(no subject)

Hellloooooo Dreamwidth!

I'm sure my first post echos many others here, I come from LJ. The last round of spam attacks LJ suffered the last week or so, made LJ basically unavailable. I still can't post pictures on my LJ.

While I think its pretty cool the Russians have  political journals there, utilizing free speech, poor little  LJ is in no way equipped to deal with the constant attacks against it. They don't have the resources to keep the site up and smooth. 

I've become very reliant on posting and reading my friends journals, it relieves stress, amuses me, teaches me things. I want to post whenever I want. I rarely prepare something then post. It's all live baby. Last week, I really wanted to post and couldn't.

So thank you dadadadio  and sharpchick_2011 for the code.

Much more later.  Peace out.

(no subject)

In what we now call West Oakland is a beautiful dilapidated train station called the 16th St. Train Station. A company called Rails has bought it. Part of a new HBO movie about Hemingway was filmed there and in San Francisco, with Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen in the spring. It was kept very hush-hush.

My friend and her husband helped with a neighborhood event there on Thursday night to bring attention to it and to bring the neighbors out. It's a cool venue and they want to have more events like these, a weekend farmers market and community garden. This is a very sketchy part of Oakland but due to new 'green' condos and housing and people who have lived there for generations, it's slowly turning into something good without displacing the long-time residents. The first real grocery store in on its way.

The train station is beautiful and will surely be completely restored one day, But for now  I love the crumbling paint exposing the brick walls and the faded yet intricate detail of the reliefs and the warm golden light that seems captive there.


( Pictures~ )