Oakland North TV
The sounds of piano notes, falsettos, and string instruments echo through the empty hallways at McClymonds High School in West Oakland. The campus that once housed over 800 students has had a steady and rapid decline in enrollment in the past few years. Currently, one-fourth of the original population attends the school—putting the enrollment at around 250 students, the majority of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. This school year, 2014-2015, is the first time in 12 years that a music…
It started with a bargaining tactic, and continued on Wednesday afternoon as a group of about 70 parents, students, and teachers walked down Park Boulevard carrying signs and shouting that they wanted a fairer contract. The march led to a packed school board meeting, as teachers, parents, and community members eagerly waited to speak about an item that didn’t appear on the agenda: contract negotiations between Oakland’s teachers and the school district. Negotiations between teachers, psychologists, counselors and the district…
Mustafa Ahadi came to the United States as a refugee after working as a medical translator with the US Armed Forces in Kabul. “This is a good country to find the dreams,” he says.
In Oakland, like many urban cities, violence tends to beget violence. But one program is attempting to use artistic expression to interrupt the cycle of bloodshed that pervades the city.
Before the sun is even up, Mehdi Shokouhi, 34, is wide awake, checking the trunk and backseat of his Hyundai Sonata for the black laundry bags he will be bringing to customers, either handing off an early-morning delivery of clean and pressed clothes or picking up a load of dirty laundry. By 6:30 a.m., Shokouhi had already left his Berkeley home, driven into San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood and returned to the East Bay, part of his job working…
California is getting some much-needed relief from the drought. Recent rainfall over the last couple weeks picked up Wednesday night as the largest storm to hit the state in five years made landfall. But as the city of Oakland deals with the storm, water utility officials are warning residents that the region is still in a drought and will have to comply with existing—and new—water regulations.
Birdland Jazzista Social Club, a long-time Berkeley staple, moves into North Oakland. Its founder sees the opportunity to turn a stretch of Martin Luther King Jr. Way into a music and art district.
What if people could create more colorful neighborhoods by simply throwing herb and vegetable seed balls on the ground? What if they could rescue the declining bee population using this method? Or what if someone could throw them from a small airplane to sow an entire field of wildflowers? That’s the goal of the “Grow a Rainbow” project developed by Christopher Burley, the “Lead Pollinator” and CEO of Seedles LLC, who has set a goal of growing one million wildflowers….
Sacred Wheel, an unpretentious cheese shop in Temescal, offers a funky menu featuring Pabst Blue Ribbon tomato soup, pickled eggs, and a Sriracha-infused sloppy Joe on what the menu calls “the trashiest bun we could find.” The eclectic menu is mirrored in the décor (a toy dinosaur with a chunk of cheese in its jaws presides over the cheese counter), and the staff (nearly all employees have a caricature of themselves on the wall, and the staff are decorated with…