Culture
Historically, Oakland was a hotbed for producing African American baseball talent for Major League Baseball. However, the face of baseball has changed. Today, blacks only account for a tiny percentage of professional players. Click on the video above to take a look at the reasons that have caused the decline, both among young Oakland players and in pro sports.
Welcome back to the Tales of Two Cities podcast! This episode is all about endings.
The Oakland Police Department (OPD) has increased its response following recent sideshow activity. Last Sunday, a large contingent of law enforcement officers took the streets to combat the illegal gatherings, which are informal demonstrations of automotive stunts, often held in vacant lots or in public intersections. This weekend, they will do the same. Officers will be accompanied by air support along with regional law enforcement partners, teaming up to deter sideshow participation by issuing citations, making arrests and towing vehicles….
“The future is queer, because the present is not enough” — that’s the opening line on the description for the Oakland Museum of California’s new exhibit called “Queer California: Untold Stories.” The exhibit is a celebration of the queer people, art, and events that have been otherwise sidelined in California history. “The show doesn’t really highlight the usual stories. We know about Pride parades, Harvey Milk, discrimination, the pride flag,” said Lisa Silberstein, the exhibit’s experience developer. “This goes beyond…
Oakland’s Vietnamese community hopes to memorialize their homeland and attract tourists to a little enclave of businesses in East Oakland with the creation of a Business Improvement District called “Little Saigon.”
Nipsey Hussle was only 33 years old when he passed away, but left behind a legacy of building community from LA to the Bay Area and beyond.
While the teachers’ strike ended weeks ago, the Oakland Unified School District’s financial troubles are far from over. Less than 24 hours after the strike, on March 4, the school board narrowly voted to cut $22 million dollars from next year’s budget. The move was to keep the district from financial ruin, but school libraries are among the programs being affected by the cuts. We focused on the story of just one library at Frick Impact Academy in East Oakland…
After winning a Grammy for the second time, Oakland artist Xavier Dphrepaulez—better known as Fantastic Negrito—came to Oakland’s Impact Hub in early March for a celebration of local talent and to make a donation to support Oakland’s teachers, who had begun a strike a few days earlier. “Feels good, because you know, just four years ago I was playing on the streets right here on Broadway,” he told Oakland North in an interview. “Four years, two Grammys … pretty good.”…
Jospefina Gonçalves, 75, knows how to cook—and she does it well. On a Sunday afternoon at her daughter’s home in North Oakland, she was leading a cooking workshop on how to prepare a Cape Verdean delicacy called pastel, an empanada-like pastry with a mix of African and Portuguese flavors. “Everything Cape Verdean, I cook,” Gonçalves said confidently. “I don’t cook nothing that’s not Cape Verdean.” Six women, including Gonçalves and her daughter Nella, are all Cape Verdean Americans—Cape Verde is…