Culture

Rehearsing your own death: not your typical night in Oakland

“Hi, my name is Becky and I am going to die,” I said as we went round the circle. We were at a three-day workshop run by Chris Zydel and Sharon Pavelda called a “death rehearsal,” a therapeutic workshop designed to help people envision and accept the eventuality of their own deaths.

Black Friday passed, North Oakland retailers see slow start to holiday buying season

Full-bellied, bleary-eyed, and shaking the last vestiges of their turkey-induced tryptophan hangovers, shopoholics and bargain-hunters nationwide kicked off the holiday spending season, lining up before dawn the morning after Thanksgiving to raid their favorite stores on Black Friday. But while consumers flocked to big-box stores across the Bay Area, local North Oakland retailers reported a much quieter beginning to the year’s shopping season.

Great Western Power Company

At 9 a.m., the old industrial doors of the Great Western Power Company on 20th Street are shut; if it wasn’t for a laminated sign next to one of the doors with “Weekday hours 6:30 a.m. – 10 p.m.” printed on it, at first glance the place would look abandoned. But if you look up, rather than a typical grey smokestack you see one that resonates humor. Simple icons of people are painted in white all around the coal black…