Culture
For nearly 100 years, the Colombo Club has been the heart and soul of Temescal’s historic Italian community. With almost 1,000 members today, the Columbo Club is the largest private Italian social club west of the Mississippi River. Oakland North reporter Megan Molteni goes down to the club to learn about its long and storied history.
Oakland-based chef, author and activist Bryant Terry has a way with food. In his newest cookbook, “The Inspired Vegan,” he continues a longtime quest to bring flavor-intense but nutritionally rich eats to a larger audience, and to have a little fun while he’s at it.
Among Protestant churches with fewer than 1,000 people in attendance, only 7 percent are multiracial, says Michael Emerson, a scholar on race and religion at Rice University. But in Oakland, Imani Community Church and Piedmont Community Church are two congregations, one predominantly black, the other predominantly white, that have developed a sisterhood.
Historic tall ships The Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain have returned to Oakland’s Jack London Square for nearly two weeks of tours, sailing activities and educational programming.
“Here you have the unrehearsed, totally spontaneous expression of truth—a concentrated exposure to the thinking of black men,” said photographer Chris Johnson, who is also a California College of the Arts (CCA) professor, longtime Oakland resident, and one of the four brains behind Question:Bridge.
Writer and home renovation expert Jane Powell is fighting to save her historic Oakland home, dubbed the Bunga-Mansion, from foreclosure.
Oakland North reporters Meghan Walsh and Roberto Daza take you on a walk around Lake Merritt in the first of an ongoing series chronicling the city’s busiest neighborhoods.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area, a local chapter of one of the nation’s biggest youth mentoring organizations, has about 750 children and teenagers in the Bay Area waiting for a mentor.
A federal appeals court declared California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional today, overturning the statewide ban on same-sex marriage that had been approved by voters in 2008. In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that Proposition 8 unfairly took away rights from a minority group.