walking tour: Chinatown with Mayor Quan and Annalee Allen

Sunday was a special version of the city's downtown walking tour of Chinatown, for a late celebration of the lunar New Year. I've been on the tour of Chinatown before, so I was expecting I'd only learn a few new things. Instead, Mayor Jean Quan not only came on the tour, she co-led it with Annalee Allen, the director of the city's walking tour program. While we went many of the same places and talked about the same people, Mayor Quan had a different and often personal experience of them.

We started in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza, which is home to various shops and restaurants as well as the Asian branch of the Oakland Public Library and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. Mayor Quan told us about Chinese family associations and early organizations to help Chinese immigrants, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the experiences of her own ancestors.

After winding around past the Asian Resource Center building, a quick stop for some fresh from the oven fortune cookies, and a look at the Chinatown Dragon Mural, we came to Lincoln Square Park. Normally it's a busy, vibrant place, but because of the intermittent rain, it was empty. We checked out one of the markers for the 10,000 Steps project, a Chinese herb shop, and then we were back to our start. A great tour, and nice to have a different perspective on it—there's always more to learn.

More pictures from the walk:

Oakland Heritage: Redevelopment and the Revitalization of Downtown

If you're new to Our Oakland, note that the links below marked with the oak tree logo will take you to the corresponding article on the Oakland Wiki where you can read more about the topic. Just be sure to come back—it's easy to start following trails through Oakland's history on the wiki.

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Sunday was another Oakland Heritage Alliance walking tour, focused on different redevelopment projects and the effects on downtown. The tour was led by Jeff Chew, who was the project manager for redevelopment of the Fox Theatre and numerous other projects in Oakland. He was assisted by local historian and columnist Annalee Allen and several other OHA volunteers.

The tour started in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza in Chinatown. One thing that was notable about the area on a Sunday was how active it is. It was noticeably quieter everywhere else we went later. Jeff pointed out several things the average person may not notice. One is the 3rd-floor roof garden that's set aside for residents; from below all you can see is a hedge. Another thing (which contrasted strongly with some other redevelopment projects we saw later) is the presence of retail around the perimeter of the area.

From there we went through one of Chinatown's "scramble" crosswalks and across Broadway into Old Oakland. Although the area is hopping much of the week, it was quiet on Sunday, and it was quiet for many years. From after WWII until the 1970s it became increasingly rundown and desolate. Architects Glenn and Rich Storek saw it in the late 1960s and saw the potential. They were better architects than they were developers, and ended up going bankrupt. As a result, it took almost 15 years for the work to be completed, and even longer for the area to start to pick up again. We walked past Swan's Market and saw a couple of residential developments of varying degrees of success.

We walked past the Oakland Convention Center. From a design standpoint, it's a classic example of what not to do. The perimeter is hard and uninviting. The only ways to interact with much of the building is to avoid getting hit by cars entering or exiting the parking structure. It's also apparently too small for a lot of uses. And it closed off Washington Street which used to go through to the city hall plaza.

Then it was up to City Center. It is part of a larger pedestrian mall along what was 13th Street, which extends from Preservation Park, through the Federal Building, all the way to Broadway. Although it has lots of retail, almost all of it was closed on Sunday, and so it was very quiet.

From there we walked towards uptown, stopping in the Oakland Ice Center to check it out and cool off a bit. Across the street is some successful affordable housing, Fox Courts. Around the corner is one of the best-known redevelopment projects in Oakland, the Fox Theatre.

We headed back towards our start for a special treat—a chance to go up in the Tribune Tower. It's one of my favorite buildings in Oakland, so I was very excited. Led by building owner Tom Henderson, we took the elevator up to the 20th floor. Tom led us through a small conference room to the balcony which is just behind the clocks. As you might expect, there are great views all over Oakland from there. Plus a chance to see lots of downtown from above.

After the tour was over, many of us went to the Tribune Tavern for a late lunch. As if I hadn't had enough Oakland history goodness on the tour, it turned out I was seated next to the grandson of "Borax" Smith, a major figure in Oakland history. I showed Stephen and and his wife the entries we have on the Oakland Wiki for Smith and for the magnificent Smith estate, Arbor Villa. I was so excited I forgot to show them the entries for Smith's first wife, Mary ("Mollie") Thompson or Smith's second wife (i.e., Stephen's grandmother), Evelyn Ellis, never mind the Home for Friendless Girls, the Key System, the Claremont Hotel, or any of the other two dozen "Borax" Smith-related pages.

Next Saturday is an OHA tour of Oakland Airport's North Field, and Sunday is the final OHA tour of the summer, Historic Downtown Churches. Check out the Oakland Heritage Alliance events page for more details.

Lots more pictures from the tour:

Oakland Wiki Jane's Walk

Sunday a group met near the Lake Merritt BART station for a Jane's Walk. Jane Jacobs was an urbanist, activist and author. She's probably best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities which argued that urban renewal did not respect the needs of most city dwellers. Each year since her death in 2007, people around the world gather for walks in her memory.

This walk was led by Himy, an Oakland Wiki contributor and neighbor of Jane Jacobs from Toronto. Although he lives in Toronto, he's been visiting family in the Bay Area and organized this Jane's Walk. He's been exploring Oakland and sharing his experiences from working on the Toronto Wiki. It was interesting to hear the viewpoint of a relative newcomer, albeit one who is an unabashed fan of Oakland in general.

It was fitting that we started our walk at Madison Square Park near Lake Merritt BART. The current location of the park between Jackson and Madison was not the original location. The park was originally between Madison and Oak, but was a victim of urban renewal. The park was moved and BART headquarters was built in 1971, and numerous residents were displaced by that and other urban renewal projects in the area.

From there we walked to Harrison Square, to view the site of the former Harrison Railroad Park. The park was dedicated in 1967, and came about in large part because a city council member, Howard Rilea, was a former railroad engineer, and championed the idea of a railroad history park. The central display was a huge Southern Pacific steam locomotive, and other displays were planned. At some point the railroad park was closed, probably because of liability concerns, and the locomotive removed. Now the park holds a Chinese senior center and garden.

We walked through Chinatown to the headquarters of the Oakland Police Department. Then we wandered through part of Chinatown and back to Broadway to DeLauer's Newstand, which has been a fixture in Oakland since 1907.

Further up Broadway we checked out The Realty Syndicate building which now houses Oaklandish, amongst other things. Across the street we checked out the Latham Square Fountain. It was erected in 1913 as a memorial for James R. Latham and Henrietta Marshall Latham by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Continuing along Broadway, we walked past the former location of Sweet's Ballroom, the gorgeous Paramount Theatre, and the Water Writes mural. On Grand, we checked out the Great Wall of Oakland, the parklet outside Farley's East, and continued to the Cathedral of Christ the Light.

We walked along the lake to the end of our tour at the Lake Merritt Hotel. Much of the group was headed back towards Lake Merritt BART, so we walked together past the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California. The building has an unusual architecture, not because of its current use, but because it was originally a Masonic Lodge.

All in all, a great walk—thanks to Himy for organizing it. We need to make sure Jane's Walks happen every year in Oakland!

Lots more pictures from Sunday's walk:

signs: Cafe Sahara

On the edge of Chinatown next to 880 is this rusted sign. The neon is in surprisingly good shape, as are the numerous small bulbs around the edge. I can't find any info about Cafe Sahara, though, just other pictures of the sign and graffiti-covered building. One photo mentions a fire in 2004 and $200,000 worth of marijuana plants that were discovered, but that's about it. Anybody know more about it?
update: See the comment from Oakland Daily Photo
update: See the entry at Oakland Wiki where @policyhobo has been investigating the Cafe Sahara story.

10,000 Steps: A Profile of Four Squares

I've written about the 10,000 Steps project before when Oakland Urban Paths hooked up with the project artists to learn about it during a walk. The 10,000 Steps project explores Oakland's historic parks and marks points of interest around downtown Oakland. There's an accompanying audio tour, with interviews of different people in the neighborhoods and explanations by local historians.

Sue Mark

Artists Sue Mark and Bruce Douglas researched Oakland history, interviewed people, and spent countless hours designing and placing fifty sidewalk markers around 4 of the 5 remaining parks from the 1800s. While 2 of the original 7 parks are gone, many of the historical points of interest are still around, and the husband and wife team captured stories of people who know and lived the history of those areas.

A short film was made about the project, 10,000 Steps: A Portrait of Four Squares. On Friday, July 20th at 8pm, there will be a showing of the award-winning film, along with a question and answer period with Sue Mark and Bruce Douglas after the showing. The free event will be held at Swan's Cohousing in Old Oakland, and you can register for it here.

The event is also a fundraiser for their next project, Mãos dos Sete Ofícios (Hands That Do All), which will take them to Portugal. As with their earlier projects, they'll be putting people's stories and history into an unusual format, in this case hand portraits of craftsmen, farmers and those who still work with their hands.

Bruce Douglas

Read more about 10,000 Steps and the artists on Grass Routes Travel and listen to a podcast interview with Sue Mark. Serena talks with her about art, history, food security and more. And come see the film on Friday evening!

Oakland Urban Paths: Jane's Walk

Sunday, 22 people gathered for a special Oakland Urban Paths walk to honor the work of writer, activist and urban planner Jane Jacobs. The walk was the flattest OUP walk I've been on, with only one stairway and a gentle grade down to Lake Merritt. But it was a great walk as we hooked up with the people behind three very interesting art and history projects around Oakland, and we couldn't have asked for better weather.

The group met in front of the mural on the Key System headquarters building on 11th Street near Broadway. Many of the stairs and paths in Oakland were built to connect people in different neighborhoods to the Key System, so it was an appropriate starting point.

10,000 Steps

10,000 Steps marker

First we heard about the 10,000 Steps project which explores Oakland's historic parks and marks points of interest around downtown Oakland. There's an accompanying audio tour, with interviews of different people in the neighborhoods and explanations by local historians. Artists Sue Mark and Bruce Douglas researched Oakland history, interviewed people, and spent countless hours designing and placing fifty sidewalk markers around the 5 remaining parks from the 1800s. While 2 of the original 7 parks are gone, many of the historical points of interest are still around, and the husband and wife team captured stories of people who know and lived the history of those areas.

For example, marker #26 outside the Hong Lok Senior Center in Lincoln Square reads:

Dorothy Eng's Oak-Chi Center
blossomed Chinese daughters' worlds
"Our soldiers had somewhere to go."
Hospitality & Friendship
1943

If you listen to the oral history for that marker, Dorothy Eng and Beatrice Wong talk about Chinese American soldiers coming home on leave from WWII and having no place to go—they weren't welcome at the USO. Eng, Wong and others formed the Chinese Young Women's Society, and made their own version of the USO there. We also learned from Sue that the bricks for the Hong Lok center came from an older iteration of Oakland High School which were repurposed for the building that was used as the clubhouse.

Given the limited space for text in each 10,000 Steps marker, the text is frequently like a haiku, expressing a complex idea in a few words. Others, like the marker outside the Oakland Museum of California have one word: transform. But reflecting the history of Oakland, 'transform' is written in Ohlone, Spanish, English and Chinese. Although the markers are numbered, the tour is designed so that you can do all of it or part of it or just one.

Once Upon A Time, Happily Ever After

One Upon a Time...

From the OMCA, we walked the short distance past Camron-Stanford House to Lake Merritt. There we met with Scott Oliver, the lead artist of the Once Upon A Time, Happily Ever After project. The project is centered on Lake Merritt and title phrase comes from the sign outside Children's Fairyland. It's a three-part project: audio tour, interpretive signs, and Lake Merritt souvenirs created by local students and artists.

There are four interpretive signs around the lake. The sign between Camron-Stanford House and the Lake Chalet shows points of interest around the lake, and labels the various neighborhoods. Another sign explores the watershed, showing the depths of the lake and indicating where storm drains feed in to the lake. As part of the project, 62 markers were embedded in the walkway around the lake showing the location of the drains. Another component is Lake Merritt souvenirs created by local students and artists. Scott was sporting a t-shirt that combines drawings by different students of the iconic lampposts around the lake. That shirt and other items are available from the Once Upon A Time web store.

The third component of the project is an audio tour. The tour begins at the Rotary Nature Center. On the audio tour you'll hear from supervising naturalist Stephanie Benevidez. She started there as an animal keeper in 1974 taking care of the center's small zoo, which included wolves, raccoon dogs (from Oakland's sister city, Fukuoka, Japan), porcupine, skunk, and a number of birds. These days all the live animals are outside, and Stephanie is the last full-time employee, but the mission of the nature center hasn't changed. You'll hear more about the goals at the second stop near the five islands that provide a safe roosting spot for hundreds of birds.

Of 21 planned stops, seven have been completed, and Scott is hoping to have the rest of the audio tour stops completed by September. At the other stops you'll hear about the history of Lake Merritt and Oakland from a wide variety of people, as well as a wide range of music and sounds: an Ohlone song; honking Canada geese; the bells at Our Lady of Lourdes Church. (NOTE: the audio files are currently offline, but Scott is working on restoring them.)

Cleveland Cascade

Cleveland Cascade

After a brisk walk around the south end of the lake, we stopped at our final point (and #5 on the Once Upon a Time audio tour), the Cleveland Cascade. There we heard from Jim Ratliff and Barbara Newcombe of the Friends of the Cleveland Cascade about the re-discovery of the cascade and the plans to restore it. Based on photos from the 1930s, it was originally an amazing structure. Designed by landscape architect Howard Gilkey, it had 3 levels of 7 steps each. Each step had a bowl that made a curved sheet of pouring water. At each side were shell-shaped brackets, behind which were lights running through the colors of the rainbow.

By the 1950s, the cascade had fallen into disrepair. Some time after that it was buried completely. In 2004, a group worked to clean up the park which was then full of nasty stuff, as Barbara said. Jim and others worked to uncover the pools of the cascade. Since then, the park has been restored, and become one of the busiest little parks in Oakland. The Friends of the Cleveland Cascade has raised funds and replicated the bowls and shells, and are now trying to raise additional money to install plumbing and lighting and fully restore the cascade. As a step towards that, they had LED lighting installed under the handrails which helps illuminate the steps. That's been in place for only a short while, but I'm looking forward to seeing it.

That was the end of the directed part of the tour, and people returned to our starting point by various routes. Thanks to everyone who turned out for the walk. Special thanks to Paul for leading the walk, and to Sue, Bruce, Scott, Jim and Barbara for sharing about their various projects. And thanks to Annalee Allen who publicized the event in a recent column. Sorry I couldn't make it to your Jane's Walk in the afternoon!

More pictures from our walk:


Related links:

• 10,000 Steps Project
• Once Upon A Time, Happily Ever After Project
• Cleveland Cascade
• Jane Jacobs (Wikipedia)
• Annalee Allen's article about the senior centers (Oakland Tribune)
• 12th Street Project blog
• downtown walking tour of Chinatown

All the walkers we saw with CEID t-shirts were part of a walk-a-thon for the Center for Early Intervention on Deafness.

Our route in Google Maps:

View Oakland Urban Paths: 2012 Jane's Walk in a larger map

signs: Hotel Milton

Hotel Milton

Not a great sign, but notable because the tubes are still intact and it's a sign I hadn't seen before, despite having passed it many times. It's on a corner near the brass EBMUD fire hydrant, at 11th and Webster. What other interesting signs are still out there in Oakland for me to discover? (see the signs map for ones I know about)

bits and pieces 7

The big news that has everyone atwitter is that Oakland was #5 in the New York Time's "45 places to go in 2012". Even @JerryBrownGov tweeted about it. Those of us who live here already know it, but it's nice to see a mainstream publication giving some positive press, too. With restaurants like Plum, Bocanova, Boot and Shoe Service, and more opening all the time, plus great music, amazing weather, and a diverse, wonderful population, what's not to love? Check out Monteskewed's Top 10 Reasons Why He Loves Oakland. For a nuanced response to the NYT article, check out 38th Notes. Late addition: also check out the response on examiner.com

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Also in the great-to-see-its-about-time category is a report in the Tribune that West Oakland's 7th Street district is going to get a blues walk of fame. The area was once home to music locales like Esther's Orbit Room, which hosted legends like Billie Holiday, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, and BB King. So it's nice to see the area getting some recognition.

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There are a variety of restaurant openings and and one closing. Oakland North reports the Silver Dragon in Chinatown is going to close, and it will become an Asian health services clinic.

I still haven't been, but apparently Arbor Cafe in the Temescal is now open. Always glad to see another bike-friendly place.

According to Diablo Magazine, Faz has opened in downtown Oakland. It features Mediterranean food, and sounds good. Anyone been yet?

Haven opened in Jack London Square. Another restaurant by Daniel Patterson (of Plum fame), it sounds quite promising.

Rumbo al Sur opened in the long-vacant spot on Park Blvd. in the Glenview. It was Compadres for a number of years, but sat empty for the last several. Rumbo al Sur features Mexican and pan-Latin American food, from the folks who brought us À Côté.

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The lack of rain (and snow in the mountains) has been bad for air quality and terrible for skiing and our water supply, but it's made for some beautiful sunsets.

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And last but not least, some photos that didn't get used elsewhere.

Chinatown StreetFest

Looked like people were having fun at the 2011 Chinatown StreetFest last weekend. After 3 walking tours in 2 days, I was pretty tired, but there was even more energy in Chinatown than usual.








More pictures from the StreetFest:


more great photos and coverage by Reginald James.

Chinatown oral history project

On Saturday's walking tour of Chinatown, we heard from Roy Chan, the director of the Oakland Chinatown Oral History Project that the next piece was premiering later that day. So after the walking tour was done, I ran some errands, got some lunch, then rode back to Chinatown for the showing of the film.

The Chinatown Oral History Project has been a work in progress for several years. Earlier parts recorded people's memories of Chinatown, and talked with people displaced when Lake Merritt BART was built -- 75 homes, an orphanage for girls, and the Chinese True Sunshine Episcopal Church were destroyed. The most recent piece talked with people who currently use Madison Square. It's the place for Tai Chi, and some people have been using the area for decades.

The project is also cool in that it's stimulating inter-generational dialogue. The people who know the history are naturally older, and the people doing the interviews, filming and editing them are students. The current piece was done by Chinatown students attending various universities around the country, and by Mills College students.

More changes are planned for the area to make a transit-oriented community. Given the past treatment of area residents and various Chinese settlements before that, it's understandable that people are taking a lot of interest in the process. Fortunately the city and BART are being open about the process, and getting lots of community input along the way. BART boardmember Robert Raburn was there to view the film and talk with area residents.

Check out the Chinatown Oral History website for more info, and if you're in Chinatown check out the exhibit itself while it's open. The Oakland Asian Cultural Center is at 388 9th Street in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza building.

More about the planning process:
Urban Habitat
Oakland Local
East Bay Bike Coalition

More pictures:

Chinatown oral history

walking tour: Chinatown

Pacific Renaissance Plaza

Saturday was another great Oakland walking tour. This time it was Chinatown, an area of Oakland I don't know that much about. We met at the fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza, which is a fitting spot as it's where the Asian library branch is, as well as the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. Annalee Allen was filling in for the regular guide, but we were fortunate to also have along a very knowledgeable Chinatown resident, Mr. Wong. And in a bit of good timing, Roy Chan, the director of the Oakland Chinatown Oral History Project was there to tell us about the premiere of the latest installment in that. (More on that here.) Note that it's the Asian library branch and Asian Cultural Center, not Chinese, because Chinatown is really more of a pan-Asian area. The library has collections in 8 different languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Tagalog and Laotian) but residents represent even more backgrounds than that.

Oakland's Chinatown has a personal connection for mayor Jean Quan, and so a special version of the walk was done to celebrate her inauguration back in January. Like thousands of others, her great-grandfather and his family came to Oakland following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Her father attended Lincoln Elementary School. While the school is still largely Asian American, back then it was because of segregation.

vegis at Chinatown market

As we walked along Webster and a variety of markets, bakeries and other stores, the vibrancy of Chinatown became quickly apparent. There's a lot of people living, working and shopping there, and a ton of energy. We passed the well-known Silver Dragon restaurant, which was designed by past Oakland city councilmember Henry Chang.

The current center of Oakland's Chinatown is at 8th Street and Webster, but it hasn't always been there. Chinese first came to Oakland in the 1850s and settled in shrimp camps along the estuary. Many of them came to work on the transcontinental railroad, dams, and other infrastructure projects. Between moves, fires and forced relocation because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinatown moved 7 more times by 1880. Because of immigration restrictions, early Chinatown was largely a bachelor society.

Chinese Methodist Church

A source of help to fight discrimination and language barriers were various churches in the area. Although the current building is more recent, the Chinese Community United Methodist Church dates back to 1887, and has been at its current location since 1905.

We walked past the remarkable Asian Resource Center building (formerly Lyons storage) over to Harrison Square, one of the original 7 town square parks in Oakland. While I was growing up, it had historical railroad equipment because the transcontinental railroad ran along what is now 7th Street. Now it features Pioneer Hall and a community center.

From there we walked up to another of the original town square parks, Lincoln Square. It was originally called Oakland Square, but renamed to honor president Lincoln. The park at Lincoln Square is a bustling place, with a community center, basketball courts, and the distinctive Chinese junk ship play structure.

junk ship play structure

It was originally a project of the Wa Sung Community Service Club, built back in 1969. That structure was "loved to death", and replaced with a more modern structure in 2003.

The park also serves as the playground for nearby Lincoln Elementary School. Not only did Jean Quan's father attend Lincoln, our guest guide Mr. Wong had attended it as a child, in an earlier building on the same location.

The tour didn't go as far as Madison Square, which is the place for Tai Chi in the mornings. People do lots of other activities there, like badminton, fan dancing, sword dancing, and even line dancing.

There's a ton more to learn about Oakland's Chinatown. You can explore on your own (as I did a while back with yourwaitress), or go on the city-sponsored walking tour (which is free!). An upcoming chance to explore the area and have some fun is the Chinatown StreetFest 2011, August 27-28. Check out any of the 10,000 Steps markers you come across for a bit more history.

Lots more pictures:

Oakland Chinatown walking tour

More resources:

• Oakland Asian Cultural Center
• Chinatown Oral History Project
• Wa Sung Community Service Club
• Wikipedia entry
• Chinatown Chamber of Commerce
• 10,000 Steps

P.S. For those of you who were still with us to the end and wondered about the brass fire hydrant near EBMUD headquarters, Oakland Magazine did a short piece about it. (Follow that link and scroll down until you see the picture of the fire hydrant.) It's a little bit of history, too.

P.P.S. For whoever was wondering about Alice Street among Franklin, Jefferson, Clay, etc., it was named for the sister of one of Oakland's founders, Horace Carpentier. He was also the first mayor of Oakland.

photowalk with @yourwaitress

One of the too many things I did the past few days was hook up with Oakland photographer your waitress, aka Valerie Cochran. I mentioned her and the great photo exhibit she had in my review of Commonwealth Cafe and Pub. Six friends, old and new, joined her for her last photowalk around Oakland before she moves to Missouri.

We met at The Trappist to give everyone a chance to get there, and had a beer while we waited. Thankfully the rain held off, though we had flat, gray lighting for most of our walk. After a quick stroll around the block in Old Oakland, we wandered through Chinatown. Even on a gray Sunday afternoon, there's a lot of color in Chinatown and a lot going on, so it makes for an interesting place to take pictures.

Valerie was flexible on the route, but did have some definite things she wanted to do, like get a treat at one of the many Chinese bakeries (I'm guessing there will be fewer in Missouri.) We also walked with the vague destination of the Oakland Museum, either to check out a photo exhibit or to wander around the museum grounds. The fact it was the first Sunday and free was an added draw.

One of the great things about shooting with other photographers is that different people see differently, different things catch their eye, and they choose to shoot a subject differently. So you can have 7 people walking through the same area and come up with 7 different views of a thing. After you've done this a number of times, you get to know what a person is likely to shoot, but this was my first time shooting with any of these people.

We have some things in common (e.g., we're all interested in photography), but only some of us live in Oakland, some shot film (which "sees" light differently) and some shot with digital, and so I'm looking forward to seeing more of the photos the others took. I'll update this post as I get links to more. And I'm looking forward to future photowalks with them, even if Valerie will be a less frequent participant after her move.

more of my photos:

your waitress photowalk

Check out some photos the others took:
Peter
Martin
Dave 1, 2, 3
Valerie 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Victoria
Shannon

showing off Oakland!

Thanks for the ideas on showing off Oakland. After figuring out when we were both available, I arranged to meet my friend D Thursday morning at West Oakland BART as he was coming over from SF.

Brown Sugar Kitchen

The first stop was Brown Sugar Kitchen for breakfast. K and I went there earlier this year and loved it. I considered Mama's Royal Cafe (worth the trip for the napkin art alone) and Mama Buzz Cafe, but settled on BSK as more unique to Oakland and because it was close to West Oakland BART. We both had the cornmeal waffles, which are served with brown sugar butter and apple cider syrup. Maybe not the healthiest breakfast ever, but hecka tasty. We took our time drinking coffee and catching up, as we hadn't seen each other in some years. As we drove around, I told him about the Cypress Structure and the Loma Prieta earthquake, and a bit about the railroads before that.

City Center

We went over to Downtown and walked around. It was foggy (no great surprise there, given the weather this summer), but there were lots of great buildings to look at and interesting things to see. By European standards, even the oldest buildings are new, but they're still interesting architecturally.

City Hall and Frank Ogawa

Cathedral Building

Oscar Grant mural

Walking towards Uptown, there were Oscar Grant posters in various store windows, and this large mural. I told D about the killing of Oscar Grant, the protests, the trial, and the impending sentencing.

Fox Theater

Oaksterdam

We walked to Uptown to admire the Fox Theater, Flora, and various other buildings. On the way back, we passed Oaksterdam and talked about the ballot measure to legalize marijuana and the futility of 'the war on drugs'. In Switzerland, apparently marijuana is not legal, but generally the police won't make an issue of a small amount. Most police, at least; like California, it depends on where you are.

Chinatown church

Old Oakland

We then walked around Chinatown, enjoying the life and activity there. Not so much the cooked ducks hanging in the window, but the hustle and bustle of people going about their lives, going to shops, to work, etc. Then it was back to Old Oakland to admire the old brick buildings.

gondola

glass and steel, anyone?

cathedral

kids playing

Lake Merritt colonnade

As we headed over to Lake Merritt, the sun finally made an appearance. D had been at a conference in San Francisco, and was dismayed to pretty much not see the sun the entire time. I told him the usual weather patterns, and while the basic pattern (foggy in San Francisco, foggy mornings and sunny afternoons in Oakland) was normal, the duration and amount of the fog was not. We walked around Lake Merritt, stopping in to check out the cathedral and bird- and people-watch as we walked around.

Tacos Sinaloa

After working up an appetite, we headed over to Tacos Sinaloa for a late lunch. Discussing favorite taco trucks can be like discussing politics or religion, but Tacos Sinaloa (well, technically the Mariscos truck) is my favorite. After lunch I drove him through San Antonio and the Fruitvale, again noting the life and energy present there.

Loard's Ice Cream

As lunch was on the small side, we stopped by Loard's for some ice cream, and to view the Mormon Temple. D said there aren't many Mormons in Europe, but there are fair number in South America where he's traveled.

Joaquin Miller Park

Despite the ice cream to cool us down, it was getting on the warm side, so we headed for the hills. We walked around Joaquin Miller Park and nearby Roberts to check out the redwoods. Proximity to various parks is a big part of why I bought our house here (and I'm glad I bought when I did). D lives near some parks, too, so he felt right at home. We stopped by the house (D reads my home improvement blog) to meet the cats, check out the improvements in person, and talk some more.

Julia Morgan designed church

We checked out the view on the way down from the hills, and went to Rockridge. All this touring and talking was thirsty-making work, so we headed to Barclay's for a pint and more talking. I was considering various options for dinner, but one pint turned into three, so we had dinner there and talked some more. After more talking, I put D on a BART train back to San Francisco, and headed home myself.

A long, tiring, fun tour of Oakland. I know I had a good time showing off Oakland -- I hope D enjoyed it at least half as much as I did. I think he did, because typical tourist things in San Francisco (e.g., Fisherman's Wharf) aren't his favorite, so a somewhat non-typical tour of Oakland was more his speed.