Culture
Giant dove puppets made from bed sheets were lofted high by youth brandishing them as signs of peace at this Sunday’s Roots & Shoots International Day of Peace event at the Oakland Zoo. The doves, held together by wooden poles and duct tape, their large eyes outlined with acrylic paint, looked down over the meadow as hundreds of attendees turned the ninth annual celebration into a day-long festival engaging youth in educational arts and crafts activities, like making piñatas for the primates at the zoo.
Hollywood came to Oakland Monday night for the world premiere of Moneyball, the movie adaptation of Michael Lewis’ 2003 bestseller chronicling the Oakland A’s 2002 season and the revolutionary method of selecting players ushered into the game by general manager Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt in the movie.
A man dressed in jeans and a t-shirt kneels on the ground, his hands held at an awkward angle by the chains that bind him to a drag king who is standing behind him wearing a sharp suit. Like a marionette, he is forced to bring his trembling hands to his face and smoke. The scene unfolds next to a 4-foot cardboard replica of a cigarette, as Maroon 5’s “Harder to Breathe” blares from the speakers.
At the end of her tenure as an artist in residence at the San Francisco Dump, Sharon Siskin discovered a pile of old, Arabic language textbooks used to teach Muslim children the fundamental lessons of life, such as to love their parents, attend school and share.
On a normal day in Oakland, most passing drivers probably wouldn’t pause to think about the pairs of stone pillars marking the entrances of four streets in the Fairview Park neighborhood. The worn, 100-year-old pillars have long been a visual anchor in the area. But yesterday it was hard to miss them: two of the monuments were decked in huge, lime green bows.
In celebration of Bandaloop’s 20th anniversary, the troupe is debuting their latest work, Bound(less), this weekend, calling the event a hybrid of “the technology of rock climbing with the aesthetics of dance.”
Meet the next watering hole in our new bar series, The Nightcap: The Trappist is owned by a couple guys who fell in love with Belgian beer while travelling through Europe, and wanted to bring the experience of a Belgian pub to Oakland.
About 200 people celebrated Mexico’s Independence Day at Oakland City Hall on Thursday, as Mexican and Latino residents from all over the city recreated the night of September 15, 1810, when Miguel Hidalgo, a priest from the town of Dolores, called his congregation to join him in a revolt against the Spanish colonial government.
In more than 140 years of professional baseball, over 17,000 players have passed through the major leagues. Only two have been openly gay. Glenn Burke was the first. At an event Wednesday night, the late Burke was honored for his contributions to his sport and community.