Tough times can occasionally mean good deals for some, and a large commercial property investment group has decided to take control of almost 2 million sq feet of downtown Oakland office & commercial space . While the deal does not actually include all of Oakland, the CIM Group has closed a deal buying the city’s tallest office building at 1 Kaiser Plaza as well as several other marquee commercial properties. Amongst the buildings acquired were 1333 Broadway which is a ten story structure that encompasses the entrance to 12th St City Center BART Station. With these purchases CIM Group now surpasses Walter Shorenstein’s legacy real estate company which owns approx 1.5 million square feet in the downtown Oakland market.

The LA based CIM group initially took a giant toehold when it bought Oakland’s largest downtown hotel the 20 story City Center Marriott and it’s sister property The Courtyard in 2007. CIM Group in an effort to drink it’s own kool-aid, will move it’s Bay Area HQ from SF to Oakland in 2009, and run it’s operations which specialize in urban properties, including revitalized icons like Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the adjacent Hollywood & Highland complex.

It’s Matcha time! The Asian Art Museum hosts their Matcha event series on the first Thursday of every month, from 5 to 9 in the evening, and tomorrow, October 2nd, is that special day. The theme for tomorrow’s event is Japanese Tattoo:

There’s more to getting inked than you think. Takahiro Kitamura — aka “HORITAKA,” apprentice to the revered master Horiyoshi III — is an author, prolific tattoo artist, and owner of San Jose’s State of Grace. He will deliver a talk on the time-honored art of Japanese tattoos, a rich culture of beauty, commitment, and history.

See LIVE demonstrations of employing both traditional (no electric needles!) and modern techniques. Joining Horitaka’s diverse, talented crew of tattooists are special guests from Japan — Shige, a powerhouse tat artist who’s showcased all over the world; Mutsuo, who’s designed for Bathing Ape and Hysteric Glamour; and Kazunobu Nagashima, a client of Shige who will proudly display his backpiece, which won a 2007 Milano Tattoo Convention award.

In addition, dip into the world of Zen among ancient Samurai warriors through a guided tour of the galleries, learn about Japanese altars, sample teas by Ito En, soak up DJ Saiman’s aural offerings, enjoy a cocktail with friends, and much more.

The museum is on Larkin next door to Main Library. Admission is $5 after 5 PM, and as they imply up there, for that awesome price you get the run of the museum. Their special exhibition at the moment is Arts of the Islamic World from Turkey to Indonesia, featuring artifacts from the museum’s collection. (They’re tooling up for a big show about Afghanistan that won’t open for three weeks. But we’ll talk about that next month.)

[Image via.]

Well, the 44th annual Big Book Sale hosted by the Friends of the Public Library started yesterday, but have no fear — the sale will continue today and tomorrow from 10 to 8, and on Sunday from 10 to 6. All books on Sunday will be priced down to $1 or less! The Friends contend that it’s the largest book sale on the West Coast, and I’d believe it. It’s being held, as usual, at lovely Fort Mason, in the Festival Pavillion. Just go to Fort Mason — you can’t miss it!

This sale is truly staggering, by the way. The picture above is of last year’s sale, and it nicely conveys the scope. (It comes from this great post on the anonymous blog, Tea & Cookies.) You could easily pick up a year’s reading for less than $50. Normally I’m such a restrained person in bookstores: because of the relatively high cost of new books, I almost never purchase one unless I’m certain I will benefit from it. Fifteen bucks per paperback adds up, never mind hardcovers! But at library book sales, all prudence goes out the window. Not only are the books cheap, but according to the Friends page, all the proceeds “fund education programs that promote literacy for children, teens and adults. Last year, over $250,000 was raised for San Francisco’s libraries.” How can you resist that? It’s a license to splurge. Last year my wife and I took public transportation specifically to limit the amount we could bring home, and we still ended up staggering up the big hill to our house with a huge bag stuffed with books. But it was worth it, I think. I’d be more certain of that if I could still remember what we bought.

Former Giants All Star first baseman J.T. Snow — seen at left during 2005, his last season with the Giants — has signed a one-day contract with the team so he can retire as a Giant.

Most recently, Snow has been a part-time broadcaster, part-time coach for the Giants, for whom he played from 1997 to 2005. A free agent in 2006, he signed with the Boston Red Sox but played little and announced his retirement during the 2006 winter meetings.

Rumors that the Giants’ “major announcement regarding J.T. Snow” meant him being named as team manager, or anything else, proved false.

Kirk Read, host of the San Francisco reading series Smack Dab and K’vetsh, has won the first award by the Open Door Project, an effort by publishing figure Don Weise to create more opportunities for gay male writers. (Publishing folks know Weise as a former editor at the Avalon Publishing Group, but before that he worked at San Francisco’s Cleis Press.) (Disclosure: Cleis Press has published two of my books.)

Read is a performance artist and HIV activist in San Francisco in addition to his author/impresario roles.

Just when you’d all but forgotten the story of the blood thirsty Presa Canarios that haunted the halls of a certain Pac Heights apartment tower, it seems the tawdry tale truly refuses to die.

This week, Marjorie Knoller, was back in court and sentenced, yet again. Knoller was the strange little woman whose giant dogs attacked and killed her neighbor, a college lacrosse instructor named Diane Whipple, back in 2001. The trial stirred up plenty of sordid details, including the pet owners’ “adoption” of an adult white supremacist convict they represented as attorneys, whose dogs they were apparently raising on his behalf.

The case was always controversial, and since a judge threw out the original jury’s second-degree murder conviction in 2002, an odd and continuing legal tug of war has existed between competing benches. In 2007, The California Supreme Court had ruled Knoller’s eventual 4 year sentence for a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter was inadequate. She would need to return to jail.

Knoller, who completed a four year stint (living in Florida and apparently estranged from her former husband who was paroled in 2003) has been brought back to California for re-sentencing that occured this morning. Little Marjorie is now expected to finish a “15 Years to Life” sentence, with eligibility for parole in 10 years when she’ll be 63 years old. The judge reportedly admonished Knoller and fined her as well, including almost $7000 in prison earnings…

Knoller’s attorney, Dennis Riordan, said they plan to file an appeal.

Bow Wow Yipee Yo Yippe Yay!

Looks like the process of building the replacement for the Bayview Branch Library is well underway and meeting with community approval, according to this article in the Examiner. The article describes the community meeting held at the existing branch on September 8th, which marked the beginning of the “public review” phase of the process. The SFPL is negotiating to purchase the building next door to the existing branch; if they succeed, the new library will be the largest branch in the system, at an estimated cost of $10 million (a bargain, really). The old building will be demolished in 2010, and the new branch should be ready for regular service in 2011; in the interim, services will be maintained at the nearby YMCA.

These refurbished branch libraries are really nice to visit and use. I often spend an afternoon in the new Glen Park branch before going downstairs to do my grocery shopping. A fresh, clean library is so inviting.

[Tip via Curbed SF.]

[Photo of Paul Auster, left, by André Meunier; photo of Junot Diaz, right, by WBUR Boston.]

Normally I like to confine my recommendations to wallet-friendly events, but next week there are two events close together at the Herbst Theater that I can’t resist mentioning: Paul Auster in conversation with Michelle Richmond on Tuesday the 16th, and Junot Diaz in conversation with Paul Lancour on Thursday the 18th. Tickets are a pricey $20 for the hour-long live interview, but as far as I know, all proceeds go to benefit the 826 College Scholarship program. So when you spend that money, just think of the great kids you’ll be helping to send to college.

Listen to Paul Auster here, reading the first chapter of his latest novel, Man in the Dark, on the KQED Writers’ Block Podcast; and here’s an interesting 5-minute audio interview with Junot Diaz, done before he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (There’s lots of great audio over on the right-hand side of that page, too: don’t miss it!) Also you can check out my review of his novel here.

Michelle Tea’s monthly RADAR series of readings by writers looks especially good this month. Ali Liebgott, winner of the 2008 Lambda Literary Award for women’s fiction; Sara Shun-Lien Bynum, a National Book Award finalist 2004; San Francisco queer activist and writer Gina DeVries, and fiction and non-fiction writer Frances Lefkowitz appear. Liebgott and Bynum, both connected with UC San Diego, bring a Southern California flair to the event.

Michelle Tea’s monthly RADAR reading series is at the SF Public Library main branch [location] Wednesday, Sep. 10 at 6:00 pm.

Oakland police think they have found the gang behind at least some of the rash of restaurant robberies that plagued the East Bay this summer.

Yesterday they arrested three people they say perpetrated three of the takeover-style heists, in which hoodie-wearing men enter restaurants at night, force employees and patrons into a back room, and clean out the cash register.

The Oakland residents were arrested Tuesday evening after they allegedly departed from their successful MO and knocked over a nail salon. Police were given a description of the getaway car, which they spotted, followed and stopped. Inside they found ski masks, guns and the money from the nail salon.

Among the arrestees was the getaway driver, a 20-year-old woman whom police said was the girlfriend of one of the bandits.

Contradicting Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums who said the string of robberies were a result of the poor economy, a police spokesman said “These aren’t guys who lost their jobs and got desperate… These are people who had access to guns and get off on the thrill of robbing people.” And the brother of one of the suspects commented:

He’s got no reason to be doing nothing like this. He’s not a drug addict, not in a bind, there’s no pressure situation. He was cool, man. He missed his calling: He should have been a basketball star. He’s an incredible basketball player. He don’t have no reason to be robbing no restaurants. That kind of (expletive) is serious and petty at the same time, you know?