Culture
“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.
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.
In keeping with our new tradition of how-to-make-delicious-food videos, we bring you: How To Make An Italian Combo as instructed by Jeff Williams at Genova Delicatessen in Temescal.
Oakland North visits the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist library on Telegraph Avenue, whose catalog includes some 30,000 titles on political economy, revolutionary tactics and radical thought.
Pickling perfect peppers isn’t all that hard, and canning is an inexpensive way to produce charming, memorable homemade holiday gifts. See Richard Parks’ video on making the perfect pepper Escabeche.
Wednesday morning, 9 a.m. No appointments. No press releases. No plan. Just 17 reporters, each with one hour alone with one corner of the city.
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…
At Broadway and West MacArthur, car engines whir and belch, stopping and starting according to a choreography determined by an orange-vested flagman. A street sweeper circles the intersection, picking up dust and debris from a massive construction site at the southeast corner. A yellow bulldozer, perched on Broadway’s asphalt median south of MacArthur, looks ready to pounce. Kaiser Permanente, Oakland’s largest hospital, is extending its vast reach south across this intersection. Kaiser already has several buildings on the north side…
The Fremont-bound train shudders to a stop above my head as I race up the escalator of my local BART at fifteen of nine this morning. The doors stay open for far less time than they normally do—I am rushing, yes, but still must manage to slip in the cavernous opening as the red lights blink furiously at me. Doors closing. Off we go. Turns out the Fremont train is running behind schedule. Our conductor admonishes us at each stop—stay…