Like-

the Mi Pueblo supermarket, especially the bbq’s outside, the meat selections, 4 for 1$ fresh bread rolls and the family atmosphere.

Dislike –

people who perpetuate the false notion that Mills College is in the Oakland Hills, when it is clearly not (see link to map)!

Signed,

A grad. student slowly discovering the truth about the neighborhoods surrounding Mills College.

I fully support attempts to get low income Oaklanders online. I’ll revise my counter proposal now.

1. I stand by my suggestion to get OLPC involved in Oakland schools.
2. Instead of the vouchers I proposed yesterday, perhaps the City could negotiate a lease on a large percentage of the wireless bandwidth that will soon be commercially available, and them make that bandwidth free.
3. Subsidized OLPC laptops could be made available to low income residents after a mandatory web-education class. The beauty of the OLPC is that it will be too inexpensive and too ubiquitous to be a risk for pawning. We might even ban pawnshops from selling them, or engrave them with city logos to discourage a blackmarket.

I reiterate that building a physical infrastructure with city money is a dated idea. A dated idea that was a bad idea even when it was new.

2. Stop spamming my blog. The first time was okay – this is an open thread and I’m fine with people trying to make people aware of public meetings. But any more comments that consist of reprinting wholesale a City announcement that has already been noted here will be deleted.

The City is spending money doing the study to see if investing in wireless is what the community would like to have. Come by and express your opinion.

The Office of the Mayor, Oakland City Council, and Oakland’s Department of Technology are seeking community members’ input on how city services might be enhanced by public wireless access to the Internet.

A series of public meetings will be held in Oakland council districts over
the coming weeks to learn how to increase public Internet access and how
residents wish to utilize wireless broadband technology to boost public
safety and improve the quality of life.

The first meeting will be Councilmember Desley Brook’s District 6 public
meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 17. Community members wishing to
participate should contact (510) 764-2425 or email OaklandWireless@tellusventure.com. Please see attached list for additional district meeting dates and times.

Participants in public meetings who stay for the entire session will be
entered into a drawing to win an iPod shuffle at the end of that session.

For more information or to RSVP, please contact (510) 764-2425 or email
Oaklandwireless@tellusventure.com

To put it bluntly, the physical part of this problem is going to be solved nationally and globally faster than the City of Oakland could get a system approved, funded and built. We would be wasting a lot of money if we tried.

If the city wants to spend money to get low income residents on the web, we should it with vouchers or subsidies, not by building a system.

WiFi is old news. Long-range wireless broadband is coming. Google has recently invested billions of dollars in satellite based web access that will blanket the entire planet, and they seem capable of rolling this out within the next four years. If they fail, American telecom companies are already hard at work rolling out faster and better wireless internet. We can expect high speed wireless internet to be available everywhere in America by 2011.

My alternative proposal to a city-run wireless network is simple and two-fold:

1. Provide vouchers to help our lowest income residents pay for internet access.
2. Lobby the OUSD to get involved with the One Laptop Per Child program, which builds and sells inexpensive, education oriented laptops.

This is a much simpler and much more effective allocation of funds. I am all for getting the internet into the hands of low-income Oaklanders. I actually think that the US needs a Tennessee Valley Authority type agency to bring the Internet to everyone. The gap between the online and the offline today is as dramatic as the historical gap between those with phones and electricity and those without.

A series of public meetings will be held in Oakland council districts over
the coming weeks to learn how to increase public Internet access and how
residents wish to utilize wireless broadband technology to boost public
safety and improve the quality of life.

The first meeting will be Councilmember Desley Brook’s District 6 public
meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 17. Community members wishing to
participate should contact (510) 764-2425 or email OaklandWireless@tellusventure.com. Please see attached list for additional district meeting dates and times.

Participants in public meetings who stay for the entire session will be
entered into a drawing to win an iPod shuffle at the end of that session.

In addition, a town hall meeting will be held on Monday, Sept. 22, 2008 at 5
p.m. at Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland.

For more information or to RSVP, please contact (510) 764-2425 or email
Oaklandwireless@tellusventure.com

I wanted to share upcoming opportunities to hear from both of the Oakland City Council At-Large candidates (this is the only Oakland race with a November run-off election):

1) Monday Sept 15th, 6:30pm. Candidate forum sponsored by the Jack London District Association. (At Portobello) For info see: http://www.jlda.org

2) Saturday Sept 20th. 10am – Noon. Candidate Debate at Allen Temple Baptist Church. Moderated by League of Women Voters. (Will also include candidates for Judge).

3) Friday Oct 3rd. 5:30pm. Oakland City Hall — Hearing Room 1. League of Women Voters “formal” debate. (To be televised too — on KTOP Cable 10).

Best wishes,
-Rebecca Kaplan

1. The E 7th street gang and the Jingletown boys tagging up the neighborhood and tagging over each others’ stuff.

2. People treating the streets without stop signs like a drag race course and the city traffic department that just hems and haws every time we petition for a stop sign on said drag race courses.

3. The used condoms and needles littering the block around the Fruitvale Ave 880 exit.

4. The kids who use the wide intersections as training grounds for sideshow doughnuts.

5. Igancio trying to c*ckblock Tiki Tom’s from moving into the old abandoned Pier 29 restaurant.

6. The big rigs that illegally idle their cabs for longer than 5 minutes (sometimes up to several hours) right in front of my apartment.

7. OPD parking in the White Elephant lot for several hours while they work off their hangovers.

8. The local bar down the street that has a flop house on the second floor and hosts a Raiders biker gang on sundays.

9. The cement plant down the street that throws up huge clouds of particulates, covering all the cars in dust and causing respiratory problems for the neighborhood. They also sometimes dump waste directly into the sewer system.

10. Anytime the E 7th St. gang and the Jingletown boys decide tagging wars aren’t enough and start shooting each other.

Things that are awsome about Jingletown:

1. It’s called ‘Jingletown’. That’s just awesome.

2. East Bay Open Studios and the Holiday Art Walk.

3. The plethora of mosaics built all over our neighborhood. Seriously, they’re amazing and they never get tagged on. A great way to fight blight.

4. The white elephant sale, especially the last day. Everything you can fit into a black trash bag for a dollar!

5. The cal boathouse. MMmm, those college crews boys might be enough to make me switch teams…

6. The sunny Fruitvale weather. Great for growing fruits and veggies.

7. The public market at the Fruitvale Transit village. The best churros in oakland AND the best mexican ice cream in oakland? Sweet.

8. Living around a bunch of wacky artists. It makes life so much more interesting.

9. Living with the mystical unicarns: http://www.unicarnsofoakland.blogspot.com/