Community
The Prescott Circus Theatre started in 1984 in a second grade classroom at Prescott Elementary in West Oakland. The program has now spread to six other Oakland schools, including Piedmont Avenue Elementary in North Oakland. Kids in the program perform regularly in Oakland and the greater Bay Area. Now they are running low on funds and looking for local business sponsors to keep the juggling bats flying and the unicycles rolling.
Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every Tuesday, Oakland Animal Services will spotlight an “Animal of the Week” that’s up for adoption at their facility. This week it’s two rabbits–Hadley and Piglet.
Manifesto’s Bike Church isn’t your typical Sunday morning of sitting inside a stained-glass structure, listening to scripture and quietly reciting prayers. But there are some similarities. People with similar beliefs do congregate, listen to music and socialize — however, they’re surrounded by bicycles.
Dough is tossed into a vat of oil and floats to the top once it’s gold. Drenched in honey and sprinkled with walnuts and cinnamon, each bite bursts with sweet liquid as it deflates and dissolves. Loukomades, or honey-dipped pastry puffs, are not a typical dessert in Northern California. But on one weekend in May, Oakland residents are granted the opportunity to explore Greece — and without the purchase of a plane ticket.
Taking the podium at Oakland City Hall during the Bike-to-Work Day celebration on Thursday morning, city councilmember Libby Schaaf of District 4 started a chant. “When I say ‘bike,’ you say ‘Oakland,’” say announced. “Bike!” she yelled. “Oakland!” the crowd chanted back. It was Oakland’s 18th annual Bike-to-Work Day and record numbers of people hopped on their bikes and commuted to work.
On a hot spring afternoon, Javier Delgado Jimenez kneels on the grass in Mountain View Cemetery. He is poised over a flat gravestone wearing a gas mask, knee guards, long work gloves and a white hood with a clear plastic visor. With intense concentration, he aims a rod attached to a round metal canister at the face of the gravestone and plumes of red dust billow into the air.
Over a loudspeaker in front of City Hall, a couple of Oakland librarians had something else to share with the young readers they had gathered for an impromptu story hour. But this story did not end with a happily ever after.
Open up your daily newspaper and there’s no doubt you’ll find a story about a greedy bank, home foreclosure or some aspect of the financial crisis that has left people reeling. But this isn’t one of those stories. It’s a story about banks supporting a project even though they wouldn’t necessarily earn a profit from it, about a community organization helping those in need, and about people coming together and making what seemed like an impossible project succeed.
Xolo, downtown’s newest restaurant, which is open until midnight on Friday and Saturdays, offers an alternative to the standard hot dog that most Oakland Uptown revelers have grown accustomed to for pre- or post- drinking sustenance