Community Corner
Five Things You Need to Know for Your Week in Alameda
Flick your flip flops, snag a food truck snack and learn the history of the Fernside.
Five Things appears Mondays on Alameda Patch and offers a window into what's happening on the Island in the week ahead. Look also for Patch's Weekend Things feature on Thursday. Send ideas for Five Things to janonpatch@gmail.com.
- Alameda public school kids are off today, so watch out for them wandering the streets, and take this opportunity to have lunch on Park Street between 12:30 and 1 p.m. without waiting in line behind the high school kids. Also consider celebrating Easter Monday (in solidarity with Canadians), or Dyngus Day (if you’re from Buffalo, NY, or South Bend, IN); the latter is a Polish-American celebration of the end of Lent and apparently involves dancing polkas and whacking people with pussy willows.
- Jon’s Street Eats is back, serving up fine food from a truck on Friday afternoons at the corner of Santa Clara Avenue and Oak Street. The grub is now slung by a different person, John Betteo, and is still well worth a stop…the ahi tuna roll and pulled pork get raves. Check his Twitter feed for minute-by-minute updates; he may be in town on Saturdays too, says a recent Tweet.
- Done with your flip flops and ready to get some new ones with which to air your toes out after a long, wet winter? Apparently flip flops are hard to recycle, but if you take them to the bin at before May 21 they’ll give them to an organization that reuses the material for playgrounds.
- The history of Alameda’s Fernside neighborhood, which started out as a large estate, will be explored Thursday evening at the Alameda Museum.
- City meeting roundup: Tonight the Alameda meets to consider a proposed residential rezoning, a use permit for a variety of properties on Encinal Avenue, another review of the community planning process for Alameda Point and the staff’s first run at the Regional Sustainable Communities Strategy. On Thursday the gets together to review block grant spending recommendations.
Plan ahead: As people get older they may need some help managing at home, and there are community programs that help them do that. is hosting a couple of city officials to explain on May 17. Miriam Delagrange, Economic Development, and Erin Christ, Alameda Fire Department, will discuss the city’s housing assistance programs and the Fire Department’s Senior Safety Program. To attend, sign up in the Mastick Office or call 747-7506.