Pick up your new Oakbook today

Most regular readers of this blog have probably visited the Oakbook online at one point or another. What you may not know is that starting last December, Oakbook also publishes a kick-ass print magazine. The fifth issue hit the streets yesterday. Read more

What is the City of Oakland’s subsidy to Forest City’s Uptown project?

Somehow, the comments on my election results post turned into a discussion of City subsidies to Forest City and the Uptown Apartments. There seems to be a lot of confusion about our agreement, so I’m just going to explain the whole deal.

The City of Oakland’s total funding contribution to the Uptown Project was $60,031,057. Read more

Encinal Tower renderings

As promised, I now have fancy renderings of Encinal Tower to share with you guys, courtesy of the nice people over at SOM. Read more

Spotted: Near Riot at the West Oakland Multi-Purpose Center

V Smoothe, here. Your one and only source on the scandalous circus that constitutes Oakland politics.

Okay, it wasn’t quite so bad as the headline suggests. But OMFG, last night was like, the mother of all meetings. Well, at the very least, it was hands down the best one I’ve been to in the past year. Read more

Bobb is not Oakland’s only hope.

So I was annoyed by Chip Johnson’s column yesterday, and then even more annoyed by all the fawning comments about how right it was. In case you didn’t read it, the idea is that Dellums should have hired former Emeryville City Manager John Flores to replace Deborah Edgerly, it was a mistake for him to pass up that opportunity and hire Bobb to conduct a search instead, and now Dellums should just hire Bobb as our new City Administrator, because even though he “wasn’t perfect,” he was pretty good. Read more

History Lesson

This isn’t about Oakland, but if you have some time to spare this weekend, I highly recommend heading over to Transbay Blog and checking out Eric’s posts No Subway for You and A Tale of Geary Street. Eric has done a phenomenal job and must have put a huge amount of work into compiling a fascinating history of failed subway plans in San Francisco. Both posts are a must read!

In case you weren’t listening to the radio this morning

KQED Forum was about crime in Oakland and the Guardian Angels, and it was pretty interesting, although it did not exactly raise my spirits about the state of our fair city. Anyway, listen to it here. And hey - listen to the whole thing and you’ll get to hear one of A Better Oakland’s favorite commenters!

Surprise! V Smoothe is annoyed by the “news”

There are lots of things I really should learn. I should learn to enough Spanish to communicate somewhere other than the kitchen. I should learn to sew sleeves and collars that don’t look like they were made by a child. I should learn PHP. And I really, really, really need to learn that when I get home after a lovely evening out, I should not check my RSS feeds because there will undoubtedly be something in them that ruins my good mood.

And so it was last night, as I absentmindedly starting scrolled through the latest headlines while pouring myself some bourbon, and stumbled upon like, the most pointless story ever, in which we learn that in the event the Fremont stadium doesn’t work out, the Mayor would like for the A’s to stay in Oakland, as long as it doesn’t require anything inconvenient from the City. The story prompted the following conversation:

VSMOOTHE: OMG OMG [redacted]
Did you see this?
http://tinyurl.com/5bqxjp
DTO510: Hey.
OMG, I know. Since when is Dellums wanting the As but with no plan news?
VSMOOTHE: Actually, that is news.
He’s changed his position.
DTO510: Yeah?
VSMOOTHE: Do you remember your very first post on Dellums Watch?
DTO510: Ha! Good memory.
I’m mad at the Trib for running an article that’s like a lie.
I mean, I guess it’s not.
Dellums hopes A’s will stay.
Chamber of Commerce wants the A’s to stay.
There’s no plan to get them to stay.
VSMOOTHE: BREAKING: The Trib sucks.

It turns out that my memory isn’t so good after all, because it was actually the second post on Dellums Watch, but the point remains that for the Mayor to even express vague desire to keep the A’s in town is actually a change of heart from when he was campaigning, when he called even the notion of the team staying around a “flight into fantasy.”

So, if you haven’t been following the Cisco Field saga and want to start, you should immediately bookmark the New A’s Ballpark blog, which is totally awesome, even if it is written from a pro-Fremont perspective. Anyway, if Dellums had been reading the new ballpark blog, or, you know, the newspaper, he might have noticed that team owner Lew Wolff has done every damn thing he can to make it perfectly clear to everyone that Oakland is not an option as far as he’s concerned, saying last fall at the Commonwealth Club:

We don’t want to move. We don’t want to start pitting cities against each other, but it’s out of the question we’ll stay in Oakland.

Sigh. Folks, if you want the A’s to stay in Oakland, well, you’ll probably end up being disappointed, but in the meantime, your best bet is to give money to Gus Morrison, former five-term Mayor of Fremont and a strong ballpark opponent who’s running again on an anti-ballpark platform. Then sit around and hope that the EIR mitigations turn out to be just way too burdensome. Meanwhile, cross your fingers that in the next year or two, Oakland is able to get crime (or at the very least the perception of crime) under control so that people aren’t afraid to come here for an evening. Then, in the unlikely event that Fremont falls through, we can start talking parcel consolidation on the central waterfront.

Cronyism at OPD

Sigh.

AC Transit on Bay Area Backroads this weekend

Transit lovers, and maybe transit skeptics too, may want to check out Bay Area Backroads this weekend, which will feature a segment highlighting some of the exciting places in the East Bay you can visit on AC Transit.

The show airs on KRON 4 at 6 PM on Saturday and Sunday. Also, you can watch it online.

Sammie, Sammie, Sammie!

One of my readers kindly brought to my attention a disaster in the making. I don’t know if any of you have been following Angela Woodall’s recent interest in the Lake Merritt Monster, which, honestly, I had never even heard mention of until she wrote about it. Anyway, after an unsuccessful monster hunt, she decided it needed a name: Read more

Oakland on Forum with Michael Krasny

If you didn’t feel completely depressed about Oakland’s government already, you certainly will after listening to yesterday’s show. Of particular note is around the 34 minute mark, Chip Johnson asks David Chai when the search for Edgerly’s replacement began, and even with some forceful pressing, of course gets absolutely no answer. Although he got a big laugh from me when, in response to Chai robotically repeating over and over again “We will have a seamless transition,” he interjects “Not if I can help it!”

Also, if you listen to the whole thing, you’ll get an opportunity to hear yours truly. Other highlights include a call from Patrick McCullough. And you’ll get to hear, unbelievably, David Chai trying to claim that Ron Dellums is responsible for Oakland’s downtown revitalization. (Chip Johnson also calls bullshit on this one. Johnson, BTW, was just totally awesome during the entire show.) Chai also says repeatedly on the program that homicides are down! We are currently at 65 homicides this year, compared to 50 last year. That is a 30% increase!

Today in Montclair has more.

UPDATE: Oakland Focus is now reporting there’s a rumor going around that Edgerly has been placed on paid administrative leave.

UPDATE #2: Now confirmed that Edgerly is on administrative leave until July 31st. Acting City Administrator is, who else, Dan Lindheim. Does this mean I don’t get to write my planned post on him, “Worst CEDA Director ever” for Monday? Eh, I think I’ll do it anyway.

Next Page »