Apartment Light

Early evening,walking up Fulton St. at dusk.. sun setting on the back of a couple apartment buildings near Dwight Way..

Mayor of Dirt Hill

On this morning's walk up Shattuck.. at Dwight Way (near our original old 'hood!) Someone has excellent parking skills. ;)

City Storage Emeryville

Things keeping me busy the past month or so, so I haven't been out and about, but out of town. Today upon returning from a quick venture out in the world for lunch, I got a closer look at the deconstruction of the former "National Upholstering Company" building at 40th and Adeline. I'm not overly familiar with Emeryville and admit to not knowing how the mostly abandoned warehouse-like structure was originally used. The spouse and I had guessed it was a bakery warehouse, but honestly had no clue. I liked it though, despite the over-grown ivy and occasional homeless camp that sprouted up in warmer weather. I had hoped something more would become of the place, but I perhaps selfishly hoped it would be more housing.. not storage.

Storage is what it will be! It seems City Storage, a company with locations in San Francisco had purchased the location a couple years ago and finally got through all the hoops of conditional use and planning approvals. We first noticed demolition of the interior this last Saturday, though it could have been earlier.. (as mentioned, we've been out of town).





According to the August 2013 progress report from the City of Emeryville Building and Planning Newsletter dated 1 September, 2013:

"City Storage: This proposal involves the conversion of an existing 32,291 square foot brick 
building at the northeast corner of 40th and Adeline Streets to 57,600 square feet of self‐
storage. 

The applicant would retain the existing brick facades and locate all parking and storage 
units inside the building. The proposal includes a single residential unit for the on-site manager and a small retail space at the corner as accessory uses. 

A second story of storage units and extensive landscaping work along Adeline is proposed. 
The Planning Commission approved the project on October 27, 2011, and approved a one‐year extension on January 24, 2013." (page 7)


One might wonder if Emeryville really needs more storage,(there's at least two other companies: Public Storage on Christie and ExtraSpace on Hollis) but as a renter in the E*ville Triangle area, I can tell you storage is hard to come by and expensive. Many of the apartments and lofts being built up in our area are small and costly, and often lack the space to store anything as simple as a bicycle or other off-season gear and equipment. While we're lucky we have a large enough unit now, if we wanted to move, we'd have to find a place to store a good portion of our furniture. I'm not sure where we'd keep our bikes, as leaving them locked up outside in our fine community is asking for trouble and inviting theft. While we're on the 'Edge of E*ville' we're more accurately on the Edge of Oakland when it comes to crime.

More Construction across the Street

the former "Burgers & Sh!%" near 4th & Main had it's front signage removed
within the past 2 days. Shot yesterday afternoon.

Was actually trying to get a photo of a DASH bus broke down in
front of Pete's Cafe and instead got the above and this, below:

a 'convoy' of moped-driven software advertisements.

Nokia Theatre/ LA LIVE job fair 2008

While snooping around the City of LA website, I came across this Nokia Theatre 2008 Job Fair notice (it's a pdf file, btw)

Basically the Nokia Theatre will be looking for new hires at its job fair Tuesday the 26th from 1-7pm and Wednesday the 27th from 10am-5pm. These are part-time events jobs for service industry positions such as ushers, ticket-sellers, merchandising positions and the like.

The pre-screening location is actually at:
Southeast LA-Crenshaw Worksource Center
3965 S. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90037

So the jobfair itself isn't at Nokia/ LA LIVE.. more info is on the pdf link above and includes contact name and phone.

LA Live was one of the things they pushed on new Downtowners when we were doing the housing tour, (that and the Ralph's "Opening SOON!") so it's nice to finally see some of this stuff come to fruition. I'll be looking forward to that AMC, though.

concrete pouring

While out & about this morning, passing by the home of future LAPD motor pool.

The cement mixers were busy pouring some concrete into the structure of the future LAPD parking garage. This is just one of many on-going projects that are currently under construction all around downtown near Main Street.

Awake on Main Street

While taking a walk around the neighborhood this evening, the DWP was out & about getting started on the nightly work.


the sidewalk outside Pitfire is closed to Pedestrians and the bright lights are up as they work on the new LAPD HQ (hey LA's finest needs indoor plumbing too!).


Night in the City.. City Hall and the new LAPD HQ as backdrop to construction.

South Park Construction Walkabout

The weather brightened up earlier than I expected yesterday, so I enjoyed a nice walk around South Park with all the beeping and humming of traffic & construction. Some of the updates I've noticed:

1. A big trench over in "BottleRock" the new wine bar at Met Lofts (which seems to be taking forever to get done) They have dug large trenches toward the back through the concrete and a slew of PVC piping materials seems to accompany an area which makes me think "plumbing!" perhaps. I have an acquaintance who lives there and asked about it and she hasn't heard anything much either but did note as well, it seemed to be taking a long time. Hopefully more on that later.

2. Work on the pick/up drop off dry cleaner in Packard Lofts continues. Last I heard they were working on the air circulation there. Not sure what sort of chemicals are involved (if any) in having pick up/ drop off service, but I'm sure whatever it is, helps to have fresh air.


3. LA LIVE! Is just as busy as ever. Multiple cherry pickers (or whatever you call those giant cherry picker things that carry stuff up) and Cranes are everywhere. I wished I had a good zoom as I missed a prime shot of a welder lighting up.. Ah more practice, I'll get something like it one day (grin).


Cold Stone Creamery 'coming soon'

4. Over at Market Lofts, "Pastagina" is still a work in progress. Also the windows are papered up at the "Robek's Juice" and "Cold Stone Creamery" which the latter is finally sporting a "NOW AUDITIONING" sign for it's mix-in creators. It looked like some gentlemen were installing the lighting fixtures possibly. (I really need to work on not being shy of taking pix of construction sites and big men in construction gear).

South Park Walk-abouts:
I figure I may start going about a couple times a month. The walking is good for me and if the weather permits, why not? I can't walk too far for too long, but I'm getting better. My back has been giving me issue (TMI) but the cycling has been helping considerably. Having nice weather helps get me out.

another day, another new year

I was running errands for myself in the South Park area. I had to pick up a couple things including a giftcard for our cat sitter, (we drink a lot of coffee so having an extra one is kind of evil to have around for long) and some notebooks for myself.

I love having little notebooks but I'm kind of a uni-tasker when having to use a notebook for something I didn't intend. These little habits are either annoying, or make me more focused. Who knows which? =)


One of the images I took this morning was of my favorite funky building near the Starbucks on Grand. It has so much character, I would hate to see it lose that. With all the conversions or 'gentrifying' of what little is left of the old buildings you hate to see things like this go. I'm only hoping that if all the lots and lofts left in the area are converted they at least leave something of the old. The careworn, the beautiful in simplicity. They should leave the sign too.

*********

With all the business going on in South Park one wonders who they are building all this stuff for. Obviously the LA LIVE! construction is for everyone, but especially the followers of the "if you build it they will come" philosophy. Having things to do, as well more places for people to do them in, is a good thing. Bringing revenue to a city as well providing bread & circuses for the masses. I personally am looking forward to the new large screen movie theater I heard was coming, as well the ESPN broadcast center. Issues like traffic congestion will hopefully work itself out after all these large construction projects like SOUTH and the Astani building are complete. Until then it's cranes everywhere and plenty of covered walkways to manage to get the pedestrian (if a little inconvenienced) to where they need to go.