Walk for Choice 2011

I walked for choice today.

I also took a bunch of pictures. Here are some of my favorites. Check out more on my flickr page.

Oakland Walk (Part 2)

Yesterday I mentioned that Evan and I were heading over to Oakland Chinatown to check out a Chinese New Year cultural festival. I thought that it was going to be a street festival and so I was eagerly looking forward to stalls bursting with bright red and gold rabbit decorations, pinwheels, cell phone accessories, colorful flowers, and street food. To be honest, I was really only interested in the street food. Unfortunately yesterday's festival was not what I had envisioned: it was contained to a room above the Chinatown library and was pretty much over by the time we arrived. So much for a lunch of dim sum and street food.

Instead we went to lunch at Breads of India and walked around the city.

We ended up in Jack London Square where we discovered The Find, a once a month antiques fair. I had a great time checking out vintage clothing, jewelry, plates, scarves, embroidery hoops, and more. The vendors had a lot of great stuff, but unfortunately for me, their prices reflected the value of their items. I want to go back next month though. It's always fun to look.

Webster Street.


Construction in Downtown Oakland. Webster Street.


Oakland Tribune building.


Neat Art Deco architecture. Webster Street.

I love this building. I noticed it for the first time yesterday. There's a lot of really great architecture in downtown Oakland, all you have to do is look around.

Spring is coming! I love daffodils and they're popping up all around town. Fairyland, Bellevue Ave and Grand Ave.

Grand Lake Theater.


Grand Lake Theater.

Some neat slap tags:

Oakland Walk

Upon finishing a breakfast of challah french toast with raspberry jam, applewood smoked bacon, and coffee, I settled down on the couch for a day of catching up on my blog feed, cleaning up my desktop, editing photos, and working on my to do list for this week. Evan thought differently. He wanted to go for a walk. And I can't blame him: he works from home so by the time Saturday rolls around he's itching to get out of the apartment. Plus it was really, really nice outside. So I closed my laptop and put on some walking shoes and away we went. Here's what we saw, did, and enjoyed on this sunny, warm Oakland day.

Someone is revitalizing this food joint. It's been vacant for years and has been a big eyesore. It's really exciting to see the positive changes that are taking place, though I am really annoyed with the amount of attention that it gets from hoodlum graffiti taggers: it gets tagged every time the owner puts on a new coat of paint. I hope it stops and/or they catch those jerks.

Grand Lake Theater.


Grand Lake Theater. Evidence of the revitalization efforts on this Oakland landmark.


Grand Lake Theater. New coat of paint and new bulbs.


Beautiful day in Oakland.


Religious nuts in Oakland. Webster Street and 17th-ish.


Tay Ho Restaurant.

Tay Ho Restaurant. #8: Ground pork and woodear mushroom mixture wrapped in soft rice noodles, more rice noodles, bean sprout, cucumber, mint, and basil salad, shrimp popover, sweet potato tempura, and pork cake. Very, very tasty (and economical), especially with sambal oelek and hoisin sauce. The fizzy lemonade was very tasty, too.

Thumbs up to this street art.


Old Oakland historic building. Current residence of Breads of India.

Old Oakland. 9th and Broadway. I love this two-tier sidewalk and wrought iron fencing.

Old Oakland. 9th and Broadway. Beautiful historic architecture.

Classy lamp for sale in Chinatown shop. They had tons of great stuff, this was one of the best.

Hello Kitty Ramune soda found at Sweetheart Cafe. It was very unfortunate that we could get the cap off; I was looking forward to some refreshing Hello Kitty fizzy goodness because it was warm and I was thirsty.

Oakland Chinatown Lunar New Year 2011

Instead of going to the farmers' market, we went to the Lunar New Year Bazaar in Oakland's Chinatown. A while back we went for a walk around downtown Oakland and stumbled upon a street bazaar/festival in Oakland Chinatown. We were hoping that this would be the same thing. It was and it wasn't: the crowds were the same, but it was much smaller, there wasn't any street food (super sad face), and we weren't able to see any of the performances--they were delayed because Mayor Jean Quan and Senator Barbara Lee were running really, really late. Nearly 25 minutes after the opening ceremonies were slotted to begin, Lunar New Year Bazaar organizers announced that the tardiness of these two dignitaries was the reason for the delay.

We were really looking forward to the singing, dancing and lion dance performances, but 45 minutes of playing musical chairs, getting jostled by old people and overwhelmed by the number of kids running around got to be too much. So we left without getting the opportunity to appreciate any cultural performances. But at least we got out of the house and went on a long walk...and I got some ok pictures of the bazaar.

Cherry blossoms in bloom.


We think they were telling jokes...


It's the year of the rabbit.


BLASTING Chinese tunes.


A bejeweled metallic moose knick-knack.








Oakland Chinatown.


A melancholy, yet apt, end to our outing.