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It is autumn in the Glenview. Dried sycamore leaves collect at the foot of red cement stairwells and crack underfoot. Spiders have spun webs all over yards up and down Park Boulevard, almost as thick as the store-bought cobwebs I see clinging to hedges next to dummy witches. The summer warmth makes its exit in fits and starts as the crisp air settles in. The holiday season, a marathon of sugar binges and punched-up cider, begins with Halloween this weekend. Here’s what Oakland has in store:
The Oakland Museum Honors Dia de los Muertos in 2008
In the Glenview: Tomorrow on All Hallows Eve, Glenview Elementary will host its annual block party from 11 a.m.–2 p.m., on Tiffin Road. Bring a dish to share and meet the neighbors. Take part in the food, games and in making a financial pledge to the school; costumes, like donations, are encouraged but not required. Later on that evening on Greenwood Avenue, a spooky puppet show and yard haunt is rumored to start at nightfall. Glenfriend John has created a Flickr group so Oaklanders can share their photos of the festivities.
In West Oakland: Also for Halloween, check out “FrankenSk8,” an event held in Town Park. It’s Oakland’s premiere skating venue brought to you by Hood Games, a community grown out of East Oakland. They successfully convinced the city to carve out a space in deFremery Park for skaters to work on their skills and officially opened in July. Bring your board or simply scope the local talent from 12 p.m.–3 p.m.
On Piedmont Avenue: This neighborhood will be all things Samhain from dawn ’til dusk. The merchants association will throw its 23rd Annual Piedmont Avenue Halloween Celebration from 9:45 a.m., when patrons can see free cartoons at the Landmark Theatre. After the parade and a trick-or-treat at Issues, visit Mountain View Cemetery. It rests at the top of Piedmont Avenue and hosts a pumpkin festival, where kids can count on a free pumpkin, treat bag and plenty of time in the jump house.
Closing out the evening is a free screening of “Nightmare Before Christmas” at the Video Room. The film runs in the yet-to-rented storefront beside the store’s current location. Prizes go to the best kids costume:
Downtown: For the cocktail crowd, The Den serves up a “Thrillerthon” costume ball this Halloween. Give-away treats at the Halloween bash range from dinner certificates at local restaurants to free drinks at future Den parties. DJ Epic and DJ Mpenzi will spin in honor of Haitian Gede and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” explaining one of the costume contest categories: Best MJ Look-alike. Also performing is the Kendra Kimbrough Ensemble and the El Wah Movement Caribbean Dancers. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. with tickets at $5 before 10 p.m. and $10 thereafter.
Dia de los Muertos in The Fruitvale: Oakland’s best festival is arguably Dia de los Muertos. In past years its attendance has surpassed many Dia de los Muertos celebrations across the country. This year, it was almost in danger of dying out but was resurrected in time for Sunday, November 1, thanks in part to Oakland’s Vice Mayor Ignacio De La Fuente. Every year on International Boulevard, the entire Fruitvale skyline transforms with rainbow-colored paper prayer flags. Sugar skulls and sweet pan de muertos pile high. But front-and-center for food concessions are from La Borinqueña Restaurant & Specialty Shop in Old Oakland; Tina “Tamale” Ramos represents with family recipes going back for generations—hopefully with some of their tasty green chile and cheese tamales.
This year more than 25 altars spill out onto the street from the ‘Vale Transit Village. A portion of them are provided by the Oakland Museum, which is currently closed for renovations. Still, they make an appearance at the festival with an interactive display and make a virtual ofrendas online. The dead fest begins at 10 a.m. with music from local Latino bands, cultural crafts and games, and shutters at 5 p.m. To get there, you could take the bus or BART to the Fruitvale station. From the escalator, follow the scent of marigolds and you’ve arrived.
Mictecacihuatl, or the Aztec's Lady of the Dead
Mas Muertos: Many peoples observe the dead with rituals. The Haitians, Celts and Native Americans each had their method of reaching for loved ones in the Otherworld. There’s also curious overlap across cultures. The Greeks spoke of Persephone presiding over the dead, and ushering departed souls to their new residences. The Aztecs, for their part, personified this “Lady of the Dead” as the goddess Mictecacihuatl. According to the story, she dies in childbirth the Underworld, where she and her husband Mictlan watch over the bones of those passed. This ensures that the lifeless bones could, if needed, build a people for some future world.
The Oakland Museum has online resources on the Day of the Dead that’s worth a peek. Under the Bay Area events is a healthy book list, featuring the indispensable “Digging the Days of the Dead,” by Juanita Garciagodoy. She writes somewhat academically but lucidly about the origins of the rites and looks at death as viewed today. It’s a great read for information and the index contains poems like the one by an ancient American poet, Cuahcuauhtzin:
My heart longs for flowers anxiously.
I only suffer with songs,
I only essay my songs,
on the earth, I am Cuahcuauhtzin.
With anxiety I want flowers,
may they rest in my hand,
I am wretched!
Where will we go
that we may never die?
Although I were jade,
although I were gold,
I will be melted, I will be perforated
in the crucible.
My heart, I Cuahcuauhtzin,
am a wretched man!
In her chapter “The Lively Skeletons,” Garciagodoy examines the oxymoronic nature of the Mexican holiday. She writes, “The calaveras are working, self-reflexively making offerings to the dead, socializing, or displaying themselves. Whatever they are doing, what may be most obvious about these skeletons is that they are not dead.” Skulls shrouded in vibrant colors walk a line between life and death. They do not dwell on last rites but on timeless rituals. In this realm, life seems the most brilliant.
One could make a similar argument for Oakland: it may be haunted by wayward ghosts, but it’s on the cusp of renewal. The city lets out its closeted skeletons every fall and takes stock of the living and the dead. A dark subject and bright colors show the beauty of life in stark contrast. And fittingly, Oakland shines.
The Glenview Neighborhood Association meeting came to order yesterday with a moment of silence. For a good few minutes the small, carpeted room at Presbyterian Church lay quiet for the police officers who died this year. Everyone in attendance—some 30 neighbors and Vice Mayor Ignacio De La Fuente—received a blue ribbon to show their support.
In his briefing on the city’s affairs, Ignacio De La Fuente said that Oakland wants to provide its law enforcement with financial help. Some of the federal stimulus funneled to Oakland will also go to the beleaguered parks system. But there’s not a whole lot of money in the proverbial kitty these days. “The city of Oakland’s budget deficit is something like $85 million,” he said, which is a lot larger than earlier estimates. The enormity of this isn’t lost on De La Fuente, who came into office in 1992 during a recession. “I’ve seen $35 million in the red, sure, but this is the worst I’ve seen in 16 years in office.”
As De La Fuente elaborated on making city-wide cuts I noticed how spiffy he looked. His black-top, half-frame glasses and tailored, pin stripe suit gave him a sharp appearance. The majority of the group walked in wearing their fleece or loosened collared shirts. A couple wore scout badges. But among the workday weary, Ignacio appeared to have been spritzed with fresh rose water. His violet-colored tie shimmered as he fielded questions about the Glenview’s flower median. (Due to budget constraints, its drip water system will be dramatically reduced.) Of the city’s spending priorities, he said that the city has to focus on basic services. “I don’t think citizens have a clue as to how much resources it takes to water the city parks and maintain its lights.”
He also reiterated how the city has to weed out wasteful spending practices. Of a recent audit in the Public Works department, he said there were 200 suggestions for improvement. “We’re also one of the few cities whose citizens pay into city employee pensions,” he claimed. On the negotiating table, then, is a reduction in pay or a reduction of pensions. “We’re going to have to do less with more.”
Some expressed frustration at how cities across the country choose to prioritize spending. And De La Fuente shared these concerns and pointed to the present set of circumstances. Then he confessed, “I should tell you that tomorrow the Oakland Tribune will publish some things I said about our mayor. With all due respect, I think he’s done a poor job.”
It was hard not to imagine how Oakland would’ve fared if De La Fuente won the mayoral race. The cardboard flowers his campaign laid all over the city came down when Dellums won. A few remained interlaced in a chain link fence at the empty lot on Park Blvd. and Hampel St. For weeks after the election, their smiling yellow faces greeting casual carpool riders. These days, Oaklanders are getting ready to weather a new status quo.
A shot of the library, courtesy of Bourbon and Branch
For now, my friends-in-town season is over. Colorado Johnny got the full Oakland tour while a few weeks later, the two Js opted for the abbreviated version. (No, J-man, I do not own a bullhorn.) They all seemed surprised at the beauty of the city. Johnny really liked the air, saying that the slight humidity combined with the sun felt like “a million licks on the skin.” Too bad it rained most of his trip here. But if anyone needed more rays, it was the grayed-out Pittsburghers. I’ve never seen people more psyched to sit on a porch that wasn’t an ice-slick.
Several reps. from Pitt flocked to a composition conference in San Francisco that week. One night we met at the Bourbon and Branch for cocktail hour. The former speakeasy sits on the corner of Jones at O’Farrell, under a corner sign that reads “Anti-Saloon League.” We entered the left of two oak doors with a password (“bird”) and a petite woman led us past a bar so dimly lit that I almost walked into the bookcase at the back. Our hostess stopped me short and opened the shelves like a door with a flick of her wrist. We stepped into the library to see books and backlit bottles of bourbon lined the walls. The gold-striped bindings of familiar Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia volumes flashed in the candelight so that on my way to the bar, I had some grade-school flashbacks of writing book reports.
I wanted to try New Orleans’ official cocktail ever since I heard a great NPR story last summer. That my waist-coated bartender made a Sazerac in a room with red velvet wallpaper made my first sip almost as awesome as it would’ve been in The Big Easy. The bartender started by coating a rocks glass with Absinthe and filling it with ice. Then he muddled a sugar cube in Peychaud’s Bitters and tossed them in a shaker with bourbon. He served it to me neat and with a lemon peel draped across the glass. First I inhaled the citrus. Then the taste of the licorice liqueur slid down the glass, and the fireside-orange flavor reached the back of my tongue. Ah, there was the rub: just one swig had me reconsidering that road trip to the south.
Also in the Tenderloin, and just a few blocks south from our perch, once stood another speakeasy. It operated around the same time but posed as a breakfast joint. My great-grandma opened it as Em’s Waffle Kitchen and in the back room served a little somethin’ with the syrup. I never heard an account of the bar; it was probably sparsely furnished and stacked with kegs. My great aunt did remember seeing sailors stumble out from the bar and onto Turk Street. For sure, Emma’s restaurant was a “come for the waffles, stay for the booze” establishment.
I hear some old Oaksterdammers talk about the early days of medicinal marijuana with a speakeasy-esque fondness. Pot clubs lit up Broadway back in 1996. Awash from the hope of Prop. 215, many patients toked skunk on site, but once the smoke drifted to a nearby youth center (and Ignacio De La Fuente got wind of it at City Hall), a regulatory era reduced the legal number of “dispensaries” in the city to four. The Bull Dog became a coffee shop and poof, the Purple Dragon vanished.
These same folks also talk about how marijuana regulation is a bad idea. They don’t want the government knowing they’re patients, restricting where or how much they purchase their herbal meds, or how much they pay for the pleasure. But there are strong arguments to the contrary, and with Oakland’s Measure Z in place, taxation could bring in some major revenue once it’s all implemented. I would’ve happily paid a tax at the Oaksterdam speakeasy A. and I visited last week. We walked a lot farther for taxable inebriates back in Pittsburgh, where the wine shop and the beer store were miles apart. Gotta love Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. (Do their laws really curb drinking habits?) I drank the same amount in PA and CA (one or two a week) and suffer less frostbite getting firewater out west.
Marijuana reform is on the verge of its next big win. You could say it’s in the air. Recently the California DMV recently changed its policy to treat medical marijuana the same as prescription drugs. And while President Obama has stated that he doesn’t support the wholesale legalization of marijuana, it looks like the days of DEA raids are numbered. Helping the cause is the taxation wave coming out of California. Oakland’s best dispensary—Harborside Medical Center—will be featured on CNN’s “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News.” Check it out the weekend of March 28.
I’m hoping that marijuana will go the way of alcohol and become legal, even become a model for regulating the alcohol industry. Taxation doesn’t have to mean prohibition. I’m thinking though that West Oakland could stand to lose some liquor stores.
RIP Parkway Speakeasy Theater!
Catherine, Kyle and Will the Thrill, you will be missed.
