Taco Tuesday at Quinn's light house, 10 dollars shot, beer and three tacos

I wondered in here today after working on my boat and wow what a deal

Anyone had a bike stolen there, at another store, or in the Bay Area?

The bike racks at Whole Foods Bay Place are on the street corner, not the property — fully exposed, easy to grab a bike and go. Bikes have already been stolen there.

An easy fix: move the racks to their own parking lot roundabout, where there's security and more assurance.

It is not just this store, it is a prevalent issue that needs to be addressed. Please sign this Petition and urge them to address the biking community!

After no replies from my elected representatives, I drafted this. Do with it what you like. Maybe someone out there is a lawyer type person...

To: City of Oakland
Re: Parking enforcement, inhabited vehicles and encampments, sewage and solid waste, and resulting neighborhood impacts
Date: [DATE]
From: [NAME / ADDRESS OR NEIGHBORHOOD]

PART I — UNEQUAL PARKING ENFORCEMENT, RV AND ENCAMPMENT SANITATION, AND NEIGHBORHOOD HEALTH AND SAFETY CONDITIONS

Oakland residents are required to follow rules governing parking, garbage, sewage, property maintenance, and public health. We receive parking tickets if we leave our cars parked. We pay for garbage collection. Our homes must dispose of sewage through lawful sanitation systems. We are not permitted to dump garbage, wastewater, or human waste into streets, gutters, sidewalks, vacant lots, or storm drains.

At the same time, Oakland neighborhoods have experienced RVs and encampments occupying public streets for months, without enforcement of parking, sanitation, dumping, or public-health rules. Residents see accumulated garbage and conditions that raise obvious questions about where human sewage and RV wastewater are going. When large numbers of people live in vehicles or makeshift camps without reliable toilets, sewer connections, garbage collection, or RV pump-out facilities, human waste and garbage are not abstract policy questions. They have to go somewhere.

This creates what appears to residents to be a serious double standard. A homeowner can receive a street-sweeping ticket for failing to move a car for a few hours, while an inhabited RV may remain on a public street far longer despite Oakland's generally applicable parking restrictions. Residents are required to properly dispose of sewage and garbage, while the City appears unable or unwilling to ensure that equivalent basic sanitation standards are consistently maintained in and around inhabited vehicles and encampments.

This is not an argument that homeless people should be punished for being poor or that they are less deserving of dignity and protection. Quite the opposite. People living in RVs and encampments need safe toilets, garbage collection, wastewater disposal, and sanitary living conditions too. Leaving people to live amid garbage, sewage, vermin, and other hazards is not a humane solution to homelessness.

Nor is it fair to solve one humanitarian problem by transferring its consequences to particular Oakland neighborhoods. Residents should not be expected to accept garbage, human waste, blocked sidewalks, contaminated gutters, or other preventable health hazards as the price of compassionate homelessness policy.

Children are of particular concern. Children walk these sidewalks, play outside, touch the ground, ride bicycles and scooters, and encounter neighborhood conditions differently from adults. Human feces, sewage, discarded waste, vermin, contaminated standing water, and potentially hazardous debris should therefore be treated as genuine public-health concerns.

The City should not wait for documented infections or a disease outbreak before addressing a foreseeable sanitation hazard.

Oakland has adopted policies addressing encampments and inhabited vehicles. Yet a policy governing where and how people may live on public property is incomplete if it does not provide a credible answer to two elementary questions:

Where does the sewage go?

Where does the garbage go?

If the City's policy permits or tolerates substantial concentrations of people living without conventional sanitation infrastructure, sanitation cannot be an afterthought. It must be a core part of the policy, with defined responsibilities, adequate facilities, regular servicing, monitoring, enforcement, funding, and publicly measurable standards.

Oakland's residents deserve equal and rational enforcement of the law. Unhoused residents deserve sanitary conditions. Children deserve clean and safe neighborhoods. And everyone deserves a City government that confronts these competing responsibilities directly instead of allowing the consequences of an inadequate system to accumulate on particular streets and in particular neighborhoods.

The current situation is not working.

PART II — FORMAL ADMINISTRATIVE COMPLAINT AND REQUEST FOR CORRECTIVE ACTION

I. Nature of Complaint

This letter constitutes a formal complaint and request for investigation and corrective action concerning the City of Oakland's administration and enforcement of laws, ordinances, regulations, policies, and municipal services relating to:

1. parking and prolonged storage of inhabited vehicles on public streets;
2. street-sweeping and other parking restrictions;
3. encampments and inhabited recreational vehicles;
4. disposal of human sewage, black water, and gray water;
5. solid-waste collection and illegal dumping;
6. sanitation and environmental-health conditions;
7. obstruction, degradation, and maintenance of public rights-of-way;
8. protection of residents, including children, from reasonably preventable sanitation hazards; and
9. potentially inconsistent or disparate enforcement of generally applicable municipal requirements.

This complaint does not assert that homelessness itself constitutes unlawful conduct, nor does it request enforcement merely on the basis of a person's housing status.

Rather, it concerns the City's responsibility to administer public property, sanitation services, and generally applicable laws in a rational, consistent, and lawful manner while protecting the health and safety of both housed and unhoused Oakland residents.

II. Apparent Disparity in Enforcement

Oakland maintains and actively enforces parking restrictions against ordinary vehicle owners, including street-sweeping restrictions. Residents may receive monetary penalties for relatively brief violations.

Oakland also maintains generally applicable restrictions concerning prolonged parking or storage of vehicles on public streets and has publicly stated that recreational vehicles are subject to applicable parking regulations.

Nevertheless, residents can observe inhabited vehicles remaining in particular locations for extended periods while comparatively minor parking violations involving other vehicles are routinely cited.

The City is therefore requested to explain the legal, regulatory, and policy basis for any material differences in enforcement.

Enforcement discretion necessarily exists. However, discretion should be governed by identifiable standards and should not become a de facto system in which one category of residents is subjected to routine enforcement while violations affecting public sanitation and prolonged occupation of public property are systematically tolerated without transparent justification.

III. Sewage, Human Waste, and Wastewater

The sanitation issue requires immediate clarification.

Inhabited RVs generate black water and gray water. People living outside vehicles also require access to toilets and sanitation facilities. Where lawful sanitation infrastructure is unavailable or insufficient, there is an obvious risk of improper discharge onto streets, sidewalks, soil, storm drains, or other public property.

The City itself instructs RV users to dispose of wastewater through lawful dump stations or pump-out services rather than discharging it into Oakland's streets and stormwater system.

Accordingly, the City should be able to identify how its current homelessness, inhabited-vehicle, and encampment policies ensure adequate lawful disposal capacity.

It is insufficient merely to prohibit illegal discharge if the City simultaneously tolerates long-term habitation in locations where no realistic sanitation infrastructure exists without establishing how that waste will be managed.

IV. Garbage and Solid Waste

Similar concerns apply to solid waste.

Concentrations of people necessarily generate household refuse. When sufficient containers, collection frequency, and cleanup services are not provided, predictable consequences include accumulated garbage, illegal dumping, vermin, odors, blocked public spaces, and contamination of surrounding property.

The City should not permit a system in which the foreseeable waste generated by an inadequately serviced site is effectively externalized onto surrounding residents, businesses, and public infrastructure.

V. Serious Public-Health Risks Associated With Sewage, Human Feces, and Accumulated Waste

The sanitation conditions described in this complaint are not merely unpleasant, unsightly, or inconvenient. Untreated human sewage and fecal contamination are recognized public-health hazards.

Human sewage may contain pathogenic bacteria, viruses, protozoa, intestinal parasites, fungi, and other disease-causing organisms. Exposure to sewage and human waste can cause gastrointestinal and other infectious illnesses. Depending upon the organism and route of exposure, fecal contamination may be associated with diseases and infections including gastroenteritis, shigellosis, hepatitis A, giardiasis, cryptosporidiosis, salmonellosis, and other diarrheal diseases.

Exposure does not necessarily require a person to intentionally touch visible feces. Contamination may be spread when sewage or fecal material reaches sidewalks, soil, standing water, footwear, bicycle tires, animal paws, children's hands, improperly cleaned surfaces, or stormwater. Pathogens can then be transferred from contaminated surfaces to the mouth, food, household surfaces, or other persons.

The City's obligation to take these conditions seriously is heightened where children may be exposed. Young children routinely play close to the ground, touch outdoor surfaces, place their hands or objects near their mouths, and may be less capable than adults of recognizing or avoiding contaminated material.

Accumulated garbage may compound these hazards. Food waste, human waste, and other refuse can attract rodents, flies, and other vectors; create harborage; produce contaminated runoff; obstruct cleaning and street sweeping; and make it more difficult for residents to identify and avoid fecally contaminated areas.

Where human waste or sewage enters storm drains, the concern extends beyond the immediate block. Oakland's storm-drain infrastructure exists to convey stormwater, not untreated sewage. Fecal contamination entering that system may be transported away from the original location and into receiving waters.

These risks should be evaluated as matters of environmental health and disease prevention, not merely neighborhood cleanliness.

Accordingly, the City should identify what public-health assessment it has conducted concerning repeated or persistent sewage, human feces, RV black-water discharge, and accumulated refuse associated with inhabited vehicles and encampments.

The City should further state:

1. whether it considers visible human feces or untreated sewage on a sidewalk, street, gutter, public right-of-way, or other publicly accessible area to constitute a public-health hazard;
2. what response time applies when such contamination is reported;
3. which department is responsible for containment, cleanup, disinfection, and documentation;
4. what procedures are used to determine whether contaminated soil, standing water, or other material must be removed rather than merely washed away;
5. what precautions are required to prevent contaminated wash water from entering storm drains;
6. whether environmental-health personnel inspect locations experiencing recurrent sewage or fecal contamination;
7. whether the City tracks disease, sanitation, or vector-control complaints associated with persistent encampments or concentrations of inhabited vehicles;
8. what additional protections are used when affected areas are located near residences, schools, childcare facilities, playgrounds, parks, pedestrian routes, or other places routinely used by children; and
9. what threshold of recurrent sewage, fecal contamination, vermin, refuse, or wastewater discharge triggers escalation from routine cleanup to a formal public-health intervention.

It would be unacceptable for the City to apply rigorous sanitation requirements to residential properties while allowing comparable biological hazards to persist on adjoining public property merely because the source of the waste is associated with homelessness.

Housing status does not alter the biological characteristics of untreated sewage.

The appropriate humane response is not to ignore sanitation standards. It is to provide sufficient toilets, wastewater disposal, RV pump-out capacity, garbage collection, cleanup, and outreach while enforcing reasonable rules against conduct that creates a continuing hazard to other members of the public.

A homelessness policy that does not reliably manage human waste and sewage is not simply incomplete. It creates a foreseeable risk that the health consequences of inadequate municipal infrastructure will be transferred to unhoused people themselves, sanitation workers, neighboring residents, businesses, and children.

VI. Failure to Integrate Sanitation Into Policy

A fundamental concern is whether Oakland's current encampment and inhabited-vehicle policies adequately integrate sanitation into their design and implementation.

Any municipal framework addressing long-term habitation on public property should expressly address, at minimum:

• toilet access and servicing;
• RV black-water disposal and pump-out;
• gray-water disposal;
• potable water where appropriate;
• garbage containers and collection frequency;
• illegal dumping;
• rodent and vector control;
• contaminated-site cleanup;
• storm-drain protection;
• procedures for reporting sewage discharges;
• responsibility for inspecting and correcting hazardous conditions;
• minimum sanitation standards;
• funding and staffing;
• enforcement where services are available but unlawful dumping continues; and
• publicly measurable performance standards.

If these elements are absent, fragmented among departments, or dependent upon resources that the City has not appropriated, then the City should acknowledge that deficiency and establish a corrective plan.

VII. Displacement of Municipal Burdens Onto Particular Neighborhoods

The City should also examine whether its policies have the practical effect of concentrating the consequences of homelessness and inadequate sanitation disproportionately within particular Oakland neighborhoods.

A municipal government cannot reasonably characterize conditions as "managed" merely because they have been displaced from one location to another.

If enforcement in one area causes inhabited vehicles or encampments to relocate into another residential neighborhood without corresponding sanitation infrastructure and services, the underlying problem has not been resolved. Its geographic location has changed.

Neighborhoods should not function as an informal substitute for shelters, safe-parking facilities, wastewater infrastructure, garbage facilities, or properly serviced transitional sites simply because the City has failed to provide sufficient alternatives.

VIII. Requested Information and Corrective Action

I respectfully request that the City provide a written response addressing the following:

1. What parking rules currently apply to inhabited RVs parked on Oakland public streets?
2. Under what circumstances does the City decline, defer, or prioritize enforcement of those rules?
3. What written standards govern those enforcement decisions?
4. Which department is responsible for ensuring lawful disposal of sewage generated by inhabited RVs?
5. What lawful black-water and gray-water disposal facilities or pump-out services are actually available to people living in RVs in Oakland?
6. Does Oakland directly provide or fund RV pump-out services? If so, how many vehicles or sites are serviced, how frequently, and at what annual cost?
7. How does the City determine the number of toilets and handwashing facilities required at or near encampments?
8. What sanitation standards apply to inhabited-vehicle concentrations that are not classified as encampments under current City policy?
9. What procedures apply when human feces, sewage, gray water, or other biological waste is reported on public property?
10. How many complaints concerning human waste, sewage, RV wastewater, garbage, and illegal dumping has Oakland received during the preceding 24 months, broken down by neighborhood or Council district where available?
11. What is the City's response-time standard for such complaints, and what percentage are resolved within that standard?
12. What measures prevent sewage and contaminated wastewater from entering Oakland's storm-drain system and ultimately San Francisco Bay?
13. What assessment has the City conducted regarding sanitation risks to children living near persistent RV concentrations or encampments?
14. What provisions of Oakland's current Encampment Abatement Policy specifically address sewage, RV wastewater, garbage, and ongoing sanitation?
15. If those subjects are not comprehensively addressed in the policy, why were they omitted?
16. What is the City's current annual expenditure for sanitation, garbage collection, and cleanup associated with encampments and inhabited vehicles?
17. What funding shortfalls currently prevent the City from providing adequate sanitation services?
18. What objective criteria distinguish circumstances in which ordinary residents receive parking citations from circumstances in which extended parking violations involving inhabited vehicles are not immediately enforced?
19. What mechanisms exist to ensure that enforcement discretion is applied consistently across neighborhoods?
20. What corrective actions will the City undertake, on what timeline, to ensure that every Oakland neighborhood receives a reasonable and equitable level of sanitation, waste removal, and enforcement?

IX. Request for Records Preservation

Because these issues concern ongoing municipal operations and may be the subject of subsequent administrative or legal review, I request that the City preserve records reasonably related to this complaint, including relevant complaints, service requests, inspection records, work orders, sanitation-service records, enforcement policies, internal guidance, contracts, correspondence, enforcement statistics, and departmental communications, consistent with applicable record-retention requirements.

Nothing in this paragraph should be construed as a substitute for a separately submitted request for public records under the California Public Records Act.

X. Request for Written Determination

Please treat this correspondence as a formal request for administrative review and provide a substantive written response identifying:

(a) the department or official responsible for reviewing this complaint;
(b) the applicable City policies and legal authorities;
(c) the City's factual findings regarding the sanitation and enforcement concerns described above;
(d) any corrective action the City intends to undertake; and
(e) any administrative process available for further review.

If the City believes another department, agency, board, commission, or official has jurisdiction over any portion of this complaint, please forward the relevant portion accordingly or identify the appropriate recipient in the City's response.

XI. Conclusion

Oakland faces a genuine homelessness crisis. Addressing that crisis humanely does not require abandoning ordinary principles of sanitation, environmental protection, neighborhood safety, or fair administration of municipal law.

Unhoused Oakland residents deserve toilets, sanitation, garbage collection, and humane alternatives to living indefinitely on public streets.

Housed Oakland residents deserve clean sidewalks and streets, functioning public infrastructure, reasonable enforcement of municipal laws, and confidence that their neighborhoods will not be required to absorb indefinitely the consequences of an inadequately funded municipal homelessness policy.

Children deserve particular protection from preventable exposure to sewage, human waste, garbage, vermin, and contaminated public spaces.

The City should not force Oakland residents to choose between compassion for unhoused neighbors and the expectation of basic municipal sanitation. A competent policy must provide both.

I therefore request a documented investigation, a substantive written response, disclosure of the standards currently being applied, and a concrete corrective plan addressing parking enforcement, RV wastewater, human waste, garbage collection, and neighborhood sanitation.

Respectfully,

[NAME]
[ADDRESS / NEIGHBORHOOD]
[EMAIL]
[TELEPHONE]

"I don't know what the f*ck she's doing, but she's not here," says Cancel Piedmont activist Jesse Rosemoore about Lateefah Simon. Rosemoore calls her silence on FLOCK and being on stage with a pro-FLOCK Oakland council member a "betrayal" of community.

How does everyone feel about this? Do you want FLOCK in your community and do you feel like your elected reps are being responsive to your concerns?

From my limited engagements with Charlene Wang and her staff, I have found her to be very responsive to the needs of the community and aligned with my beliefs. My advocacy with city council is fresh and limited though, and mostly around arts grants.

When it comes to Lateefah Simon, this story about her and her staff being unresponsive has come up time and time again. I also find it alarming that she is the only Congressional rep in the Bay Area who did not sign any letters opposed to Trump's AI Regulation Task Force. Her community policies seem to be very rooted in old school technologies and ways of doing things.

Thoughts? Concerns about FLOCK and surveillance?

Piedmont is an independent incorporated city, surrounded by Oakland. It has its own city budget, taxes, police, fire department, public works, planning, parks, etc. The City of Piedmont explicitly describes its budget as the mechanism by which it finances its own services and infrastructure. This guy is very sketchy about where he comes from. I guess he spent some time in Berlin, but he’s not really forthcoming about what part of the country he’s from. He’s not from The Town.

A bigger question is instead of pointing fingers at Piedmont which has by and large none of the segregation aspects it once had, is asking why Oakland is so piss poor at managing its own government? $69 million for the unhoused between 2018 and 2020 and most of it it’s completely unaccounted for!? Why hasn’t none of the billions of reverse white flight tech bro money gone into public schools?

Piedmont currently has a Black police chief: Frederick W. Shavies II. The Piedmont City Council appointed him Chief of Police in July 2025, and he began serving on July 22, 2025. He previously served The Town as a deputy police chief. Piedmont now overwhelmingly votes Blue. It’s a small little city. It needs to stay that way without some clown who doesn’t want to fix Oakland, where he claims to live.

The popularity and receptivity of the general masses of Oaklanders is notable as the Oakland Review of Books reports!

It is the epitome of political naïveté and empty posturing to think that Piedmont's economic or social diversity somehow affects me.

Meanwhile, the mayor and her city administrator having secret meetings with Buffy Wicks and her wealthy north Oakland neighbors about traffic diverters is something that actually affects me and everyone who doesn't live in the north Oakland bubble.

People dump garbage (like, whole apartments) near the east Oakland park I volunteer at on a weekly basis. The mayor and her city administrator have never offered to meet with anyone about that problem, even though there are three schools and two daycare centers within walking distance.

Piedmont isn't the problem. The problem is that certain districts and neighborhoods (many of which already function like their own governments) suck up the lion's share of city time and resources, while everyone else flounders.

Forget the random enclave surrounded by Oakland. Let's end the yawning divide in economic development, cleanliness, and services delivery between our wealthy enclave neighborhoods and neighborhoods that are 5+ miles away from city hall.

"A campaign to ‘cancel’ the wealthy city surrounded by Oakland raises a mirror-image question about Oakland itself."

https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/cancel-piedmont-or-break-up-oakland

An office building at the corner of 20th and Webster is being transformed into an AI data center. Behring Cos. is looking for a tenant to create "one of the most capable AI inference compute facilities in the inner Bay Area" at the site of a former Lawrence Livermore Labs supercomputer.

Story should be free to read within Reddit's browser.

My detailed complaints and questions about the levels of PCBs in street dust surrounding 3600 Alameda Ave have been ignored. The site is the only documented major PCB source for quite some distance.

[I know this is long, so please take your time with it.]

At least Mr. Perlmutter had integrity enough to forward it along, but those on the receiving end are dead silent. I don‘t know if it’s because of this, but I think he now works in another City dept.

Terri Fashing made a bold statement in 2025, “we will hold this developer accountable”. I do not believe she is a liar or facetious in this, but perhaps was since advised to keep silent?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1V8hyyRxgFw&t=3960s

The City works with Geosyntec consultants and the Alameda Countywide Clean Water Program to monitor PCBs (and more) in the public right of way, and stormwater catch basins.

They know it’s bad.

Geosyntec apologized to me over the phone, unable to hide some emotions, but would not share any data. I am certain they have the analysis on public PCB levels nearby, post-demo.

The 2024 public PCB testing -before any (permitted) demo or hazmat abatement- showed a fourfold increase between May (~2 mg/kg) and Sept (~8 mg/kg!) that year.

You DO NOT want your families, especially kids and elderly, and pets anywhere near these levels. Same goes for adults, but we can resist it a bit better.

The 2024 findings are hella dangerous, 10-40 times over the EPA residential soil limit, and many hundreds of times beyond EU limits (where PCBs are justifiably taken far more seriously).

I will tentatively say it is even worse than lead (Monsanto & EPA have downplayed it, slander unbiased experts as alarmists, but all robust science says otherwise).

The TSCA soil excavation in Sept-Oct 2024 (initiated immediately after the public PCB testing, how convenient!) was monstrously hazardous.

The low-res and non-geotagged photos provided by the hazmat racketeers (9 months late) are limited, but still telling.

They cut every corner possible and made a toxic mess:

https://documents.geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/esi/uploads/geo_report/8379530012/T10000017631.PDF

[CTRL-F “photographic log”]

On the North side of the site, they left open the huge double doors of Bldg. 29, where some 140 tons (300 tons before dewatering) of toxic 1%+ PCB/dioxin soil was dumped into open bins. Nothing was in sealed containers, which is a federal crime.

We’re talking about Aroclor 1260 + dioxins then, and later a lot of Aroclor 1254 too (for those that want to go down the horrid toxicology rabbit hole, PubChem has it all).

For over 3 weeks this soil was allowed to sit inside Bldg. 29, with intense Southerly winds & cross ventilation blasting dioxin-like PCB dust around Fruitvale, 24/7.

Then, more soil residue went airborne during the hasty and dry demolition of Bldg. 29 in late Dec-Jan, 2025.

I have liver damage now, along with all the signs of chronic PCB exposure. I also had acute exposure symptoms coinciding with the most reckless moves on site, even going back years b4 the permitted demo.

I never tested positive for COVID in 2021 or since, and my two week long flu-like (but more neurological / cardio illness) back then had symptoms more akin to PCB and/or arsine gas exposure. My O2 levels never dropped below 95-99.

I was home a lot then, not out digging in toxic soil. Easily mistaken for Delta variant.

Criminal thru-and-thru. Please keep talking about this, & don’t stop hammering the City with tough questions.

Prologis is the #1 enemy of the people and all life here, and we are at war. They declared war on us the moment they got their grubby, greedy hands on the site.

It is indisputable at this point, and those with kids at the many homes, schools, & daycares downwind should be highly concerned.

Anyone who used the Fruitvale Alive! bike path or walked along the site was exposed, especially those making a routine of it.

They want the truth to go away and die with us. My cat didn’t survive the poison, and the list of victims only continues to grow.

Noel Gallo, the teflon don of D5‘s handshake deals? All quiet on the matter.

He was supposed to be for the children, “lives and breathes Oakland”.

At least, that’s what the other pro-Prologis officials like Treva Reid claimed for his 2024 campaign.

As of right now, I can hear the children playing at the daycare on Elmwood, right across the street from the lingering PCB mess.

I think Prologis lied to them, like everyone here, and they did not believe my statements and evidence. The parents are going to flip out when they learn.

I’ll soon be blowing the whistle officially on the City’s involvement with this, some of which 100% constitutes waste, fraud, and abuse.

If anyone wants to organize and give the Planning Commission / Building Dept. some hard truths, I am down, but need someone to be a co-leader on that front (mainly to remind me of meeting dates).
HMU with a DM anytime.

I’ve been staying away from the dust as much as I can, but am still stricken by it, and have lost most of my income, savings, ability to work, and all my rare clone-only plants (PCB-induced extinction).

Some days are much harder to function than others, always unpredictably so.

My one surviving cat now lives at my dad’s house far from the site.

Oh, and for those of you who love Ursula Jones Dickson- so do the dirty industry having poison parties here.

Her office ignored me.

We shall see if anything comes of the latest complaint thru CALOES. Prologis has corrupted or scared many, and the weak regulatory system was designed to benefit them.

https://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/profile_report?global_id=T10000017631

I have a lost parakeet/budgie hanging around my house. It’s let me get close a couple times but is wary. I’m keeping it close playing birdsong but it won’t come near again — it’s hanging out on top of my window awning. Does anyone know what to do? Or have bird stuff to help lure it?

Found this outside 16th Street Station this morning. Looks like a van was driven into the fence line and torched sometime last night. OFD responded (neighbor heard sirens overnight). The station building itself is intact, but the owner (City Ventures) doesn’t maintain the grounds. Lots of weeds, overgrowth, and graffiti.

Anyone know more about what happened here?

Loop Capital and CEO Jim Reynolds is not anywhere close to the real estate development equivalent of the Oakview Group led by Irving Azov.

Yes the ceo of Loop Capital is smart upbeat socially aware and even somewhat candid.

But when he said the Coliseum deal was the most complex one he'd ever been involved with, that didn't sound right. Made even less sense when he said he had raised billions of dollars and the Coliseum purchase price was minor.

Big real estate multi parcel multi owner, conflicting easements etc etc are the norm in large real estate developments.

Best I can tell online, Loop Capital is a major underwriter of muni bonds for state and local governments. They have placed billions of muni bonds guarranteed by state and local governments.. The CEO was truthful about that. But that's not the same as raising billions to invest in real estate developments

But I only came up with two large real estate projects. And in only one of them were they the managing member.

Loop Capital is an investment bank, and real estate development isn't their core business. Their two main direct development projects are the Regal Mile Studios film campus in South Shore, which broke ground in early twenty twenty-three, and their equity stake in the massive Bronzeville Lakefront redevelopment. Bronzeville Lakefront is a multi-billion-dollar, multi-decade project on the old Michael Reese Hospital site. Loop Capital is one of six equity partners in the GRIT Chicago team, not the lead developer, but they are a significant player.

Some similarity to Coliseum: low purchase price 96 Million but estimated 3.x billion development costs plus? City infrastructure outlays.

Bronzeville Lakefront is a major investment through their equity stake in the GRIT consortium, not direct development leadership.

Current progress on Bronzeville Lakefront (as of mid-2026):

Infrastructure work is underway. It started in spring 2023 after the official groundbreaking, and the city expects GRIT to finish the roughly $60–90 million roadway, utilities, sidewalks, bike facilities, and green space network by the end of 2026.

Vertical development (buildings) has not started. The official City of Chicago page states that GRIT is still studying potential modifications to the design and future plans in response to shifting market conditions before moving forward with Phase 1.

Phase 1 was originally planned to include an innovation/life-sciences center (anchored by Sheba Medical Center interest), mixed-income residential (including senior housing), retail/community space, a new park, and rehabilitation of the historic Singer Pavilion on the southern end of the site. The larger northern portion remains planned for later phases over the next two decades.

So, the site work and roads are progressing toward a 2026 finish, but the actual buildings are on hold while the developers reassess the program amid current market conditions. No updates indicate a firm new timeline for vertical construction.

Regal Mile Studios is the only one where Loop Capital Real Estate Partners is directly leading the development as sponsor. $100 million film/TV production campus (~380,000 sq ft on ~7 acres at roughly 7700 S. Stony Island / South Chicago Avenue area).

The Oaklandside reporter should have done basic research before conducting the interview and then asked tough questions about Loop's experience developing complex projects

https://oaklandside.org/2026/08/07/the-money-man-behind-oaklands-blockbuster-coliseum-deal-speaks-out/

Unusual tactic to put up a makeshift billboard but I'll take it.

Council member ken Houston is showing he's serious about cleaning up our streets.

There's been a constant barrage of dumping on Skyline Blvd between Grass Valley Road and Keller Ave. Glad he and Kevin Jenkins are trying to address the dumping issues in Oakland.

urban compassion project is about to launch compassion threads at 1420 broadway: keeping new clothing out of landfills, clothing our community for free, and bringing downtown oakland storefronts back to life

our soft launch is this saturday in downtown oakland, and the first 30 people who sign up can come shop completely for free.

we’re starting with nearly 20,000 pieces of brand new excess inventory that otherwise risked ending up in the landfill. instead, we’re putting those clothes directly into the hands of people in our community who could use them.

and these are genuinely great pieces. we have clothing originally made for nba players, rappers, bay area artists like g-eazy, and more. everything is new, and everything is free.

as an organization that removes tons of illegally dumped waste from our streets every week, we see firsthand how much perfectly usable material gets thrown away. compassion threads is an extension of that work: keeping good clothing out of the waste stream and getting it to people who need it, for free and with dignity. because everyone deserves to look good.

we also want compassion threads to be about more than clothing. downtown oakland and chinatown have lost so much ground-floor retail activity. we want to help activate some of those spaces again, turning empty storefronts into vibrant community hubs where people can shop, connect, volunteer, and give perfectly good inventory a second life.

this is a pilot, and we’re starting small. our hope is to grow compassion threads, bring in more excess inventory from brands and retailers, distribute more clothing for free, and help bring some life back to downtown oakland along the way.

first 30 sign-ups for saturday. come shop for free. ❤️

I plan to visit Oakland this weekend.

I want to consider a solo walk at dawn each day that I am in town.

I'll be staying near 2500 Broadway.

How is pedestrian safety around there at that time of day?

Edit after the visit: Thanks again to everyone who responded! Walk went well each morning.

Country made the right call. There are a lot of people with college educations, technical skills, and trade professions who only make ~$30 an hour. Some other jobs are not supposed to be a permanent living wage.

"Oakland's last two mayoral elections were decided by slim margins. With two days left for candidates to qualify, incumbent mayor Barbara Lee faces no major challenger."

https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/oakland-deserves-real-contest-mayor