Community
On Friday night, businesses around Oakland participated in an open house in honor of “the return of free evening parking.”
The Piedmont Avenue patch is back, even if it’s harder to find than it used to be, and it’s still got the goods: the tongues, the eyeballs, the photos of wicked bulging-eyed children, and Oopy the daschund, who’s in costume too.
At the Golden Gate Public Library on Tuesday night, a diverse group of young dancers celebrated Diwali, the Festival of Lights, continuing a tradition that is thousands of years old .
An ambitious east-west bike plan proposal set off agitated debate at a meeting Tuesday in North Oakland’s Longfellow district, where one speaker likened the neighborhood to a bride on her wedding day. The plan to remove medians, he said, is going “to take her dress, smear her make-up, shave her head, and pare her down to a tank top.”
The diverse atmosphere of Temescal was replicated last night by the restaurants — from Mexican food to Indian food to Bake Sale Betty and ice cream sorbets. As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once said: “There is no sincerer love than the love of food.”
At the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts in downtown Oakland, Portsha Jefferson and the Rara Tou Limen Haitian Folkloric Ensemble use dance and performance to educate the Bay Area about Haitian culture. The ensemble is organizing a fundraiser this Wednesday, October 21, at San Francisco’s Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts.
Oral histories of Oakland residents collected by Laney College students are woven together in the original production, “The Miseducation of Oakland.” Director Michael Torres says that the overall message of the show is that, “everyone should get an education and nobody has the right to take away education.”
At least once a month on a Saturday night, the singles scene in Oakland is less about saving up the cash to wine and dine and more about brushing up on your UNO and Connect Four skills. This weekend, people gathered at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Oakland to show their love for doing things like rolling the dice to get past GO and trying to get their left knee on yellow and right hand on green. PlayDate, a monthly…
Ruthann Liu-Johnston brought her red high-heeled shoes to the anniversary ceremony yesterday—not on her feet, but as remembrances. Liu-Johnston was wearing those the day the Cypress Freeway collapsed out from under her. Johnston joined city officials at Cypress Freeway Memorial Park as part of a city-sponsored commemoration called “Reflect. Honor. Prepare: Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake.” She can no longer wear her red shoes, due to severe ankle and spinal injuries she sustained during the earthquake,…