Daily Archives: January 31, 2011
The Berkeley Wire: 01.31.11
Cal might reconsider cuts to five sports teams [Daily Cal]
Berkeley Rep to stage Pulitzer-winning Ruined [Berkeley Rep]
Daisey exposes Apple’s “terrible sin in China” [TechCrunch]
Yellowjackets’ Brittany Boyd notches 23 points, 11 rebounds, 8 steals in win [Chronicle]
Photo by Keoki Seu/Berkeleyside Flickr pool
Cal alums with “front-row seat on the revolution” in Egypt
The assistant dean of development at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school, Robert Sproul, found himself and a group of Cal alumni in the thick of protests in Cairo last week. Sproul was undeterred, he told The Wall Street Journal (link to Google News avoids the WSJ subscription firewall): “Everybody on the bus said, ‘We’re used to tear gas, we’re used to protest. We went to Berkeley in the 1960s.’”
The hotel the group was staying in, the Semiramis … Continue reading »
Berkeley’s “jazz funeral without a body”
On Saturday, as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Arhoolie Records, the New Orleans-based Tremè Brass Band will lead a second line parade from Civic Center Park to the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse. One observer of New Orleans traditions calls the second line parade “a jazz funeral without a body”.
The parade will be the most public event in a three-day celebration of Arhoolie, which Freight executive director Steve Baker calls “the leading roots music recording company in the world”. Berkeleyan Chris Strachwitz started Arhoolie in November 1960 with a pressing of 250 copies of Mance Lipscomb’s “Texas Sharecropper and Songster”. The Freight’s celebration, with concerts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, and a number of talks (including one with Linda Ronstadt and Strachwitz on Mexican music), will benefit the Arhoolie Foundation, which holds the archives from the recording company.
The term second line parade refers to the second line — the public — following the first line, the band. Traditionally, second line paraders twirl a handkerchief or parasol in the air, but just following along in less exuberant Berkeley style is apparently acceptable. The second line parade will form at 4 pm in Civic Center Park.
Councilmember concerned about seafood sustainability
Following our January 26 story about the difficulties many restaurants and suppliers face sourcing sustainable seafood, Anthony Sanchez, chief of staff for Berkeley city Councilmember Jesse Arreguín, wrote in to remind us that this issue has been discussed at the local government level.
“Sustainable seafood is a serious environmental issue that has luckily been brought to the public’s attention by organizations like the Monterey Bay Aquarium and good reporting,” he writes. “Also, the Berkeley City Council is interested … Continue reading »
Critical mass: Berkeley and ancient Rome
Berkeley’s geographic footprint has always seemed just right: big enough for diversity but small enough to be manageable. Perhaps there really is something just right about the size. A new website from the BBC allows for all sorts of intriguing comparisons. What if you transplanted China’s Great Wall to the American West? It turns out it would stretch from Minnesota to San Francisco. How big was the Colossus of Rhodes’ legspan? He’d comfortably straddle Berkeley’s city government … Continue reading »
Berkeley exports its cannabis expertise
In a sign of the growing professionalization of the medical cannabis industry, Mark Rhoades and Ali Kashani, the owners of the Berkeley development company Citycentric Investments, have teamed up with Debby Goldsberry, a founder of the Berkeley Patients Group, to open a number of medical marijuana facilities around the East Bay.
Rhoades, Kashani, and Goldsberry have applied to open a cannabis dispensary in Albany and are planning to apply to open another in Oakland.
On Saturday, at the California NORML conference in Berkeley, the trio advertised their plans for a new Oakland collective they hope will combine an aesthetically appealing space with a large range of social services. They hung up a big banner on the second floor of the David Brower Center announcing the ARCH Collective, which stands for the Angel’s Retreat for Cannabis Health, to solicit prospective members.
There are only two large dispensaries in the East Bay, Harborside Health Center and BPG, and they are both over capacity, said Goldsberry. Since the rest of the dispensaries in the East Bay are small, there is an urgent need for a new large facility that can accommodate the growing number of medical cannabis patients, she said.
“There’s a war on drugs out there,” said Goldsberry, who along with Rhoades was a speaker at the conference, which looked at next steps for marijuana laws in California. “We want to make a gathering place that people feel comfortable hanging out in. We want to create a place to retreat, a place to come and get healthy, get recharged and then go out back in the world.” … Continue reading »
