Month: December 2009

Brad Pitt Filming In Oakland Soon

Remember the saga of Moneyball?  We’re not talking about the book about Billy Beane, our Oakland A’s manager.  Instead, we’re all over the movie that was supposed to star Brad Pitt as Billy.  That flick is finally moving forward, with a scheduled 2011 release.

Last time we checked, this movie had been rejected by Columbia Pictures because Director Steven Soderbergh’s version was unacceptable.  We wondered if the movie would get resuscitated, and the news is even better.

According to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, the new Moneyball will be directed by Bennett Miller.  Who’s that, you ask?  The director of Capote, which won Philip Seymour Hoffman a best-actor Oscar.

With Bennett Miller as director and Aaron Sorkin (nee West Wing) as writer, we’re pretty sure that Brad Pitt will stick around and star in this biopic.  Expect to see Brad and his entourage tooling around Oakland, sometime next year.

Piedmonters and Montclarions Protesting Today

We knew that Friends of Moraga Canyon had organized a protest against Blair Park development, and decided to check out the scene earlier today.  There were between 75 and 100 protesters on the scene, all making their “Save Moraga Canyon” opinions known to passers-by…who pretty much all honked hello.

As a citizen reporter, I decided to stop and sniff around.  So many Blair Park neighbors lined up along Moraga Avenue, armed with their signs, kids and dogs.  They also stuck around beyond the planned hour-long rally.

Neighbors have different reasons for opposing soccer field development on the site, currently under review by Piedmont City Council.   Today many protesters offered up environment risks related to wildlife, earthquakes, watershed, sound and urbanization – but traffic and safety topped the list.  We can paraphrase here:

  • “Can you even imagine kids around here, there’s no room!”
  • “My kids do play soccer across the street, and it’s already tough on game days.”
  • “No one would be able to exit parking lots if they were built here.”

There’s some unease about the months ahead, but Oaklanders and Piedmonters on site today are pretty united about keeping Blair Park intact.  We’ll all see what happens in the coming months.

More info:  Piedmont City Council is holding a environment review scoping meeting for the Moraga Canyon Sports Fields, next Tuesday, December 8th – in the Piedmont Community Hall, 711 Highland Avenue (map).  Click to read the public notice, meeting agenda, environmental review schedule, environmental notice and initial fields study.

Helping The Hungry, This Holiday

This time of year, it can get absurdly confusing to pick your good causes.  Should you give away food, clothes or money?  Do you give in a reactive manner, by running into folks around town?  Or do you shop around, trying to decide what charities might catch your fancy?

Last year, our posting about charity drop-offs was one of the top traffic-getters at Today in Montclair.  That gives us plenty of hope, since you were clearly interested in helping needy Oaklanders.

This week, Oakland bloggers came together in the “blogoaksphere” to help Alameda County’s Community Food Bank.  You may now donate food morsels with a mouse click or two, which seems much easier than buying goods and dropping them off.

Our local Food Bank benefits when they buy food directly – and claim to “stretch $1 in donations into $7 worth of distributed food.”  Plus there’s no need for the Food Bank to sort through food donations, so they conserve on sweat equity too.

Try clicking the cute red buttons above, or in the right-hand navigation.  Then start shopping for virtual groceries and donate money directly.  We decided to “buy” some peanut butter for the Food Bank, and it only took a few minutes…for this good cause.

Checked Out Mountain’s Graffiti

As promised, we decided to share a handful of spray-painted locations in Montclair Village.  These four photos were taken this afternoon, while checking out some graffiti along Mountain Boulevard.  The vandals certainly took a bit of moxie, not to mention climbing ability, to decorate these top spots.

Just who or what is “SNS,” which was recently sprayed throughout town?  These initials have certainly gotten our attention, starting with the Montclair Village guide next to Lucky’s Supermarket as well as a private building across the street.

On two other private buildings, you see a days-old red graffiti adorning a side wall as well as older blue and black markings on a brick wall.  They are located on exposed reaches between buildings.

We also discovered a completely racist remark sprayed on one of the local street-lights near Montclair Park, but decided the words and image were both too inflammatory for this (or any) site.  You may walk right by and read it at nearly eye-level, though.

During today’s stroll, we opened our “graffiti  radar” for smaller examples.  There are subtle markings in odd places like the back side of Lucky’s behind the big Montclair Park trees, the top of the windows at Montclair Physical Therapy, and the back of buildings visible from the parking garage.

So we wonder what happens when this graffiti lands on private property.  We know it can be reported and that’s fine.  What will motivate all the building owners to clean up after the mess?  Will the owners have to keep cleaning up, over and over?  What a pain, huh.

Response To Graffiti Attacks

We wanted to make sure that Montclarions heard some “official reactions” to the recent graffiti attacks on Montclair Village.  You really can’t miss the spray paint when you see the defaced welcome sign and then drive north into the village – and this vandalism creates an awful first impression.

Montclarions should expect the most egregious graffiti to be wiped clean, as many times as necessary.  Kudos to the Montclair Village Association for their responsiveness on the welcome sign, as repairs are getting done quickly.  We understand a couple other places are getting fixed, and will check ’em out later.

However, we can’t rely on the powers-that-be when it comes to graffiti.  Locals are asked to participate in the ongoing solution, by reporting findings around the village streets.  Then we keep our fingers crossed, depending on the public or private property owner!

Please take a look at this morning’s email sent out by Roger Vickery, who directs the Montclair Village Association (MVA).  As you likely know, this merchant group maintains and spices up our faire village district.  Vickery reports on the latest happenings and shares some advice from Nick Vigilante, who chairs the Montclair Safety & Improvement Council (MSIC).

Graffiti in the Village

From Roger Vickery, MVA Executive Director

Greetings!  As you may know, last weekend the Village was hit with graffiti quite extensively, on private and public property.  The most visible instance of it was on the “Welcome to Montclair” sign near the corner of Mountain and Park Boulevards.  The sign had been vandalized and repaired just a week before by Dave Strong of Strong Signs (thanks, Dave, for the quick response), and subsequently subjected to this past weekend’s graffiti.  The MVA asked our maintenance company, Peralta Services, to power wash the sign, and paint over small areas in the Village where they could (parking kiosks for example).  That work has been completed, but it seems like an on-going task.

In light of these recent incidents, Nick Vigilante, chair of the Montclair Safety & Improvement Council (MSIC), has written on their Yahoo Group the following:

Vandalism, a crime, is defined as the act of changing, modifying or defacing public or private property. Graffiti is a crime because it a form of vandalism.  To enhance reporting and recording graffiti crimes in Montclair, here are the procedures to handle it:

1.  Report Graffiti in-progress:

If graffiti is seen in-progress on either public or private property in Oakland, immediately call 911 from a landline, or 777-3211 from a cell phone.

2.  Graffiti on city property (after it occurred):

One should contact either the Public Works Agency (PWA) and/or the Oakland Police Department (OPD) to report graffiti.  Contact the Public Works Agency (PWA) – 615-5566, or send an email to pwacallcenter@oaklandnet.com.  Or, contact the Oakland Police Department (OPD) – 238-4703

Regardless of which Department you contact, the contact ends up at the PWA for the clean-up. If OPD is called, they refer the calls to PWA for the clean-up. If you think the graffiti is gang-related, the OPD number should be called so OPD can examine the graffiti and the location of it, to see if it is linked to gang and/or illegal drug and alcohol use. If someone does not know if the graffiti is gang-related, then contacting both Departments is probably the best way to handle it – make it clear to both Departments that you do not know if the graffiti is gang-related. If the graffiti is not gang-related, contacting PWA is the best way to handle it for the clean-up purposes.

3.  Graffiti on private property (after it occurred):

Contact the Oakland Police Department (OPD) – 238-4703

4.  In addition to #2 or #3 above, file a police report on the graffiti:

Graffiti reports do not always end up in the OPD crime reporting data base.  The monthly reports I send out on our MSIC Yahoo! Group will verify this.  Therefore, I recommend you file a Citizen Crime Report for each incident of graffiti, whether it be on public or private property.  This can be done via computer and on-line at the Oakland Police Department web site at www.oaklandpolice.com.

Reporting graffiti this way helps bring the graffiti problem to the attention of OPD; gets it into the OPD crime reporting data base to keep track of it; helps raise graffiti problems with Montclair’s Problem Solving Officer for patrol, investigation, enforcement, and prevention activities; and helps get the graffiti removed (clean-up) on city property.

There are three points I’d like to add to Nick’s very complete information:

Some graffiti ends up on PG&E or EBMUD property, so they must be contacted to address it:

  • Report any graffiti you see on PG&E property by contacting them on-line:  click here or call 1-800-743-5000.
  • Report any graffiti you see on EBMUD property by contacting them on-line:  click here.  (Although graffiti is not one of the topics on the list, use this form anyway.)

Regarding graffiti you see on private property in the Village, in addition to notifying the OPD, please let us know at the MVA office at montclairvillage@sbcglobal.net.  We are working with Village property owners on this regularly and can use the extra eyes of the community to catch graffiti when it happens.

Finally, those of you who are parents of school-age children (or any kids that might be doing this) let them know this kind of vandalism is expensive to address and contributes to making the Village a less attractive place to visit…and, of course, it’s illegal.  We have our private security folks and the OPD alerted, so they are running the risk of getting caught.

Sorry to be providing such a downer at the beginning of the holiday season, but we need to stay on top of this…we know that graffiti that is allowed to remain draws more graffiti, and the appeal of our Village is seriously affected.