(photo: greenkozi)
It all began a little more than five years ago when Dan Stevenson and his wife Lu, who live nearby, grew fed up with the decline in Oakland’s Eastlake neighborhood. The corner of 11th Avenue and East 19th Street was a rough part of town, and repeated calls to the city’s public works department had failed to improve the situation. In a last-ditch attempt to elevate the energy in the area, the couple purchased a 60-centimeter stone Buddha statue from a hardware store and placed it on the corner across the street from their home.