Community
The smell of old and worn paper wafts through the door as you step into the first floor of the public library main branch in downtown Oakland. Faint whispers come from two librarians sitting promptly at their desks. Stacks of bookshelves flank both sides of the building, covered in stories waiting to be read. Smaller desks are occupied by students who are consumed by their projects. You can find a sense of relaxation in the silence that overcomes the library. Wandering the long…
Greetings from Space Burger, a red and white striped shrine to fifties kitsch. Official people would call this the 2200 block of Telegraph. Space Burger’s set between two gas stations and sits next to the kind of street sweeping machine a person can sit inside. There’s a church across the street and, from the hours of 11 am to noon on October 22, 2015, none of its bells rang. A few things did happen. A potential customer biked up to the…
Her eyes shift from the stack of papers in her hands then to her watch. She’s wearing a navy blue blazer, a peach-colored pencil skirt and a pair of black peep-toe heels. Watch to papers, papers to watch. The bus stops at Telegraph Avenue and 40th Street and a handful of people walk on. They know the drill. Passengers either tap their Clipper cards on the meter next to the driver or show their daily single ride passes, and then…
If you want to know how a mouse would feel if it got caught beneath a stampede of elephants, ride your bike around the Port of Oakland at 11 o’clock on a Thursday. All sense of scale is lost against a limitless stream of 18-wheelers rumbling to pick up their cargo container. They join the half-mile line of idling trucks, with acrid fumes drifting from their smokestacks, comingling with the lung-stretching heaviness of blacktop in the sun. Santiago Diaz, from Woodland,…
Photographer Ray Bussolari harnesses the symbolic power of tattoos to represent the experiences of foster youth.
At Wednesday’s sparsely-attended school board meeting, the board discussed the superintendent’s report, which is presented at every board meeting, and funding options for the Dr. Marcus Foster Educational Leadership Campus.
The Allen Temple Baptist Church will partner with the University of the Pacific this Saturday to hold a health fair to help seniors understand their medications.
Over 50 people of faith, including religious leaders, from Oakland have signed a letter urging Mayor Libby Shaaf and the city council to reject the plan to export coal from the Oakland Bulk and Oversize Terminal, located at the old Army base. The letter was presented to them during the city council meeting on October 20.
Protestors chanted “Living wage, not poverty wage!” and “Downtown Oakland not for sale!” to the lively rhythm of music played by a five-piece band featuring a tuba, saxophone, trumpet and drums as they took the streets of downtown Oakland on Tuesday evening. “We’re at the site of the hopefully-never-built Hampton poverty hotel,” shouted Wei-Ling Huber, president of UNITE HERE Local 2850, into a megaphone. Organizers and members of UNITE HERE, a union that represents East Bay and North Bay hotel and…