Welcome to the new site.
One year ago today I started a blog on a lark. There was no motivation, no purpose, no theme. The blog became a straightforward, if opinionated, record of daily life in a small neighborhood of Oakland, California.
Today I’m happy to say A Rockridge Life will remain just that.
The new portfolios hold photographs and writing from the blog that I’d like to return to, and you might too. Today we start with flowers and food, two of my passions. In time, more of these portfolios will be added, and the existing ones refined.
Walking can be a form of transportation, a means of meditation or exercise, or a great way to explore a community. Writer/photographer Keith Skinner offers intimate glimpses of Berkeley life, in word and image, as well as reflections on the joys and challenges of a modern urban walker.
A photo blog focused on West Oakland.
i live here:SF is an open invitation to San Francisco residents to enjoy and participate in, sharing many facets of life in this city with each other and the world at large. The project was also featured in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Julie Michelle is one of the founding members of the photographic collective CALIBER.
Her website is femmefotographie.com. Her writing and personal blog is julieliveshere.com. Julie is also the photographer for the band Magic Christian.
I fell in love with Alameda in 1974 on the first day we drove through the "Tube" on to Webster Street, and have been walking Alameda streets nearly every day since then. The city is a treat for the eyes and the imagination. Here is what I see...
This little blog turns six years old this week. I was being interviewed for a project recently and was trying to describe why I started my blog. At the time, there were very few food bloggers, and I started because I needed a creative outlet. I always thought that I didn't start with any specific purpose, but looking back at the beginning, it's obvious that I was destined to write about food and farmers and farmers markets.
The most remarkable thing about starting Life Begins at 30 is how much it has infiltrated every part of my life. Even when I'm not writing here on a daily basis, things I do each day are some way related to the fact that I started this blog.
When I sat down to write this post, I went through every blog post I've written to find my favorites. The posts you see quoted below may surprise you -- they are not necessarily the most popular, or the most important. But to me, they played an interesting part in the life of this blog.
Thanks friends and readers. You are the reason this blog is still going.
When my husband, Alejandro, and I moved from Brooklyn to Berkeley, we knew we’d find warmer weather and greener pastures. We had no idea we’d be in for year-round produce, the likes of which I’ve only seen in Italy.
The decision was not an easy one, with family and friends living in New York – but something about the daily subway ride into Manhattan and the supersonic speed of life told us it was time for a change. So, we quit our jobs, packed our things and set out on a two-week cross-country adventure that brought us to our new home in sunny California.
One of my favorite things about Berkeley, besides the food, is the smell. Every time I walk outside I breath in citrus and roses – hence, Local Lemons. It makes sense that a place with such sweet air would produce amazing food.
Mission Loc@l believes that by covering a neighborhood fairly and thoroughly, we can build community and a sustainable model for quality journalism.
As part of that effort, we seek collaboration and experimentation that will serve the community we cover and journalism. In the Mission District that means being a bilingual site and using print, multimedia and video to deliver information that offers diverse residents a way to connect and stay informed.
The site launched in October 2008, opened an office in the Mission District in January and many of us are Mission residents.
The project is part of an initiative in hyper-local coverage developed by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and supported by the school, the Ford Foundation and other donors.
Our aim is to become a self-sustaining model for public private partnerships that involve journalism schools, private foundations and community supporters.
This summer’s staff includes five interns from UC Berkeley, one intern from SF State and a visiting scholar from Mexico. We also participate in collaborations to mentor young journalists.
Saluting San Francisco's Mission District. Quote from the SF Bay Guardian: "Politics! Culture! Real-time crime reports! Drunken hipsters! Whether you want to immerse yourself in the gory and dramatic details of the proposed American Apparel store, suss out the latest renegade Sparks-and-empanada-flavored ice cream food cart location, revel in random pics of burnt mattresses on the sidewalk, or mock the Ritual Roasters laptop rodeo, of course you turn to the Mission Mission blog, our one-click West Coast answer to Brooklyn Vegan, Hipster Runoff, and Lookbook. "
When you pay attention to your surroundings, there's no end to what you can learn.
Oakland North is a news project of U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. With support from the Ford Foundation, graduate student reporters at the School are creating focused news outlets to concentrate on different parts of the Bay Area. Our goals are to improve local coverage, experiment with online and digital media, and listen to you–about the stories and features that most interest you, the issues that concern you, the information services you want, and the reporting you’d like to see undertaken in your own community.
Oakland North is staffed this fall by the reporting students of Cynthia Gorney and Kara Platoni, both journalists who have lived in Oakland for years. You can click here for bios of all 18 students.
We hope to keep Oakland North a source of news and community conversation, and we welcome all comments, corrections and suggestions. Please check out our sibling news outlet across the bay, Mission Local, covering San Francisco’s Mission district; and look for the launch this fall of the new Richmond Confidential.
We all take seriously our Ford Foundation mandate, which is to explore new ways to give communities back the coverage they’re losing as regional newspapers shrink–and also to be inventive about what digital journalism can do for all of us in the future. We’re learning new ways of telling stories in sound pictures, in cellphone dispatches, and in other forms of back-and-forth still under development.
Take a look at the photos of public places in Oakland, CA. Can you identify the location? Leave a comment with your answer.
Do you have a photo you'd like to share on OakSnap? Send it over to cmn.wilson@gmail.com and you may see it up on the blog!
The Oakland snapshot mystery game.
1. Check out the photos and see if you can guess where the snapshot was taken. You can identify the photo by leaving a comment listing the neighborhood and/or cross street.
2. Send in tricky shots to add more fun to the game.
3. If this game becomes a hit I will work on getting prizes for the first commenter to guess the correct location on each photo post!
Louis la Vache
Views of an American with French ancestry about France - and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Clic sur l'image pour l'agrandir
