Congratulations are in order for Gavin Newsom and the SF Board of Supervisors, who held firm and didn’t give away the farm in their winning America’s Cup bid. The City beat out stalking horse Newport, RI, who did not actually get its 2013 bid out in time, despite having the experience of holding the event [...]

I don’t regularly go onto The Google and type in the terms “councilman dui.” After Oakland District 5 Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente’s arrest for an apparent DUI violation earlier this morning, I was curious. The final tally: 61,800 results, most of them from media outlets. Included were a Hercules councilman’s DUI last month and [...]

To celebrate the holiday season, the Marlins have sent out a virtual greeting card showing a time-lapse of the construction of their new ballpark. It’s scheduled to open in 2012. Impressive, right? Maybe not when you take a look at this cross-section (via Autodesk/Hunt-Moss), in which all of the luxury suites have been stuffed behind [...]

Now that funding for the Victory Court EIR has been approved, what will the next year-plus look like? How does the process work, and what could speed up or slow it down? I posted a possible timeline for the EIR work at AN. Here’s the entire comment: 2011 Jan-Mar: Draft EIR prepared Apr: Notice of [...]

Liveblog of the meeting (watching the stream): 7:15 PM – The first of eight speakers, Chris Dobbins, is up. The first three speakers are in favor of the resolution: Dobbins, Mike Davie, and Jorge Leon. emperor nobody is fifth with the the phrase “green stadium” as the magic words to making the ballpark work. Ethan [...]

If you’ve been following the Twitter feed, you’d know that tonight I’ve been following the Escondido city council’s decision on whether to move forward with its $50 million AAA ballpark plan for the Padres. The City Council voted 5-0 on two items: to move forward with EIR work and the acquisition of some land that [...]

The Trib’s Angela Woodall observed the proceedings today. The result? 3-1 in favor of a full EIR study. As expected, the lone dissenter on the committee was Ignacio De La Fuente. The issue will appear before the Oakland City Council next Tuesday, where it should pass. The one important detail: In the end, the committee [...]

Peerless Coffee is based out of a low-slung, light industrial building built in 1976. Established in 1924, the company has seen it all: wars, boom and bust cycles, and several sports teams. Three generations of the Vukasin family have helmed the company, and they are Oaklanders through and through. They have every intention and desire [...]

A reader alerted me to Andy Dolich’s piece last week in the Biz Ball section of the CSN Bay Area/California website. Dolich goes back through the postwar history of stadia in America, going from the multipurpose bowls of yesteryear to the new single purpose venues of the last twenty years. He then summarizes the current [...]

I don’t know if it’s divine intervention for Brett Favre or symmetry with the Minnesota Vikings’ season. Either way, this video of the Metrodome’s roof collapsing is awesome. The game has been rescheduled for Monday night at Detroit’s Ford Field. The teams could’ve played at TCF Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota, but the [...]