A good day for a malted

This hardly qualifies as news, but with such a heat wave, my thoughts turn to malted milkshakes.

As a relatively new North Oakland resident (less than a year), I haven’t tried too many places yet, so I’m open to suggestions.

The best, but least traditional, I’ve had so far was at Ici. OK, that’s Elmwood, but let’s stretch a point. They were very generous with the malt, but it was pretty small.

I had one at the Smokehouse, on Woolsey and Telegraph, that was fine, but nothing special.

The one I had at Barney’s, on College, came with the extra in the metal cup, or bowl, or whatever that is, which is very nice because it stays cold. Plus it’s fun to top up.

I think perhaps Dreyer’s has only milkshakes? I did have a milkshake there, and I can’t imagine I would have passed up malt if it had been available.

Safeway meeting

Last night I attended a meeting to hear input from neighbors on a proposed redesign of the Safeway supermarket on the corner of College Avenue and Claremont Avenue.

There were more than 80 speakers — from the audience — plus presentations. It was clear people really had something to say. Most of it was along the lines of “too big, too ugly, too much traffic, too big, too ugly.” The question, of course, is how much influence local people really have.

More when I write the article, of course, but you can see renderings of the store here.

I like it here

Today I was shopping at the Temescal farmers’ market — the one at the DMV on Claremont. It’s our usual Sunday morning activity, plus today Asheba was playing.

I ran into a couple with two young girls. They live in San Francisco but they’re thinking of moving to North Oakland. I mentioned that I had done the same thing, and they asked me why. And I found myself giving the area a little love song about the parks and trees and friendly people with kids and, you know, it felt really nice. This is a good place. Problems there are, but I don’t want to forget about the good things.

Election results

Alameda Registrar gives this breakdown for District 1’s city council race.

The first column is votes, the second is percentage.

As council races go, this one was pretty contentious, at least on the neighborhood e-mail lists and at the farmer’s market. But over 70% is a very good showing for Councilmember Brunner, the incumbent.

Jane Brunner	8941	72.83
Patrick Mccullough	3301	26.89

Temescal street cinema

Tonight I went to cover the inaugural showing of the Temescal open-air film series. I’ll post when I’ve written the story. But it was a happening scene, and a nice thing to see in a place where you often don’t want to hang around after dark.

Stories about Oakland

I’ve got some more stories up at the Contra Costa Times website. All were originally published in the Montclarion, the Piedmonter or the Alameda Journal.

One was a profile of a woman I found quite impressive — though only 27, she’s been a foreign correspondent and runs a non-profit and just won a journalism award.

I’m keeping my audience up to date with the Safeway development on College and Claremont, as well.

And I covered a very touching art exhibit by former foster youth.