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In the Mix

Glory Days

     Oakland never promised you a rose garden. But thanks to President Roosevelt’s Depression-era Works Progress Administration initiative and rose lovers at the Oakland Businessmen’s Breakfast Club back in the 1930s, the city got one. It was named for then-mayor Frank Morcom. Now, due in no small part to the passion of Oakland Public Works Agency garden crew leader Tora Rocha, the Morcom Rose Garden, which had lost its bloom along with its All American Rose Selection, or AARS, accreditation, is back to its glory days.
     Two years ago, spurred on by the challenge of getting its accreditation back (and, yes, it has), Rocha got busy in the 8 acres of rose beds in this “hidden, secret garden that many Oaklanders don’t know exist,” to quote her, with her colleague, John Demery. At the time, there was some volunteer help from a handful of neighborhood residents.
     When Rocha saw city budget cuts looming in 2009, she knew she needed to up the ante and get more volunteers.
     Around that time, two things happened. First, someone broke into the Morcom toolshed and stole the power tools. This led a neighbor, who had seen how hard Rocha and Demery were working, to send out a group e-mail asking for volunteers.
     Then, “I didn’t want to bleed people, so I thought if we were going to ask for volunteers, we should offer workshops on garden practices that people could use at home,” says Rocha. What followed was this: Someone asked Rocha about the workshops. Rocha told her: “We’re teaching deadheading.” The woman presumed this had something to do with The Grateful Dead.
     “Ding, ding, the light went on,” laughs Rocha, who studied ornamental horticulture at Merritt College and whose commitment to gardens, beauty, the environment, nature — and beautifying Oakland — infuse her life and go way beyond her job. She would train what she would call “master volunteers.” They would be called “dedicated deadheaders.” They would wear tie-dye T-shirts. Her wicked sense of humor dictated that dedicated deadheader requirements would include being able to tell a weed from a rose, knowing how to spell Morcom (“few people do,” she says) and having a passion for rock ’n’ roll. Or Vivaldi.
     The idea caught. On “pruning day” in January, 100 volunteers gathered to learn how (to prune) from East Bay Rose Society experts. Volunteers came from all over Oakland and way beyond.
     On a Saturday in February, 425 volunteers showed up in pouring rain to dig, mulch, prune and cart dirt around the garden.
     And now, any day of the week, if you stop by at the garden, you might find one of almost 50 “dedicated deadheaders” — the trained volunteers who have earned their tie-dye shirts and who are at liberty to go work in the garden at any time, unsupervised.
     The volunteers plot their hours and organize themselves in a Friends of the Morcom Rose Garden Web site (friendsofoaklandrose.org)
built by Oakland tech guru, avid deadheader and T-shirt dyer Anca Mosoiu. Four volunteers have been working on a rose database where each of the 5,000-plus rose bushes will be listed. And volunteers are developing interactive maps for the site.
     Regular volunteer days are now the first Wednesday and second Saturday of each month, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. This is when Rocha and Demery are there to supervise, and when anyone can work in the garden. In a new development — one likely to attract funding for the garden — Rocha has applied for Monarch (butterfly) and Painted Lady way-station status for Morcom. This means adding certain butterfly plants to the existing butterfly garden.
     Morcom has around 900 rose varieties, with names like Julia Child, Queen Elizabeth, Julio Inglesias, Ambassador, Voodoo, Scentimental and Tahitian Sunset. Yet you could drive right past it without noticing its 700 Jean St. location, off Grand Avenue, until you know where to look. If you haven’t been, the time to stop, smell — and learn about — the roses is now. Check out the website, friendsofoaklandrose.com.

Honor Your Mother
     In 1954 the city of Oakland honored its first Mother of the Year. The annual ceremony takes place at Morcom Rose Garden the Saturday before Mother’s Day. The award is designed to honor an exemplary woman (who does not literally have to be a mother) who has made a significant contribution to the city. Her name is put on a bronze plaque and embedded into a dedicated rose garden walkway, and she receives two-dozen roses a week, cut from the garden, for six months. The 2010 Mother of the Year ceremony takes place at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, May 8, and anyone can attend. Morcom Rose Garden, 700 Jean St., Oakland.

— Wanda Hennig

Food as Medicine, Medicine as Food

     Oakland gardener and herbalist Kait Singley teaches people how to cultivate edible and medicinal gardens. She wants us all, year-round, to be fed by the beauty and bounty of an organic garden. To this end, she mentors, installs, runs workshops, consults and lives by the Hippocrates quotation: “Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food.”
     The trend, Singley says, is toward more people growing a lot more food. Sometimes it is for financial or ecological reason; it can be out of concern for the carbon footprint, or simply a desire to be more self-reliant.
      While Singley would love for us all to have gardens that are healing sanctuaries, first and foremost she wants people to realize that what she’s doing is “mainstream, accessible and everyday urbanite.” So, she says, “I encourage everyone to grow a little basil in their window if that’s all the space they have.” Or if there’s a garden, they can start with a patch of herbs to use when cooking dinner or for tea.
      Talking health, if Singley has a client with, say, arthritis, “we’ll start by discussing what might help and what to avoid.” She teaches people to grow the appropriate plants for tinctures and salves, and how to make them. She has a great hand-salve recipe, for example, using comfrey, calendula and lavender. She’s big on herbal infusions using oil and vinegar and focuses on integrating ornamental and healing plants. Singley thought of roses as decorative and frivolous until she became aware of their nutrition and healing properties and learned she could collect rose hips and use them to make a range of delectable and healthy edibles: tea, sauce, jelly, jam, pudding and more.
     Singley will run a workshop, The Herbal Kitchen, on June 13 in Oakland. See the Institute of Urban Homesteading (iuhoakland.com) website for details or call her at (510) 449-1055.

— Wanda Hennig

Dinnersitter

An Evening With the Kids … Without the Kids

     In the history of the world, there have been some great ideas — the light bulb, sliced bread, world peace — but Digs Bistro has them all beat with Parents’ Nite Out. Instead of paying through the nose for a babysitter who could cancel at the drop of a hangnail, every first Monday of the month, Digs offers babysitting in a private dining room, allowing at the same time weary parents to reconnect and perhaps even a toast to a special occasion.
     At $10 for the first child and $5 for every sibling, little ones remain occupied with coloring books, movies and other fun activities supervised by a former server — the resident babysitter since Digs started this tradition nearly two years ago.
     The best part is everyone fills up on chef-and-owner Heidi DiPippo’s delicious New American cuisine, which is made mostly with local and organic ingredients that extend to the simpler fare for the kids. Be sure to call a week or two in advance, as news of this great idea spreads fast.
1453 Dwight Way, Berkeley, (501) 548-2322, digsbistro.com

— Karen T. Hartline

The Green Bin

East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse

     It’s 5:45 on a cold, dark, rainy January night. A well-dressed man walks into the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, just as it’s about to close. Wearing an expertly tailored suit, expensive wing-tipped shoes and holding the hand of a 6-year-old boy, the stylish man looks like he should be in an Armani ad rather than a discount arts center. “Can I help you?” asks Linda Levitsky, director of the depot. The man looks her in the eye and says one word: “Spaceship.”
     “Spaceship?” Levitsky asks, “When?”
     “Tomorrow,” the man replies. The staff springs into action, searching the store and gathering materials — oatmeal containers, foam core, tubes, leftover hoses. “And off they went into the night to build their spaceship,” Levitsky recalls. It’s one of her favorite stories.
      For 14 years Levitsky has been director of the depot, which she calls, “an ecological treasure trove.” Founded 30 years ago by two Oakland teachers with the mission of providing reused materials at rock-bottom prices (or for free) to educators and artists and diverting usable material from landfills, today the depot serves just about any creative type. Its reuse program has kept about 400 tons of material from the landfill last year alone.
     The depot operates a retail store on Telegraph Avenue, attracting as many as 200 paying customers per weekend day. In addition to giving deep discounts to teachers and social service agencies — like donating sewing machines to a program to teach low-income women to sew — the depot also conducts outreach programs, such as Art in the Heart, a Richmond after-school program, and a reuse program in Contra Costa County.
      Open daily, the depot accepts all kinds of craft donations. “We just love stuff like beads, art and craft materials, crayons, paper and yarn,” says Levitsky. “Used calendars. And National Geographics, which are in huge demand.”
      The oddest donation? Four wisdom teeth in a jar, says Levitsky, though her staff prefers the dreadlocks in a jar.

East Bay Center for Creative Reuse, 11 a.m.–6 p.m. daily, 4695 Telegraph Ave., (510) 547-6470, creativereuse.org.

— Christina Boufis

Secret Eats

Greg Eng and Jason Low of Trueburger

     How to explain the pop appeal of comfort food during uncertain times? “Comfort food is food that you crave,” offers Greg Eng. “It should evoke memories and stimulate conversation. Eating comfort food with friends is the best because everybody can talk about food honestly and what it means to them.”
     Eng knows of what he speaks: Partnering with fellow former Bay Wolf sous chef and kindred Oaklander Jason Low, he recently launched Trueburger, an unpretentious, friendly Uptown eaterie that shoots for doing one item, namely the burger, very, very right. Between the two of them they’re also well acquainted with great food, having worked at such restaurants as Jardiniere, Delfina and Absinthe in San Francisco, and Cesar in Oakland.
     The concept of Trueburger epitomizes the best of nurturing eats, sans preservatives and transfats, along with a close attention to detail and an eye to reasonable prices. “Most everything is house-made or made special for us by a local business, such as our egg buns, which are custom-made for us by the Bread Workshop,” Eng explains. Trueburger’s meat is house-ground every morning, the milkshakes are hand-spun using premium ice cream, and, Eng adds, “We use a smash technique on the griddle that we learned from Midwest short-order cooks to produce a superior crust.” Sounds like Eng and Low are just the ones to look to for great deals on worthy eats in O-town.

Vien Huong If you feel like slurping noodles, go here.
712 Franklin St., (510) 465-5938

Taqueria El Farolito We would go here after cooking at Bay Wolf and stuff ourselves with al pastor burritos and tongue tacos and beer. 
3646 International Blvd., (510) 533-9194

In-N-Out Burger  A shrine. Their production boggles the mind. We would go there and just stare at their efficiency. We like their burger, too. 
8301 Oakport St., (800) 786-1000, in-n-out.com

Ly Luck Restaurant Three huge dishes for $18? The salt-and-pepper spareribs are like no other.
3537 Fruitvale Ave., (510) 530-3232, lyluckrestaurant.com

Nieves Cinco de Mayo Great curdled-cream ice cream. Fruitvale Public Market,
3340 E. 12th St., (510) 533-6296

Trueburger, 146 Grand Ave., Oakland, (510) 208-5678, trueburgeroakland.com

—KImberly Chun
 

Shaken, Not Stirred

     I love beer more than any spirit (besides maybe cognac) and more than any cocktail.  There’s much more to life than Manhattans and margaritas, and there’s much more to beer than Millers and Molsons. I am somewhat of a beeraholic and could survive without any other adult beverage if you just give me a cold micro (or macro) brew to swallow. Despite my deeply rooted love of beer, I still knew very little about the different brewing processes and styles of beer. But Nicole Erny of the Trappist (460 Eighth St., thetrappist.com) speaks fluent beer.
     When asked about current trends in beer culture, Erny says: “Right now, black IPAs are the new thing in the U.S. Big, dry, hoppy IPA styles with a bit of chocolate or roasted malt for color and flavor complexity.”
     Erny is a Certified Cicerone™, which is to beer what a sommelier is to wine. Erny believes people’s perception of beer is changing; no longer are suds associated with only “football games and dive bars” but have gone high-end with a huge ever-growing list of styles from around the world. “Northern California is the best place in the U.S. for beer,” Erny says.
     At the Trappist, you’ll find close to 200 different beers on offer. Many of the tasty bottled beers can be purchased and brought home, and that includes Erny’s current favorite, Foret Saison, which she describes as “a spicy, dry beer with pleasant citrusy notes.”

— Lonnie Long

The Six Questions

Who: Jana Hardy, 61, Oakland

What: By day, she’s a workers’ comp risk management consultant. By night, she’s a respected Bay Area movie critic.
 
When: She reviews about 130 movies a year, almost always buying her own ticket. While the general public sees seven or eight films a year, Hardy sees two or three movies a week, often before they’re released to the general public.
 
Where: She attends screenings around the Bay Area, including a December screening of the movie Nine at the home of George Lucas. “I drove through pouring rain and hideous weather to Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch to see that movie.”
 
Why: She got started on a dare, eight years ago. “A group of friends and I formed a women’s group. We challenged each other to be more creative in our lives.” Hardy loved movies and loved to write, and her friends encouraged her to start doing movie reviews.

How: She sends the reviews by e-mail to friends and colleagues, who pass them on to other friends and colleagues. “Hundreds of people get my reviews now,” she guesses. “Maybe thousands.”

—Ginny Prior 

Adopt a Park

     Can 72 Oakland employees effectively take care of 1,350 acres of public parks, medians, landscaped areas and open space? No, especially when the economic meltdown points toward additional park maintenance budget decimation.
     “The long-term prognosis for Oakland parks is dismal,” says Susan Montauk of the Oakland Parks Coalition, a volunteer organization focused on community stewardship of the city’s parks.
     What’s an Oaklander to do? Ones like Dennis Brown are stepping up and pulling weeds, removing trash, sweeping play areas. Brown is the designated park steward of Oak Park. He had been unofficially keeping an eye on the park
and former school playground near Harrison Street and Interstate 580 since moving to a condo in the converted school in 1991.
     After reading about impending service cuts last fall, he says, “We started to notice the effects in our park. While the grass was mowed, the trashcans disappeared and the weeds started to get taller. I decided it would be a good thing to help out by weeding and trimming.” He checked in with OPC and became Oak Park’s official park steward, organizing workdays and helping coordinate neighborhood efforts.
     If you’d like to adopt your own little bit of Oakland’s open space, see the OPC’s website, oaklandparkscoalition.org, for a list of parks in need.
     It’s a win-win, Montauk points out: “Parks provide neighbors with a venue for social events, which can solidify a neighborhood,” she says. “And when neighbors are involved in the upkeep of their park, they are protecting a valuable asset that actually increases the value of their houses.”

— Mary Eisenhart

Friends in Green Places

     You may not have heard of them yet, but their work is all around you. Since 1981, the nonprofit Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation has had a hand in nearly every park renovation and park program in the city. Working in tandem with city agencies and community groups, Friends provides fiscal sponsorship and oversight for projects, and also gives grants and scholarships. Everything from football fields at the new 4.4-acre Raimondi Park to life preservers on Lake Merritt have been funded through Friends, and in an era of budget gloom and cuts in city services, the public/private model that Friends has fostered is more crucial than ever.
Friends’ diverse board of directors, and several hundred members, have rallied around the notion that public parks bring together and nurture Oakland’s most precious resources: the land, the community and the children. “We got a donation this year from a woman who only moved here in July,” says executive director Paula Ramsey. “She wrote, ‘We love the parks, and the kids and I saved all the money in our cookie jar.’ ”
     Each year, Friends throws a big party to celebrate accomplishments past and raise money for the future. Called “A Taste of Spring,” this year’s event takes place 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. May 6 and features wine a
nd food tasting from an array of vendors, music and acrobatics, all taking place within at the gorgeous Rotunda at 300 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza.
     Tickets are $50 in advance, $65 at the door; proceeds fund Friends’ grants and scholarships.
     Next on the Friends agenda: El Sobrante Park has a gopher hole problem!

To purchase tickets to A Taste of Spring, call (510) 465-1850 or visit oaklandparks.org.

— Matt Dibble

Gallery Spotlight

Pro Arts

     Bay Area artists and art lovers have good reason to cherish Pro Arts, the 35-year-old Oakland–based nonprofit that relocated from Jack London Square to the Oakland Art Gallery space at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza.
    “Our mission is to support the arts by servicing the changing needs of artists,” says exhibitions and programs coordinator David Huff. So, for example, in response to city budget cuts, “We stepped up our advocacy work with city government.” Meaning? “When the city wanted to cut 100 percent of arts funding last October [2009], Pro Arts became the gathering place for organized resistance.” This saw 400 artists attend the city council meeting where the cuts were on the table, “which saved the arts funding,” says Huff.
     “We’re best known for our annual East Bay Open Studios, which takes place in June. More than 400 artists from around the Bay Area participate, and the event draws more than 50,000 people.”
     Pro Arts schedules many community shows. “We’re only dark when putting up new exhibitions,” says Huff. And during these times, one can visit the Pro Arts gallery store, which stocks jewelry, prints, bags and other arts and crafts items made by Bay Area artists.

 Pro Arts at Oakland Art Gallery, 150 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, (510) 763-4361, proartsgallery.org.

— Wanda Hennig

MEDIA SHELF

New Releases from Bay Area Authors

Ramayana: Divine Loophole written and illustrated by Sanjay Patel
(Chronicle Books, 2010, 184 pp., $29.95)
     Sanjay Patel has some nerve. When he takes up the Ramayan in his new graphic novel, he gives the ancient Hindu mythology a little urban edge and works some magic. In his imaginative retelling of the epic Indian tale of Ravana, Vishnu, Rama and Sita, he traces the adventures and antics of the gods, sages, warriors, animals and demons of his Hindu heritage in bold, blocky geometric shapes using bright colors of burnt orange, fuchsia, turquoise blue and seafoam green. Patel, a Pixar Animation Studios animator and storyboard artist, creates a feast for the eyes with elegant, fluid illustrations. His familiar tone, didactic style and quaint prose shape quite a story for the heart. Altogether a nice package from the Oaklander and author/illustrator of The Little Book of Hindu Deities, another homage to his culture and upbringing.

Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry edited by Camille T. Dungy
(The University of Georgia Press, 2009, 387 pp., $24.95)
     Poet Camile T. Dungy, associate professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University, has put together an anthology of nature writing by African-American poets that includes 180 poems
from 93 poets. The collection covers 10 “cycles,” or chapters, from “Just Looking” and “Nature, Be With Us” to “Growing Out of This Land” and “Comes Always Spring.” Poets as diverse as Phillis Wheatley, Natasha Trethway and Gwendolyn Brooks are catalogued here to emphasize, celebrate and recognize the longstanding contributions blacks have made to the genre.

Monday Hearts for Madalene by Page Hodel
(Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009, 111 pp., $16.95)
     San Francisco DJ Page Hodel fell in love with Madalene Louise Rodriguez, who worked in Berkeley as a librarian. Each morning in the wee hours, Hodel would lovingly create an art project of sorts — always a heart — and leave it on her partner’s doorstep for Rodriguez to find. In the seven month of their courtship, Rodriguez was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died soon after. But Hodel continues to create a weekly heart to remember Rodriguez. Her new photography book is a collection of 100 favorite hearts created from “anything beautiful” Hodel can find: carrots, peas and potatoes; paper umbrellas and key tags; hose clamps and daisies. Some book royalties benefit the Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Oakland. You can get a heart every Monday from Hodel via e-mail by visiting mondayheartsformadalene.com.

— Judith M. Gallman

Where It’s At

Ethan Miller’s Oakland Hangs

     As the leader of internationally acclaimed experimental-psych outfit Comets on Fire and then the more soulful yet still hard rockin’ ensemble Howlin Rain, Ethan Miller has been so instrumental in aughties Bay Area underground that the Oakland musician deserved a little downtime in ’09. Since the ’08 release of Magnificent Fiend (Birdman/American Recordings), the combo has been writing, arranging and rehearsing some 25 songs in preparation of this year’s rehearsals and pre-production at Prairie Sun Studios and then recording in Southern California with the band’s American Recordings mentor, Grammy-winning producer Rick Rubin.
     The time seems right, then, before the tough and rewarding work on Howlin Rain’s highly anticipated third album begins, to hit Miller up for his Oaktown favorites:

Lake Merritt  I live on Adam’s Point above the lake, so the lake is really my compass — spiritually, physically and mentally. I jog around the lake for exercise, and my wife and I walk the lake on Sundays to watch the birds (Lake Merritt is home to the oldest wildlife sanctuary in North America.) I could go on and on about the lake. On the way home from a walk or run in the spring or summer, I always stop at the aqueduct on Harrison between Grand and 27th and find the turtles that live in the lake sun-bathing on the rocks that stick out of the water. My whole life outside of work and home is so connected to this place.

Piedmont Grocery Co.  The whole grocery store is great — expensive but worth it, though a little shy of Whole Food’s prices — but I especially have come to love and rely on the butcher counter there. The butchers are always friendly and, no matter how mobbed the counter is, they always have time to answer questions and get you the right fillet of fish or cut of meat for what you need. I find they have the consistently best fish and meat of any upscale grocery store butcher I have tried in the East Bay, or anywhere, really.
4038 Piedmont Ave., (510) 653-8181

Issues   Great spot for magazines, books, records or even just running into friends or other musicians and artist acquaintances that frequent the store and shooting the bull, or catching up to the sounds of stoney dub, avant-garde music or psychedelic rock playing on the store record player. The owners are great folks with a business and community vision.
20 Glen Ave., (510) 652-5700, issuesshop.com

Mountain View Cemetery  Amazing. I just revisited this massive cemetery with my folks because of a recent write-up in the Chronicle about the Julia Morgan Chapel of the Chimes, which is an architectural jewel but is only one of the wonders of this vast and artistic cemetery. There is nothing morbid-feeling about this graveyard: It feels much more like stepping into a vast secret garden and walking amongst the historical figures of the Bay Area and their strange and beautiful monuments.
5000 Piedmont Ave., (510) 658-2588, mountainviewcemetery.org

The Uptown Area  As an Oakland musician and a fan, the coming of new popular venues to town can only be good. Cafe doors are open, tables out on the street, people everywhere — the bars are packed after the Fox Theater or Paramount lets out. On warm summer evenings, that great weekend-afternoon ‘everybody is there’ vibe at the lake just seems to spill right on over into the Uptown area after the sun goes down. Really great vibe for foodies, bar hoppers, music lovers.

—KImberly Chun

Retail Therapy

Book Tour

     It’s true that the likes of Barnes and Noble and Borders keep the American economy alive and well, but what about your soul? We all love Amazon, but with an hour of Facebook to every five minutes of online shopping, your brain only ends up one step closer to mush. Sometimes the best thing to do is shut off your cell phone, take a break from Twitter and lose yourself in the shelves of these new and used bookstores where the booksellers choose their words wisely.

KEVIN PATRICK BOOKS
2170 Encinal Ave, Alameda, (510) 865-3880
There is no way that the next 150 words will do justice to the experience of walking into Kevin Patrick Books. The store has the feel of an attic in an old house, a place where bookworms can lose themselves in stacks and stacks of titles as Minerva, the resident cat, swivels through the tight aisles. On the day of my visit, Viola Buckner was all smiles and happy to help patrons look for something specific. But don’t be surprised if you end up spending an hour sifting through an entire section, forgetting why you originally came in.

WALDEN POND BOOKS
3316 Grand Ave., Oakland, (510) 832-4438, waldenpondbooks.com
“Let me know if you need any help,” says manager Bob Fisher to a customer. “We’re really picky and jaded here.” No doubt patrons of this 37-year-old, rustic spot would not have it any other way. Each staff member is an expert in a particular section, so there is always someone to talk shop with shoppers. Fisher is not only the resident sci-fi guy (among many other genres), but also the proud papa of Walden’s rare book room. Bring the kids along, as the children’s section invites budding literary bugs to cozy up in a toddler-sized reading nook. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Walden Pond can get their hands on most any read within 24 hours with no shipping costs. (Beat that, Amazon!) 

WILMOT’S BOOKS
478 Central Ave., Alameda, (510) 865-1443, wilmotsbooks.com
Ask Tim Wilmot what made him decide to open a bookstore nearly five years ago, and he will answer almost before you finish the question: to avoid getting a job. “I don’t mind work; I just don’t want a job.” Clearly, he puts lots of work into this lovely shop, with well-organized shelves packed with titles to satisfy any taste for literature and poetry. American history buffs can geek out over the comprehensive section on World War II – a period when Alameda’s Naval Air Station was in its heyday. Check out his online stock at alibris.com and ebay.com. But no matter how one chooses to browse Wilmot’s, rest assured, Wilmot will be working.

MOE’S BOOKS
2476 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com
If you live in the East Bay and have not been to Moe’s, just go. This Berkeley institution, which spans four floors and upwards of 200,000 titles, is not only a store, it’s a piece of history. “The very idea of trading books at a fair price was established by Moe,” says Doris Moskowitz, Moe’s daughter and the store’s current owner. Though Moe Moskowitz, who founded the store in 1959, passed away in 1997, the tradition of trading books lives on with thousands of books coming in every day from dealers all over the state. Among the usual sections is an area filled with sheet music. The collectible bookshop on the top floor employs dedicated experts, some of whom have been there for more than 30 years. If you cannot find something, just ask. After 50 years of selling books, you can bet these booksellers know their stuff.
 
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE
5433 College Ave., Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com
There is a buzzing energy as soon as you walk through the doors of this College Avenue fixture. All over the store, employee and customer favorites are highlighted, beginning with the front table and continuing throughout the store with pastel “shelf talkers.” If you’ve got some extra time, lose yourself in the large magazine section. Diesel also has an array of cards, wrapping paper and journals from local, national and international vendors. Who knows, after being surrounded by so many great books, a person may want to do a little of his own writing.

BLACK OAK BOOKS
2618 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, (510) 486-0698, blackoakbooks.com
The former Rountree’s R & B Club is now the permanent home to the thousands of titles of this Berkeley icon, once located on Shattuck Avenue. With 70 percent used books, this sprawling new location holds a much larger selection than the former spot. The store has also expanded its online inventory with a wider range of exceptionally rare and unique books, which may be searched on the website. But don’t be fooled by these new digs — customers will still find bookies at their service around every shelf.

—Karen T. Hartline