Community
Some people have potted plants on their front porches. Others have rocking chairs or benches. Walk onto the porch of Jessie Mae Brown’s East Oakland home on any given day and you’re likely to be stepping around 100-pound bags of onions and potatoes or bins of apples and carrots—all fresh for the taking.
Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every week, Oakland Animal Services will spotlight an “Animal of the Week” that’s up for adoption at their facility. This week it’s two cats named Ava and Nova.
On an average day, the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, an Oakland thrift store, is chock full of school supplies, furniture and even quirky items like ET postcards and baskets full of doll heads. The shop buzzes with teachers, students, parents and passers-by, either in search of something specific like pencils for the classroom or just hoping for a unique find.
The Old Navy store in the Bay Street shopping complex near the border of Oakland and Emeryville ended Black Friday with holiday pajamas on the wrong racks, graphic t-shirts on the floor and “Diva” jeans falling off of their shelves. As the day of sales came to a close, employees were preparing for a weekend of more frantic shoppers looking for deals.
Oakland North visited a few spots in town to talk to residents about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Ranging from family to nice weather, we found Oaklanders had a lot of things to be thankful for.
When Brad Lubeck, 11, and his mother Stacey showed up at the Alameda County Community Food Bank for an afternoon of volunteering with his Boy Scout troop, he didn’t expect much in the way of thrills. Food bank staff showed Brad and the others what to do with the broccoli and carrots they’d be unloading, and said it would be the Scouts’ job to teach the process to another group of volunteers arriving shortly.
Then the surprise was sprung. Six giants in black and silver strolled up to the boys and asked for instructions. The Oakland Raiders had arrived.
Shoppers looking for an alternative to the post-Thanksgiving melee of Black Friday will find one in Oakland. A strong “shop local” push has developed in the city over the past few years, and this year’s day-after-T-Day campaign is the biggest yet.
You’ve cleared the table, done the dishes, and your relatives have left town. Now what to do with all that leftover turkey? Oakland North visited four restaurants around Oakland to find culinary inspiration from around the world for all that Thanksgiving turkey sitting in your fridge.
One by one, in the pre-dawn darkness Tuesday, delivery trucks exited Oakland’s 980 freeway at Adeline and headed toward Middle Harbor Road, prepared to pick up or drop off shipments at the Port of Oakland. Each truck came to a halt as the drivers faced picketers blocking the entrance to the international container terminals at the Port.