Mandela Foods: Urban Art Gallery?

Regular readers of East Bay Conservative will know how absolutely absurd I find the Mandela Foods Cooperative anti-poverty experiment and its main supporter, City Council member Nancy Nadel. I recently dropped by the site for an update on its status. It would appear its mission has shifted somewhat.

During the runup to the election, Nadel said that the coop just needed more time to get off the ground.That claim is becoming increasingly unbelievable. And, with Nadel's recent reelection, we can all await the coop's inevitable demand for more money.

In any event, the following are two pictures snapped Monday, June 9. The first shows some excellent urban art spraypainted on the coop's window. This is what is so nice about failed urban-renewal projects: the business failure is just the beginning of the show. Now come the taggers, and next we can probably expect to see a drug dealer set up shop in the back.



Speak of the devil. This second picture seems to indicate that they are building a small hiding place in the back of the coop's space. Is this where they'll hide the weed? Only time will tell. For now, the space continues to sit vacant, costing the city economically and in quality of life.

At Mandela Foods Coop, The Cupboard Is Bare

Regular readers of the blog know my dislike for the latest socialist experiment being perpetrated on the people of West Oakland. As promised, I dropped by and took pictures both of the "Coop" and the 99 Cents Only store's produce section.



Mandela Foods Coop:



99c Only Stores:



Where would you rather shop? For those of us who are not termites or metal-eaters, the choice is clear.

Incidentally, while I was at 99c Only, I bought some great sweet bread and a drink. In front of me in line was a lady buying produce and some snacks for her daughter. She only had $6 but the bill was $8.20. Luckily, the store manager was there and offered her a discount so she could afford everything.

Thanks again to 99c Only for proving me right and the socialists wrong.

Tribune Agrees: 99c Only Good for West Oakland

Glad to see the tribune bend to the truth in Monday's article. Also, for the record, I go by the West Oakland BART station pretty much every day, with nary a peep out of the Mandela Foods Collective. Good thing West Oakland residents already have a reasonably priced alternative for food and sundries.

Oakland Magazine Joins the Anti-Poor-People Parade

Just got my monthly (?) copy of Oakland Magazine in the mail. A strange sort of magazine, it continually suggests that I should subscribe, yet I've received it for more than two years without paying a dime.



This month's edition contained what, all in all, was a good article about grocery shopping options in Oakland.

But, not to beat a dead horse, but I'm pretty irritated that they felt the need to join the parade of those who feel the presence of a 99 cents only store in West Oakland somehow hurts the people living there:

West Oakland residents wanted a healthy, community-focused, full-service grocery to anchor the Mandela Gateway retail and housing redevelopment project on Seventh Street, across from the West Oakland BART. What they got instead was a 99¢ Only chain outlet. But the scrappy worker-owned Mandela Food Cooperative ... negotiated a deal that will allow it to open a small (2,000-square-foot selling area) market as early as April.

This is exactly why capitalism works. I have no doubt that some people do want an overpriced failure of a "food cooperative." Thankfully, capitalism knows better, and the free market brought residents of that area with a store that provides them with reasonable merchandise at an excellent value.

I also find tiresome the author's suggestion that the 99¢ Only store is somehow declasse or inappropriate for West Oakland. Give me a break. As a matter of fact, I shop at that store not infrequently, as I often use the West Oakland BART station to commute. The store has good food at a great price. I plan to post some pictures in the near future to give readers a sense of what this store has to offer.

I also walk by the Mandela Foods location, and there is no way those guys are going to open in April. Not suprising, but it is pretty annoying when you consider that we as a city are subsidizing that store, giving it a financial advantage over the 99¢ Only store. Even with that disadvantage, the 99¢ Only store will win. Mark my words.

Incidentally, the 99¢ Only store clientele is extremely diverse, which I consider a great thing. The staff appears to be very diverse as well. Also a great thing.

I recently asked a checker about the news I'd read that residents weren't going to shop at the store. "Psssh," she said. "I see everyone in here. We're the best bargain in town."

Amen to that, and thanks to 99¢ Only for providing West Oakland with unbeatable value.

West Oakland Welcomes 99c Only Stores!

This morning at 8AM West Oakland gets its new 99c Only Store [press release]. The store is on Seventh Avenue, just across from the West Oakland BART station. When I came home from work today, I could see there were already people lining up there to get iPods and scooters for 99c at the grand opening.

This store is a miracle of capitalism in a decimated area of liquor stores and section 8 housing. The folks wanting to open the "Mandela Collective," a joke enterprise which will undoubtedly fail, did everything in their power to stop 99c Only from coming to town.



The collective is one of these weird combinations of Leftist causes you see occasionally in places like Oakland where no one even bothers to try to run profitable enterprises. Their whole idea is to bring organic (and therefore extremely expensive) produce to the inner city. Folks, people in West Oakland don't need prestige products. If they want that, they can head over to the new Whole Foods. What they need are honest products at fair prices, just like everyone else.

One argument people floated against the 99c Only store is that it won't provide people with food. That's just false. 99c Only offers produce, milk, eggs, canned goods, you name it, and you can feed a family of four out of that store on $5 per day. Try doing that on organic produce.

Bravo also to 99c Only for bringing some honest private-enterprise jobs to town. This is what West Oakland needs. Not more government programs. Not more "collective" style businesses that last a few months and then fail.

While we're on the subject, 99c Only turns out to be a pretty nice company itself. It has 250 stores, most of them in California, and over $1B in revenues. Not a bad win for Oakland. And, for those EBC readers out there looking for a place to invest some money, 99c Only's stock looks extremely cheap to me. Here's a chance to make some money and invest in real economic development for the East Bay all at once.