Samson Reiny/510Report
It’s an overcast Friday afternoon at Golden Gate Fields, the last remaining racing track in Northern California.  The on-and-off drizzle and chilly air have left the bleachers nearly empty as people flock into the clubhouse-a heated room with greasy ballpark-style foods being sold by vendors and closed-circuit television access to the races.  It isn’t quite a standing-room-only crowd, but it seems like a decent weekday turnout-a good number of seats are filled and the walking space is taken up by several anxious television watchers, their heads cocked toward the …

BY CASEY MINER AND HUDA AHMED  The 12th St. corridor in Oakland is a 12-lane freeway sandwiched between two perfectly normal city streets. There are no crosswalks or traffic lights, but morning commuters don’t care; the quickest way to BART is to look both ways and hope for the best.

By Linsay Rousseau Burnett
Take a stroll through the Allegro Music Store and it’s rich history. Hover your mouse over the collage to scroll right and left or grab the scroll bar at the bottom. Pressing the play button in the bottom left hand corner will scroll the collage automatically. Click on the audio icon in the bottom right hand corner and press the play button to listen to the song “Training Day,” by the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, in the background as you explore the collage. Alto saxophonist Gabe Eaton …

By Adelaide Chen
The chain link fence around the perimeter of a corner gas station is contributing to the blight in the International and East 12th Street Corridor, neighbors say.
But the owner is having a hard time maintaining and keeping up with equipment upgrades required by state law.

By Linsay Rousseau Burnett
In these grim economic times, chain stores and online retail companies still pose an increasing threat to small businesses. Linsay Rousseau Burnett brings us this report from one small Fremont business that has been a mainstay in the community for the past 47 years and remains full of life. Click to listen.

You can view an interactive multimedia collage of the Allegro Music Store by clicking here.
Check out Allegro’s website: www.allegromusic.net

PART I: CLICK TO LISTEN – The Big Day: Black Friday Mania at a Fremont Target
By Tyler Sipe  –  
Lured by retailers, the shopping faithful waited in long lines on Thanksgiving and Black Friday in order to get their hand on heavily discounted hot ticket items.  At the Target in Fremont, consumers were plentiful, but spendthrift, making officials cautiously optimistic about the holiday shopping season.
 
 
PART II: CLICK TO LISTEN – Recapping the Weekend: Hopeful Sales Kick-Off Holiday Shopping Season
By Karen Weise –
With low expectations given the shaky economy, retailers …

By Tyler Sipe  – 
East Bay area job centers have seen a dramatic increase in the number of people utilizing their services in the past few months.
Tina Dodson, the director of Tri-Cities One-Stop Career Center in Newark, said foot traffic to the location has doubled in the past month, partly reflecting California’s dramatic half a percent increase in unemployment for October. 
The October state unemployment rate was at a 14-year high of 8.2 percent.  In Alameda County, it stood at 7.1 percent.
Dodson said the last big surge of interest in …

By Karen Weise  –
As Congress passed for now on giving a federal bailout to General Motors and other American automakers, local workers and residents are concerned about what a potential GM bankruptcy might mean for automobile production in the East Bay.

By Will Jason  – 
Click on story link to play audio. Or read the text version:
 
With California facing a record budget crisis, state universities are looking for money wherever they can find it. It appears that U.C. Berkeley is increasingly tapping one reliable source of dollars: foreign students.
According to final enrollment data released November 13, U.C. Berkeley has more than tripled the number of international students in its freshman class. This fall it enrolled 360 foreign students, about eight percent of the freshman class. That’s up from less than 3 percent …

By Adelaide Chen
Oakland continues to rank among the top ten metropolitan areas in the U.S. with high rates of foreclosure, but the city’s Asian neighborhoods remain relatively untouched.
Chinatown, Eastlake and lower San Antonio have received few notices of default over the last three years, according to data analyzed by a local economic development nonprofit.
The notices serve as “the first line of evidence that there is a problem, and none of them are reflecting that there is one,” said Anne Griffith of Urban Strategies Council, who has mapped data …