Daily Archives: September 22, 2011
The Berkeley Wire: 09.22.11
Albany residents say no to Berkeley Lab [BANG]
iPhones a popular robbery target in Berkeley [Daily Cal]
Berkeley Lab cites sea levels as concern for Alameda campus [BANG]
UC Berkeley students protest funding cuts [Chronicle]
Andrew Clough appointed new public works director [City of Berkeley]
Students play out Israeli-Palestinian conflict on campus [California]
New computer lab at Berkeley High “like an Apple store” [BUSD]
Joy in Berkeley as Chabad dedicates new headquarters [JWeekly]
After 13 years, no more records from Absolutely Kosher [SFWeekly]
Photo: Near 4th St, by tracymcbride/Berkeleyside Flickr pool.
Most expensive house for sale in Berkeley ever?
While much attention is being paid to a beautifully restored Victorian that is up for sale for $2,500,000 over in north Berkeley, another grand home has quietly come on the market in a more elevated part of town — specifically in those hybrid 94705 hills where Berkeley zipcode meets Oakland taxes.
The asking price for the 8,500 sq ft home at 4975 Grizzly Peak Blvd is also elevated, at a not insubstantial $9,500,000. While this house is the absolute … Continue reading »
A Berkeley designer, an iconic Airstream, a happy ending
Austin Chu admits he is obsessed with Airstreams, those mid-century, sausage-shaped, silver aluminum trailers that are enjoying a renaissance of late, particularly among design aficionados.
Chu works at The Werehaus, a small creative production studio in San Francisco. He says his passion for the Airstream has been growing even more recently.
One day, Chu was browsing through the pages of Dwell.com and saw a story on Andreas Stavropoulos, a landscape architect from Berkeley who went to a derelict horse ranch in the Salinas Valley to buy a 1959 Airstream travel trailer. Stavropoulos parked the Airstream in the yard of a 1880s Berkeley farmhouse near the Gourmet Ghetto, and converted it into a beautiful studio.
Fascinated by Stavropoulos’s ingenuity and his creative DIY attitude, the Werehaus team decided to develop a short video piece around the development of his mobile workspace.
Stavropoulos, who holds a graduate degree in landscape architecture from UC Berkeley, founded Berkeley-based XS/LA Land Architects in 2009. He runs the company with colleagues Patricia Algara and Max Miller. The Werehaus enjoys telling stories about people and their communities. Their clients include Four Barrel Coffee, Bandwidth Publishing, and Will Leather Goods.
Nurses’ strike draws cheers and honking horns
A raucous, good-humored crowd of hundreds of nurses gathered this morning in front of the Alta Bates Summit campus on Ashby Avenue to rally for the one-day California Nurses Association strike against “sweeping demands for concessions” from Sutter Health, the hospital’s owner. The nurses listened to music, chanted slogans and cheered the many passing cars and trucks that honked horns in support.
“Too big to fail applies to more than banks,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, told Berkeleyside. … Continue reading »
Aurora: 20 years at heart of Berkeley’s cultural life
Edward Albee was in the audience for the opening night of “A Delicate Balance” at the Aurora Theatre earlier this month. He stood up at the play’s end, joining many others to give the actors a standing ovation. Tom Ross, who directed the play, had not told his cast that the renowned author of the play they were performing would be present on their first night. It would have given them the jitters, he said — even more than … Continue reading »
Junius Courtney Big Band: Spirited in the right ways
When an ensemble keeps performing after the death of its namesake leader, it’s known as a ghost band. Though descriptive rather than pejorative, the term often carries a whiff of the dismissive, as if a musical legacy should be interred with its creator (things work differently in the world of dance, where no one seems interested in tossing dirt on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater).
The Junius Courtney Big Band might be a ghost orchestra, but it’s spirited … Continue reading »
