Daily Archives: December 20, 2011
The Berkeley Wire: 12.20.11
Lawsuit fails to force Warm Pool to remain open [Berkeley Pools Campaign]
Monterey Market and neighboring stores at odds [East Bay Express]
A $15 million gift to UC, Berkeley Art Museum [UCB News]
Patients’ Care Collective makes marijuana Christmas trees [Toke of the Town]
Open call for artists for juried exhibition [Oakland Art Beat]
Telegraph merchants rebound from fire with street fair [CBS]
Photo: Cost of living, by dyannaanfang/Berkeleyside Flickr pool.
Shop Talk: The ins and outs of Berkeley businesses
SMOKY NO MORE Ken Looney has closed his Looney’s Southern Bar -B-Que at 2190 Bancroft Avenue after five years of operation. He closed it Dec. 11 because he could not come to acceptable terms with the landlord when his lease expired, according to an employee at one of Looney’s Oakland locations.
PHARMACY SHUFFLE – No official word yet but informed sources say Walgreen’s will be moving from its location on Shattuck and Allston Way across the street into the … Continue reading »
BioFuel Oasis: Eight years on, and still powered by idealism
By Nathan Pensky
Even in a community as amenable to progressive values as Berkeley, there are few small businesses so powered by idealism as BioFuel Oasis, which this month is celebrating its eighth birthday.
An environmentalist mainstay since 2003, the company specializes in the sale of biodiesel fuel chemically rendered from recycled vegetable oil, and shipped in from an off-site manufacturer.
Since moving to its current location at 1441 Ashby Avenue, the company has diversified its product line to include urban farming materials such as organic chicken feed and beekeeping supplies, as well as teaching classes in DIY practices like beekeeping and home fermentation. Its clientele has swelled from a few environmentally conscious Berkeley residents to a loyal, 3,000-strong customer base.
As an all female/worker-run business geared entirely towards providing local residents with clean-fuel solutions and encouraging urban farming, to say that BioFuel Oasis is a unique exercise in entrepreneurism would be an understatement.
One could rightly say that the five owner-employees who make up the company’s staff are activists first and businesswomen second. They are: Margaret Farrow, Ace Anderson, Melissa Hardy, Jennifer Radtke, and noted author Novella Carpenter.
“We started selling biodiesel out of a little warehouse in west Berkeley,” said co-founder and co-owner Jennifer Radtke. “No one in Northern California was making biodiesel when we started. And so because of us and our distribution center, there are now places around here making it.” … Continue reading »
Big Screen Berkeley: The Muppets and Hugo
Once again, the season of holiday movie-going — that special time of year when local art-houses overflow with Oscar bait and the multiplexi are stuffed with family-friendly fare sweeter and stickier than a supermarket Yule log — is upon us.
It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, those few weeks in December when even yours truly stops fruitlessly trying to better his mind and relaxes with a popcorn flick or three. Therefore, be it resolved: this week I’ll spare you any dissertations on the latest Estonian comedy or that depressing documentary about cute baby seals being turned into lamp shades in favor of something a little more mainstream.
The Muppets (currently screening at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood) hits the family film sweet spot, taking the now grown children of the late 20th century on a delightful trip down memory lane while also tickling the funny bones of the younger set. Whether you’re 8 or 80, a chorus of chickens singing a G-rated version of Cee-lo Green’s Fuck You is going to make you laugh, but the film’s narrative structure is primarily designed to reel in those of us who spent the late 1970s following the prime-time adventures of Kermit the Frog. (Speaking of whom, it’s hard to imagine a time when the only remotely famous Kermit was Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson. It’s also hard to imagine a time when loving parents would name their son ‘Kermit’.)
Kermit was the only Muppet to take the leap from PBS pedagogue to network superstar, so it’s only proper that the lean green amphibian is the focal point of The Muppets. In brief: having retired into seclusion upon The Muppet Show’s 1981 cancellation, Kermit is called upon to save the old Muppet Studio from a nefarious oil baron (Chris Cooper) who intends to tear it down and drill for the Texas Tea rumored to be bubbling beneath its historic grounds. … Continue reading »
