InBerkeley

It won’t officially launch until mid-August September 1, but The Hub—Berkeley’s new “habitat for innovators” in the David Brower Center—offered a taste Monday evening of the stimulating public events it plans to offer. A sold-out audience crowded into the center’s Richard and Rhoda Goldman Theater for “Money, Mobs, and Media,” a lively and candid discussion about mobilizing action for change. The panelists were the founders of three of the Bay Area’s most influential social-change organizations—Matt Flannery of Kiva, Steve Newcomb of Virgance, and Ben Rattray of Change.org—who shared stories about the challenges and rewards of blending entrepreneurship with activism.

“Tonight is the beginning of a seed sprouting,” said Alex Michel, managing director of Hub Bay Area, in his introduction. “People with ideas for change need a living, nourishing habitat, and we’re building that habitat upstairs.”

The Berkeley Hub, at 2150 Allston Way (less than a block from the Berkeley BART station), is the first U.S. location of a worldwide Hub network that was founded four years ago in London. (There are Hubs in 12 cities on four continents; a San Francisco Hub is in the works.) According to Hub “community builder” Meredith Walters, Hub Bay Area got its start when Tim Freundlich and Kevin Jones, co-founders of San Francisco investment firm Good Capital and creators of the Social Capital Markets conference, “realized that people in the Bay Area were itching for a place to come together to connect around social enterprise, social investing, and generally using business to create a better world.” They raised money and got permission from Hub World to launch at the Brower Center, itself a hub for environmental and socially conscious organizations. (The center’s other tenants include Earth Island Institute, Green Jobs Network, and the Redford Center.)

The Berkeley Hub will include individual petal-shaped tables, a communications station, a kitchen/café, a window workbar, and the “Hubble,” an enclosed meeting space for up to eight people whose frosted-glass walls can be written on. Hub memberships are available at various levels, from Hub5 (allowing five hours’ access per month) to founding member.

Hub Bay Area is also creating a network of mentors, sponsors, and people who can contribute professional skills to fledgling social enterprises. Find out more about joining or supporting The Hub; for information about attending or sponsoring an event, send an email to bayarea.hosts@the-hub.net or call 415-624-5881.

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We came for the tartare but stayed for the “suite” tour.

The newly renovated Shattuck Hotel held an open house this evening, during which tastes were offered from the revamped menu and viewings of the spruced-up rooms and suites.

The dining room is a welcome change from the previous incarnation of the space with classic white and bright walls and a much more open feel. The signature drink of the night, as described by the bartender, was a rhubarb-strawberry cocktail sprayed with berry coulis in the shape of a “5″ on top of egg white foam (pictured).

Restaurant Five is named for the senses and is headed up by Chef Scott Howard. Samples such as beef brisket with tomato jam, goat cheese and smoked jamon crostini, tuna tahini tartare and butterscotch candied-walnut parfait were served to a capacity crowd of uncharacteristically well-dressed Berkeleyans.

The hotel rooms displayed during the evening overlook Shattuck and are equipped with modern amenities including free wifi. Pictures of Berkeley adorn the walls.

Above all, it’s nicer to have a restaurant opening in Berkeley than one closing, and the Shattuck Hotel fills a much-needed niche in the heart of downtown.

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Petrale sole with Dungeness crab mashed potatoes and asparagus and citrus butter, or Ahi tuna tartare with avocado, vanilla bean, chorizo and scallions? Just two choices on the menu at Five, which opens tonight in the newly renovated Hotel Shattuck Plaza.

The restaurant is under the stewardship of  “big-name” chef Scott Howard who, according to Eater SF, is “making his anticipated return to the kitchen after his eponymous restaurant shuttered (followed by a brief stint at Larkspur’s Left Bank)”.

[Source: Eater SF. Full menu can be seen at Thrillist.]

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A team of twelve teenagers was put in charge of designing a new $5.2m Berkeley-Albany YMCA teen center which will begin construction this fall on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Center Street in downtown Berkeley. 

YMCA CEO Fran Gallati admits the experience has not been pain free, but “it’s been a good experiential process for these kids and we’ve had a lot of good adults guiding them”. 

Read the full story in the Berkeley Voice.

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If you love it, you love it.

Devotees of In-N-Out, the quirky Californian burger chain with the not so secret secret menu, have launched a campaign on Facebook to try to persuade the company to set up shop on Shattuck Avenue.

Put an In-N-Out on Shattuck has attracted 977 members so far.

On the group’s wall, David Colin Joseph from Lick Wilmerding High School shares his view that “In-N-Out would be the talk of the town” and  “Shattuck would be the epicenter of Berkeley”.

But several fans, many of them students at Berkeley High, are skeptical it will happen. Max Berstein, for instance, writes: “It would be raw…they tried to get one a while back when the Burger King that was near McDonald’s was closing, but you know Berkeley people, they weren’t having it no matter how much ‘better’ a fast food place it is!”

[Hat-tip: Ben Knobel.]

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How refreshing to be reporting on a retailer that is expanding rather than closing up shop.

According to Diablo Magazine, Elmwood Stationers will be opening a second store in Lafayette.  The store, which has being going strong since 1966 on College Avenue, will share space with custom jewelry shop Ware Designs, in a space near Trader Joe’s.

I patronize this store for its personal service rather than schlep down to Office Depot in Emeryville. And, I don’t know if it’s new, but their website’s pretty nice too.

Meanwhile, in case you missed the news, two art galleries recently opened in Berkeley: Hazel Wolf Gallery is in the new downtown David Brower Center; and Alphonse Berber Gallery is in a Julia-Morgan-designed building on Bancroft Way opposite the UC campus.

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Berkeley’s Downtown, the three-star restaurant on the corner of Shattuck and Addison, is closing for a while over the summer. According to Eater SF:

Downtown has decided to shutter for the months of July and August. We’re told that the restaurant is planning on coming back for the fall semester, but there’s a chance that, in the meantime, there will be a remodel… The specific shutter date is still up in the air, but the strongest possibility is that Downtown’s summer vacation will commence on the last weekend of June. Kindly adjust your schedules.

Downtown, opened in 2001 by alums of Chez Panisse and Bay Wolf, is a favorite haunt of theater and concert-goers — and they usually do a grand job getting their French-influenced dishes to you in time for curtains up.

[Photos: www.downtownrestaurant.com.]

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