General
Industry recognized choreographers who got their start here, 14-year-old b-boys and a pulsing Cuban DJ filled East Bay Center for Performing Arts with style and swag Friday night as part of a month long celebration of the studio’s grand re-opening.
When Reina Portillo was diagnosed with breast cancer and her husband, Jose Pedro Albarron Lopez, lost his job, her family, including four children and one grandchild, crammed into whatever one-bedroom apartment they could afford that month. They lived like that for years. Since July, Portillo and her family have lived in the Lillie Mae Jones Plaza, in a spacious four-bedroom apartment, with affordable rent and social services in the building. “My mom couldn’t work any more and it was only…
The Kennedy High Eagles played hard Saturday, but couldn’t put up the defense needed to keep the Saint Mary’s College High School Panthers down. The Eagles stayed ahead of the Panthers for all but the last two minutes of the game, when a turnover led to the Panthers’ game-winning touchdown. “We didn’t have the defense, and we didn’t execute,” said Eagles head coach Mack Carminer. Further complicating the 35-31 game was the ejection of Carminer for improper equipment. Several Eagles…
The game between Richmond and El Cerrito on Thursday evening was decided much before the final whistle. It was an exercise in waiting for the final score and for the Richmond High fans, the score was dismal: El Cerrito 58, Richmond 6. On the sidelines during the game, the Oilers had six players to the Gauchos’ 21. On the field it was 11 against 11, but the Oilers seemed to be outnumbered there as well. The Richmond defense seemed to…
More than 750 families in the city’s low-income Iron Triangle neighborhood now have computers in their homes thanks to a two-year effort by a coalition of nonprofit agencies working to make broadband Internet access widely available there.
Generally, when you sit a 19-year-old at a table with a reporter, it’s a classic recipe for one-word answers and evasive glances at the ground. Yet, Francisco Rodriguez stands to shake my hand. He looks me directly in the eye, and speaks clearly, in full sentences. “That’s everything they teach you in the post,” Rodriguez says. The Explorers, a police-directed extracurricular program that grooms youth not only for law enforcement but also for life, hasn’t just given Rodriguez social tools…
Fred Casanares got to Point Pinole Park a little before 8 a.m. on Saturday. He fired up the grill at 10 a.m. with almond wood, because it burns cleaner than charcoal. For the next five hours, Casanares cooked hundreds of pounds of burgers, hot dogs, quesadillas, and skirt steak, while smoke wafted around the festival and the persistent long lines in front of the grill. “I can’t even calculate how many people I’ve fed,” he said, wiping the trails of…
Richmond residents, business owners and conservationists showed up in droves at the City Council chambers Thursday night to give the Planning Commission an earful regarding the fourth draft of the city’s major planning document and its accompanying final environmental analysis. In all, 59 speaker cards were submitted, and most residents expressed concerns about air quality, job growth, transportation, development and especially land use. “You can imagine that in such a city there is going to be quite a bit of…
Sit for a minute and watch cars drive the stretch of road on Barrett Avenue from Harbor Way to Seventh Street, and you can see bad pavement in action. A red Range Rover trips over an uneven patch with a jolt. The Camry behind it slows down and creaks as tires meet pothole. A white Chevy tries to accelerate, but the cracks on the road resist. According to a quality standard set by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the pavement of…