Bicycle Bingo has a Bingo Bicycle!

Thanks for our friend Jeff Tiedeken, aka Monkey Likes Shiny, aka Dr. E-ville, aka... (ok, you get the idea) - he built an awesome bike-driven bingo machine for Bicycle Bingo. Photos and videos here...check it out!

Bicycle Bingo - Launches in February

We've been working for a few months on an event that I'm really excited about, and that will launch in February (next week! on Groundhog Day!). It's called Bicycle Bingo, and it's a weekly fundraiser. We've teamed up with several not-for-profit orgs active in our neighborhood, and gotten sponsorship from Trumer, New Belgium, Lagunitas, and Chinook Book. We built a bicycle-driven bingo hopper (with the help of our favorite mad scientist/fabricator, Monkey Likes Shiny). We signed up local ingenue Steffy Sue on the Uke as our emcee. We got donated prizes from Chinook Book, Mike's Bikes, the Berkeley Bike Station, A Verb for Keeping Warm, James and the Giant Cupcake, The Essence of Beauty, Kinks Beauty Supply, and all the beer companies. The cafe will provide some prizes as well (did I need to say so?).

We selected partners who are relevant to our own neighborhood:

- East Bay Bicycle Coalition (first Thursdays, starting 2/2) advocates for bike lanes and roadway maintenance, holds bicycle safety classes for new urban cyclists, and generally promotes bicycle culture in Oakland and the greater East Bay

- Rebuilding Together Oakland (second Thursdays, starting 2/9) provides free home repairs and safety modifications to economically disadvantaged clients, especially the disabled and older adults. They organize neighborhood-wide maintenance days across Oakland, including in the Golden Gate neighborhood in October 2011. Their office is in the Golden Gate District.
- East Bay College Fund (third Thursdays, starting 2/16) provides College Guidance Services in High School, Scholarships, Mentoring, and Career Development for underrepresented students from Oakland public schools.
- United Roots Oakland (fourth Thursdays, starting 2/23) provides exposure to, support of, and training in arts, design and media for Oakland Youth ages 13-24. They offer youth leadership training, career & workforce development and support many important community campaigns.

...With special one-off fundraisers in long months with five Thursdays (like March, for instance).

Although you may be familiar with one or two of our beneficiary partners, you probably don't know them all. We figure that we can introduce them to supportive people and help spread the word about what they're doing, so they'll be here to meet you and tell you about why they're relevant.

Cards will be got for donations ($3/each, 2/$5, 5/$10) which will go directly to our partners. On top of that, we'll be donating 10% of everything we take in during the event. Beer sponsors will donate $1 from each pint sold, and we'll match what they give - so that for each $5 beer we sell, $2 goes to our partners. Chinook Book will donate $3 of each Chinook Book sold, and we'll match that as well (so that out of every $20 Chinook Book sale, our partners get $6).

But, even while we do good, we don't forget the having fun part. We built the bingo bike so that folks from the audience could come on up and pedal to select the winning numbers. We have lots of awesome prizes from which winners may select. There will be beer (and coffee, and food, and good company). Steffy Sue will be charming and entertaining. What's not to love?

It is my fervent hope that this event be successful for us and our partners. We'd like this to be something we do every week forever, and we want to help folks who do good in our neighborhoods fund their projects. All we need is for lots of people to come out and have a good time for a good cause. So please do.

The salient facts bear emphasis here:

- Thursdays 7-9!

- No cover charge!

- All ages admitted!

- Win prizes!

- Enjoy refreshments!

- Support folks who do good in your very own community!

- Maybe get to ride the Bingo Bike (if you're real lucky)!

See you there.

sal

our first million dollars...what it means.

I have been meaning to sit down and write another 'year end reflection' sort of post, and haven't had the time. This isn't that post. I will write it. Soon. Pinky swear.

In the meantime...

I realized the other day while I was working on closing my books for the end of the 2011 that the cafe had crossed the million-dollar total revenue mark recently (we made a bit over $400k last year and about $600k this year). "That's pretty awesome," said I to myself. Then I looked at the profit over these years, which totals just under $0 (our opening loss in 2009 wipes out every dollar made in 2010 and 2011, and then a few more). "So that's not so awesome," thought I. And then I thought more about it. Every single dollar that's come through the front door of this cafe has gone somewhere, and every one of them has had some impact where it landed.

The biggest chunk went to our vendors - over $350k went to buy the stuff we sell; $50k went to supplies, $25k to repairs. Since almost all those vendors are local businesses, a chunk of their dollars are being spent somewhere in town, and then recirculating more.

The next biggest chunk went to our crew - we've paid out over $350k in salaries. Because almost all our employees live within about a mile of the cafe, it's a good bet that a chunk of these dollars reappear on the streets of Berklandville as well.

$70k went to rent. My landlord happens to be a partnership of guys who live in Oakland and Berkeley, so some of their dollars also go back into the local moneystream.

$5k went to entertainers. $1,500 went to charities. All local.

We've collected and paid $70k in sales tax (that's separate from the million bucks). Those dollars go to schools, police, firefighters, roads, and other useful stuff. (Granted, they do other less-useful things as well, but that's the nature of taxation.)

The rest went to things like insurance, utilities ($45k!), permits, taxes, and on and on. (Almost $20k went to credit card processing fees, depressingly.)

This constant recirculation of money is the sort of thing that people on the radio and the TV call 'the economy', but that's a bit abstract. Looking at real facts and figures helps make it a bit more concrete, at least for me. If I were a politician, I'd say that we 'created' a million dollars in 'economic activity' or 'increased the local economy' by a million bucks or some such. Since I'm not a politician, I don't know exactly how I'd say it, but certainly the fact of the existence of Actual Cafe has contributed to the movement of dollars, and the fact that we prioritize doing business in our own community means that activity happens more often in our own backyard. Of course, the nature of 'the economy' is such that streams of money flow all over the damn place in the end - there's no stopping them going literally all around the world and back.

I feel like an NPR reporter right now.

luvya,

sal

It's been TWO WHOLE YEARS!!! Come Celebrate with us!

In December, Actual Cafe is celebrating two years of operation in Oakland’s Golden Gate district. On Friday December 9th from 5-10pm, we'll commemorate the occasion with the opening of a retrospective art show, entitled “We Are The People In Your Neighborhood”, and featuring our favorite artists who have shown at the cafe in the past year, along with artists from the Actual Cafe staff.

We'll have a repeat engagement of our free DIY s’mores stations on the sidewalk outside the cafe, and our friends at the East Bay Bike Party will be organizing a gathering during our party which will depart from the cafe for the start of EBBP’s regular monthly ride at 7:15pm. DJs Oze and Lifeone will spin records, and we'll have lots of other fun stuff that we haven't figured out yet.

Artists in the show will include: Jon Suzuki (bicycle photography), Eva Silverman & Querido Galdo (Oakland and other urban photography), Alexis Babayan (woodcuts of local street scenes), Nissa Nicole (photography), Lauren Aczon (street corner illustrations), along with two of the cafe crew: Kim Babnik (character illustrations) and Rachyel Puleo (photography).

We'll also be unveiling our new indoor mural (also entitled “We Are The People In Your Neighborhood”), by our own Kimbo Babnik! It'll be awesome. Trust us.

'We' means all of us, but especially you. So don't miss the party, K?

luvya,
sal & the whole actual crew


Eva Silverman - “Hair”

Nissa Nicole - untitled (Green Bicycle)


Querido Galdo - “Oakland Found”


Rachyel Puleo - “Cafe”


Kim Babnik - “Mermaid”


Lauren Aczon - “Oakland”


Jon Suzuki - untitled (vintage bike chain guard)

Press release for our Park(ing) Day weekend celebration

9/5/2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ACTUAL CAFE, GOLDEN GATE COMMUNITY ALLICANCE, A PLACE FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING
AND OTHER SAN PABLO & ALCATRAZ BUSINESSES
ANNOUNCE A PARK(ING) DAY WEEKEND CELEBRATION
WITH PARKLETS, NEW SIDEWALK FURNITURE, AND EVENTS ALL WEEKEND LONG

Actual Cafe, Walk Oakland Bike Oakland (WOBO), the East Bay Bicycle Coalition (EBBC), the Golden Gate Commmunity Alliance (GGCA), A PLACE for Sustainable Living, along with other neighborhood volunteers, will reconstruct the Actual Cafe parklet which debuted in May of this year, as well as creating three new sidewalk planter/bench combinations for other businesses (The Essence of Beauty, James and the Giant Cupcake, and Kinks Beauty Supply). All these elements will be built from reclaimed building materials (some of which were donated by the Re*use People Store in East Oakland), and will be installed in time for Park(ing) Day, on September 16th. The Actual Cafe parklet will remain in place through Park(ing) Day weekend (9/16-9/18). The new sidewalk furniture will remain in place permanently.

Actual Cafe has been an advocate for parklets since its opening in 2009. The cafe abuts a no-longer-operational AC Transit bus stop, which creates a long stretch of vacant (and unusable) pavement immediately outside its window. Hosting a permanent parklet in that bus stop is a dream of Sal Bednarz, owner of the cafe, which appears increasingly likely to become a reality in the near future. On Park(ing) Day from 5-8pm, Actual Cafe will host its regular Friday evening DJ happy hour in the parklet (weather permitting). The cafe will be asking visitors to sign a petition to the City of Oakland to grant a permanent permit for the Parklet, as well as hosting a guest book and inviting comments through the weekend. WOBO parklet passport holders will receive stamps at the cafe, as well as a 10% discount all weekend long; all other businesses on the block will also offer discounts to passport holders.

In addition, on Saturday, 9/17, from 9am-6pm, a block party will be held on 64th Street between San Pablo Avenue and Marshall Street. Sponsored by A PLACE for Sustainable Living coordinating with its neighbors, including St. Columba Catholic Church and Rebuilding Together Oakland, it will feature a flea market in St. Columba's parking lot from 9AM to 2PM, along with music and other activities. The party will be held entirely in what would otherwise be parking spaces on the block. Performances include: Korean Drumming, children's theater by Marin based sustainability education troupe Next Generation and folk/blues by Ariel Eisen and John Bennet.

The new San Pablo Avenue sidewalk furniture will follow the same construction style and methods as the Actual Cafe parklet, and is intended to integrate the entire block between Alcatraz Avenue and 63rd Street into the parklet experience. In addition to providing seating in the form of benches, planters in the structures will contain plants provided by A Verb for Keeping Warm (another block business) who will use them to create pigments for their yarn dyeing studio. The planters will incorporate an ingenious self-watering design using recycled plastic bottles and a water reservoir to provide constant water to the plants above and reduce the need for regular watering.

Many of the original Actual Cafe parklet components were taken after its debut in May after being disassembled and left outside the cafe, to the disappointment of neighbors and volunteers who contributed to its construction. Says Sal Bednarz, owner of Actual Cafe, "I can't wait to have the parklet back in place so neighbors can experience it again, and for the day when it becomes a permanent fixture of the neighborhood. I'm also really excited to be expanding the parklet through the installation of sidewalk furniture for our neighbor businesses." During its first incarnation, the cafe's parklet was admired by literally thousands of visitors in just a few days, at the EBBC Bike After Work Day party, and during the following weekend at the cafe. Says Bednarz, "It also had a substantial traffic calming effect on what is normally a really dangerous intersection - people were slowing down to look, and also just taking it a bit easier because they saw the parklet in the street."

The City of Oakland is within weeks of issuing its first RFP for parklet proposals, and intends to grant eight parklet permits this year, in a pilot program that will hopefully expand into a regular parklet process in early 2012, according to Blair Miller, chair of the cross-functional task force at the City of Oakland responsible for developing a parklet process in the city. Actual Cafe intends to be a participant in the pilot program, and will use materials developed during this weekend event to show neighborhood and area-wide support for its parklet and parklets in general. "There is no doubt in my mind that the commitment of the community to help Actual Cafe build one quality parklet, let alone two, motivated the City of Oakland to start taking parklets seriously," said Ruth Miller (no relation), parklet program coordinator for Walk Oakland Bike Oakland. "I look forward to seeing the other parklets imagined and built all over Oakland and San Francisco, but there's something really special about taking your friends into the Golden Gate neighborhood and saying: 'that parklet that's full of people and activity - I built that!' Building a parklet is a unique and wonderful way to support your community."

Park(ing) Day and the following weekend will be observed by other Oakland businesses with various temporary parklet installations. These include Farley's East on Grand Avenue, Arizmendi on Lakeshore Blvd., and another Lakeshore location hosted by the Lakeshore Merchants Association.

CONTACTS & MORE INFO:
Park(ing) Day: www.parkingday.org
Actual Cafe: www.actualcafe.com / Sal Bednarz / actualcafe@gmail.com / 510.735.6016
Walk Oakland Bike Oakland: www.wobo.org / Ruth Miller / ruth@wobo.org / 770.312.9295
A PLACE for Sustainable Living: www.aplaceforsustainableliving.org / Takahiro Noguchi / takahiro.noguchi@gmail.com / 510.213.8252
Golden Gate Community Alliance: www.goldengateoakland.org / Dan Woloz / dan@bikemandan.com
A Verb for Keeping Warm: www.averbforkeepingwarm.com / Kristine Vejar / kristine@averbforkeepingwarm.com
The Essence of Beauty: www.4theessenceofbeauty.com / Andrea Abdullah / andreaabdullah7@yahoo.com / 510.601.1972
James and the Giant Cupcake: www.jamesandthegiantcupcake.com / Eurydice Manning / jamesandthegiantcupcake@gmail.com
Kinks Beauty Supply: 510.655.7002
twitter #oaklet

more...of just about everything.

The months just fly by, and there's a lot that I'd like to blog about in order to keep a record, and always lots to communicate to all of you. But it just doesn't work out that way so much. I (rightly, I think) prioritize keeping the day-to-day operation here under control, which is a growing job as our business grows. We had an unexpectedly busy summer, in terms of customers and revenue - where last year we got less busy in June through August, this year we're busier every month. This is partly a function of having new neighbors with growing businesses, who attract more people to the block (who sometimes want a coffee or a waffle or whatever), and partly just us attracting new customers through word of mouth. Honestly, since we opened, it's been all we could do to keep up with growth, and that's still the case. Good problems to have, they say. Someday, I'll be trying to figure out how to get more customers through the door, but right now, you all just keep on coming. Thanks for that. :)

Growth means constant adjustment - we built systems that worked reasonably well at the beginning, but every few months we've had to re-engineer what we're doing to make our operation more efficient and consistent as more customers decided they wanted to spend their money here. We've had some problems along the way - some things haven't worked out as well as we'd hoped, and sometimes staff and customers suffered for it. But on the whole, we've been doing pretty OK. We've also managed to build a stronger crew over time - each time we grow the staff, I feel like we improve. We're at a point where three quarters of our staff has been here for over 6 months, and almost half have been here a year or more. This in a business which has only been around for a bit more than a year and a half in an industry known for high turnover - I think we're doing pretty well on that front, and hope we continue to.

We've spent a lot of the past 9 months adjusting our food menu, adding new bakery goods, establishing rotating specials (and adding new things to the menu as we went). Also, we've had to improve the speed and efficiency of our counter operation - turning out food and drinks faster, ringing sales faster, setting up stations so that two people can work side-by-side when things get really busy, improving our inventory and prep schedules, etc. We've also really beefed up our entertainment calendar - we've got live music every Saturday, and most Sundays, and our standing Friday evening happy hour (with DJs, movies, and other fun stuff). We're getting more great performers, more great art, and more great folks to throw their events here, and have even more coming. We've already planned out the remainder of our arts calendar for the year, and have some exciting stuff coming that we think you'll all really love.

We're focused right now on making some adjustments to our coffee program - we recently switched our decaf to a new product that we like a lot better, and we're making some minor recipe changes as well (watch for those over the next month or two). We're also improving our general drink quality and consistency - although we've always had some great baristas, we also had to hire folks who could handle food, and they haven't always had the best coffee chops. I'm happy to say that we've made some good progress on this front in the past couple months, but there's more to be done - we'll keep at it.

We're really excited to be hosting our first multi-venue art show in September: Fuzzy Logic - Oakland Threads is a group fiber arts show that will be hosted here and at James and the Giant Cupcake, and Threads of Transition, Patterns of Change - Rabari Textiles of India will be hosted by A Verb for Keeping Warm. We'll be opening both shows on September 9th, from 5-10pm, with DJs, free cupcakes, popcorn, happy hour specials, and a screening of The Muppet Movie. It looks to be a real swell time, so make a point of dropping by.

But, maybe the most exciting news...right now, we're working on re-building our parklet! Park(ing) Day is next month (September 16th), and we're one of many Oakland businesses who will be deploying temporary parklets during that weekend. Ours will be the most permanent of the crop, and we're told by the folks at the City of Oakland that there will be an RFP issued in the next several weeks which will allow us to apply for one of eight parklet permits to be granted in a pilot program. I see no reason why we would be denied a permit, and I can't wait for the day that the parklet becomes a permanent fixture of the block.

As part of the Park(ing) Day brouhaha, we're helping the Golden Gate Community Alliance build new sidewalk furniture for several businesses on our block (The Essence of Beauty, James and the Giant Cupcake, and Kinks Beauty Supply). We're using a design similar to what we did for the parklet for sidewalk planters and benches, and really trying to integrate the entire block in the parklet experience. I can't tell you how excited this makes me. I hope you feel the same. The planter/benches will become permanent fixtures of the block immediately - although we'll need to take the parklet away after the weekend, the sidewalk furniture will remain.

Park(ing) Day weekend is shaping up to be a three-day block party here at SP/Alcatraz: we'll be listed in the nationwide Park(ing) Day directory, and expect lots of folks coming by on Friday to check out the parklet. We're having our regular Friday night happy hour that night on the sidewalk adjoining the parklet, which ought to be fun. On Saturday (9/17), St. Columba Church (across the street from us) is having a big yard sale in their parking lot, and the folks at A PLACE for Sustainable Living are planning a street closure and block party on 64th and San Pablo for the day (details soon...). On Sunday (9/18), we'll have a sidewalk party with entertainment from noon-4:00, and will again invite press, politicians and other folks from the area to soak up the parklet vibe and get excited about our parklet and Oakland parklets in general. We'll be circulating a petition for signatures which will help ease us through the permit process, and also stamping Oakland parklet passports all weekend long. Passport holders will receive a 10% discount all weekend as well (more details about passports coming...).

We've got more in store...Halloween/Dia de los Muertos things in October with a great solo photography show by Varese Layzer; a group food-themed art show in November, with a special Plaid Friday party, and more, more, more!

Also, I think we can officially declare Laptop-Free Weekends a success, thanks to all of you. We've managed to do something a little different here, and our customers love us for it. I hope some of the folks who harassed me and us in the early days have taken the time to stop by and experience what we're doing, and that maybe we've helped a couple people see things in a new way.

So...

Stop by and share the love. It's real.

-luvya,

sal & the actual crew

parklets, built, enjoyed, now missing...

It's been a busy spring for us here, and for me personally. I've been training for AIDS/Lifecycle, and I'm leaving in just a couple weeks to ride my bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise funds for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (www.tofighthiv.org/goto/salbednarz for more). It's been a lot of work, finding time to train and run the business, and getting prepared to be gone for 10 straight days in June. I agonized over the decision for a while, and recently decided that it was time to hire a manager; once I did, I spent a couple months trying to find the right person. I think I did - Chris is his name, and he's been here for a couple weeks now. If you see him at the counter, welcome him. I'm looking forward to many improvements in the operation once he gets settled in - stay tuned for that.

But on top of all this, I have been working with Walk Oakland, Bike Oakland, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition and others, trying to get permission to install a Parklet (http://sfpavementtoparks.sfplanning.org/ if you don't know what a parklet is) in the defunct bus stop at the end of Alcatraz (right outside our window). Although parklets have been deployed in San Francisco for a couple years now, there's no process to do the same thing here in Oakland. We spent time speaking to various City departments, and couldn't get a clear answer about how to proceed.

So we built one.

We spent just a few hundred dollars, and used mostly reclaimed and donated materials, and only volunteer labor. Our friends at WOBO and EBBC, and especially the PLACE for Sustainable Living contributed tons of hours to help us get all the construction done. It was beautiful, I think.

It went to EBBC's Bike After Work party in Old Oakland, where it was a big hit, then came back here for our Parklet Love-In, which was tons of fun - we had lots of friends and neighbors come out, and everyone had great things to say about the parklet. It got well used that day.

After the weekend was over, I disassembled the parklet into its components, and stacked it up on the sidewalk to get it ready to move into storage until we had another event or could get a permit for permanent installation.

Then the bad thing happened. I was so wiped out from all the parklet building, and other Bike Month things we'd been working on, that I left the parklet pieces sitting on the sidewalk for longer than I ought to. Someone (and maybe multiple someones) helped themselves to the pieces before I noticed and could do anything about it.

So we're out a parklet. Which is sad. It's not the money, or even the time I spent, that I'm sad about. It's the fact that so many other folks gave their sweat and blood (literally) to get the thing built, moved, re-built, etc. I don't want their work to have been wasted.

So, I'm trying to spread the word as widely as I can, and enlist whatever help we can get, to find and get the parklet returned to us. I'm relatively sure that the folks who took it didn't think they were doing anything wrong, and if they get wind that we're looking for it, they'll bring it back home.

Please, if you've seen our parklet, let us know. If you took it, please bring it back. I'll make it worth your while - no questions asked. No one here is angry - just sad and hopeful.

luvya,
sal