Sooooo sweet: Chocolate Festival promotes Black artists, entrepreneurs and businesses

Chocolate festival

In celebration of Black History Month, the Black Cultural Zone put a spotlight on love and local businesses, bringing them together in the Sooooo Chocolate Festival on Sunday at Uptown Station. “Promoting local artists is the antidote to gentrification and displacement,” said Carylon Johnson, Black Cultural Zone CEO. “Festivals like these remind people that who…

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Original Site of Merritt College in Oakland

The BART train whirrs by, leaving MacArthur station as cars exit the freeway. Nobody notices the bit of history below. Under the train tracks at the speedway intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and 58th Street in North Oakland is a salmon-colored building spanning the length of five blocks. It is the original site…

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Easter Hill United Methodist Church in Richmond

The sidewalk in front of the Easter Hill United Methodist Church in Richmond was all but empty on Monday at 11 am. A cyclist slowly meandered by on Cutting Boulevard, the clinking of his bike chain breaking up the white noise created by a constant stream of passing cars. The doors of the church were…

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DeFremery Park in Oakland

DeFremery Park is an island. A two-story light blue Victorian sits alone in a massive yard, surrounded by fields of vibrant green grass. It’s quiet in the park on most days, the building’s stoic presence adding a layer of calm to the surrounding West Oakland neighborhood. The house sits next to a tennis court, a…

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Remember Them monument in Oakland

Remember Them monument

It is a very precise place. No plastic bags, no empty bottles, not even in the corners or under the bench. The red plastic edging seems to fence the monument in, to protect it from stranger things. The four bronzes inside are placed symmetrically on two sites framed by a gallery of little busts, bronzed…

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