Culture
Neighbors stock up, and one family gets to work on its pumpkins, as North Oakland’s Lawton Avenue braces for the yearly Oct 31 onslaught of trick-or-treaters from far and wide.
Video report: Michael Jackson devotees dressed as zombies and assembled in North Oakland on Saturday as part of Thrill the World, a yearly event when thousands of people around the world dance to the song “Thriller” at the exact same time.
The unusual fashion show at Jack London Square last night featured discount and second-hand clothing, Willie Brown Jr., and an abundance of pride. A slideshow accompanies the story.
The race, last run in Oakland in 1984, will take marathoners from City Hall through North Oakland, and then all over town.
Oakland Tech’s Homecoming combined the old standards with the new — cheerleaders did their routine to a hip-hop beat and football players listened to iPods to get ready for the game. In this audioslide, ON’s Becky Palmstrom, who’s from Wales, gets a lesson in an American tradition.
At 23rd and Telegraph, inside a storefront/gallery/craft space called Rock Paper Scissors, neatly hung canvas paintings and framed ink drawings lined the walls. Cards below each piece identified the artist: all are prisoners at San Quentin.
The Piedmont Avenue patch is back, even if it’s harder to find than it used to be, and it’s still got the goods: the tongues, the eyeballs, the photos of wicked bulging-eyed children, and Oopy the daschund, who’s in costume too.
At the Golden Gate Public Library on Tuesday night, a diverse group of young dancers celebrated Diwali, the Festival of Lights, continuing a tradition that is thousands of years old .
The diverse atmosphere of Temescal was replicated last night by the restaurants — from Mexican food to Indian food to Bake Sale Betty and ice cream sorbets. As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once said: “There is no sincerer love than the love of food.”