Community

“That day I felt like I was dying,” Mayra said in Spanish. “But I knew I had to get through it.” A day with a patient of UC San Francisco’s oncology center, and her English interpreter, as she seeks care for recurrent cancer.

The artists behind the Wonderarium, an eight-foot floating terrarium they hope will find a home on the waters of Lake Merritt, brought their project to the public plaza outside Oakland’s Christ the Light cathedral–where they invited passers-by to dig into dirt and plants to make their own mini-terrariums.

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…