Bella Arnold

Afro-Peruvian dance in Oakland: ‘We are making sure the tradition is still alive for future generations’

On a cloudy Saturday morning, Carmen Román and her husband, Pierr Padilla, filled the basement of the Golden Gate Library with a symphony of sounds, using their feet, hands and traditional Afro-Peruvian instruments. A small group of children shrieked with glee and bumbled around the room, dancing as their parents nodded to the beat being created by Román and Padilla opening and closing the top to their cajitas, a box-shaped Latin percussion instrument, and hitting it with a thin stick. …

At this week’s Bay Area Queer Zine Fest, artists sell, swap and inspire

A small group of zine artists gathered in front of the Crisis Club Gallery in Oakland on Saturday afternoon and rifled through the dozens of zines splayed across a white foldout table, looking to trade their own creations with  other zinesters. The zine swap was a pre-festival event in celebration of the Bay Area Queer Zine Fest, which began Sunday. The weeklong Zine Fest is returning for its fifth festival with a mixture of in-person and remote events until Saturday….

Oakland museum honors school shooting victims in Día de los Muertos ofrenda

Mariachi music will ring through the Oakland Museum on Sunday as the smell of copal, a traditional Aztec incense, fills the museum’s newly renovated garden.  The Oakland Museum of California’s Día de los Muertos one-day festival will return for the first time in-person since 2019, with seven ofrendas on display from noon to 4 p.m. A central part of Día de los Muertos is creating ofrendas to honor departed ancestors and bring them back to the land of the living,…

Drunken Film Fest mixes movies with cocktails at Oakland bars

No table was left unfilled as film-lovers gathered on the patio of Stay Gold Deli to get a good view of a white screen that would soon show 12 films ranging in genre and subject matter on the second day of the Drunken Film Fest Oakland on Monday. The six-day festival ends Friday, bringing a dozen new films each night to different bars in Oakland. Arlin Golden brought the Drunken Film Fest to the city in 2018, after working on…