Community
The Nightcap is a series that features a favorite Oakland drinking establishment every Friday afternoon. This week, it’s George Kaye’s. It first opened in 1934, right after Prohibition ended, serving drinks to neighborhood folks in the same small, wood-paneled room the bar occupies today. Much of Kaye’s has remained the same for decades, in fact, like the 1950’s cash register, the original icebox and bathroom doors, and the wood bar.
For roughly 320 days of the year, a 1.5-acre space in Joaquin Miller Park is used as a dog park—for the rest of the time, it is a parking lot.
Armenian Americans may be one of the Bay Area’s less-noticed ethnic groups, but this Friday and Saturday at the Armenian Bazaar & Food Festival, their rich cultural legacy will be on full display for anyone interested in learning more.
Cheerleaders hooted and waved pom-poms. School bands marched to the thunderous beats of drums. This was the 37th Black Cowboy Parade held in Oakland, and as usual, it was a big one.
Souley Vegan, located at Broadway and 3rd Street in downtown Oakland, conjures up a sense of Southern comfort with murals of jazz artists like Louis Armstrong and Big Mama Thornton covering the walls. The air is scented by the steaming gravy wafting off the top of one patron’s mashed potatoes. Blues tunes carry over the entire seating area and bar, as does the sizzling of something frying in a batter: tofu.
School communities around the world celebrated International Walk or Roll to School Day on Wednesday, which is meant to encourage kids to exercise by walking or biking to class, and to stay safe by traveling with their parents or groups.
Dozens of Oakland residents approached the podium at the city council meeting Tuesday night to voice their displeasure with three items on the agenda intended to curb violence in the city – an anti-loitering law, a teen curfew, and more gang injunctions. However, the council deferred voting on these measures by sending them to the public safety committee for more in-depth review. Proponents of these hotly-debated items argue they would be valuable tools for the Oakland Police Department to clamp…
Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every Wednesday, we will publish a photo submitted by one of our readers. This week’s photo is by Jamie Olsen.
For one night only, Oakland’s historic Children’s Fairyland opened its magical doors to the young at heart aged 21 and over. The spell that has been cast over Children’s Fairyland for 60 years was broken: adults were allowed into the park without a child last Friday night. For three hours, close to 1,200 adults, most of them in their 20s and 30s, marauded the historic wonderland. Some visited for the first time, others for the first time in more than 20 years.