Firstly: it’s been a helluva long time (again) since I’ve posted anything here. I’d like to say that I’ve meant to, but that’s not even true. I’ve been so busy that posting to the blog hasn’t even made the list. But, it’s just about our one year anniversary – we opened our doors on December [...]

11/29/2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ACTUAL CAFE CELEBRATES ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY WITH A JUMPING-UP-AND-DOWN, SIDEWALK-SHAKING, BOOTY-MOVING, DOWN THE CORNER YES-FEST, AND HOLIDAY GROUP ART SHOW Actual Cafe, located at the corner of San Pablo and Alcatraz Avenues, in the tiny isthmus of North Oakland bounded by Emeryville and Berkeley, is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a party [...]

It continues to be a fun ride over here in the north o. We’ve been working on a bunch of stuff, and I’m really excited about the coming months. Firstly, our May first Friday show (May 7th) is going to be a great one. Brian Richardson, a longtime local, is showing a new exhibit of [...]

Until just about an hour ago, I hadn’t been keeping up with online comments to the blog (or anywhere else) lately – I’ve been busy actually running the Cafe. We hired a couple new folks (stop by and say hello to Rosy and Even), and are hiring more again. Business continues to grow, and the [...]

I’m thrilled to announce that our laptop-free weekend experiment, while not without it’s bumps, has been on the whole, a huge success, and that we’ll be keeping weekends at the Cafe laptop-free indefinitely. The Cafe has become a different (I think nicer) place on the weekends, and many people have told me that they go [...]

It’s been an interesting few more days over here. We continue to have lots of people coming through the doors who are really excited about laptop-free weekends, and also creating a space that’s a bit different from the average cafe. On the other hand, I’ve steeped myself in the negative opinions about what we’re doing, [...]

What a day. We had an incredible response to our laptop-free weekend experiment. Not everything went perfectly, but a lot went really well, and I’m excited about what comes next. First of all, we had a really great first Friday party last night – a great turnout of neighborhood folks, photographers, musicians, cyclists, and other [...]

I knew that the day would come eventually. It came much sooner than I thought, and has taken me by surprise. It was the day when we filled up with laptop users, and became just another wifi shack, at least for a couple hours. It happened this past weekend. And led me to losing many [...]

I haven’t had a second to give any updates on the Cafe, except 140 characters at a time. Here’s a (slightly) longer one. We’ve been doing spectacularly well, thanks to our neighbors and local cyclists. Weather has been a bit dodgy for the past couple weeks, and folks are a little less animated now that [...]