Economy
Available space, low real estate prices, access to talent pools like U.C. Berkeley and an attractive urban vibe all draw new tech startups—outshining drawbacks like crime and a troubled school system that still challenge the city.
Best known for its red, white and blue bottle, Clorox has been the standard “clean scent” for many Americans for over a century.
Red caution tape cordons off the sidewalk where Eric Wright and his crew are working on electrical wires.
When she started keeping bees as a hobby six years ago, tattoo artist Jean Chen never thought she’d be making a living from them in her kitchen. But on April 28, Chen quit her job after ten years. Her new job—soap maker.
Oakland. Home of the Black Panthers. Of Gertrude Stein. Of notorious corners, multimillion-dollar drug empires. Hyphy music. Hella. And, more recently, of the upscale Blue Bottle Coffee. Now according to an online real estate company called Movoto, Oakland is the most exciting city in America. Movoto regularly releases top 10 lists, among them “The 10 Most Redneck Cities in America” and “The 10 Nerdiest Cities in America.” When it came to excitement, Oakland took the top slot, with Boston taking second,…
Coatlicue drummers and dancers occupied the island between East and West-bound traffic on International Blvd in Oakland, as they celebrated and prayed. With shells at their ankles and feathers on their crowns, over a dozen people congregated and moved to the beat. Smoke from lit herbs such as sage filled the intersection. Police directed traffic around the celebration, as passersby honked and waved.
The sky starts to lighten as Joyce Masih heads out to her bus. It’s just after 6 a.m. at the AC Transit bus yard in Hayward, and Masih is all smiles.
Of all the birds that nest on or around the Bay Bridge—gulls, terns, pelicans, pigeons, falcons, hummingbirds—Lauren Bingham is most concerned with the cormorants. It’s not that they’re worse, bird by bird, more onerous or unruly than the other birds; it’s just that there’s so many of them. Standing on the unopened new span of the Bay Bridge, halfway to Yerba Buena Island, she points at the steel latticework right below the road deck on the old bridge, then gestures…
Oakland resident Sableu Cabildo was diagnosed at the end of 2011 with a kind of brain cancer known as an astrocytoma. It originated on the right side of her thalamus, the lobed mass under the cerebral cortex that acts like the brain’s switchboard, regulating sensory perception and motor functions. Because of the cancer, Cabildo has been steadily losing her short-term memory and her balance. She stutters sometimes, and to be on the safe side, doesn’t drive at night anymore.
To alleviate some of the symptoms of her cancer and the harsher side affects of her medications, Cabildo, 34, has a medical marijuana prescription. It’s helped to calm her mood swings and improve her diminished appetite. It also dulls the pain from the migraine headaches caused by her disease. It lets her sleep at night.