Community
Unlike most of his classmates at Skyline High School in Oakland, Allan Qin, a shy 18-year-old, finishes class at noon and goes straight to work at the Emeryville headquarters of Peet’s Coffee & Tea. His day is just getting started. A high school senior, Qin has been working at Peet’s in technological support for more than five months. Opportunities for low-income students to find work are hard to find, and meaningful work is even more rare.
For one night, dancers at Oakland’s Skyline High School transported the auditorium’s occupants to the shores of West Africa with rhythmic drumming that reverberated through the room. Dancers stomped and moved rapidly across the stage, their energy captivating their audience. Then came the mystical sounds of the Kura, a West African 21-string instrument, which when plucked makes sounds similar to those of a harp and a guitar. This was the 20th Annual Collage des Cultures Africaines (Collage of African Cultures),…
The hip-hop community is mourning the loss of the Jacka, 37, whose given name was Dominic Newton. For many, the death of the rapper also means the loss of a mentor to at-risk youth and young artists in the Bay Area.
The Oakland housing market has gotten so high-priced that some residents have decided to think creatively and chosen a shipping container as their home.
On a Thursday morning just before lunch, 40-year-old Eugene Hamilton is looking at one of the two-year-old boys in his daycare. “You’re going to behave properly and not like a baby if you want to get back in there,” he says. The young boy wears a clean and snazzy orange flannel shirt, but is delivering a cross between a whine and a cry, the specialty of the walking, but not yet articulate, toddler. Eugene, dressed in crisp Nike casual sportswear,…
In her first appearance as Oakland’s mayor-elect, Libby Schaaf held a press conference wearing a striking red dress, a necklace of the Oakland tree, a bamboo earrings and riding — unforgettably — in a fire-snorting snail-shaped chariot. All of these were made in Oakland, and all of them had a story.
In 1923, world-renowned escape artist Harry Houdini came to Oakland. He hung 112 feet above the ground from one Oakland’s most iconic buildings—then nearly brand-new—to entertain thousands of spectators as he escaped from handcuffs and a straightjacket. Ninety-two years later, the Tribune Tower continues to be one of the main attractions in the city’s downtown skyline; it overlooks the Port of Oakland, Lake Merritt and Oakland City Hall. The tower was built between 1922 and 1923 by Joseph Russell Knowland,…
These local makers, and the idea of Oakland as a “maker city,” have been a central point in Schaaf’s run up to being sworn in as mayor, down to the transportation (an Oakland-made art car) she used at her victory press conference.
The Jules Verne-ish, Dr. Doolittle-ish, 12’6 foot high, 18 foot long, 3000 pound, glow-in-the-dark, fire-blowing, motorized, iron snail, was built atop the skeleton of a 1966 VW Bug. But it came from a dream — literally.