Chinatown StreetFest

Looked like people were having fun at the 2011 Chinatown StreetFest last weekend. After 3 walking tours in 2 days, I was pretty tired, but there was even more energy in Chinatown than usual.








More pictures from the StreetFest:


more great photos and coverage by Reginald James.

walking tour: Women's History

Saturday after the West Oakland walking tour, I headed over to city hall for an Oakland Heritage Alliance walking tour on women's history in Oakland. 2011 marks the 100th year since women got the right to vote in California.

Ina Coolbrith

One of the first women we heard about was Ina Coolbrith. She was the niece of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Her family came to California and was led over the Sierra Nevada by African American mountain man Jim Beckwourth, with Ina riding on Beckwourth's horse. Ina is probably best known as a poet, and was the first California Poet Laureate. But she was also the first librarian of the Oakland Free Library (the 2nd public library in California), and befriended and mentored 10-year-old Jack London (he called her his "literary mother") and also mentored a young Isadora Duncan. Alas, the affections of Isadora's father for Ina may have led to the breakup of his marriage. Ina was also an honorary member of the Bohemian Club, had her portrait taken in her later years by a young Ansel Adams, and was friends with Joaquin Miller (and helped him gain global fame.) Ina is buried in Mt. View Cemetery.

We also walked by the 7-story tall "Mitzvah, the Jewish Cultural Experience" mural. Amongst the people pictured are Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. I've blogged about Gertrude Stein before, so I won't repeat it here, but she was a remarkable woman. The mural is definitely worth checking out, but you need to be on foot to see it -- the mural is visible looking south on northbound Franklin between 14th and 15th. The mural also shows the dome of Temple Sinai, featured in the Churches and Temples walking tour. For better pictures of the mural, see Oaktown Art.

YWCA building

Nearby we admired the YWCA building designed by Julia Morgan. It was one of 17 YWCA buildings she designed around the west. Morgan is probably best known for designing Hearst Castle, but locally she designed El Campanil at Mills College, College Avenue Presbyterian, and an array of other buildings. Her name has come up during the "Borax" Smith and Churches and Temples walking tours, and doubtless will again. Julia Morgan is buried in Mt. View Cemetery.

Women of some means formed clubs and societies to further their educations and impact the world around them, as well as for social reasons. One such club was the Ebell Society, formed in Oakland in 1876, and named for Dr. Adrian Ebell. We saw the former location of the Ebell Society clubhouse on Harrison. Not far from that is the former Women's City Club of Oakland, now the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts. It was built in 1928, and designed by Miller & Warnecke, and housed various women's clubs. There was a surge in the number of clubs after national suffrage was passed.

Pardee House

Women got the right to vote in California in 1911, and nationally in 1919. The first woman registered to vote in California was Clara Elizabeth Chan Lee, and was the first Chinese American woman to register to vote in the U.S. But it's interesting to note that suffrage in California didn't pass in Oakland and San Francisco, but was carried by Berkeley and the farm counties.

We then walked west, past Lincoln Square, to Pardee House, past Preservation Park, past the First Unitarian Church of Oakland (where Isadora Duncan gave her first dance recital in 1890), and finished at the African American Museum and Library of Oakland (which the Ebell Society helped raise funds for).

some names from the tour:

• Ina Coolbrith
• Gertrude Stein
• Julia Morgan
• Isadora Duncan
• Ida Louise Jackson - education and public-health pioneer, first African American to teach in Oakland schools
• Clara Elizabeth Chan Lee
• Dorothy Ng - started a hospitality hall for Asian soldiers during WWII
• March Fong Eu
• Delilah Beasley - first African American woman to be published in a major US paper
• Jane Sather
• Madeline and Helen Pardee

more on Ina Coolbrith:
Wikipedia entry
"When the Grass Shall Cover Me" by Ina Coolbrith
Songs from the Golden Gate (free ebook)

more pictures:

women's history walking tour

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.