Eat Real Festival cultivates local food

Todd Champagne of Happy Girl Kitchen serves pickles to festival attendees. Photo by Hannah Ricker.

The 11th annual Eat Real Festival at Jack London Square this weekend drew in thousands of people with an appetite. Food trucks, environmental advocacy booths, and stalls serving locally-sourced food and drink fed a steady crowd hungry for new flavors. Eat Real is a food festival where lines become masses, and sensory overload is, above…

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Coming soon to Oakland: the Black Choreographers Festival

Dance professor Julia Hughes is finishing a rehearsal in a big circle in the center of a studio. “Breathe in, breathe out,” she says. “Let’s leave all our bad energies and refresh by saying something we are thankful for!” This is the first time that her group, Tô Aí: We Are One People, will be…

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Bigger than ever, the Oakland Music Festival is back for nine days

They say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it but what if your goal is to transform it? After three years of steadily increasing attendance and growing popularity, Oakland Music Festival (OMF) CEO and founder Alfonso Dominguez decided to do something different—change the format of the festively entirely. What started as traditional, one-day music festival…

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Rockridge’s Out and About festival appeals to kids, adults

Hundreds gathered on College Ave. this Sunday for the Out and About Festival, Rockridge’s annual celebration of food, music, crafts, community organizing, and good-natured neighborhood noise. The festival featured Bay Area musicians such as The Clifford Lamb Trio and The Blue Monday Jazz Jam. Young children had their faces painted, practiced hula hooping, painted small pumpkins, planted seeds, and tried to climb a gigantic rock wall…

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Eat Real food festival kicks off in Oakland this weekend

Small-batch beers are a popular feature at the Eat Real Festival. Locals may also submit their homemade brews for a beer contest Saturday. Photo courtesy of Eat Real Festival.

The third annual annual Eat Real Festival’s organizers hope the event is so much fun you’ll forget it’s reshaping your assumptions about food. The free event in Jack London Square this weekend, which is billed as half street festival, half block party, will feature local music and film screenings alongside food workshops, demonstrations, contests and scores of vendors.

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