Daily Archives: May 26, 2011
The Berkeley Wire: 05.26.11
King Middle School appoints new head, new vice-principal [BUSD]
Deli rebels ride into Berkeley [Midlife Bat Mitzvah]
La Strada named 8th best college coffee shop in the country [Complex]
Berkeley Law Clinic receives award from Death Penalty Clinic [UC News]
California Closets moves HQs to Berkeley [CC Times]
Berkeley ranked top college town for renters [Marketwire]
Chancellor Birgeneau is long-time social activist [Daily Cal]
Ex-City Council candidate forms watchdog website [Patch]
Photo: Morning sun at North Berkeley BART, by Matthew Kuhmann.
Chez Panisse chef to open artisan butcher shop
Chez Panisse chef Aaron Rocchino and his wife Monica are bringing artisan meat to the heart of the Gourmet Ghetto with the opening this summer of The Local Butcher Shop on Cedar Street in the old Red Hanger Kleaners space.
“We think there’s a void in the market for restaurant-quality, sustainable meat for home customers,” said Monica Rocchino, who is setting up the new retail operation with her husband.
“It’s an idea whose time has come. I’m looking forward to having this shop in the neighborhood,” said Michael Pollan, who lives in north Berkeley and has done much to champion the consumption of responsibly sourced meat.
The butcher shop will feature whole animals sourced directly from farms, none of which are further than 150 miles from Berkeley. The emphasis will be on grass-fed, sustainably raised meat, and the butchering and cutting will be to order. … Continue reading »
Berkeley is nation’s third best-read city, and buys online
We already knew that Berkeley is one of the nation’s brainiest cities. Today, Amazon.com released data that shows that Berkeley is the third best-read city in the country.
Amazon, by far the largest bookseller in the world, looked at its sales data since the beginning of the year for books, magazines and newspapers, in both print and Kindle form, for all cities larger than 100,000. Cambridge, MA, home of both MIT and Harvard, unsurprisingly tops the table on a per head basis.
Perhaps some readers will do a double take at the second city on the list, Alexandria, VA, until they think of the large numbers of policy wonks and military-industrial analysts in the Washington, D.C. Beltway community (Arlington, home of the Pentagon, figures at 10th in the list, and D.C. itself lands at 14th). … Continue reading »
Moving out day, and the President goes too
Citizen reporter Dave Gilson sent us this snap of students moving out of their digs on Haste Street. Look who’s leaving with them?
If you see something interesting while you’re out and about in Berkeley, take a photo and email it to us. If you have the Berkeleyside iPhone app, it’s even easier, as your image can be dispatched to us directly
After all, good community journalism happens in the community — and the more roving reporters we have … Continue reading »
Out in Berkeley: Bravura accordion player Petar Ralchev
Tenor saxophonist Al Cohn famously quipped that a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion, but doesn’t. Once emblematic of squareness, the maligned accordion is ascendant these days, playing a key role in resurgent roots styles, while also championed by intrepid musicians unconcerned about old musical categories.
In Balkan music, no one has done more to advance the instrument in recent years than Petar Ralchev, an outrageously accomplished Roma player steeped in folkloric Bulgarian styles.
Ralchev performs Friday at Berkeley’s Subterranean Arthouse with a stellar quartet showcasing Bulgarian musicians who have settled in the United States, including Chicago’s Iliana Marudova-Georgiev on vocals and Nikolay Georgiev on tambura and guitar, and percussionist/choreographer Petur Iliev, an essential exponent of Eastern European culture in the Bay Area since 1999. … Continue reading »
Berkeley’s bicycle boulevards create liveable city
Berkeley’s collection of bicycle boulevards and traffic-calming devices are highlighted in this eight minute film done by Streetfilm.org. A few interesting tidbits gleaned from the film:
- The signs on Berkeley’s bike ways are purple because it is one of the few noticeable colors that traffic engineers hadn’t already used.
- The stencils that identify streets as bicycle boulevards are the same size and color as stop signs painted on the ground. This gives motorists a visual clue to watch out for bicyclists.
- The city embedded magnetic loop detectors in many intersections that change lights from red to green. This means bicyclists have to make fewer stops.
- Bicycles are allowed to do many things that motorists can’t,
- There are around 35 roundabouts in Berkeley and the neighborhood is responsible for taking care of the plants inside the circle. These are just the more recent traffic calming devises used by the city. In the 1980s, numerous bollards were installed in neighborhoods to slow traffic.
