Community
For nearly a decade, residents living near the intersection of Gaskill and 54th Streets in Northwest Oakland enjoyed a hard-won sense of calm. They’d formed a community police group, discouraged loitering and blatant drug dealing, and a diverse group of new homeowners was infusing money into this section of town, which runs along the Emeryville border. Even the owner of the neighborhood convenience store agreed to stop selling liquor in an effort to reduce crime. Yet on Tuesday, neighbors were…
The Art Murmur, Oakland’s monthly gallery walk, drew hundreds to the streets of downtown Oakland Friday despite the Labor Day holiday weekend and the closing of the Bay Bridge. New measures were undertaken by the Murmur this month to ensure safety and civility toward gallery walkers and neighborhood residents. Incidents involving disrespect toward artists and neighbors in recent months have precipitated the changes, which include a vendor check-in fee and the addition of patrolling security guards. These occurrences have raised…
Those who die on Oakland’s toughest avenues may get little more than a brief mention in local papers or on the nightly news, but their memories live on at Sherri-Lyn Miller’s print shop.
Updated at 6:20 p.m. For the first time in 73 years, the boss let the Bay Bridge take a day off during the workweek. Even without the bridge, Friday’s morning commute went relatively smoothly, and no major messes were apparent by early evening. Caltrans closed the bridge at 8 p.m. last night and initiated a five-night, four-day special construction project to replace a 300-foot section of the span near Yerba Buena Island. Despite the loss of a bridge that carries…
It’s the gritty urban basketball Mecca where Gary Payton and Jason Kidd developed the toughness and skill that would make them NBA All-Stars.
Some come for the art. Some come for the chaos. But most come to the Oakland Art Murmur for a little bit of both. With nineteen galleries participating in the Murmur this Friday, there will be a wide variety of styles and mediums on display, from the traditional (paintings) to the unorthodox (skateboards) at what has become a monthly mob scene of art, culture, and debauchery. On the first Friday of every month, hundreds of gallery-goers converge at the intersection…
Three East Bay residents share their plans for commuting while the Bay Bridge is closed for construction from Thursday, September 3 through Tuesday, September 8.
With the Bay Bridge closed for Labor Day weekend, the 280,000 people who usually use the bridge to cross San Francisco Bay will have to find ways to travel under, around or above it instead. Some are choosing to stay home, but the rest will crowd into BART trains, on to local ferries, or be forced to draw up alternative routes across other area bridges. John McClelland, owner of San Francisco Helicopter Tours, said that so far nobody’s asked him…
The bold sign over the Greyhound station in Oakland says “BUS” in big letters, each bigger than a man. There are no windows, only doors to buses. The doors lead to terminals where the buses pull in and stop. During the day, the doors are the only source of sunlight. At 7 a.m. on a Wednesday, the station is already warm despite the emptiness. The security guard gets up from his stool. He waves a metal detector over my body…