Berkeley Iceland Up for Sale, Raising New Fears of Closure By SUZANNE LA BARRE
Berkeley’s 66-year-old ice-skating rink is up for sale, but some fear it will close before new operators take it on. -more-
Berkeley’s 66-year-old ice-skating rink is up for sale, but some fear it will close before new operators take it on. -more-
Nearly a quarter of a million residents went hungry in Alameda County last year, a new report said. -more-
Spenger’s Fresh Fish Grotto makes its African-American staff work in the back of its Fourth Street restaurant, away from most customers, according to the complaint in a lawsuit filed by the San Francisco law offices of Angela Alioto. -more-
One of the attorneys the Albany City Council hired to handle talks with a controversial Southern California developer over a project at Golden Gate Fields may have represented the developer on a similar project. -more-
The controversy over the removal of Oakland medical professional Gwen Sykes from the Alameda County Medical Center Board of Trustees descended into confusion this week. -more-
It was business as usual in front of Berkeley Honda Saturday. -more-
Construction of the Sugar Bowl, a $200 million tribal casino on industrial lands in unincorporated North Richmond, would have no negative environmental impacts so great that they can’t be mitigated, according to a recently released environmental impact statement (EIS). -more-
The long-anticipated proposed Peralta Community College District bond measure will come up to district trustees for consideration tonight (Tuesday), but district staff has still not decided on details of the $390 million measure. -more-
While the Sierra Club has endorsed Oakland City Councilmember Nancy Nadel in the city’s mayoral race, a spokesperson for the organization said the group is also “in the process of considering an endorsement” of her rival, former Congressmember Ron Dellums, and a dual endorsement is a possibility. -more-
A series of blustery storms that pelted the Bay Area during most of the day and night Sunday drove locals indoors to enjoy the warmth and comfort of their homes. -more-
A man who calls himself “Cheddar Cheese” spent his 20th birthday recently singing and performing for spare change in front of the Powerbar building in downtown Berkeley, as he has every day since arriving in Berkeley last January. -more-
Hyim Ross doesn’t look like a hero. He’s a 30-something musician and school teacher and, like many, he’s angry that money that is needed for schools is going to fight the war in Iraq. -more-
Berkeley police announced Monday that they would offer two $15,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murders of Juan Ramos and Keith Stephens. -more-
Two weeks ago the temperatures fell, and there was snow on Mt. Diablo and at other higher elevations. Also there was lots of TV coverage of snow storms on the East Coast and Midwest. I must admit that during the recently passed holiday season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and Super Bowl) I also kind of missed the snow, something that rarely happens in Berkeley. -more-
They had prayed and protested, gone to jail and gone to the media. On Tuesday, death-penalty foes celebrated a partial victory: the life of Michael Morales, the man who had stabbed, raped and bludgeoned to death 17-year-old Terri Winchell in 1981, would be spared—for a few months at least. -more-
Keith Stephens was “a good kid, very kind-hearted and giving,” said Latisha Stephens, his oldest sister. -more-
A controversial trustee on the Alameda County Medical Center Board of Directors has been removed by the president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors because of complaints from fellow board members, but there is question whether Supervisor Keith Carson has the legal authority to do so. -more-
Lucky for diners at Le Bateau Ivre, there’s ample parking available right out front. For motorcycles, that is. -more-
Berkeley City Councilmembers voted unanimously Tuesday to order the closure of Dwight Way Liquors, ending a decade-long and often confusing regulatory battle. -more-
Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and UC Berkeley’s representation on the panel helping formulate a new downtown plan were among the issues confronted by the City Council Tuesday. -more-
Members of four city panels filed into the North Berkeley Senior Center Wednesday night to hear the university’s first formal presentation of its plans for the Memorial Stadium area. -more-
Planning commissioners Wednesday voted to delay extending a provision of the city’s condominium ordinance setting cost levels for mandated “inclusionary” units. -more-
Less than a month after Director Sharon Jackson hastily departed from the Berkeley Housing Authority, a new chief has stepped in to lead the agency through tough times. -more-
It was one of those beautiful sunny days in Berkeley that makes you want to take the longest route to the Saturday morning farmers’ market. -more-
One of the important functions of the Police Review Commission is to recommend policy changes, based on the complaints the commission sees, according to Deputy City Attorney Sarah Reynoso. -more-
Table tennis is coming of age in America, according to players and coaches who descended on Berkeley from around the world last weekend. -more-
A staple of daily newspaper journalism is an “expose” of the salaries paid to public servants of all kinds. The Contra Costa Times has been dining out for more than a year on salary information it obtained about Oakland employees who make more than $100,000 per year, gleaned from a successful California Public Records Act lawsuit against the city. Oakland’s unions, particularly the police union, fought tooth and nail to keep said information from coming out into the open. Lately, the San Francisco Chronicle has been engaged in a similar struggle to reveal information about compensation packages for top University of California officials, and the results have caught the attention of the state Legislature—both parties—in a big way. Putting such details in the public arena is laudable, and readers are certainly shocked to see it, but in some ways these stories miss their mark. -more-
Daily Planet reporter Judith Scherr received a literate and thoughtful letter this week from a Contra Costa Avenue resident about the stabbing which occurred recently at a teen party on that street. The writer said that “I would like to offer a question that is worth some commentary. The question is—did the neighbors in the homes adjacent to the party exercise any social responsibility in contacting the Berkeley Police Department prior to the party getting out of hand and in offering assistance immediately after the stabbing?” -more-
In her Feb. 24 letter to the editor, Carolyn Sell mentions both the David Brower Center and plans to develop Ashby BART, an interesting combination which, for me, is an invitation to comment on how the city plans for the use of publicly controlled space. -more-
Maintaining a setback of 30 feet makes good sense for Berkeley creeks and anything less is short-sighted for long-term restoration, ecological health, and city maintenance requirements. -more-
To view Justin DeFreitas’ latest editorial cartoon, please visit -more-
It feels like a bad dream. Poorly drawn cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper spark deadly riots. In northern Nigeria at least 16 people die, many of them Christians, when rioters torch churches, shops and vehicles; in Libya 10 people die in clashes with police; in Afghanistan 12 people are killed and 20 injured. The Danish consulate is burned in Beirut. 300 Palestinian protesters attack an international observers’ mission in Hebron throwing rocks and bottles. Riot police in Delhi fire tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds of student protesters; in Kashmir a general strike is called. And a Pakistani Imam announces his mosque will give $25,000 and a car to anyone who kills the single cartoonist he believes produced the offensive drawings. He says a local jewelers’ association would give another million. -more-
Cleanaircoalition.net is now signing up people and families from the communities of Berkeley, Albany and El Cerrito. There is a growing number of individuals who feel it is necessary to turn up the heat on Pacific Steel Company (PSC). Specifically, we intend to file multiple lawsuits through Small Claims to force PSC to give us a better solution than the “settlement” BAAQMD has arranged or, failing that, make us pay us for PSC’s constant black air. We have contracted with Neighborhood Solutions and they are on board working and consulting with us to help this move forward quickly. -more-
“Urge Your City to Adopt Community Control Over Local Energy!” That was the headline on the Sierra Club Environmental Action Alert that recently appeared in my mailbox. The alert was part of the club’s Bay Chapter campaign for Community Choice Aggregation (why do great ideas—single-payer health insurance is another example—have such mind-numbing names?). Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), the leaflet went on to say, is “a form of energy independence that takes the electricity-purchasing decisions out of the hands of huge corporations and gives control to local government.” CCA also promises to deliver electric power that’s greener and cheaper than what we now get from PG&E. -more-
Friday night I went over to the Women’s Cancer Resource Center to view the art show, SNAP! SNAP! is a satellite exhibit of the larger Art of Living Black 2006 exhibition hosted by the Richmond Art Center through March 19. In addition to the WCRC show, there are satellite exhibits taking place at various locations throughout the Bay Area, and a cyberspace site at www.mesart.com. -more-
Ravens are complicated birds. Spend enough time with them and you’ll learn that there’s no such thing as “the raven”—a standard one-size-fits-all set of behavioral traits. They’re as wonderfully various as we are. -more-
Eugene Jarecki’s documentary Why We Fight is playing at several Bay Area theaters, including downtown Berkeley’s Shattuck Cinemas. Although it won the grand jury prize for documentaries at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and made a much-touted appearance on the BBC, for a considerable period it appeared that the film wouldn’t be seen in the United States. Finally Sony agreed to distribute Why We Fight and it opened nationwide on Feb. 10. -more-
There is a certain boy-caught-with-matches quality to the Bush administration’s reactions regarding the U.S. port terminal transfers, like the little kid who has been busy setting fires all over the neighborhood and then finds, to his horror, that his own playhouse is suddenly threatened. -more-
Symbiotically, the University of California and the city of Berkeley are partners, not always in harmony. Since 1873 when students, professors and their educational accouterments moved from downtown Oakland to the new site above Oceanview, both have prospered. -more-
For an object lesson in preservation go to the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Parker Street where the old Gorman building has emerged from an exemplary rehab project. This historic structure with roots deep in the 19th century can now ably serve the 21st. -more-
Dear Matt Cantor, -more-
We’re nearing the end of bare-root tree season, but we can buy and plant a tree any time of the year here, lucky us. But picking out the right tree in a nursery can be confusing, and a tree is (one hopes) an investment that we’ll be living with for years. -more-
In the middle of the 20th century a happy coincidence made Berkeley home to two poets, Josephine Miles (1911-1985) and Alan Ginsberg, who bore at least a passing resemblance to a pair of their celebrated predecessors, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. -more-
The shadowy figure of a ranchero, lightly strumming a guitar and intoning lines in Spanish about leaving home due to poverty and necessity, looms before the screen in the Berkeley City Club on which the tall cactus and stony land of the border are projected, along with an English translation of the song’s mournful words. -more-
Public school jazz education began in Berkeley in 1966 when Herb Wong, the principal at Washington Elementary, offered a jazz class to his music students. It wasn’t long before every school in the district had a jazz band. -more-
Ravens are complicated birds. Spend enough time with them and you’ll learn that there’s no such thing as “the raven”—a standard one-size-fits-all set of behavioral traits. They’re as wonderfully various as we are. -more-
Start your spring cleaning and decluttering early. There’s less than a week left to get rid of your extra and unwanted, but useable, belongings by giving them to the White Elephant Sale (WES) at the Oakland Museum of California -more-
Travel writer Jeff Greenwald, primed to be the raconteur of stories from his books, improvised on the spot in answer to Strange Travel Suggestions, climbs the stage at The Marsh-Berkeley, and begins to explain his props: a gameshow-like wheel, the rim covered with odd symbols—and a huge Tarot card, featuring the romanticized image of The Fool from the Rider Pack, carrying a bindle on a stick and proceeding trippingly over a cliff while dandling a rose, as a little dog prances by his side ... -more-
Early on in the documentary Occupation: Dreamland, soldiers of the 82nd Airborne are seen patrolling the streets of Falluja, talking with the city’s residents along the way. At one point an Iraqi man stands before a soldier and tells him that the Iraqi people simply cannot accept colonialism, that resistance is an innate part of the Iraqi identity. “Bear with me,” he says to the soldier. “This is something that is pent up inside our hearts … know it, record it, transmit it.” -more-
At 20 paces Ivan Thompson is a dead ringer for the late Hunter S. Thompson—a lean figure in jeans and 10-gallon hat, mysterious and rugged with eyes concealed by large dark sunglasses. However, Ivan—the self-styled “Cowboy Cupid” of director Michèle Ohayon’s documentary Cowboy del Amor, opening today at Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley—has none of the gonzo journalist’s mumbled, eccentric rapid-fire cadences. Instead he is a plain-spoken, down-to-earth southwesterner with the twangy, no-nonsense voice of a man who has spent his life on ranches, working hard and scraping by amid the tumbleweeds and dust. -more-
Symbiotically, the University of California and the city of Berkeley are partners, not always in harmony. Since 1873 when students, professors and their educational accouterments moved from downtown Oakland to the new site above Oceanview, both have prospered. -more-
For an object lesson in preservation go to the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Parker Street where the old Gorman building has emerged from an exemplary rehab project. This historic structure with roots deep in the 19th century can now ably serve the 21st. -more-
Dear Matt Cantor, -more-
We’re nearing the end of bare-root tree season, but we can buy and plant a tree any time of the year here, lucky us. But picking out the right tree in a nursery can be confusing, and a tree is (one hopes) an investment that we’ll be living with for years. -more-