As a professional gardener, I can tell you City of Oakland gardeners do a crap job. Peer into one of the planters in front of City Hall and you will see they are full of weeds. 15 minutes to pull them out of one planter, yet they stayed that way all summer. I sat there one day drinking my coffee while the head gardener spent twenty minutes yapping on the phone, and the other two gardeners kept one eye on him while pretending to trim the bushes (crookedly) and edge the lawn (which required 10 minutes spent putting gas in the weed whip, a three minute job at best). A regular gardening staff for any commercial company would have kicked their ass in terms of getting stuff done.

City Center is privately owned and has its own gardeners, who do a much better job. Not my style, but they keep it looking nice. It could use a lot more planters, though.

OSP: “From the images, this park looks awful. I hope it is just the images, parks are notoriously hard to photograph well. Hopefully I’ll get over there at this weekend to have a look for myself.”

I think it’s actually a pretty well designed park. Once the vines grow up over the arbor, it’s going to be quite nice. The seat wall is great- benches I can do without, because at most usually one person sits on a bench at a time, which is a waste- the seats at Splashpad Park are better. I’m happy there’s minimal grass to water, and the plantings are *pretty* well chosen for the climate. There’s a bit too much hardscape, IMO, but now that I now it’s been designed for an oversized sculpture, I understand (even if I don’t like it or the sculpture). The tall tables with seats I actually like better than the benches, because I’ve seen families sitting at them eating lunch. They also seem like reasonably low maintenance outdoor furniture. It’s laid out in such a way that you can have a sense of separation from other areas if you want to be alone, yet nothing is really isolated or hemmed in. It’s going to feel quite a bit different when the plantings grow in, and will certainly be more shady in the morning when the new condos are built. Compared to the usual practice of planting a lot of incompatible, inappropriate, high maintenance, and just plain ugly color and design choices (I’m looking at you, Lake Chalet), I think this little park is well considered, even if it’s not to everyone’s taste.

Now back to the matter we left. I just went through Mario Chiodo’s website, and I admire the craftsmanship of everything up there. I admire the man’s output too. And there’s plenty of of stuff in his portfolio that I’d rather see in that park. The “Brass Band Relief” piece he did in New Orleans is gorgeous, and what’s more it honors culture instead of icons.

I have a problem more with picking 24 political leaders and one author, some of whom aren’t even dead yet, and presuming that they all deserve to be recognized by the City of Oakland. Presuming that Lincoln, Thich Nhat Hanh and Maya Angelou are worthy of places on the same monument is premature.

What’s more, publicly funded art that honors politicians is sort of a time-delayed conflict of interest. It’s toadyism drawn out over centuries. Frank Ogawa got a Plaza. Was that the voters’ idea or an initiative of a select group? Anybody on this blog want to guess which Oakland elected official will be the next to be immortalized on the public dime? Maybe we should do a poll on that.

Yeah, I know “Remember Them” is already a done deal. But it bugs me because I feel like I’m being pandered to in a very shortsighted way. The political leaders chosen for this memorial only have one thing in common. In the blink of history that we live in, these people are popular among the dominant political ideology of our region. In 10 years or 20 or 50, the choices will no doubt seem arbitrary, or at best a lesson in who was popular in 2008.

When public money is spent on monumental art, frankly, I think the monument should honor the public. When local public money is spent on monuments, the monuments should honor members of the local public. If I was king and got to pick who ended up in bronze in this town, the only name that comes to mind at the moment is Chauncey Bailey. I might add Frank Rose, but I certainly hope he sticks around for a good long while before he gives us reason to build him a monument. If Oakland chooses to honor external heroes instead of it’s own, we short our local heritage, identity, and pride.

******

Chiodo’s “The Money Couple”, by the way, is FREAKING AWESOME. Hardly appropriate for a public park in Oakland, but awesome all the same.

As for the CDBG board, I can only speak for myself, but I certainly don’t want to go out of my way to hamstring a teen center. I do, however, see other initiatives with great promise. K-Dub’s skate park, for instance, really deserves all the help it needs to get done and get done soon. Anyone who was at the event Chinaka Hodge put together last weekend knows the potential of K-Dub’s project. Skateboarding has become a force for peace and colorblindness that makes me smile everytime I think about it.

Nadel walked into a room in September and told people she was taking all the money. 100 or more people in the room freaked out. Nadel backed off and told the room that the CDBG board would operate as it had in the past after all.

The following month, a Cecily Burt piece appears which in my opinion, completely downplayed the furor of that meeting. That in and of itself bugged me. But it’s just my opinion. The KALW tape backs me up, but it’s just my opinion. What really bugged me, and what I hope really bugs you, Ms. Burt, is this:

The $100k set aside for the teen center mentioned in your article had not previously been mentioned to the public or to the District 3 CDBG board. I sincerely hope Ms. Nadel failed to tell you this before you went to press. Did she tell you or didn’t she?

If she didn’t tell you, that would mean that she tricked you into making an announcement for her. You would be innocent, and she would be both manipulative and spectacularly unprofessional about communication with her constituents. And it would be the second time in less than a month that Ms. Nadel’s approach to leadership regarding CDBG would be highly questionable.

If Ms. Nadel did tell you that you were about to print a super passive-aggressive announcement from her, I really must ask if you think it was OK to be complicit.

Please at least let us know whether or not you knew you were printing a surprise ahead of time.

I’m really pleased by the uptown development. This development along with the renovation of the Fox Theater, the new restaurants and the sidewalk and landscaping improvements on Telegraph Avenue, will make Uptown a destination neighborhood for downtown Oakland.