In Defense of Oakland
The following is my introduction to Oakland in Popular Memory, which I read an excerpt of in my Authors@Google talk.
When I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, I remember talking with a sorority girl at a party about where we grew up. She was from Orange County. I replied that I was born in Oakland, California, and I grew up in Alameda, Oakland, Berkeley, and Palo Alto.
She stared at me in disbelief. One word stood out to her.
“Oakland? Oh, we don’t go into Oakland.”
When I prodded her some more, she said that Oakland was so violent, and that there were so many murders, that her parents warned her never to go into Oakland. Eventually, I got her to admit that she goes to Zachary’s Pizza only a couple miles south of UC Berkeley and to Fentons Ice Creamery. But she insisted that she didn’t venture any further into Oakland than Fentons.
It was clear that the mere mention of “Oakland” triggered something of a fear response in her.
Her use of the word “into” was also very telling. In a sense, that one little word reflected not only her fear but many people’s ambivalence toward Oakland as well. It was as if the locales of Zachary’s and Fentons—upper middle class neighborhoods—were not part of Oakland but extensions of Berkeley, and that the idea of venturing any farther “into” Oakland was unfathomable.
This encounter has stayed with me because, for the first time, I began to consider Oakland through the eyes of an “outsider.” This encounter is representative of the many I’ve had since, and these misperceptions motivated me to offer a different narrative of Oakland. The Oakland I’ve grown up in has its challenges like any major city, but what stands out to me is the cultural renaissance happening in Oakland today. I’ve been privileged to have a front-row seat to see what’s been happening in Oakland, and I wrote Oakland in Popular Memory to collect my interviews with the people who know it best—musicians and writers from Oakland and those shaping its art scene.
Wanting to better understand the outsider’s perspective of Oakland, I wondered, why do even reputable outlets like the Discovery Channel air sensationalistic programming about Oakland? They have two shows called Gang Wars: Oakland and Gang Wars II: Oakland, which follow the Oakland Gang Task Force.
The first episode begins with a deep voice-over calling Oakland, California “ground zero in a new American war. Violent street gangs fight over drug turf, and the battle is only escalating.” Oakland is called a “war zone” and it’s compared to Iraq, adding to the already sensational tone. This gives viewers the impression that just below the surface, Oakland is fomenting with such violence, that at any moment all hell will break loose.
With this much negative press, it’s no wonder people are afraid to go into Oakland. Given the presuppositions and stereotypes that result from such portrayals it’s hard for visitors to experience the reality of what is presented before them because it clashes with the narrative they’ve internalized from countless news reports. People consuming this type of media go to Oakland expecting to find drive-by shootings, roving gangs toting AK-47s, as well as pimps, prostitutes, and race riots. However, people visiting Oakland are often surprised when they don’t see this, but instead find several avant-garde movements in art, music, fashion, urban farming, and local food.
Chinaka Hodge, an Oakland writer, whom I was fortunate to interview for Oakland in Popular Memory, writes about the perceptions of Oakland in her blog:
Hodge continues, setting the record straight about what Oakland is and what the city does best.
Hodge’s poetic description giving snapshots of various periods of Oakland’s history captures Oakland’s free-spirited character that is at once tough, artistic, and even sensitive—a character often misunderstood. But Oakland is unapologetic. After all it knows who it is: a strong city, that’s gracious and accepting of people from all economic and cultural backgrounds.
Oakland residents are resilient, free-spirited, and confident, qualities which keep the city at the cutting edge and help it forge trends in fashion, music, dance, or as Hodge puts it, making “ideas that power the world.” These ideas are indeed powerful as they go beyond individual expression and often speak to the collective soul of a generation or a group of people. Oakland mediates the production of art, language, and cultural innovation for the US and has produced some of the country’s top talent.
Despite only having 400,000 residents, several iconic cultural figures grew up in Oakland, including Gertrude Stein, Clint Eastwood, and Tupac Shakur. It’s a mecca for hip-hop, producing artists like MC Hammer, Too Short, Mac Dre, Keak da Sneak, Mistah F.A.B., and Del the Funky Homosapien. Oakland is also the birthplace of many rock groups and members of bands like: Green Day, REM, and Third Eye Blind. Oakland has a long history of producing leading jazz, funk, and R&B artists like Keisha Cole and En Vogue, and older bands like Tower of Power, The Pointer Sisters, and Tony! Toni! Toné! Although this book won’t cover these famous figures, Black Artists in Oakland by Jerry Thompson and Duane Deterville, does an excellent job at portraying Oakland’s arts heritage.
Why is the perception of Oakland at odds with its role as a culture creator? Gang Wars: Oakland features interviews from prison with Oakland’s most violent Latino gang members. They’re in orange jump suits, arms covered in tattoos, and on the show they talk about who they’ve shot or stabbed and how they won’t hesitate to use violence again if they have to defend their honor.
These violent images reinforce what Oakland author Ishmael Reed calls the “If it bleeds, it leads” style of reporting on Oakland. In his book Blues City: A Walk in Oakland, Reed criticizes how the press fixates on violence in Oakland while consistently neglecting much of Oakland’s vibrant cultural happenings. In fact, mainstream media often portrays West Oakland as a landscape similar to the Grand Theft Auto San Andreas video game, overrun with gangsters and drug addicts.
However, the city is bustling with activity from the annual Life is Living Festival in DeFremery Park, the Oakland dance group Turf Feinz dancing on streetcorners in videos made famous by Yak Films, and many incredible food joints like Bakesale Betty, where people line up for half a block on Saturday afternoons to get her famous fried chicken sandwiches, and sit down to eat them at ironing boards repurposed as tables.
Line outside Bakesale Betty for her famous fried chicken sandwiches
The local food movement spans from fine dining experiences like Commis, run by Oakland-native James Syhabout, which earned Oakland its first Michelin Star in 2009. To people growing their own food in their yard in an urban farming movement led by Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City and co-author of The Essential Urban Farmer with Willow Rosenthal.
Ishmael Reed wrote in Oakland Rhapsody: The Secret Soul of an American Downtown in 1995 that “Oakland is America’s best kept secret.” Well, the secret is out. And the media is starting to take notice: The New York Times ranked Oakland as one of the top-5 places to visit in the world in 2012.
The New York Times Travel section gives credit to Oakland native chef James Syhabout, but it also points out that Oakland is now worth visiting because famous San Francisco chefs have decided to set up shop in Oakland. But it’s not only such entrepreneurial transplants that make Oakland worth visiting.
Those in the know would say the media’s recognition of Oakland’s thriving cultural realm was long overdue, especially given the city’s growth spurt in the art, music, fashion, and literary scenes in the last decade. In the last few years alone, over a dozen new art galleries have popped up in Oakland’s Northgate-Waverly district, previously known for its auto repair shops and warehouses. Such a renaissance no doubt draws inspiration from Oakland’s rich history as a cultural destination since the late 19th century, hosting the likes of Gertrude Stein, Jack London, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and John Muir, to name a few. More recently, Oakland gave birth to the Hyphy Movement, the Scraper Bike movement, and turf dancing, while Mac Dre, E-40, and Keak da Sneak invented much of the hip-hop language used internationally today.
Several local news sources have sprung up in recent years to document this renaissance in art collectives, local food movement, urban farming, and music, including Oakland Local, Oakland North, The Bay Citizen, GoBanter, Thizzler, and 38th Notes.
The Bay Area’s indie and underground scenes are constantly “studies in surprise.” They’ve historically been engines of innovation, creating new musical styles and language. What’s happening on the ground today in the Bay may take months or even years to become “mainstream.”
Novelist William Gibson said “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” In the Bay Area, the future in music and language is already here. Each artist I interviewed in Oakland in Popular Memory is innovating in his or her own way. You can listen to the future of music through these artists. These twelve established and up-and-coming artists give perspectives on Oakland different from the usual media narrative about the city. What I admire about these artists is how they’ve kept their authenticity as they’ve grown in their music and how they champion the Oakland quality of having a “knack for finding the next.”
And as for the sorority girl at the beginning, I hope she visited Oakland while she was at UC Berkeley. If not, she sure missed out on a lot.
---
By, Matt Werner, author of Oakland in Popular Memory: Interviews with 12 cutting-edge artists from Oakland and beyond
In Defense of Oakland
When I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, I remember talking with a sorority girl at a party about where we grew up. She was from Orange County. I replied that I was born in Oakland, California, and I grew up in Alameda, Oakland, Berkeley, and Palo Alto.
She stared at me in disbelief. One word stood out to her.
“Oakland? Oh, we don’t go into Oakland.”
When I prodded her some more, she said that Oakland was so violent, and that there were so many murders, that her parents warned her never to go into Oakland. Eventually, I got her to admit that she goes to Zachary’s Pizza only a couple miles south of UC Berkeley and to Fentons Ice Creamery. But she insisted that she didn’t venture any further into Oakland than Fentons.
It was clear that the mere mention of “Oakland” triggered something of a fear response in her.
Her use of the word “into” was also very telling. In a sense, that one little word reflected not only her fear but many people’s ambivalence toward Oakland as well. It was as if the locales of Zachary’s and Fentons—upper middle class neighborhoods—were not part of Oakland but extensions of Berkeley, and that the idea of venturing any farther “into” Oakland was unfathomable.
This encounter has stayed with me because, for the first time, I began to consider Oakland through the eyes of an “outsider.” This encounter is representative of the many I’ve had since, and these misperceptions motivated me to offer a different narrative of Oakland. The Oakland I’ve grown up in has its challenges like any major city, but what stands out to me is the cultural renaissance happening in Oakland today. I’ve been privileged to have a front-row seat to see what’s been happening in Oakland, and I wrote Oakland in Popular Memory to collect my interviews with the people who know it best—musicians and writers from Oakland and those shaping its art scene.
Wanting to better understand the outsider’s perspective of Oakland, I wondered, why do even reputable outlets like the Discovery Channel air sensationalistic programming about Oakland? They have two shows called Gang Wars: Oakland and Gang Wars II: Oakland, which follow the Oakland Gang Task Force.
The first episode begins with a deep voice-over calling Oakland, California “ground zero in a new American war. Violent street gangs fight over drug turf, and the battle is only escalating.” Oakland is called a “war zone” and it’s compared to Iraq, adding to the already sensational tone. This gives viewers the impression that just below the surface, Oakland is fomenting with such violence, that at any moment all hell will break loose.
With this much negative press, it’s no wonder people are afraid to go into Oakland. Given the presuppositions and stereotypes that result from such portrayals it’s hard for visitors to experience the reality of what is presented before them because it clashes with the narrative they’ve internalized from countless news reports. People consuming this type of media go to Oakland expecting to find drive-by shootings, roving gangs toting AK-47s, as well as pimps, prostitutes, and race riots. However, people visiting Oakland are often surprised when they don’t see this, but instead find several avant-garde movements in art, music, fashion, urban farming, and local food.
Chinaka Hodge, an Oakland writer, whom I was fortunate to interview for Oakland in Popular Memory, writes about the perceptions of Oakland in her blog:
“I lived on the East Coast for a few years. Tell a New Yorker you’re from Cali, and they’ll assume, 8 times out of 10, that you’re from Los Angeles. I live in LA now. Tell the average Angeleno that you’re from up North, and they assume San Francisco. Oakland is constantly upstaged, asterisked and misunderstood. In my travels, I still field questions about the 1996 Ebonics debate; I talk about a hoop squad that is more than Latrell’s hands around someone’s neck; I remind that we are more than the riots that followed the Raiders’ loss at the 2003 Superbowl.”
Hodge continues, setting the record straight about what Oakland is and what the city does best.
“In short, Oakland is Proud because no one else will be proud for us. We exercise a rich cultural legacy, a policy of introspection and a knack for finding the next. The Town is a study in surprise, in artistic innovation, in movements foreign to the rest of the planet. We are the birthplace of leather jackets rocked with berets at free breakfast, where Skyline High School taught Tom Hanks to act, the original terminus for all Pullman Porter activity, where Walt Disney visited a theme park near a lake and began drafting ideas for Disneyland. Here, we make ideas that power the world. We do what no one else does, and we do it well.”
Hodge’s poetic description giving snapshots of various periods of Oakland’s history captures Oakland’s free-spirited character that is at once tough, artistic, and even sensitive—a character often misunderstood. But Oakland is unapologetic. After all it knows who it is: a strong city, that’s gracious and accepting of people from all economic and cultural backgrounds.
Oakland residents are resilient, free-spirited, and confident, qualities which keep the city at the cutting edge and help it forge trends in fashion, music, dance, or as Hodge puts it, making “ideas that power the world.” These ideas are indeed powerful as they go beyond individual expression and often speak to the collective soul of a generation or a group of people. Oakland mediates the production of art, language, and cultural innovation for the US and has produced some of the country’s top talent.
Despite only having 400,000 residents, several iconic cultural figures grew up in Oakland, including Gertrude Stein, Clint Eastwood, and Tupac Shakur. It’s a mecca for hip-hop, producing artists like MC Hammer, Too Short, Mac Dre, Keak da Sneak, Mistah F.A.B., and Del the Funky Homosapien. Oakland is also the birthplace of many rock groups and members of bands like: Green Day, REM, and Third Eye Blind. Oakland has a long history of producing leading jazz, funk, and R&B artists like Keisha Cole and En Vogue, and older bands like Tower of Power, The Pointer Sisters, and Tony! Toni! Toné! Although this book won’t cover these famous figures, Black Artists in Oakland by Jerry Thompson and Duane Deterville, does an excellent job at portraying Oakland’s arts heritage.
Why is the perception of Oakland at odds with its role as a culture creator? Gang Wars: Oakland features interviews from prison with Oakland’s most violent Latino gang members. They’re in orange jump suits, arms covered in tattoos, and on the show they talk about who they’ve shot or stabbed and how they won’t hesitate to use violence again if they have to defend their honor.
These violent images reinforce what Oakland author Ishmael Reed calls the “If it bleeds, it leads” style of reporting on Oakland. In his book Blues City: A Walk in Oakland, Reed criticizes how the press fixates on violence in Oakland while consistently neglecting much of Oakland’s vibrant cultural happenings. In fact, mainstream media often portrays West Oakland as a landscape similar to the Grand Theft Auto San Andreas video game, overrun with gangsters and drug addicts.
However, the city is bustling with activity from the annual Life is Living Festival in DeFremery Park, the Oakland dance group Turf Feinz dancing on streetcorners in videos made famous by Yak Films, and many incredible food joints like Bakesale Betty, where people line up for half a block on Saturday afternoons to get her famous fried chicken sandwiches, and sit down to eat them at ironing boards repurposed as tables.
Line outside Bakesale Betty for her famous fried chicken sandwiches
The local food movement spans from fine dining experiences like Commis, run by Oakland-native James Syhabout, which earned Oakland its first Michelin Star in 2009. To people growing their own food in their yard in an urban farming movement led by Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City and co-author of The Essential Urban Farmer with Willow Rosenthal.
Oakland: The secret is out
Ishmael Reed wrote in Oakland Rhapsody: The Secret Soul of an American Downtown in 1995 that “Oakland is America’s best kept secret.” Well, the secret is out. And the media is starting to take notice: The New York Times ranked Oakland as one of the top-5 places to visit in the world in 2012.
The New York Times Travel section gives credit to Oakland native chef James Syhabout, but it also points out that Oakland is now worth visiting because famous San Francisco chefs have decided to set up shop in Oakland. But it’s not only such entrepreneurial transplants that make Oakland worth visiting.
Those in the know would say the media’s recognition of Oakland’s thriving cultural realm was long overdue, especially given the city’s growth spurt in the art, music, fashion, and literary scenes in the last decade. In the last few years alone, over a dozen new art galleries have popped up in Oakland’s Northgate-Waverly district, previously known for its auto repair shops and warehouses. Such a renaissance no doubt draws inspiration from Oakland’s rich history as a cultural destination since the late 19th century, hosting the likes of Gertrude Stein, Jack London, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and John Muir, to name a few. More recently, Oakland gave birth to the Hyphy Movement, the Scraper Bike movement, and turf dancing, while Mac Dre, E-40, and Keak da Sneak invented much of the hip-hop language used internationally today.
Several local news sources have sprung up in recent years to document this renaissance in art collectives, local food movement, urban farming, and music, including Oakland Local, Oakland North, The Bay Citizen, GoBanter, Thizzler, and 38th Notes.
The Bay Area’s indie and underground scenes are constantly “studies in surprise.” They’ve historically been engines of innovation, creating new musical styles and language. What’s happening on the ground today in the Bay may take months or even years to become “mainstream.”
Novelist William Gibson said “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” In the Bay Area, the future in music and language is already here. Each artist I interviewed in Oakland in Popular Memory is innovating in his or her own way. You can listen to the future of music through these artists. These twelve established and up-and-coming artists give perspectives on Oakland different from the usual media narrative about the city. What I admire about these artists is how they’ve kept their authenticity as they’ve grown in their music and how they champion the Oakland quality of having a “knack for finding the next.”
And as for the sorority girl at the beginning, I hope she visited Oakland while she was at UC Berkeley. If not, she sure missed out on a lot.
---
By, Matt Werner, author of Oakland in Popular Memory: Interviews with 12 cutting-edge artists from Oakland and beyond
