Education

How three well-traveled ingredients end up as lunch in Oakland’s public school cafeterias

The lunchroom at Hoover Elementary School has a long metal counter built into the wall between the lunchroom and the kitchen. There’s an industrial-looking sliding metal door that can be opened for serving food directly from the kitchen, but this serving arrangement is no longer used. In terms of food preparation devices, the kitchen now boasts only a refrigerator and an “oven” that is not equipped to do anything old-fashioned, like bake; it only reheats trays of already-cooked meals. Despite the fact that there is no cooking at Hoover, there are still 325 mouths to feed at breakfast and lunch every day.

Bikes get hyphy in West Oakland

At a West Oakland warehouse, youth build their own custom bike creations – chopper bikes, tandem bikes, cruiser bikes, and sidecar bikes of various shapes and sizes and colors.