In a quiet spot, just west of the bustle of the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, sits a garden dedicated to English literature’s crowned prince: William Shakespeare. Once you make it past the entrance gate and down the worn brick path, you are transported into an English garden filled with manicured flower beds, trimmed lawns, and people escaping the noise of the city.
Unlike other metro systems, BART shuts down for several hours a day for routine maintenance. That likely won’t change unless they build another track under the Bay. Meaning if you don’t get into the Embarcadero station by 12:27 a.m. you’ll have to find another way across the Bay. And, this isn’t your quiet-but-crowded morning commute.
After a failed coup in 2016, the Turkish government closed 169 newspapers, publishers, and TV and radio stations. Thousands of reporters lost their jobs, or worse. Currently Turkey has more journalists in jail than any other country in the world.
Every year since 1975 the Indigenous People’s Sunrise Ceremony has taken place on Alcatraz Island on Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day. Native Americans of many tribes attend the ceremony to commemorate the 1969 protest when the Alcatraz Red Power Movement occupied the island. They stayed there for 18 months, until they were removed by federal marshalls in 1971.
It’s not just you. That morning commute is getting longer and longer. As the local economy picks up steam, more and more people are getting in their cars, riding BART, and hopping on their bikes to get to work. This means everyone is spending more time on the road and is doing it less comfortably.
It’s been a year and a half since the fire at the Ghost Ship warehouse in East Oakland killed 36 party-goers. And new information about the tragedy is still coming out.
April 15th just passed and you hopefully finished paying the IRS. But, if you’re an independent contractor in San Francisco your taxes to the city are due next on May 31st.
San Francisco's Proposition B makes appointed commissioners give up their seats when they run for elected office.
The mayor and the Board of Supervisors appoint people to be commissioners, and there are dozens of commissions that oversee everything from the airport to juvenile probation to building inspections.
San Francisco's Proposition A is about financing power in San Francisco.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission deals with the city’s water, the city’s sewage, and it also provides electrical power to all city departments — from the airport to fire stations to schools.
San Francisco has the strongest economy of any city in the United States. And with business booming, a lot of eyes are on local corporations to see if they are giving back to the local community by paying their fair share in taxes.
Would you choose to pay a tax that you didn’t legally owe? A group of indigenous women in the East Bay have gotten together to ask for just that. They’ve levied a tax on residents for the land they are living on.
By Flickr user mlinksva, used under CC / Resized and cropped
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Earlier this year, Oakland City Council voted to stop banking with JPMorgan Chase because of the corporation’s investment in causes like the Dakota Access Pipeline and private prisons.
If you’ve driven across the Bay Bridge this month you probably noticed the banner above the Treasure Island Tunnel that says “Armenian Genocide 1915.” It's been just over a century since the Ottoman Empire began to systematically kill what would eventually be 1.5 million Armenians. Waves of refugees immigrated to the Bay Area, fleeing the killings. Today, tens of thousands of people of Armenian descent live here.
On Dec. 2, 2016, at approximately 11:30 p.m., a Friday night of electronic music was just beginning when a fire broke out at the Ghost Ship warehouse in East Oakland. It engulfed the warehouse in a matter of minutes, trapping partygoers inside the difficult to navigate building. Thirty-six people died.
While many living in warehouses are worried they could lose their homes, those affected most immediately were the almost two dozen people who lived at the Ghost Ship. They woke up the morning after the fire, to find themselves homeless.
Events like the one thrown the night of the Ghost Ship fire used to be a regular occurrence all over Oakland. But they’ve virtually died out, because venues fear drawing attention to themselves.
The Oakland mayor’s office officially knows of 18 large industrial spaces doubling as unpermitted homes, but other estimates say there are dozens more, maybe as many as 60.
Prop V is known as "the soda tax" and "the grocery tax," but on the ballot it’s “the tax on distributing sugar-sweetened beverages.” Okay, so what’s a "sugar-sweetened beverage?"
It’s election season. So of course, I’m at the bar El Rio in San Francisco doing what everyone loves to do over a beer -- chat about municipal bonds. I’m asking people: Do you know what a bond is?
