The Week

ELS architect Ed Nolen explains the design of the warm pool at the Disability Commission meeting. Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee.
ELS architect Ed Nolen explains the design of the warm pool at the Disability Commission meeting. Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee.
 

News

Warm Pool Plans Criticized For Parking Lack

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday July 13, 2007

Warm water pool users got a look at what the proposed warm water pool at the Berkeley Unified School District’s Milvia Street site would look like on Wednesday at the Disability Commission meeting. -more-


City Council Delays Iceland Decision

By Judith Scherr
Friday July 13, 2007

The public hearing at the Tuesday night City Council meeting was supposed to focus on whether the council should uphold or overturn a commission’s landmark designation of the 1939 art deco structure that houses Berkeley Iceland at Derby and Milvia streets. -more-


Appeal Denied, Elmwood Project Opponents Vow To Keep Fighting

By Judith Scherr
Friday July 13, 2007

Elmwood neighbors and merchants lost their bid to overturn zoning board approval of a proposed retail development at College and Ashby avenues at the City Council Tuesday. Opponents say the proposal for stores, a gym and large restaurant-bar is too big for the small shopping district. -more-


UC Regents Expected to Approve Lab’s Expansion

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 13, 2007

The UC Regents are scheduled to approve two key environmental documents Monday, setting the stage for a major expansion at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. -more-


Controversial Planning Manager Rhoades Quits

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 13, 2007

Few people who’ve encountered him are indifferent to Mark Rhoades, whose departure was announced this week by city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks. -more-


Supervisors Blast Children’s Hospital for Bond Measure

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday July 13, 2007

Officials from Oakland’s privately operated Children’s Hospital got an hourlong angry lecture from all five Alameda County Supervisors on Tuesday morning after supervisors learned that Children’s has begun circulating petitions to put a $24 parcel tax increase on the February ballot to help finance the building of a new hospital. -more-


Oakland Sues over Uncollected Garbage

Bay City News
Friday July 13, 2007

Oakland City Attorney John Russo filed a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court Thursday to seek a court order compelling Waste Management of Alameda County to collect garbage that has piled up since it locked out its employees on July 2. -more-


Wrecking Ball Scheduled For Earl Warren Hall

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 13, 2007

Demolition of UC Berkeley’s Earl Warren Hall—an architectural tribute to the late California governor and U.S. Supreme Court chief justice—could begin as early as next month. -more-


Council to Hear Trader Joe’s Building Appeal

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday July 13, 2007

The Berkeley City Council will hold a public hearing Monday to consider an appeal regarding the decision by the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) to approve the Trader Joe’s project at 1885 University Ave. -more-


DAPAC Pace Quickens With Deadline Nearing

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 13, 2007

DAPAC members, with less than five months to finish their work on a downtown plan, are picking up the pace—scheduling two meetings in the coming week. -more-


Arson Repeated at Mental Health Center

By Rio Bauce
Friday July 13, 2007

In the past week, there have been two arson attempts at the Berkeley Mental Health Center at 2640 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The first attempt was on Saturday, July 7, and the second was on Monday, July 9. -more-


Bone Marrow Drive Held for Former UC Berkeley Student

Friday July 13, 2007

By Riya Bhattacharjee -more-


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-


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Does Anyone Know What’s Going On?

By Becky O’Malley
Friday July 13, 2007

President Bush increasingly inhabits a parallel universe. His Thursday press conference displayed a remarkable disconnect from the current thinking of most Americans and even of many elected officials in his own Republican party. Most Americans, from all parties, now understand that our main, our only, goal in Iraq is to get out, though there are still some differences of opinion as to the manner of our going. There has been approximately no progress toward the subsidiary goal of helping the indigenous Iraqis establish a civil society based on what in this country we call democratic values. Staying there longer won’t change much. It’s possible that immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces would exacerbate the factional war among Iraqis, but even that is not certain. -more-


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-


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday July 13, 2007

OPINION AND NEWS -more-


Commentary: Smart Growth: Let’s Not Dumb it Down

By Rob Browning
Friday July 13, 2007

Those of us who advocate “smart growth”—siting new and denser housing near jobs, academic centers, services, etc., and on transit corridors—have a responsibility to help ensure that such developments are assets, not detriments, to their neighborhoods. -more-


Commentary: The Importance of Saving Iceland

By Wendy Schlesinger
Friday July 13, 2007

Anything that helps “Save Iceland” and specifically reopen it ASAP, including its landmarking, is on the mark and hopefully neither a day late nor a penny short. -more-


Commentary: Ode to Bus Rapid Transit

By Doug Buckwald
Friday July 13, 2007

It comes with a $400 million dollar bill -more-


Healthy Living: Happiness is a Choice

By Annie Kassof, Special to the Planet
Friday July 13, 2007

Some mornings my 18-year-old son tells me his dreams. “I dreamt I got some new multi-vitamins, and that I was locked up in a glass deli case,” he says matter-of-factly. He unscrews the cap from one of his orange prescription pill bottles while he talks. His eyes look guarded. He looks tired. -more-


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-


Columns

Column: Undercurrents: East Bay’s Problems Can’t Be Hidden Under the Trash

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday July 13, 2007

We continue to have odd and inexplicable gaps in our ability to discuss race and racism in an adult way in this country. -more-


East Bay: Then and Now: When Southside Apartment Living Was All the Rage

By Daniella Thompson
Friday July 13, 2007

Around the turn of the 20th century, Berkeley was promoted as a City of Homes. In 1905, the Conference Committee of the Improvement Clubs of Berkeley, California published an illustrated booklet bearing this title and featuring various private residences. But the concept of home would soon change. The San Francisco earthquake and fire brought a flood of refugees into the East Bay, and many real-estate entrepreneurs quickly rolled up their sleeves to meet the housing demand. -more-


Garden Variety: Don’t Panic! Ethical Gardening is Possible

By Ron Sullivan
Friday July 13, 2007

I’ve talked about a couple of ethical aspects of gardening over the past two weeks: ethical suppliers and basic kindness to plants, the reason I don’t buy Arizona desert species for my shady, poorly drained Berkeley garden. -more-


About the House: House Photos Are Worth Thousands of Words and Dollars

By Matt Cantor
Friday July 13, 2007

Do you know The Consultant’s Song? It goes: Maybe it’s this way, or maybe it’s that way and I get paid’O in either case’O. -more-


Quake Tip of the Week: Brace Your Chimney?

By Larry Guillot
Friday July 13, 2007

At a retrofit seminar last weekend, I saw a photo of a braced chimney that had fallen in an earthquake, just like its un-braced neighbors. -more-


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-


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday July 13, 2007

FRIDAY, JULY 13 -more-


San Francisco Mime Troupe’s ‘Making a Killing’

Friday July 13, 2007

Promising “more song-and-dance than a Bush Administration press conference,” the San Francisco Mime Troupe will be Making a Killing this weekend, for free, at Cedar Rose Park, a block from Cedar and Chestnut Streets. -more-


SFMOMA Highlights Art of Sculpture

By Peter Selz, Special to the Planet
Friday July 13, 2007

It has been 35 years since the Berkeley Museum brought New York’s Museum of Modern Art exhibition, “Sculpture of Matisse,” to the Bay Area. The current show as SFMOMA permits us to re-examine the great painter’s three-dimensional work. The museum’s press release speaks of his “sculptural masterpieces.” -more-


Trinity Lyric Opera Stages Copland’s ‘The Tender Land’

By Jaime Robles, Special to the Planet
Friday July 13, 2007

This Friday Trinity Lyric Opera opens its second season with Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land at its new home in the Castro Valley Center for the Arts. -more-


Moving Pictures: The Meditative Art of Kiarostami on Display at BAM/PFA

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday July 13, 2007

It’s a perverse world that lets the name of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami remain obscure to the vast Western film-going public. He is considered by many to among the three or four greatest artists in cinema today, the creative force behind some of the most thoughtful and compelling films of the past 25 years. -more-


East Bay: Then and Now: When Southside Apartment Living Was All the Rage

By Daniella Thompson
Friday July 13, 2007

Around the turn of the 20th century, Berkeley was promoted as a City of Homes. In 1905, the Conference Committee of the Improvement Clubs of Berkeley, California published an illustrated booklet bearing this title and featuring various private residences. But the concept of home would soon change. The San Francisco earthquake and fire brought a flood of refugees into the East Bay, and many real-estate entrepreneurs quickly rolled up their sleeves to meet the housing demand. -more-


Garden Variety: Don’t Panic! Ethical Gardening is Possible

By Ron Sullivan
Friday July 13, 2007

I’ve talked about a couple of ethical aspects of gardening over the past two weeks: ethical suppliers and basic kindness to plants, the reason I don’t buy Arizona desert species for my shady, poorly drained Berkeley garden. -more-


About the House: House Photos Are Worth Thousands of Words and Dollars

By Matt Cantor
Friday July 13, 2007

Do you know The Consultant’s Song? It goes: Maybe it’s this way, or maybe it’s that way and I get paid’O in either case’O. -more-


Quake Tip of the Week: Brace Your Chimney?

By Larry Guillot
Friday July 13, 2007

At a retrofit seminar last weekend, I saw a photo of a braced chimney that had fallen in an earthquake, just like its un-braced neighbors. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday July 13, 2007

FRIDAY, JULY 13 -more-


CORRECTION

Friday July 13, 2007

Tuesday’s review of Crowded Fire Theater Company’s Anna Bella Eema at Ashby Stage mistakenly attributed last year’s production of The Typographer’s Dream to Crowded Fire. The play was actually produced by Encore Theatre and remounted at Ashby Stage in association with Shotgun Players. -more-


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-