The 5^th Annual Oakland Indie Awards were a smashing success! On May 13^th, Oaklanders honored local artists and small businesses at the Indie Awards. Check out photos of the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/onepacificcoast. The Oakland Indie Awards encourages people to recognize the community, economic, environmental, and political impact of supporting Oakland’s locally-owned businesses and artists instead of chain stores. It also provides rare opportunities for recognition for the small businesses and artists that make Oakland such a wonderful, creative place. Finally, it’s a chance for Oaklanders to just celebrate Oakland by enjoying Oakland food, wine, chocolate and music.

Congratulations to the Indie Awards winners:

• Business Greenie Award – The Rising Loafer Café & Bakery

• Artist Greenie Award - Jamie Vaida

• Pillars – Montclair Vet Hospital & Give Something Back

• Innovative Newbie – Back to the Roots Ventures

• Ripple Effect – Mandela Foods Co-operative

• Socially Responsible Rockstar – Karen’s Flowers

This event would not have been possible without the support of our committed sponsors including: Mattmar Group, Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass, Uptown Apartments, Dan Carroll and Stasia Obremskey, Pete Higgins and Leslie Magid, Blue Heron Catering Company, SuperPrint, Exploratorium, Jack London Square, California Waste Solutions, First Solar, YMCA of the East Bay, City of Oakland, Urban Legends Winery, East Bay Community Foundation, Ron Beller and Jennifer Moses Family Foundation, Bay Area Derby Girls, Oakland Outlaws, AnewAmerica, Kipp and Sara Howard, Nancy Neel, and Bruce and Susan Kelley.

Bay Area Green Tours is hosting its second Farm to Fork tour of the season on August 15th.

Last year’s Eat Real Festival was a huge hit, featuring local food, street food, homemade ice cream, local beer and wine, presentations, music, and more.  If you weren’t able to make it last year, be sure to check it out this year!  The event runs from Friday, August 27th to Sunday, August 29th and features local food from around the Bay.  For details, visit their website.

New this year is Saturday’s Eat Real Bike Tour!  From 12-4:30, peddle along Oakland’s waterfront, meet local culinary artists, and sample their creations.  Tastings will be at Linden Street Brewery, Numi Teas, Vice Chocolates, and Urban Legend Cellars.  To purchase a ticket and find out more information, visit http://hesternet.net/events.html

All the finalists at the Oakland Indie Awards were proud businesses and artists of Oakland that do wonderful things here in our community.  But some go beyond our East Bay city-some do work that impacts the United States as a whole.

Sungevity is one of those nominees.  Sungevity is a solar panel business based in Jack London Square that allows clients to lease solar panels for their roof as well as purchase them.  In doing so, Sungevity hopes to democratize solar panels by providing access to solar energy to a wider-based clientele.  Sungevity hopes this will make solar panels more widely used throughout the United States.

Another way Sungevity is working to spread interest and awareness about solar panels is to get them back on the White House.  Solar panels used to be on the White House during the Carter administration, but came down during the first Bush administration.  Sungevity wants to get them back on.  They sent a letter to the Obamas and started a website, http://solaronthewhitehouse.com/, where you can learn more and sign a petition to get involved.  According to Sungevity, the goal of this campaign and petition is “to drive awareness of the ease and affordability now available to homeowners and the dramatic effects it can have on not only slowing global warming, but also saving consumers money on their monthly power bill.”

You can learn more about Sungevity on their website.  And to learn about their push to get solar on the White House, check out solaronthewhitehouse.com.

On Friday, May 14th, Oaklanders celebrated the people and businesses that make the city great at OneCalifornia Foundation’s 4th Annual Oakland Indie Awards.  Hosted in partnership with the East Bay Express, the annual awards program is a celebration of all things Oakland and an opportunity to highlight the positive social and environmental impact of Oakland’s independent businesses and artists. The program was kicked off by keynote speaker Michael Kieschnick, Co-Founder, President and CEO of CREDO Mobile / Working Assets. 

The 2010 Indie Award Winners Are:

Neighborhood Dynamo: Uptown Body and Fender, a woman-owned body shop that focuses on the emotional well-being of its customers and hosts community events and fundraisers free to local non-profits at its stunning body shop in Oakland’s Uptown district.

Newbie: Snap Judgment, the new Oakland-based NPR program and multi-media company that offers a new voice in storytelling, showcasing Oakland’s diversity and telling stories that “drop listeners into another person’s skin”.

Youth Empowerment: Oaklandish, the extremely popular design and screen-printing company that celebrates all-things Oakland through its apparel and supports the city’s youth through innovation award grants.

Pillar: Peerless Coffee, the 86-year-old family-owned specialty coffee company that provides specialty blends to some of the Bay Area’s most esteemed restaurants, offers scholarships to Berkeley students, helps develop the communities that grow their coffee, and was one of the first businesses to be certified green by the Alameda County Green Business program.

Innovator: Natural Home Cleaning Professionals, the eco-friendly co-op that provides healthy worker-owner cleaning employment opportunities for immigrant women in Oakland and the Bay Area.

Ripple Effect: BayVAN and Compound Gallery, the arts organizations that founded the nationally-recognized Plaid Friday, the independent business’ answer to Black Friday that encourages people to do their holiday shopping at local indie businesses.

Greenie: Ryan Duke, an independent industrial designer that creatively re-uses reclaimed materials to build essential products to improve lives including refugees in the U.S. and individuals in developing countries.

Oakland Soul: Joyce Gordon Gallery, the downtown-Oakland based commercial fine art gallery that seeks to open doors and share the perspectives of the Bay Area’s diverse artist population, as well as those of international artists.

Please visit http://www.oaklandindieawards.com/ for more information about the winners and for pictures!

In addition to seeing the winners being announced and awarded, party guests sampled food, wine, chocolate and beer from as many as 30 food producers and restaurants, explored a selection of locally-made items from over 50 artists and retailers, and thanks to the generosity of DJ Mama L, listened to music from Oakland musicians, past and present. 

Thank you to everyone that came out to celebrate with us and we’ll see you at the 5th Annual next year!!

The new Beehive Market, celebrating all that is green and local, is opening in Berkeley on June 12th.  Think of it as an expanded farmer’s market, featurning food and product vendors, live music, and more.  They will be open every Saturday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on San Pablo Avenue at Virginia Street in West Berkeley.  To find out more about the event, or to find out how to get involved as a vendor or sponsor, visit their website.

During one of the busiest shopping times of the year, we at OneCalifornia Bank and Foundation have been reminding our friends and colleagues to shop local and support small, independent businesses as much as possible.  Supporting local businesses keeps money cycling through the area and contributes to community development.   

When you shop at locally-owned, independent businesses, more money is kept in the community because local businesses are more likely to buy from local suppliers, and service providers.  In fact, the most conservative studies indicate that for every $100 that you spent at a locally-owned independent business, $68 of those dollars gets re-spent in the community.  That’s $25 (58%) more than if you spent it at a chain headquartered in another city.

The OneCalifornia team isn’t the only one singing the praises of shopping locally.  There is an entire movement centered on shopping locally and supporting small, independent businesses.  Some of these national organizations include BALLE and AMIBA.  Here in the Bay Area, Oakland Grown, Buy Local Berkeley, and SFLOMA are great resources.  Want to learn more?  See the list of 10 reasons to support local businesses on the Oakland Grown website.

What are some ways to shop local this holiday season?  Of course, the foundation’s Oakland Unwrapped! website makes it really easy, where you can shop online from over 160 locally-owned stores and artists - great for late nights and cold days when you prefer to shop online, but want to keep your money local.

We are also hosting a big, festive shopping event on December 10th and 11th to bring all of these shops and more together in one place.  Organizations like the Crucible are also hosting shopping events and many Oakland neighborhood shopping districts are hosting strolls, parades, discounts and later hours  to allow you the chance to shop there instead of at the mall.  Most of these shopping events feature live musical entertainment, fun kid activities, and food from local restaurants, so there are plenty of reasons to check them out!  The Oakland Grown website lists Oakland Shopping events, and we’ve been blogging about upcoming shopping events as well.  There are plenty of resources out there to help you shop local–so make it your holiday shopping resolution to support your local economy by shopping locally!  In fact, we encourage you to take the Oakland Grown pledge to try to do all of your shopping with locally-owned independent businesses and artists.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about going green and selecting environmentaly-friendly cleaning products for your green lifestyle.  Now you can get some tips and insights from an expert!  The Sustainable Business Alliance is hosting a talk on Researching and Selecting Green Products with Environmental & Public Health consultant Ann Blake, PhD.  Come hear what she has to say on Tuesday, December 8th at UC Berkeley.  For more details, check out the Sustainable Business Alliance’s website.

OneCalifornia Foundation works closely with Oakland Grown, the East Bay Express, Buy Local Berkeley and the Sustainable Business Alliance on a campaign called the Indie Revolution.  Each month offers a different theme with ideas to help revolutionize our economy and celebrate our community with individual choices.  It provides people with ideas and tools to support local indpendent businesses and aritists.  October was Made in the East Bay month, and we thought we’d share it with you.  You might be suprised by what is made right here in our neighborhood!

Brought to you by Buy Local Berkeley, Oakland Grown, Sustainable Business Alliance and the East Bay Express…

Dear Indie Revolutionary,

We’ve spent this year exploring many ways to change the world through small personal economic decisions and actions.  Many of these actions involved shopping at locally-owned stores and with local artists.  This month, we focus on items that are actually MADE right here in the East Bay.  

We residents and business owners can extend our impact on the local economy by not only focusing on where we buy, but also where products are made. Buying products made here not only reduces the carbon footprint made in transit to you, but also helps contribute to variety of job types in the East Bay, including jobs that may suit those without a high school or college degree, and or those who are not English proficient.

So… in this October issue, we touch on a few industries and a few interesting manufacturing businesses in our neighborhood.

Industries – Now and Then

Here in the East Bay, we’ve moved from the WWII era of shipbuilding, automobile manufacturing, and canning to scooters, skirts, and raw organic granola. Oakland, once a major exporter of beer, finds a young brewmaster ready to bring that era back.

The East Bay has an illustrious industrial past, as one of the largest ship building regions in the world. during WWII.  An industry that included women, helped start the first HMO (by Henry J. Kaiser), and let to a bustling auto industry in Oakland, once known as the Detroit of the West. 

While the region doesn’t produce cars anymore, and it isn’t centered around building warships, it does still offer a variety of smaller businesses focusing on transportation, and benefitting from being near a larger port.  Several  smaller businesses in the area build smaller boats, boat parts, and aircraft equipment.  And new businesses are cropping up to handle more local and sustainable transportation needs, such as bikes and scooters.

Similarly, the East Bay’s current strength in food production harkens back to that same era when our proximity to agricultural land, orchards, and the port made canning Oakland’s second-most valuable war contribution. 

Many people know that several large corporations like Safeway, Dreyers, Clorox and Cost Plus World Market have corporate headquarters here in the East Bay.  But we thought we’d share a small number of interesting, independent businesses actually producing things in our neighborhood.  And we’ll focus on items you can buy yourself, so when you have a choice, you can choose their products.

Fashion

The fashion industry in the East Bay is quite bustling, and incorporates a wide variety of jobs, including models, photographers, event planners, promoters, designers, manufacturers/sewing facilities, to name a few. Here are some locally-made fashions you can buy, next time you’re in the market:

Baby and Children’s Clothing 
Biscotti (Malia Obama’s inauguration dress was from Biscotti)
Mariposa Baby
Jasper Hearts Wren
 

Women’s Clothing
Babette  
Cari Borja
Says Who
Verrieres & Sako
5ft2in

Makeup
100% Pure
Just Glam

Bags
Haiku Bags
Elbow Grease Designs

Watches & Jewelry
Youngblood Timepieces          

Specifically Sustainable
Blue Sky Biofuels
Fwrap
Lucid Design Group

Technology and Web Businesses 
Pandora
Elfster
Livescribe, Inc.           
Wine Commune.com
Drivers Ed.com

Home / Furniture     
Jason Lees
Berkeley Mills
Swerve Co
Metro Lighting   
Wooden Duck
Mediums to Masses
Vertical Home Gardens           

Musical Instruments 
DaSilva Ukeleles          
Ervyn Somogyi Guitars
Steven Faulk Guitars

Sporting Goods and Accessories 
TruKid Skincare for the Active Kid
Electric Motor Sport Motorcycles
Fly Scooters
Xtracycle
Sheila Moon Athletic Wear
Comet Skateboards

Food, Seeds, and Herbs
Fortune Cookie Factory
DELIZIA Olive Oil
Voila Juice
Food Mill Peanut Butter
No Cookie Vegan Cookies
Hodo Soy Beanery
Glow Mama Drink
Premier Organics Nut Butters
Sweet Maria’s home coffee roasting supplies
Blue Bottle, Peerless, Mr. Espresso coffee & machines
Clif Bars
Tofu Yu
Mayway Herbs
Kitsawa Seeds
Gu Energy Gel

For more local foods, and various local Wines and Beers, see last month’s article…

Artisan and Handmade in the East Bay
The list above focused on small to large scale manufactured items.  However, the bay area hosts a huge variety of artisans, home-based businesses making wonderful, unique things, like re-purposed clothing, jewelry, bath and body care, silk screen clothing, hats, housewares, fine art and so much more.  To find some of these, we recommend you check the following sites:

Buy Local Berkeley
Oakland Unwrapped!
Rock Paper Scissors Collective
Feria Urbana
DAI Style Lounge
ProArts Gallery

This Made in the East Bay list is part of the 2009 Indie Revolution - a year-long campaign to support local independent businesses and artists in the East Bay. A collaboration of Oakland Grown, Buy Local Berkeley, East Bay Express, and the Sustainable Business Alliance.

Tell Us About Your Experience in October and Stay Eligible to Win the $5800 Prize
To comment on your participation for these months and be eligible for $5800 in prizes, go to http://indierevolution.wordpress.com

Oakland Unwrapped would like to introduce you to the latest additions to our online marketplace:

Baby Girl Designs: fine artwork by Jeanette Madden on notecards, journals, gift bags and boxes, and more.

By Nieves: all natural handmade body care products made with essential oils.

CC Star: original and custom-made handmade cuffs and snap bracelets, coin purses and pouches made from vintage neckties.

East Bay Express eDeals: gift certificates to local stores, including bath & body, food & drink, books, music, and more, sold at 25% off the certificate face value.

Envirodryz: low-tech, eco-friendly clotheslines.

Ezme Designs: funky, unique, and custom-made ceramic bowls, mugs, and dishes.

Kristine Online: unique and fun collectible toys, dolls, and gifts.

Looks Good From The Front: handmade hair accessories and birdcage veils.

Pushcart Design: a graphic design studio that creates politically and geographically influenced t-shirts and posters.

Sarah Swell Jewelry: nature-inspiried handcrafted fine jewelry.

Steppen Simply: necklaces and earrings to make you look and feel “simply” beautiful in any outfit for any occasion at any time.

YB Timepieces: high-quality fashion watches.

More stores are being added all the time, so keep checking www.oaklandunwrapped.org for more fun and unique Oakland-based businesses!