Community
Photos from the early days of Oakland’s Golden Gate District. All photos courtesy of the Oakland History Room of the Oakland Public Library.
The place where the Mai Tai was invented is now a vacant lot. The original Trader Vic’s—where the world famous rum cocktail was invented in 1944—once stood at 6500 San Pablo Avenue, on the corner of 65th Street. But Trader Vic’s closed that location in 1972 and moved to Emeryville. In the first half of the 20th Century, there were “50 bars from the Emeryville line to the Berkeley line” around San Pablo Avenue, according to historian Don Hausler, who…
Today, Oakland North reporter Megan Molteni continues our weekly street photography series and takes us down to Oakland’s waterfront.
Many of the 20,000 people from Ethiopia and Eritrea living in the Bay Area call Oakland home. Oakland North is taking a look at the culture and history of the Ethiopian or Eritrean community in Oakland with “East Africans in Oakland” a series of profiles on everyday people living in the city.
It’s time for the annual Oakland Running Festival, and that means that some streets throughout the city will be closed on Sunday, March 25, to make way for the marathon and the other race courses. The festival is expected to attract 8,000 runners.
A discussion about Measure Y funds developed into a debate about Mayor Jean Quan’s “100 block” public safety plan at the Oakland City Council meeting Tuesday night.
Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every week, we will publish a photo submitted by one of our readers. This week’s photo is by Meredith Fenton.
Mike Hannigan and Sean Marx of Give Something Back have come a long way from selling office supplies from Hannigan’s living room office. In 1991, the two started a business-to-business office supply company with an out-of-pocket $40,000 investment that had a different mission in mind
Keith Salminen is passionate about his favorite team, the Oakland A’s. He’s the host of an Internet radio talk show called “A’s Fan Radio,” has been going to games since he was 2 years old, and says he regularly goes to 50 or 60 games a year. (The exception was the four years when he was in the Marines, stationed at Camp Pendleton in Southern California, when he only made it to handful of road games.) Last weekend, Salminen had the finishing touches put on his arm tattoo: the A’s logo with the Oaklandish tree behind it.
“Basically, for the last decade I’ve been planning on getting an A’s tattoo because of avid of an A’s fan I am,” Salminen said. He’s such a big fan, he recently became part of a group of committed fans who are working to keep Oakland’s three professional sports teams—the A’s of Major League Baseball, the NFL’s Oakland Raiders and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors—from leaving town.