My working history is tied to Oakland and places like it. I had my first job at the World Savings office in San Leandro, and my second job for World was situated on Lakeshore, a facet of the Oakland Business District. Of Oakland I've heard people say natives can "tell" if a person doesn't belong there. I believed it without quite understanding, but now I get it: the city of Oakland demands a willingness in its guests to walk down its gray pavement and look at it full in the face.
Aside from its better-known ghetto characteristics, Oakland has an old-world grit and glamour to it that make it truly unique. You'll find cats in pimp suits: larger-than-life colours and cuts, ornamented in jewels the size of knuckles. Black Muslim bakeries loom enigmatically beside Indian bread shops, and a Filipino cafe owner passes heaping scoops of purple ice cream to passers-by.
A frail artist paints the everyday scene in oil on a street corner. He puts so much colour in his renditions of BART, of loitering girls with Daisy Dukes, of puff jackets and cigarettes. Small galleries cross pop-art with aristocratic gilt. Large, smirking men in gray or maroon pinstripe spin their canes and doff their wide-brimmed hats at you. They look like they meandered out of the '50's.
Evidence of stunningly varied American dreams tumble forward from every street corner - the liquor stores, the fruit cascades, the hair braiding shops, the nail places. Art galleries. African art. Saris. Greased duck glistening from windows. Streets marked in Chinese, where people can cross diagonally as well as left or right.
Finally there's Jack London, the perfect place to bring a companion. A train from another time still crosses virtually unrestricted right through the square. Among the wind, the salty sea smell and old and new lofts sit a swanky jazz scene, some mean restaurants (of which Yoshi's is perhaps best known), a theatre, a massive Barnes & Nobles, old industrial warehouses, and wooden planking that brings you out toward the sea. Man-made cranes rise from the water, winking with red or yellow lights.
Of Oakland, Gertrude Stein once said "There is no there there." She must have been a fool with no senses. Beneath the filthy exterior of our Oakland lies vibrant, pulsing and colourful life that's so rich it's fit to burst. It moves uninterrupted in its space, protected by impressions of fearsome chaos: a kind of fallen-from-grace Galt's Gulch. Look it in the face and you'll find it yourself.
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