PLANT SALE The Edible Schoolyard Plant Sale and Celebration on Saturday includes live music, garden tours, a beer garden, wood-fired pizza, food from local chefs, and, by the way, plants for sale. It’s a spring chance to get your garden off to a strong start with tomatoes, vegetables, fruit trees and berries, herbs, perennials, and annual flowers. There’s also gardening advice on hand for both novices and experts. Saturday, May 13, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., King Middle School, 1781 Rose St.
PEACE TRAIN The Peace Train Children’s Choir will arrive at the Peace Wall steps at Civic Center Park on Saturday to sing songs about peace, social justice and racial harmony. The choir includes over 100 diverse youth and adults from Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond and Sacramento, touring the East Bay on BART, stopping to sing in schools and public places along the way. Berkeleyan Alisa Peres was inspired to start the Peace Train after seeing the film “When Voices Meet,” about South Africa’s Peace Train, which was created to unite youth in the post-apartheid era. The Peace Train performance in Berkeley is being supported by the Downtown Berkeley Association as part of their 50th anniversary Summer of Love program. Saturday, May 13, 1:30 p.m., Civic Center Park.
ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES We can’t better the wild prose the UC Theatre has to promote Sunday’s concert: “In that mythical era known as the 90’s, five brave young men emerged from the legendary halls of some of the mightiest bands on Fat Wreck Chords with a single mission: make all the rest of these dildo punk bands covering popular songs obsolete. They crowned themselves Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and the world rejoiced. Now, seven records, scores of singles and nearly a thousand years later, having tackled every genre under the sun, the bold young knaves known colloquially as the Gimmes have ridden their success hard, and decayed into desiccated, old divas.” If that speaks to you, you’ll probably love Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, who release their latest record, “Are We Not Men? We Are Diva!”, this weekend. Sunday, May 14, 7 p.m., UC Theatre, 2036 University Ave.
DEMOCRACY NOW Amy Goodman has built Democracy Now! from a local radio show to one of the country’s premier alternate journalism programs over 21 years. Its online broadcasts focus on issues that are often ignored by mainstream news organizations. Goodman returns to Berkeley on Sunday to talk about her over two decades hosting the show and the current state of politics in the US. She’ll be speaking with Denis Moynihan, her co-author on the recent book Democracy Now!: Twenty years covering the Movements Changing America. Sunday, May 14, 7 p.m., First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, 2407 Dana St.
NCAA TENNIS With the honor of the eight seed in the NCAA tournament, Cal men’s tennis gets to host the first two rounds on their home courts. If you rush out now (on Friday), you’ll see the Bears take on Tennessee Tech. Saturday’s matches will feature the winner of Northwestern v. Utah State against the winner of Cal’s match. That second round should start at 3 p.m., and follows Cal women’s tennis’ first-round NCAA match against San Jose State, which starts at noon. Fun, little known fact: there is no service let in NCAA tennis rules. Saturday, May 13, women’s match at noon, men’s match at 3 p.m., Hellman Tennis Complex.
Don’t forget these other events covered on Berkeleyside:
Berkeley High jazz comes home Friday at UC Theatre
Big Screen Berkeley: ‘Obit,’ ‘Bang! The Bert Berns Story,’ ‘Risk’
