"There" photo by Joe Sciarrillo How can one city be both the object of praise and blame in the same publication? That’s what happened in Sunday’s New York Times . The Travel section , in a piece subtitled “New restaurants and bars beckon amid the grit,” ranked Oakland, California as the 5 th top place to visit in the world in 2012. The same $6 newspaper published the article Shootings Soar in Oakland; Children Often the Victims in its Bay Area edition. The article gives the sad details that in 2011 over 2,000 people were victims of gun violence and 110 people died from homicide in Oakland. To further complicate things, as I write this, Gang Wars: Oakland, Part II is on TV. How am I to reconcile Oakland being celebrated as one of the top-5 places to travel in the world in 2012, while at the same time being called a gang war zone? I’ve been reading a lot and attending events all over Oakland to research for the essays that accompany the in...
