Oakland North TV
Volunteers from all over the Bay Area kicked off Earth Day weekend by participating in a Habitat for Humanity East Bay Build-a-thon. By the end of the four-day event, eight new homes in the Tassafaronga Village on 81st Avenue in East Oakland will be framed.
This past weekend, Oakland celebrated Earth Day a bit early with 79 volunteer sites set up all around the city. We were out gathering photos, but we couldn’t be everywhere, so send your Earth Day pictures to lillian.mongeau@oaklandnorth.net and we’ll publish them in our second annual community photo slideshow on the “official” Earth Day, Friday, April 22.
Burlesque dancers in Oakland now have a new way of showing off their fishnet stockings and sexy lingerie—as models for Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, an international alternative drawing movement. The East Bay branch of Dr. Sketchy’s had its premiere event Saturday afternoon at Layover Lounge, where more than a dozen artists—and even those who were a bit artistically-challenged—gathered to sketch three members of the local dance troupe, the Can-Cannibals.
The front gate at the Oakland branch of weGrow, the country’s first “out of the closet” company that sells indoor marijuana growing equipment, is now locked up and its former owners are embroiled in a series of heated legal battles. The 15,000 square foot warehouse facility, located two miles away from the Oakland International Airport, opened last October with a press conference at which a number of city officials, including Oakland Mayor Jean Quan (a city councilmember at that time), showed up to support the store in front of the national media.
Twenty two-year-old spoken word artist Jasmine “Jazz” Hudson has been rocking Oakland’s mics since the eighth grade. From her first writer’s workshop at the West Oakland Library — where her father sent her to “curb that mouth of hers” — she has performed everywhere from the streets of Oakland and Richmond to the national stage, often with her three-year-old son Nassor at her side.
Oakland residents John Morgan and John Boomer graduated from UC Berkeley in 2009. A few months later, they faced a decision: make some quick cash, or move back home. On a lark, Morgan wheeled a full-size piano out to Macarthur BART station, sat down, and played.
The Oakland Marathon will get off to a running start on Sunday, March 27 with a handful of other race events and activities on Saturday preceding the principal competition, as part of the second annual Oakland Running Festival.
Many in the Chinese community find themselves at odds with new legislation aimed at banning the sale and import of shark fin, the main ingredient of the Chinese delicacy known as shark fin soup.
On February 11, Oakland-based Pandora, the popular internet radio program, filed for its initial public offering, or IPO, and the influx of money will bolster the company’s position at the forefront of the booming online music industry. In this video we hear from a musician and an industry attorney on what Pandora’s success means for online music.