Talk of the Point

The Starbucks corporation announced last year that all but the smallest of its stores would be fitted with a wireless hub for users of laptops and other Internet-able devices. So I waited for our own Starbucks to get it.

Today I called the nine Starbucks stores in Pinole, Hercules, El Cerrito, Berkeley and Emeryville. Each had […]

The two names on the beer-and-wine-sales application posted at the old Annie’s Cafe are Hindi, says one local authority. Yet I hear that Vorapoj Phoonpirom and Boonyalak Viboonlarp, also known as Joe and Pat, will serve Thai food, not Indian.

Joe and Pat already own another restaurant, says one source, in Albany on Solano near Stannage. […]

Our own Randall von Wedel’s company CytoCulture, based in the Point, scored this week when a Fairfax gas station, Alfa Gas, elected to serve the company’s vegetable-based diesel fuel at its pumps.

Station to offer cleaner biodiesel fuel, Marin Independent Journal, April 7
Cytoculture

Just after midnight Saturday morning, witnesses at a party on Railroad Avenue told police they saw a man and a woman he had danced with struggle for a gun. Soon after, the fellow party-goers heard gunshots and saw the man drop dead. So reported the West County Times on Sunday. The man, Wendall Valencia, was […]

Correspondent Paul Thompson, a known character-on-the-square and observer of the wee hours, has pronounced the Starbucks sign at 2 a.m. the town’s “loudest noise.” The visual pollution is so great it crosses over to the other senses, he says.

Subway’s colors are even brighter, and the thought of them hanging over the square may yet awaken […]

S train will not stop at Bank of Richmond building

Months ago Subway, the global fast-food chain, offered Mark Howe $2.50 per square foot for part of the first floor in his restored Bank of Richmond building at West Richmond and Washington. But the custom wooden windows, briquetage and the grand copper cone just wouldn’t go […]