been put to death at the hands of Christians in Maluku. Not to mention, say, the holocaust and the pogroms in which Jews were murdered by Christians, or, for that matter the Crusades, which featured Christian murder-in-the-name-of-the-lord for fun and profit. And, of course (nobody expects) the Spanish Inquisition. 

This is not to argue that Christianity is intrinsically a violent religion, or that all, or most, or even a large portion of people practicing Christian religions are violent thugs. But making up fictional massacres and then saying “Oh, wait a minute, that didn’t happen” doesn’t go all that far to advance an argument that Christians are blameless in contrast to the bloodthirsty Muslims when so many actual massacres at the hands of persons describing themselves as Christians indisputably did happen. 

I won’t even go into the despicable treatment that prisoners convicted of no crime have received in the American Gulag (as described by that Commie front group Amnesty International) of Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, where the dispute is whether “only” 30 have, in an unexplained manner, died at the hands of their captors, or whether the death toll is as high as 100. We all know that the insults to the religion and persons of the detainees had nothing at all to do with the violent protests against the detention which led scores of “fire breathing” (really? I’d like to see that) Muslim “idiots” to vent their “religious insecurities.” 

No, it wasn’t the fact that America has detained people without trials, lawyers, charges, or access to their own families; that America has tortured them physically and psychologically; that America has, without any legal process “renditioned” captives over to totalitarian states to be tortured. No, we all know what caused those “hysterical” Muslims to protest: 

It was all Newsweek’s fault.  

Paul Glusman 

READER OFFERS CORRECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I had always assumed that journalists do their own research and then incorporate opinions in quotations into an article. It seems that Ms. Norton took Mr. Mirab’s words as fact and then used them in her article as such. Her article, “Iranian Americans Target Elections in Downtown Protest,” contained two gross mistakes. 

1) In the article she said: “The process for electing a ruler in Iran begins with the careful screening of potential candidates by a council directed by the current president.” First of all, the council is called the Guardian Council and it is made of 12 members, six of whom are clerics chosen directly by the supreme leader and the other six are jurists chosen by the head of the judiciary who is also chosen by the supreme leader. Therefore, it is the supreme leader, not the president who has control either directly or indirectly in the affairs of the Guardian Council.  

2) She also said in the article: “Mirab contends that the supreme leader, as the president is called, uses this council to select the next president, regardless of who wins the popular vote.” The bigger mistake was made here. There is a president and a supreme leader. They are not the same person, they are two different people. The current supreme leader is Ali Khameini and the current president is Mohammad Khatami. In addition, the Guardian Council does not choose the winner (unlike the Electoral College process here in America). The Guardian Council examines the credentials of candidates running prior to the election and whomever musters the greatest numbers of votes wins.  

In addition, I have to add that the National Council of Resistance of Iran which Mr. Mirab is a member of is the political arm of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MK0) an armed (prior to the U.S. invasion) opposition group based in Iraq. This group is on the US government’s list of terrorist organizations.  

For your information, I have added the following BBC link which provides a diagram about Iran’s government structure that may help Ms. Norton understand the political system better: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/middle_east/2000/iran_elections/iran_struggle_for_change/who_holds_power/. 

Name withheldÄ

Citizen participation in Berkeley public life is under attack. Some of the assaults are blatant—most egregiously, the secret settlement with UC that the City Council approved on a 6-3 vote on May 25. The deal cuts citizens out of planning for downtown Berkeley, while effectively giving the Regents a veto over the future of our city center.  

There are also more insidious offensives, such as the proposal to limit service on city commissions slated for the council’s July 12 agenda. Submitted by Councilmembers Capitelli, Moore and Wozniak, this item would both strictly enforce the city’s strange eight-year limit on commission appointments and forbid individuals to serve on more than one commission at a time. It would take effect on Dec. 1, with retroactive impact on commissioners already serving.  

A little background: In Berkeley, the mayor and the eight councilmembers each get an appointment to the city’s boards and commissions, except the Rent Board, which is elected. In other, less democratic places, city commissioners are all appointed by the mayor or have to be approved by a majority vote of the council. Berkeley commissioners are all volunteers.  

On the face of it, the Capitelli-Moore-Wozniak proposal may appear to bolster participatory democracy. Certainly that’s the impression its three sponsors seek to give. Under the heading “Maximize Opportunities for Citizens to Serve on a Commission or Board,” they assert that the proposed limits “will ensure that commissions are regularly revitalized with new people and new points of view, and will help to increase the number of residents who can participate in our government.”  

You might suppose, then, that many Berkeley commissioners have served well over eight years and/or sit on two or more commissions. Actually, the number of individuals who would be affected by the strict enforcement of the eight-year rule is miniscule—only 13 out of 350, or 3.7 percent of all current appointees. Moreover, after the first year of a commissioner’s service, councilmembers have the right to replace their appointees whenever they please.  

In fact, the high-toned rhetoric masks the low-down motive of the proposal’s makers: suppressing commissioners whose perspectives and priorities differ from theirs. To be precise, suppressing other councilmembers’ appointees whom they find objectionable. (None of the proposal’s three sponsors, two of whom have been on the council only seven months, now have commissioners who will be affected by the proposed new limits.)  

Councilmember Capitelli let the cat out of the bag during the council’s initial discussion of commission matters on May 17. “The longer we stay on [a] commission,” he said, “the more weight that we carry, and I don’t mean physical weight. Sometimes we tend to dominate environments and discourage participation by other citizens.”  

“We?” Anybody who’s familiar with Berkeley politics knows that the primary antecedent of Capitelli’s shifty first person plural pronoun is Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman.  

Now why would Councilmember Capitelli and his colleagues Wozniak and Moore want to off Commissioner Poschman?  

Well, Gene Poschman knows more about zoning and land use in Berkeley than anybody else in town, including the staff of the Planning Department; works harder than any other commissioner I know of; and uses his exceptional knowledge and energy to defend democratic process and legal propriety.  

In today’s Berkeley, that means that he advocates for neighborhoods and ordinary citizens who are contending with the bigger-is-better/the-zoning-ordinance-be-damned development that’s championed by the city’s planning staff. Not incidentally, such development is also championed by Councilmembers Capitelli, Moore and Wozniak, who regularly support projects that violate Berkeley’s zoning laws, yet come to the council with enthusiastic recommendations from city staff.  

If the council is serious about making commission service more attractive, it should foster a culture of integrity and accountability in City Hall. Excluding seasoned and knowledgeable citizens from the pool of volunteers only strengthens the hand of city staff and powerful local interests—the university and other big developers.  

Just so, whatever its benefits, instituting term limits in Sacramento—a move that Tom Bates fought all the way to the Supreme Court—has increased the influence of bureaucrats and lobbyists in California. They’re ensconced in the political landscape, while new legislators come and go, many never gaining the experience necessary to be effective. That’s why term limits have repeatedly been used to purge liberals from office.  

What keeps more Berkeleyans from volunteering for city commissions is not the presence of forceful individuals. It’s the dedication that commission service involves, especially service on Planning and other boards that ought to require a big investment of time and energy.  

I say “ought to” because it’s common knowledge that some commissioners come to meetings, their packets unread, and vote on matters they’ve barely scanned. Nobody criticizes such behavior, at least not publicly, because people are all volunteers and, it’s assumed, doing the best they can. So going after commissioners who not only fulfill the call of duty but surpass it is particularly offensive.  

On July 12 the council can demonstrate its commitment to citizen democracy by doing two things: It can reject the proposed new limits on commission service. And it can direct staff to annually survey commissioners about the quality of staff support and to report the results back to the council, as stipulated by Council Resolution No. 61,312-N.S., taken in 2001 (see the Commissioner’s Manual, Appendix E, Section 4). To my knowledge, no such surveys have ever been done. This would be an opportune time to start.  

It looks as if Councilmember Anderson is having second thoughts about his vote for the UC settlement in May. At the council’s July 21 meeting, he showed some mettle by ignoring a mayoral plea and abstaining on a vote to approve the city sewer fees that the settlement assigned the university. The measure still passed, but only by the slimmest of margins (5-3-1). May council support for the settlement dwindle still further.  

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When my mother was 14 years old, she and her three sisters combined the contents of their piggy banks and bought my grandmother an overstuffed, flower-print covered chaise longue. They envisioned their mother lying like a starlet on this piece of furniture, dressed in a sleek satin smoking gown, a slim black cigarette holder in one hand, and a full martini glass in the other. In reality, Grandma spent most of her time in front of a hot stove, cooking my grandfather medium rare steaks, an apron around her waist, a cigarette butt between her lips. She didn’t have time to recline leisurely on the chaise longue, and so it sat abandoned in her bedroom, covered not in cast-off silk and satin negligees, but my grandfather’s dirty underwear.  

When my mother married my father, Grandma gave her the chaise longue. She mumbled something about “…no woman ever having the time to make use of it, but what the hell...” My parents hauled it up the stairs and into their bedroom where it sat for over 50 years, idle except as a dumping spot for the contents of the family laundry basket. My mother used it as a place to fold clean clothes. No one ever sat in it. 

Five years ago my parents moved to a smaller house. There wasn’t space for the chaise longue. My brother, who had recently bought a home in California, expressed an interest in the unused chair. My parents shipped it to him in a moving van. When it arrived he put it in his basement, intending to stretch out on it while drinking beer and watching TV. But before he had a chance to flop down, his Doberman Pincer, Zeke, claimed it for his own. Then his other dog, Peanut, a tiny Teacup Poodle, decided he wanted part of the action. A fight ensued. The chaise longue lost a major amount of stuffing. My brother dragged it into his garage where it remained until I got the bright idea that I needed a place in which to loll while wearing silk pajamas.  

I arranged for my neighbor, Mr. Burton, to refurbish the chaise longue. It needed new stuffing. The armrests were wobbly and the legs were broken. Mr. Burton, who has been an upholsterer for over 60 years, said he could do it but it would take awhile. He sent me to Discount Fabrics on San Pablo Avenue for wholesale upholstery fabric. I picked out something to match the slinky dressing gown I intended to buy. I delivered the material to Mr. Burton and waited. 

Mr. Burton is 87 years old and a very busy man. Besides upholstering the bar stools for Oaks Card Room, (an ongoing position he has held since 1962), he is a deacon at Beth Eden Baptist Church. He didn’t have a lot of time to devote to my longue-around dreams. 

But finally, six months later, Mr. Burton finished the project. My neighbor Ché helped me lug the now beautiful chair back to my house. “Where’s it going?” asked Ché. “The attic,” I said. “I’m going to drink martinis up there and maybe even smoke a cigarette just for the hell of it.” 

Ché and I maneuvered the chaise longue to the second floor. He looked at the narrow attic stairway. “Did you try getting this thing up there before you had Mr. Burton re-cover it?” asked my wise next door neighbor. “Cuz, you know somethin’? I don’t think it’s gonna fit.”  

“Of course it’ll fit,” I said. “It has to. I’ve already bought the matching pajamas.” 

Ché and I attempted to push the sofa up the steps right side up, then upside down, and sideways. We switched directions, switched positions, unscrewed the banister railing, put a few holes in the drywall, but there was no way in hell it would squeeze through the stairwell. We left it in the hallway, blocking important traffic flow patterns to and from the bathroom. Perhaps, tactfully suggested Ché, it was time to return the silk pajamas and go down to Beth Eden with Mr. Burton and pray.

I have a 7-year-old who just finished her second year at Jefferson Elementary. And I’m a parent who has been wholly uninvolved in matters concerning the school’s proposed name change (from Jefferson to Sequoia) and in its ensuing controversy; uninvolved that is, until now. 

My first act was only to attend the public hearing and meeting when the matter was put to a vote by the School Board. As is now public record, the vote went against the proposed change. I admit favoring a change. But my motivation for attending these deliberations was not to influence the outcome, but only to observe the process. 

I was curious about this process because part of our community feels disenfranchised by a school that bears a name linked to slavery. I, on the other hand, am a middle-aged white man; I don’t have that feeling. And I recognize that I may never fully understand why retaining the name Jefferson invokes this feeling among some of my neighbors. But I can guess that the reasons are numerous and complex. So, I was drawn to the hearing and to the board meeting that followed because it occurred to me (finally) that concerns of disenfranchisement need to be addressed by the entire community. 

At the public hearing, those from one camp spoke of Jefferson’s greatness, even offering apologia for the beastly sides of his legacy. This constituency agreed that to change the school’s name would be to dishonor the memory of a Founding Father. But no one from this side spoke constructively about those members of our community who see Jefferson as a symbol of oppression (though one speaker callously labeled these community members a “special interest”). 

So, when the board finally weighed in, I was stunned that this level of discourse generally continued. Let me illustrate the disappointingly muddled rationales offered by some board members to justify their votes. 

Board President Riddle furnished a rather suspect argument. She announced that her rejection of the name change serves the democratic process. President Riddle, you see, claims to have surveyed the community at large. The responses according to Riddle ranged from complete apathy to strong opposition to change. Evidently none of those surveyed favored a name change. This outcome seems odd, given that the actual vote of the school community approved the change. Riddle’s survey is curious indeed—and unverifiable to boot. 

Director Issel’s rationale seemed the most gutless. Her stated reason for voting no: The idea is too divisive. I thought everyone knew that race-related issues are divisive. Even Lyndon Johnson (no paradigm of virtue himself) predicted that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would cost Democrats the south for the next 40 years. But Johnson still championed the Act. Ms. Issel, on the other hand, is a coward. 

Finally, it was Director Rivera who distinguished himself in my eyes. His comments struck me as not just baseless, but downright mean. One of his admonishments went as follows: The misplaced energy spent on pursuing name change was a distraction that may have contributed to achievement gaps that plague Jefferson School. His message is clear: Not only are the concerns expressed by those favoring change not to be embraced, they are to be recognized as destructive. Here’s why that mean-spirited message is baseless: Rivera furnished statistics that point to the school’s achievement gaps, but conspicuously offered no evidence linking those statistics to the proposed name change. Had Rivera instead been arguing in favor of change, he could have just as easily asserted that the achievement gaps are caused by the intimidating name of Jefferson (and not the process of changing that name). 

Rivera went on to characterize the debate as “all this [divisiveness] over a man who owned slaves.” This, he told us, is what bothers him about some Berkeley progressives; their thinking is too simplistic, he claimed. 

But who’s really the simpleton here? I thought this debate centered around a man whose body of work includes acts that buoyed slavery’s position in society; about drafting portions of the constitution like the three-fifths clause and Articles I and V that safeguarded slavery’s place until igniting the Civil War 80-some years later; about establishing the University of Virginia to turn out educated defenders of slavery and to counter abolitionist bastions like Harvard and Yale; and about the moral hypocrisy of writing copiously on the evils of race-mixing while fathering children from at least one slave. So, Mr. Rivera, do you really think all this is just about a man who owned some slaves? 

Ultimately, Rivera’s stated reason for his vote was that the name change doesn’t make “rational sense” to him. This may be so. But Mr. Rivera’s rationality is based on an ignorance of both the rules of logic and the facts of history. I’m just not convinced that what makes sense to him, makes sense to thinking adults. (There’s a bit of mean-spiritedness back at ya‚ Rivera. Oh, and one more thing: You’re a bully!) 

In the end, School Board members may have the authority to deny the name change. So be it. But the community is entitled to justifications for this negative decision that are reasoned and defensible. Such have yet to be furnished by the board. Without legitimate justification, the process can only be viewed as corrupt. And corruption within our schools’ leadership is of concern to us all. 

The burden now falls squarely on the board to revisit this matter; to remedy their flawed deliberations; and to render a decision that can be supported by rational argument. Should any members be unwilling or unable to do this, then the community should respond: Let’s vote them out so that we can work with a thoughtful and enlightened board. 

Michael Cassidy is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley.

Underlying the dispute over the name change of Jefferson school are issues that divide and tear at the heart of the Berkeley community. While I think the School Board should have honored the vote in a demonstration of democracy, at the same time, the idea of a name change is merely symbolic and risks continued avoidance of the real issues. My suggestion is: Let’s get real. Literally. Let’s look at the real history, the real issues. How about Berkeley being the first school district in the country to design a slavery curriculum, not just as part of African American studies but as part of world history and current events? 

Enslavement in one form or another has permeated human history and been a major economic force right up to the present. While the outright chattel slavery of the Africans was among the most prolonged and vicious, many other forms of enslavement have come very close. The movie Schindler’s List documented the enslavement of Jews in German factories and labor camps. Previously, Jews had been enslaved by Egyptians. Much of this country was built on the slave labor of Africans and the near-slavery of other groups such as the Chinese and Irish. History overflows with examples of the wealth of one group being built upon the enslavement of another. Rather than compete over whose enslavement was the most important, we need to look honestly at the actual history and how it has affected us up to the present. 

It is impossible to understand all of this in a simplistic way. If we reject as racist anyone who benefits from this system, many of us today would have to change our lives drastically. An interesting school exercise would be to do a calculation. Let’s add up how much the items in our daily lives cost: food, clothes, electronic equipment and so on. Then let’s calculate how much these items would cost if they were all produced by people earning a living wage, with health care, vacations and pensions instead of by 15-year-old girls in Malaysia working eighty hours a week in sweatshops for pennies an hour with a boss who gets to rape them any time he wants. Or by enslaved children in Africa, or Latin Americans working in near-slavery conditions. Let’s see. None of us would be able to afford our way of life any more than Jefferson could have afforded his if his slaves were all paid and lived decently. Let’s really look at how much of our country was built by slave labor and how much the owners and all of us have relied on this. 

Let’s look at this honestly. Are the people who reject Jefferson willing to make the sacrifice they ask of him? Are any of us willing to confront these issues head-on? The Berkeley school board has a unique opportunity now to provide leadership on an issue deeply affecting our community and our whole nation. Let’s do it. 

Carl Shames is a Berkeley resident.

The tragedy playing out at the Drayage building today was set up when the city quietly dumped the Arts and Crafts Ordinance protections covering the building until the rezoning of West Berkeley in 1998.  

For the decade between 1989 and 1998, all West Be rkeley arts and crafts studios were “protected uses.” Those spaces were reserved for artisans and artists. The landlord could change the use of the space only by creating a comparable space somewhere else in West Berkeley. 

The Arts and Crafts Ordinance o f 1989 was passed unanimously by then-mayor Loni Hancock and the City Council as an “urgency ordinance,” to stem a growing exodus of artisans and artists from West Berkeley, who were being forced out by gentrification. The situation back then was similar to what is happening today: A wave of gentrification was enticing owners of artisan and artist buildings to convert them to more profitable uses. The ordinance recognized that maintaining a stable pool of arts and crafts space was vital to Berkeley as a whole, because of the role artisans and artists play in the quality of life in the city. It saw artisan and artist studios as a threatened community resource that needed to be protected if it was to survive. If studio space were permitted to disappear, so would artisans and artists, like a species deprived of its environment. 

For a decade the ordinance stabilized the situation, working successfully to keep studio space available and affordable, while not interfering with the building owners’ right to cha nge tenants for the usual reasons. The owner could, however, only rent to similar tenants, who could afford only a similar rent. This removed the landlord’s incentive to push out the current tenants by raising the rent unreasonably, since the use itself c ould only sustain a modest rent level.  

However, in 1998, when West Berkeley was rezoned and the entire zoning ordinance reorganized, the protections of the Arts and Crafts Ordinance were quietly applied to only certain districts of West Berkeley, and om itted from other districts. This was done with absolutely no public discussion or knowledge. I myself only became aware of the fact in 2002, when I was serving on the planning commission. Whether by intent or negligence, the new zoning boundary placed the Drayage building in the commercial-west (C-W) district, where artisan and artist studios were suddenly left unprotected, instead of in the adjoining mixed-use/light industrial (MU-LI) district down the same block, where it belonged, and where the arts an d crafts protections remained in force. If the boundary had been drawn properly, with the Drayage remaining in the protected district, or if the protections had been included in the C-W district, this mass eviction and conversion could not have legally ha ppened.  

To make matters even worse, the same 1989 ordinance revision made it suddenly impossible for manufacturing space to be reused for arts and crafts. This too was done with no public discussion or knowledge, and was diametrically against the spirit and letter of the West Berkeley Plan. While both manufacturing and arts and crafts were protected uses, they were now put into two different categories. Before this a change from light manufacturing to crafts was simple and not considered a conversion, b ut in 1998 it became almost impossible, because a conversion kicked into effect the replacement provision for manufacturing space. That locked the door on the possibility of reuse of empty industrial buildings for arts and crafts; any new artisan or artist studios in Berkeley could now come only through pricey new construction. 

In 2005 we are in a volatile emergency similar to the one in 1989. The Drayage is the second mass eviction of artisans and artists in Berkeley this year. The first was inflicted on the long-term artist colony in the old Dakin Warehouse at 2750 Adeline St., a location outside the boundaries of the West Berkeley protections. Today the Nexus building artisans and artists on Eighth Street are also under threat of eviction. The Durkee building artists are threatened by the pending conversion of the adjoining warehouse at 740 Heinz St. Besides the Drayage, other arts and crafts buildings were also left suddenly unprotected by the 1998 rezoning and today remain at risk, notably the art isans and artists in the Berkeley Arts Complex (Magic Gardens) off Heinz Street, in the mixed manufacturing (MM) district. The mayor’s proposal to rezone all of Ashby and Gilman west of San Pablo from industrial to commercial, and the proposed West Berkel ey Bowl on 9th Street that will bring 50,000 cars per week into the sleepy arts-crafts-industrial neighborhood, clearly show that the entire artisan and artist community is at serious and immediate risk from the unleashed and unchecked forces of spiraling gentrification. 

Three years ago, when I first became aware that some of the Arts and Crafts Ordinance protections were no longer in place, I made a concerted effort to bring this to the attention of the Planning Commission and City Council. I was part o f a group of planning commissioners who recommended that the arts and crafts protections be reinstated over the entire area of their original extent. This proposal was summarily shot down, and denied even a public airing, by the conservative majority led by current chair Pollack and vice chair Stoloff. If this proposal had been accepted, the Drayage building would have regained its protected status and could never have been scheduled for demolition and rebuilding as pricey condos. 

Back in 1989 the city showed the political will to protect our artisan and artist community, and the backbone to implement an effective urgency ordinance. Today the city shows only a shameful abandonment of artisans and artists to the false god of profit. The artisans and arti sts of West Berkeley need to wake up and use their enormous latent power. The Drayage building can still be saved, if public outrage can force the City Council to somehow summon up the vision and the courage. We need a new urgency ordinance today that wil l reinstate arts and crafts protections everywhere in West Berkeley, and remove the insane restriction against the creation of new affordable arts and crafts studio space. If not, the Drayage eviction is just a taste of what’s ahead. 

John Curl is a West Berkeley woodworker and a former member of the Planning Commission. 

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The front page of Berkeley Daily Planet of June 28 shows the picture of a few Iranians who are protesting the recent presidential election in Iran. They are holding a flag that belonged to Shah’s regime. You might know that Shah of Iran was brought to power by a CIA coup d’etat in the 1950s. He was a U.S. lackey for more than 25 years who oppressed his own people. Also in the picture, a protester is holding a poster of a man who is the leader of a group officially declared as a terrorist group by the U.S.; although it is presently supported by the White House and the CIA. Thus, I have no doubt that the Iranian men in the photo are just a mouthpiece for the CIA and neocons. 

These men together with the White House, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the corporate media are claiming that the Iranian presidential election was undemocratic. They say so, because the Council of Guardians of Iran disqualified some presidential applicants. There were, however, seven candidates to run, including a pro-west reformer. Among these candidates, the reformer finished the fifth. The least known and the most modest candidate, Mr. Ahmadinejad, eventually was elected as the president. Now, let’s take a look at the last election in the U.S. There were only two candidates (neither of them a black or a woman). The third candidate, Ralph Nader, had to fight in courts in order to get on the ballot; in many states, he failed to do so. The corporate media, Fox, was siding with George Bush. There was no paper trail of the votes people cast into the computer (cyber-abyss). Do you really call this a fair, honest, and democratic election? Americans cherish their democracy by letting a porn star run for the governor of California and let a body builder become the governor. But, learn this: There is no room for such perversions in other countries. 

Since Mr. Ahmadinejad has been elected as the Iranian president, the corporate media has started its hostile rhetoric against him. In their reports, they write “the hardliner president of Iran,” “the ultra-conservative president of Iran in his cheap suit,” etc. Is this journalism to label people this and that? If yes, then they should write “the warmonger George Bush,” “the blood-thirsty Ariel Sharon.” 

Then comes Mr. Rumsfeld, who says that women and youth did not vote in Iran. This is nonsense. More than half of votes were cast by women. If the U.S. is 

worried about the rights of women, then it should not support regimes in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, where women cannot even vote. 

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said “With the conclusion of the elections in Iran, we have seen nothing that sways us from our view that Iran is out of step with the rest of the region in the currents of freedom and liberty that have been so apparent in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.” Democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon? What a joke! When I read this statement and recall the torture photos of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison, I conclude that for the U.S. “democracy” is synonymous with “torture.” 

The U.S. is supporting undemocratic regimes all around the world; for instance, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, most of the Persian Gulf states, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, the monarchy in Jordan, the apartheid regime of Israel, the military regime in Pakistan. Condi Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, said that Pakistan is the exemplary Islamic democracy. Wow, what nonsense; it can be uttered only by some one like Ms. Rice. On the other hand, the U.S. funnels the tax payers’ money to opposition groups in Venezuela to recall President Hugo Chavez, or supports terrorist groups planting bombs in Iranian cities, demonizing the North Koreans, etc. The whole world is nauseated when hearing the US double standards. When I hear any statement coming from the U.S. regime and neocons about spreading the American fashioned democracy around the world, I say “No thanks, keep your decadent democracy to yourself.” 

Kurosh Arianpour is an Iranian student studying in Bangalore, India. 

It is no secret that the University of California at Berkeley plans to play a major role in nanotechnology research. But what the university has kept under covers is that its research in nanotechnology is much more advanced than most people think. For the past few months, the university has conducted an “off the books” nanotechnology experiment on the Berkeley City Council, and the results are in: Attempts to shrink the brains and cajones of the City Council were overwhelmingly effective! 

“The proof is in the pudding,” glowed one UC spokesperson. “Six councilmembers voted for our settlement agreement for the Long-Range Development Plan (LRDP) lawsuit. Since the settlement was designed by our researchers to be a complete giveaway to the university, evidently our experiment produced the hoped-for ‘nanobrains’ and ‘nanoballs’ in those councilmembers. Our results are subject to peer review, but nobody has yet proposed a credible alternate explanation. We think [signing this settlement agreement] and presenting it as ‘cooperation’ is stupid enough to be definitive.” 

The entire experiment was conducted in “closed session,” so the methodology is confidential. However, the “nanocatalyst” was reportedly concealed in some Kool Aid graciously delivered to the closed session by the university. Two councilmembers, Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington, did not undergo the experimental procedure. Suspicious of anything offered by the university, they refused to drink the Kool Aid. 

Given the confidentiality, the experimental status of the third no-vote, Councilmember Betty Olds, may never be known. Everyone agrees that she uttered the phrase, “I can’t believe what a bunch of namby-pambies you all are!” but people disagree about when she said it. 

Some believe Ms. Olds uttered the phrase while refusing to drink the Kool Aid being guzzled by others on the council. Others believe she also drank the Kool Aid, but that her brain was too stubborn to shrink very much. An unidentified source stated that when everyone bent over to read the settlement, the nanobrains fell out the noses of six council members. But apparently Ms. Olds’ brain was too big to fall out, so that when she felt an unexpected prod from the rear, she popped back up with enough brain left to utter her now-famous phrase and vote no. 

Scientists did not anticipate that the nanobrains would actually fall out when the council bent over. “That was an unexpected boon, to physically see the nanobrains. We thought they would remain attached to the spinal column like little tumors--not realizing [the council] might not have spinal columns. And the council bent over so much farther than anyone expected,” mused one. 

The six nanobrains rolled to the floor and have since disappeared from the closed chambers. Reportedly they are in the hands of the university, which denies having them, but says that if they did have them, they would be “proprietary” as research results. 

“The public has a right to see the brains that signed this agreement,” said one outraged resident, “even if we need a microscope.” Another opined, “It’s scary to think of nanobrain technology in the hands of a ruthless institution like the university. I’ll never drink Kool Aid again, even if a very nice university flak-catcher like Irene Hegarty offers it to me during another pointless meeting.” 

The status of the council’s nanoballs is unknown. They may still be attached, or they might have been voluntarily turned over to the university in the new spirit of cooperation. Citizens are checking to see whether the Public Records and Freedom of Information acts permit the inspection of official anatomy as well as official documents. 

“They are shielded as work product,” countered Assistant City Attorney Zachary Cowan, adding bitterly, “Our office has been working on shrinking those balls for years, and now the university sweeps in and takes all the credit. I don’t call that ‘cooperation.’” 

When the six councilmembers were asked whether they wanted their original brains and balls back, two said they didn’t think they were missing. The other four said, “No, we like it this way. The staff is getting paid the big bucks to run this city, and the university has so much more expertise than we do. The less we think or act on our own, the happier we are. The citizens should try it.” 

Councilmembers deny knowing the Kool Aid contained nanocatalyst when they drank it, which raises the issue of informed consent. “I don’t think that’s a problem,” said City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque. “Nobody has the right to be informed about anything, least of all the decision makers. After all, we live in a democracy.” 

“I’d like to hear her explain that,” said Councilmember Worthington. 

Ms. Albuquerque clarified: “The words ‘secrecy’ and ‘democracy’ share the same root, ‘crecy’ or ‘cracy,’ which means ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ ‘Demo’ means ‘people,’ so ‘democracy’ means ‘don’t ask the people and don’t tell the people.’ Never, ever. Until afterward, anyway.” 

“Most of the council has learned this,” she added with an impatient gesture. 

Finally free to speak, Councilmember Spring lambasted the settlement. “It gives away the downtown—which is in my council district—to the university. Under this agreement, people in my district have to petition the Regents for permission to go to the bathroom!” 

Mayor Bates said that, as usual, Spring’s priorities are misplaced. “Our sewer system is there to help the university,” he said. “If downtown residents have to wait their turn, so be it. That’s what cooperation is all about.” 

Gordon Wozniak, a nuclear chemist, explained the settlement at a recent neighborhood meeting. “Just as particles become tinier but extremely heavy when they approach the speed of light, university impacts can be massive when experienced by neighbors and itemized by staff, lawyers, and independent accountants, but tiny in the context of a rapid settlement. And like the polarity of magnets, impacts can suddenly change from negative to positive. And if you know anything about imaginary numbers, you know that the less we get, the better it is for us. By getting no environmental mitigations and very little money, and by giving away municipal sovereignty and our right to recover future expenses or mitigations from the university, the city benefits enormously. We’re lucky they didn’t offer us anything substantial, because we might have accepted and then we’d be in a real pickle.” 

“Generally, the common people shouldn’t try to understand these things; it just gives them the idea they can micromanage policy,” Wozniak added. 

Under the settlement agreement, the city will receive $1.2 million per year from the university, which costs the city $12 million per year. When City Manager Phil Kamlarz was asked about this discrepancy, he looked a little surprised, then shrugged. “Well, when you get to be my age, it gets hard to see those tiny little decimal points,” he said. “My mistake. But what’s done is done. Let’s get on with balancing our budget. We have a lot of people who are pretty mad at having their services cut. We need to browbeat them, not the university.” 

›

As you may know, Iran has a new president. Mr. Ahmadi-nejhad (also known as “Darwin’s missing link”) an ultra right and fairly unknown candidate was supposedly elected to the office in a run-off election just a few days ago.  

Since then I locked myself in my apartment going over every possible reason as to how something so stupid that defies all logic could have happened? Hours ago it finally dawned on me that I have gone through this miserable yet comical experience once before. That’s right, back in the year 2000 when Mr. A’s Western twin brother George W. Bush (also known as the eighth wonder of the world) was somehow miraculously voted to the office.  

Wow, I thought to myself, as an Iranian-American I am surely blessed. I have seen first hand both the Western and the Eastern versions of what will surely be remembered as one of the greatest blunders of the mankind in modern times.  

What more could I ask of the Almighty?  

Lord only knows how these two fine specimens of the human race had not found each other earlier. After all, Mr. A ,as the mayor of Tehran over the period of last year, had whispered of building a freeway to accommodate the arrival of the Messiah (Mehdi to the Shi’a Muslims) once he re-appears and heads over to Iran, while the other poor puritanical moron, Mr. B, thinks he IS the messiah.  

Or perhaps because one attends church every Sunday while the other one goes to the mosque on Fridays?  

Or could it be that their tiny brain, matching the size of their beady evil eyes, is just not capable to comprehend that antagonizing the whole world against the greatest democracy on the face of the earth today on the one hand, and degrading a great ancient culture known to have established the first human rights proclamation 2500 years ago on the other hand, must have its limits too? 

Or could it just be that they spoke the same language and yet did not realize it? I say tomato, you say tomaato. I say radical, you say raadikaal. I say war, you say var! 

Whatever the reason it got me to notice how much these two long-lost-twins have in common: 

• They both belong to the NEO club: neo-conservatism, neo-radicalism, neo-Satanism, etc. 

• Both believe vote rigging is the true meaning of a democratic election. 

• Both take their orders from a higher authority. 

• Both sound as stupid as they look. 

• Both view the military, violence and martyrdom as the proper way of life. 

• Both love the “F” word: fascism. 

• Both came to power by the strong backing of the political and economical elite, while promising an end to poverty! 

• Both have written highly acclaimed articles entitled “how to steal the presidency” (Microsoft is in the process of negotiating with both to develop a software for that presented in all languages except English and Persian as the Americans and Iranians seem to do just fine without the software). 

• Both think the path to human advancement is achieved by the “W-Ahmadi-Rule” abbreviated as “WAR.” 

And as far as differences, well, I can only think of one: One shaves everyday before putting his tie on, the other one however, does not own a tie so he skips shaving! 

g

The Busker’s Opera, which stopped oh so briefly here at Zellerbach before going on tour, was not only vivid and exhilarating. It was one of those specific moments that open like a cone far beyond this time and place, that reveal its center and invoke the world. From the indelible first images of the Busker, spilling out his empty tin cans on to the stage, drumming on them, the empty box, and even his own drumsticks, his long silky hair, swinging and rippling, designer and director Robert Lepage’s version of John Gay’s The Busker’s Opera celebrates and castigates the culture—ours; and uses the culture’s own idiom to do so. The first few pieces drive the rock/rap/hip-hop style to passionate intensity. Ultimately savvy about theater, show business, manners, politics, and the human psyche, the work is marvelous and it is mad. 

Peacham struts and bosses. His wife is irrepressibly conniving and optimistic, with an impressively agile and gymnastic voice—her visual charms a little over-ripe. Macheath (Marco Poulin) departs radically from most of his illustrious predecessors in this role in other great versions of the same story, John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera from the 18th century and Bertoldt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera from the 20th. Coming on with the strength and thrust of a welter-weight boxing champ with a singing voice, he manages “first-time” sweetness with each new conquest (Yeats: “Virginity renews itself like the moon”). He is basically a nice guy. And he can rock. 

The chunky, muscular, peroxide Jenny Diver’s solo on the lot of women is a high point among the highs. Resting on her side in the center of the darkened stage, she is a sculpturally arresting lit oblong, head propped up on her arm, leg folded back. Black push-up brassiere, elastic girdle, garter belt and black lace stockings. Shadow, and too, too solid flesh, patches and swatches of flesh, too much flesh. She is Cleopatra, Venus, and a Caryatid. Poignant, seductive, longing, sad; her voice a smooth velvety flood, alto and baritone together—she embodies the clumsy, searing elegiac nature of human love. (Claire Gignac.) 

In this production, Polly is a DJ.—she really is a DJ. Lucy and her father are excellent violinists. The Guitarist is a distinct and distinguished presence. The voo-doo figure (also Gignac) is a convergence of mysterious powers. 

Frederic Lebrasseur, Kevin McCoy, Frederike Bedard, Julie Fainer, Veronika Makdissi-Warren, Jean Rene, and Martin Belanger (the musical director) are the other gifted performers. The 18th century rhetoric of many of the supertitles and lyrics add clarity and elegance. 

The Busker’s Opera has the core humanity of previous versions with radical update of socio-economic themes. The comments on elections, corporate business tie-ups, globalism are mordant and amusing. Lockit, the governor of New York, has a Muslim name, and his pregnant daughter belly-dances with jubilant abandon. A smarmy suthren politician in a cowboy hat rants and slavers over the dangerous times that require a dangerous president. The video-frame mug-shot that hovers over his moving body to magnify the face—is merciless. Macheath’s last supper before execution is a team-constructed MacDonald’s hamburger, small, hard, and inedible. 

There was a slump in power and quality toward the end of the Zellerbach production, a challenge to Lepage and Company to make the tinny, repetitive fiddle music used for Texas and Lousiana into something as alive as what they pulled off with hip-hop, rock, jazz, D.J., voodoo—and remember what W.C. Fields said about dogs and children on the stage. The dog was a distraction. The epilogue should much more powerfully evoke the essential quality of what has been presented. 

I fervently hope that The Busker’s Opera has a long, long tour and will be repeated in this area. 

Ariel is a painter and designer living in Berkeley. 

A film festival today, Tuesday, July 5 in San Francisco marks the beginning of LaborFest, a month-long celebration of working people and a commemoration of the 1934 general strike, when the businesses of San Francisco shut down in support of the striking dockworkers. 

The International Working Class Film and Video Festival at the Four Star Theater begins at 6 p.m. with a reception and features the premier screening of The Concrete Revolution, directed by Xiaolu Guo, who will be in attendance. It focuses on the construction boom in China and the workers who make it possible. Mardi Gras: Made in China, directed by David Redmon, depicts the contrast between the Mardi Gras partyers who display the familiar, brightly colored beads, and the sweatshop laborers who make them. Mardi Gras starts at 7 p.m. and The Concrete Revolution at 8 p.m. The event costs $8.50. 

Though most of the events taking place from July 5 to July 31 are in San Francisco, several are in Oakland and Berkeley. 

On Wednesday, July 6, Humanist Hall in Oakland hosts a viewing of two movies: Il Effecto Iguazu, by Pere Joan Ventura, and Bloodletting: Life, Death, Healthcare, by Lorna Green. The first is a documentary of the 2001 struggle by 1800 Spanish workers who were laid off by the national telephone company. The latter follows a filmmaker who travels to Cuba to explore its healthcare system, only to return home where two family members, uninsured by their employers, have developed illnesses. The show begins at 7 p.m. and costs $5. 

Another movie night takes place the following Wednesday, also at Humanist Hall. The Latin American Working Class Film and Video Festival screens RAYMUNDO: The Revolutionary Film-Makers’ Struggle, about the life and work of Raymundo Gleyzer, one of the most important Latin American filmmakers, kidnapped and murdered by the Argentina’s military dictatorship in 1976. It is directed by Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina and is in Spanish with English subtitles. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. and costs $5. 

Movie nights continue on subsequent Wednesdays until the end of July. All are at Humanist Hall, begin at 7:30 p.m., and cost $5. Most are in Spanish without English subtitles. For more information see www.laborfest.net/2005schedule. 

On Thursday, July 14, La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley celebrates Bastille Day with a concert. Bastille Day is the French Independence Day, a commemoration of the beginning of the French revolution. On July 14, 1789, French citizens stormed the Bastille, a prison used to hold political prisoners. This year, “From Bastille to Bush” features international labor musician Anne Feeny and others, as well as videos about labor movements. It begins at 7:30 p.m. and has a $10 - $12 entrance fee. 

Cody’s Bookstore in Berkeley hosts a reading from Wobblies: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World, edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman on Friday, July 22 at 7:30 p.m. Labor historian Buhle will talk about the history of the Wobblies through the use of art and stories from the book, published this year for the anniversary of the founding of the International Workers of the World. Cody’s Bookstore is located at 2454 Telegraph Ave. 

That’s it for events outside San Francisco, but for those willing to travel, there’s at least one event every day in the city. Other highlights include a Monday, July 11 rally for a contract by the San Francisco Chronicle workers at noon at the Chronicle building, and a workshop by local labor writer and historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. “Writing Workshops for Working People” on July 23 at 1 p.m. at the EXIT Theater encourages workers to write about their lives to defy the corporation-controlled media’s attempt to prevent a growing consciousness among laborers, according to LaborFest’s website. 

For more information on any of these events and those in San Francisco, see www.laborfest.net/2005schedule or call (415) 642-8066.›

TUESDAY, JULY 5 

CHILDREN 

“Hazel and the Dragon” puppet show at 7 p.m. at The Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17.  

THEATER 

Shotgun Theater Lab “The Pawn” Tues. and Wed. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through July 6. Tickets are $10. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

Eyeing Nature “Darwin’s Nightmare” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Gini Wilson, solo piano, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Cuarto Dos Alas with John Santos, Elio Villafranca, Orestes Vilato and John Benitez at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200.  

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6 

FILM 

For Your Eyes Only “Ministry of Fear” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Arab Women Film Festival “Four Women of Egypt” at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Donation $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Joy Perrin, one-woman band, at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

Ned Boynton/Jules Broussard Trio at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Wadi Gad and Jahbandis at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Mike Glendinning Band at 10 p.m. at The Ivy Room, 858 San Pablo Ave., Albany.  

Julio Bravo, salsa, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Ezra Gale Trio, jazz and funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Websters with Scott Nygaard at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Thomas Cunningham, 5 Days Dirty, Whole Wheat Bread at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Sunny Hawkins at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, JULY 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Wholly Grace” works by Susan Dunhan Felix opens at the Badé Museum, 1798 Scenic Ave. 848-0528. 

“Blind at the Museum” guided tour at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808.  

“Botanical Archival Pigment Prints” Reception for the photographer, Kate Kline May at 7 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

FILM 

Pre-Code Hollywood “The Animal Kingdom” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free First Thursday. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Toby Bielawski reads from her recent poetry and prose at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“El sueño nerudiano” A poetic commemoration of Neruda’s 101th birthday at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña. 849-2568.  

Beth Lisick introduces “Everybody Into the Pool: True Tales” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Word Beat Reading Series with Jon Longhi and Chandra Garsson at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert with the Capoeira Arts Café at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza. Sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Association. 

Irina Rivkin and SONiA at 7:30 p.m. at Rose Street House of Music, 1839 Rose St. For reservations call 594-4000, ext. 687. 

Musicians of Bharatakalanji Lecture and demonstration of Bharatanatyn classical dance at 8 p.m., concert at 9:15 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8-$10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jeb Brady Band, rhythm and blues, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Zapatista Benefit Concert with hip hop, jazz and spoken word at 8 p.m. at 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakland. Donation $5-$10. http://21grand.org 

Fourtet with David Jeffrey at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Lo Cura, music of Spain, Cuba, and California at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Free. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Orange Peels, The Biddy & Buddy Show, Mark Weinstock at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

Michael Wilcox/Sheldon Brown Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Robben Ford Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Selector, lap-top funk and beat machines, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, JULY 8 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Thousandth Night” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. 2 and 7 p.m., through July 24, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $36. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Central Works, “The Grand Inquisitor” by Dostoevsky. Thurs - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at The Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through July 31. Tickets are $9-$25 sliding scale. 558-1381. www.centralworks.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Anything Goes” Cole Porter’s musical, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Aug. 13 at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

“Livin’ Fat” a comedy about an African American family struggling over a financial blessing, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m., through July 30, at Sweets Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $12.50-$35. 233-9222. 

Shotgun Players, “Arabian Night” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. until July 10. Tickets are $10-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Oaklahoma” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland. Through July 17. Tickets are $20-$33. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Insomnia” Ten artists collaborate on one painting, from midnight to sunrise. Reception at 7:30 p.m. at Boontling Gallery, 4224 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. boontlinggallery@hotmail.com 

FILM 

For Your Eyes Only “Black Sunday” at 7:30 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Laurie R. King introduces her new novel, “Locked Rooms” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jason Martineau, Tina Marzell & Ellen Hoffman Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Jazz, 4000 Meters High, with pianist Johnny Gonzales from Bolivia, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$13. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick & Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Thomas Banks & Cultural Gumbo, N Focus at 5:30 p.m. at Baltic Square, behind 121 Park Place, Point Richmond. 223-3882. 

Beth Waters with Adrianne at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

In Harmony’s Way, a capella CD release, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Viva K, The Cushion Theory, Tiny Power, Gosling at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Kathleen Grace Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

DJ & Brook, jazz trio, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Bobby Jamieson Quintet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Cecil P-Nut Daniels at 7 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 548-1159.  

Mingus Amungus at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Parallax, No Turning Back, Internal Affairs at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Robben Ford Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 9 

THEATER 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose St. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

Woman’s Will, “Richard III” Sat. and Sun. at 1 p.m. in John Hinkle Park. Free. 420-0813. www.woman’s will.org 

FILM 

Pre-Code Hollywood “Freaks” at 7 p.m. and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” at 8:25 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chant for Peace with Snatam Kaur, Thomas Barquee & GuruGanesha at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Cost is $20-$25. 1-888-735-4800. 

Hideo Date, Bobi Cespedes & Social Club Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Carribean Allstars at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Eileen Hazel, songwriter showcase, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Jon Roniger, singer-songwriter, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Geoff Muldaur, Larry Hanks, American home-grown music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Kugleplex, Klezmer music at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Facing New York, Before Braille at 8:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Extensions Jazz Quartet with guest Khalil Shaeed at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Rhiannon with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña. Conversation with the artists and Susan Muscarella at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Smith Dobson Family Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Rev. Rabia, urban blueswoman, at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Real Sippin’ Whiskeys, The Bittersweets, Firecracker at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Jinx Jones Trio, alt jazz rock,at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Voetsek, Widespread Bloodshead, Brody’s Militia at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JULY 10 

CHILDREN 

San Francisco Circus Theater, “Elevations 63” at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $5 children, $10 adult. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

THEATER 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose St. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

California Watercolor Association “Summer Small Paintings Show” opens at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. 848-1228. www.giorgigallery.com 

Matrix 217: Haim Steinbach “Work in Progress: Objects for People/Snapshots” opens at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. Artists talk at 4 p.m. 642-0808.  

FILM 

Eyeing Nature “Darwin’s Nightmare” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Blind at the Museum” Gallery Talk with John Dugdale and Beth Dungan at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Chilufiya Safaa introduces her new book “A Foreign Affair” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. Co-sponsored by the International Women’s Writing Guild. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, traditional music and dance from the southern Philippines at 2 p.m. at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Bancroft at College Ave. Cost is $1-$4. 643-7648. 

Americana Unplugged: Pete Madsen, blues, at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Misturada with Michael Golds at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Adrian West, one-man string quartet, at 10 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Teka, Hungarian music at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Hitomi Oba Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

“Take Me Home” a benefit to support the filming of this documentary about children caught in the foster care system at 5 and 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $20 adults, $12 youth. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

P-Nut & The Apocolypse at 7 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Go it Alone, Blue Monday, Right On at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, JULY 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Transformations” A new Life for Recycled and Found Objects by Toby Tover-Krein opens at LunchStop Café, Bort Metro Center, 101 8th St. Oakland. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Actors Reading Writers: “Unwise Decisions” Stories by O. Henry, Lynne McFall and Saki at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Free. 845-8542, ext. 376. 

Aurora Stories, tales from the Arabian Nights at 7:30 p.m. at Aurora Theater, 2081 Addison St., Donation $20. 843-4822. 

Amy Butler Greenfield traces the history of cochineal dye in “A Perfect Red” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Track Maintenance, a benefit party for Watchword Press, with readings and music at 7:30 p.m. at Café Van Kleef, 1624 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5.  

Poetry Express with Marvin Hiemstra at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

East Bay Blues Benefit for East Bay Cancer Support at 7:30 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, JULY 12 

CHILDREN 

Colibri An interactive journey through Latin America with traditional instruments and song, at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

FILM 

Eyeing Nature “The Great Art of Knowing” and “Skagafjordur”at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sam Davis on “Designing for the Homeless: Architecture that Works” at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Free, but please RSVP 643-8465. 

Bakari Kitwana explains “Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiffers, Wannabes and the New Reality of Race in America” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Nicole Henares and Anise at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Swamp Coolers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

The Karan Casey Band, Irish progressive traditionalists, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50- $18.50. 548-1761.  

Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Mark Goldenberg at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

YMP and the Jazz Masters Benefit at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$22. 238-9200.  

Barbara Linn at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.

We have a few legendary Europeans around town, some of them lined up on Blake Street just east of San Pablo Avenue, and currently all dressed up. They’re European beech trees, Fagus sylvatica, and quite a few of them are the copper variety, Fagus purpurea or Fagus sylvatica atropunicea depending on how old your information source is. Their leaves are deep burgundy, like a purple-leaf plum’s; you can tell them from plums by their smooth silvery bark, their larger size, and their fruit—beechnuts! (In no way does that fruit resemble chewing gum or baby food, and if that doesn’t make sense to you, ask someone older.) 

Living as street trees, these fellows probably won’t ever reach their potential maximum size. The species can get 50 to 60 feet tall and almost as wide in its spread. It’s naturally graceful, even pruned miniskirt-high as our street trees are. In the middle of a big lawn or meadow, its branches can sweep wide and almost touch the ground, for quite a different grande dame effect. 

They look good with the petticoats off, too, all leafless in winter, because of the graceful and coherent way they ramify. (Yes, “ramify” has a literal meaning too. Listen to a few bonsai artists chatting sometime; good ramification is a prized quality in a tree. Don’t you love it when these invisible metaphors jump out of the abstract and wiggle around?) 

You also won’t get to see, in street trees, the effect that Tennyson referred to when he mentioned sitting on a “serpent-rooted beech.” Senior beeches in forests and fields show an impressive tangle of muscular surface roots around their trunks. 

Beech is a member of one of the oldest and formerly most widespread ecosystems in Europe, the great mixed-hardwood forest. People have used its pale, fairly tough wood for structures, furniture (where it’s popular right now, as veneer), useful objects like tool handles, and even charcoal for thousands of years; archaeologists find bits of it all the time when digging up pre-Roman settlements. 

It also has had an economic effect for a long time, via that funny little nut it bears. The beechnut is rather like a small chestnut, and like a chestnut is covered by a prickly burr. 

The ornamental trees on our streets generally drop a small and almost meatless version of them, but beechnuts inspired trademark names because they’re sweet and nutritious in the original wild form. Like chestnuts, but a bit less of a prime cut, they have been gathered for food even by the poorest of the poor in, say, medieval Europe, and thus been the bottom line in that economy. In places where the forest remains, so does the practice of gathering those free nuts. Where countryfolk are less desperate, they drive their pigs into the forest to fatten on the mast, the aggregated nourishment of chestnuts, acorns, beechnuts and such, on the forest floor. 

Speaking of invisible metaphors, I’d bet there’s someone reading this who hadn’t until now noticed that the verse about “Here we go gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May…” is a blatant absurdity, rather like “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” 

The latter doesn’t translate well to this continent, where cuckoos (such of them as remain) do indeed have proper nests; cuckoos in Europe are nest parasites, laying their eggs among other species’ broods the way our cowbirds do, and not bothering to build their own homes. 

But, while many nuts are available in groceries year-round, and while they do keep well, they’re basically a fall harvest here as everywhere. Even in our time, with tomatoes bouncing in from Chile and New Zealand in midwinter, the more perishable nuts like chestnuts appear only in late summer and early autumn. Nut trees seem rather less amenable to greenhouse culture and forcing than the average annual vegetable… no big surprise. 

Nuts from American and European beeches are tasty, but hard to find in stores. Their abundant oil sometimes gets pressed and used in cooking, even substituting for butter in French recipes. They’re also ground and roasted to make a coffee substitute, and if Peet’s doesn’t get a little more consistent in carrying chicory to make New Orleans-style coffee, I might have to resort to beechnuts myself.3

TUESDAY, JULY 5 

Mid-Day Meander in Pt. Pinole at 2:30 p.m. to see returning shorebirds in their summer breeding plummage. Call for meeting place. 525-2233. 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Join us for an active afternoon of nature study, conservation, and rambling through woods and waters. Dress to get dirty; bring a healthy snack to share. Girls and boys ages 8-12, unaccompanied by their parents. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area. Cost is $6-$8. Reservations required. 636-1684. 

Stargazing: Twilight of the Gods at 8 p.m. at Inspiration Point in Tilden Park. Dress warmly and bring a flashlight. 525-2233. 

“Darwin’s Nightmare” A film about the introduction of Nile Perch into Lake Victoria in Tanzania, which led to the endangerment or extinction of native fish, and famine in the area. At 7:30 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way, at Bowditch. Cost is $8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“The Politics of Transportation” A slideshow and talk with Andy Signer on the environmental and social problems caused by automobiles, at 7 p.m. at AK Press, 674A 23rd St., Oakland. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

Foot Care for Any Sport with runner, hiker, and backpacker, John Vonhof at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. In case of questionable weather, call around 8 a.m. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Learn to Salsa Dance Tues. at 7 p.m. at the Lake Merrit Dance Center, 200 Grand Ave. Cost is $15 per class. 415-668-9936. www.DanceSF.com 

Brainstormer Weekly Pub Quiz from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Pyramid Alehouse Brewery, 901 Gilman St. 528-9880. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Buddhist Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at The Dzalandhara Buddhist Center. Cost is $7-$10. For directions and details please call 559-8183. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll capture and release butterflies from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Tilden Explorers An after school nature adventure for 5-7 year olds who may be accompanied by an adult. No younger siblings please. We’ll capture and release butterflies and moths. From 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Berkeley Path Wanderers’ tour of East Bay Regional Parks Botanic Garden. Meet at 10 am. at the garden entrance, Wildcat Canyon Rd. and South Park Drive. To register call 524-4715. 

Kayaking 101 Covering kayaks, paddles, flotation devices, clothing and acccessories at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

Insects for Kids A free class for children ages 5-10, at 9 a.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. www.barringtoncollective.org 

Arab Women Film Festival at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Donation $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

Walking Tour of Jack London Waterfront Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“The Iguazu Effect” a film about globalization and “Bloodletting: Life Death Healthcare” at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. 

JumpStart Entrepreneurs share information at 8 a.m. at A’Cuppa Tea, 3202 College Ave. at Alcatraz. Cost is $5. 541-9901. 

Speculative and Practical Folklore Class at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. We will discuss American folk practices from around the country but specifically Southern/South-Eastern, Pennsylvanian, Appalachian and Ozark folk practices. www.barringtoncollective.org 

League of Women Voters meets at 7 p.m. at 1414 University Ave., Suite D. 843-8824. http://lwvbae/org  

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Action St. 841-2174.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes. 548-9840. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch Bring your knitting, crocheting and other handcrafts from 6 to 9 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198. 

Artify Ashby Muralist Group meets every Wed. from 5 to 8 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, to plan a new mural. New artists are welcome. Call Bonnie at 704-0803. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, JULY 7 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets at 7:15 a.m. at Au Cocolait, 200 University Ave. at Milvia. 524-3765. 

Early Morning Bird Walk Meet at 7 a.m. at Inspiration Point in Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Zapatista Benefit Concert with hip hop, jazz and spoken word at 8 p.m. at 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakland. Donation $5-$10. http://21grand.org 

World of Plants Tours Thurs.-Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centenial Drive. Cost is $1-$5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Parenting Class: Baby Basics for new and expecting parents at 10 a.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave. Registration required. 658-7353.  

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll capture and release butterflies from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Stroke Screening beginning at 9 a.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Cost is $109-$139. For an appointment call 1-800-697-9721. 

FRIDAY, JULY 8 

“Peace One Day” A documentary film by British actor/director Jeremy Gilley describing how he persuaded world leaders to have the U.N. declare Sept. 21 an International Day of Peace, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2296 Cedar St. Wheelchair accessible. Cost is $5. 527-0450. www.peaceoneday.org  

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers monthly meeting at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Ave., Kensington. The July meeting will be a Fly Tying Extravaganza. GPFF’s most accomplished tiers will demonstrate their techniques, and help less advanced tiers improve their skills. There will be extra tools and materials available for beginners who wish to try this fascinating craft. Everyone who has tools and materials is encouraged to bring them. 547-8629. 

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Digital Cameras with Alan Stross, photographer, at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Salsa Dancing at “The Beat” Dance Studio at 8:30 p.m. Lessons with Joseph Gallardo. 2560 9th St. at Parker. 472-2393 www.wildsalsanights.com  

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

SATURDAY, JULY 9 

Berkeley Path Wanderers’ Cerrito Creek Walk to explore Indian, Spanish and early El Cerrito history, as well as recent restoration work. Meet at 10 a.m. at the north end of Cornell St., south edge of El Cerrito Plaza shopping center. 848-9358. f5creeks@aol.com 

Sick Plant Clinic UC plant pathologist Dr. Robert Raabe, UC entomologist Dr. Nick Mills, and their team of experts will diagnose what ails your plants from 9 a.m. to noon at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755.  

“Herbal Desserts with Lavender” Learn to make lavender ice cream and cookies. For ages 6-13 at 1 p.m. at Spiral Garden, 2850 Sacramento. Reservations required. 623-0882. 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $5-$7. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Kids Garden Club For children 7-12 years old to explore the world of gardening. We plant, harvest, build, make crafts, cook and get dirty! From 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233. 

Celebrate Early Literacy at 10 a.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Pollution Solutions with a focus on indoor air quality from 1 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $8-$10. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Oakland Airport and North Field. Cost is $5-$10. For details call 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Mediterranean Gardens for the Bay Area at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose St. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

The Political Cartoons of Ward Sutton at 7 p.m. at the AK Press Warehouse, 7674-A 23rd. St., Oakland. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

Children’s Books for K-5 Teachers with Walter Mayes at 2 p.m. at Cody’s Books, on Telegraph Ave. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

“Parasites of the Body of Energy?” a lecture with Samuel Sagan at 3 p.m. at Claremeont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 882-0042. 

Sistaz N Motion Business Mixer from noon to 3 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, Madeline Whittlesey Community Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. http://sistaznmotion.tripod.com 

Basic Manners for Your Dog, a six-week class on Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $125. Registration required. 525-6155. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552 

SUNDAY, JULY 10 

Year of the Estuary Hike in the hills of the Miller Knox Regional Shoreline. Meet at 1:30 p.m. in the first parking lot off Dornan Drive near Pt. Richmond. Bring a sack lunch and water. 525-2233. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Mountain View Cemetary. Cost is $5-$10. For details call 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Hands-on Bike Maintenance Learn how to perform basic repairs on your bike from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $85-$100. 527-4140. 

“Take Me Home” a benefit to support the filming of this documentary about children caught in the foster care system at 5 and 7 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $20 adults, $12 youth. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Campfire and Sing-a-Long Meet at 5:30 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center and we’ll walk uphill to the campfire circle. Bring hot dogs, buns, marshmallows and long sticks. Dress for fog. Call for disabled asistance. 525-2233. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Doing Good” at 2 p.m. at Cedar Rose Park, 1300 Rose St. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

Social Action Forum with Dr. Robert Gould from Physicians for Social Responsibility, at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

“Darwin’s Nightmare” A film about the introduction of Nile Perch into Lake Victoria in Tanzania, which led to the endangerment or extinction of native fish, and famine in the area. At 5:30 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way, at Bowditch. Cost is $8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/calendar/index.html 

C. Clark Kissinger & Travis Morales on their new book “The World Can’t Wait. Drive Out The Bush Regime” at 6:30 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Basic Pet Rat Care Learn about habitat, handling, hygiene, diseases, food and water. Meet the rescued rats looking for homes. At 2:30 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Donations appreciated. All proceeds go to Bay Area Rats Rescue & Care. 525-6155.  

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

MONDAY, JULY 11 

National Organization of Women, Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. The speaker will be Jeffrey Mittman, the PATRIOT Act Campaign Coordinator for the Northern California Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. 287-8948. 

Strokes with Dr. Loron McGillis at 10:30 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, JULY 12 

Road Cycling for Women Covering rules of the road, bike choice, clothing and accessories, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org  

Buddhist Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at The Dzalandhara Buddhist Center. Cost is $7-$10. For directions and details please call 559-8183. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Don Worth will lead a current events discussion at 11 a.m. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

ONGOING 

Summer Camps for Children offered by the City of Berkeley, including swimming, sports and twilight basketball, from June 20 to August 12, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 981-5150, 981-5153. 

Free Lunches for Berkeley Children beginning June 20, Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Frances Albrier Center, James Kenney Center, MLK, Jr. Youth Services Center, Strawberry Creek, Washington School and Rosa Parks School. 981-5146. 

Albany Summer Youth Programs including basketball, classes, bike trips and family activities. For information see www.albanyca.org/dept/rec.html 

Bay Area Shakespeare Camp for ages 7 to 13, two week sessions through Aug., at John Hinkle Park. Cost is $395, with scholarships available. 415-422-2222. www.sfshakes.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., July 6, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Katherine O’Connor, 981-6601. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/humane 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Thurs. July 7, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche, 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., July 7, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/environmentaladvisory 

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., July 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworks 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. July 11 at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/Creeks/default.html 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., July 11, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

citycouncil/agenda-committee 

City Council meets Tues., July 12, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

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Mr. Tobey, who appears again today to our right, seems not to know that editors, not writers, always write the headlines. Headlines in this and most papers will always be the choice of the editor—we’re happy to clarify that for him. There’s a simple practical reason for this: headlines have to be adjusted to fit into space available. Also, we do try to write headlines to catch readers’ eyes, and “Landmarks Meeting of June 27th” just isn’t a very catchy title. And if Mr. Tobey did predict that a headline writer might combine the epithets “anarchist” and “suicide bomber” into the concept of “terrorist” in a headline, he should have used less, shall we say, “inflammatory” language in the first place.  

But that’s the simple part. More troubling is the way Tobey’s op-ed distorted the history of the calculated and deliberate attempts to destroy Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, which has protected its historic resources and its neighborhoods for the last 25 years. I take personal exception to his charge that “the ‘landmarks experts’ on the LPC couldn’t be bothered to produce [their own draft] or even to offer constructive suggestions along the way.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In the years I was on the commission, we produced not one but two full drafts, and offered a host of constructive suggestions, most of which were ignored by the city staff which was supposed to be supporting our work. 

Tobey wasn’t even around for much of the five years this has been going on. The first time I ever saw him was when he started monitoring Landmarks Commission meetings a couple of years ago on behalf of Livable Berkeley, a new pro-development lobbying group. 

A little history lesson: In the first place, changing one short phrase in the existing ordinance would bring it into compliance with the state’s Permit Streamlining Act, which was all the City Council originally wanted. City staff, on their own initiative, chose to weigh down the ordinance language they offered with many more unnecessary changes in order to advance their own pro-growth agenda. That point has been exhaustively documented in these pages by me and many others, so I won’t waste any more of the readers’ time on it.  

The commission spent three long years trying unsuccessfully to clean up a series of inexcusably sloppy drafts, full of embarrassing errors, which were produced by the city attorney’s office and a string of poorly-educated planning department staffers. Next, the commission tried to get the job done by appointing an ad hoc committee of their own members to do it, of which I was one. We worked for several more months on our own time, with the pro-bono services of retired planner John English, to produce a straightforward and error-free draft, which we presented to the commission in December of 2002. But since this was just after a council election, outgoing commissioners were reluctant to adopt it. It took the newly appointed commissioners another year to get up to speed, in a period when the development boom also meant a massive increase in the commission’s workload. At the end of that year, a final draft was passed by the LPC which incorporated many compromises with staff pro-growth advocates. 

Big mistake. This turned out to be the classic error liberals make when they try to compromise. They lead off with concessions, hoping that their opponents will be public-spirited enough to appreciate them and make a few compromises of their own. And then the other side takes the concessions, thank you very much, and still demands everything they originally wanted in addition. That’s the genesis of the Planning Commission’s new draft, which incorporates many objectionable new wrinkles at the behest of the development lobby. The mayor is trying to ram it through before the City Council departs on its long summer vacation. 

Tobey and a couple of well-meaning but naïve liberals (Some of My Best Friends Are….) proposed a few more sacrificial compromises intended to placate the development boosters, but by this time the LPC wasn’t buying, nor did the pro-growthers seem to be placated. The current Landmarks Preservation Commission, a majority of them new to the commission since my time, appointed by councilmembers who seldom all agree on anything, has now recommended unanimously that the council stop and think before adopting either draft. The commission recognizes that the changes proposed are extensive enough to warrant a full report, as prescribed by the California Environmental Quality Act, about what their impact will be on Berkeley’s threatened historic resources.  

Cool heads on the City Council, if there still are any, would be wise to ask for this report before voting, since it now seems very likely that if they skip this step there are citizens willing to back up the request for an EIR with legal muscle. It just doesn’t look good to substitute a shoddy draft produced in a few months by an uninformed Planning Commission for the product of years of work by commissioners chosen for their expertise in the field of protecting historic resources.  

B

Wow. How often do you see John Conyers, Maxine Waters, Richard Pombo, Richard Sensenbrenner, Molly Ivins and Debra Saunders playing on the same team? For those of you who have been on vacation the last five years, that’s two best-of-bunch Democratic congresspersons, two out-to-lunch Republican same, and two columnists, both good writers but one wrong on most things we care about. The issue that brought them all together, and fast? The recent Supreme Court decision that it’s fine for local government to take your house and give it to developers. Paul Glusman has already noted in these pages how judges can be all over the map these days, and that’s part of the explanation, but there’s more. 

The decision, which assembled its majority from four “liberals” and one “moderate,” illustrates vividly how the Democrats, who have traditionally been the party of the have-nots, have slipped over more often than not into being just another party for the haves. Molly Ivins, as always, nails it. She sees through the scam of the economic development lobby, which always gets more money for the rich, though sometimes also for organized construction workers and local government budgets. Of course, she puts it better than I can: “‘Jobs, jobs, jobs’ is the eternal cry of the development lobby, which always stands to profit from whatever abomination is foisted on the public.” She has been known to winter in Berkeley on occasion, which is perhaps why she says “those who naively trust local governments to make wise decisions clearly haven’t been paying attention. The main difference between the feds and the locals is that it costs more to buy the feds.” 

John Conyers has been my main man in Congress ever since I lived in Michigan in the ‘60s. He was one of the very first Democrats to smell something fishy about the Vietnam war, bucking leaders of his own party by sponsoring a bill to impeach Lyndon Johnson, a copy of which I still have in a drawer somewhere. Detroit, where his district is located, has been repeatedly ravaged by misbegotten redevelopment schemes. He’s never trusted the powerful, even in his own party.  

Maxine Waters, who can best be described as “mouthy” (and from me that’s a compliment) similarly makes up her own mind, and she’s certainly aware that the modest homes of her L.A. constituents are now targets of opportunity in California’s real estate boom. To give their unlikely Republican bedfellows their due, even Republicans are sometimes concerned about little guys getting shafted, though they tend to suspect the feds more than the locals.  

Here in Berkeley, we’ve recently been treated to the unusual spectacle of a banner across the front steps of City Hall held at one end by a conservative ex-mayor and on the other end by a progressive ex-planning-commissioner. Both objected to the recent dumb deal by our own local government, sacrificing our city’s autonomy in planning for its own downtown for a very small mess of pottage promised by our resident megacorporation. The conservative end of the banner represented people who know that taxes will have to go up to pay for services used by mega-U’s expansion projects; the left-liberal end represented those who think that citizens should retain the right to control their own urban environment for the public good, and who understand that UC’s plans will end up being equivalent to the nastiest versions of urban redevelopment projects. Oh, and by the way, UC does have the power of eminent domain.  

Our readers in Oakland, in Rockridge, Temescal and North Oakland, face similar intrusions by greedy redevelopers. Another one of our sharp-eyed readers, Bob Brokl, recently contributed a fine explanation of how redevelopment works, and anyone who missed it should look it up on the Internet. Here again we have alert progressives who won’t take the fool’s gold offered to them by self-styled liberals in Oakland’s self-serving local government. Oakland has already been burned by classic redevelopment schemes, including the sports stadium trick and the convention hotel scam.  

What political observers more naïve than Conyers and Waters often miss is that the development lobby is not just “the developers,” though they get a good piece of the pie. Even more, it’s their financiers, who may be, for example, low-profile university business school professors. It’s also their contractors. The construction workers, the “jobs” behind which the lobby hides, usually turn out not to be the local unemployed, but poorly paid non-union outsiders who frequently work under substandard conditions with health hazards like asbestos exposure winked at by enforcers.  

It will be extremely interesting to see where these new progressive-conservative coalitions are going. Another sphere where both groups are beginning to catch on that government might be doing them in is the Iraq war. When you see rock-ribbed conservatives like Walter Jones beginning to ask why we’re there, you know something new has happened.  

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