The Week

Workers measure the frame of the former Wright’s Garage building on Ashby Avenue Monday as part of ongoing renovations. The proposed bar-restaurant development has been the subject of controversy in the Elmwood District, and the City Council is considering holding a public hearing on the plans. Photograph by Michael Howerton.
Workers measure the frame of the former Wright’s Garage building on Ashby Avenue Monday as part of ongoing renovations. The proposed bar-restaurant development has been the subject of controversy in the Elmwood District, and the City Council is considering holding a public hearing on the plans. Photograph by Michael Howerton.
 

News

Mark Rhoades Joins Exodus

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Berkeley Planning Manager Mark Rhoades is headed for the private sector, the third high level city official to vacate his position in city government. -more-


Council Will Consider Hearings On Iceland, Wright’s Garage

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Tonight’s (Tuesday) City Council meeting will look at holding public hearings on landmarking Iceland, an ice skating rink at Milvia and Derby streets, and allowing a commercial development at College and Ashby avenues. -more-


BHS Gym Landmarked, But District Moves Ahead With Demolition Plans

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Although the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) voted 5-4 to landmark the Berkeley High School (BHS) Old Gym at 1920 Allston Way Thursday, the Berkeley Unified School District will move ahead with its demolition plans. -more-


People’s Park Workshop A Success, Says UC

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Sunday was a day of envisioning the future of People’s Park. -more-


Oakland School Board Regains Limited Authority

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday July 10, 2007

California State Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O’Connell came to Oakland on Monday to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) returning a portion of the Oakland Unified School District back to local control, telling a crowd of reporters, citizens, education activists, and politicians gathered at East Oakland’s Franklin Elementary School that “this is a big day for Oakland Unified. This is a new beginning for us. The district’s future looks brighter than ever before.” -more-


Noted Architect Tackles Center Street Plaza Plan

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 10, 2007

One of the nation’s rising stars of landscape architecture shared the stirrings of a vision for what could become a Berkeley civic showcase—the Center Street Plaza. -more-


LeConte Neighbors Plan to Appeal Use Permit for 2516 Ellsworth

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday July 10, 2007

A group of LeConte neighbors are planning to appeal an administrative use permit to construct an addition to a one-story two-unit building at 2516 Ellsworth St. at the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) meeting Thursday. -more-


Beth El Wecomes First Gay Rabbi

By Rio Bauce
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Senior Rabbi Yoel Kahn gave his first service at Congregation Beth El Friday night, marking the first time the congregation has had an openly gay rabbi. -more-


Teamsters, Waste Management Still at Odds

By Rio Bauce
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Waste Management of Alameda County and Teamsters Local 70, a union that represents drivers and equipment operators, aren’t making progress in negotiations of a new contract despite the company’s lockout of the union’s 481 members last Monday. The old contract expired June 30. -more-


Activists Vow to Fight for Police Information Bill

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Despite the crushing defeat of a police misconduct information bill late last month in the Assembly Public Safety Committee, a local American Civil Liberties Union director says that SB1019 is not dead in this Legislature, and “what we have been able to do to bring this bill so far at this point is remarkable.” -more-


Toxic Sites’ Woes Lead CAG Agenda

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Toxics at two adjoining Richmond waterfront sites will dominate Thursday evening’s discussion of a citizen panel advising the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). -more-


Costa Rica: Raising the Bar for Conservation

By Marta Yamamoto, Special to the Planet
Tuesday July 10, 2007

When traveling through Costa Rica it’s best to emulate the sloth. Take it slow, very slow. Costa Rica requires maceration, allowing time for her to soak into your pores. On a recent visit I received sage advice from my guide, Luis Diego Soto: “Close your eyes and listen.” Listen to the voices of the forests, mountains, rivers and the life within. Listen to the voices of the people. -more-


Police Blotter

By Rio Bauce
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Arson -more-


New Deal Legacy Remains Visible and Vibrant in East Bay

By Gray Brechin, Special to the Planet
Friday July 06, 2007

We live and move daily amidst the remains of a lost civilization that we do not see but that we cannot do without. Nor, I suspect, do those who have loathed Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever since he made good on his promise to deliver a New Deal to Americans 75 years ago want you to see them. To do so would shatter myths beloved of free market fundamentalists whose economic flimflam has—at least until they bring on the next bust—triumphed over what Roosevelt and myriads of Americans accomplished and left us. -more-


Toxic Questions Surround Two Richmond Sites

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 06, 2007

More questions are swirling around the cleanup efforts at two adjacent contaminated sites in Richmond this week. -more-


New UC-BP Biofuel Lab Opening Set for July 2010

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 06, 2007

BP—the multinational once known as British Petroleum—will be able to move into its new digs in Berkeley in three years, according to plans given to would-be builders. -more-


State to Return Part of OUSD to Local Control

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday July 06, 2007

The president of the School Board for the Oakland Unified School District said late this week that State Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O’Connell will come to Oakland next Monday to announce his decision to immediately turn over the area of “Community Relations And Governance” from state control to control by the school board. -more-


County’s First Detox Center to Open in San Leandro

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday July 06, 2007

Alameda County’s first detox center is scheduled to open in November in San Leandro, although Berkeley and UC Berkeley officials had pushed for a center closer to home. -more-


Arrest Made in Series of Bateman/Halcyon Robberies

By Rio Bauce, Special to the Planet
Friday July 06, 2007

Residents of the Halcyon/Bateman neighborhood are breathing a bit easier since police arrested Marvin M. Johnson last week and charged him with a string of robberies targeting women walking alone during daylight hours in the neighborhood. -more-


South Berkeley Shootings Prompt Increased Patrols

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 06, 2007

Spurred by calls from anxious South Berkeley residents, Police Chief Douglas Hambleton sent a letter to neighborhood associations promising additional patrols in the area. -more-


Architects to Present New Design of Warm Water Pool

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday July 06, 2007

The Warm Water Pool Task Force will deliver a progress report and hold a public hearing on the the relocation of the Berkeley High School warm water pool to the Berkeley Unified School District Milvia tennis courts at the disability commission meeting Wednesday. -more-


Berkeley Police Blotter

By Rio Bauce
Friday July 06, 2007

Robbery -more-


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Reporting on the News from the Home Front

By Becky O’Malley
Tuesday July 10, 2007

A visit from our friend the journalism professor prompted many “whither newspapers” conversations around dinner tables last week. These were a continuation of earlier similar discussions with local friends about recent developments in what used to be called the corporate mass media. I say “used to be called” because as newspapers are increasingly the playthings of large corporate empires their influence on the masses seems to be diminishing. -more-


Editorial: Keeping Government Out of Sight

By Becky O’Malley
Friday July 06, 2007

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice used to say in Wonderland. The belief that government is something that should take place outside the view of the governed seems to be growing by leaps and bounds, both nationally and locally. At the national level we have Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Cheney claiming that he’s got a whole new branch of government that doesn’t have to tell anyone what they’re doing, while Nominal President Bush commutes Cheney staffer Scooter Libby’s punishment for perjuring himself before the grand jury investigating Team Cheney misdeeds. And in Berkeley we have the continuing assertion that important city policy decisions can only be made by those who have no opinions on the matters before them. -more-


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Tuesday July 10, 2007

AUG. 6 -more-


Commentary: Oakland Planning Commissioners to Citizens: ‘Eat Cake!’

By Bob Brokl
Tuesday July 10, 2007

The U.S. Supreme Court, likely to be controlled by reactionaries for a generation, will be one of George Bush’s many unfortunate lingering legacies. The Oakland City Planning Commission will be Jerry Brown’s. While Brown has been yanked by the chain of his ambition back to Sacramento, all of Brown’s appointees, nearly a year into the Dellums’ mayorship, still run the Planning Commission. (Planet readers may be unfamiliar with the Oakland model, where—unlike Berkeley—the mayor makes all the appointments to the planning commission and landmarks board.) -more-


Commentary: A Humanitarian Crisis at Gaza’s Gate

By Annette Herskovits
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Thousands of Palestinians are stranded in Egypt, waiting to return home to the Gaza Strip. Among them is Husam El Nounou, who has been there three weeks, unable to join his wife and three children and return to his work at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP), the Strip’s principal provider of mental health services. -more-


Healthy Living: Confession of a Television Addict

By Richard Cormack
Tuesday July 10, 2007

The story goes something like this: While discussing his living will, the man tells his wife that he prefers not to exist in a vegetative state, dependent on a machine and taking fluids from a bottle. His wife moves from her chair, unplugs the television, and throws out all of his beer. -more-


Letters to the Editor

Friday July 06, 2007

CELL PHONE TOWERS -more-


Commentary: What Don’t You Understand About Democracy?

By David Esler
Friday July 06, 2007

The administration swept aside laws it didn’t like or found inconvenient and ignored citizens’ protests as it catered to the commercial interests of its supporters. Sound familiar? No, we’re not talking about the Bush/Cheney administration but, sadly, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and some members of the City Council. -more-


Commentary: Accuracy in America’s Gun-Use Statistics

By Robert Clear
Friday July 06, 2007

The writers supporting guns for self-defense don’t seem to be honest, or not very good at numbers. After Richard Hourula questioned the veracity of Michael Hardesty’s claim that guns are used millions of times per year, Hardesty fell back on the claim that there are a great many documented cases of self defense over the years, and it was therefore a reasonable estimate. In short, he made up numbers to make the argument look good. Hawkins adds up violent crimes, property crimes, burglary, larceny and so on to get an estimate of 20 million crimes per year, but according to the FBI website “In the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson,” so he has double counted the property crimes. However what is more important is that “The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims.” There were only about a half million crimes per year where force or a threat of force was involved, and therefore where self-defense may be involved. If there are two million successful cases of self-defense then only 20 percent of the attempted violent acts were successful. It is hard to believe violent crime would be the problem that it is if its success rate was so low. Ms. Cloudwalker claims that 20 percent of homicides are concentrated in four cities with gun control, but provides no evidence that the two facts are related. A strong clue that they are not is that her numbers are old, and that by 2003 the value was about 10 percent. Washington D.C., which is one of the four, has been undergoing gentrification, and its murder rate dropped from first in the nation in 1991 at 81 per 100,000 to a much reduced but still horrible 44 in 2003, with the vast majority of the homicides occurring in those areas which have not yet been gentrified. New York has reduced its murder rate to 7.4, which is substantially below what is expected for a city of its size, its rate of poverty, unemployment, female head of household, and racial makeup. Locally one only need compare Richmond, with a murder rate of 36.7 to Berkeley, with a murder rate of 5.7, to realize that you have to account for all the variables before trying to draw conclusions about gun control and crime rates. -more-


Healthy Living: The Aging Process Beyond Four Score and Ten

By Rose Green
Friday July 06, 2007

For years my definition of a bore was “Someone, who when you ask how they are, they tell you.” It always got a laugh. However, these days the laugh’s on me. For I myself am now that quintessential Bore. When asked how I feel no longer say “Fine!” Instead, I launch into a recital of my aches and pains, completely disregarding the stifled yawns around me. I cannot believe that I’ve turned into such a person—one I don’t like at all. Never in my wildest nightmares did I think that I could bore anyone—and myself as well! -more-


Healthy Living: Lifelong Medical Care Weighs In On Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’

By Chris Kiefer
Friday July 06, 2007

With the humor, realism, and moving imagery we’ve come to expect from Michael Moore, Sicko is exactly the medicine needed by the public debate around health care. The film has three simple messages: First, the American health care “system” is utterly broken, not just for the 40 million uninsured, but potentially for all of us. Second, this is totally unnecessary; other countries have systems that work quite well. Third, this is far more than an economic issue—the way we treat the sickest among us is a moral disgrace of staggering proportions. -more-


Columns

The Public Eye: Faith and Politics

By Bob Burnett
Tuesday July 10, 2007

How important is it that presidential candidates tell us whether or not they are Christians? For many Berkeley residents it’s not important at all; most of us feel that religious belief is a personal matter: what matters most is that candidates adhere to high ethical standards and honor the U.S. Constitution. But for many Americans, identifying as a Christian is shorthand for being on the “right” side. As a result, candidates for president are forced to talk about their Christian faith. -more-


Green Neighbors: What’s in a Name? History and Big Trees

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday July 10, 2007

It isn’t always easy to keep a giant sequoia / Big Tree / Sequoiadendron giganteum thriving down here near sea level. (It isn’t always easy even to talk about the species without someone’s caviling about whatever common name is current.) I’ve known at least two that were cut down locally, and one that just doesn’t look happy. There’s a nice row of them along the main road through Tilden Park, though, just past the regional Parks Botanic Garden, for easy viewing as you pass. You can get up close and personal with the species in the Bot Garden too, and reassure yourself about identification—they’re labeled—and compare them with coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. -more-


Column: Dispatches From The Edge: Australia and the Pacific Wall

By Conn Hallinan
Friday July 06, 2007

Some 230 miles north of Perth, at Geraldton on Australia’s west coast, the Bush administration is building a base. When completed, it will control two geostationary satellites that feed intelligence to U.S. military forces in Asia and the Middle East. -more-


Column: Undercurrents: Putting Band-Aids on Oakland’s Crime Problem

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday July 06, 2007

Modern-day African-Americans owe an enormous debt to the American labor movement, which helped provided funding, leadership training, and leadership itself for the African-American Freedom cause during key periods of the civil rights era. -more-


Open Home in Focus: Berkeley Architect Dakin’s Work on View at 2828 Hillegass

By Steven Finacom
Friday July 06, 2007

THE four-bedroom home at 2828 Hillegass Ave., built in 1909 in what is now Berkeley’s Willard neighborhood, is one of the notable residential works of Clarence Casebolt Dakin a little-remembered, but very intriguing, Berkeley architect. -more-


Garden Variety: The Conscience of a Conservator

By Ron Sullivan
Friday July 06, 2007

Who would have known that something as simple and harmless as buying plants for our gardens would turn out to be such a fraught moral choice? Knowledge and scruples can drive you nuts. -more-


About the House: The Amazing Simpson Universal Foundation Plate

By Matt Cantor
Friday July 06, 2007

Now, this has happened to everybody at some point. You think of this cool thing that would make something work better and then one day, you’re walking (or in my case crawling) along and lo and behold, there it is! Well I have to admit that when I saw the one that Simpson company (of our own beloved San Leandro) had come up with, I realized that the one in my mind wasn’t as good. Nevertheless, It’s still amazing when something institutional, large-scale and corporate turns out to be clever and just the right size and price. -more-


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Tuesday July 10, 2007

TUESDAY, JULY 10 -more-


Arts and Entertainment Around the East Bay

Tuesday July 10, 2007

ARIEL STRING QUARTET AT GIORGI GALLERY -more-


The Theater: Crowded Fire Theater Presents ‘Anna Bella Eema’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday July 10, 2007

On a platform, three women sit, facing the audience. They don’t budge from their chairs until practically the end of the show, yet there’s a choreography, in Lisa D’Amour’s Anna Bella Eema, as directed by Rebecca Novick for Crowded Fire Theater Company at the Ashby Stage, and the three actors (Cassie Beck, Danielle Levin and Julie Kurtz) provide a rhythmic soundscape as well, with voice, simple musical instruments (a finger piano) and various ordinary objects as noisemakers. -more-


Moving Pictures: Silent Film Festival a Portal To the Picturesque Past

By Justin DeFreitas
Tuesday July 10, 2007

In today’s fully wired world of digital video and handheld viewing devices, it may be difficult to fathom a time when the moving picture was itself a revolutionary technology. In the first few decades of the 20th century, as the new medium was developed and perfected, it brought with it a radical cultural shift, bringing images from all over the world to neighborhood theaters. -more-


Green Neighbors: What’s in a Name? History and Big Trees

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday July 10, 2007

It isn’t always easy to keep a giant sequoia / Big Tree / Sequoiadendron giganteum thriving down here near sea level. (It isn’t always easy even to talk about the species without someone’s caviling about whatever common name is current.) I’ve known at least two that were cut down locally, and one that just doesn’t look happy. There’s a nice row of them along the main road through Tilden Park, though, just past the regional Parks Botanic Garden, for easy viewing as you pass. You can get up close and personal with the species in the Bot Garden too, and reassure yourself about identification—they’re labeled—and compare them with coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday July 10, 2007

TUESDAY, JULY 10 -more-


Arts Calendar

Friday July 06, 2007

FRIDAY, JULY 6 -more-


Moving Pictures: PFA Celebrates a Tough Old Broad’s 100th

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday July 06, 2007

You’d think a beautiful young woman with a name like Ruby Stevens would have had it made in 1930s Hollywood. And she very well might have; the name conjures images of a bright-eyed ingenue, lovely, ambitious and 100 percent red-blooded American. -more-


The Theater: Contra Costa Civic Theatre Stages ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday July 06, 2007

“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley ...”—which around these parts gets confounded with cable car bells and tourist-ridden summers, just as Meet Me in St. Louis’ other big hit, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” has led some to think of (or to list) the 1944 Vincente Minelli movie musical as a Christmas film. -more-


Midsummer Mozart Sneak Preview at El Cerrito Benefit

By Ira Steingroot, Special to the Planet
Friday July 06, 2007

In an encore of last year’s idyllic kick off event, this year’s 33rd Midsummer Mozart Festival, under the direction of Maestro George Cleve, again begins early with a sneak preview of the destival at a benefit party set in a lovely garden in the El Cerrito hills this Sunday, July 8, from 4 p.m to 6 p.m. -more-


Open Home in Focus: Berkeley Architect Dakin’s Work on View at 2828 Hillegass

By Steven Finacom
Friday July 06, 2007

THE four-bedroom home at 2828 Hillegass Ave., built in 1909 in what is now Berkeley’s Willard neighborhood, is one of the notable residential works of Clarence Casebolt Dakin a little-remembered, but very intriguing, Berkeley architect. -more-


Garden Variety: The Conscience of a Conservator

By Ron Sullivan
Friday July 06, 2007

Who would have known that something as simple and harmless as buying plants for our gardens would turn out to be such a fraught moral choice? Knowledge and scruples can drive you nuts. -more-


About the House: The Amazing Simpson Universal Foundation Plate

By Matt Cantor
Friday July 06, 2007

Now, this has happened to everybody at some point. You think of this cool thing that would make something work better and then one day, you’re walking (or in my case crawling) along and lo and behold, there it is! Well I have to admit that when I saw the one that Simpson company (of our own beloved San Leandro) had come up with, I realized that the one in my mind wasn’t as good. Nevertheless, It’s still amazing when something institutional, large-scale and corporate turns out to be clever and just the right size and price. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday July 06, 2007

FRIDAY, JULY 6 -more-