It was sad, but not surprising, to hear of the troubles Bay Grape is experiencing. The owners of the wine store chain, which has locations in Napa and Oakland, tried to sell both shops, but succeeded only in Napa. The buyers decided not to purchase the Grand Avenue location, they explained, because “There’s been a lot of vandalism, robberies and burglaries directed at small businesses [in Oakland].” No sane business owner wants to sink money into such a dangerous, failed city.
So while Thao is out there babbling about how safe and loving Oakland is, people who live in the real world understand that it just ain’t so. Oakland continues to hemorrhage businesses, and nobody wants to fill those empty storefronts for the perfectly good reason that they don’t wish to be victims.
My old friend Josiah Baldivino, whom I’ve known since my days in the wine business, and his wife Stevie Stacionis opened Bay Grape in 2014, and it was an instant hit. The Grand Avenue location, at the foot of Adams Point and midway between Uptown and the Grand Lake/Lakeshore shopping districts, was poised for development. Younger residents were flocking to the area, lured by affordable rents and a pleasant neighborhood vibe. The pandemic struck the area its first blow, one from which it might have recovered were it not for the second, lethal blow: the explosion of crime under Libby Schaaf and her successor, Thao. While the Oakland Bay Grape remains open for the time being, Josiah and Stevie still want to sell it—if they can only find someone willing to take the risk in buying it.
Thao was out here just the other day promoting bicycle safety. Followed by a scrim of photojournalists, she rode right past Bay Grape, and I’ll bet she didn’t even know about its travails. Thao seems to feel that her job is to be a sort of Rotary Club Queen, selling the idea of Oakland, promoting it with hackneyed and frankly fake hyperbole, bragging about the Valkyries while covering up her own role in driving the A’s out of town—a stab in Oakland’s heart she accomplished with help from Carroll Fife, Rebecca Kaplan and Nikki Bas. As a resident of this Lake Merritt neighborhood for nearly 40 years, I can tell you it’s on its last legs. But here’s Carroll Fife calling it “the heart of Oakland, always the perfect spot for gathering, being in community, & connecting to this beautiful place we call home.”
While Oakland dies store by store, Thao and her friends preside over a madcap witches’ frenzy of nightmarish lunacy. It’s like a scene out of a Fellini movie: Nero fiddling while Rome burns, to mix a metaphor. Thao, Fife, Bas, Price: into their incompetent, ruinous hands we have entrusted the governance of our beloved city.
Steve Heimoff