Diana Montaño
In what has become a years-long saga pitting the Woodfin Hotel in Emeryville against its workers, the hotel has again defied an Emeryville City Council order to pay back wages, workers’ advocates say.
In 2006, hotel employees first charged the Woodfin with defying a city-wide living wage ordinance. Measure C, approved by Emeryville voters in November 2005 and put into effect that December, set guidelines for low wage work in the city. Among these guidelines was a limit to the workloads assigned to hotel attendants, or housekeepers. According to the …

By Shaleece Haas/Special to 510 Report
Wheel Estate from Shaleece Haas on Vimeo.
For one Berkeley man, an RV is more than just a recreational vehicle. It’s the home he turned to when his house went into foreclosure.

By Samson Reiny / 510Report
As the California heat begins to usher in the summer, as well as usher water enthusiasts into the swimming pools, counties, including Alameda County, are integrating a new federal law that will further protect people from accidental drownings in public pools and spas. All hotels, community recreation centers, and high schools must install new federally-approved drain covers to prevent swimmers from being held down by the suction force of water ducts.

On eating roadkill and the thin line between trash and treasure.

By Will Jason
For nearly 10 years, federally funded career centers in the East Bay have offered little in the way of job training. Last year, as the region lost 40,000 jobs, local career centers offered training to just 449 adults.
That is because about two thirds of the federal money pays to run the career centers, which also offer more basic services such as résumé workshops, English classes and free computer access to search for jobs. And when jobs were plentiful, career centers saw little need to increase more intensive training …

I was driving down Shattuck Ave this afternoon – the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war – and out of the corner of my eye I noticed quite a commotion out front of the Marine Recruiting Center. I circled around to get a better look, and saw the huge windows at the front of the Center being replaced. There were baseball-sized holes in the windows, and dripping red paint.
Read an article about the vandalism from the Oakland Tribune.

Making magic with caulk, insulation and duct blasters, Contra Costa County weatherization specialist Brett Crowe can reduce a house’s energy waste by two-thirds in just half a day.

By late spring, thanks to $5 billion of stimulus funding, thousands of new weatherizers similar to Crowe will be sealing up low-income homes in the Bay Area and across the country. They will primarily come from the country’s 1.7 million unemployed construction workers, retrained as lean, greening machines.

By Melanie Mason/Oakland North
About a month ago, the North Oakland branch of the San Leandro-based chain Pet Food Express was hit by an armed robber. Two weeks later, it happened again, this time at the Pet Food Express Rockridge store, located in the Safeway shopping center at 51st and Broadway. According to employees, it was the same guy.
It was then that the vice president of Pet Food Express, Mark Witirol, started hearing of other armed robberies at the Rockridge shopping center. Frustrated by what he thought was a predictable pattern …

A congregation of look-alike Andy Warhols is not something that happens often. But on Friday March 6, in an Emeryville warehouse that reproduced the 1960s’ dark, industrial-driven art scene fathered by Warhol, the Third Annual Amoeba Art Show took place.

The Factory Party.