“Ignite your Possibilities”

Skylier Wear Economic Development Forum is hosting its first annual 5 Series Holiday Events followed by a Fashion Show Gala.

September 5, 2009, Saturday from 12:00pm – 8:30pm; Z Cafe & Bar, 2735 Broadway, Oakland

Skylier Wear Economic Development Forum presents the first of the 5 events “Beauty Parlor”, a fun Make-up day recognizing and appreciating Beautiful Women. It is a day for pampering and preparing for our Holiday Shopping Spree Series. You will have a wonderful experience selecting and purchasing the make-up of your choice.

Skylier Wear Collection currently located here in the Prescott Oakland Point neighborhood, at 912 Peralta Street, is a sole proprietorship run and operated by Skylier A. Blanchard-Crowder.

Skylier, a designer for 16 years, see her customer base as Junior (10 years old to 16 years old), Missy (18 year old to 25 years old) and Misses (25 years old to 45 years old).

Skylier states "My customers are practical yet have a sense of style and class. They are not afraid to accessorize an outfit with a bright color, sense color is the very in look. Some of my customers will still be drawn to your more solid base color chart. Customers will enjoy the diversity of product I offer. Their personalities are lively and upbeat. They appreciate the value of 100% cotton products for themselves and want to provide year round comfort. Some of their buying behavior will be impulse purchases – what most of us do when we see just the right thing. Capturing young aspiring business women and some of their buying habits will be repeat purchases for friends and family members."

Designers wishing to participate in this event can contact Skylier at (510) 919-6644 or Skylier@skylierwear.com

Eat Real Festival August 28-30, 2009

...a mostly free celebration of sustainably produced street food,

coming to Jack London Square, August 28-30.

Time: Fri, 4PM - 9PM, Sat, 10 AM - 9PM, Sun, 10AM - 5PM

Eat Real shares similar local, sustainable values with the slow food movement, but it also focuses on accessibility and affordability.

Eat Real will mix restaurant-driven, trendy food carts like the crème brulée truck and sexy soup lady with the traditional taco trucks and barbeque outposts that have been feeding city workers for years.

A comparable number of farmers and food artisans from nine Bay Area counties will set up stalls inside the Jack London Market where they will sell and sample products. There will also be 40 Northern California microbreweries in the beer shed.

Oakland restaurants participating in the event include Camino, Pizzaiolo, Brown Sugar Kitchen, Miss Pearl’s Jam House and Radio Africa.

Several new Jack London Square businesses, including Bocanova restaurant and Miette Patisserie, will open in conjunction with the festival.

Attendees must pay for beer and food, but vendors agreed to keep their food offerings under $5, and an eight-beer tasting costs $20 in advance.

Proceeds from the event will benefit La Cocina, People’s Grocery and Buy Fresh, Buy Local, three nonprofits that support food entrepreneurs.

How do I get there? It's easy to get to the square by ferry, train, bus, car, bike, or BART—the Lake Merritt BART stop is only six blocks away.

SF Business Times sduxbury@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4963

Oakland's Art & Soul

For those of you wanting to shift away from the doom and gloom of this past weekend, I submit the following Angela Woodall's article on the Art and Soul Festival.

Here are some excerpts from that article:

Music and people flowed through downtown streets Saturday, even before the noon opening of Oakland 's annual Art and Soul festival.

Ten city blocks around City Center and Frank H. Ogawa Plaza were covered with a seemingly endless variety of vendors selling everything from Cajun crawfish étouffée to alpaca shawls.

Nimble young acrobats turned flips in the middle of the closed-off streets, which are usually filled with cars instead of painters, ceramists, T-shirt printers, hat makers, book sellers, jewelry creators and dress designers showing off their wares.

Shirley Leeper, of San Leandro , was following the peel of singers echoing from the gospel stage on 12th Street and Broadway, where a choir used their vocal chords to warm up the crowd early in the afternoon. Leeper said she has attended the festival every summer for five or six years because of the diversity of people, vendors and music.

"It's very pleasant. Very likable," she said.

Singer and Grammy-award winner Shawn Colvin was the draw at the KFOG rock stage for three women from San Francisco , who attended Art and Soul for the first time.

"There's a little more variety here than street fairs in San Francisco ," Miriam Marriner said.

The size of the festival impressed Sarah Raymond. "You can easily spend all day here walking around," Meghan McDonough added.

Some of the headliners included:

On Saturday some of the headliners were Shawn Colvin, BoDeans, Ramana Vieira, Mo'Fone, Dear Indugu, Bishop Walter Hawkins, Kevin Moore and SEPIA

On Sunday, the headliners were Will Downing, Bobby Caldwell, Frankie Lee, Chino Espinoza & Los Dueños Del Son, Caravan of All Stars, Zakiya Hooker, Fito Reinoso and Su Ritmo Y Armonia

For a complete line-up of the headliners go to the Art & Soul Oakland site here

COMPARED TO WHAT?

A play about two Pullman porters and a local club woman attempting to convince them to join the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

This play is by local playwright Judith Offer, who also wrote CASINO! a musical about an Indian casino in the Fox.

When: Saturday, August 14th at 2:00 p.m.

Where: Main Library Auditorium, on 125 14th Street

AND

When: Sunday, August 15th at 3:00 p.m.

Where: The Noodle Factory, 1255 26th Street

Both are free events. For questions, call (510) 444-0257.

The actors for the readings include Wendell Brooks, a teacher at Berkeley High, known by many in Oakland for his incredible bass singing voice; Mark O'Neill, familiar to community theatre mavens; Sabrina Brown, an operatic soprano, who with Mr. O'Neill was featured in Ms. Offer's A SHIRTWAIST TALE; Damon Williams, who performs in Vallejo and with a traveling group.

Ms. Offer researched the play over a period of a couple of years, in the AAMLO, the Sacramento Railroad Museum, and on the Streets of West Oakland. "Oakland is an old railroad town", she explains. I've always thought something in my work should reference the local train industry. The Pullman porters and all their determined hard work that built up the African American community really appeal to me."

Other Pullman Porter Resources:

16th Street Southern Pacific Train Depot

Pullman Virtual Museum / Pullman State Historic Site

Richmond Pullman Porters

Lives on the Railroad

The Life of the Pullman Porter

The Work of a Pullman Porter

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Wikepedia

Phillip Randolph, Wikepedia

Pullman Company, Wikepedia

The Road Taken, Documentary of African-Canadian Railway Porters

Phillip Randolph Institute Historic Pullman Foundation

Prescott Oakland Point to receive ARRA Funds

According to an Oakland Housing Authority (OHA) press release on August 6th, our neighborhood will receive stimulus funding for repairs and upgrades:

Campbell Village located at 1657 10th Street was built in 1940, and is it is composed of 19 buildings encompassing Campbell Street, 8th street, Willow Street and 10th Street and includes 154 units and four large parking lots. Each building in Campbell Village will receive new exterior painting; new roof eves, Solar panels, and all fencing will be painted. In addition, the parking lot gates will be removed, and each lot sealed and striped. Total Grant: $480,000

Peralta Villa located at 960 Mandela Parkway was built in 1993 and spans four city blocks (Prescott Oakland Point southeast boundary) between Mandela Parkway and Union Street and includes 390 units. This complex will receive a complete roof replacement and exterior painting, double pane energy efficient windows, parking areas resealed and striped and equipment bays constructed. A zeroscape[1] landscape redesign with drought resistant plantings will be planted. Total Grant $1,500,000

These repairs and upgrades should complement the work currently underway by the Central Station Development efforts.

[1] The industry definition is simply a landscape design where there is little or no ongoing maintenance.

Central Station development taking shape in West Oakland

New condominiums sit empty around the city as buyers stay away, but moving vans have been steady visitors to new developments along Wood Street in West Oakland.

The new homeowners are breathing life into what had been a no man's land wedged between the Prescott (Oakland Point) neighborhood of West Oakland and Interstate 880, an area that until recently was better known as a repository for truck parking and illegal dumping. They are walking their pets around the neighborhood and establishing Neighborhood Watch groups and e-mail communities to cut down on crime.

Small steps, sure, but it's only the beginning, area residents say.

A redevelopment plan that Oakland city leaders approved four years ago calls for as many as 1,500 new homes — collectively called the Central Station project — to replace 26 dusty acres surrounding a restored Southern Pacific train depot. The depot has been shuttered since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The busts in housing and banking dogged sales in the 163-unit Pacific Cannery Lofts, one of the first of the developments to get under way.

But things have loosened up in recent months: Fifty-seven units, nearly all in the historic Pacific Coast Cannery building, have been sold and 21 have closed escrow, said Gail Stark, sales director. Another 15 townhouses will go on sale this weekend, she said.

... the 130-unit Zephyr (Gate) Creek development filling in the blocks between 12th and 14th streets is constructed in stages as units are sold. People move in as soon as their townhouses are finished, so there are no empty buildings, said Sandy Richert, sales manager for Pulte Homes. So far 74 homes have been built and sold; 63 of those have closed escrow and the new owners have moved in.

David Ghadimi, 47, a union electrician and jack of many trades who was laid off in September after finishing work on the California Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park, is also a pioneer of sorts.

He moved to an industrial loft across the street from Central Station four years ago and decided recently to build a cafe. Galatea Café opened six weeks ago, filled with colorful art created by his girlfriend and offering free Wi-Fi and a range of coffees, smoothies, and breakfast and lunch fare. There is a chessboard on one of the tables and Ghadimi, who is also a massage therapist, plans to open a yoga studio upstairs.

'Crime really went down'

Ghadimi said he has noticed a big change in the neighborhood since the vacant blocks have been filled in with new homes and new residents.

Ghadimi attributed that drop partly to police responding sooner to 911 calls, but the strength in numbers fueled by new residents moving to the area helped, too.

Several developments will shape the Central Station project. In addition to the Pacific Cannery Lofts and Zephyr Gate townhouses, the 99-unit Iron Horse affordable rental complex should open this fall. However, construction has been delayed on a large market-rate apartment complex on a key block between 14th and 16th streets, closest to the old train station.

Full Story, here

Condo buyers find it tough to get mortgages

Vegie Recipe of the Week

Vegie Recipe of the Week: Marinated Swiss Chard

Ingredients: 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup sun dried tomatoes, 1/4 cup green onions, 1 clove of garlic (minced), 2 tsp black pepper, 1 bunch of swiss chard, 1/8 cup of olive oil

Directions: cut swiss chard leaves into a bowl of water to wash off any dirt, shake excess water off and cut into small strips, set aside, cut up sun dried tomatoes and green onions into small pieces, mince garlic, add (salt, peeper, olive oil annd apple vinegar), mix up and add to swiss chard, let marinate until tender.

courtesy of the Oakland Based Urban Gardens (OBUGS)

All hands on deck!

KSW Steam Shop - 2525 Mandela Parkway, Oakland.

Das Boot, Paddle Wheel Steamer

KSW Work Night

Wed Aug 5 6pm – Wed Aug 5 11pm

Boat work, repairs, prep. Pappy repairs, prep. Tender prep.

Repeats weekly at 6pm on Wednesday