Second Lt. Joseph Perkins described it as a small carnival—with its Humvee, Apache Helicopter simulator and climbing wall. A graduate of UC Berkeley, Perkins was one of the army recruiters on campus on Friday. -more-
The Berkeley Marina was closed to incoming and outgoing boat traffic Friday after the incoming tide brought more oil globules and sick birds into its beaches and surrounding parks. -more-
The fenced-in tree-sitters at UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium oak grove gained new allies Wednesday as their counterparts in Santa Cruz climbed redwoods while their allies were driven back by an onslaught of police clubs and pepper spray. -more-
The City of Berkeley dredged the lagoon at the north end of Aquatic Park and dumped the sludge along the shoreline this week. State Water Resources Control Board officials said the city’s Public Works Department never requested a permit for the project. -more-
Amidst jeers, catcalls and demands for the mayor’s recall‚ and Mayor Tom Bates’ threats to clear the rowdy public from the chambers, the Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday to allow two powerful telecommunications companies to place antennas atop UC Storage, a five-story building owned by developer Patrick Kennedy adjacent to the neighborhood at Ward Street and Shattuck Avenue. -more-
Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee members turned thumbs down on point towers in downtown Berkeley Wednesday, voting 13-7-1 for a six-story maximum building height, while allowing for up to ten exceptions. -more-
While Berkeley Police Chief Douglas Hambleton agreed with many of the Police Review Commission recommendations aimed at preventing criminal activity among police officers, he took issue with a few. -more-
The East Bay Regional Park District temporarily closed water access at selected shoreline parks Thursday after an 810-foot container ship rammed into the Bay Bridge Wednesday and spilt oil into the bay. -more-
More than 100 home and business owners may get long-term low-interest loans through the city to add energy efficiencies and/or solar panels to their properties, if a financing plan hatched by the mayor’s chief of staff, Cisco DeVries, pans out. -more-
Community members urged UC Berkeley to keep People’s Park an open space and sharply criticized a report on possible changes to the park at the People’s Park Community Advisory Board meeting Monday. -more-
It’s not at all unusual for the majority of Berkeley voters to wake up with a nasty political hangover the morning after a presidential election. -more-
Amidst jeers, catcalls and demands for the mayor's recall – and threats from Mayor Tom Bates that he'd clear the rowdy public from the chambers – the Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday to allow two powerful telecommunications companies to place their antennas atop UC Storage, adjacent to the neighborhood at Ward Street and Shattuck Avenue. The building is owned by developer Patrick Kennedy. -more-
As Berkeley’s downtown planning panel faces its Wednesday deadline to make, break, or abandon a compromise on raising buildings’ height limits, it might want to look to the decisions of those who’ve considered the issue a bit longer. -more-
High rises and high densities top the agenda for Wednesday’s Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee meeting. -more-
Berkeley could be the first city to pay upfront costs for residents upgrading energy efficiencies and/or going solar. -more-
The Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) voted on Thursday to nominate the Berkeley High School campus to the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district . -more-
The Richmond Community Redevelopment Agency (RCRA) is proposing to build a new housing development called Miraflores on the site of three Japanese American nurseries that date from the early 20th century. The greenhouse roofs are visible from west Interstate 80 near the Cutting Boulevard exit. -more-
For the average citizen, trying to clear up personal information on a government computer—Social Security records, for example—can range between a headache and a bureaucratic nightmare. For California ex-offenders it can be worse, a permanent way of life that sometimes can resemble a trip down into a Victor Hugo or Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel, a hole in which any effort to dig one’s way out only ends in burying oneself in a deeper hole. -more-
City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Police Chief Doug Hambleton will be at the Wednesday Police Review Commission meeting to respond to a subcommittee report on evidence theft issues. -more-
Council rules are clear: councilmembers and mayor may not direct city staff to perform any task—at least not without the city manager’s intervention. -more-
From the outside, Portable 9 looks like any other classroom at Berkeley High. But inside, a mix of sights, sounds and colors hurtles the visitor into a world of oil, paper and fabric. -more-
The “Emily” in the very successful Emily’s List fundraising organization is not a person but an acronym. It stands for the old political slogan Early Money Is Like Yeast, which means that a dollar given early in a campaign is worth many more dollars for the would-be candidate than one contributed at the end. Early dollars can be used to do fundraising for additional funds, and to reach out to undecided voters in time to recruit them as campaign volunteers. -more-
“Downtown Berkeley is at present a pretty desolate and unattractive place, one that many citizens avoid if at all possible.” -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: This letter was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. -more-
Daily Planet columnist J. Douglas Allen-Taylor has been an un-abashed apologist for Mayor Dellums for too long. In a petty feud with Chip Johnson of the San Francisco Chronicle, he uses his recent column to belabor the non-issue that Chip has been treating Mayor Dellums more harshly than former Mayor Brown. In the process, Allen-Taylor sadly misses the real story. Crime in Oakland is out of control and Mayor Dellums has failed to articulate a detailed action plan to address it. I for one applaud Chip Johnson’s tenacity in reporting the issue of crime. The Reader’s Platform in the San Francisco Chronicle relates the growing frustration residents face day after day with ever increasing crime and unresponsive and overworked police. Admittedly, Mayor Dellums did not create Oakland’s crime problem, but he has a responsibility to address it. -more-
I am not a member of the “Concerned Listeners”; nonetheless I am a ”concerned” listener. -more-
For the average KPFA listener, it’s not easy to understand what—if anything—is really at stake in elections for the Local Station Board, nor how to select and rank candidates. They’re divided into myriad slates and factions, all passionately denouncing one another, but they’re all experienced progressives, and at a glance their platforms and platitudes sound pretty similar. And beyond the official election pamphlet, the station itself isn’t doing much to help voters understand the issues: There’s been only one, poorly publicized in-person candidate forum, and as of this writing, more than three weeks after the ballots were mailed, KPFA had yet to begin airing the recorded pitches candidates were asked to make weeks ago. -more-
Although our City Council on Tuesday, Nov. 7 surprised many of us naïve citizens by reversing its position made two weeks earlier in support of South Berkeley residents, it was less surprising if one examines the council’s history. On many occasions, the council had led Berkeley citizens to believe that it was truly sympathetic to neighborhood concerns over RF radiation from cell phone antennas. They cite for their reason federal law as promulgated in the 1996 Tele-Commun-ications Act which pre-empts the city from being able to defend its citizen on the basis of health concerns. -more-
When I interviewed with Councilmember Kriss Worth-ington two years ago regarding my interest in serving on the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), the first thing that I said was that I felt that the existing Downtown Plan was generally fine and that there really was no need for a new plan. When I was later appointed to the DAPAC, I entered the process with a lot of skepticism, hoping that something positive would come out of the process. Two long and exhausting years later, I am still not only skeptical but also concerned about the direction of the DAPAC. -more-
Having lived in Berkeley and other parts of the Bay Area for a number of years (yes, I am one of those dreaded “true believers” indoctrinated at UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning), I occasionally read the Daily Planet online from across the country—mostly for entertainment, it must be said. I’ve watched the debate over tall buildings in downtown Berkeley with some interest and have to say that, despite my “true believer” status and my tendency to agree with the “pro-development lobby group” Livable Berkeley, I find myself in this case sharing the skepticism about the wisdom of filling up downtown Berkeley with buildings of 14 stories and more. But opposition to that kind of height should not translate into support for the anti-growth position so often espoused by the Daily Planet. -more-
Over the past 24-plus years, I have directly participated, either as a volunteer or a paid landscape architecture/urban design consultant, in approximately 15 separate projects that have been actually constructed in Berkeley’s downtown. -more-
Winston Smith was sitting in his cubicle in the Ministry of Truth. It was his job to collect all of the information about the problems with high-rise buildings and high-density development and place it in the tube to be sent down the Memory Hole so that it would be forgotten forever. It had been a busy day; many records had been changed to prove that high-rise “Smart Growth” worked perfectly everywhere it had been tried. He was exhausted. -more-
Tonight (Tuesday), Bruce Kelley, a local developer, will ask the City Council to approve his plans to build a house at 161 Panoramic Way. The lot Kelley plans to build on sits between two blind curves on the narrowest section of this substandard road. While California Fire Code requires roads to be 20 feet wide, Panoramic Way is only 11 feet, 8 inches wide adjacent to the north side of Kelley’s lot. Panoramic Way was designed for 1920s cars and has hardly been upgraded since then. The road is treacherous because of its narrowness, its many blind curves, and the absence of shoulders and sidewalks. Walkers and joggers are forced to the edge of the road to dodge passing cars and delivery trucks. -more-
In 1992, the Earth First conference in Rio de Janeiro brought together people from all over the world, from all disciplines and walks of life, to address the issue of sustainability, especially in relation to the earth’s diversity of species—its living systems. Among other topics, Rio ’92 addressed polices of the rich countries that drove poor people who live off the land to adopt certain “slash and burn” practices detrimental to the environment. Out of Rio ‘92 flowed the United Nations Biodiversity Convention which the United States was one of the last countries to ratify. A similar stance was taken over the Kyoto Protocol that addresses the emission of greenhouse gases that are not sustainable to the earth’s environment. -more-
Evelyn Giardina said in a recent letter to the editor, “And good riddance to you, Manuela. You built a career by telling the city manager and City Council what they wanted to hear, which is not the same as providing good legal counsel. Take your golden parachute and just go.” -more-
“Religion, sometimes, is a continuation of politics by other means,” notes Jon Alterman, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Middle East division, and it was hard to avoid that thought about last month’s conference of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) in Washington, D.C. -more-
Water is the primary problem to solve if we’re to raise plants. I suspect this has always been the case almost everywhere (and offhand I can’t think of what the theoretical exception would be) and likely will be, at least until some theoretical descendants are working hydroponic plantations outside the orbit of, say, Mars, where the problem will be sunlight. Probably there’s some smiling herb grower now who’s working on an electricity-sparing solution to that. -more-
I tend to stare at the ceiling a lot. I think it’s only to be expected. If you sleep on your back or lie on the couch reading Jane Austin (as we all must), you’re bound to spend a certain amount of time staring off into space and guess what’s there … between you and space but your ceiling. There it hangs (Yes, that’s what it’s doing, hanging.) between the walls, with all those cracks and stains and Grateful Dead posters and you think, “Maybe I should do something about this mess but what can I do? It’s a ceiling, not a casserole. I don’t know where to begin!” -more-
Sometimes I miss out on interesting natural phenomena. It wasn’t until last month, while cruising the posters at the biennial State of the Estuary Conference, that I learned about the water snake invasion of Lafayette Reservoir. I’d go check it out, but it’s too late; they’re all gone. Another exotic-species boom gone bust. -more-
Every now and then I see a teenager in one of my trees. From a window I thought at first it might be a small UC student locationally adrift, in a striped shirt. A closer look showed it to be a young Cooper’s hawk, glaring down at me in comparably dauntless fashion. Thanks to Joe Eaton’s bi-weekly column, I can guess that it is drawn to the sparrows and finches at the thistle feeder, though the ducks keep an eye skywards when it appears, and my female cat skedaddles into the house. Smaller than the ducks, she is I hope still too large for the crow-sized Cooper’s. -more-
Tenor Kalil Wilson, 26, who grew up in Berkeley and Oakland, won the annual New York Metropolitan Opera National Council competition regional finals in Los Angeles on Oct. 30 and will sing on-stage at the Met in February in the semifinals. -more-
Once in a great while, everything goes right. It’s not very often, mind you, but it does happen. This time it’s the play that’s ending its two-week run this weekend at the East Bay Jewish Community Center in Berkeley. -more-
We tend to think that once something is committed to film we have it forever. The act of recording seems by its very nature permanent, and often we forget that the very materials used to record are nearly as transient as the images they capture. For the reality is that film is a tenuous medium at best, given to disintegration and, in the case of nitrate films, spontaneous combustion. And this is compounded by the fact that cinema itself was for decades considered merely a novelty, an ephemeral entertainment of virtually no great cultural or historical value. -more-
Poets and world travelers from the international scene of the 1960s and ’70s, Ira Cohen and Louise Landes Levi will read with poet and editor Michael Rothenberg 7:30 p.m. Monday at Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue. Admission is free. -more-
Water is the primary problem to solve if we’re to raise plants. I suspect this has always been the case almost everywhere (and offhand I can’t think of what the theoretical exception would be) and likely will be, at least until some theoretical descendants are working hydroponic plantations outside the orbit of, say, Mars, where the problem will be sunlight. Probably there’s some smiling herb grower now who’s working on an electricity-sparing solution to that. -more-
I tend to stare at the ceiling a lot. I think it’s only to be expected. If you sleep on your back or lie on the couch reading Jane Austin (as we all must), you’re bound to spend a certain amount of time staring off into space and guess what’s there … between you and space but your ceiling. There it hangs (Yes, that’s what it’s doing, hanging.) between the walls, with all those cracks and stains and Grateful Dead posters and you think, “Maybe I should do something about this mess but what can I do? It’s a ceiling, not a casserole. I don’t know where to begin!” -more-
Little Mary Sunshine, at the Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond, is silly, jejune, puerile, even childish. It’s all of these things so successfully that it can be really funny. -more-
Sometimes I miss out on interesting natural phenomena. It wasn’t until last month, while cruising the posters at the biennial State of the Estuary Conference, that I learned about the water snake invasion of Lafayette Reservoir. I’d go check it out, but it’s too late; they’re all gone. Another exotic-species boom gone bust. -more-
Every now and then I see a teenager in one of my trees. From a window I thought at first it might be a small UC student locationally adrift, in a striped shirt. A closer look showed it to be a young Cooper’s hawk, glaring down at me in comparably dauntless fashion. Thanks to Joe Eaton’s bi-weekly column, I can guess that it is drawn to the sparrows and finches at the thistle feeder, though the ducks keep an eye skywards when it appears, and my female cat skedaddles into the house. Smaller than the ducks, she is I hope still too large for the crow-sized Cooper’s. -more-
