West Oakland’s Zoo Labs wants to revolutionize how musicians “make it”
Vinitha Watson says she and her co-founders David Watson and Anna Acquistapace were motivated to create Zoo Labs mostly by a “sense of sadness.” (But wait, this is a happy story.) They stood by...
View ArticleOakland Local’s top reads, July 8 – 13
If you need a break from the heavy, difficult news we often have to confront as Oakland residents, you’ve got one. This week’s top reads were decidedly of whimsical persuasion. Our highlights include...
View ArticleOakland Local’s top reads 7/20-7/30
The writers at OL have been hit hard by the summer and can now only write the most heart-affirming and/or fluffy and/or fuzzy Oakland stories. You as readers seem to be on the same wavelength about...
View ArticleOaktown Jazz Workshops pumps lifeblood into the Bay Area jazz world
Jazz began as a desperate and dangerous cry from the urban underbelly. Today it is an after-school-sanctioned, common-app-adorning extracurricular activity. Ravi Abcarian, musician and director of The...
View ArticleThe only person qualified to make a one-man show about criminal justice in...
Jinho “The Piper” Ferreira wants to take his show, Cops and Robbers, to Ferguson. Like that town this week, his show centers on an officer-involved murder. But some people in Ferguson might not want to...
View ArticleKapor Center establishes Oakland as the epicenter of tech for social justice
There’s something happening on Craigslist that some people might find disturbing: landlords are listing spots in North and West Oakland as being located in “the new tech area.” But while tech has been...
View ArticleOakland: A growing center for apothecaries, herbalists
“I love plants,” says herbalist Atava Garcia Swiecicki, “but for me it’s also really political. [Herbal medicine] is about reclaiming our power to take care of ourselves in a way that’s really...
View ArticleSprinkle Lab is quirky, but lucid
In the Queens D. Light music video for Love Pistol (below), the hip hop griot hunts nubile Adonises with a bow and arrow. She accepts worship from stone male statues in her chain link garden sanctuary...
View ArticleHomebrew in Oakland like it’s 1902
We have Prohibition to thank for the ubiquity of the American Lager (think Miller, think Budweiser) and Jimmy Carter to thank for the relatively recent resurgence in craft beer. Here’s why: only the...
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