InBerkeley would like to apologize to The Daily Californian for violating its copyright by publishing its photograph by Emma Lantos on a post dated October 9th, titled “Berkeley High teens: too close for comfort?”
We did not have the required permission to use the photo and we have taken it down.
Books Inc opened its Berkeley store at 1760 Fourth Street today. The doors opened early to welcome the crowd that had gathered outside eager to experience a new book store after witnessing so many go the other way in recent years.
Co-owner and president Michael Tucker told Carolyn Said at the Chronicle: “I’m a Berkeley boy, so for me it was absolutely anathema that there wasn’t a general-interest bookstore left here.” Said’s story also explores why an independent chain like Books Inc has managed to survive against the odds. Read it here.
A friend was complaining the other day about the experience of being in downtown Berkeley at lunchtime. It’s a madhouse with all those students milling about, she said. “And some of them are really not that attractive.”
Now, having a son who attends Berkeley High, and is of course very attractive, my immediate reaction was to go on the defensive. However I admit I have never actually experienced the lunchtime rush — I do know around 3,000 teenagers need to find a place to buy lunch and be back in their classrooms in about 40 minutes.
And I can appreciate that having huge numbers of big — for they are invariably big — possibly unruly, teenagers bearing down on you when you are just popping into town to get a replacement battery for your camcorder at RadioShack might be intimidating and a tad unpleasant.
But Berkeley High has been at its current location for 108 years. (The first public high school classes in Berkeley were held in 1880 at the Kellogg Primary School at Oxford and Center Streets adjacent to the campus. In 1901, construction began on the northwest portion of the present site of the high school.)
If anything, the rest of downtown has evolved around it and the UC campus. And, I ask myself, is it not healthy for educational establishments to be at the heart of cities? Or should they be banished to the outskirts so good citizens don’t need to encounter teen spirit up close and en masse on a daily basis?
OK so Berkeley is not exactly chic on the street. Love it though we may, we do not usually think to turn to the city’s thoroughfares and gathering spots for sartorial inspiration.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t stylish people out there. You just have to know where to look, and the Cal campus is – perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not — a good place to start
A group of undergraduates recently launched a fashion magazine and a blog to explore “fashion as more than just cloth on a body”. It’s called Bare (Bear/Bare, get it?) and the students “aim to represent creativity and inspiration, ingenuity, and passion. Passion for art, passion for the aesthetic, and passion for one’s own tastes, biases, and self-expression.”
The blog might dissect the look of a student who is photographed on campus, suggest ways to put together an outfit, or report on the retro fashions on TV series True Blood.
So far it’s all lookin’ good. Check out Bare’s website here.
Photo: ronpenndorf.com
We missed a round-up of bargain bites in the East Bay in last Thursday’s Chronicle.
For those of us focused on Berkeley, the recommendations were as follows:
InBerkeley was out of milk — as per usual — so we went to check out Ashby Marketplace, which has just opened near the corner of Ashby and College in the Elmwood.
First impressions are good. It’s a very nicely designed space — airy, with good lighting and well displayed goods. The emphasis is on healthy, natural food and organic produce. There’s a significant dairy section, fresh produce and baked pastries from the Paris Baker. We leaped to a verdict: it’s Star Grocery meets Market Hall.
Owner Ramiz Hasan (pictured, bottom right) is happy with both comparisons, but says he sees himself as friend rather than competition to both these venerable institutions. This is his family’s 18th store — most are around Haight Ashbury in the city — but it’s the first one he has got to run and he is brimming with ambition for the new venture.
“I have been a Bay Area native for 28 years and I’ve always wanted to own my own store — and I knew I wanted it to be in Berkeley,” he says.
Hasan says he’s bringing in lots of locally produced goodies to his “100% green” shop, such as olive oils and cheeses. He also guarantees that his cheeses cost on average $3 per pound less than at any other independently run vendors in the area — even though he is using many of the same suppliers. “I want to bring my prices down as much as possible and be a real old-school store,” he says
He mentions his niche specialty last: ” I have the largest selection of natural and organic pet supplies among independent stores, possibly in the whole of California,” he says.
Knowing how berserk Berkeley is about dogs, that should make a lot of people very happy.
According to Slice (subtitle: “Crusty, Saucy Cheesy”) Emilia’s Pizzeria on Shattuck had its soft opening on Monday. Owner and pizzaiolo Keith Freilich says he’s taking it slow with just dinner and three types of pies to begin with, but will gradually increase capacity, hours and offerings.
From the photo above, it looks like people like what they’re getting so far.
[Photo: slice.seriouseats.com]
Alan Mutter (above) reports that journalists didn’t kvetch at Googleplex. Personally I don’t believe it, but he was there and I wasn’t:
They said a conference about the future of journalism couldn’t take place without the usual qvetching [sic] about the golden, olden days of journalism, with publishers grieving shriveled margins and editors caviling about the bloggers challenging their previously unassailable wisdom.
But we did it. The two-day Media Technology Summit sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley adjourned today without sliding into the Bermuda Triangle of denial, anger and depression that ordinarily characterizes such shindigs.
Read more about the summit on Mutter’s blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur.
[Photo: MediaBistro.com]
As anyone who drives up and down Grizzly Peak regularly in a Prius knows, Berkeley’s hills are a boon for hybrid cars since energy from braking helps to recharge a car’s battery.
Berkeley already has one of the highest number of hybrid cars per person in the nation, and electric cars are next.
PG&E chairman Peter Darbee told the New York Times that plug-in electric cars are likely to reach Berkeley and San Francisco in significant numbers in the next few years, and plans are under way to reinforce the distribution network to accommodate them.
[Photo: Tracey Taylor]
The City of Berkeley Police Department is asking for the community’s help in identifying the suspects pictured above who are believed to be responsible for two daytime residential burglaries on the afternoon of September 22 on the 1500 and 1600 blocks of Sacramento Street.
Residents at one of the two locations had fixed security cameras inside their home and captured photos of the two suspects.
For more information click here.
Hat-tip: Infospigot
Berkeley High School has been selected as one of five schools in California for a program to prepare students for green jobs, as announced by PG&E at a launch event yesterday.
The New Energy Academy is the result of a partnership between PG&E, the California Department of Education and CaliforniaALL, a nonprofit education group.
Read the full story in The Daily Californian.
Photo: tenasillahe.wordpress.com
I hesitate to suggest you go to hear Michael Pollan speak tonight in Berkeley, not because he isn’t smart and entertaining, but because last time I went up to the campus to hear him hold forth, the place was so packed many of us were relegated to an ante-room and had to settle for watching him on small screens.
Still, that was a free shindig and tonight’s event requires one to buy a ticket, so Pollan’s enormous fan-base may not come out in such full force — even if he is on home turf.
“The Omnivore’s Dilemma” author and J-School prof will be talking about his philosophy—“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” — in Cal Performances’ Strickly Speaking Series, tonight at 8pm at Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. Tickets cost $16–$30, (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org.
[Photo: Ken Light.]
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
Berkeley, as we know, has more than its share of well-regarded authors. A cluster of them have had the call from Hollywood recently and the resulting movies will hopefully be appearing at a theater near you soon.
This month’s Diablo Magazine rounds up the movies that have emanated from four noted Berkeley writers.
The screenplay for “Where the Wild Things Are”, directed by Spike Jones and adapted from the much-loved children’s book by Maurice Sendak, was written by Berkeleyite Dave Eggers.
Berkeley resident Ayelet Waldman recently attended the premiere of “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits” based on her novel of the same name.
Her husband Michael Chabon is seeing two of his books translated to the silver screen: “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”, directed by Stephen Daldry, and “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union”, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
And Michael Lewis, who also lives in Berkeley, is hoping to see Brad Pitt play the role of Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane in an adaptation of his bestselling book “Moneyball”.
[Photos, left to right: Waldman, Chabon, Eggers and Lewis.]
The announcement by philanthropist Warren Hellman (left) that he is pledging $5 million to kick-start a new online Bay Area news service in conjunction with KQED, UC’s journalism school and possibly the New York Times has prompted a variety of responses.
Robert Gammon in The East Bay Express probably came out most strongly against the initiative, saying it represented a threat to Bay Area journalism as well as to the long-term fortunes of journalism students in the area.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given his position as an adjunct professor at the J-School, Silicon Valley new-media consultant Alan Mutter passed no comment on the development and merely reported it on his blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur.
Susan Mernit, who is about to launch hyperlocal blog called Oakland Local, was ambivalent on her own blog, but concluded that, “As much as I worry that Hellman’s project will suck $$ from my own little project and other wonderful smaller sites I see emerging, the Hellman project feels more like a replacement for something we’ve lost — the big (bloated?) newsrooms of the corporate papers — not the local sites that are close to their community.”
All the major news media have reported the initiative whose website can be found here and its Facebook page, launched just today, has already attracted about 240, mostly encouraging, followers.
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