The Week

Councilmember Max Anderson, left, and a Berkeley Flea Market stalwart who calls himself “Buffalo Soldier 92 and 93” listen as Mayor Tom Bates responded to a critic of the city’s handling of development on the main Ashby BART parking lot. Photograph by Richard Brenneman.
Councilmember Max Anderson, left, and a Berkeley Flea Market stalwart who calls himself “Buffalo Soldier 92 and 93” listen as Mayor Tom Bates responded to a critic of the city’s handling of development on the main Ashby BART parking lot. Photograph by Richard Brenneman.
 

News

Plans for Ashby BART Project Continues After Grant Denial

By Richard Brenneman
Friday June 09, 2006

Despite rumors to the contrary, the Ashby BART Task Force is very much alive—though in what form and to what ends remain open questions. -more-


Radstons Quits After 98 Years in Berkeley

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday June 09, 2006

It’s the end of an era for yet another independent Berkeley retailer. -more-


West Berkeley Bowl Faces Mounting Challenges

By Richard Brenneman
Friday June 09, 2006

Will there be a new Berkeley Bowl market in West Berkeley or not? -more-


Trustees Dismiss Library Head Griffin

By Judith Scherr
Friday June 09, 2006

After almost two years of staff-management strife, a page has turned at the Berkeley Public Library: Wednesday evening the Board of Trustees announced the departure of the embattled library director and the appointment of an interim replacement. -more-


Public School Tutoring Industy Lacks Accountability, Students

By Suzanne La Barre
Friday June 09, 2006

This is Part Two of a two-part series on tutoring. Part One ran in the June 6 issue. -more-


Downtown Planners Tackle Transportation, UC Polices

By Richard Brenneman
Friday June 09, 2006

Berkeley Transportation Commissioner Rob Wrenn charged Wednesday night that “UC Berkeley uses the programs least likely to succeed” to reduce car use by students, faculty and staff. -more-


Voters to Decide Fate of BUSD Parcel Tax in November

By Suzanne La Barre
Friday June 09, 2006

It’s official: a renewed parcel tax to support Berkeley’s public schools will go before voters this November. -more-


Berkeley Health Clinics Awarded State Grants

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday June 09, 2006

The California Health Facilities Financing Authority announced last week that Berkeley’s LifeLong Medical Care clinics will receive a $408,374 grant and the Berkeley Free Clinic will receive $35,264 out of the $40 million grant money issued statewide. -more-


Berkeley Art Center Hopes For More City Support

By Judith Scherr
Friday June 09, 2006

When Berkeley Art Center Director Robbin Henderson came to the City Council, beret in hand, asking councilmembers to restore funding slashed three years ago, the unanimous body moved the question to the growing list of projects to be considered when the council puts together its final budget this month or next. -more-


Storm Drain Tax Off City Council Agenda for Now

By Judith Scherr
Friday June 09, 2006

A plan to put a $50-per-homeowner levy on the November ballot to upgrade the Berkeley’s 100-year-old storm drain system is water under the bridge, at least for now, says Councilmember Linda Maio. -more-


Libraries Lament Prop. 81 Defeat

By Judith Scherr
Friday June 09, 2006

With the defeat of the library bond measure on Tuesday’s ballot, there will be no expansion at the West Berkeley Library. There will be no new space for computers or for kids to sit and read, no new room for the literacy program and its tutors, according to library officials. -more-


Joint Berkeley City Council and Board of Library Trustees Special Meeting June 7

Tuesday June 06, 2006

The Berkeley City Council and Board of Library Trustees will meet in a special closed session on Wednesday, June 7, to consider threatened litigation by attorney Jonathan Siegel on behalf of Library Director Jackie Griffin. This announcement was received by the Planet at 5:41 a.m. on June 6, too late to include in our Tuesday edition. The meeting will be held at 5 p.m. in the sixth floor Conference Room, 2180 Milvia St. The meeting will begin with a Public Comment Session. -more-


Time’s Up for Clean Money in November

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday June 06, 2006

The Berkeley City Council last month asked for the city’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission to analyze a proposal to place public financing for the mayor’s office on the November ballot. But the council directive has been stalled by City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, who says her office has insufficient time to prepare the ballot measure. -more-


Free Tutoring Becomes Big Business in Public Schools

By Suzanne La Barre
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Christina Paniagua’s daughter, a fifth-grader at Jefferson Elementary School in Oakland, needed extra help with reading, so Paniagua attended a school fair to find out about free private tutoring services available on-campus. -more-


Landmarks, Condo Conversion Likely to Make Ballot

By Richard Brenneman and Judith Scherr
Tuesday June 06, 2006

A small revision of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) appears headed to the November ballot: supporters turned in 3,200 signatures on Monday. -more-


Clerk: Berkeley Won’t Get IRV This Year

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Although Berkeley voters called for Instant Runoff Voting when they passed Measure I in March 2004 by 72 percent, IRV will not happen in 2006, according to City Clerk Sara Cox. -more-


Streaking Seniors Find Doors Locked at BHS

By Suzanne La Barre
Tuesday June 06, 2006

The annual senior streaking tradition at Berkeley High School nearly went awry Monday when students descended upon the school ready to flaunt skin, only to find out the doors were locked. -more-


UC Downtown Hotel Project Moves Closer to Reality

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday June 06, 2006

UC Berkeley’s plans for a high-rise hotel and conference center in downtown Berkeley are moving closer to reality, a university official said Monday. -more-


BUSD Board to Finalize Tax Measure Wednesday

By Suzanne La Barre
Tuesday June 06, 2006

The Berkeley Board of Education is expected to finalize language Wednesday for a renewed parcel tax measure that would supply Berkeley schools with an estimated $19.6 million a year. -more-


ZAB Considers Berkeley Toyota For Former Berkeley Tire Site

By Suzanne La Barre
Tuesday June 06, 2006

The Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) is slated to reconsider a use permit for a vacant site on University Avenue that allows Toyota of Berkeley to operate an automobile sales and service facility. -more-


Downtown Planners, Transportation Committee to Hold Joint Meeting

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday June 06, 2006

The committee helping formulate the new downtown plan will hold a joint meeting with the city Transportation Commission Wednesday. -more-


People’s Park Activist Arrested

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Disabled People Outside Project activist Dan McMullen was informed last week that he could either pay $10,000 in bail money or face arrest for violating an earlier probation by getting arrested at People’s Park on April 30. -more-


Shoddy Reconstruction Angers Afghans

By Fariba Nawa, New America Media
Tuesday June 06, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan—I am writing this in my apartment in one of the “posh” new buildings constructed in 2004 near downtown Kabul. The shiny structure is five stories tall with tinted windows. My roommate and I pay $300 a month in rent, the going price in such buildings. Few locals can afford such relative luxury—a civil servant's salary is just $50 a month. And this is no Trump Towers. -more-


Not on List? Request Provisional Ballot

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Berkeley City Clerk Sara Cox said that if voters’ names do not appear on the voters’ list at the polling place where they believe they are registered, they have the right to ask for a provisional ballot. -more-


Candidates Can Substitute Signatures for Fee

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Candidates for office in Berkeley are required to pay a $150 filing fee when they take out nomination papers. However, in lieu of paying the fee, they can collect signatures. -more-


Police Blotter

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Rape suspect arrested -more-


Opinion

Editorials

County Supes Approve Sequoia Voting Contract

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday June 09, 2006

A divided Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 Thursday to approve a $13.25 million, three-year voting machine contract with Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, ending, for the present, the county’s relationship with controversial Diebold Election Systems. -more-


Commission Landmarks UC Memorial Stadium

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday June 06, 2006

UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium joined the ranks of Berkeley’s landmarks Thursday by a unanimous vote of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). -more-


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday June 09, 2006

-more-


Commentary: Sources of African-American Culture a Conundrum

By Jean Damu
Friday June 09, 2006

Thank you for Mr. Allen-Taylor’s stimulating review of Charles DeBose’s The Sociology of African-American Language. Not long ago I submitted a book review to a left leaning, youth oriented newspaper in San Francisco but was informed they don’t print book reviews. So thank you for encouraging us all to put our thinking caps on. -more-


Commentary: Art Center Needs More Money to Stay Open for 40th Anniversary

By Kathleen Kahn
Friday June 09, 2006

Next year, the Berkeley Art Center hopes to celebrate its 40th anniversary. The Center, housed in a small gem of a Ratcliff building beside the creek in Live Oak Park, has been displaying the work of Berkeley artists since 1967. But the prospects for a 2007 celebration are far from certain. The more likely scenario is that Berkeley’s municipal art gallery will be forced to close down before its anniversary date arrives. Its budget has been shrinking every year and if the city cannot restore the grant for the coming year to the 2001 level, the Center will not be able to keep its doors open. -more-


Commentary: Eviction Threat Imperils Nexus Building

By Robert Brokl
Friday June 09, 2006

A unhappy milestone has just passed. On May 31, our latest 15-year lease on Nexus from the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society expired. Although Nexus is attempting to negotiate with the Humane Society to purchase the property, the Humane Society had indicated they intended to place a metal fence around the vacated building on June 1. That fence did not go up on that date, but who knows about tomorrow? -more-


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday June 06, 2006

BEARING -more-


Commentary: Ballot Language for Parcel Tax Should Be Clear to Pass

By Stevie Corcos
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Last Wednesday night, I went to the school board’s public hearing to express my concern about how the superintendent’s proposed new parcel tax of over $19 million would be spent. -more-


Commentary: Bus Riders Need Equal Access to Funds

By Keith Carson
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Fifty years ago, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and public transportation, more specifically buses, became the stage from which the civil-rights movement was launched. The paradox is that today discrimination is alive and well in mass-transit bus service. In the Bay Area, for instance, a federal civil-rights lawsuit is pending in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charging that the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (which plans and allocates the majority of funding for the area’s transit needs) supports a “separate and unequal transit system” that discriminates against poor transit riders of color. -more-


Commentary: A Traditional Neighborhood at Ashby BART

By Charles Siegel
Tuesday June 06, 2006

It is possible to build housing at Ashby BART to create a sizable neighborhood park, and to make the neighborhood more livable. Let me describe what could be done in a sketchy way, using approximate numbers. -more-


Columns

Column: Dispatches From the Edge: Afghanistan and the Ghost of Kipling’s ‘Kim’

By Conn Hallinan
Friday June 09, 2006

“He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House as the natives called the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that ‘fire-breathing dragon,’ hold the Punjab; for the great green bronze piece is always first of the conqueror’s loot.” -more-


Column: Undercurrents: Reporting on Alameda County’s Election ‘Delay’

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday June 09, 2006

The job of the news media is supposed to be to report on the news as we find it. -more-


Film Details the World of Wild Butterflies

By Steven Finacom
Friday June 09, 2006

It’s a tough world for the seemingly fragile butterfly. -more-


East Bay Then and Now: Maurice Curtis Brought Brief Splendor to Berkeley

By Daniella Thompson
Friday June 09, 2006

In 1881, Irish-born playwright George H. Jessop wrote a minor comedy-drama titled Sam’l of Posen, the Commercial Drummer whose lead character, a shrewd Jewish peddler with a heart of gold, attains bourgeois respectability by means of little wiles interleaved with honesty. -more-


About the House: Global Warming Begins (and Ends) at Home

By Matt Cantor
Friday June 09, 2006

Although I am generally sympathetic with the varied plights of the home buyer, I have to admit, in all my curmugeonitude that I have no tears to shed for anyone in Berkeley that has to meet the requirement of our RECO ordinance. -more-


Garden Variety: The Jewel Box Dazzle of Broadway Terrace Nursery

By Ron Sullivan
Friday June 09, 2006

Broadway Terrace Nursery is a tad off my regular circuit, and it had been too long since I’d dropped in when I dashed there last Saturday. It was just before closing time—a good time to watch the staff get its collective mettle tested. I was as impressed as I’d been on the regrettably few occasions I’d visited before. -more-


Quake Tip of the Week: Will Your Home Survive?

By Larry Guillot
Friday June 09, 2006

Area governments say that 150,000 homes in the Bay Area are going to be uninhabitable after the Hayward Fault ruptures, the fault about which USGS seismologist Tom Brocher says, “It’s locked and loaded and ready to fire.” -more-


The Public Eye: Telegraph Avenue’s Hope: Buzz, Not Busway

By Michael Katz
Tuesday June 06, 2006

The good news is that Telegraph Avenue and the Southside commercial district are doing just fine. -more-


Understanding The Shoes of North Oakland

By Susan Parker
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Three quarters of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world would finish if people were to put on the shoes of their adversaries and understood their point of view. -more-


The Bluebird of Hostility: Getting an Evolutionary Edge

By Joe Eaton, Special to the Planet
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Unless you’ve been living in a cave since 1979, you have undoubtedly seen the Mad Bluebird. It was captured by aspiring wildlife photographer Michael L. Smith on a cold February day in Maryland. The subject, a male eastern bluebird, feathers fluffed out, sits on a fence post glowering at the camera. The Mad Bluebird has been very good to Smith, enabling him to quit his day job as an electrician. Over 100,000 signed prints have been sold, and the image appears on calendars, coffee mugs, and all kinds of tchatchkes. The royalties by now must be considerable. -more-


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday June 09, 2006

FRIDAY, JUNE 9 -more-


Savion Glover, D’Rivera at SF Jazz Festival This Weekend

By Ira Steingroot
Friday June 09, 2006

This weekend as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the Herbst Theatre will feature tap dancer extraordinaire Savion Glover on Saturday and Latin saxophone and clarinet virtuoso Paquito D’Rivera on Sunday. -more-


CalShake’s Presents ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’

By Ken Bullock
Friday June 09, 2006

In any of Shakespeare’s comedies, some of the “low” characters are usually referred to as clowns. In CalShake’s new production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, there’s a different generic term for funnymen and women: puppets. -more-


Film Details the World of Wild Butterflies

By Steven Finacom
Friday June 09, 2006

It’s a tough world for the seemingly fragile butterfly. -more-


East Bay Then and Now: Maurice Curtis Brought Brief Splendor to Berkeley

By Daniella Thompson
Friday June 09, 2006

In 1881, Irish-born playwright George H. Jessop wrote a minor comedy-drama titled Sam’l of Posen, the Commercial Drummer whose lead character, a shrewd Jewish peddler with a heart of gold, attains bourgeois respectability by means of little wiles interleaved with honesty. -more-


About the House: Global Warming Begins (and Ends) at Home

By Matt Cantor
Friday June 09, 2006

Although I am generally sympathetic with the varied plights of the home buyer, I have to admit, in all my curmugeonitude that I have no tears to shed for anyone in Berkeley that has to meet the requirement of our RECO ordinance. -more-


Garden Variety: The Jewel Box Dazzle of Broadway Terrace Nursery

By Ron Sullivan
Friday June 09, 2006

Broadway Terrace Nursery is a tad off my regular circuit, and it had been too long since I’d dropped in when I dashed there last Saturday. It was just before closing time—a good time to watch the staff get its collective mettle tested. I was as impressed as I’d been on the regrettably few occasions I’d visited before. -more-


Quake Tip of the Week: Will Your Home Survive?

By Larry Guillot
Friday June 09, 2006

Area governments say that 150,000 homes in the Bay Area are going to be uninhabitable after the Hayward Fault ruptures, the fault about which USGS seismologist Tom Brocher says, “It’s locked and loaded and ready to fire.” -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday June 09, 2006

FRIDAY, JUNE 9 -more-


Arts Calendar

Tuesday June 06, 2006

TUESDAY, JUNE 6 -more-


Arts: Malcolm X the Opera at Oakland Metro

By Ken Bullock
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Joseph Wright as Malcolm Little, from the depths of a prison cell, sings, “You want the truth, but you don’t want to know,” as he contemplates his change from “country boy” newly arrived in Boston to “Detroit Red,” hustling the Harlem streets, on the verge of a conversion that will make him into Malcolm X. His is the powerful voice that will express African-American rage and hope as portrayed in Anthony Davis’ lucid and compelling opera X, based on Malcolm’s autobiography and performed by the Oakland Opera Theater through June 11 at the Oakland Metro Operahouse near Jack London Square. -more-


Book Review: Author Examines African-American Language

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday June 06, 2006

If you live anywhere near the inner city or have occasion to have business there, this may have happened to you. Walking down a street near dusk you meet a young African-American man, clothes sagging, walking toward you. As you get closer, you can hear him talking, and, although you can’t make out the words, it seems as if he may be signaling commands to one of his partners who may be behind you, or else he’s crazy and talking to himself. In either case, it doesn’t seem good. -more-


The Bluebird of Hostility: Getting an Evolutionary Edge

By Joe Eaton, Special to the Planet
Tuesday June 06, 2006

Unless you’ve been living in a cave since 1979, you have undoubtedly seen the Mad Bluebird. It was captured by aspiring wildlife photographer Michael L. Smith on a cold February day in Maryland. The subject, a male eastern bluebird, feathers fluffed out, sits on a fence post glowering at the camera. The Mad Bluebird has been very good to Smith, enabling him to quit his day job as an electrician. Over 100,000 signed prints have been sold, and the image appears on calendars, coffee mugs, and all kinds of tchatchkes. The royalties by now must be considerable. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday June 06, 2006

TUESDAY, JUNE 6 -more-