Culture
Derrek Bell leans forward and places his elbows on the counter, turning the hat he is holding upside down to expose the price tag attached to the inside. He holds it gently, careful not to pinch it or bend it out of shape. The Panama hat has travelled all the way from Cuenca in Ecuador, where it was manufactured, to a factory in Alessandria, Italy, where it was shaped and tagged with a little navy label that spelled “Borsalino” in a cursive gold font. It is now on a rack at The Hat Guys, an upscale hat shop in downtown Oakland that has served famous heads for over two decades.
Bell has worked here as a salesman for seven years. “Take a look at this,” he says, pointing at the price tag. The Borsalino name puts the hat’s price at $1,200. It is one of the most expensive hats in the store.
On Saturday morning parents, students, volunteers and school district staff held hands as they danced to the beat of a drum in the gymnasium of Fruitvale’s United Academy for Success as part the Oakland Unified School District’s first Back to School Festival. They formed a circle, led by members of the Medicine Warriors, a Native American dance troupe. “This dance signifies friendship and unity,” George Galvis of the Native American community center Intertribal Friendship House said to the crowd.
The online radio station Pandora has teamed up with the Great Wall of Oakland, a monthly video art screening, to host an evening of local music and video shorts this Friday. The “Homegrown” event on September 7 will debut Pandora’s “Sounds of Oakland,” a sampling of local music, which will accompany video shorts projected on the wall in Oakland’s Uptown district. It also marks the first collaboration between the two Oakland-based organizations. “We approached Pandora because their specialty is music…
Years after serving as education director for then-Mayor Ron Dellums, professor Kitty Kelly Epstein aims to recast the controversial mayorship in a new book. “Organizing to Change a City,” released at the end of August, tells the story from a supporter’s view. It describes the community effort that secured Dellums’ victory and defends his tenure – all part of advancing Epstein’s contention that grass roots change is possible, even in a city as complicated as Oakland.
Oakland Pride, a festival celebrating the city’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community, drew about 20,000 people to the city’s Uptown district on Sunday.
Police said they have recorded a surge in such robberies in Rockridge, Temescal, Montclair, downtown Oakland, and around BART stations, particularly the MacArthur station. Many incidents have occurred in restaurants, like the Hudson, and cafes, police said.
When Fruitvale Presbyterian Church was first established 123 years ago, the area it ministered to–with its fruit-bearing orchards–was not yet part of urban Oakland. Faced with a diminished congregation, the church will hold its last service Sunday.
In the final days before this year’s Pride celebration, event chair Amber Todd has been juggling the demands of being a city employee, a mother of four daughters, and a student. “I have so much crammed into my brain right now that I’m forgetting simple things like locking the car,” she said.
Around 350 people came to the New Parish in Oakland to see Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux perform on Wednesday along with Raw G, 2 Mex, Hordatoj, Magnolius and DJ Nima Fadavi. Tijoux, who is petite and in the early stages of pregnancy, swayed to her drummer’s military beat and spit out rhymes with self-assured, low-key confidence. Dressed in a flannel shirt and black tights, her style was more ‘90s b-girl than rising international hip-hop star.