Community
Oakland Pride, a festival celebrating the city’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community, drew about 20,000 people to the city’s Uptown district on Sunday.
Police said they have recorded a surge in such robberies in Rockridge, Temescal, Montclair, downtown Oakland, and around BART stations, particularly the MacArthur station. Many incidents have occurred in restaurants, like the Hudson, and cafes, police said.
When Fruitvale Presbyterian Church was first established 123 years ago, the area it ministered to–with its fruit-bearing orchards–was not yet part of urban Oakland. Faced with a diminished congregation, the church will hold its last service Sunday.
In the final days before this year’s Pride celebration, event chair Amber Todd has been juggling the demands of being a city employee, a mother of four daughters, and a student. “I have so much crammed into my brain right now that I’m forgetting simple things like locking the car,” she said.
Four hopefuls vying for Oakland’s City Council’s at-large seat this November agreed on one thing at a candidate’s forum Wednesday night—violence on the streets needs to stop.
Zarina Ahmad, principal of Piedmont Avenue Elementary in Oakland, put extra effort this year into creating a bright first day of school. She and her staff pasted a class list to the outside wall, with a photo of each teacher. Big orange cones separated children by their grades. Teachers ran a short pep rally, called the “Line Up to Learn.” Uniformed Oakland firemen welcomed kids into the school.
In a parking garage in East Oakland’s Jingletown neighborhood, an enormous piece of local music history gazes out at parked cars. More than ten feet tall, and sporting sunglasses, the relic is a stage prop modeled after rapper Shock G. The head was featured in a 1993 music video by rapper Shock G’s platinum-selling group, Digital Underground, and went out with the group on tour. Now it collects dust and dirt from exhaust pipes.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi died August 20, at the age of 57, of an undisclosed illness. The Bay Area will host two memorial services on Sunday – in Oakland at the Jack London Aquatic Center, and in San Jose at the Masonic Temple.
Over the past two weeks an impromptu library has sprung up on the location of the former Latin American Library in the Fruitvale district. A group of nearly fifteen people, including a few Occupy Oakland protesters and several community members, have been loaning out books, constructing planters for gardening and holding community meetings.