National Night Out in West Oakland

Under the relentlessly streaming axis of the I-980 and HWY 24 freeways in an industrial wasteland marked by abandoned cars, hobo camps, and a CalTrans staging lot where Castro intersects with 7th is a small triangular plot of land that is maybe a thousand square feet. The tip of the wedge points west to San Francisco. Its broad base rests against West Oakland, a neighborhood that enjoys an international reputation for senseless murders and random violence. The sidewalks are impassable—overgrown with weeds and strewn with windblown trash. Discarded veins of electrical tubing stripped of copper by thieves who sell it on the black market knot the mess together.
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On the evening of August 2, 2011—National Night Out—my neighbors and I met there to cook hotdogs, drink beers and listen to exquisite live music supplied by local bands. Those who brought their own instruments joined in as their muse dictated. About a year ago, Garden Hortica transformed this vacant, filthy lot into a multi-use urban garden and community gathering space with astonishing success.
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NNO, National Night Out, is the night Americans are encouraged to meet their neighbors and build community by talking and eating with each other, I could think of no better place to be. Young people not that far from their college graduation day, eternal hippies, and children mingled with people like me who have left the ‘old country’ of youth and latched onto a scene that reminds them of early passions for art, music, spontaneity, and the hip crowds that tune in to these things and the long-time residents who could never afford to leave their dilapidated or public housing no matter what was going on around them.
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Often, on evenings when the moon is a bright fingernail in the pale blue western sky and the back bay shines with the last of the mid-summer night’s dreamy sunlight, magic blesses my neighborhood with Shakespearian charm. Young families with children whose feet struck straight out from the chairs they sat in, ate weenies and chips or the better fare of the big, red tandoori truck that came and stayed. People opened wine and then left the bottles on the community table for others to enjoy. Some of the older women came out of their projects apartments bearing platters of cupcakes.
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We all enjoyed the small but elegant stage where a blues band comprised of a Chinese American on lead guitar, a Latino on ukulele, an African American on trumpet, and a Vietnamese guy on base belted out the American songbook to brilliant effect. Impromptu drummers sat close to the stage and pounded out irresistible rhythms as evening settled on our lot and the moon rose with the scent of chicken cooking in the tandoori oven.
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I love my True Grit neighborhood. Contrary to what the media has conditioned you to believe about West Oakland, this is a small neighborhood populated by those who care passionately about its past, present, and future. Let New York have its Highline. This is a place with a history and a soul. And one-year-old Garden Hortica, the Little Engine That Did, beat out more than two hundred other exhibitors at the 2011 San Francisco Flower and Garden Show to win the award for outstanding visual presentation.
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