Culture
Occupy Oakland activists launched the first of three rallies at 14th and Broadway Wednesday morning, with Angela Davis and others speaking. Occupy Oakland, along with out-of-towners and employees from local unions, will meet at the intersection again Wednesday evening to converge on the Port of Oakland and attempt to shut it down.
On Monday evening, the Oakland Scraper Bike Team rolled through East Oakland for their 5th Annual Scraper Bike Halloween Ride. A scraper bike is a custom designed bike that includes flashy wheels, a spray-painted frame and a unique design. Some scraper bikes even have sound systems installed.
On Saturday, at the Oakland Zoo’s Snow Building, families reunited with the doctors and nurses who cared for their premature babies at the Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
On Thursday night, a cast of about 40 characters gathered under the lights of the Rockridge BART parking lot for the annual pre-Halloween version of FourSquare East Bay, dubbed “Costume Square.”
On Friday, parents, kids, and community leaders came out to Youth Uprising, a youth center in East Oakland, to help build a community playground. In six hours, the play area at Youth Uprising transformed from a slab of concrete to a playground that includes swings, monkey bars and artwork made by the kids who volunteered. “If you would have showed up here at 7:00 this morning, you would have seen an empty lot with a bunch of concrete,” said Manuel…
From the living room of his sparsely furnished West Oakland apartment, Joseph Moreno, 30, runs a vintage costume rental business. That he can do so for just $25 per rental is perhaps the most remarkable thing about his work.
The Nightcap is a series that features a favorite Oakland drinking establishment every Friday afternoon. This week, it’s The Avenue, a Temescal dive bar that pretty much turns into a haunted house every Halloween.
Thi Bui has just begun her fifth year teaching at OHIS. During her time here she has worn several hats. She taught social studies for one year, then art, reading and literacy for another; for the past two years she’s been the art and media teacher. As she begins her third year teaching a combined comic book and oral history curriculum, she finds she is doing a little bit of everything.
Reporters from Oakland North and Richmond Confidential are shooting cellphone videos Wednesday evening as the Occupy Oakland protests move noisily into the streets, with BART and city police trying to corral their movements and keep them out of downtown BART stations. This raw footage was captured between 9 and 11:00 PM.