Entertainment
On a recent Friday night at All Out Comedy Theater in Uptown, comedians Wonder Dave and Kristee Ono wandered about the stage telling stories of troubled minds. The stories — and minds — were their own, and involved things that people usually hide behind the curtain: confrontations with demonic, pre-sober selves, nomadic journeys into family trauma, the slow burn of relentless overwork. The mantra, repeated throughout the night: “We are not OK, and that’s OK.” On the second Friday of…
Alex Valle did not expect date night to begin blindfolded and on a stage. She sat across a divider from a potential match, a man who introduced himself as “Dennis,” as a lively audience listened to them banter. The experience was “exciting and abnormal,” Valle reported after removing her blindfold, and also short-lived — lasting just five minutes. But that was the plan. Each dater had a dozen or so other meetups scheduled for later that night. As young people…
The Oakland Comedy Festival returns this weekend for its sixth year, featuring dozens of up-and-coming and established talent. Mike E. Winfield, a comic who has been featured on “America’s Got Talent” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” will headline the event Sunday. Shoshanna Howard, Oakland Comedy Festival host and founder, said the event is all about bringing people together. With Bay Area comedy venues like Alameda Comedy Club, Cal Shakes, and San Francisco’s Milk Bar shutting down, Howard said…
Bands, dancers, clowns, cowboys and cool cars filled downtown Oakland Sunday afternoon for the Black Joy Parade. Wet streets and chilly weather didn’t discourage hundreds of people from enjoying music, food and a host of activities for children and adults. In its sixth year, the parade celebrates the Black experience and culture. It also promotes Oakland’s many Black-owned small businesses. All photos by Najim Rahim
The nine performers on stage Saturday night at Oakland Theater Project weren’t professional actors. They were day laborers from Fruitvale who relinquished the safety of silence to tell their stories. And they will do it again at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at FLAX art & design, 1501 Martin Luther King Jr. Way in downtown Oakland. Under a project called Teatro Jornalero, workers from Central America, Mexico and the United States share intimate stories of the turmoil that drove them from their…
No table was left unfilled as film-lovers gathered on the patio of Stay Gold Deli to get a good view of a white screen that would soon show 12 films ranging in genre and subject matter on the second day of the Drunken Film Fest Oakland on Monday. The six-day festival ends Friday, bringing a dozen new films each night to different bars in Oakland. Arlin Golden brought the Drunken Film Fest to the city in 2018, after working on…
The 19th Annual Healthy Living Festival, Alameda County’s largest event for seniors, returned to the Oakland Zoo Thursday for its first in-person event in two years. Hosted by United Seniors of Oakland and Alameda County, the free festival featured 80 vendors and promoted health and wellness among adults over age 55. Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley, who was one of the festival’s founders, noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has been especially difficult and dangerous for seniors. “This event allows them…
Leila Mottley, the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, began writing novels when she was just 14. Now, at 19, her debut novel, “Nightcrawling,” has been selected for Oprah’s Book Club. “I think that I just have instinctually always been writing,” Mottley said during a Zoom interview this month. “But I think from a young age it felt very natural to me.” The Oakland native began writing “Nightcrawling” at 16 and hopes it will represent the lives and thoughts of people…
Half a dozen people sporting cowboy hats and boots stood in a queue outside of Eli’s Mile High Club, chatting in hushed excitement, some squeezing together for selfies. The occasion was the Oct. 2 premiere of “Cowboy,” a documentary about the life of “Oakland’s last Black cowboy,” 80-year-old Wilbert Freeman McAlister. He is president of the Oakland Black Cowboy Association, which is a non-profit focused on preserving the history of African Americans who were crucial to the establishment of the…