Author: montclairoak

Thanks For The Trefoils

Just a week or two before the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano, our local Girl Scouts reappear with their annual supply of trefoils and thin mints.  There’s something wonderful about this fundraiser which teaches girls about business, while feeding the craving masses.

Today the Girl Scouts were set up in Montclair Village, and selling their stash.  We watched and recorded ’em in action below.  First, the scouts marketed and hawked cookies with plenty of verve!

Then it was time to check out the goods up close, artfully displayed and ready for the taking.  Did you know the cookie boxes all say “courage, confidence and character” on them?

At around 2pm, the girls were experiencing a lull in the post-lunch crowd.  Like all good retailers, they patiently waited for shoppers to stop by their stand.

Within minutes, we caught one happy buyer and seller in mid-transaction.  No matter what happens over the decades, the buyers still want these cookies and are pleased to fork over $4 per box.

There were several signs that we’re living in 2010, though.  One buyer didn’t want to be photographed acquiring her contraband, explaining that she was buying it as a gift.  Plus the Girl Scouts now sport nicer-green vests festooned with earned badges, which seem much cuter than we remember.

Cheers to these girls, hard at work.

No Longer Welcome In Montclair

We are no longer welcoming visitors to Montclair Village these days:  our southern “Welcome to Montclair” sign is not there!

Remember when there was a graffiti hit on the village, in early December?  This very same sign, located on the corner of Mountain and Park Boulevards, was broken as well as spray-painted back then.  We noticed the welcome got fixed in record time – within days.

Welcome to Groundhog Day, here in Montclair.  Fast forward three months, and our well-worn sign was attacked once more.  Apparently it’s just too weakened to be repaired quickly and has been removed, temporarily.

Montclarions are deluging Roger Vickery, who serves as the Montclair Village Association (MVA) director, about the sign’s disappearance and status.  Here is his pre-emptive response:

Yes, the Montclair Village Welcome sign…has been removed for repairs and repainting.  Vandals, you may recall, smashed the top of the sign last December.  We made a repair on site but the vandals returned and tried to break off the top again last week.  And, in our attempt to remove some graffiti late last year, we removed some of the paint on the sign.

So, we’ve asked Dave Strong, of Strong Signs in Oakland, to take the sign back to his shop so he can do a proper fix and repaint the sign.  Dave is the guy who created this sign as well as our Welcome sign in the MSIC Shortline Pocket Park on the other end of town.

We hope to have the sign back in place in the next couple of weeks.

We understand the refurbishment is in safe hands and getting done, but still couldn’t resist the symbolic removal of our red-carpet welcome.  Keep in mind that Montclarions took immediate notice, yet visitors wouldn’t know they missed anything.

And here’s hoping the second time is a charm.

The Die Is Cast

Not that the Oakland City Council members are like Julius Caesar, but they declared “the die is cast” and proceeded across their Budget Rubicon last night.

We think they closed the 2009-2010 budget gap.  After some hand-wringing, seven council reps voted and one abstained for a final round of cuts.  [And they agreed to vote on the rest in two weeks.]  There’s plenty of unfinished business, like working with union negotiators, but few options right this minute.

The Council will vote voted to shave 15 percent from elected officials’ budgets, which includes the mayor, attorney, auditor, council reps and their aides.  In addition, the city planners were hit hard.

During this current budget year, there had to be a place to save another $4 million because this gap wasn’t going to magically disappear.  And another $35 million needs to be hunted down during the next fiscal year, so the clock was running out.

After months of delay, Council President Jane Brunner admitted, “we’re all going to suffer together.”  Not pretty but necessary.

Updates:  Please see voting clarifications above, thanks to V Smoothe and Max Allstadt.  (March 3rd Update)  The Council finally voted for the 15 percent cuts from elected officials’ budgets.  (April 1st Update)

Cheshire Grins Shared With Our Maestro

We’re still sporting cheshire grins from the Oakland East Bay Symphony concert on Friday evening, after experiencing three performances with sheer attitude.  Maestro Michael Morgan knowingly smiled and made the unusual something that symphony goers could simply embrace.

Let’s start with Charles Ives’ Second Symphony (listen), written over 110 years ago.  Our conductor gave advanced warning about the pastiche of tunes and abrupt ending, yet assured us that Ives behaved himself by sticking to one key.  It was a real trip to hear the musicians making their way around and through this piece.  While the music was beautiful, we were truly teased here.

After intermission, Rebeca Mauleon’s Suite Afro-Cubano was premiered to our audience.  This music took us through Cuban settlement and history.  We needed to toss away our preconceived notions of an orchestra, as instruments were drawn into the stories.  By the time the orchestra members shouted “Mambo,” everyone in the theater seemed ready to celebrate.

That high energy fed right into the last piece, Duke Ellington’s Harlem Suite.  We hadn’t really thought of Duke in this larger venue, complete with familiar crooning brass.  Who needs a big band when you can one-up with a full orchestra instead?  Very nice.

We hope this weekend’s performance reflects the present and future of symphony orchestras.  In that spirit, our East Bay performers are still putting out their hats and asking for donations – and they deserve our support.

What’s An Oakland Neighborhood?

No true shock:  Montclair really isn’t an Oakland neighborhood.  The latest maps reveal our ragged geographic demarcations, in what’s collectively called the Montclair District by its denizens.

Despite the ambiguity, we still share a sense of place as defined by hills and canyons, catastrophic events, historical real estate developments and whomever lives next door.

Recently Our Oakland took a stab at mapping every single extant neighborhood throughout the City of Oakland.  We relish this effort, which combines many different sources.  What’s more, because it’s on Google, you can play around with different overlays and views.

So where are we?

Let’s start with the largest definition of the Oakland Hills, which represent “our claim” on the Berkeley Hills.  Some of the Oakland Hills are called the North Hills, which tries to smooth over the Berkeley divide as well.   These northern reaches include Panoramic Hill, Claremont Hills and Hiller Highlands.

Moving south of the Caldecott Tunnel, the labeled neighborhoods include Merriewood, Glen Highlands and even portions of Upper Rockridge.  We’re not sure anyone says they live in “Glen Highlands” these days.  And while Rockridge isn’t considered Montclair, it shares a tight bond from the devastating Oakland Firestorm of 1991.

Traveling down to the southern reaches, the large Piedmont Pines development is nestled between Shepherd Canyon and Skyline.  And much like Michigan, this neighborhood’s bifurcated:  a small section exists on the far side of Joaquin Miller Park.

Parts of the Hayward Fault, running along Highway 13, also mark our borders successfully.  However the “Montclair core” jumps the line here, with many homes sited between Moraga Avenue and Park Boulevard.  We weren’t around before the highway was built, and it probably felt like a unified area back then.

How else are we defined?

The City of Oakland likes to call us Beats 13Y and 13Z, essentially north and south of Thornhill.  It’s a neat definition based on the original canyon road used by Hiram Thorn for logging operations, and likely divides up the patrolling duties.  But there are no real differences among Montclarions on either side.

We are clearly unified by the 1991 firestorm.  When asked where you live, neighbors residing in the rebuilt zone will often mention that fact in casual conversation.  If your home was destroyed, then you let other people know about it.  Even if you lived in untouched areas back then, you were touched by an experience that brought everyone together.

In the end, the people probably define Montclair District best.  A few of the earliest homeowners or their descendants are still living here, who pass on their stories.  It’s not only about the fire, either.  If you remember the one snowfall in the early 1970s, then you are a true-blue Montclarion too.  On my block, there are some old-timers and their memories help us live here – maps or not.