Community
The rising sun cuts deep contrasting shadows across the face of each civil rights leader, etched in dark, rugged steel, staring down onto each onlooker gazing up to the metal monuments in Henry J. Kaiser memorial park in downtown Oakland. This park, only half a city block long, is more than a casual area for dog walkers, pot smokers and office workers on lunch break. For many, this park is a reminder of the influential individuals, predominantly leaders of color, who…
A collection of free mobile Medicare clinics staffed by volunteer pharmacists and students are helping residents navigate their healthcare plans.
Golfers teeing it up on Thursday morning at Lake Chabot Golf Course must count themselves among the luckiest people in Oakland. Or perhaps not. “Golf is like a love affair,” the sportswriter Arthur Daley once wrote. “If you don’t take it seriously, it’s no fun; if you do take it seriously, it breaks your heart.” Golf has come a long way from its modern origins as a diversion for Scottish sheepherders in the 15th century to a $70 billion per…
Frank Ogawa Plaza at the lunch rush.
Thursday, 11 a.m. at Koreana Plaza Market was quiet. The fish-stocker went about his daily routine, organizing the freezers and cleaning the crab tanks. An elderly couple, a man and a woman, shuffled their way to the ice-filled buckets laden with the fresh catch of the day – wide-mouthed catfish, red-eyed snapper, slimy black eel. The couple had a mission: To find the perfect salmon. As the fish-stocker nestled jars of clam meat into the ice chips, the woman began…
Weekday mornings in Temescal Alley are quiet. The clinking of a spoon against the side of a coffee cup can be easily heard over the faint hum of traffic from nearby Telegraph Avenue. The occasional burst of male laughter or the sound of a buzzing electric razor escapes through the barbershop’s open door. A small handful of people, some on vacation, others perhaps taking a day off a la Ferris Bueller, walk languidly past the little shops, some with coffee…
Trains rumble through the West Oakland BART station every five minutes, some packed with people, squeezing together like little sardines, en route to San Francisco, others nearly empty, with just a few stragglers aboard heading toward Fremont. As each train’s doors slide open, three or four people board. Some pull suitcases and others wheel bikes. Almost everyone is enthralled by the screen in their hand, glancing up only occasionally, eyeing the distance between the screen and the yellow paint lining the…
When you walk into Oakland’s African American History Museum and Library, it feels as if you’ve transported back into 1965 – when the organization started off as the East Bay Negro Historical Society. Frederick Douglass, an African American leader of the abolitionist movement, greets each visitor that enters into the museum. His sculpture mimics Mount Rushmore, but is no taller than 3 feet, and only his head has been carved into the granite monument. The building is quiet, and you can…
A man sits alone in one of the last pews at the Cathedral of Christ the Light. The man, wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, stares at the altar where at the center, a grand full body image of Jesus, which looks like a projection, overlooks the inside of the cathedral. The place is empty, but not completely silent. There is a soft, sustained ringing sound, but a man and two women silence it when they rush in. They immediately take out…