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* Oakland and the Chabot Space and Science Center *
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Yesterday, Hongyun and I decided to head to Oakland and the Chabot Space and Science Center. Why Oakland? Well, frankly, we've never been there before and figured we go check it out. We headed for Jack London square and found that it was a ghost town...weird. Then we headed to Old Downtown Oakland...yet another ghost town. Very nice buildings, good parking, but ghost town. Double weird.

We decided to walk around aimlessly and within a few minutes hit Chinatown. This is were the action was. Tons of people, lines out the door of tiny bakeries and medium sized noodle shops. Ahh...just like China (except here they all spoke Cantonese and I've mostly hung out in Mandarin-speaking parts of China).

We sampled some pastries from a bakery filled with old Cantonese guys sipping tea and just chatting away. The pastries were quite good and we took some for the road. We explored some more and then decided to head back to give Jack London Square another try. We just drove by the first time so we decided to stop and walk around this time. We parked on a side street next to some warehouses, one of which was abandoned...nice. I'm not sure what it is about industrial sites and rundown buildings that fascinate me, but I like the look of it. I also saw a warehouse with a full deck of solar panels on top...woohoo! That place must be at least breaking even if not making money on their electricity generation. Everyone has been saying that solar is too expensive. Well it's not anymore. Tax credits have gone up while installation and hardware costs have come down a bit. Most people who install solar panels on their homes and business run a profit. The ROI usually comes around 1/2 the life of the system (estimate at 25 years). So figure, you'd double your investment and never have to pay for electricity (and possibly hot water too). Anyway, back to the day...

While walking around Jack London Square, we hit upon a Kayak rental shop. We were bumming around the shop and found some interesting looking sandals. We figured we'd try them on since our WalMart fiasco netted me a useless pair of sandals. These funny looking sandals had big toe cap that totally covered my big toe, but left the rest of my foot exposed like a regular sandal. The net result? A snug fitting sandal that required no toe power to keep them on. Amazing! I've actually heard of the name Keen before (they've been getting some buzz as a word-of-mouth sort of shop that builds some seriously high quality shoes). Anyway, I purchased a pair of Keen Men's Antigua. Hongyun got a pair of Keen Women's Antigua. At first, they're a little funky, but after about an hour, your feet feel great and they don't slip off.

We wore them around the Chabot Space and Science Center in the Oakland hills. We found that they're spectacular for hiking as well. Rocks were not constantly flying into the sandal bed like with other open shoes. I'm pretty sure it's because of the lack of toe gymnastics that are usually required to keep other sandals on your feet. Whatever it is, they're the first pair of sandals I may actually try hiking in.

The space center was quite uneventful and we didn't even stay to see through the telescope. I'm not sure what it was, but the place was deserted like most of the rest of Oakland. It's kind of weird really. Oakland seems like a nice enough place (there are some bad areas that we drove through, but overall, not too bad), but there just aren't any people hanging around. I guess they were all in San Francisco or something.













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Tommy @ dodoskido.com[TypeKey Profile Page]:

Ahhh...I see. We may be heading over there again in August just to hang out (depending on how much free time we have). But if we do go, I'll be sure to check some of those places out. Thanks for the tips, M.

Tommy @ dodoskido.com[TypeKey Profile Page] | August 1, 2005 03:26 PM


M:

You should have gone to Lake Merrit, Piedmont, Rockridge, Piedmont Ave and College Ave. These are all very nice areas of Oakland and the more hip spots. Downtown Oakland and anything off of 880 is old and deserted like you said. Stuff off of 580 is the nicest!! Lake Merrit is gorgeous.

M | June 24, 2005 12:29 AM


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