blog: Oakland 12th Street Project

The Oakland 12th Street Project blog is coming to an end soon. The blog has been carefully following the progress of the 12th Street project, which is getting rid of "world's shortest freeway" and widening the opening between Lake Merritt and the estuary. The good news is that the 12th Street work is nearing completion. The bad news is that the writer and photographer behind the blog, Erik Niemann, has moved from Oakland to Sacramento.

Erik started documenting the project at the May 6, 2010 groundbreaking, and started the blog not long after. Although he's received a small stipend for some special projects (e.g., documenting the construction of the new marsh), he's mostly done this task for over two years because he wants to. In fact, he delayed his move to Sacramento to continue the documentation. Now that's dedication.

That amazing dedication was celebrated at a reception Erik hosted in the 11th-story apartment where he lived until recently and where he took many of his photos from. Pat Kernighan presented Erik with a commendation from the Oakland city council thanking him for his work. Guests enjoyed the view, and took in some of the more than 22,000 pictures he's taken to document the progress.

The time lapse below shows the progress from the beginning of 2011 through March of this year:
Erik is working on a new time lapse sequence which shows all the progress so far. But there are many notable individual photos, like this "before" photo:

which shows 12th Street with the configuration it's had since the 1950s: 12 lanes of traffic, a mess of connectors and crazy merges, and a very narrow opening between Lake Merritt and the estuary. Compare that with the last shot Erik took from his apartment:

which shows a much saner 6 lanes of traffic, bike lanes, fewer connectors, a separated pedestrian and bike path, lots more open and green space, plus the wider opening from the lake.

Although Erik and his wife have moved to Sacramento, Erik will be making a few return trips to continue documenting the progress. Erik is also a painter and photographer, and you can view an exhibit of his work at EBMUD headquarters on 11th Street. The exhibition runs until December 20th. So long, and thanks for all the great photos, Erik!

More pictures from my visit with Erik:


Related posts:
The Lake that Isn't (May 2012)
Oakland Urban Paths: Jane's Walk (May 2012)
New in Oakland (June 2011)

blog redesign

After almost 4 years and 600 posts, I decided it was time for a little redesign. A while back I got some business cards to hand out because I was telling so many people at different events about the blog, where pictures I was taking of the event would be, etc. that it was just a lot easier to have something to hand them. Those of you who have seen the cards will probably recognize the look of the new header. The logo harkens back to the first of what's now one of my favorite features, interesting Oakland signs. And the background of the new header represents one of my other favorites, Oakland maps.

I'll also take the opportunity to point out some little-known features of Our Oakland. First, there are a number of special URLs you can enter with Our Oakland to get shortcuts to specific things: maps.ouroakland.net, signs.ouroakland.net, events.ouroakland.net, facesof.ouroakland.net and of course, 5houses.ouroakland.net. Another useful feature is that the Blogger code automatically checks if you're on a mobile device such as a smartphone, and gives you a specially-formatted version of the site that's easier to use on a smartphone. It gets rid of extra margins, automatically condenses posts on the home page, and allows various touch controls to navigate.

So if you see something that doesn't look right or work quite right, please let me know. Include which web browser and OS you're using.

lack of posts

Sorry for the relative lack of posts this week. Between work (good) and some eye problems (bad*), I haven't been able to spend as much time attending events or blogging as I'd like. (*Apparently no diseases or damage in my eyes, though after a trip to Kaiser, my eyes are looking a bit like Homer's after licking a toad. Mostly likely I'll need glasses soon.)

Don't worry, Our Oakland isn't going away like the East Bay Express article seems to think much of the Oakland blogosphere has done. What has happened is that last year's winners of the League of Women Voters "helping make democracy work" award aren't blogging as much. VSmoothe at A Better Oakland isn't blogging at the moment, Becks at Living in the O isn't blogging as much, Zennie at Oakland Focus is mostly blogging on Zennie62.com about non-Oakland topics, Debby Richman of Today in Montclair moved to Utah (someone else took over the blog) and Aimee Allison of Oakland Seen has been focused on other (paying) work. Read an alternative viewpoint at Oakland Local.

While I definitely miss their insight and views on things, especially VSmoothe's attention to Oakland politics, there are lots of other Oakland blogs that are active. In the right column below the Oakland news section are a list of Oakland blogs, with the 10 most recently updated shown. The list currently only has 30 or so active blogs in it, though I have a list of hundreds that I could add. I'm looking for a replacement for the Blogger 'Blog List' widget, which doesn't do well with hundreds of blogs. Ideas?

In any event, I'm hoping to be back to my regular blogging schedule next week.

new digs

Ifinally took the plunge and got my own domain. Without further ado, welcome to OurOakland.net! Old links to blogspot.com should still work, just redirect to the new location. To celebrate the move, I created a new logo, with a familiar look to it:

Happy New Year!

last sunset pic of 2010

Here's wishing all of Oakland a happy and peaceful new year.

And if you write an Oakland blog (dc and Driver, I'm looking at you!) or just read various Oakland blogs regularly, I'd like to invite you to the 2011 Blogoaksphere on January 6th. You can find all the details on Living in the O. Hope to see you there!

what a long, strange two weeks it's been...

First, thank you to Oakland Magazine for featuring Our Oakland in the Oakland Online piece in the latest edition! Welcome to any new readers (whether you found the blog through that or not :-) As the title suggests, this post is somewhat long and strange compared with what I usually post here: no signs, no restaurant reviews, no cool maps.

Now, on to an explanation of the paucity of posts of late. It started two weeks ago with a short trip through the stairs of our carport. No broken bones, but plenty of aches and bruises and a renewed appreciation of the power of gravity.

not Oakland

I recovered enough from that in time for a trip for work to near Fellows, CA. Outside of Bakersfield is the town of Taft. Outside of Taft is Fellows. Outside of Fellows are a bunch of oil fields and several power plants. It's a strange-looking bit of California, so it was appropriate I was there over Halloween. Doubly spooky since the entry on Wikipedia says Fellows is where the film version of Shirley Jackon's always creepy short story The Lottery was shot.

Had I been 30 minutes or so to the west, I could have been in the beautiful Carrizo Plain National Monument. Instead, I was inside most of the time working on software at one of the power plants, working long hours to launch a new version of the software.

The long hours lead to a nasty cold, but we got the new version launched, and made it home in time to vote on Tuesday. The results from across the nation were somewhat depressing, but many of the California and local contests have had good results: we don't have Meg Whitman as our governor, nor Carly Fiorina as our senator, and Prop 23 didn't pass. (And even more locally, I'm happy that Libby Schaaf will be our new council member for district 4.) Tammerlin Drummond of the Tribune asks the question I ask almost every election: isn't there a better way for rich candidates to spend their money? The flood of negative ads didn't persuade me to vote for anyone; rather it confirmed my votes against those sending it out.

We didn't know who the next mayor of Oakland would be, though -- due in part to ballots like mine. I requested a mail-in ballot in case I wasn't able to get back in time on Tuesday. Unfortunately, it didn't arrive before I left, so I had to cast a provisional ballot upon my return. The changing results as the IRV ballots are tabulated has been interesting, and it's clear why Don Perata was against IRV since he's gone from 1st to 2nd in the process (and speaking of spending lots of money...) For what it's worth, although I think Don Perata is "ethics challenged", he was my second choice after Rebecca Kaplan. Jean Quan's responsibility for Measure Y, et al, was enough to convince me she's probably not the right person to lead Oakland out of its budget problems.

By Friday, I was mostly over my cold, but we still didn't know who the next mayor would be, but Oakland was now focused on the impending sentencing of Johannes Mehserle for his killing of Oscar Grant. Like many, I was disappointed with the involuntary manslaughter verdict, but was hoping for for a reasonable sentence because of the gun-enhancement charge the jury included. Instead, the judge inexplicably gave a minimum sentence and credit for time served. Not surprisingly, this made many people unhappy. A peaceful rally lead to a march towards Fruitvale BART, which lead to some vandalism, and ended with 152 arrests. Reports differ widely about the nature of the march, but at least the understaffed OPD was better prepared. My question for those involved in the vandalism: if you feel like you have to trash something to make your point, why not go trash the BART offices instead of the property of innocent Oaklanders?

Sunday morning I woke up barely able to swallow and my tongue looking absolutely disgusting. After I nearly passed out, K called the advice nurse at Kaiser. A trip to the doctor and pharmacist later, I had diagnosis of strep throat and a prescription for penicillin.

Rosie

Since then, the kitties and I have been doing a lot of this. To be fair, that's what they do a lot of even when I'm feeling well, but they enjoyed the company and were probably wondering why I don't join them every day.

So there you have it: the long, strange post of why I haven't updated the blog recently. I'm off to rest a while, and will hopefully be back to normal posting soon.

calling Oakland blogs

One feature here on Our Oakland is a blog roll of Oakland blogs (over on the left, below the list of maps), ranging from the journalism school-based Oakland North, to 38th Notes with news on local music, to Marleen Lee's Defending Measure Y, to various Oakland home-improvement blogs, and of course well-known blogs like VSmoothe's A Better Oakland. I found them linked from other Oakland blogs; on Twitter; searching Blogger's rolls (skipping a lot of one-post blogs); and, of course, by luck. Regardless of how I found them, the end result is a rolling update of what people in Oakland are blogging about.

By default, the list shows the 10 most recently updated, but you can view them all by clicking on Show All at the bottom of the list. If you do that, you'll see 95 blogs, some of that have fallen by the wayside, not updated in months or years. I know I haven't found all the active and semi-active Oakland blogs by any stretch, but I'd like to keep expanding the list. What Oakland blogs do you follow?