“Dark Secrets” at Berkeley Rep tonight. About most of the universe — and free [LBL] Street fashion in Berkeley. Not an oxymoron [Work it, Berk] You always wanted to know about a robot competition in Ulaanbaatar. Didn’t you? [Graduate School of Journalism] Or you could go to the Parks & Recreation meeting. Amy Poehler will […]
Lance Knobel
Lance Knobel (Berkeleyside co-founder) has been a journalist for nearly 40 years. Much of his career was in business journalism. He was editor-in-chief of both Management Today, the leading business magazine in Britain, and World Link, the magazine of the World Economic Forum. In 1999-2000 he was director of the Programme of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. He is also the founder and curator of Berkeleyside's Uncharted Festival of Ideas.
Posted inArts
The Rep is “on fire”
Photo by Kevin Berne/Berkeley Rep The New York Times isn’t known for gushing enthusiasm, but how about yesterday’s Critics Notebook by Bruce Weber: Like ballplayers, theaters sometimes get hot, rapping out hits with unlikely regularity, and the Rep, 41 this year, is on fire.
Posted inSchools
Chu returns to Lawrence Berkeley Lab
Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Lab – Roy Kaltschmidt, photographer Steve Chu, energy secretary in the Obama administration, returned to Berkeley today to speak to his former colleagues at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBL). If you’re reading Berkeleyside before the 10:30 finish to Chu’s presentation, you can watch a live webcast. Chu won the Nobel prize […]
Posted inEvents, Schools
Galileo didn’t use instructions
Geoff Marcy, the Berkeley professor who has discovered more planets than anyone else in history (70, in case you’re counting), joined a few dozen decidedly younger astronomers last night to build a Galileoscope — a telescope like the one Galileo Galilei first built 400 years ago. My 11-year old completed his well before Marcy and […]
Posted inEvents
Berkeley’s Halloween
I live in Halloween Central, just off Russell Street. For those who live here, there’s a choice between campaign-scale planning or turning out the lights and hiding for an evening. Last year we gave out 2,000 pieces of candy — and that’s by strictly rationing trick-or-treaters to one piece each. My neighbor started building his […]
Posted inNews Wire
The Berkeley wire: 10.22.09
Skateboarding, graffiti art and hip-hop. Of course. [Skate Daily] Mario Savio: “All that was daring, militant and new about the Free Speech Movement“. [OUP Blog] Build your own Galileoscope tomorrow night. [Berkeley Astronomy] Succumb to the anti-scientific zeitgeist with Deepak Chopra. [Berkeley Arts & Letters] Photo: North Berkeley BART station by Crimsonically Yours on Flickr
Posted inBusiness, Nosh
Hoisted from the comments: The relentless rise of fro-yo and ice cream on Shattuck
Commenter Deirdre notes there is one area where downtown is thriving: One business that seems to have launched itself spectacularly is the frozen dessert phenomenon on Shattuck. First Gaia, then Milano Gelato (now called something else, I believe). Then Tully’s introduced its ice cream cones. Then the $1 John’s Ice Cream place got going (always […]
Posted inHousing & Development
Too good to be true? Berkeley houses for $1
What’s the catch? Two fixer-uppers on College Avenue for $1 each. Oh, you need to move them, and there are some trees in the way. Surely that’s not beyond the ingenuity of some ambitious Berkeley house buyer. How much does it cost to move a house in any case?
Posted inArts, Business
The return of Black Oak Books
Black Oak Books, which closed its wonderful store on Shattuck in June this year, will be resurrected on San Pablo. The booksellers are renovating the space at 2618 San Pablo formerly leased by Rountrees (hat tip: Jim). Since the closure, Black Oak Books has been buying and selling books out of a warehouse on San […]
Posted inBerkeleyside
New kids on the block
Berkeleyside welcomes some new entrants in local coverage. The New York Times, which launched its Bay Area pages in the newspaper last week, unveiled its new Bay Area blog this afternoon. Thanks, by the way, for including Berkeleyside on the blogroll. And neighboring Oakland, long a hotbed of hyperlocal sites, saw the launch of Oakland […]
Posted inCrime & Safety
Did anyone hear the ‘minor explosion’ last night?
Berkeley police are investigating a “minor explosion” that occurred near Blake Street and Chilton Way, just west of Telegraph, last night. Are there any reader reports on what happened?
Posted inBerkeleyside
Home of bearded dissidents
One of the special, intangible assets of Berkeley is that it is widely recognized as a political landmark and a state of mind. I love stumbling across references to “Berkeley” in that sense. The latest comes from an excellent essay by Tim Garton Ash in The New York Review of Books on the epochal changes […]
