Daily Archives: January 5, 2012
The Berkeley Wire: 01.05.12
Berkeley man to go on trial on Walnut Creek rape charges [CCT]
Berkeley watch company uses Facebook for focus groups [NYT]
UC Lab makes robot that emulates leaping lizard [Chronicle]
Berkeley schools: a sustainable food model [Fed Up With Lunch]
27-year old mezzo soprano is a rising singer [Coco Times]
Biotech company Xoma cuts workforce by a third [Mercury News]
Pacific Steel workers spend emotional last day at plant [Coco Times]
Moscone’s “Ghost Light” opens at Berkeley Rep Friday [NBC]
Photo: Sky web, by 2812photography/Berkeleyside Flickr pool.
Judith Iglehart becomes new chief of staff to Mayor Bates
Judith Iglehart, whose experience embraces both the Bay Area start-up world and the University of California, started her post as new chief of staff to Mayor Tom Bates this week.
Iglehart was briefly chief research development officer at the University of California in 2003, CEO of Tech Ventures Network, a state program to identify and assist very early stage companies in northern California, from 2000 to 2003, and deputy senior vice president for business and finance at the University of … Continue reading »
Parking around Trader Joe’s sparks “vigilante” action
By Linda Hemmila
If you’ve received a parking ticket near Trader Joe’s on University Avenue in Berkeley, you’re in good company. So many people have been ticketed there over the past year and half it’s become a neighborhood cause, has provoked defiant action from a “parking vigilante”, and is up for renewed discussion at the next scheduled City Council meeting on January 17th.
The trouble stems from parking signs in the area, which, according to councilmember Jesse Arreguín, are “very confusing”. The city has acknowledged as much by dismissing most contested citations because, it says, the signage is not sufficiently clear to visitors.
It all started in June 2010 when, as part of the redevelopment of the downtown area — and with the June 11 opening of Trader Joe’s — the city altered parking signs in the neighborhood that designated one side of the street as resident-only parking and the other side two-hour parking. The signs on the residential side were adorned with red and white city-made stickers denoting “no parking” that were placed directly over the old sign which said “two- hour parking”. The streets in questions include Berkeley Way, Addison Street, Bonita Avenue and Grant Street. … Continue reading »
Zongo Junction: Drawing inspiration from Berkeley roots
The 12-piece Brooklyn Afrobeat band Zongo Junction plays hard-hitting West African funk inspired by grooves emanating from Nigeria, Ghana, and Benin, but the group’s roots extend directly to Berkeley. Founded by drummer Charles Ferguson after a six-month sojourn in Ghana, the band features several of his fellow Berkeley High jazz band buddies, including keyboardist Eli Sundelson and bassist Noah Garabedian.
A California tour brings Zongo Junction to Berkeley on Saturday for a gig at Ashkenaz (see them in action in video above).
“I think the biggest influence that the BHS jazz program had on us and the band’s sound was the diversity of music we would play,” Ferguson said. “Charles Hamilton, the band director, opened a lot of us up to a ton of different styles of music, as did a bunch of other guys in the area we all took lessons with (like Josh Jones, Peter Apfelbaum, Wil Blades). We would go to these high school jazz festivals where other bands were just playing boring straight ahead jazz tunes. We would play Tower of Power, Duke Ellington and Mongo Santamaria all in the same set.” … Continue reading »
