Culture
In her first appearance as Oakland’s mayor-elect, Libby Schaaf held a press conference wearing a striking red dress, a necklace of the Oakland tree, a bamboo earrings and riding — unforgettably — in a fire-snorting snail-shaped chariot. All of these were made in Oakland, and all of them had a story.
These local makers, and the idea of Oakland as a “maker city,” have been a central point in Schaaf’s run up to being sworn in as mayor, down to the transportation (an Oakland-made art car) she used at her victory press conference.
The fire-engine red sheath on our mayor-elect: it was Made in Oakland too, just as Libby Schaaf said. But the character who gave the dress its name would make for a slightly terrifying chief city executive.
The assembly of those bamboo trees on the new mayor’s earlobes was an Oakland production, start to finish — and one small product of the local “maker” culture that inspires the earrings’ designer.
The Jules Verne-ish, Dr. Doolittle-ish, 12’6 foot high, 18 foot long, 3000 pound, glow-in-the-dark, fire-blowing, motorized, iron snail, was built atop the skeleton of a 1966 VW Bug. But it came from a dream — literally.
The museum welcomed in the new year with a fun-filled festival of Chinese and other Asian traditions for the fourteenth year in a row, as hundreds of children and parents learned how to write Chinese characters and watched performances in celebration of the Year of the Sheep.
This weekend, 10 teams of young people—predominately African American and Latino students between the ages of 7 and 20—worked alongside designers and developers in Oakland to build innovative apps and websites to “hack” their communities.
A parade slowly danced its way through the downtown on Tuesday, Feb. 17, monopolizing the streets with music and joy.
“Way beyond the water source to millions of people downstream, and water to irrigate farmland, the river is a wildlife sanctuary,” said landscape artist Julie Trail, speaking about the mystical Mokelumne River. Trail is one of the 50 artists participating in an exhibit organized by AmadorArts, currently on display at East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) in downtown Oakland. The exhibit focuses on the Mokelumne River, which extends about 90 miles from the Sierra Nevada to the East Bay, and…