Category Archives: Downtown
New taqueria opens in old Amanda’s space on Shattuck
Casa Bernal Taqueria celebrated its grand opening Tuesday at 2122 Shattuck Avenue with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, a 10-piece mariachi band, and $2 beers.
The new taqueria, which opened in the space once occupied by Amanda’s, is the project of Guillermo Bernal and his father. Their family owns a number of restaurants in southern California and Mexico. It features Niman Ranch pork and beef, free range chicken, and organic produce.
City project will transform utility boxes with vibrant art
There are 60 different utility boxes in downtown Berkeley and they are all gray. But not for long.
A new civic art project has plans to transform these dull, bleak and utilitarian boxes, which are owned either by the city or by PG&E, into a kalidescope of color and art.
Called the “60 Boxes Project,” the idea is to pair patrons with artists who will paint the boxes or make a design that can be transferred to large polymer stickers and be affixed to the boxes.
“We’ve had a very very positive response to this project,” said Elyce Klein, who is coordinating sponsorships for the group, a collaboration between the Earth Island Institute‘s Streets Alive! program and Berkeley’s Civic Arts Commission. “The quality of artwork on the boxes will be very high.”
A wide range of sponsors have already pledged their support for the initiative, including Berkeley High School, Peet’s Coffee, the Downtown Berkeley Association, numerous private schools, businesses, individuals, public officials, and non-profit organizations — even the city’s Mayor, Tom Bates.
Now the 60 Boxes Projects is putting out a call for artists to participate. They must fill out a form and submit examples from their portfolio. Each sponsor will get to choose their own artist. The theme is “sustainability.” … Continue reading »
Julian Lage delights listeners at Freight and Salvage
Julian Lage reacts to a smooth guitar lick the way a father stares at a newborn child. There’s a pleasure and grace about his stage presence that cannot be mistaken. An intimate Friday night jazz show at Berkeley’s Freight and Salvage proved this.
Lage, a former child prodigy who first performed publicly at age 6, has been called a virtuoso. The 23-year-old guitarist displayed his skill that night, moving his hand up and down every fret of his guitar effortlessly.
He was humble and appreciative, pausing between songs to speak softly to the audience, praising them for sharing an evening with the band.
“We’re absolutely thrilled to be here,” Lage said during the show. “You know, we talk about it in the band that we just don’t take any of this for granted – not a second of it. To be able to just plug in and play music, let alone have a great audience is pretty phenomenal.” … Continue reading »
Five’s Banks White: Berkeley “keeps me on my toes”
Banks White is the executive chef of Five, which calls itself a modern American bistro. Think comfort food with au courant accents: Macaroni and cheese made with orzo, wild mushrooms, tomato jam, and smoked gouda. Slow braised short rib pot roast with mascarpone polenta. Buttermilk biscuits with white cheddar pimento cheese.
The restaurant (named for the five senses and its 5 o’clock happy hour) is housed in the historic, refurbished Hotel Shattuck Plaza, which looks like it’s been given the Dorothy Draper treatment. (This writer spent some time last fall at the interior designer’s signature space, The Greenbrier in West Virginia.) Swirling black-and-white wallpaper. Ornate red chandelier. Black-and-white marble floors and red wall sconces. Get the picture?
White hails from Texas, land of barbecue and Buds, but is trained in classic French culinary techniques. The 30-year-old has worked for several upscale boutique hotel restaurants including The Driskill in Austin and Auberge du Soleil in the Napa Valley. … Continue reading »
Anna Deavere Smith astonishes in ‘Let Me Down Easy’
Anna Deavere Smith’s latest one-woman play “Let Me Down Easy” is like a novella of stories – the individual vignettes are bold and interesting, but are only loosely linked.
From her spot-on impersonation of Lance Armstrong, whose body is so kinetic it can’t stay still, to pretending to be the bed-ridden, cancer-stricken film critic Joel Siegel, to her poignant portrayal of Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, an intern who was shocked by the way her superiors at Charity Hospital in New Orleans treated Katrina victims, Smith is mesmerizing in her ability to channel the words and quirks of her characters.
The 105-minute play is based on interviews with more than 320 people on three continents over a ten-year period. Smith focuses on 20 of those characters and uses their verbatim interviews to create a heart-wrenching portrait of our attitudes toward our bodies, their strengths and weaknesses, and our feelings about death.
On a stage sparsely decorated with a white couch, a dining table with chairs, and huge hanging mirrors, Smith changes lightening-fast from one person to another. She dons a piece of clothing or picks up a prop like a bottle of beer or coffee mug to delineate each character, and then discards those items on the stage as the play progresses. It’s almost a metaphor for her overarching theme: that life is ethereal and short. We are here and then we are not. The props are of use and then they are not, but traces of them remain. … Continue reading »
Bartlett’s Coffee closes its doors
Bartlett’s Coffee, a small café in the Library Gardens on Kittredge near Milvia, has shut its doors.
The café, which served as a social hub for many Berkeley High students, is not going completely out of business, however, according to Benjamin Bartlett, who owned the place with his family. It is looking to move to a new location.
“Yes, we had to close the café,” Bartlett wrote in an email. “We thought long and hard about it, but an … Continue reading »
Berkeley poets take to the stage Saturday at festival
This year, the Berkeley Poetry Festival, which takes place Saturday at Berkeley City College, will fuse words and art. Poets will read from their work and local artists will display their digital images around the festival.
“It’s going to be a rainbow cornucopia of images and words,” said Louis Cuneo, a haiku poet and a co-founder (with city councilmember Kriss Worthington) of the festival “This isn’t just a poetry festival. It’s a festival of the muses – the creative muse, the poetry muse.”
On Saturday, the festival will present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Adam David Miller, the 88-year old Berkeley poet who has published five books of poetry and an acclaimed memoir, Ticket to Exile.
Friends of Berkeley library resurrect beloved book sale
The last time the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library held a huge used book sale, hundreds of people lined up early in the morning to get first crack at rare and unusual books.
That was back in 1999.
In the ensuing 12 years, the Friends have sold used books at their two bookstores, one located on the first floor of the main library and the other at 2433 Channing near Telegraph. But the two stores don’t move inventory quite like a big sale, so the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library have decided to resurrect their once-much-beloved book sale.
It will take place Saturday May 14 from 10 to 4 pm in the community room on the third floor of the Main Library.
“In the past year, more book donations than ever have poured in, and it was these surplus donations that convinced the Friends to re-institute an annual sale — not yet as big as the “old” sale and with three big changes: everything will sell for 50 cents, the sale will be held inside the Library, and more than books will be sold — videos, phonograph records, maps, pamphlets, DVDs, CDs, and so on,” the Friends announced in a press release. “There’ll even be a whole section for vampire books!” … Continue reading »
Burgers with a twist: new restaurant to open in downtown
Hugh Groman loves his dad. That much is clear when you learn he is naming his new restaurant after his pop. “My dad is someone who has always cared so much about how people feel, and that’s why I wanted to name my new venture after him,” he said.
Groman describes Phil’s Sliders — which will open next month in the old New China Express space at 2024 Shattuck, next door to the former Comic Relief — as “more organic than In-N-Out, with a twist”.
The menu will consist of $2.00 sliders (mini-burgers to the uninitiated), all made with Marin Sun Farms grass-fed beef and organic lettuce; potato tots (“crispy nuggets of goodness”); poppyseed coleslaw; and a smorgasbord of “delicious” baked goods, including s’mores bars, and not forgetting the house-made shakes and sodas.
“It will be a limited menu — simple and quick. People have so many decisions to make these days. Here the decisions are easy,” Groman said. … Continue reading »
Crime prevention top of mind for a Berkeley community
[This story has been updated -- see end of the article.]
Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan expressed frustration at the Berkeley Unified School District last night, and in particular its lack of communication with the BPD, following a rash of crimes in a central Berkeley neighborhood, some of which were committed by students at Berkeley High School.
“We don’t get good information from the school district right now,” Chief Meehan said. “We asked them: if there was a robbery you knew about, would you call us? And they said, ‘we would not’.”
Chief Meehan added that the school district had not responded yet to a series of recommendations on security measures compiled by the BPD in the wake of a number of gun incidents on the Berkeley High campus.
Calls to BUSD Superintendent Bill Huyett were not returned at the time of going to press.
Since January there have been three strong-arm robberies, one armed robbery, one attempted burglary and one case of an arrest for prowling/possession of burglary tools in the area west of Martin Luther King Junior Way, according to police records. Four of the six cases involved juveniles. … Continue reading »
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