Culture
Banana and apples trees, pomegranate, pear, and plum. Blackberries and strawberries, lemons and persimmons. Thyme, sage, and a host of other herbs. This isn’t a supermarket produce section or a busy Saturday farmer’s market—it’s an edible forest, two of them in fact, planted by students in the courtyard of Oakland International High School.
Oakland North reporters have been exploring our city’s neighborhoods through street photography. Click above to enter this interactive presentation of our Oakland Photo Treks done over the last few months. Choose the neighborhood you want to explore to see a series oh photographs taken by the Oakland North team.
A contemporary art gallery in West Oakland debuted this month with an exhibition of Bay Area artists, filling the top floor of a former auto service center with abstract paintings, whimsical sculptures and an old, wooden chair cast in aluminum.
The Pointer Sisters. The Black Panthers. Olympians Jim Hinds and Ray Norton, basketball player Bill Russell, baseball’s Frank Robinson and Curt Flood. These famous names all have roots in West Oakland, and Ed Howard wants to share their stories, along with those of other West Oakland residents from the 40s, 50s and 60s.
On Saturday afternoon, thousands of people from around the Bay Area walked, ran, and pedaled their way over to the 2nd Annual Pedalfest bicycle celebration at Jack London Square. Hosted by the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, the festival featured a variety of events for all ages to enjoy including BMX stunt jumps, bicycle dances performed on a tight rope by clowns and bike races inside Jack London Square.
The shrieks and squeals of happy children could be heard Friday over the boombox blasting pop music at Acta Non Verba Youth Urban Farm project in East Oakland. This was a day for play, not work. Celebrating the end of 100 hours of summer labor in the garden, nine local kids ran wild and free among the garden beds arranged in neat rows on the half-acre lot.
Whether it is visual art, music, crafts, film or writing, the Rock Paper Scissors Collective in Oakland encourages community members to teach, sell, exhibit and learn about art. The shop on Grand and Telegraph Avenues offers a collection of hats, sketches, mixed media art, sewing equipment and jewelry as well as a large collection of zines—magazines, cartoons and books self-published by the writers.
Kayoko Akabori and Yoko Kumano, friends since college, recently opened a new store called Umami Mart in the heart of Oakland’s historical district, where they offer unique merchandise as well as their insight about cocktails and Japanese cuisine.
On Saturday, over 20 people filed into the Ella Baker Center, just off Broadway in downtown Oakland, for a conference that gave former inmates, parents and family members of incarcerated young people a chance to tell their stories to each other.