OAKLAND

Tips on streets to check out in East Lake?

As close to Champa Garden as possible :)

Welcome welcome. Alas I am under the weather via some bug I must have picked up during my holiday home and the next couple of days at least I'm going to lie low. Will check in on here as I feel more coherent.

If yr bored rn I am DJing at the Knockout in SF

Also from Eastlake resident and former ilxor Chaki: you should go to rockin crawfish. I am North/west lake so i haven’t been

Anyone want to get together Sunday?

Me!

Wait I thought Chaki was from LA? No?

Chaki grew up in LA but has been in the Bay for decades afaik

A little over one decade iirc, definitely not 2

Anyway maybe sunday go get food at burma superstar or teni east?

Probably need to pass just because this cold's feeling bad. We'll see how I feel Sunday morning.

OAKLAND/SF ilxors I'm sorry to have missed you this go-round, but I may be making a 2020 appearance or two so let's try again then?

Take homes from this trip:
Like Temescal and Piedmont Ave areas. Don't know how to pronounce Temescal.
Found the perfect place for the horse(s) in Castro Valley, also a good back-up place in case first place didn't work out.
Both of us are having some East Bay angst given our SF yearnings, so current plan is to rent something in SF for a year and see how the horse commute goes. I may look for an East Bay or telework job to ease the pain?
Don't know how to pronounce MUNI. Is it MYEW-nee or MOO-nee?
Bay Area is awesome. Ate so goddamn well and enjoyed the weather so much. SF is so damn pretty!
I love kumquats.

My ex who is a 4-decades (& 4th gen) native of the Temescal neighborhood always says "tem-e-SCAL" (slight emph. on terminal syllable)
MUNI = Myu Knee..
Kumquats are rad

Was it cold? I was out of town for most of the holidays.

"Both of us are having some East Bay angst given our SF yearnings, so current plan is to rent something in SF for a year " you'll pay almost double for this unless you get lucky. I'll stan for the East Bay all day long. But maybe that's just me being bitter because I never managed to move to SF despite planning to multiple times throughout the 90's.

I've always heard teh-MESS-cul in LA (there's a Temescal Canyon here).

people up here say 'temescal' in every conceivable way, I don't know that anyone will claim that you're saying it incorrectly.

The emphasis is on the second syllable

I live in an absurdly convenient spot in SF with rent control and regret not moving to Oakland when it was still affordable.

For better or for worse, I'm coming from an expensive city, and the only major sticker shock I experienced was gas prices

Apparently Keanu is in the area through February ...

Is this a good thing? (Not trying to be leading -- since the city admin is behind it, I'm wondering what's going on.)

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13874382/state-senator-introduces-legislation-to-protect-live-work-and-warehouse-residences

I don't know exactly how much I can say without violating my NDA, so I'm erring on the side of caution, but ... the answer is yes, this is a good thing.

In terms of background, now that I have read the article. The article was very cleverly/cautiously structured in terms of who was quoted and what they were quoted as saying ... and that this is related to IRS regulations regarding lobbying by non-profit organizations.

Noted and thanks.

I suppose I can say, "the drafting of this legislation involved outreach and solicited input from non-profit organizations working in this area"

eviction moratorium city council meeting happening rn

We contacted our landlords yesterday about a rent decrease and their counter offer was $300 off for 3 months, to the be repaid immediately. Which doesn’t help us at all. I want to threaten to just not pay any rent but Jordan is more reasonable than me.

Anyway, once the shutdown is over I’ll be asking them to come fix all the stuff we haven’t asked them to fix in 6 yrs.

If I didn’t have a dog and didn’t find moving so stressful, I would move out right now and let them suffer. We’ve always paid our rent on time, accepted a massive rent increase over the 6 yrs, always fix things ourselves, maintain the yard ourselves (even though by emeryville remnant law, they’re supposed to).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPTMdO_15MQ

hard to fathom all of those people were lost

There is a fire station 1.5 blocks away. They were on the scene in 3 minutes. They were unable to rescue anyone who hadn't made it out in those 3 minutes.

God. Five years.

Four rather. Feels like five.

xxp - there are plenty of articles easily searchable that explain how and why and the structural issues (both literally and figuratively) for which this was just "not if but when" ... I don't need to do my annual executive summary ... I spent yesterday working at a job that exists because of this ...

Add to the "only in the bay area" list of woke school district bungles:

"Oakland teacher points finger at 'rich white parents' in reopening debate"

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/All-the-rich-white-parents-suddenly-concerned-15970678.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-CP-Spotlight

"Bethany Meyer tweeted on Feb. 17, "All the rich white parents suddenly concerned about mental health can take a seat. Most of them are causing their kids' anxiety by pressuring them to complete asynchronous work and feeding into their sense of entitlement. Sorry/not sorry."

""After a harrowing winter surge, it is encouraging that Alameda County is on the cusp of entering the red tier," Keith Brown, the president of the Oakland Education Association, wrote in an email Monday. "I’m deeply appreciative of our healthcare workers and to everyone who followed shelter in place guidance. I also want to acknowledge the very real stresses felt by students, parents and teachers during this time. OEA has consistently fought to increase mental health support for our students, and will continue to do so. As we move forward, I am feeling hopeful that lower community spread, multi-tiered safety measures and vaccinations will continue to bring us closer to a safe return to in-person instruction. In order to get there together, everyone in our OUSD community will need to treat each other with respect and empathy as we move forward."

Autumn McDonald felt Meyer's Tweet implies only white parents want their children back in school. More so, as a Black mom, she's upset to hear Meyer—who is not Black—purporting to know what Black people are thinking.

"I think there are a lot Black people who will not know this has even happened," said McDonald, who has a kindergartner and third grader in the district. "They won’t even know this voice is out there speaking for them. I, as a Black women, can’t say where Black people do or don't want schools to reopen. But I do personally want my kids back in school. I need my kids to be back in school. My husband and I are working parents. The level to which our kids not being in school has caused stress for us and stress for them is beyond the pale. The other thing is that I believe in the science. I know a lot of parents of color who believe in the science. I wonder why there’s an assumption, 'Oh gosh, all the Black people don’t want to do it.' Black people have a lot of reason to be concerned with anything related to our trust in the health care system ... that all said it doesn’t change the fact I still believe in the science."

I am heartbroken and outraged by today’s announcement that Mills College will cease to be as we know it.

Personally I owe a debt of gratitude to Mills College. Five decades ago, I was able to attend college and earn a degree as a young single mother on public assistance who often had to bring her sons to class – something that would have been impossible at many other colleges or universities.

It is where I met my mentor, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, and it is where my passion for public service and politics began.

Powerful statement from Congresswoman Barbara Lee about the closure of her alma mater - Mills College in Oakland. She says she’s outraged and is asking the Board of Trustees to reconsider their decision. pic.twitter.com/Bc4HTduj60

— Kate Larsen (@KateABC7) March 18, 2021

Saw that yesterday; kind of shocking really, Mills is probably the reason I'm in Oakland (ex-GF went there). One of the last women-only universities in the country..."Better dead than coed!" was the rallying cry. (I think men were eventually allowed in for post-grad work.)

Huge part of east bay culture, I had no idea that they were struggling like this.

I had a pretty good sense that they had serious financial problems tbh. I would get paid to guest lecture to a business skills for artists class every year for a few years, and then that gig stopped. Also, several years ago (maybe more like 10 though?) they really ramped up promotion for their business school and MBA/MPP programs, which to me indicated that they were trying to make up for shortfalls in regular undergrad revenue by trying to get more profitable graduate enrollment for these post-grad certifications.

They also were doing the typical thing where tenured professors would retire and they would be replaced with adjuncts.
The music department got major budget cuts a few years ago, and a few professors chose early retirement to save other faculty/staff/program cuts being made

As far as women-only universities go, Smith College is still a going concern, and recently featured in the racism thread.

My wife chose to get her MFA at St. Mary's rather than Mills, which she regretted a few times, but not now. That said I would not be surprised to see this happen to St. Marys also in a few years. They've also been pushing their MBA very heavily. It's a bit surprising to me in general that these smaller private universities have been struggling, I suppose the bigger privates are eating up all the endowment money available in the world.

lol one of my close friends used to work in the fundraising dept. for St. Mary's

Honestly, I don't feel surprised that smaller private universities are struggling. For many years I've felt like there's been this higher ed bubble fueled by the availability of student loans. Like, if people had to come up with $60k a year of their own money to go to Mills or St. Mary's ... would they? Or would they just go to a state school, or do two years at community college and transfer? ...

It's like housing prices during the sub-prime mortgage era

Housing prices for Mills' students is definitely a part of it. The area around Mills is gentrifying quick.

Our internet has been down since Saturday: apparently someone shot at a Comcast... thing... and then they shot at the techs when they turned up and tried to fix it?? There’s nothing about it in the news, this info came from Comcast CS. It’s very fuckin weird.

I switched to Sonic and love it fwiw

me too!

I have AT&T -- it is reliable

We had multiple nightmare experiences with at&t which is why we switched to Comcast! They finally got it working again late this morning.

What a relief!