Skin Deep in West Oakland

‘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 3^rd 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 3^rd 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 3^rd 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 3^rd 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.