People
In this video, we follow Serina Elliott, a Kitchen of Champions student from North Oakland’s Golden Gate neighborhood. Just four weeks into her program, Elliot aspires to one day become “a Food Network star.”
Recently-minted Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson, the former Oakland Tech Bulldog and Oakland Athletic, returned to his old neighborhood on Saturday afternoon for a ceremony renaming a North Oakland baseball field in his honor. Story by Sam Laird/Oakland North
Meet Rod Dibble, the 77 year-old pianist who’s been entertaining patrons of the Alley for half a century.
Friends and family gathered Monday to remember the 17 year-old Oakland Tech student who was killed on Labor Day in a drive-by shooting. By S. Howard Bransford/Oakland North.
Oakland’s new superintendent of schools, who’ll be participating in a public town hall at North Oakland’s International High School this Wednesday, talks to reporter Lillian R. Mongeau about the achievement gap, the challenge of useful teacher evaluations, and “cutting zeros off the budget.”
Oakland native Stanley Kirk Burrell, a.k.a. MC Hammer, but now preferring simply Hammer, brought his dance and rap show to the recently reopened Fox Theatre in downtown Oakland Friday night. The scene on the street outside was atwitter with Hammer talk. Oakland North posed this question to the Hammer faithful: What makes the rapper so great? We asked the fans attending the show talk about what makes their beloved Oakland icon special.
A chocolate-brown pinstriped suit with a brown silk handkerchief folded seamlessly in the left breast pocket. Brown suede dress shoes and a gold pinkie ring that glinted in the spotlight as he strode on stage.
Willie Brown was here. Story by Laurel Moorhead.
Frank Snapp walks up 40th Street, just east of Broadway, with a wheelbarrow full of plants and a plastic green garden hose slung in rounds over his shoulder. His olive sunhat shades denim blue eyes. It’s a 78-degree day in North Oakland and the heat rising off the asphalt makes it seem even hotter, but the fair-skinned, red-haired Snapp is in his element. He is a gardener like many gardeners, but three things set him apart: He has a remarkable depth…
17-year old Desiree Davis had spent her childhood excluded and taunted for never quite fitting in. “They gave her a real hard time her whole life,” said her mother, Dru Ann Davis, in an interview at her home this weekend. A Hurricane Katrina survivor, born blind in one eye, Desiree was working to find new strength and identity in Oakland before she was killed last week in a drive-by shooting. Story by S. Howard Bransford/Oakland North.