Unfortunately, there’s been some bad news coming out of Oakland recently.  Fortunately, there are some bright spots to Oakland, and one of them is the Temescal neighborhood.

The Wall Street Journal considers the neighborhood to be the new gourmet ghetto of the Bay Area, and I can see why with Bakesale Betty, Pizzaiolo, and Doña Tomás.  You can even sense the gourmet-ness at the Temescal Farmers’ Market.  I just checked it out today and was really impressed.  It’s held year-round in the Oakland DMV parking lot every Sunday from 9am-1pm and the vendors there have some really delicious and unique products.  Blue Bottle Coffee has a booth with a line that winds down through the market.  Hodo Soy Beanery has some delicious soy products, (including yuba which I love, love, love) and Scream Sorbet has fantastic flavor offerings like Coconut Thai Basil, Lemon Shiso, and Lime Jasmine (dang! so good!).

It’s inspiring to see small, independent vendors with delicious and unique, quality products.  You get a sense from walking around the market that good things are happening — entrepreneurs are growing their businesses, community is being built and in general people are sharing some really good stuff!  Love it!

OK, so this isn’t jewelry related, but it’s inspiring…

I recently saw an episode of Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-ins & Dives (I love the Food Network and secretly wish I could be a cake decorator) that featured Gorilla BBQ in Pacifica, CA (a small beach town just south of San Francisco).  W-e-l-l, it turns out I was invited to an event in Pacifica today and decided that on my way back to SF I had to stop by Gorilla and check it out.

Gorilla BBQ was opened by two native Pacifica guys in 2006 and it’s a free-standing, sort of orange-y-red railroad car right off of the Coast  Highway.  There’s nowhere to sit inside– everything is to go, although there are a few picnic tables up the hill.  I heard one of the co-owners say they smoke 600 pounds a day and since the episode on the Food Network there have been lines of people waiting for them to open and pretty much until they close.  They used to be open until 8:00pm and now they’ve marked out their open hours to say they’re open until they sell out.  Today they sold out around 3:30 (they open at noon!).  I stood in line for over an hour and once I got to the counter, all they had left was the pulled pork (see their menu here).  I’m so glad there was something left so that hour wasn’t wasted — there were quite a few people still in line when I left, I hope there was still some BBQ left for them.

There was a lot of chit-chat while waiting in line and some local guys behind me were saying that it’s amazing how different things are now that Gorilla was featured on the Food Network — which reminded me of the whole “Oprah effect”.  While we all love our little local favorites and don’t always want to share them with the oustide world, it’s really great to see them succeed.  Both of the owners were in the train car working away and I was really happy for them — doing what they love and doing fantastic!  I’m definitely going to go back and try the ribs — probably on a weekday.

Aiko Designs is Nest’s Designer of the Week!  See the blog post here.

Just got back from Philadelphia last week.  I really liked Philadelphia (the little bit of it that I had time to check out).  For some reason it was 68° F the second day I was there (mid-Feb!).  It did get colder, but was pretty nice for East Coast winter.

The Buyers Market was a great experience for me — Aiko Designs will be in several new stores very soon and I met some amazing jewelry designers and artists while I was there.  Some of my new favorite designers: Mashka Jewelry, Ashleigh George and 314 Studio (funny, they’re Russian, Zimbabwean and Japanese — I’m always drawn to expats!).  I’ll post more about these lovely ladies soon and will be back in Philly in August for the summer show.