Ginny Prior

OAKlAND TRIBUNE: January 26, 2011 With a celebratory clink of the glass, Oakland winds down its second annual Oakland Restaurant Week on Sunday. The culinary event features 10 days of deals at 37 local restaurants as part of a statewide campaign. From San Diego to San Francisco, restaurant weeks have been boosting local economies by [...]

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CONTRA COSTA TIMES: January 12, 2011 Montclair is joining the ranks of several Oakland neighborhoods getting attention from “foodies” these days. Local writer Serena Bartlett has launched a new culinary walking tour peppered with historic anecdotes of what she calls “unique food offerings” in the village, known more for its quaint hillside setting and proximity [...]

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MONTCLARION: December 23, 2011 It was an empty, blighted property in the heart of a Lake Merritt retail district, a haven for the homeless and a neighborhood eyesore. Now, the former bank site at 3265 Grand Ave. has been given new life as a coffee shop and gallery called Monkey Forest Road. Monkey Forest Road [...]

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MONTCLARION: October 28, 2011 The ratio of humans to ghosts in this world is unknown. That’s probably a good thing, knowing how spirits can violate one’s personal space. “Most of them are friendly,” a ghost hunter once told me, “but they do like to make mischief.” In some cases, a gaggle of ghosts can team [...]

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CONTRA COSTA TIMES: OCTOBER 28, 2011 Brother Michael Meister knows where all the bodies are buried — and at Halloween, that’s a good thing. The Saint Mary’s College theology and religious studies professor has lived on the bucolic Moraga campus for 30 years and is known as the resident storyteller. Things that go bump in [...]

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MONTCLARION: October 7, 2011 Like the Kennedy assassination and 9/11, most of us remember where we were when the Oakland hills fire broke out. I was in Minneapolis covering the World Series, and watched reports of the blaze on a lone TV in the pressroom. I remember Oakland A’s Manager Tony LaRussa saying he might [...]

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OAKLAND TRIBUNE: September 29, 2011 Three smartly dressed women stroll through the handsome brick dining room past the warm wood bar, smiling as they say “arrivederci” to a gentleman nearby. “Arrivederci” the dapper man answers, letting the r-r-r-r roll off his tongue in a rich, Italian accent that can only belong to a native speaker. [...]

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HILLS NEWSPAPERS: September 3, 2011 Happy hours I have known …. Someday I’ll write a book about this spectacle we call happy hour. Did it really start in the 1920s as a way for ship-bound sailors to relieve stress? Did it explode onto the civilian scene in the decadent ’60s, as Wikipedia says? Whatever the [...]

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