Albany Bulb Petition Drive to restore parking & Orion’s Joy Of The Bulb Sunset Walk

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When:
February 2, 2014 @ 11:30 pm – February 3, 2014 @ 1:30 am
2014-02-02T23:30:00+00:00
2014-02-03T01:30:00+00:00
Where:
Albany Bulb
1 Buchanan Street Extension
Albany, CA 94710
USA
Cost:
0
Albany Bulb Petition Drive to restore parking & Orion's Joy Of The Bulb Sunset Walk @ Albany Bulb | Albany | California | United States

3:30PM Petition Drive to Restore Parking 50 parking places at the Bulb
430 PM Sunset Hike

     3:30 PM:   Drop by a table at the Albany Bulb parking lot to encourage people to demand that the city of Albany restore Parking at the BULB so the working class and their dogs and children can enjoy our park.

Recently the City has put up NO PARKING signs along the north side of Buchanan Street, eliminating about 50 parking spaces frequently used by visitors to the Bulb. There is no good environmental or health & safety reason that this action has been taken, that road is very lightly trafficked, so there is no case for making it two lanes (going west only). The City is trying to reduce usage of the Bulb and isolate the residents from the community. At this point all the parking spots for the Bulb in the small lot near the porta-potty are filled all weekend long, causing recreational would-be users to drive around in circles, wasting gasoline waiting for a spot to become free, and blocking disappointed users from giving up and driving away to find another place to walk.  The only parking alternative is to drive across the bridge over the freeway and fill up spots in the surrounding residential neighborhoods and walk back about a half mile crossing the railroad tracks through a hole in the fence to return to the Bulb. The City and the Sierra Club and other bourgeois groups have been arguing that the residents need to be evicted from the Bulb and the art must be destroyed in order make the area accessible to all community members, but this action dramatically restricting the heavy citizen use of the Bulb gives lie to that rationale. In fact, last Sunday there was an Albany police cruiser patrolling the parking for long periods, as well a a Albany fire truck traversing the dirt roads, apparently aimed at discouraging people from using the Bulb. What seems to scare the City and Sierra Club is exactly the popularity of the Bulb with visitors AS IT IS, uniquely unencumbered by numbing bureaucratic restrictions on artistic expression, camping or recreation, such as walking your dog OFF LEASH. There is to my knowledge no other place on the Bay where you can throw a stick for your dog into the water or create art from washed up debris.

  We stopped the City Of Oakland from extending parking meter hours a few years back. Recently this December 500 signatures and hundreds of Active Water Gate Residents forced the Emeryville Go Round bus Company to restore the Watergate  Bus Stop. We can make the authorities respond to our demands here, as well.

 500,OOO DOLLARS has been SPENT TO DESTROY the BULB. THEY ARE NOT GOING TO STOP THIS TIME UNLESS WE HAVE A MASS MOVEMENT. Call or email Orion to volunteer to collect signatures at other times at:
ohohorion99@gmail.com   (510) 541-3835
For more info on the Bulb see sharethebulb.org

 

At 4:30 or so after collecting signatures there wil be an Art Walk around the Bulb. This walk was inspired by a burning man funeral that took place at the Albany Bulb January 11th, over 100 people honered their comrade with a Norse-style boat burning and fire works ceremony. It was very moving.
IT COULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED IF WE HAD LET THEM DESTROY OUR SPACE OCT. 1st 2012 EVICTION. WE HAVE WON SO FAR.

But many of you haven’t see the BULB I have seen. Please visit by yourself…or join my sunset walk on Sunday, Feb. 2. Heavy rain cancels.

DETAILS

Meet at the parking lot at 1 Buchanan Street Extension, Albany 4:30 pm   Bring water. snacks, drinks, & flashlights.

Visit the wonderful chair/throne  built years ago and still there and inscribed “from me to you” and watch sunset from beach then take a 15 min walk to Osha Neuman’s “Crying Women Sculpture.”  There we will share stories of the Bulb, future, present and past, & maybe music. Then go to Mad Mike’s Castle & look through the port hole and see the Golden Gate Bridge framed perfectly in the window. And come back on the Water Trail which has 100s of flag stones and finish at the MOSAIC HEART. The trip should be about 2 hrs. We plan to have minimum disturbance to  our friends the residents.

Call me or email me or just show up. To get a preview of art go to:
Google ‘image search’ albany bulb

Orion (510) 541-3835

Check out some of Orion’s songs here:

Drone You

You Can Watch TV

David Nadel

They Never Change

OccuPie

Martyrs Of New Orleans

Interview with Orion on KPFA News about new parking restrictions

GG speaking before Albany Shitty Council on homelessness and the Bulb

 

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One Response to “Albany Bulb Petition Drive to restore parking & Orion’s Joy Of The Bulb Sunset Walk”

  1. GNUWorldOrder

    Here is a few paragraphs from a post made 12 years ago that still seems very current:
    http://baynature.org/articles/claiming-the-rubble

    All that has enchanted me about Albany Waterfront Park may now be on the verge of disappearing, or at least of being transformed into something different, something controlled and engineered to provide a much more conventional “park experience.” Last week, I sat quietly atop Mad Mark’s Castle and took in the breathtakingly clear view of the City from an abandoned orange arm-chair on the roof. My son and I found several buckets and began a spontaneous chant and drumming session amidst the rubble and ruin. Toward the end of our hike, we encountered the SNIFF collective working by the mudflats on several large wooden canvases in an elaborate and colorful scene of human chaos and play. Surrounding the artists was an entourage of admirers, friends, children, and free-running dogs, all taking in the sunshine and beauty of the surroundings while watching the unfolding creation. Where else could this happen?

    The prospect of turning this freewheeling place into a state park raises inevitable questions. What will it mean to the spirit of the Bulb to impose rules, establish formal trails, and post signs? Will its transformation necessarily involve uprooting nonnative plants, carting away the public art, and removing the concrete and rebar? The apparently arbitrary paths, the imaginative creations, and the sheer variety of things to look at are the surprises and adventures that make this place unique and that bring us back time and again. Are we tolerant enough to expand our definition of parkland to include this kind of anarchic relationship between nature and human creativity? Are we brave enough to allow for—and welcome—the unpredictable on a large scale? My son certainly hopes so.
    The Eastshore State Park and the Fate of the Albany Bulb

    The new Eastshore State Park comprises one of the largest undeveloped public landholdings fronting San Francisco Bay, stretching from the Bay Bridge in Oakland to Marina Bay in Richmond. The 8.5-mile-long, 260-acre park is the result of more than four decades of lobbying, negotiations, and ballot initiatives by local environmental activists. In 2000, the Department of State Parks, in conjunction with the East Bay Regional Park District, began the planning process for the new park.

    Following regional workshops held to solicit comments from the public, the first general plan for the park was presented in March 2002. The plan attempts to reconcile the views of the two most vocal constituencies: recreation advocates and environmentalists. Soccer clubs, Little League groups, and other sports enthusiasts see the new park as an opportunity to address the shortage of playing fields in the East Bay. Other advocates for “active” recreational uses include kayakers, windsurfers, and fishermen, who want greater access to the shoreline and water. Of necessity, this entails the construction of parking and launching facilities.

    The environmental groups that campaigned long and hard to make Eastshore Park a reality—Save the Bay, Citizens for the Eastshore State Park, Sierra Club, Golden Gate Audubon, and others—take a different view. “The idea of putting ball fields in one of the most environmentally sensitive areas of the East Bay seems ludicrous,” says Norman La Force, the author of Creating the Eastshore State Park: An Activist History. For environmentalists, the park is an opportunity to counter the effects of decades of filling the Bay and destroying wetlands, and for urban residents to observe and interact with a bayshore wildlife habitat that has disappeared from so much of the rest of the Bay. Arthur Feinstein, co-executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society, sees the Eastshore State Park as a “major opportunity to give our children a better understanding of our natural world.”

    In the official plan, areas designated for habitat preservation include the Emeryville Crescent, the Albany Mudflats, and the South Richmond Shoreline/Hoffman Marsh. Other areas with established yet less pristine habitat, such as the Berkeley Meadow and the Albany Bulb, would be protected as open space with some “enhancement.” At the Albany Bulb this would include removal of artwork and nonnative plants, and banning of off-leash dogs. Still other areas, including the Albany Plateau, would be turned into facilities for active recreation, such as ball fields and boat launches. A group calling itself Albany/Let It Be has come together recently to oppose these measures for the Bulb in particular. They like the Bulb as it is, maintaining that artists, hikers, birders, and dog walkers coexist now, and enjoy the opportunity to have unmediated experiences.

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