Oakland News: Robberies, Restaurant Week, Occupy Oakland

You can take this Oakland news in whatever order, but this blogger’ presenting Robberies, Restaurant Week, and Occupy Oakland, and other news.

First, let’s start with the other news.

Cafe 817 Opens Again

17 years ago, in 1995, I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the then-new Cafe 817, on 817 Washington Street, and in Old Oakland. It was considered a kind of pioneer business in a part of Downtown Oakland that was just developing an office and housing base and needed a place to get a good cup of coffee. Now, an Oaklander couple, Scott and Emily Goldenberg, has purchased and refocused the great place to its original small food glory. I had the pleasure of attending an event for bloggers and food news types on Sunday.

And man, was the food so good! Here’s an example of what I was eating:

Check out Cafe 817.

Armed Roberries – Too Many In Oakland

If you follow the Yahoo Groups for Oakland, you may have noticed too many robberies of late. The most prominent one was last Tuesday, when the Round Table Pizza on Grand Avenue and Staten Avenue was robbed late at night. Then there was an armed robbery on Grand and Staten – again, near the Round Table Pizza – on Thursday night at 10 PM. And in general there are many reports of people being robbed for their cell phones on Lakeshore. The one tip I can offer is this: look up, not down, don’t act scared, and use your cell phone camera. The one fact is that many of these crimes around Lake Merritt are black and Latino males picking on white women or the elderly. So, the one thing a woman should not do is walk alone, and also walk tall – too many women walk with their heads down. That’s the first mistake – act like you’re confident.

Occupy Oakland: 400 Arrests

There were, according to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, 400 people arrested during the Occupy Oakland protests on Saturday. And as I predicted, not all of them were protestors. A KGO Radio reporter by the name of Kristin Hanes was swept up in the mess, and obviously because she didn’t get the email that the City sent out, when the City of Oakland should have used Twitter. A real big fail on Oakland’s part. Hanes tweeted that the Oakland Police called to see if she was OK; now how many media types did the OPD do that for?

And while we’re asking the “What did they do that for” question, here’s another thing that’s got me pissed, a bit:

Burning the flag. That was not cool. It’s hard for me to get behind the Occupy Oakland movement when this stuff happens.

And regarding happenings, remember my complaint about Oakland Restaurant Week and that video which had almost no blacks in it? Well, I got a note from someone connected with Visiting Oakland who told me that the video was produced by a black woman, the implication being that I’m supposed to back down because a sister made a racist video. Fat chance of that. In fact, it’s more tragic that a black woman in Oakland would seek to make a video about Oakland with almost no blacks in it.

Bad. Just bad.

Stay tuned.