Culture

The Crucible invites visitors for flames, fun and fixing bikes

The Crucible, where students do everything from fixing bikes to giving live performances with flaming batons, is having an open house this Saturday, September 12.  “We’re best known for the fire,” says Ismael Plasencia, the Crucible’s Youth and Community Program Manager. “Everyone knows about that, but we’re a school too.  We’re a school first.” Twenty-four Oakland community  outreach organizations will set up information tables in and around the Crucible’s industrial workspace.  The open house will be punctuated by live performances,…

9/11 film festival brings “truthers” to Grand Lake

Eight years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, a group of people who call themselves “truthers”—those who insist that the American government’s version of that day’s events is a lie—will gather at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater Wednesday and Thursday for a film festival. For the last five years, the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance, an organization that seeks to further people’s understanding about the September 11, 2001 attacks, has sponsored the festival, which brings together filmmakers, speakers and other…

Neighbors mourn shooting death of Tech student

For nearly a decade, residents living near the intersection of Gaskill and 54th Streets in Northwest Oakland enjoyed a hard-won sense of calm. They’d formed a community police group, discouraged loitering and blatant drug dealing, and a diverse group of new homeowners was infusing money into this section of town, which runs along the Emeryville border. Even the owner of the neighborhood convenience store agreed to stop selling liquor in an effort to reduce crime. Yet on Tuesday, neighbors were…

Labor Day potluck pushes better school meals

Michelle Mapp and Rachel Carroll, of Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood, took their 8-year-old daughter Lauren to Labor Day lunch yesterday, taking their seats at a white-cloth-covered table in the middle of Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Civic Center Park.    The menu, on their plates, at least, was enchiladas, red grapes, and freshly squeezed lemonade.  It was a community potluck–with a purpose. The three gathered at the end of one of five long tables lined with bright red apples. As Lauren alternated between…

Migrants invited to church pulpits for Labor Day

Romana was seven months pregnant, she told the congregation at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church on Sunday, when she walked for six hours from Mexico to the United States -– mostly without water, sometimes without shoes. She crossed through brush where sticks ripped at her skin, she said. Her brother and grandmother dragged her when she felt too tired to walk.  When Romana and her family arrived at a tunnel where they thought they could rest, she said, US immigration workers…

Video: Inside the Oakland Art Murmur

The Art Murmur, Oakland’s monthly gallery walk, drew hundreds to the streets of downtown Oakland Friday despite the Labor Day holiday weekend and the closing of the Bay Bridge. New measures were undertaken by the Murmur this month to ensure safety and civility toward gallery walkers and neighborhood residents. Incidents involving disrespect toward artists and neighbors in recent months have precipitated the changes, which include a vendor check-in fee and the addition of patrolling security guards. These occurrences have raised…

Author Gopnik on the wonders of babies’ brains

It’s not surprising that Alison Gopnik, 54, mother of three adult children and the eldest of six siblings, became fascinated at a young age by the cognitive goings-on of babies. She was around them all the time. “My first son was born when I was 23, so there’s about 5 minutes in there when I wasn’t taking care of a baby,” Gopnik said. The child psychologist and U.C. Berkeley professor arrived last night at Mrs. Dalloway’s, the College Avenue bookstore…