upcoming Oakland events

Kids are back to school and the festival season is dropping down a notch, but there's still lots to do. Besides the highlights below, check the events calendar at the right with all these events in a nice calendar format.

This is a First Friday, so the Art Murmur is happening, and of course Bites off Broadway happens every Friday until October 21st. And the Art Stroll is every Saturday.

welcome home Food & Freedom Riders Thursday, 8pm at The New Parish. Welcome home the group that's been riding around the country, and hear reports on how it all went.

Oakland Pride Day - Sunday, September 4. Oakland's LGBTQ pride festival, featuring 75 artists on 4 stages.

unveiling of Remember Them - Tuesday, September 6, 1pm. Unveiling of a statue of champions for humanity, including Dr. Maya Angelou who will be present for the ceremony.

Gatsby Summer Afternoon - September 11. an afternoon with the Art Deco Society of California. Aficionados of the 1920s and 30s step back to a time when elegance was a way of life and the Charleston and Fox Trot were all the rage. This is not a spectator event; every guest is part of the scene in their vintage best.

Plus the usual events:
Piedmont Avenue Art Walk (3rd Thursday)
Bites off Broadway (Fridays)
Art Murmur (1st Friday)
Downtown walking tours (Wednesdays and Saturdays)
Saturday Art Stroll (Saturdays)

For more, check the Visit Oakland event calendar.

Looking further ahead:
Park(ing) day - Friday, September 16.
Taste of Temescal - Tuesday, September 20.
Blog Action Day - Saturday, September 24.
Oaktoberfest - Saturday, October 1, in the Dimond.
Parlor and Politics - Saturday, October 1. A celebration of women's suffrage in California.
Suffrage Parade - Sunday, October 2. Continuing the celebration of women's suffrage, a parade starting Lakeside Park at Lake Merritt.
PedalFest - October 22nd. Bikes, beer, food, fun at Jack London Square.

walking tour: West Oakland

World Impact

Saturday morning I joined Luke Prince for a walking tour of West Oakland. This isn't part of the city tours program or the Oakland Heritage Alliance tours program, but it should be. The city tours are focused downtown, and the OHA tours in different neighborhoods of Oakland, but none covers the significant history of Prescott and Lower Bottoms.

Luke and I met at the West Oakland center of World Impact, a ministry working all over the world and here in Oakland. Coincidentally the building is across the street from a liquor store that has a sign I'd been meaning to photograph. The area near the liquor store used to be a magnet for drug trouble in the neighborhood before World Impact came in.

where OPD officer was shot

The first spot we went to was where OPD officer John Frey was shot. Frey had stopped Black Panther Party (BPP) co-founder Huey Newton during one of the BPP defense patrols in the pre-dawn hours. After fellow officer Herbert Heanes arrived for backup, shots were fired, all three were wounded, and Frey died. Newton claimed that Frey shot him first, which made him lose consciousness. He awoke in Kaiser Hospital handcuffed to his bed, and was convicted in 1968 of voluntary manslaughter. He served two years before the California Appellate Court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. After two mistrials, the California Supreme Court dropped the case.

We walked along admiring the Victorians and other houses. Luke pointed out an "almost polite house" where he had lived when he first came to Oakland. An "almost polite house" was one that had multiple families living in it, and was subdivided each night by curtains to provide more privacy for sleeping. Some were designed with that in mind, resulting in houses with an odd assortment of half walls.

West Oakland was the home of a happening soul, R&B and jazz scene during the 40s, 50s, and 60s until construction of BART and the main post office brought it to an end. One place that survived longer was the Continental Club, which still opens for occasionally for private events. A lot of the music had Louisiana and New Orleans influences, because many of the workers recruited during WWII came from there. Read more in my post about Esther's Orbit Room.

16th Street Station

No discussion of Oakland history is complete without talking about the influence of the railroads, and that's especially true for West Oakland. The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, and had its western terminus in Oakland. The first trains ran to Alameda, and the original terminus station was on 7th Street in Old Oakland, but eventually the 16th Street Station became the hub. We talked about the Pullman porters and the rise of the black middle class, and the importance of unions like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the civil rights movement -- recall that MLK was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers union when he was shot.

Victorian

While better in many ways, life in West Oakland wasn't a complete bed of roses. Jack London (who lived at 807 Pine) described a cannery as a "hell hole" where he worked 12-18 hour days as a 15-year-old. It was not uncommon to see children around West Oakland who were missing fingers or limbs, lost working in the factories north of 13th Street. Pullman porters, while better paid than some, were not fairly paid compared with whites. The 1949 construction of the Cypress Structure split West Oakland in half for decades. Industry has left contaminated soil.

But despite some modern problems like gentrification, drugs, and cleaning up past pollution, West Oakland is a lively, beautiful part of Oakland full of interesting people (who all seem to know Luke). It has great weather, easy access to Uptown, Downtown, and the Bay Bridge, and a burgeoning art and maker scene. If you're interested in taking the West Oakland history tour, contact Luke via email at lprince14 at gmail.com. He told me a ton more than I've written about here, and it makes for an interesting tour.

More reading:
Putting the "There" There: Historical Archaeologies of West Oakland
Black Panthers history
Pullman porter museum
Oakland Local : Right beneath our feet: Brownfields in West Oakland

More pictures:

West Oakland walking tour

Friday night fun

Make Westing

Friday night K and I went to see Dr. Strangelove at the Paramount movie classics. A whole lot of other people did, too.

We planned to start with dinner at Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe next to the Fox. Unfortunately it was already crowded, so there was a 20 minute wait for a table. Fortunately, Make Westing across the street is now open, so we went over there to check it out while we waited. It still smells new, but the bar was crowded and both bocce courts were in use. They've got a good selection of beers on tap, and an interesting-looking cocktail list.

We headed back over to Rudy's for dinner, and although it was crowded and we were in a corner table we loved it. K had a portobello mushroom sandwich and I had a Asian crunchy tofu salad, and both were very tasty.

crunchy tofu salad at Rudy's

Each table is decorated with a unique collage of items. Ours had toy cars and other car-related items embedded in the plastic; the next one over had a variety of bottle caps. Rudy's isn't too fancy, and is very reasonably priced.

I thought I saw George of All About George and the Contra Costa Times on the other side of the restaurant (there aren't many hairdos like his), but it was crowded and I couldn't tell for sure. By the time we left, he was already gone so I still wasn't sure. But as we waited for the signal in front of the Fox, I saw Amy Gahran of contentious.com and CNN, and found out later they'd been out celebrating Amy's birthday. Happy Birthday, Amy!

the mighty Wurlitzer

We walked over to the Paramount, and joined hordes of other people filing in to see Dr. Strangelove. I knew Jonathan of TheDTO was planning to be there, as was @kenyaw, but given the crowd the odds of finding them seemed small. The main level was already filling up, so we headed up to the balcony. The view from up there is different, but still very good because the rows are very steep. And most of the Dec-o-Win winners were up there, too. Alas, we didn't win anything -- especially nice-sounding was the gift certificate for Plum. Part of the whole Paramount movie classics experience is what leads up to the movie itself: hearing the mighty Wurlitzer, hoping for a winning ticket during the Dec-o-Win game, watching the newsreel and the cartoon, and of course checking out the beautiful interior of the Paramount itself.

The movie itself is a lot of fun (now that the Cold War is safely over), and even more so with a big theater full of people who have all seen it before, too. People cheered when various names were listed in the opening credits, laughed during the many funny parts, and made the whole experience that much more fun.

Afterwards as we were leaving, I saw not only Jonathan from The DTO, but VSmoothe of A Better Oakland and @das88.

All in all, a hecka fun evening. The $5 for the Paramount movie classics is a great deal for all you get, and is definitely worth checking out if there's a movie playing you'd enjoy.

bits and pieces 5

Lots of restaurant openings and closings in this round of bits and pieces. And there's a new feature here at Our Oakland -- an events calendar. It's still a work in progress, but has the basic event info for upcoming events. There's a permanent link at the right.

The Oakland Tribune will be merged with other local papers like the Alameda Times-Star and rebranded as the Tribune. Zennie on Oakland Focus chimes in with his thoughts.

A new bike-friendly cafe called Arbor will be opening in the Temescal, according to the East Bay Express. If it's anything like Actual Cafe, I'll be loving it.

Faz Oakland will be taking over the former Caffe Verbena spot, according to InsideScoop SF.

I never made it there, and I guess a lot of people didn't. The Temescal restaurant SR24 is no more.

GrubStreet has the scoop on new bar Make Westing. They're almost done with the build out of the space.

Piedmont Ave. has a new restaurant, Local Cafe, focusing on local food.

A nice article in the Oakland Tribune about Rebuilding Together Oakland.

I love this pic from Dancing Under the Stars over at Oakland Daily Photo. Tonight (Friday) is the final dance of the 2011 season.

Feel some Oakland love over on the newly-remodeled 38th Notes blog.

If you haven't been that way recently, the street changes by the 12th Street Dam have started.

The National Brotherhood of Cyclists was in town the other week, and received a special blessing at the Cathedral of Christ the Light.

Nice write up on new patio at The Trappist.

Oakland Local has a nice article on the new shuttle service to and from Alameda. If you've ever tried to walk or bike through the tubes, you know why this is a great thing.

Finally, Montreal-style bagels are available in the East Bay from Oakland-based Beauty's Bagel Shop.



more pictures:

bits and pieces 5

Oakland Zoo

Another guest post by my lovely and talented wife, K. Her website for her spiritual direction practice can be found at Sleep on the Hearth. She also blogs on spiritual matters.

During the summer, members of the Oakland Zoo can enter the park at 9:30, half an hour before the kids and strollers and cell-phone talkers storm the place. This morning I took advantage of the early-entry perq of zoo membership and headed straight for the bat cage, which is similar to the Bat Cave, but...different. I didn't take any photos of the bats, because my view was blocked by the mesh of their enclosure, but I will simply say: wow. One of them ate a slice of watermelon while I watched, then stuffed the rind into his mouth, making a giant pooch in his cheek that he shifted from right to left as he munched. To get an idea of how cool these animals are, try a Google image search for island flying foxes.

I understand that people have qualms about keeping exotic animals in zoos, but many of the animals in this zoo were rescued out of much worse situations. Ting Ting, this Malaysian Sun Bear, was kept in a cage for the first ten years of her life until she was sent to the San Diego Zoo. Even after spending time in bear-friendly circumstances in San Diego and then in Oakland, she exhibited stress behaviors like pacing and circling. But the docent who spoke with me said that Ting Ting almost never paces or circles anymore. The three Oakland Sun Bears have the biggest Sun Bear enclosure in the country, and to my untrained eye, Ting looked pretty darn relaxed. (I hardly saw the other two, who are sisters. They were busy investigating a giant pile of logs and branches that their keepers added to the enclosure to keep them entertained.)

The two tigers at the Oakland Zoo "worked" in a circus until 1999. They were housed in 3' x 6' containers when they were not performing or training. Given the alternatives for some of these animals, I'll support the zoo any day.