Eye on the Hills: Highwire Coffee reopens in Oakland’s Montclair Village

Montclair Village’s Highwire Coffee location in the Oakland hills has reopened after operational issues caused it to shut down abruptly in March.

The shop, one of nine in the Emeryville-based chain, has been gradually expanding hours and is serving coffee and pastries again daily at 2059 Mountain Blvd.

Frivolous lawsuit: Farmstead Cheeses & Wines is inching closer to its fundraising goal on the crowdsourcing site GoFundMe. Owner David Chambers set up the site to help defray the cost of a lawsuit alleging the shop’s website wasn’t fully complaint with accessibility requirements for the blind in the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

The disabled plaintiff, who reportedly has filed hundreds of similar lawsuits against small businesses, has demanded that every image on Farmstead’s website have descriptive text in its meta data that can be read by software. The GoFundMe site has a goal of $13,000 to pay for legal fees, the cost of the settlement and the cost to fix the website and check it annually for compliance.

So far, just more than $11,000 has been raised from supporters of the longtime business with stores in Montclair and Alameda. Many of the donors are customers and business owners who say they’re angry that small, family-owned shops can face this kind of threat — especially in what’s already a challenging business climate.

Switching sites: The Montclair CVS drug store has cleared out the middle of its small store, allowing easier access to the pharmacy in the back of the shop. Staff say this branch is scheduled to move across the street to the vacant Rite Aid space by the end of the year.

Shop talk: The owner of Montclair’s boutique clothing store, The Shop, is augmenting sales in her 6123 La Salle Ave. location with clothing auctions on two Livestream sites. Ali Baker says when foot traffic is slow in Montclair Village, she can sell her upscale European clothing on the Poshmark and Whatnot platforms.

She’ll get as many as 30 people at a time on the live shopping marketplaces, which lets her keep inventory fresh at The Shop. Baker’s strong fashion-sense and industry connections help her source specialty European brands and then offer them at deep discounts.

Her selection includes $7 kids shorts and a $15 sale rack of one-of-a-kind designer pieces for women. She also carries a selection of shoes, wallets, purses, jewelry and other accessories.

Park feature: Lake Temescal in the Oakland hills is open for swimming with good water quality that’s tested each week. Speaking of East Bay Regional Park District properties, the local TV show “OpenRoad” visited several of the park sites for an episode that aired July 11 focused on the search for the rare Crotch’s bumblebee at Alameda’s Crown Beach and Berkeley’s Tilden Regional Park Botanic Garden.

Host Doug McConnell also stopped by Carquinez Regional Shoreline to see how Park District staff are restoring land impacted by the 2022 Scenic Fire. The Oakland hills’ other own Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve got a shoutout too for its meadow restoration project. You can watch the taped episode online at nbcbayarea.com.

Ginny Prior can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook and at ginnyprior.com.