Block Party 2016 Success!

Thank you all who made this Block Party such a success! Especially to Kate and Melissa who were the catalysts (and Kate makes a mean Tres Leches Coconut Cake), and to Joe for being Grill Master, and to Helen our fearless Treasurer, and to all of you who showed up with good food, and make our street and neighborhood so colorful and fun.

We have set up a Plumfund account to raise money for future block parties. Please consider a donation! click here

2nd Annual Viva Bayview Block Party!!

October 29, 2012

Our neighborhood once again literally pooled their resources together to continue to fight crime by creating community. We had a great turnout, with a bouncy house for the children, a fun, live band, and a fabulous spread of BBQ meats, Mexican food, desserts and drinks. We have such a diverse, great bunch of people living on our street, such a nice representation of how community can come together, to support one another and get to know one another to boast our Oakland pride.

The band had two of our neighbors represented, and they rocked the streets for hours!! Thank you for keeping us entertained! We also had a couple neighbors start a little drum circle after the band had finished to keep the beat rockin'!

Even the World Series wasn't a deterrent for neighbors to be present, as they brought their transistor radios to keep up with the scoreboard! Go Giants!!

If you couldn't make it this time, we hope you will join us or help plan for our next gathering!

Here's a slideshow of our great gathering:

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Viva Bayview First Annual Block Party!!

We had perfect weather for an excellent gathering of neighbors last Sunday. We had a few people dressed in costume for Halloween, but mainly, people were enjoying catching up, drinking and eating. We had a bounce house for the kids, which kept them thoroughly entertained the whole time!

Our make-shift "blockades" to keep it safe during the party.

Helen and Calvin, chillin' after throwing down a lot of hotdogs!

Mar having a good time!

Seriously? Don't mess with Cynthia!

John feeding fueling the kids before they reenter the bounce house.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this such a huge success! We were really able to get both ends of Bayview to come together and enjoy beautiful fall weather. We had live music and neighbors were inspired to go and get their drums, creating a great vibe, and the organizer even got her groove on :)

We also discussed keeping the texting pool going. We are also going to be having an emergency preparedness seminar on November 30th. If you would like to know more, please email Alicia: boalsis@gmail.com. We will also be planting trees, and hopefully making some more headway on installing speed bumps soon!

This picture collage created with Smilebox If you missed this year's block party, hopefully we will have some holiday gatherings, and another block party in the spring! Viva Bayview!!

Bayview Cleanup Party: Round 1

Brainstorming the plan of attack.

This past Saturday, a bunch of us got together starting at 28th and Bayview, and worked our way up the street picking up trash, weeding the cracks, trimming back the hedges and trees where criminals can hide, and generally making Bayview look a little more beautiful. We had quite a good turn out, and got to know each other a little better. We are going to make this an ongoing event, hopefully every third Saturday of each month. We harvested two large bags of garbage, one dead maggot-infested squirrel (thanks, Tony!!), dog droppings, and six green bins filled to the brim. Jim Schubert so graciously lent us the services of his gardener, Ricardo, who was a great help! Also in attendance were Alicia & Tony, Christina and Alexander, Chip and Lavica (sorry if I mispelled it), John, David, Theresa and her friend Brad and Jeff. Thanks all for making our little corner of the world a little more beautiful. We hope you will join us for our next cleanup on Saturday October 15th from 10 -12 p.m. Meet at Bayview and Elliot. Bring drinks and snacks to share! And gloves, tools and trash bags...and maybe a boom box!

Brad, Theresa and Ricardo sweeping and raking up leaves and pulled weeds.

Theresa, Bran and David getting the weeds between the cracks.

Jeff trimming back the tree. Special thanks to him for doing final cleanup after everyone else left!

Alexander making a decision about where to begin.

Making the sidewalks easier to walk by trimming back the hedges.

Christina pulling the weeds.

Brad and Theresa

Chip and John with their "fresh" catch of 20-lb. garbage picked up and down the street.

Finished look. (Sorry I forgot to take "before" shots.)

Welcome to the Viva Bayview blog!

We just had a very successful evening at Jim Schubert's lovely home, graced by the music of neighbors Chris Kee and Jane Selkye. The music was amazing, and we had a good turnout of guests. The Bayview Leadership Committee which consists of: Mar S., Kelly & Jeff B., Kate W., Leslie W., Teresa B. and Alicia B. organized this event. Our main goal was to get the neighborhood more connected, with hopes of also raising money to help with our collective objectives.

Jim Schubert (host)

Chris Kee and Jane Selkye

We discussed ideas of how to spend the donation money. The ideas we have set forth as priorities for Bayview and keeping it safer:

* Lighting: installing lighting and electrical services to those neighbors who might not have the resources to do it themselves; eradicating "dark" spots where assailants can lurk.
* Speed bumps: Jeff Brown has notified us that the permit process is already in place, and it will cost less than $1000 dollars.
* Street beautification: having work parties to plant trees and flowers, clean up yards, etc., which can give our street a "face lift" making it a more attractive neighborhood to live in, and hopefully deter crimes, psychologically. (Leslie Wagstaff is a Landscape Architect, and can definitely help us with any city ordinances, coordination with our mayor and city council person.)
* Video surveillance cameras: a more extensive investment ($3000-$5000) to set as a future goal, and will require at least 3 homes willing to "host" the cameras. It will involve a 2-week feed that gets stored on a computer server. Concerns were raised about vandalism of said cameras, which run $800-$1200 per system. Not only will they serve as a good deterrent, but will also serve for catching suspects and their vehicle license plates.

Our Treasurer is undetermined at this point, so if any of you would like to get involved and can handle the money task, please contact us!

Feel free to comment and give us your feedback, inquiries, opinions, etc., so that we can get some of the above items set in motion for the New Year.

~ Happy Holidays from your Leadership Committee!