Community

Roller Derby in Oakland is only for the rough and tough

Some families hand down dishware and handmade quilts. Other families hand down aliases, casino luck, and hip-smashing, hard-hitting, skirt-rocking roller sports. Jane Hammer’s family falls into the second category. Hammer is team captain and coach for The Oakland Outlaws roller derby team – a group of women athletes who represent, “tenacity, fire, and drive.”

Oakland groups address sustainable agriculture

On Monday night people came out from around the East Bay to attend the Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA) event at the David Brower Center in Berkeley. The event showcased Oakland organizations like Planting Justice, Communitree, Art in Action, People’s Grocery, Something for your Soul catering service, Healthy Hoodz, and Ital Pinay Jewelry. Each addressed the importance of sustainable agriculture and featured the creative ways they are implementing it in their urban communities . “We’re trying to create health and wellness…

California Roll world record broken at Cal

Over 350 lively people made up of fraternities, sororities, campus clubs, individual students, and community members registered for the event at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza on Sunday afternoon. Each was hopeful that they would beat the Maui, Hawaii contingent that set the last record with a 300 foot-long California Roll in 2001.

California Writers Club celebrates 100th Anniversary

There’s nothing like a beautiful Saturday to remind you of all the yardwork that remains to be done before the winter rains return in a few weeks. So this past Saturday, members of the California Writers Club, along with Councilmember Jean Quan and other city employees, gathered to celebrate the CWC’s 100th anniversary—and begin the groundwork for a new walkway around the Abbey, Oakland poet Joaquin Miller’s historical home. The two-year project, which will include building the handicap-accessible walkway and…

Oakland Black Cowboy Association revives forgotten memories of the American West

Oakland resident Wilbert McAlister grew up watching Westerns at the movie theater in his rural hometown of Madera, Calif.  For years he reveled in the exploits of white heroes, but as an adult he began to ask himself why none of the actors resembled him or his ancestors, who were ranchers in Oklahoma.  As he explained to Oakland North, this question of identity led him to become president of the Oakland Black Cowboy Association, which keeps East Bay residents connected…