Culture
For nearly 20 years, the Oakland Museum of California has operated under a public-private partnership with the City of Oakland and the nonprofit Oakland Museum of California Foundation, sharing the $15 million annual budget and control of operations. But now city officials may remove themselves from that partnership, leaving the nonprofit foundation to run the 41-year-old cultural institution.
For the founders of Oakland’s Pop-Up General Store—Chris Lee and fellow chef Samin Nosrat—food is, indeed, a labor of love. Since early 2009, the former Chez Panisse and Eccolo chefs have been selling gourmet goods out of Grace Street Catering in North Oakland. Once a month, Lee, Nosrat and a team of helpers prepare homemade delicacies and, along with a host of other specialty food vendors, set up for an afternoon and sell them to an ever-expanding group of Oakland and Berkeley foodies. Patrons can order beforehand online or buy up whatever is left on the spot.
Cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie – Thanksgiving calls to mind a literal cornucopia of foods. But the pièce de résistance of a traditional Thanksgiving meal won’t be found among the side dishes. There’s a reason they call it Turkey Day.
With Carlos Santana playing alongside the Oakland East Bay Symphony at the Paramount Theater this weekend, concertgoers will have a chance to broaden their musical palettes.
November, for a number of Americans, brings Thanksgiving and the kickoff of the Christmas holiday season. But for the descents of the country’s first peoples, it also brings an entire month of heritage celebrations.
The San Francisco Goaldiggers, a recreational league hockey team that plays at Oakland Ice Center, is out to win games, as well as change minds. Otvos says his hope was always to simply show that the sport of hockey is for everyone, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation.
Michael Rossman amassed 23,500 progressive social movement posters throughout his life as a free speech activist who also dabbled in arts, politics and science. Rossman died after a short battle with cancer in 2008, but his legacy will live on through his mammoth collection—the Oakland Museum of California recently acquired it. Check out this interactive to see a selection of posters and learn about the history behind them.
Until it burned to the ground, Tiki Tom’s waterfront restaurant and bar, with its giant inflatable rooftop frog and bright yellow exterior, was a difficult place to miss.
About once a month, the Paramount Theatre on Broadway hosts a Movie Classics night, at which patrons can enjoy old favorites at the right price: $5. The movie night began thirty years ago, and has long been a favorite of local cinema junkies and Paramount staff. The theater screened its second-to-last classic of 2010 on Friday night, with another tentatively schedule for December. A January film is already lined up, and as far as general manager Leslee Stewart is concerned, the series will go on indefinitely.