National Night Out 2012

The Greenbriar Neighborhood enjoyed themselves and the good weather as they gathered in Kipling Court once again this year for the annual National Night Out celebration on August 7th.. 

Most of the neighborhood "regulars" were there as well as a few newcomers. The Richmond Police made their usual grand entrance around 6:30 and stayed for about a half hour feasting on burgers and hot dogs. Also in attendance was City Council candidate Tom Butt and Candidate for Bart District 7, Zakhary G Mallett. A good time was had by all. Planning for next years event has already begun.

Photo by Valerie Ridgers

All photographs by John Oster unless otherwise noted

Discuss the Issues

KQED News and The Bay Citizen, a project of the Center for Investigative

Reporting, invite you and fellow neighbors to meet with reporters from our

two award-winning Bay Area news organizations and discuss the issues

important to your community. 

From 11am-1pm on Friday, June 1, we will be at

Clean Xpress, 1100 Macdonald Ave., and we're hoping the members and

supporters of the Greenbriar Neighborhood Council will join us.

Nobody knows your community and the challenges it faces better than you and

your neighbors. But getting the media to pay attention to your community's

needs during an election year can be difficult. We want to make sure your

voice is heard above the sound bites and din of the horse race. Our meet up

in Richmond will be an informal get-together in which your members and

supporters can share their concerns and talk about ways we can improve our

coverage of the Bay Area and the election.

You can find more information at OpenNewsroom.

Thank you,

Ian

Monthly RNCC Meeting for May

Richmond Neighborhood Coordinating Council Meeting

May 14th, 2012

330 25th St., Conference Room 1

7:00 p.m.

The meeting started off with a presentation by Finance Director James Groins.

This year, the City will adopt its first Five-Year Financial Plan. The plan provides a snapshot of possible projected fiscal outcomes and their impacts on maintaining the City's current service levels and policies.

Accomplishments for Fiscal Year 2011-2012 include:

Installed 67 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Curb ramps.

Repaired 13,567 Square feet of sidewalks.

Replaced 89 Series Street Lights.

Relined 12,500 linear feet of sewer pipeline.

Resurfaced 68 City blocks.

Finance Director James Goins

presentation on Richmond’s financial status

For more information on the City of Richmond's financial outlook: Click here

Code Enforcement Chief Tim Higares encouraged people to place their empty recycling and trash receptacles out of view from the street. He reported that he has received numerous complaints from people regarding this matter. He said although citations are few regarding this, they will be issued if the problems persist.

Tim Higares, Richmond Code Enforcement, second from right;

to his right, Richmond Police Chief, Chris Magnus

Mr. Higares went on to talk about illegal dumping and how it adversely affects our community. Last year the City removed 33 tons of trash, and over 1,500 mattresses. Over 216 hours were devoted to removing graffiti at over 210 locations. And 192 tires were removed from City streets. 

To report illegal dumping in progress call the police immediately at (510) 233-1214.

To report something that's been illegally dumped call (510) 965-4905

Environmental Manager Lynne Scarpa encouraged everyone to be vigilant in fighting mosquitos this year by emptying bird baths twice a week and dumping any standing water found around the home and yard.

Other departments reporting at tonight's meeting were:

• Public Works, Yader Bermudez
• Engineering Services, Edric Kwan
• City Manager, Rochelle Monk
• Mayor's Office, Marilyn Langlois
• Planning Dept., Senior Planner

Report by:

John Oster, President of Greenbriar Neighborhood Council

All photographs by John Oster

Grassroots Anti-Violence Efforts Bearing Fruit

News Report, Monica Quesada, March 5, 2012 — Richmond Pulse

Richmond, long burdened by the reputation of being one of the Bay Area’s most dangerous cities, experienced an overall decrease in violent crime last year, according to data recently made public by the city’s police department.

Overall, violent crime decreased 14 percent citywide between 2010 and 2011, according to Richmond Police Department statistics from last January obtained by Richmond Pulse. Those crimes include armed carjacking (down 30 percent), attempted homicide (down 14 percent) and attempted robbery (down 65 percent). Also down were the number of drug-related 911 calls (down 46 percent), “man with gun” calls (down 18 percent) and reports of “neighborhood gunfire” (down 13 percent).

Nicole Valentino, a community-advocate at the Richmond mayor’s office, says it is a mix of resident groups and non-profit organizations that are making the difference.

“The story of Richmond is more and more (about) people coming together to make things better,” says Valentino.

To read the remainder of the report, please visit the Richmond Pulse by clicking here.

Urban beekeeping comes to Richmond

The bees from Self-Sustaining Communities come and go from their

hive on a warm February morning. (photo: Lexi Pandell)

By: Lexi Pandell, February 27, 2012 — Richmond Confidential

Just over a year ago, an oasis blossomed in a rundown Richmond neighborhood off of Highway 580. Cars speed by on the busy freeway overhead and the Safeway Beverage packing plant, large and industrial, looms within eyesight. But here at the Self-Sustaining Communities garden, chickens peck at nubs of grass, a pair of rabbits dart in and out of their burrow, and, if you listen closely, you might hear a faint buzz. Thousands of bees flit between the nearby plants and their wooden, man-made hive in the middle of the property. Clumps of bright orange pollen cling to the bees’ swollen legs and the insects quickly disappear inside the hive, preparing to make honey from the nectar they collected.

One of the many chickens at Self-Sustaining Communities. (photo: Lexi Pandell)

As an industrial city, Richmond seems an unlikely place for farming of any sort. Yet urban beekeeping has spread throughout the Bay Area in some of the most improbable sites, with hives popping up in backyards and on rooftops everywhere from the city streets of San Francisco to the suburbs of Walnut Creek. Now, Self-Sustaining Communities founder Linda Schneider and fellow urban farmers hope to bring the buzz to Richmond.

Since November 2010, Self-Sustaining Communities has held beekeeping workshops to teach the community about preserving bees as a species and how one can reap the benefits of this hobby by collecting honey to eat or sell. For Schneider, beekeeping and urban farming are ways to give back to nature, however big or small the contribution may be. “It’s a movement toward healing not only people, but the environment,” Schneider says.

On a warm February afternoon at the garden, Schneider is showing a volunteer how to plant capers. Nearby, a construction crew is assembling an aquaponics system, a specialized greenhouse where fish provide fertilization for plants that, in turn, filter water for the fish. The garden’s worker bees are bustling in and out of the small opening of their hive, which is built out of recycled wooden boxes. The ten to 20 lbs. of bees that live in the medium-sized hive Schneider tends to are a handful to care for. But the rewards are certainly sweet. “[The honey is] so different from anything store bought,” Schneider says.

Before the garden, this land was an abandoned lot used for illegal dumping and drug dealing. Now, it’s bustling with life. Animals and plants thrive there, and the nearby apartment complex had a new wave of tenants, many of whom help out with gardening.

Linda Schneider, founder of Self-Sustaining Communities, with her rooster, Sage.
Directly behind them is the garden's chicken coop and, in the distance,
the vegetable beds are visible. (photo: Lexi Pandell)

Some think of the garden as a refuge, like a formerly homeless man who was key in much of the garden’s construction. He now lives nearby in an RV purchased for him by Self-Sustaining Communities and acts as a guardian for the urban farm. Many other community members come here to work off service hours or to help sustain the plants and animals that live there. As a result of this neighborhood effort, there has not been a single case of vandalism or theft since it opened, Schneider says.“Even though it’s kind of a sketchy area,” Schneider says, “the people are the ones who built it.”

In return, Schneider and other members of Self-Sustaining Communities hope to share their gardening and urban farming techniques with the city. Led by Simone Dippon, an urban farmer, the group held its first hive-building workshop in January 2011 and followed up in the spring with a swarm-catching class. Last month, they hosted another hive building class at 6th Street and MacDonald Avenue.

Although it’s relatively new to Richmond, urban beekeeping has notably expanded in recent years. Beekeeping was formerly restricted to the countryside and was even banned in many cities. But this attitude began to shift in the mid-1990s when varroa mite infestations destroyed countless colonies nationwide, says U.C. Davis professor and bee expert Eric Mussen. City dwellers took notice. Honeybees that regularly buzzed around cherry trees were nowhere to be seen and gardeners noticed irregularities among plants that required pollination, like zucchini that grew to be misshapen.

“Urban beekeeping caught on as a phenomenon as folks decided to help with the honey bee shortage,” Mussen wrote in an email. “This surge in urban beekeeping… should be of great benefit to urban gardeners.”

The bees at Richmond’s Self-Sustaining Comunities pollinate the garden’s flowers and fruit trees. But bees need a variety of pollen types to meet their daily nutritional needs and will fly as far as four miles from their hives to sample from various plants. Thus, one hive can cover an area of about 50 square miles, pollinating plants all around the Bay Area as they travel.

These bees are just some of thousands of workers in the hive. (photo: Lexi Pandell)

While there are tens of thousands of urban bee colonies in the United States, compared to the approximately two and a half million commercial colonies, urban bees could have the potential to make one big impact on the nation’s bee population at large, Mussen says.

“Many ‘small scale’ … beekeepers are operating their colonies without any chemical inputs for controlling varroa mites or nosema disease,” Mussen says, whereas commercial beekeepers usually use pesticides or antibiotics to reduce their hives’ vulnerability to infestation and infection. Some of the bees raised by urban beekeepers may not survive without these protections. But the ones that do might have useful genetic characteristics that could be introduced into commercial bee lines, he says.

Schneider and Dippon practice sustainable beekeeping, which means they don’t use chemicals on the hive and only takes surpluses of honey once or twice a year, whereas many beekeepers frequently take all the honey from the bees and give them sugar water as a replacement. They also don’t wear any protective gear or use smoke when they work with the bees.

Beekeeping is a more precise practice than other aspects of urban farming, although the average person can have a hive if they learn the proper techniques, Schneider says. Hives must be built very specifically for the bees’ needs and must be monitored constantly. If the colony grows too big for their hive, they will swarm and leave in search of a new home. The hive also has to be checked to make sure bees aren’t being bothered or killed by pests, like ants. Eric Mussen emphasized that those interested in maintaining hives should be “beekeepers, not bee-havers.”

“My greatest concern about this resurgence in beekeeping is that some beekeepers will be so hands-off that their bees will be vexing homeowners when the bees fly next door for water or when a swarm emerges and moves into the neighbor’s house,” he says.

Some also worry about danger in beekeeping. But this can be overcome, Schneider says, by positioning the hives so the bees’ flight patterns don’t lead them into nearby homes or apartments, as well as learning ways to minimize the chance of being stung. “There’s a slight misunderstanding about bees,” she says. “At times in our life, we have to overcome fear. We got to the dentist, perform at a piano recital. We deal with these things in life and we learn.”

Links to check out: 

     San Francisco Beekeeping Association

     Alameda County Beekeepers Association

     Mount Diablo Beekeepers Association

     Bay Area Beekeeping Resources

Last chance to visit the USS Iowa

By Thomas Peele, February 14, 2012 — Contra Costa Times

All photos from Contra Costa Times

The USS Iowa temporarily rests at the Richmond Yard, California

(Karl Mondon/Staff)

RICHMOND — All day, people climbed the steep gangway to board the USS Iowa and to hear 87-year-old John Wolfinbarger tell stories about serving on the battleship during World War II.

World War II veteran John Wolfinbarger served aboard the battleship

USS Iowa in 1944 during all its Pacific battles (Karl Mondon/Staff)

"I was aboard the Iowa for all of its (Pacific Theatre) battles," he said, standing near the ship's sleek prow one Saturday morning, not far from six of its murderous big guns, talking of his time as a young sailor.

During the Battle of Saipan in 1944, "I was way up there," he said, pointing high toward the ship's superstructure. "We were bombarding (Saipan) all night long."

The next morning the Japanese launched a massive air strike against the U.S. fleet, Wolfinbarger recalled. A torpedo bomber made it through "a sea of fire" from the Iowa and its escorts, and flew right over his head without dropping its torpedo in the water.

"His mechanism must have jammed," Wolfinbarger said. "Either that or he saved it. What they were really after were our (aircraft) carriers."

The enemy pilot never got the chance, though. Seconds later a shell from a 3-inch gun blew the plane out of the sky.

That is just one of the stories told by Wolfinbarger, a volunteer docent who commutes from his home in San Martin, south of San Jose, on weekends, while the Iowa is docked at the Port of Richmond for cleanup work and painting. In the spring, it will be towed to the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, where it will become a museum.

Perspective on the size of the USS Iowa, docked in Richmond,

Calif., Jan. 17, 2012 (Karl Mondon/Staff)

Until it leaves, the battleship is open to the public for limited touring on Saturdays and Sundays.

The ship spent the last decade mothballed in Suisun Bay off Benicia. Members of the nonprofit Pacific Battleship Center work to make the most of its time in Richmond as they prepare the vessel for what could be its final voyage.

The goal is to figure out "how do we make it a living attraction? How do you bring it alive?" said Jonathan Williams, the group's vice president.

Earlier this month, dozens of volunteers tore up rotted wooden decking, opened long-forgotten watertight doors and ushered visitors aboard. Even with only a small portion of the 887-foot ship open to the public and years of work ahead before it is fully restored, as many as a 1,000 people are visiting each weekend, Williams said.

"I am just curious to see the ship," said Marilyn Kelple, who drove from Sacramento on Feb. 4 to look around the Iowa. "They don't build them like this anymore."

"We get to set foot on a real battleship, one of the last ever built," said Karl Okamoto, who accompanied Kelple.

The Navy awarded the Iowa to Williams' group late last year after efforts to make it a museum in San Francisco, Vallejo and Stockton failed.

It is regarded as one of the most historic ships in naval history.

View of battleship USS Iowa in Hunters Point Naval Shipyard,

Drydock No. 4, San Francisco, looking northeast

(Photo from the U.S. Library of Congress, Prints and

Photographs Division, "Built in America" Collection)

The Iowa was launched in New York in August 1942 as the head of the last class of battleships built by the United States. It ferried President Franklin D. Roosevelt to northern Africa for war councils in 1943 and moved to the Pacific in 1944. However, it never engaged in the type of battle for which it was ultimately designed -- dueling with another battleship -- instead firing thousands of heavy shells at Japanese-held islands and protecting aircraft carriers.

During the Korean War, the Iowa again was used in dozens of bombardments before being mothballed from 1958 until 1982, when President Ronald Reagan ordered the ship returned to service as a show of Cold War force.

In April 1989, an explosion in one of the ship's gun turrets during a training exercise killed 47 sailors. The disaster has been blamed on both a murder-suicide plot by an individual sailor and an electrical accident.

How to best honor the men who died in the turret is still being decided, Williams said. Families of the dead "want it sealed off out of respect," he said. "And we are listening to how they want it memorialized."

Plans are for at least one of the 16-inch gun turrets to be accessible, he said. Much of the bridge and superstructure will eventually be open to the public, as well as areas below deck. Those areas include a bathtub that was installed for Roosevelt, who could not stand because of polio. For now, though, Roosevelt's quarters are not open to the public.

But that didn't stop Wolfinbarger from visiting them a few years ago during a tour while the ship was in Suisun Bay. He said he even jumped in the famous bathtub for a photograph.

The USS Iowa is towed to the Port of Richmond in Richmond, Calif.

on Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 (Dean Coppola/Staff)

But his love of the ship goes far beyond simply having his snapshot taken.

Sitting alone in a chair on the foredeck before the crowds came, Wolfinbarger spoke emotionally about what it means to him to be back aboard the ship and finally seeing its preservation taking place around him. He said he will head south to volunteer on the ship when he can.

"This ship has done a lot to win the war," he said, his voice breaking, tears forming in the corner of his eyes behind sunglasses. "It was an honor to serve on (the Iowa). I am not going to say it was a pleasure because nothing in war is a pleasure. This is a piece of history."

When visitors came, Wolfinbarger stood to meet them, often framing his face with his hands and pointing -- at the bridge, at the giant cannons, their barrels seeming as big as factory smokestacks.

"This was your boat?" a man said to him, a hint of amazement in his voice.

"This was my boat," Wolfinbarger answered, another story beginning, the Iowa's history very much alive.

For the entire slideshow, please click here.

     If you go

What: Battleship USS Iowa
When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays
Where: Port of Richmond, 1411 Harbour Way South, Richmond
Admission: $10 for adults, $5 for children

Monthly Greenbriar RNCC report

(Photo: John Oster)

The Richmond Neighborhood Coordinating Council meeting was called to order at 7:00 by Bea Roberson, President of the RNCC. The minutes from the last meeting were read and approved.

Then everyone in the room introduced themselves and a brief report was given by each Neighborhood Council President, afterwards some brief announcements ensued.

Reports from the City of Richmond staff began. They included reports from:

     Public Works Department            Yader Bermudez

     Engineering Services                   Eric Kwan

     City Manager/Comm Coord          Rocelle Monk

     Mayor’s Office                             Marilyn Langlois

     Police Department                      Chief Chris Magnus

     Code Enforcement                      Tim Higares

     Environmental Manager              Lynne Scarpa

     Planning Department                  Senior Planner

(Photo: John Oster)

At 8:30 we took a break and enjoyed the wonderful food provided by the joint efforts between Greenbriar and Pt. Richmond Neighborhood Councils.

More presentations ensued. The Richmond Rockets pro basketball team gave a presentation and encouraged everyone to come out to their next game on Friday, February 17, at Richmond Memorial Auditorium.

Further presentations ensued. The I-80 project to defer traffic to local streets was discussed. Afterwards we adjourned.

Report by: John Oster, Greenbriar Neighborhood Council President

Got Mice? Get an Owl

Marin group pushes for owls, not rodent poison

Barn Owl (Photo: Paul Buxton, Creative Commons)

By Joan Curtis, Bay Nature — The Bay Citizen, August 23, 2011

Facing a rodent problem? Before you head to the hardware store for rat poison, Alex Godby, founder of the Marin-based nonprofit Hungry Owl Project (HOP), wants to persuade you that there are better ways to deal with rats and mice.

And one of those ways is to attract owls by installing nest boxes and keeping the surrounding area free of rodenticides, which can be deadly not just to rodents but also to the birds and other predators that feed on poisoned animals and then die themselves.

"I don't think people realize how detrimental [rodenticides] are to the environment," says Godby. "The threat they present to wildlife and pets, and that they don't actually work in the long term."

Over in Bolinas, HOP volunteer Stockton Buck hopes to take the effort a few steps further than just an owl box in his backyard: He recently started a "Rodenticide-Free Bolinas" campaign in the small West Marin community at the souther end of the Point Reyes peninsula.

"Because Bolinas is a small and isolated enough community, if we could convince those in Bolinas to forego rodenticides then we could create an environment free of influence from surrounding communities," says Buck. Wildlife there, in other words, would bye unlikely to encounter poisons in neighboring towns.

Buck began his campaign by sending out surveys to Bolinas residents. About 10 percent have responded, nearly all "strongly in favor of" a rodenticide-free Bolinas, given viable alternatives. "If you care about the environment, it's hard to argue against," he says. "There are so many downsides to poisons, to me it isn't worth it."

Through HOP, Buck has installed three owl boxes in Bolinas, and he says he hopes to eventually install at least 100 boxes throughout the community.

Godby has similarly high hopes for the project, especially because HOP now has a full decade of experience encouraging barn owls as natural rodent control, which she touts as better for the environment, good for owl populations, and effective--barn owls are skilled predators with fast metabolisms, capable of consuming thousands of rodents in a season.

If the Rodenticide-Free Bolinas campaign goes well, it may inspire similar measures in other parts of the Bay Area. As Godby says, "We're hoping that if one town can set the example then others will follow."

You can learn about all this and more at Hungry Owl Organization website, including plans for building your own owl nesting box. You can also check out Bay Nature Organization for events and other informative information.

The Bay Bridge will be closed Presidential weekend

A new east span of the Bay Bridge is being built alongside the old east span,

which is 75 years old and slated for removal (Photo: Caltrans)

By ZOE CORNELI - February 11, 2012 — The Bay Citizen

The seismic upgrade of the Bay Bridge, California’s biggest and most complicated highway construction project, will cost taxpayers more than $6 billion and has taxed drivers with a series of bridge closings. Next weekend Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation, is once again asking many of the 280,000 drivers who traverse the bridge each day to find another way across the bay.

Appropriate to the tech-savvy population of commuters, Caltrans is asking Bay Area residents to help spread the word on blogs, local Web sites and Facebook pages. The agency has created a series of plug-in banners for commuters to embed on their favorite online sites. It has also created an online animated simulator to help explain the changes.

A catwalk rises over the new East span of the Bay Bridge on 

Monday, Aug. 29, 2011, in San Francisco (photo: Noah Berger, The Bay Citizen)

The agency has spent about $500,000 to spread the word via more conventional advertisements, public service announcements and fliers, along with its 300 changeable message signs throughout the state.

Unless weather delays the planned President’s Day weekend closing, it will be the second-to-last bridge interruption before the new span opens in late 2013.

For the remainder of the article and information, please visit The Bay Citizen. 

Hotel Mac celebrates 100 years

Source: Hotel Mac Restaurant and Bar historical archives

By: Julia Marshall, William Harless, Mitzi Mock, Maggie Beidelman 

      November 9, 2012 — Richmond Confidential

Hotel Mac Restaurant and Bar is celebrating 100 years of business, since its original opening in 1911.

First built to serve Standard Oil workers in the early twentieth century, Hotel Mac, then called the Colonial Hotel, was a supreme dining establishment. After a mid-century decline and a fire that destroyed the building in 1971, the restaurant was rebuilt by current owners Bill Burnett and Griff Brazil in 1978.

Now restored to its original splendor, Hotel Mac hosts a typically professional clientele in Point Richmond.

Hotel Mac Restaurant and Bar website.

Crime Watch Alert

There has been a significant increase in auto thefts and burglaries in the Richmond area. We are therefore asking for you to be more vigilant in the coming weeks and months, especially since this type of crime moves from one neighborhood zone to another.

We will keep you posted of any significant changes, so please keep checking regularly this website. Remember if you see any suspicious behavior or activity, please report it by calling (510) 233-1214.