Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

Main Street Oakland Is Becoming A Ghosttown



Documenting the decline in commercial properties being actively occupied as of the end of 2010. Representative of Main Street -- which means this is not as bad as it gets nowadays -- side streets are even emptier.
Good thing Oakland people are resourceful, and the community spirit here is strong. People helping each other is the only way to survive: if only more human beings understood as much....







youtube link: http://tinyurl.com/ghosttown-oakland




Be seeing you.
















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4 comments:

  1. It's a terrible shame to see this video. It's representative of many great towns across America experiencing similar trauma. A bigger shame is that this doesn't happen overnight. It takes years to lose this amount of business activity in a major city like Oakland. The biggest shame of all is the fact that the blind and ignorant people of the state of CA just elected the same person to become Governor that ruined the City of Oakland. You get who you vote for. Not looking forward to seeing the damage Jerry Brown can do to an entire state after witnessing what he's done to the City of Oakland.

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  2. Jerry Brown had his cronies build apartment houses in downtown Oakland. That was the best hope of reviving the business climate.

    Global capitalism has taken all the jobs to China. There's nothing Jerry Brown could have done about that.

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  3. Sear is hanging on I don't know how. unquote.

    That shows their ignorance of how business works. Sears is being subsidized by profitable stores in the suburbs. That's hot they are hanging on.

    You look at empty Auto Row being empty. Are your for cars or not?

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  4. My Dad's office furniture company was on Franklin. In the 60's I rode a bus all the way out Broadway. There was a hotdog stand at the end. I sat there and people watched. Things were funky back then, dirty and disgusting. I saw a woman make her son pee on the sidewalk. Now, 50 years later I drove out Broadway to Lake Merrit. I felt like a turkey on a platter ready to be 'served up'.. feels like "no-man's-land".

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