Economy
Off of 19th and San Pablo in downtown Oakland lies an unassuming two-story building; if it’s a quiet night, the only giveaway that something is going on inside is a big bouncer with an ear-piece standing out front and a small black and white sign that says “The New Parish.” But inside, the New Parish is Oakland’s newest music venue.
It’s nesting time for the California Least Tern, an endangered species of bird that is beginning to make a recovery out on the Oakland mudflats and at the Alameda Air Station. But as development encroaches on their nesting grounds and their food supply remains uncertain, the birds’ comeback is anything but a sure thing.
Before there was AC Transit or BART, there was the Key System. A privately-owned mass transit company that operated electric railcars, street cars, and ferries, the Key System linked ten East Bay cities and San Francisco, and it shaped the development of this area.
Jon’s Street Eats is one of a new series of food trucks popping up all over the East Bay serving innovative street food — in this case, gourmet grub like grilled asparagus, butterscotch pudding and panko-coated mac and cheese. As Oakland-based chef Jon Kosorek puts it: “There’s not a lot of places where you can get hand-pulled mozzarella. I would never be able to do a hot dog cart with just boiled hot dogs. I’d go crazy.”
In Oakland, 76,000 people—that’s 19 percent of the city’s population—live at or below the federal poverty level. This is a statistic that the City of Oakland wants to lower.
Something has recently changed in South Berkeley—big colorful paintings are popping up in formerly vacant storefront windows. They were all made by low-income youth, mostly from Oakland, paid to paint by an organization called Youth Spirit Artworks — an organization that hires teens to beautify local neighborhoods.
In April, Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland city councilmember at large, announced that she was considering running for mayor this fall. Oakland North reporter Ayako Mie sat down for an exclusive interview with Kaplan to talk about how she hopes to change the city.
We asked neighbors, teachers and business owners in Golden Gate to share their thoughts with us. Click each video below to hear what they had to say.
In this special report, we have created an audio-visual map of the learning resources in Oakland’s Golden Gate neighborhood.