Flash: Judge Halts UC Memorial Stadium Gym Project
An Alameda County Superior Court judge’s ruling has forced a halt to the planned construction of a gymnasium complex next to UC Berkeley’s California Memorial Stadium. -more-
An Alameda County Superior Court judge’s ruling has forced a halt to the planned construction of a gymnasium complex next to UC Berkeley’s California Memorial Stadium. -more-
Forget flexibility: It’s now the “West Berkeley Project.” -more-
Pam Bennett of Code Pink was arrested Friday when she bared her breasts in front of Berkeley's downtown Marine Recruiting Station. -more-
Jerry Wachtal describes the Panoramic Hill area where he lives as “a rare paradise,” where you can get to downtown Berkeley in seven minutes and be at home with “trees, birds and wild animals.” -more-
By a narrow margin, journalists at East Bay newspapers owned by the Bay Area News Group-East Bay (BANG-EB) voted to unionize Friday. -more-
The Berkeley Police Department is helping Houston police investigate the disappearance of a 21-year-old student who has been missing since Dec. 15 from his off-campus Houston apartment, authorities said Friday. -more-
Trying to strike a balance between budgetary necessities and political realities, the AC Transit Board of Directors put off consideration of a proposed across-the-board fare increase until after the November general election last week, opting instead to begin the process of putting a parcel tax increase measure on the fall ballot. -more-
Three candidates for local offices added their names on Friday to the list of those collecting signatures for Berkeleyl elections on Nov. 4: Beatriz Levya-Cutler for school board and Robert J. Evans and Eleanor Walden for Rent Stabilization Board. -more-
The February shooting death of Anita Gay, 51, by Officer Rashawn Cummings was justified, Berkeley police say. -more-
The ongoing battle over bus rapid transit (BRT) smoldered anew when Berkeley’s planning and transportation commissions took their second joint look at the concept Wednesday night. -more-
The Berkeley Planning Commission continues its look at the Downtown Area Plan Wednesday night, with three separate chapters on the agenda for the 7 p.m. session. -more-
Berkeley firefighters found themselves fighting flames on two fronts Thursday, one at the site of the disastrous 1991 hills fire, the other in West Berkeley. -more-
City Manager Phil Kamlarz has told a number of councilmembers, including Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Dona Spring, that he is planning a nationwide search for a permanent replacement for former City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque after the budget has been put to rest. -more-
The Berkeley Unified School District announced this week that all teachers who received lay-off notices as a result of proposed education budget cuts will be able to keep their jobs. -more-
Berkeley City College student Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield—charged with the murder of UC Berkeley nuclear engineering student Chris Wootton—did not enter a plea during an appearance Thursday at the Alameda County Superior Court. -more-
Reports of its death having been greatly exaggerated, Rich-mond’s Point Molate casino is not only alive—it’s being fast-tracked by state and federal agencies. -more-
It will be a Juneteenthless June for Berkeley residents this year, after what some event organizers said was a myriad of restrictions imposed by city officials just months before the big weekend of the 22-year-old tradition. -more-
Berkeley Technology Academy Principal Victor Diaz summed up the school year at the 2008 graduation ceremony at UC Berkeley’s Alumni Hall on June 5: “It was a year of extreme highs and extreme lows—a crazy, crazy year.” -more-
UC Berkeley became a much more dangerous place last year, according to crime figures released by campus police. -more-
No one showed up from the Firefighters Union to speak to the issue of putting a fire safety/disaster relief bond measure on the November ballot, so councilmembers decided to put off discussion on the measure until they could hear from the union at the June 17 meeting. They also took no action regarding a possible library bond measure. -more-
A ballot measure to fund a new warm pool and rehab neighborhood pools was taken off the table at the Berkeley City Council’s Tuesday night meeting. -more-
Nearly a month after Washington Elementary first-grader Jamon Lewis drowned in the Don Castro Regional Recreation Park on May 18, the school is still struggling to recover from his death. -more-
Berkeley High School replaced its soccer coach Tuesday because of what some community activists said were complaints filed against him for disrespectful and racist behavior. -more-
Plans to rehabilitate the red brick building at the West Campus will be presented to the Berkeley Board of Education on June 18 before this issue comes out, Berkeley Unified School District officials said. -more-
With hard-fought but largely ignored June primaries behind them, voters will be setting their sights on the Nov. 4 presidential election and, locally, on races for the Berkeley City Council, school board and Rent Stabilization Board. -more-
Who will decide if buses get their own lanes on Telegraph Avenue? If Bruce Kaplan and Dean Metzger get their way, the people will. On May 28, Kaplan and Metzger submitted a petition to the City Clerk with 3,240 signatures of Berkeley voters in order to place on the Nov. 4 ballot an initiative “to require voter approval before dedicating Berkeley streets or lanes for transit-only or HOV/Bus-only use.” -more-
A number of Peace and Freedom Party members were given “non partisan” rather than Peace and Freedom Party ballots on Tuesday in Alameda County, registrar Dave Macdonald acknowledged Thursday in an interview with the Daily Planet. -more-
The race to succeed Henry Chang as Oakland’s at-large city councilmember is going forward with scarcely a pause following last week’s primary elections, with Oakland District One School Board member Kerry Hamill responding to charges by AC Transit At-Large Director Rebecca Kaplan that public safety “scare tactics” employed by Hamill during the primary campaign may have “backfired.” -more-
A quirk in the way in which the Alameda County Registrars Office posts online election results caused the Daily Planet to misreport one of last week’s races. -more-
U-Haul Berkeley was doing a brisk business last Thursday afternoon, with customers maneuvering trucks in and out of the lot at Addison Street and San Pablo Avenue, workers cleaning up the vehicles and people queuing up five deep at the indoor customer-service counter. -more-
A man held up the Bank of America branch at Shattuck Avenue and Center Street at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday and escaped with cash, Berkeley police said. -more-
While most people are refraining from washing cars or watering lawns, taking shorter showers, and flushing only when they really need to, the UC Berkeley is pouring water down the drain like it was—well—2007. -more-
Bill Gates, the money man behind the company that has formed the first corporate/UC Berkeley ethanol partnership, is dumping his shares. -more-
Despite fears that Lawrence Berkeley National Lab was rushing ahead Tuesday with construction of a new road leading to the site of a proposed controversial new lab, crews were taking down two trees in Strawberry Canyon for safety reasons, not roadway building. -more-
T-Mobile will be back today (Thursday) to ask the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) to approve a permit for constructing a new wireless telecommunication facility on the roof of the Affordable Housing Associates-owned building at 1725 University Ave. -more-
When Superior Court Judge Trina Thompson Stanley was growing up in West Oakland, she faced her share of challenges that could have deterred her life’s journey. She credits her success, becoming the first African American woman elected to the bench in Alameda County, on listening to and following the right people, those she calls her “guardian angels.” -more-
My second-grade students want to know the answer to that question and they’ve written a poem to elicit an answer. Each year my Spanish dual-immersion students at Rosa Parks produce laminated poetry bookmarks as part of our “Pepper Ink” labor unit. This year students chose their topic on the way back from the school library, after learning that their beloved librarian, Deborah Howe, might be in peril from the governor’s budget cuts—a deficit he cunningly created by rebating part of the vehicle license fee when he first took office. -more-
The name of a a in the May 29 article about a string of East Bay robberies was incorrect. The correct name is De Afghan Kabob House, located at 1160 University Ave. -more-
The front-page story on June 5, “Big Win for Skinner, Hancock in State Elections,” mistakenly reported that Loni Hancock had been elected to the State Senate and Nancy Skinner had been elected to the State Assembly. They won the Democratic primary in those races for the November election. -more-
June is a month of final acts: graduations, performances, recitals. We’ve gone to several recitals in the last two weeks and enjoyed every one. Nothing beats the sight of a bunch of fresh-faced kids polished until they shine and on their best behavior, enjoying themselves—albeit with a bit of tension—making music or dancing. And if the music sounds good, or if the dancing delights, that’s a plus, but it isn’t really about the product, it’s about the process. -more-
Now that the election's behind us, I finally had time to sort through my mail this morning. I pulled out all of the glossy color postcards from the big pile of junk, leaving behind twelve Land's End catalogs and several offers of free trips to Las Vegas to shop for condos. -more-
In the past decade, Berkeley’s Aquatic Park has been undergoing a striking renewal. Dreamland for Kids and the Addison Street bicycle/pedestrian bridge bring new life to the park, as do the community organizations that have established programs in park buildings. Habitat restoration along the bay shoreline has created new shelter for wildlife. However, these biologically rich tidal lagoons are at risk of repeated toxic contamination if the Berkeley City Council approves plans for a $2 million storm drain construction project. -more-
June 12 marked the one-year anniversary that our friend and comrade Hal Carlstad left us. He was well known and is missed by a great many people in the Bay Area peace, environmental, social justice, anti-death penalty, Unitarian, and anti-nuclear communities. Hal was everywhere. I first met him in the mid-1980s through Earth First! activities. He said he liked Earth First! because it was “less talk, more action.” It is the rare individual who, literally, every time he blinks his eyes he is thinking not of himself, but rather about what he can do next to bring about change, to build a more compassionate and just world. Hal was that rare individual. -more-
One of my international relations instructors at San Francisco State knew the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of Massachusetts, and characterized him as a raging alcoholic. OK, I’m Irish on my mother’s side, that goes with the territory. But, he also said that Moynihan was smarter dead drunk than most of his colleagues were sober. Would that we had more Democrats like him these days. -more-
Pick up a copy of the Berkeley Daily Planet and you are almost certain to find a letters to editor/opinion page filled with complaints about Berkeley city government. While such reader feedback is not a scientific sample, it does show that there are many, many people dissatisfied with one or more aspects of Berkeley’s quality of life. -more-
Around noon on Friday, May 16, I waited at Telegraph Avenue and Dwight Way to board the new 1R bus (Rapid Bus) to San Leandro. My goal? To see for myself why AC Transit chose the Telegraph Avenue/International Boulevard route for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). To do this, I would ride the BRT route to San Leandro, and several unfamiliar bus routes (Bancroft, MacArthur) back to Berkeley. -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second part of a critique of KPFA’s current management’s “selling” and not playing public affairs. The first part appeared in the Daily Planet on May 22 and can be found at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. -more-
We’re being ENRONed again: this time by oil futures contracts speculators who are unnecessarily and very profitably driving up the price of crude oil and hence retail gasoline prices. Curious as to why you are suddenly paying over four dollars a gallon for gasoline? No, it’s not due to “supply-and-demand,” no, it’s not due to “OPEC,” nor is it due to “peak oil.” It’s due to totally unregulated electronic oil futures trading in world markets. Check out the very lucid article that explains the unseen financial machinations in oil futures markets written by F. W. Engdahl on May 2, entitled, “Perhaps 60 Percent of Today’s Oil Price is Pure Speculation.” It may be viewed at www.financialsense.com/editorials/2008/0502.html. -more-
I was at a meeting the a few weeks ago at the local high school. It had been called by the president of the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), as a city-wide PTA meeting. One of the parents who attended has a son in elementary school, and this afternoon had been his very first little league game. His mom left before the game was over to attend this meeting. Parents should not need to make decisions between watching their children play ball and working to secure adequate funding for our schools, yet that is exactly what this mother had to do. Her choice was to work for better funding for education, reasoning that there will be other games to watch, and only one education to worry about. -more-
With the judge’s decision imminent in the lawsuits over the university’s plan to cut down the Memorial Stadium oak grove and build a gymnasium/office complex at the site, the atmosphere is crackling with tension—or is that just the wind rustling through the leaves? It has been one and a half years since this issue leapt onto the local and national stage with a dramatic Big Game tree-sitting protest, and the conflict remains as compelling to this day. There are some persistent questions that have remained in my mind over this period of time, and I want to present them to your readers in the hope of creating a safe atmosphere to engage in a reasonable discussion of the conflict over the proposed construction in the oak grove. -more-
On June 3, at the end of an epic contest, Democrats nominated Barack Obama as their presidential candidate rather than Hillary Clinton. Sixteen months ago, few would have predicted that a relatively unknown African-American senator would defeat the famous wife of the 42nd U.S. president. While many factors contributed to the outcome, the grueling campaign highlighted a critical difference between the candidates: Obama demonstrated better judgment than did Clinton. -more-
Does Baraka Obama—if and when he is president of the United States—have the skills to go head-to-head with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad and come to some agreement of mutual benefit to both countries as well as to the Middle East and to the rest of the world? -more-
Chilean mayten, Maytenus boari, has for quite a while been touted as a substitute for “California” peppertree, Schinus molle, since the latter has been ravaged by scale insects and disease. The peppertree was supposedly introduced by Spanish missionaries, who brought it up from South America. It’s been in the California landscape a long time, so we have some senior specimens. It’s a pity to lose them wholesale, and I don’t see mayten as filling that same aesthetic niche as peppertree’s gnarled black trunk dressed in such unlikely, graceful foliage. -more-
Clothes dryers seem innocuous enough but actually, it turns out that they’re killers. More accurately, I should say, they’re arsonists, because they cause about 15,000 fires a year. -more-
Through a great arch of blasted oak shambles a mysterious figure, shrouded in a mantle disguising his face. Once unveiled, the rambler looks Moorish, or like some tattooed Tuareg tribesman. He is Gower (played by Shawn Hamilton), a pre-Tudor English poet, transposed to a Mediterranean identity, as he narrates the CalShakes’ production of the Bard’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre. -more-
My goal is to reach the audience, to evoke and provoke,” said Berkeley composer Sheli Nan of the multi-faceted program, for both modern and Baroque instruments and voice, of her music, “The Berkeley Baroque & Beyond Experience,” Friday at Giorgi Gallery. There will be a possible second performance on Saturday. -more-
Happy is the man who hears/The helicopter beat its wings/The sky goes black with flying things/For him it sings,/It’s only music, music.” So sings the Iraqi insurgent cabbie (tenor Mark Hernandez as Omar), as he sets out an Improvised Explosive Device in Lisa Scola Prosek’s one act opera, Trap Door, playing tonight, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. in The Lab, 16th St. near Mission in San Francisco. -more-
Walking into Book Zoo feels like stepping into someone’s living room. It’s a funky little used bookstore in North Oakland, with hardwood floors, an abundance of plants, posters, and artwork, a children’s play area, and hanging in the back, an American flag with the peace symbol. Erik Lyngen and Nick Raymond are co-owners of Book Zoo, mavericks who don’t use a cash register or sell books online and are trusting souls who leave a cart with sale books out overnight with a slot in the door for payment. -more-
Clothes dryers seem innocuous enough but actually, it turns out that they’re killers. More accurately, I should say, they’re arsonists, because they cause about 15,000 fires a year. -more-