Sourcing the Iconic Eats, Berkeley-style

Once, back in the distant days when I had some hope of getting organized, I hired a clever high school student to arrange our all-too-numerous books in some logical order. He even labeled the sections, using a scheme of his own devising that has now gone bye-the-bye—my favorite was a combination of cookbooks and treatises on diet and health under the umbrella label of “Food: Pro and Con”. (No surprise, he grew up to become a critic.) Berkeleyans since we’ve been here have spent a lot of time on the question of “Food: Pro and Con.” 

Recently I’ve been monitoring the heated discussion in my South Berkeley/ North Oakland neighborhood about whether Safeway should be allowed to build a megastore cum strip mall on the lot which now houses a normal neighborhood supermarket at the junction of College and Claremont on the Berkeley-Oakland border. 

The current store is 22,500 sq. ft., and Safeway wants to almost triple the footprint to 62,000 sq. ft. Neighbors, both residential and commercial, are up in arms. Safeway is fighting back, with its latest effort a deceptive glossy promotional postcard mailed to all residents in a huge area around the store, complete with a sideways architect’s rendition of the proposed building that makes it seem much smaller than it will actually be. Recipients are directed to a website where they can record their approval of Safeway’s plans—but there’s no way to record disapproval, of course. 

Objections from neighbors aren’t just to the architectural design (enormous and ugly), but also to the concept. The proposed re-do will include a flock of retail storefronts obviously targeted to compete with the successful owner-operated retailers across College Avenue, most likely to be operated either by Safeway Inc. or by chains. It’s likely that some small stores will be swamped, which will, among other things, reduce Oakland’s sales tax revenues for the area in the long run. 

The heated discussion will next surface sometime in mid-June when the project’s draft EIR comes to the Oakland Planning Commission (the decision-making equivalent of Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustment Board.) Opponents are marshalling their forces now, well aware that Safeway has big bucks and heavy-duty political clout to push its corporate scenario. AJE Partners, the PR engine headed by ex-Assemblymember Dion Aroner, is leading the charge, which practically guarantees the support of many apparatchiks in the urban East Bay Democratic organization. They’ve already successfully engineered a similar Safeway expansion plan for North Shattuck, and are working on the Solano version.

Quebec province with francophone culture | Toronto Merchant Services

Quebec province with francophone culture

Quebec is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population. There are over seven million people in Quebec, whose everyday language is French. The French-speaking Canadians, who live in the province of Quebec, are referred to as the Quebecois. The Quebecois constitute 82% of all French-Canadians. Capital City of Quebec is Quebec City.

Quebec is a province in Canada , North America  bordered on the Southeast by the United States and New Brunswick, on it’s Southwest by Ontario , on it’s West and North by  Hudson Bay, and on it’s Northeast by Newfoundland.  It has an area of 1 700 000 sq.km, and is three times as large as France. Quebec is Canada’s largest province by area. Montreal is the second-largest city in Canada and the largest city in the province of Quebec.

The name “Quebec”, which comes from the Algonquin word kébec meaning “where the river narrows”, originally referred to the area around Quebec City where the Saint Lawrence River narrows to a cliff-lined gap. The Quebec flag changes came about slowly, however after World War II the Fleurdelisé flag was made Quebec’s national emblem on January 21, 1948.  Québec’s official flower is the Blue Iris.

The major newspapers in Quebec are La Presse, Le journal de Montreal, Le Soleil de Quebec and The Gazette (Montreal). There are also several free papers including “alternative weeklies” and daily micro-presses available in cafes and the Montreal metro.

Quebec has three main climate regions. Southern and western Quebec, including most of the major population centers, have a humid continental climate  with four distinct seasons having warm to occasionally hot and humid summers and often very cold and snowy winters. Sporting activities are increasingly popular in Quebec. Hockey is the sport of choice in Quebec.

The territory of Quebec is extremely rich in resources in its coniferous forests, lakes, and rivers pulp and paper, lumber, and hydroelectricity are still some of the province’s most important industries. There is a significant concentration of high-tech industries around Montreal, including aerospace companies such as aircraft manufacturer Bombardier, the jet engine company Pratt & Whitney, the flight simulator builder CAE and  Lockheed Martin Canada. The province of Quebec is ranked the 44th largest economy in the world just behind Norway and ranked the 21st largest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Main Quebec industries are: aerospace,agriculture, manufacturing, energy, mining, forestry and transportation. Science and technology are key factors in the economic position of Quebec. More than one million people in Quebec are employed in science and technology sector. Montreal’s economy is the second largest of all cities in Canada and the largest in Quebec.

San Francisco focus

Queer latinidad, identity practices, discursive spaces

Abstracts of the annual meeting

The Francophones of Saskatchewan, a history

The Californians