People
Axis performed its unique style of modern dance last Thursday at Dance Access Day: A Day of Dance, Disability, Performance and Fun at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts in Oakland. Audience members included children as well as disabled adults and seniors. Watch the video of the local dance team performing and teaching people of all ages how to dance.
Oakland’s Art Murmur event on Friday night focused on art of all forms. There were storyboards of comic books. There was a fawn with a surveillance camera for a head. But aside from what could be found in the galleries, the event attracted creative individuals who chose to wear their art rather than display it on a wall. Click on the article for a Flash interactive about the back stories about Art Murmur fashion.
Art can come in a variety of forms—paint carefully brushed onto a sheet of canvas or pencil marks thoughtfully scrawled onto a piece of sketch paper. Then there are the less conventional art forms. Skateboards, for example. Or a pair of sneakers. Or knuckle tattoos.
Don Perata, one of 10 candidates for Oakland mayor, has had a long history of public service, having spent 16 years teaching in Alameda County and 12 years as a Sacramento politician. But his record has also been marred with controversy over issues such as campaign finances.
Many Oaklanders have heard mayoral candidate Joe Tuman talk about politics, but they might not know it. Before he declared himself a candidate in Oakland’s most hotly contested race, he spent over twenty years as a political analyst and a talking head on TV, making him a familiar yet nameless voice in the region’s politics.
Mitchell, a senior at Oakland Technical High School, is just getting started in her role as the 2010-2011 All-City Council student representative on the Oakland school board. Unlike her adult counterparts, however, Mitchell has no official voting power on the school board, a fact that she considers a minor detail in her mission to make sure the voice of the district’s students is heard.
Some people rested. Some traveled. Others played on Labor Day. Many Oakland residents used their extra day off from work or school Monday to create their own sporting events: a bike ride in the hills, steering an unfamiliar water vessel at Lake Merritt. Check out reporter Laith Agha’s slide show and map for a glimpse of city residents finding their own ways to play.
Are you just about done with all the summer squash coming out of your garden? Or been eyeing the neighbor’s plum tree, wishing you had some of your own? There’s a bench in North Oakland’s Mosswood Park where you can trade away your excess harvest and pick up something else you like.
It’s hard to catch Steve Sparkes these days between World Cup games, building a tasting room at Linden Street Brewery in West Oakland, and organizing a week-long free soccer camp for over sixty kids. Now in its third year, the “My Yute” soccer camp offers skills training to young players, while exposing them to the cultural diversity of the game and spreading, Sparkes hopes, his passion for the sport.