Leaving Moline meant saying goodbye to our furry friend Tucker. We miss him every day. When we remodeled our Oakland terrace the other day (we moved the planters from the box on the ground to hanging racks on the outside of the railing, making room for a little table) we uncovered a hiding place for a little squirrel who likes to visit. We used to have a love/hate relationship with the squirrels in Moline. They were always jumping up on our bird feeders and slurping down all the good seeds. But since we’ve moved into an apartment and don’t have other furry companionship, the squirrel who visits is becoming a surrogate pal. I’ve decided to call him (her?) Rocky (after Rocket J. Squirrel of the Rocky and Bulwinkle Show).

We’re two stories above street level, and it looks like Rocky uses the telephone cables outside the building to get onto the railing around our terrace. It’s a bold little squirrel. Even when I opened the door to discourage him from eating directly out of the bird feeder he refused to skitter away. I was able to sit in the open doorway and snap several photos, and it seems like Rocky was pretty happy to pose.

The birds (half a dozen or so have found and are now frequent diners at our feeder) have been dropping a lot of seed onto the floor of the terrace. This gives Rocky plenty to eat, so hopefully he won’t feel inclined to jump up onto the feeder. I’d worry that he might fall off and drop 30 feet to the ground below. It would be tragic to lose him, just as we’re getting fond of him.

Since our remodeling disturbed Rocky’s old cubby hole, we’ve set up some of Justin’s ceramic art to create a couple of little hiding spots for our new friend. Hopefully he’ll feel welcome.

I have a friend who wrote a book about the bible. Don, a computer scientist and mathematician, wondered what he would find by sampling the third chapter, 16th verse of every book.¹ (The artist in Don also thought it would be interesting to find the best calligraphers in the world and ask them to illustrate these verses.) The book he produced was 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated. It’s a beautiful book that delivers on the promise in the title.

I enjoy remembering Don’s explanation of how he approached this study of the bible, and I’ve felt his sampling strategy would apply to other areas of research and study. For instance, one might compare and judge restaurants by eating the same dish as prepared by each restaurant one visits. What dish do most restaurants have in common? It should be no surprise that you can get a hamburger in many dining establishments.

I have long felt that a restaurant that is attentive to the burger on the menu will likely be attentive to other dishes. If a chef treats the burger with disdain and only offers it as a token concession to public taste, I’d prefer he or she not bother to serve it at all. (And frankly, such a chef should not expect me to visit for a second meal.) The chef, however, that recognizes the simple hamburger as a worthy meal, and a meal to be prepared with loving attention, will earn my respect and the opportunity to feed me again and again.

Bear with me, I’ll get to Trueburger, I promise.

The hamburger, in it’s conceptual simplicity, has infinite expressions. I have probably eaten a couple thousand burgers in my life. Many have been delicious and satisfying. Others have been marginally nutritious and unmemorable. I trace my fondness for burgers to my youth. I remember the burgers my dad cooked for us on the grill at home. The love that goes into a home-cooked meal conceals many culinary flaws, so topping my list of burger styles is the traditional homemade charcoal grilled burger. Served on a store-bought bun with a thin slice of onion, some crisp lettuce, a slice of tomato (garden grown is best, obviously), a dollop of ketchup, and a thin spread of mustard, that burger is a staple of a joyful family meal, often eaten al fresco. The other childhood burger memory that shapes my preference is the old Bob’s Big Boy burger chain. I can still recall the taste of their toasted, sesame studded buns. In fact I can hardly taste a toasted sesame seed without thinking about the Big Boy statue that used to stand in front of the restaurants. I believe those burgers were grilled on a smooth steel grill rather than over charcoal, but they were tasty to my 10 year old palette, and the experience cemented my love for the classic burger.

Over the years I have developed a more nuanced taste, and I enjoy burgers of varying styles. There are several excellent burgers within walking distance of our home, and as time allows I may share my impressions of these burgers. But today I want to talk about a new burger place that opened up a couple of weeks ago. It’s 6 and a half blocks from our domestic headquarters. It’s a straight up burger place. The owners are former sous chefs from some mighty respectable Bay Area restaurants, but like me, they have respect for the simple, classic burger. Trueburger delivers an incredibly tasty patty, perched on top of one of the tastiest hamburger buns I’ve ever chewed. Other burger aficionados will likely agree that, while the meat is clearly (and literally) the centerpiece of a burger, the chef who fails to match the meat with an appropriate piece of bread commits an error of the first degree. The Trueburger bun is a thing of beauty. (The buns are made to Trueburger’s specifications by the Bread Workshop”:http://thebreadworkshop.com/ in Berkeley.) Just enough elasticity and crumb to stand up to the juicy runoff from the perfectly cooked meat, but not so firm as to cause the burger and toppings to squirt out the side of the bun when one attempts to pierce the crust with one’s teeth. And the flavor of the bread compliments the juicy beef, crispy lettuce, ripe tomato, and garlic aioli perfectly. Trueburger slips the sandwich into a brown paper sleeve and serves it on a baking sheet lined with parchment. (Fans of New York City’s Shake Shack will recognize the look.) The topper? This burger is just $4.95. A bit more for a cheeseburger, and add $2.50 for a basket of fries. Anna and I each had a burger and shared a basket of fries and were very satisfied.

The place is as unpretentious as the burger. There’s a mural on one wall that depicts an idealized downtown Oakland skyline. The silhouette of the Tribune Tower bears the words TRUE BURGER. The folks behind the counter (which I’m guessing included the owners) were friendly and welcoming. It was clean and tidy and the kitchen is open to the room so you can watch your burger being cooked. This is a great place to eat a burger. Other hamburgers in Oakland will be compared to Trueburgers. Some will be as good. Very few, however, will be able to unseat this burger from near the top of my all time top ten burgers.

Since Trueburger is a burger place and not a fine dining establishment, we should expect their burger to be pretty friggin’ fantastic. While it’s tempting to be seduced into thinking that a fine dining establishment should not be in direct competition with a burger joint, such thinking is flawed reasoning. If a restaurant puts a burger on the menu, they should be able to match (allowing for stylistic differences) the tasty sandwich one can get from Trueburger. Most high-end places charge considerably more for their burgers than $4.95, so even accounting for the higher overhead in such an establishment, there should be room to make a burger that is at least as satisfying as a Trueburger.

—

¹ For those literalists who are even now flipping through the pages of the Bible to verify that there is indeed a 16th verse in every chapter three of every book in the bible, relax. The actual system that Don devised called for examining the 16th verse, starting with the first verse of the third chapter. For those books that have fewer than 16 verses in the third chapter, Don continued counting into the fourth chapter until he reached a total of 16 verses.

Anna and I took a walk along Piedmont Avenue this morning, looking at vacant storefronts. We were thinking it might be interesting to locate a Prenatal Education and Resource center (like Blossom, the place she founded in Palo Alto) somewhere along the avenue. Piedmont is a pretty short street that stretches from the Mountain View Cemetery to Broadway, just past MacArthur.

There are several vacant properties along the street. Some big, some small. Anna has been scouting the neighborhood for a while and she feels like she’s seen a fairly significant population of pregnant women along Piedmont. We’ll continue to scout, but we’re also eyeing a couple of places on Grand Avenue and Lakeshore. The Farmer’s Market at Splash Pad Park on Saturday’s seems to attract pregnant women, too. And the Grand Lake area is more convenient for us — it’s within easy walking range. If you have suggestions (or you want to learn more about what kinds of things Anna does, please visit her website to send her an email).

As we were walking I noticed the little piece of artwork on the sidewalk pictured above. Interesting piece. I’m keeping an eye out for other examples of this kind of street level graffiti art. I can see some of the overspray outlines around the image that confirm my suspicion that this was a stencil, but it’s a multicolor stencil. A nice technique.

On the second half of my bike ride through West Oakland yesterday I made a short visit to the Loma Prieta Earthquake memorial park. The park pays respect to the residents of the neighborhood who risked their lives to scramble up onto the collapsed double deck Cypress Structure to rescue strangers trapped by the fallen freeway. Imprinted in the concrete are remembrances of the rickety ladders, some attached end to end with duct tape to make them long enough to reach the crushed cars. I had a quiet moment and recalled that day. (I was stuck in San Francisco after the quake — the Bay Bridge was partially broken — so I worked all night at KFRC until I found a way home via Marin County the next day.) Being in the park made me a little weepy. I hadn’t thought about the Cypress Structure in a long time. Despite the efforts of all those brave neighbors, 42 people died in the collapsed viaduct in 1989.

I crossed over Interstate 980 on 14th Street. On the southwest corner of of 14th and Castro Streets sits the First Unitarian Church, an attractive stone and brick building. As I passed the church it triggered another memory. I recalled that the original location of First Lutheran Church in Oakland was somewhere in this neighborhood (before it moved to the location where Anna and I got married). I stopped and called my dad. He told me the church was on Martin Luther King, just north of 14th Street. Sure enough, on the corner of 16th and MLK sits the Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church. That congregation purchased the building from First Lutheran in the late 1950s. The church building is fenced and I didn’t check to see if the gate was unlocked, but from the outside the building looks well kept. I don’t know if this is what the building looked like when it was First Lutheran, but it’s a nice, simple looking building.

The last stop on my ride was the Tribune Tower for an espresso at Modern Coffee. Robert described my bean options — The Sermon by Verve and the Ecco Espresso. I decided to try a shot of each. The Sermon had a bright blueberry flavor. The Ecco had a restrained carmel flavor. Both were good, but I’m finding myself really appreciating the beans from Verve.

It was a good ride. Removing the freeway that collapsed in the 1989 earthquake has renewed a relationship between two neighborhoods that had lost contact with one another. I encountered at least 9 or 10 people while riding around. Most smiled and said “hi.” Some seemed curious about the guy stopping to take pictures of old houses and the crumbling train station, but no one tried to make me feel like an interloper in a neighborhood where I didn’t belong. It’s interesting that the destructive power of the earthquake may have helped to clear an atherosclerotic connection between two parts of this town. Riding in West Oakland I felt welcomed. Like a neighbor.

I took the bike on a ride through West Oakland this morning. My initial goal was to revisit the steel sculptures we saw the other day. They’re very interesting up close. The kowtowing figure on the southeast corner of the intersection is easily accessible and photographable. These are magnificent, fanciful compositions.

My secondary interest was in finding the new lofts in the old Pacific Cannery building. This is a project developed by an old friend, Rick. I’ve been wanting to see the development and I knew it was over on the edge of West Oakland. I headed west from Mandela Parkway on 16th Street and the first landmark I recognized was the old Oakland Railroad Station at Wood and 16th. The joy of discovery was quickly tempered as I saw the state of the station.

My brother Jon and I took at train trip together when we were young, from Oakland to Seattle to hike with some friends in the Cascade mountains. We boarded the train in the majestic station at 16th and Wood for that trip. It would have been the summer of 1973. I was 15, Jon was 14. I remember thinking, even then, that the building was in a pretty sorry state of repair. It was obviously a building that had a glorious past, but shrinking rail ridership meant too few passengers to fill the building. It felt lonely, and a little run down.

Today, as I caught a first glimpse I was transported back to 1973. Just as quickly, though, that memory disappeared to be replaced by an image of decay. The building suffered significant damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It’s been boarded up for over 20 years, waiting to be rescued from the ravages of time. Vandals and nature have taken a costly toll. Today, the building is a stark and graphic symbol of the extent to which our nation has abandoned its railway infrastructure.

Apparently the the building may yet be saved. As part of the development of the Central Station neighborhood (hundreds of condominiums and apartments of which the Pacific Cannery Lofts are just a small part) the old decaying station was acquired by Bridge Housing. A plan for restoring the building and putting back to use is on the drawing boards.

Of course the railroad has long since found another route through Oakland, and now the trains come and go from a new station near Jack London Square. The developers of the surrounding apartment and condominium complexes have paid homage to the station, replicating the ironwork landing platform in a decorative installation near the new apartments. The whole neighborhood now sports an interesting collection of housing. The new developments sit cheek by jowl with industrial buildings and little houses built in the early 1900s. Some of those houses have been (or are being) lovingly restored or updated. Others seem like they may not have been painted in several decades. It’s an awkward time in this section of West Oakland. Gentrification is not an easily managed (or an entirely positive) process.

I look forward to seeing the old train station remodeled and open to visitors. Even if it never serves another railroad passenger it would be a shame to let it decay any further. And I hope the new Central Station neighborhood is able to preserve some of its character and culture even as new developments grow around the station.

UPDATE: On my way home I passed the African American Museum and Library on 14th Street in Downtown. Oaktown Art has a great entry about the museum today. »

On occasion I find topics to write about which don’t fit into the Back To Oakland framework. When that happens I pop over to my other blog, mark.hurty.net to reflect on those things that interest me. That blog started out as a place for me to express my thoughts during the 2008 Presidential election campaign, so there are still articles in the archive related to that season. At that time the blog was called (with no humility at all) veritas. I’ve since come to my senses and removed the pretense and just offer the content as a self titled journal of things I’m thinking about. Feel free to join me in conversation there if you feel so inclined.

February is a big month. I have my final interview for Teach For America. And of course one of our favorite holidays of the year rolls around on the 14th. The feast of St. Valentine is a day we celebrate with gusto. I’m still having a hard time getting used to the idea that February weather is like spring here in Oakland. No complaints. I think we’ll plan to celebrate Valentines day with a trip to the beach.

We ran into some interesting art today. There’s a fenced lot at the corner of 20th Street and Mandela Parkway in which there are two mammoth sculptures made of scrap iron. One is kneeling and the other is sitting in the lotus position. Kitty corner from that lot is another sculpture of a figure, kowtowing, facing his friends across the intersection. They are beautiful pieces of art. I wish the two larger pieces were not fenced in — it’s difficult to get close enough to take in the textured detail. Perhaps they will eventually move to a more open location.

We found these sculptures while driving along the Mandela Parkway from Emeryville into downtown Oakland. Another thing we passed along the way was the Loma Prieta Earthquake memorial and park. I’m heading back tomorrow on my bike when I have a little more time to explore. It looks interesting.

While we were walking in the neighborhood this afternoon we passed a gray cat sitting on a balcony watching the passersby. Oh, to lead the life of this happy cat. He sat patiently and watched me with detached amusement as I fumbled to capture his image with my cellphone camera. As we walked away I pondered Garrison Keillor’s line, “cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.”

Inspired by DC at Fragmentary Evidence I rolled out of Adams Point on my bike this morning, heading for the Bridgeview Trail through the Sausal Creek watershed. I’d walked this trail a long time ago — when I was a kid. (In fact I smoked the only cigarette I ever smoked along the side of this trail with a high school buddy. Mike and his family used to live on Leimert just above the trail and we slipped out one afternoon to taste the forbidden tobacco. I thought Mike was pretty cool, and sharing a smoke seemed like manly act of bonding. I remain friends with Mike, but the cigarette experience was a real letdown.)

This morning I pointed the bike up Grand then south on MacArthur Blvd, east on Park, south on Leimert, east again on Bridgeview to the trailhead where the road dead ends. The first half a mile of the trail was not problematic, even considering the mud produced by this weeks rains. At the top of the trail, though, just before it intersects with Monterey Blvd (the frontage road along the west side of the Warren Freeway) I encountered a very muddy, steep set of switchbacks and stairs. There used to be a cable suspension bridge over the creek at this location—the anchors for the cables are still visible on the ground—but the bridge is gone, so one must slip and slide all the way to the bottom of the ravine to cross the babbling creek. This was a get-off-the-bike-and-walk section of the trail. I encountered several walkers (most with dogs) on the ride up the trail, but no other bikes. When I got to the switchbacks I realized why. This is a great trail for walking, and in the future I’ll incorporate it into foot based exploring.

One of the great things about the top part of the trail is the redwood forest. There are many trees in the 30 inch diameter range, probably 80-100 feet tall — a great little forest within easy pedestrian range of our urban neighborhood. It’s one of the best things about Oakland — our city encompasses some incredibly beautiful and rich natural environments. Add to that our great collection of public art, great restaurants, farmers markets, and friendly people and you have a pretty darned livable city.

Now if we can just teach the squirrel who was rooting around in the planters on the terrace this morning not to dig up our flowers, we’re golden.

Riding home from the grocery store on my bike this morning I decided to take the long route around the lake for a little exercise. As I was rolling along Lakeshore I saw a bunch of kids (they looked like they were 5th graders) with nets pulling garbage out of the lake. I saw a different group of kids doing the same thing last week. These kids said they were on a field trip, and as I continued my ride I saw other small groups of kids with nets on the other side of the lake. A few weeks ago when I was walking I saw a couple of adults with garbage bags cleaning the shoreline along 12th Street across from the Oakland Auditorium.

All this cleaning got me curious. A quick Google search provided some answers. There’s a non-profit organization which is devoted to the cleaning and preservation of Lake Merritt. The Lake Merritt Institute has a contract with the City of Oakland to clean the lake. The organization relies on volunteers and if you’re interested in lending a hand you can stop by and grab a net and gloves near the sailboat house on Bellevue in Lakeside Park. If you prefer to work as part of a larger team, Hands On Bay Area organizes monthly clean up/habitat restoration projects. You can sign up to participate at the Hands On website.

I checked the schedule for the Hands On project and they are already at capacity for volunteers for their February and March dates, so it looks like you need to sign up early to get in on the fun. I have to say that the kids I talked to this morning seemed like they were having a great time. I think it’s fantastic that local citizens are taking direct responsibility for keeping the lake clean.

After dinner on Wednesday Desi gave Anna and me a copy of the magazine he and the artists in the Community Rejuvenation Project produced last summer: S.W.E.A.R. — Street Warriors Enacting Artistic Revolution. The magazine documents the art made as part of their Summer 2009 project.

The magazine (and Desi) got me interested in the mural art we see around Oakland. Some of it is painted on commission, but much of it is painted without permission. It’s a fascinating scene. Today I found a website, Oaktown Art I hadn’t seen before which curates the public art on display in Oakland, including a rich sampling of murals and graffiti. What a great website—my daily browsing schedule just got longer.

The top article on Oaktown Art (on Jan 28) is about Desi, the S.W.E.A.R. magazine, and the Community Rejuvenation Project. Hop on over and give it a read. And spend a few minutes scrolling down the page for more about public art in Oakland. The site also features a google map page that locates all the art that she finds and writes about.

Anna and I decided to see Avatar last night at the Grand Lake Theatre. It’s a 15 minute walk from our apartment. After an early supper (home made soft tacos with a nice shredded cabbage salsa that Anna threw together) we stepped out for a pleasant stroll up Grand Avenue.

We left a little early so that we could grab a cup of coffee at the Day of the Dead Cafe next to the theatre. Cute place. There were half a dozen people inside working on laptops and watching the cafe’s large screen TV. Smokey poured us a couple of cups and we sat outside and sipped for a few minutes before buying tickets for the show.

We grabbed a couple of the bags of popcorn that the Grand Lake gives away on weeknights and chose our seats. The 3D glasses are pretty clunky looking (I enjoyed sneaking a peek at Anna in hers—it made me laugh), but the effect is pretty sweet. One of the trailers was for the 3D version of Tim Burton’s upcoming Alice in Wonderland, and it looked great. (It looks good in 2D, too — 3D just accentuates Burton’s already heightened visual reality.)

Avatar was a very engaging film. If you’re one of the few people left who haven’t seen it, treat yourself to a nice evening out. The story is a bit over the top — melodramatic is probably a fair description — but the visual world James Cameron creates is stunning, totally worth the price of admission.

We wrapped the evening with the short walk back down Grand Avenue. I have to remind myself that it’s January — walking to the movies in the dead of winter was not something we’ve done for the past several years.

The beautiful, warm weather called and I replied with a short walk to Lakeside Park. Anna and I needed to go to the California Department of Motor Vehicles today to take care of some business. (After waiting in line for about half an hour to get to the “Start Here” desk we found we didn’t have all the paperwork we needed. Rats. We met a really nice clerk at the desk, though, and she set us up for appointments in February so we’ll be going back then and avoid further lines.) Anyway… I didn’t have time for a long walk so I just made a little loop down Perkins to the edge of the lake and then back to the north through the park.

I passed the bird sanctuary and a little duck pond and the building that houses the Oakland Junior Center of Art and Science. Next to that is the place where you can rent little sailboats and kayaks to putter around the lake. I’m definitely going to go back and relive my childhood there by renting a little boat and taking it out for a sail.

The gate to the gardens was open so I popped through for a short visit. The Garden center features an eclectic collection of gardens. The Golden State Bonsai Collection is there, as well as a large palm garden. There are several community tended vegetable plots and other ornamental plantings and plantings of native and drought tolerant plants. The garden may not be at it’s most beautiful in midwinter, but it was nice to see so many people walking around and enjoying the sun.

Next to the Garden Center is the Oakland Lawn Bowling Club. No bowlers today, but I will be checking back on warm spring Sunday afternoons. I recall seeing older gents in white clothes and white straw hats bowling here when I was a kid. It’s a genteel sport. I may be just about old enough now to qualify for the label “older gent.” (If not “gent” at least “older dude,” or, as my cousin Brita might say, “old fart.”) I already have the right kind of hat. I just need to shop around for some white pants and shoes.

I won’t claim to have any particularly novel insight into the greatness of J.D. Salinger, but I didn’t want the day to pass without recognizing his death. Franny and Zooey is on the very top of my all-time great books list. The New York Times has a good piece about the enigmatic writer.

Anna and I were invited to Susan and Andrew’s for dinner tonight. They served what Andrew called a “Moroccan themed” meal. Delicious. We started with olives, dolmas, pita, cheese and a very tasty spinach pastry. The salad course was lightly roasted eggplant slices and a rainbow carrot salad (accented with a delicious lemon juice and cilantro dressing). The main course was a lamb stew with apricots and squash accompanied by couscous with mushrooms and chickpeas. A sweet mint tea was a delicious companion to the meal. Anna made a brownie pie topped with almond whipped cream and chocolate shavings. We managed to polish off the brownie with little trouble. What a meal.

Joining us for dinner was artist/beat boxer Desi W.O.M.E. (Weapons of Mass Expression). Desi is originally from Chicago and a really interesting dinner companion. He’s also a community organizer and teacher. You can see his murals on many Oakland buildings (we drove by one of his pieces on our way home from dinner — 28th Street and Martin Luther King). He really piqued my interest in mural art, and I’ll need to take a bike tour soon and hunt down more of his stuff. (It was too dark to take a picture of the building we saw tonight.)

Conversation at the table was fascinating. Susan is a writer and journalist. Andrew is brilliant. Desi is fascinating. Even Susan’s dog Winston (who was named for and closely resembled Winston Churchill) was friendly. Nothing makes for a more pleasant evening than a meal shared with friends.