‘You live in a cement box,’ my guest said, flustered by her lack of sufficient wit to otherwise describe my home. She was the
first to visit since I bought and moved into an old iron works factory , now lofts, inside
the Port of Oakland. There is no denying it—it's a cement box in a foundry just
around the corner from an EPA Superfund site. For the double down, it’s not
just Oakland, it’s West Oakland. West
Oakland, for those who have been living abroad for the last decade, has a national
reputation. Giving it the most positive spin I can, when it comes to murder
rates West Oakland has consistently out-performed every other major
metropolitan area of any size. Two years ago, when I told people I was selling
my house in a safe but dreary East Bay neighborhood to live in West Oakland,
they all had the same reaction. First, they would ask if I was kidding and,
when they realized I wasn’t, would take a big step back as though proximity to
such madness might result in contagion.
Now, to be clear, I don’t take the murder rate lightly. Or
the toxic top soil. Nor, for that matter, abysmally bad air quality due to the
Port of Oakland in whose rough lap I tenderly sit. I am aware of the people
living in their cars, always in the shadow of shipping containers stacked six
high and I know about the abandoned buildings across the street. I am not at all surprised by the people who
say ‘no’ to this outpost of civilization.
Very few of them, however, are still my friends—if they don’t get this
neighborhood, they don’t get me.
For their every one
of their no’s, here is a yes:
·
I awoke one morning to find the street blocked
off so that a crane, working with a helicopter, could load a 15-ton metal
sculpture onto a flatbed taking it to an installation in New York. People watched
all day as the piece was slowly dragged from the sculptor’s studio (big as an airline
hanger) and hoisted onto a pallet, strapped and bound like Prometheus, and then
loaded and secured. Small cart vendors showed up around noon selling hot dogs,
sandwiches, soda. It became a party.
·
One of the first entrepreneurs to stir each
morning is the local brew meister pedaling his bike up 3rd Street making
deliveries to local restaurants and bars. The bike is custom built to have a low
platform settled between the pedals and the front wheel—a mini flatbed—that can
hold a half dozen beer kegs. His long beard blows back over his shoulder as he
makes his rounds.
·
The days all three local coffee roasters fire the beans. The scent of hot, moist steam rising from vats
of boiling malt having some sort of misty, twiney amoeba sex with the nose-singing
flare of burning coffee makes me smile.
·
The restaurant causing the most excitement this
season is El Taco Bike—a mobile taco stand specializing in carne asada with salsa
verde. The bike is charming as all hell and I want it. If you grew up in an era
when boys delivered to doorsteps newspapers thrown from the front of their
bikes you’ll have no trouble envisioning the small, aluminum steam table
attached like a newspaper basket to the front of El Taco Bike. Pulled pork on
one side of the divided compartment and sauce on the other. Move to the back of
the bike for condiments—extra hot sauce, more salt, diced chilies—and napkins
arranged on a café table no bigger than a pizza stone welded to the back seat
where a child’s seat would go. The wee-est, little trash canister sits under
the table.
·
On summer nights the Oakland Opera sets up in an
old, converted warehouse just around the corner from me on 3rd across
from the hardware store and hydroponic outlet for people who grow their own
pot. On show nights, an enterprising young man operates a martini cart on the
sidewalk. He is usually joined by a hotdog vendor also working the pre-show
crowd and us casual diners/drinkers who happen by.
·
Love beer and you’re in heaven here. The stretch
of 3rd between Linden Street, home to Linden Street Brewery and Merchant’s
Saloon in the Produce District attracts an international crowd of beer connoisseurs
out to taste some of the most innovative flavorings made today. Head east to
catch International Beer just west of B’way on 3rd where bikers
catch the late afternoon sun on their leather and chains. Jog south to Jack
London Square and stop in at Heinhold’s Last Chance Salon, a bar The New York
Times has dubbed one of the ten best in the world. Built during the gold rush
days, it was where a young Jack London bent his elbow with grizzled sailors
from all over the world and learned how to tell a story. It is no bigger than a
single car garage and everything in it is uniformly the same color—table,
floor, walls, chairs, lamps, décor. It is like stepping into an old sepia-print
photograph; a different world.
·
The newly dredged Oakland Estuary allows the
Port of Oakland to take more and larger cargo traffic away from San Francisco
and other, West Coaster seaports. On any day, tug boats push and nudge and herd
cargo ships bigger than the high school I went to into berths where stevedores
high in the sky guide three story cranes over their holds to empty them out and
reload in a day. They work through the night and I have grown accustomed to the
light and noise.
·
The hottest venue in this part of town is a
triangle-shaped wedge under the 24 where it crosses I-880. A local man started
a garden there, eventually adding a stage and café tables. The whole thing is
maybe 2,000 square feet and holds only a few dozen people lucky enough to get a
seat when local bands play for free because they want to. This isn’t a government subsidized community
enrichment program. It is neighborhood people
getting together on summer nights and grilling hotdogs and holding their babies
on their laps, and watching the moon come up. It naturally attracts artists and
people and dogs and food trucks. Girls in summer dresses dance in the late
light, their shadows stretch long and thin; their sandals crunch on the gravel
as the girls twist and turn and laugh and call to their boyfriends.
·
Jack London Square is the Paris of California. All
the street art I could ever hope to find is here. A school of taggers working
from here up to Fruitvale is producing the most dynamic and beautifully
rendered paintings; gorgeous and beautifully crafted, these paintings are masterful.
Artists live and work here alongside
trades people and stevedores, truck drivers, musicians, bakers, meat cutters,
produce markets, painters, photographers, dancers, writers, and a strange boy
who stands silently in the Square weaving his hands around each other like
soaring birds in swarming flight—it is hypnotic and beautiful and utterly
useless except to delight.
