Culture
By 5 am Friday, David Martinez and Derrick Love, both Oakland residents, had spent nearly 48 hours stationed outside the Best Buy on the city’s Mandela Parkway. The first night, they slept in a borrowed tent. On Thursday they ate Thanksgiving dinner—turkey on paper plates—under the streetlights as the line circling the building formed behind them. “It’s totally worth it,” said Love, who had locked his target on one of the store’s ten $349 laptops that usually sell for $600….
Ebbett’s Good to Go is one of the newest food trucks cruising the East Bay to hawk gourmet fare. Its chefs focus on specialty sandwiches made from organic and local ingredients.
With the Thanksgiving spirit in mind, Oakland North set out to Rockridge and Downtown to find out what Oaklanders are most grateful for in their lives this year. Watch our video to hear what people said.
Basmati rice bags, colorful packets of spices, and bins of honey-sweetened candies pack the aisles at Marwa Market on Telegraph Avenue. A small freezer full of turkeys sits at the front of the store. “Thanksgiving is not a Muslim holiday, but all religions say thanks to God,” Owner Temur Khwaja said. “We always get a few orders for halal turkeys.”
Rock Paper Scissors Collective, an Oakland-based volunteer cooperative offering free and low-cost art classes to the community, has offered “Street Style Fashion” workshops since 2007. The workshops, which are presented in partnership with Arts and Creative Expression, are open by application to young fashion designers ages 14 to 25 and focus on teaching participants professional design skills. Each workshop, students begin or continue work on a garment using techniques they develop in class to move their work forward. The clothing the students create ranges from sweatshirts to skirts to dresses.
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.