A series of robberies targeting Bay Area restaurants ended with the arrest of three suspects last week, Berkeley police announced today. Kristoffer Jones, 18, of Albany, and two Oakland residents, 40-year-old Shawan Spragans and 46-year-old Merl Simpson, were arrested in connection with 23 takeover-style robberies since early March, according to police. The trio was arrested while allegedly attempting to rob a San Francisco bar on Friday. Nine of the robberies have been in Berkeley, police said. Businesses in San Francisco, San Leandro, Albany, Oakland and Hayward were also targeted during the spree. -more-

On Saturday, April 30th the Berkeley Progressive Alliance, Berkeley Citizens Action and Berkeley Tenants Union are holding a joint meeting to endorse candidates who support their progressive agenda. The meeting for endorsements will be heldfrom 2 pm to 5 pm at the MLK Jr Young Adult Project (YAP) Recreation Center at 1730 Oregon St., west of MLK. Members of BPA, BCA and BTU will vote to endorse candidates for Berkeley's Mayor and City Council. For more information please contact the Berkeley Progressive Alliance at berkeleyprogressivealliance@gmail.com -more-

Holds over 12 to 1 Cash on Hand advantage over nearest opponent

Nancy Skinner continues to hold a massive financial advantage over her two Democratic opponents for State Senate in District 9.

In reports filed yesterday, covering the period from 1/1/16 to 4/23/16, Skinner held a more than 12 to 1 cash-on-hand advantage over her closest opponent, Sandre Swanson. -more-

About 30 residents of an apartment building at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Delaware Street in Berkeley remain displaced today following a one-alarm fire on Tuesday night that caused an estimated $100,000 worth of damage, a Berkeley fire spokeswoman said. -more-

Two of Berkeley's progressive councilmembers are running for Mayor--videos below -more-

See the video of Mike Lee's presentation at the joint endorsement meeting on Saturday. -more-

Overall Results:

The ramshackle tent, free box and sleeping bags may be gone from the steps of the Berkeley Main Post Office but the spirit of the long-standing (and squatting) grassroots protest encampment remains. -more-

“West Berkeley Shellmound dates back 5,800 years and is the oldest Shellmound in the area by about 1,000 years” - Richard Schwartz. Berkeley Voice April 15, 2006.

News of this recent finding has brought me back to a summer when I traveled to Iran, my parent’s country, where I heard tails of a much different burial site. My grandmother and great aunt recounted the most intriguing childhood memory of their childhood home, in the province of Kermanshah. Their village, Kangavar, set in North western Iran was built on a few hills in the belly of the valley. It was a quiet and uneventful village which had a legend. This legend was formed by those who , while digging their gardens found human remains. Children believed there was a serpent living under them who would sacrifice humans. They lived in the shadow of this demon until the 1930’s when archeologists came to investigate. -more-

At the Berkeley City Council meeting on Tuesday night, the Council voted six to three to place on the ballot a more modest proposal than the initiative developed by the City Council's Labor Commission, progressive activists and the union, SEIU. The community measure would raise the minimum hourly wage to $15 next year, in 2017. The hourly wage would continue to rise afterward until it approaches a living wage. The motion made by councilman Capitelli would instead postpone the $15 an hour wage until 2019. This would be one year later than in Emeryville and San Francisco. Also, except for cost of living adjustments there would be no further wage increase. -more-

In about two weeks, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley -- himself a desperate cartoonish candidate for clemency from the people of Alabama (who he has so profoundly betrayed) -- will be the sole arbiter of clemency for Mr. Vernon Madison, an African-American death row inmate; On May 12, Mr. Madison is scheduled to be executed in the death chamber at Holman Prison, in Atmore, Alabama, for his 1985 conviction for the murder of a Mobile police officer. -more-

Editor's Note: The latest issue of the Pepper Spray Times is now available.

You can view it absolutely free of charge by clicking here . You can print it out to give to your friends.

Grace Underpressure has been producing it for many years now, even before the Berkeley Daily Planet started distributing it, most of the time without being paid, and now we'd like you to show your appreciation by using the button below to send her money.

This is a Very Good Deal. Go for it! -more-

We're going to start making more use of the "Next Issue" button, which appears at the top of the home page as soon as I start posting new pieces for next Friday's new issue, which I'm going to start earlier as much as I can. If you want an advance look at what's in the works, just click on Next Issue and see what lies ahead. On Fridays the Current Issue becomes the Previous Issue and the Next Issue becomes the Current Issue, what you see when you type berkeleydailyplanet.com into your browser. -more-

The 2016 presidential campaign drags on and on. As we grit our teeth at the prospect of six more months of Donald Trump tweets, it’s useful to look back on the past 12 months and consider what we’ve learned about Republicans. -more-

Television advertising and programming promote narcissism. Our culture is one that respects power, being able-bodied, not having "weakness," and other warped ideas of supposed human perfection that don't stand up to enlightened scrutiny. The concept that says, you are "unfit" if you need a medicine to survive, is a flawed concept. -more-

My wife and I arrived in San Francisco in 1971. Since at least that time, getting the homeless into housing or shelters has been a "concern" or a "priority" for every administration. Yet, the number of homeless keeps increasing from about 6,248 in 2005 to about 6,686 in 2015. -more-

On Sunday, May 1, I attended the Opera Parallèle production of The Lighthouse, a 1979 opera by Peter Maxwell Davies. Based on a true story about lighthouse keepers who mysteriously disappeared in 1900, leaving no trace, from a lighthouse on Flannan Island in the Outer Hebrides, The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies is heavy on atmosphere but somewhat spare and chilling in musical terms. The orchestra offers an unusual mix of jangly out of tune piano, guitar, banjo, flexatone keyboard, blaring brass, strings, and exotic percussion. The music is jagged, often piercing, and the singing is largely declamatory. Three singers play the three lighthouse keepers. They seem to switch back and forth between the keepers who mysteriously disappeared, on one hand, and those who discovered that the original keepers had disappeared into thin air, or, possibly, into the sea. -more-

It's rare to have professional Noh actors here from Japan to perform their intensive style, which is physically based in a spare, rigorous form of stage movement and dance that resembles a martial art, the longest-lived continually performed style of theater onstage today, with its origins in the 14th century.

"Nothing is new. Constantly!"

Hank (Ben Ortega) is having a talk with his daughter Marlene (Anna Smith) through the front door. Or trying to; the locks have been changed by his estranged wife. His daughter, wearing a pained expression, stands inside. Her absent mother doesn't want her to open the door or talk to him. The conversation runs through a tense recitation of banalities, punctuated by little explosions of that tension. Everything's inconclusive, with the sense of something mechanical winding down ...

Portuguese Fado singer Ana Moura returned to the Bay Area for a concert Friday, April 22, at San Francisco’s Nourse Auditorium sponsored by California Institute of Integral Studies. To my taste, this concert was a disappointment. I have heard Ana Moura twice before, and both previous times I was enthralled by her dark, dusky voice and impeccable phrasing in the musical genre of Fado, which explores the Portuguese sentiment of saudade, a potent mix of yearning tinged with sorrow. Lately, however, perhaps beginning with her 2012 CD Desfado, Ana Moura has begun ‘de-constructing’ traditional Fado and mixing it with other musical currents. Where Fado is concerned, I am a purist. I was first introduced to Fado at a club in Lorenco Marques (now Maputo) in Mocambique way back in 1963. Here was a middle-aged woman in a black dress with a black lace shawl, accompanied only by a Portuguese guitar, singing her heart out in songs of deep, almost bitter longing. Soon I bought up all the Amalia Rodriguez recordings I could find, reveling in the intense expressivity of this the greatest Fado singer in recent history. -more-

Opens at the Landmark Albany Two on April 29

The appearance of Dough marks another great leap for humankind. Not since Cheech and Chong have marijuana buds had such a co-starring role in a major pop film.

(Related question: How did the East Bay Express NOT review this film? After all, the EBX's current issue devotes the equivalent of three full pages to nothing but pot ads.)

Start with your basic ingredients: Elderly Jewish grandfather (the priceless Jonathan Pryce as grey-bearded Nat Dayan) runs a Kosher bakery in London's East End; the business is called Dayan and Son, but the baker's son is a successful lawyer, estranged from the baking tradition and from his father; the building is owned by a widow who has eyes for Nat but wants to sell the building; out of desperation, Nat hires a teenage refugee from Darfur (compelling newcomer Jerome Holder as Ayyash) as an apprentice in his shop; but, unknown to his mom, Ayyash already has a part-time gig—selling weed in London's shadow economy.

-more-

On Sunday, April 24, California Bach Society gave the last of three concerts dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chorales. Berkeley’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church was the venue for this concert, while the earlier ones were in San Francisco and Palo Alto. Conducted by Artistic Director Paul Flight, California Bach Society is a 30-voice chamber chorus specializing in Renaissance and Baroque choral music. Borrowing a title from one of Bach’s Motets which was heard on this program, Paul Flight labeled this concert Singet dem Herrn (Sing unto the Lord). Bach, as we know, composed many chorales, some of which became integral parts of his cantatas. In the chorales chosen for this program, the hymn melody is sung by the sopranos while the lower three vocal lines provide rhythmic and harmonic support. -more-

Everything I touch
with tenderness, alas,
pricks like a bramble.
Kobayashi Issa (1762-1826)

In my medicine cabinet
the winter fly
has died of old age.
—Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

A Celebration of Haiku & Its Relationship to The Beats & Zen Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1950’s and A Book Release Party for “Haiku Revisited Volume 2 - A Creative Textbook” by Louis Cuneo (Mother’s Hen Publications)

Friday, April 29
7- 9 pm

The Beat Museum
540 Broadway & Columbus
North Beach, San Francisco
415.399.9626

The Beat Museum of San Francisco is pleased to invite the public to a special free event celebrating Haiku in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1950s until now. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and others, through their avid interest in Zen Buddhism, adapted this unique Japanese form to the new free-verse of the American poetic voice. Jack Kerouac would call them “Western Haiku” in his “Scattered Poems” published by City Lights Publications. -more-