Health
The Bay Area has one of the largest Asian and Asian Pacific Islander (API) populations in the entire country; together the two groups make up almost 19 percent of Oakland’s population. This group is uniquely at risk for hepatitis B, a disease that is sometimes known as the “silent killer,” as an infected person can remain asymptomatic for long periods of time, leaving many unknowingly infected. Nationwide, nearly 1 in 12 people of Asian and API descent are infected. But here in Oakland, healthcare workers are drawing more attention to getting residents screened for the disease and vaccinated against it, specifically among the low-income and uninsured.
Dr. Elliot Gann is standing in front of his beat-up and stickered black Mazda Protégé in the parking lot of West Oakland Middle School. In his left ear is a Bluetooth earpiece, which, as he eats a Trader Joes sandwich wrap, enables him to lament to a friend the parking ticket he just received. To his side is a worn green Atlantic suitcase that wobbles with a broken wheel. Inside, its contents are packed tight: two sets of studio monitors,…
Nearly 200 people gathered at a North Oakland church Monday to remember Oakland’s homicide victims in 2012. On New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year, the number of killings had reached 131—a five-year high.
Scid Howard III grew up on the streets of East Oakland, so he knows what it’s like to be a teenager in a city where some young people are lost forever to gun violence and others live on, scarred physically and mentally. Howard himself was shot at age 19 and witnessed the shooting death of his best friend at age 17. He now counsels young people for several support organizations in Oakland to save them from a similar fate. “My…
Oakland is offering $160,000 to help fund a new day labor program for 2013. Various organizations are vying for the funds, and day laborers say the center will be essential to helping them get jobs.
When word spread that there was half a box of Twinkies still on a shelf at the A&A Market on Sunday afternoon, people of all ages gathered to get their hands on a small cellophane-wrapped piece of what was left of the Hostess legacy, and reflected on what the Twinkie—the “snack with a snack in the middle,” as the ads used to say–meant to them.
Kevin Weston doesn’t remember doctors saying he had two weeks to live. He doesn’t remember his 44th birthday. He doesn’t remember his own wedding, though he says he’s seen the photos: Weston in a white hospital gown, eyes closed, with an extremely swollen face. In some photos he has tubes and monitors attached to his body. And in one photo, he has a white hospital bracelet on his wrist, and he’s holding his new wife’s hand. In August, Weston was…
On November 13, jewelers and jewelry connoisseurs filed into Oakland’s Compound Gallery to feast on a visual display of shimmery handcrafted necklaces, bracelets and rings created by Bay Area artisan Robert Taber.
Some people have potted plants on their front porches. Others have rocking chairs or benches. Walk onto the porch of Jessie Mae Brown’s East Oakland home on any given day and you’re likely to be stepping around 100-pound bags of onions and potatoes or bins of apples and carrots—all fresh for the taking.