Culture
The First Friday art crowd packed the room, backing all the way up the stairs. This wasn’t a conventional event for one of Oakland’s downtown art walks. It was a youth fashion show, featuring local kids trained by Mario Benton, a San Francisco native who moved to East Oakland 16 years ago. “From childhood I wanted to be a fashion producer and have models,” Benton said. “That’s my first love.”
Thousands of East Bay residents, gay and straight, celebrated last year’s gay rights triumphs on Sunday at Oakland’s second annual Gay Pride Festival. A landmark year in gay rights, 2011 saw the elimination of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy that banned openly gay personnel from serving in the military.
Touted by locals as the center of the medical marijuana industry, Oakland seems a fitting host for the nation’s first marijuana outdoor street festival: the two-day International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, which opened its doors Saturday.
To chants of “Si se puede!” eight young people stood smiling on stage at the New Parish club in downtown Oakland on Thursday night. They were there to tell the stories of the farmers and community members they had met while on a road trip across California to promote farm bill reform and to encourage young people to support new farm-related legislation.
Meet the next watering hole in our new bar series, The Nightcap: The Stork Club has live rock music every night it’s open and looks like a typical dive bar from the outside. But The Stork is also owned by a sweet, 74-year-old woman who shows off her Barbie collection at the bar and used to decorate a Christmas tree year-round.
Unlike a traditional gallery with a few wide-open rooms, the flow of traffic at the Kroswork Gallery is confined to a mostly linear path. Here, the current show, This Means War is Personal, examines the concepts of masculinity, conformity and militarism.
In 1991 activist and writer Paul Kivel and UC Berkeley health educator Allan Creighton co-authored a book called “Helping Teens Stop Violence: A Practical Guide for Counselors, Educators and Parents.” The book was written as a guide for adults who work with teens, to help them tackle violence.
The Oakland History Room’s exhibit will display items related to the fire on the second floor of Oakland’s Main Library from September 1 to November 30. The exhibit includes aerial maps of Oakland before and after the fire and public records related to the firestorm.
At Spokeland, anyone can learn how to fix their ride, with bike tutorial workshops designed for everyone from kids and families to women and transgendered people.