food: Camber Montclair

Montclair Village has a new restaurant on Moraga Avenue, and it's great. Camber replaces the venerable Silver Palace restaurant. I happened by the grand opening celebration they had, attended by current district four city council member Annie Campbell Washington and former member and current mayor Libby Schaaf.

It's a nice space with a high ceiling. Husband and wife owners Irfan Jaffery and Linda Saechao made the front space a bar (with lots of TV screens for watching sports), and the main dining area is up a couple steps. Camber is their second restaurant; the first Camber Oakland is in Uptown on Telegraph. Camber is named for their kids, Camrin and Amber, who were at the grand opening. The food is mixture of cultures; according to Mimi Rohr's article, Saechao's family is Thailand and Laos, while Jaffery's is from Pakistan and Burma.

This past Friday, K and I got a chance to check Camber out for dinner. We started with drinks (Gingerita for K, Lagunitas IPA for me) and an order of Crab Rangoon. Then it was on to spicy Bouncing Tofu for me, and a really tasty Pad Si Ew for K. Everything was great, but left us too full to even contemplate dessert. Camber makes a great addition to Oakland's burgeoning restaurant scene and for us it's great to have another dining option close to home. We'll definitely eat there again, and will likely take advantage of the bar for watching sports that aren't on broadcast TV.

Camber Montclair celebrates grand opening in Montclair Village by Mimi Rohr San Jose Mercury News January 21, 2015.

More pictures from the grand opening and from dinner:

walking tour: Chinatown with Mayor Quan and Annalee Allen

Sunday was a special version of the city's downtown walking tour of Chinatown, for a late celebration of the lunar New Year. I've been on the tour of Chinatown before, so I was expecting I'd only learn a few new things. Instead, Mayor Jean Quan not only came on the tour, she co-led it with Annalee Allen, the director of the city's walking tour program. While we went many of the same places and talked about the same people, Mayor Quan had a different and often personal experience of them.

We started in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza, which is home to various shops and restaurants as well as the Asian branch of the Oakland Public Library and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. Mayor Quan told us about Chinese family associations and early organizations to help Chinese immigrants, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the experiences of her own ancestors.

After winding around past the Asian Resource Center building, a quick stop for some fresh from the oven fortune cookies, and a look at the Chinatown Dragon Mural, we came to Lincoln Square Park. Normally it's a busy, vibrant place, but because of the intermittent rain, it was empty. We checked out one of the markers for the 10,000 Steps project, a Chinese herb shop, and then we were back to our start. A great tour, and nice to have a different perspective on it—there's always more to learn.

More pictures from the walk:

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.

Oakland mayor's race

In a move that should have surprised no one, last week Oakland mayor Ron Dellums announced he wasn't going to run for re-election. That automatically extended the filing deadline to Wednesday.

After a flurry of activity, we now have 13 candidates running for mayor:

• Arnie Fields
• Don Macleay
• Don Perata
• Greg Harland
• Jean Quan
• Joe Tuman
• Lionel Young, Jr.
• Marcie Hodge
• Niki Okuk
• Rebecca Kaplan
• Sharika Gregory
• Terence Candell
• Tim Brown

OaklandSeen has a good rundown of the activity, plus the various elections for council districts 2, 4 and 6; SFGate's Matthai Kuruvila has a brief rundown of the 13 candidates.

I'm a long way from deciding who I'll vote for, other than Anybody But Don. I've heard Rebecca Kaplan and Jean Quan speak at council meetings and other city events, and Kaplan and Joe Tuman were amongst the people who stopped by the EBBC bike parking at the Best of the East Bay party in Jack London Square, but there are a lot of candidates to educate myself about before deciding.

According to the East Bay Express, Perata is nearing the campaign spending cap, and we're still a long ways from the election. The article also talks about the spending of Kaplan and Quan, which has been fairly limited so far. Tribune reporter and The Education Report blogger Katy Murphy has an article on late-comer Marcie Hodge, a Peralta college trustee. Rounding out recent coverage is OaklandLocal's article about the response of various candidates to the the idea of a local currency for Oakland, and a different view of the event from Oakland North.

I'm sure there will be lots more coverage in the weeks and months to come, and I'd be surprised if all 13 candidates are still actively in the race by the time the election rolls around. Whether they all are or not, I'm glad we're going to have ranked voting / Instant Run-off Voting this time. With this wide a field, it'll be easier to pick a 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice and hope one of them wins, rather than have no clear winner and require a run-off in a separate election requiring more money.

Tucker out = good. Lindheim in = ?

Mayor Ron Dellums appointed Dan Lindheim to the long-vacant city administrator post. The Oakland blogosphere is generally unhappy with it:

• Lindheim Choice as Administrator Result of Cronyism, Hypocrisy, and Low Expectations at City Hall
• Take Action: Ensure Top-Rate Management for Oakland
• Appointment puts Oakland on the brink
• Op-Ed: Mayor Appoints Crony, City Suffers

I don't know much about Lindheim, but there seem like some serious warning signs. The first being that Lindheim is a "longtime confidant". There was supposed to be a nationwide search to fill the post, with former city manager Robert Bobb being a favorite. When he opted to take a job with the Detroit school system, the job quickly went to a friend of Dellums. There's been no list of who else was considered or what the process for the search actually was.

Another warning sign is that "Lindheim also tried hard to keep outgoing police Chief Wayne Tucker on board". Tucker's classless departure erased any doubts that he wasn't the right man for the job, if the list of problems under his command wasn't enough.

Lindheim may be the most qualified person willing to take the job, but he doesn't meet the Mayor's listed qualifications ("12 to 15 years of senior level executive management experience preferably in a large sophisticated diverse urban governmental organization").

The charges of cronyism don't seem far off the mark given the lack of information and Lindheim's lack of qualifications.

Regardless of whether he is the best person for the job, there needs to be more transparency about how he was selected. If there's not, Dellums' already low approval ratings are likely to go even lower. And if he's not the best qualified, then the council shouldn't approve his appointment.

state of the city address tonight

Tonight is Mayor Dellums' state of the city address (it'll be on KTOP, starting at either 5:30 or 6:00pm). Will he acknowledge the problems, and implement the ideas in the Bobb report? Or will it degenerate into a list of "look what I accomplished (even if I didn't do it) in 2008" as V Smoothe suggests on A Better Oakland? It would be funny if it didn't have so much truth to it based on past addresses.

Meanwhile, the whole coutry (and world, for that matter) continues to settle into the recession, with more job cuts announced. Few, if any, of those listed are in Oakland, but I imagine the Home Depot Expo store in Emeryville employs some Oakland residents, and bad news for the world economy is bad news for all of us.

The economic upheaval will bring more changes to Oakland than just job changes. Oakland Streets has a nice write-up on Creative Reuse of buildings. When the economy begins to improve, it'd be nice to see some of these things happen.