InBerkeley

It’s the east end, not the Berkeley end, but still, it’s close…

See ABC7’s  live video here.

News

Bill Fujimoto, who left Berkeley’s Monterey Market earlier this year, has been hired as a consultant by Lafayette grocer Diablo Foods according to a report in Diablo Magazine:

Since Fujimoto’s arrival in July, Diablo Foods has begun offering more seasonal fare from such farms as Full Belly in Capay Valley and Goldbud in Placerville.

Fujimoto, shown above with his wife Judy, says he may open his own store, possibly in Contra Costa county.

Bill Fujimoto: what’s fresh now, June 24 2009
Monterey Market Mystery, June 12 2009

Business, Food, News, People Bill Fujimoto, Monterey Market

Eagerly awaiting the Berkeley reports

When I read the agenda for tonight’s city council meeting, I didn’t notice anything particularly newsworthy. There’s establishing Berkeley as a Tree City USA — no problem there. Even the parking amendments — increasing the rate to $1.50 an hour and expanding pay and display areas — struck me as ordinary council business.

I clearly need to take lessons in agenda exegesis because the proposal from the Peace and Justice Commission to have the city adhere to UN treaties completely passed me by. The Chronicle’s Carolyn Jones is more eagle eyed. The nub of the recommendation is: “That the Berkeley City Council affirm the value of localities complying with relevant UN Treaty recommendations”.

I’m all in favor of UN treaties on human rights, racial discrimination and torture, but why does a municipality need its own compliance with treaties aimed at sovereign states? I have friends that work in the UN, and the last thing that over-stretched organization needs is a deluge of reports from every city in the world with 100,000 or more people. Of course, there’s only one city in the world that would ever contemplate such a thing. I can just imagine the joy of a junior civil servant at the UN at opening her annual package of compliance reports from Berkeley.

I know there’s a history of Berkeley asserting itself on the world stage. Some of that is admirable, but the city really has more pressing problems than wrestling with national treaty obligations.

The city council meeting is open to the public and also available through a webcast.

Photo from United Nations Photo

Government

InBerkeley will always greet newcomers to the Berkeley blog world. So The Berkeley Blog is welcome (there’s also the much longer-running Berkeley Blog by Sylvia Paull — I guess the addition of “The” makes a difference).

The Berkeley Blog is subtitled “provocative thinking from UC Berkeley”. It’s early days, but the content on the site now is pretty thin. I hope as more content flows in, it will look livelier. It seems to have launched with one post per topic.

What’s slightly odd to me is that The Berkeley Blog hasn’t seized the opportunity to bring in the feeds of some of the excellent, well-established UC Berkeley bloggers, like Brad DeLong and Robert Reich. Perhaps that’s all to come.

UC Berkeley