Oakland's New Last-Minute Mayor

We're tired of mojito-mixing Gavin Newsom now -- bring on the new guy in Oakland! Over on the sunnier side of the San Francisco Bay, former Congressman Ron Dellums is settling on in at 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza for his first full day on the job today.

Yeah, we don't remember any dramatic hand-on-the-Bible or inaugural speechifying either -- it turns out they threw together a somewhat slapdash inauguration when someone realized that the Oakland city charter required Dellums to be sworn in no later than 11 a.m. on the first Monday in January -- which was yesterday and the holiday. So Dellums was deputized the mayor at a private ceremony at his house last Friday afternoon, with only a few friends and officials present. It's all gone so fast they still haven't even updated the Oakland website yet!

The public inauguration will be next Monday, Jan. 8, at the Paramount Theater, which will kick off a gala (and presumably less last-minute) week of events -- including a night of hyphy-soul (Thursday Jan. 11, tickets $40).