Uptown named one of the “Great Places in America”

Quan and McElhaney stand with the award.

The American Planning Association recognized Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood as one of the “Great Places in America” in a ceremony yesterday. In the warm afternoon sun, APA Board of Directors member Kurt Christiansen and Hing H. Wong, president-elect of the organization’s California chapter, lauded the neighborhood’s homegrown artistry, entrepreneurialism and diversity. They also praised its revitalizing…

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Antique Naked Soul ensemble creates manifesto music with the human voice

woman and man on grey background

Today Antique is wearing a black skirt over green tights, a boldly-striped tank top over a black long-sleeve shirt, bright earrings that look like ice cream cones you might find in a Dr. Seuss story, an orange and black bandanna in her hair, and black 1950s-style cat’s eye glasses with sparkles in the corners. “I dress in different eras every day,” she says.

The music she creates, however, is naked.

As the lead vocalist of the ensemble Antique Naked Soul, Antique, along with vocal percussionist Tommy Shepherd, also known as Soulati, and vocalists Jayme Brown and N’gala McCoy, composes songs that consist solely of the human voice. The challenge, she and Shepherd say, is managing to create full-bodied “manifestos” within the limitation of such spare instrumentation.

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Oakland by the Zip Code: Photos from the 94618

Enjoy the photo gallery for our weekly series, The Pulse of Oakland. This week’s featured ZIP code is 94618, which include Rockridge and parts of the Oakland Hills. Oakland North reporters will be taking photographs documenting each of the ZIP codes in Oakland over the next few months. Every neighborhood is diverse and different, and…

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A look inside The New Parkway

The New Parkway is nearly 8,000 square feet, has two floors and features two screening rooms with a seating capacity of 145 and 125 people each. The theater will have a full commercial kitchen and a café from which people will be able to order pizza, burgers, fries, salads, soups and appetizers, as well as vegetarian and vegan options.

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East Lake Merritt residents want the Parkway Theater back

On November 30, the community of Oakland celebrated the reopening of the once popular Parkway Theater in its new downtown location. But for some community members, the event was not joyous, but rather full of longing for the original theater, which was located east of Lake Merritt. Click on the player above to watch the…

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Gourmet restaurants, art galleries revive Oakland’s Auto Row on Broadway

Nearly full on a Monday night, Mua Bar and Restaurant is at the center of Broadway Auto Row's transition from auto hub to cultural enclave.

Once a hub of automobile commerce, Broadway Auto Row is fast becoming a cultural enclave, thanks to the gentle prodding and financial investment of an eclectic group of gallerists, restaurateurs and niche shop owners who are mixing the old (and big) with the new (and small) to create a hybrid commercial corridor that keeps money flowing through the street from day to night and back again.

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