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Category Archives: Oakland

Goodnight Oakland

I haven’t posted—or written, for that matter—any doggerel since my very first post, but since I apparently don’t have much else to say these days, I might as well. I happened to look up at the moon when I went out for my little just-before-bed dog walk last night, and this is the result. My […]

Dirty Pool

Who is subverting the democratic process more? a) Candidate A, who uses his political allies to exploit a loophole in Oakland’s campaign finance law in order to exceed spending caps or: b) Candidates B and C, who use their positions as city council legislators to attempt to modify clarify* Oakland’s campaign finance law 5 weeks […]

When the Dog Bites. When the Bee Stings.

These are a few of my favorite things: coffee, bikes, music, and the reclaiming of public space from the tyranny of the automobile. Imagine how delighted I was, then, to be able to take a picture of a coffee shop, a bike shop, a record shop, and a (temporary, alas) parklet installed on 40th Street […]

This Year’s Soccer Mom?

I just got back from vacation today, and I see a lot more yard signs and window signs for the mayoral and city council races than I did when I left town ten days ago. Looks as if Don Perata is hoping to win the “creepy, shadowy figure lurking on a porch” demographic:

A Representative Sample of One

With people dropping their landlines and screening all their calls with caller ID these days, it’s hard for lonely pollsters to find people to talk to, and harder still to make sure the people they talk to are a representative sample of the electorate. Since I still have a landline (and for some reason still […]

Lake Merritt Denizens

Interesting Times

“May you live in interesting times” —Ancient chinese curse, likely apocryphal Over a year ago I posted this photograph from a vacant lot along the Oakland waterfront. One commenter suggested that it looked like a relic of the dying American economy. Another thought, more colorfully, that it was “maybe the last known hideout of a […]

The Long March

Sport Utility Vehicle

I rode past this custom build on Telegraph Ave last week, and of course I had to stop for photos:

Yet Another Candidate Enters Oakland’s Mayoral Race

I happened to mention the bakery Arizmendi in a brief post about electoral politics on Monday. The only stranger I have ever recognized inside Arizmendi is Joe Tuman, a professor at San Francisco State and a regular political analyst on CBS’s local TV and radio news. I wouldn’t typically write about a year-old sighting of […]

Arizmendi, the Grand Lake Theater, and…the Whitman campaign?

This storefront on Lakeshore Avenue is frequently rented by political campaigns, but I was still a bit surprised to see that Meg Whitman’s campaign had moved in, with a cooperative bakery down the street in one direction and a ferociously anti-Republican movie theater in the other (and just a few hundred yards from where I […]

Sun Rays