history: Mt. View Cemetery and Auto Row

History. Where would we be without it? :-)

There's a nice post on Today in Montclair about the Mountain View Cemetery. Wandering around a place full of dead people may not be your idea of fun, but it is beautiful, and as the post informs us, there are a lot of prominent people from Oakland's past buried there.

Over at one of my favorite Oakland blogs, City Homestead, there's a nice post on the history of Auto Row. Interesting stuff, and good things to know as people discuss the future of Auto Row.

signs: Torchio's Auto Repair

Torchio's
Auto Repair

Tucked behind the YMCA on Webster street is Torchio's Auto Repair, obviously specializing in brakes.

history: Williams Dairy, part II

Williams Dairy bottle

With the help of the Oakland Public Library, it didn't take long to find out about the history of the Williams Dairy. I emailed the OPL a note and a picture of the bottle I found, and within a couple days I had a response pointing me to an article in the Oakland Tribune from 1974 when the dairy closed.

According to the article, Harold Williams bought the dairy at 3600 Telegraph in 1938 in partnership with his brother Willard (the OPL noted that it was listed in the city directories of the 1940s at 3818 Piedmont Avenue, so that may have been its original location.) It ran for many years, but like its competitors, was doomed by rising costs and changing times:

...but it has been operating in the red since 1972. Nor is the prospect bright for the 50 union members who lost jobs with Williams' closing, for this was the last dairy in the Eastbay exclusively devoted to home delivery.
Once there were dozens. In 1947 some 1,300 union members were "milkmen"...

"The giant chains, Safeway and Lucky, can handle vast quantities of dairy products with fewer people than we can. Union scale is the same for a Safeway and a Williams driver. But one Safeway driver can make huge deliveries to six or eight stores in the time it took my driver to service a few homes."

I grew up in Michigan in the 1970s, and remember milk being delivered. There was a special metal box that sat on the back porch where deliveries and empties were left. I don't remember it well enough to have missed it when it was gone, but Williams Dairy customers sound like they were a loyal bunch that missed it greatly when it closed:

One 14-year customer wrote "cut-your deliveries, raise your prices, but come back, oh please come back, to Castro Valley."

Most cite product quality, even more than the convenience of home delivery, as reason for their loyalty. But as they talk to Harold Williams, there emerges a certain nostalgia for calmer days and gentler ways.

It was definitely a different time. Milkmen knew when you were having company, when you were on vacation, and when you could afford some extras. Some milkmen were even given keys, and delivered milk directly to the refrigerator if the customers weren't home. These days that level of trust isn't there, though it is interesting that people like the convenience of home delivery enough that you can have groceries (including, once again, milk) delivered to your home.

a lovely afternoon

We attended Fruitvale Presbyterian Church again today, on monteskewed's penultimate Sunday there before he and his family move to France. He preached another great sermon, and used the analogy of the painter he saw painting the new bike lanes along MacArthur to compare to needing to keep looking where you're going to make sure you're heading in the right direction, but you also need to look up to see the big picture sometimes, too.

Loard's Ice Cream

After some socializing and talking with the supply pastor who will be filling in at FVPC, we headed across the street to Loard's for some ice cream. A quick trip down Fruitvale to Home Depot for some supplies, and we were ready for some more lunch. (Yes, we did have dessert first.)

We headed towards downtown, and decided to get some frites at Luka's. K had never been, but I knew they had good frites and a very nice selection of beers.

Because it was such a beautiful day, we decided to go check out the Cathedral of Christ the Light. On the walk over, we spotted cyclists in the 5th Grand Prix of Oakland racing around the streets.

bike racing

We've both wanted to visit the cathedral since its completion, and today was a perfect day for it. We didn't enter the sanctuary because the Spanish mass was in progress, but we walked around and visited the healing garden, and on the recommendation of the woman in the bookstore, visited the mausoleum underneath the cathedral. It's definitely worth checking out.

below the altar

blog pulse: Pleasant Valley Safeway

I follow a bunch of Oakland blogs, which cover a wide variety of subjects reflecting the diversity of Oakland. Occasionally there will be an event like Uptown Unveiled which gets blogged across a variety of sites, but usually there's little in common except the bloggers are in Oakland.

So it's interesting when something appears in multiple blogs. The latest thing to catch my eye were various discussions of the plans for the Safeway at 51st/Pleasant Valley and Broadway ("Pleasant Valley Safeway" leaves the Monkees' version of Pleasant Valley Sunday going through my head.)

I first read Becks' post about it on Living in the O, but didn't think too much about it. While I find the mega-Longs near it to be handy for some stuff, I rarely shop at the Safeway (which a friend and I used to joke was so big you could see the curve of the earth looking from one end to the other.) I do find it interesting that Safeway is working on rebuilding plans at the Claremont Safeway in Rockridge, and about a mile away, working on major rebuilding plans for another. I figured with all the work they've put into the plans for the Claremont one, the PV one would be great. I was wrong. They plan to move the Safeway, close the Long's (it's now a CVS Pharmacy), and add parking to what's already an enormous sprawl of parking. Parking gets bunched up in areas of the parking lot at some times of the day, but I've never seen the lot full or close to it.

Transbay Blog's alternative

So when I came across a post on the Transbay Blog with a great alternative, I took note. It expands the grid of streets, and adds pedestrian-friendly alleyways. It gets rid of the sprawl of parking, by adding parking below (unfortunately that costs more, and could stop the plan right there.) And it makes the whole place a lot more appealing by having shops along Pleasant Valley and Broadway and by creating buildings of various heights, including housing. What's not to like about it? Go check out the details of Eric's plan.

So if you're interested in what Safeway is planning and want them to consider alternatives, attend the planning commission hearing on July 15th. Becks has a follow-up post there including a link to the hearing details, and pictures of just how under-utilized the existing parking is.

• Living in the O
• Transbay Blog
• Oakland North
• Living in the O, part II