Fourth Street Lofts Web Log

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MONTHLY MEETING
The Fourth Street Lofts Board of Directors meet the third Monday of each month, and all owners are invited. The next meeting will Monday 21 February 2005 in Loft #105 at 7:00pm, and the Homeowners' Forum is at the top of the Agenda, which is posted on our FSL website.

CONSTRUCTION
There are no fewer than four separate projects in progress in our immediate vicinity. We are surrounded on all sides now by construction. It's going to be a long summer.

Across the street from our front door at Alice and Fourth will be an eight-story Pulte building with lofts and retail. It is actively being worked.

Catty-corner from us, on Alice and Third Signature is about to begin its six-story lofts and retail building. They have moved the fence outside the current fence, so it now impinges on the dog-walking path. The big historic railroad trestle-thing was removed Thursday. A workman told Rick that it will be saved and used somehow. Eight trees are targeted for removal. The permit is up and the trees are tagged.

There are two other projects close by. One was Miller Meat at Jackson and Second which is actively being bulldozed. The other one used to be a small strip office park at Madison and Second, which is also being actively bulldozed.

We were the first work-live loft in the neighborhood, and look what we started.

As I was writing this I just experienced the largest clap of thunder I have ever heard - sounded like one of those building sites exploded.

PARAMOUNT MOVIE CLASSICS
The Paramount, at 2025 Broadway in Oakland is in another cycle of Movie Classics, and the three coming up are variations on a theme - a mini film festival as it were. Three versions of the same story, starting with "Shop Around the Corner" this Friday 18 February 2005. The second is "In The Good Old Summertime" on Friday 11 March 2005. The last is Friday 25 March 2005 and it's "You've Got Mail." All movies start at 8pm, preceded by a half hour of live organ music on The Mighty Wurlitzer. Each evening's program includes a newsreel, cartoon, Coming Attractions and Dec-O-Win where one can win dinners at local/Jack London Square restaurants. This cycle of movies has sponsorship from Kincaid's in JLS.

An interesting thing about the newsreels and cartoons is that they are selected to go along with

LOBBY ART
Several of you have asked about the interesting wall art we have in our front lobby. It is an Encaustic and was done in 2001 by our own PAULETTA CHANCO, whose studio is on the fourth floor. The title is "Liminal Bridges."

In layman's terms, encausing means a method of painting using pigments with wax fixed onto the surface by heat. The word used as a noun is a work of art produced by this process. The word is Latin with Greek origins, from enkaiein (to burn in).

Liminal means transitional space between two levels of life, such as puberty into adulthood, youth into marriage, aging into dying, etc.

Liminal is an anthropology term coined in 1925 by the French anthropologist, Arnold Van Gennep when he was researching 'rites of passage' in different tribal cultures.

Pauletta got the idea for this work when she thought about our unique Live/Work, urban community here at Fourth Street Lofts and in the Jack London District, and how we attempt to build bridges for seamless transitions between our work and everyday lives. She also sees a transition into how we all try to maintain a sense of community with one another despite our differences, and how we try to move towards more neighborly intimacy with compassion and greater understanding.

Visitors and residents in the lobby can spend time contemplating the piece, especially while waiting for busy elevator.

And from personal experience watching it in process, I know it is long, hard work. There were many many layers of wax and paint embedded on the wall to produce the textured surface. It is sort of a fusion of the two mediums.

It took Pauletta several weeks of hard work to make this lovely piece of artwork which is a permanent part of our lobby.

FOOD BARREL
It was taken away this week by the Alameda Food Bank, and embarrassingly enough, it was only a quarter full after being in the Mail Room Lobby for the past four months.

DEJA VU
Interesting things one sees when one watches late nite TV. I like Nash Bridges, because of the scenery. Many of the location shoots are right in our own neighborhood. One day years ago I watched them shoot scenes at the Amtrak station, and learned there were four different versions of Nash's yellow 'Cuda - all with different suspension setups for different driving and/or chase scenes.

In a recent episode called "Girl Trouble," our building front was shown, as was the Amtrak station. It also showed the Tower Lofts - front, lobby and one of the West lofts on the top floor. Some other episodes show Portico Lofts.

THANK YOU KATHY LEMMN
Kathy lives at Portico Lofts and last Friday she cleaned up around all the neighborhood Trash Cans. Those would be the decorative Trash Cans installed by our neighborhood association - the ones with the red and yellow plaques describing neighborhood buildings.