Tag Archives: oakland

Grand Lake Love.

So I spent a good chunk of my Saturday meandering around Lake Merritt and the Grand/Lake area… I started at the Farmers Market which is simply awesome and definitely one of my favorite things about Oakland.  It’s a wonderful combination of fresh farm produce & flowers, prepared foods, artisan goods, live music, and more.  They even have a stand with massage therapists & tables ready to ease any remaining work-week stress right out of you!  I made my way to the food court where a great lo-fi funk band was playing… I think they were called Sprocket (not sure about this though).  Check out these little tykes… they were totally groovin’!

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Then I pedaled around the lake… and at 11:45am sharp, the bell tower of The Lady of the Lourdes church (featured last week) started chiming what I believe is a portion of one of Beethoven’s symphonies… it played for several minutes, which I honestly had never heard before. Pretty cool.

As I rounded the next corner, I came upon a group of about 50 people on a lawn section adjacent to the lake, doing the Thriller dance.  Yes, Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  They were doing it without the music, but anyone who knows the video (is there anyone who doesn’t?) knows this dance!  A group of random passerbys (myself included) stopped to gawk and laugh.  It was quite hilarious.

What I’ve since learned, is that this group (and others) are preparing for an attempt at the Guinness World Record for the largest simultaneous worldwide dance to Thriller on October 24th (called Thrill the World).  It’s just a week away folks, so if you want to get in on this ridiculous fun and dress up like a zombie and get down with the funky grooves, there’s one last rehearsal scheduled for this Thursday, October 22nd.  Click here for full rehearsal schedule as well as a link to practice the dance at home.  How can you not love this???

After leaving the zombies-in-training, I parked my bike and spent a lovely time strolling through The Gardens at Lake Merritt. It’s amazing how many people cruise the lake every day – bicycling, pushing their strollers, running their dogs – but how few people know of this gem. Located on the north side of the lake within Lakeside Park, the gardens are comprised of a seven-acre collection of themed gardens. I’ll have more info on this in the next couple of days, and will be focused most of this week on all the cool things that are happening around Lake Merritt. It’s really the heart of our city.

Loma Prieta Earthquake – 20 years later

If you live in the Bay Area, it’s hard to not be aware of the fact that tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. It was the biggest earthquake in the Bay Area since the “big one” of 1906, and at the time, was the nation’s most expensive natural disaster (now grossly surpassed by Katrina).

I didn’t yet live here in ’89, but I was not far away, living in another earthquake-prone region, Southern California. I remember watching the images on tv… the fires raging through the marina, the collapsed upper deck panel of the Bay Bridge and the car that careened off where its support had once been, and of course, the images of the collapsed Cypress Freeway, built before the 1950’s and the use of modern seismic safety standards. This is where the highest number of fatalities occurred… 42 people on the lower deck were literally crushed to death.

The freeway was rebuilt years later in a different location, further west to provide access to the Port of Oakland, and what now remains where that portion of freeway once was, is the recently redeveloped Mandela Parkway, which I have featured in several other posts. Between 13th and 14th Streets is located Oakland Memorial Park, which is a beautifully rendered tribute to the events of that day.

Here is the actual seismograph from those 15 seconds…

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Designed by April Philips Design Works and artists Gilman and Keefer, the landscape work conveys the waves that moved through the earth that day, with undulating sections of native grasses, and plantings arranged in concentric arcs emanating from the “epicenter,” Story Plaza at the corner of 14th and Mandela. Here, three curved ladders represent both the literal ladders thrown up against the damaged structure that day by local residents to save those trapped within, and the symbolic hope of community spirit rising skyward from the dust of destruction. Excerpts from stories offered by local residents are imprinted into the concrete, such as “When the quake stopped, a rain of concrete dust obscured everything.”

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On this anniversary, it seems fitting to remember that we do live in an earthquake prone region, and it is extremely likely that we will see another earthquake of similar magnitude in our lifetimes. In fact, there is a 62% probability of at least one quake of this size within the next 20 years. This statistic and an incredible wealth of information on the science of earthquakes and what we can do to prepare for them is located at the U.S. Geological Survey’s site “Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country.” Please check it out. Strap those waterheaters. Get your disaster kits together. These things really do make a difference.

And by all means, go visit the Oakland Memorial Park… it’s a lovely spot to sit and remember.

And something new…

Catholicism isn’t really my cup of tea… all this business about sinning! But if there were ever something that might make me want to convert, it would undoubtedly be the experience of walking into this church. It’s like no church I’ve ever seen.

The building was designed by architect Craig Hartman of the San Francisco firm of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill. You might recognize his work from another famous Bay Area structure… the international terminal of SFO. Having just been there days ago, there are definite stylistic similarities, in use of materials (especially metal and glass) and in the manipulation of space and light.

What’s different is the feeling you have when you enter the Cathedral of Christ the Light. And you do feel something.

It is considered to be one of the most “riveting examples of recent architecture” in the Bay Area, and I think I can speak for many when I say, we are happy to claim it as our own in good ol’ Oaktown.

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Though the architecture is truly modern, it has “strong underpinnings in traditional religious architecture, such as the concentric plans of Renaissance chapels, or the manipulation of light in Baroque churches.” This information, and much more about its design, can be found here, on Architectural Record’s website.

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There is a small memorial garden dedicated to the victims of clergy sexual abuse.

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And below is a shot in the crypt/mausoleum in the the lower level of the building, which is quite stunning in itself, and incorporates the original 1870 stained glass windows taken from the previous church (Cathedral of Saint Francis de Sales) which was damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. We’ll be talking more about that tomorrow…

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Something old…

So I’m all out of whack now… after several days of enjoying what we Americans have just recently come to know as “slow food” (the Europeans have been doing it for centuries folks), today I found myself scarfing a piece of pizza while sitting alone in my car on a very short lunch break.  Granted, it was Arizmendi pizza, but still… so uncivilized.

I’ve been thinking about how sometimes revisiting the way things were done in the past can guide us in developing models of sustainability for the future.  Amsterdam is a perfect example… here you have a city of three-quarters of a million people and the primary form of transportation is the bicycle.  It’s fantastic.  No auto noise, no auto exhaust, no vast stretches of ugly concrete designed for nothing other than spaces to put all the cars.  There’s an extensive mass transit system too.

We now have this concept that city planners talk about quite a bit… the “20-minute neighborhood,” where everything we need to go about our daily lives in both work and play are easily walkable within 20 minutes.  That’s how they did it in the old days. It may sound like a crazy model for a country that came of age during its love affair with the automobile, but hey, we’re making headway.  We are getting smarter.

So I’m gonna change topics a bit here, though my visit to Europe did get me thinking of the old versus the new. And we have a nice example of this near our lovely Lake Merritt, which I’ve been wanting to focus on anyway (more on this later).

Now I’m not a particularly religious person, but I do love visiting churches for the amazing art and architecture these grand buildings typically display.  We happen to have two catholic churches perched on opposite ends of the lake.  Today we will visit the old one…

She is called Our Lady of the Lourdes, and is quite near to what is historically considered to have been the site of the first catholic mass ever held within the county of Alameda (1772). Though the church building itself was not erected until the mid-20th century, it has an old world European feel, built in the Romanesque style out of Italian marble, complete with 110 foot bell tower.

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My pictures don’t quite do this church justice… it’s got wonderful sculptural work on the exterior and rows of stunning stained glass windows from the interior.  Not to mention it’s lovely location.

Tomorrow we visit the new!