Friday, August 27, 2021

Faces on Broadway

 

 


 Buffalo Souljah

 

 

 
 
Walking South from Seventeenth Street
I noted the massive influx of photographics
along the way all recently installed
by businesses hoping to keep their display 
windows unbroken
Almost all shown are on only one side of Broadway 
Same sort of thing on the other side as well





 
Starting point
 

 
 
No shortage of pride
 

 
A bit of chinoiserie manages to squeeze in
 
 



Kind of an over-determined public service
ad campaign


 
I think a white person
tried to photo-bomb this one
Heaven forefend
 

 
My favorite
 
 


 
Faces on the other side as mentioned
 
 
The Sculpture Garden
 



This was a bust made
 perhaps unwisely 
of breakable material
Gone within a few days




 
 
Recently installed
 
 

 



Everyday People



 
Time to renew
 

 
Ideals of social justice
 

 
The Great Outdoors
and the Cannabis shop down the street
 
 


A constant militancy underneath


 
 
 Ironically this building The Rotunda
is owned by Phil Tagami
who's fighting to build a massive coal terminal
at the Port of Oakland bordered by a large
Black population plagued by particulate pollution
 
 

 
 
Shadow of the Panther


 
 The Awaken Cafe
 


If you ain't woke when you come in
you will be on your way out


 
Another peek across the street
 


 
Smiling faces going places
 
 

 
 She looks as skeptical as I feel
in a manner of speaking

 
Fourteenth Street
three blocks since starting
 


This was the single most destroyed business
Oddly I was there on 31 May 2020
Chatted with a Black security guard out front
We both knew what was in store for the City later that night
Without an alternative since then but wonders never cease
Walgreens has rebuilt it & a reopening is planned



The African-American population has long regarded Oakland as their city. 
In recent years Big Capitol led by property values and rents in San Francisco have been building market rate housing at a fierce pace and rents have really climbed. In a sense lower income and working class Blacks historically benefited by the rundown quality of the city and by its various social hazards. 
 It was keeping the city affordable. It is increasingly apparent that their situation is facing some drastic changes. The Black population has gone from 60% to 40% and the writing seemed on the wall. More and more displacement and homelessness. Couple that with a militarized police and the horror of the murder of George Floyd it is not difficult to see the onset of an existential crisis
This parade of photos, exclusively of Black people, suggests that despite the ongoing gentrification and the growing misery on its mean streets, the City is still theirs.







23 May 2021








Saturday, August 21, 2021

Aleatory Guided Tour

 

 

This side of downtown



 


Sort  of a frumpy part of town
we don't mind
There are also many new "market-rate" buildings
which I tend to ignore in my image capture adventures
Preferring instead to unearth evidence
of earlier civilizations
 
 

 
Architectural artifacts of defunct religions
serve a fairly common denominator still
Wade in the water, children 
 
 

 
 Windows that stay blind
across from the non-stop after dark park
a foreboding refuge for who knows who

 

Windows that let in little light
 


The mind externalized
 the skull and the sky



 
Valuable advertising exhibition space 
visible to the incessant highway traffic
 
 

 
Its neglected state is also somehow its charm
 
 



Not to say that it is entirely neglected


 

A tailor shop
I have in fact patronized myself
though I've yet to purchase a bow tie



 
You phone them 
and someone answers the door



 
 Sales here benefit the public library
I've been intending to bring them a bagful 



 
Good old Hotel Carles
I am acquainted with a resident who works 
at the Cannabis shop around the corner from me
 
 

 
Green Man mural on the Carles
 
 


It's a place in space
calm most of the time

Occasionally it's not so placid

 
I stumbled into  breaking news 
That's Deborah Villalon I remember
from local TV and behind her
the Oakland police PR lady

 

 
 Someone was shot to death
 a planned hit one block from
Police Headquarters
This fellow mops the blood spill
 

 
Two reporters interview the decedent's mother 
He had just driven here from San Francisco

 


Life is touch and go
in the ghetto and beyond



 
Last street before downtown
an impersonal precinct in the dusk
This lit-up pad hangs in the air
like an anachronism
 

 
Indoor dining makes a comeback
 
 

 
Worsening during the post-panic pandemic
This was the hell's half-acre that 9th street
in Old Oakland became at night
My prayers were answered & it is now gone
The club no doubt finally pushed lawlessness too far
it attracted the gangster types
Six were shot here in a January melee
 
 
 

 
 O happy day
 

 
 
A recently arrived painting studio
Indoor and out 
 
 
 
 
 It's a wavy afternoon
 
 

 
As I photographed this graffiti fence...
 
 
 
This wee bird was flying around me oddly
After a moment he squeezed through a space in the fence
I saw a guy was weeding close by in the next yard
and realized the Finch I think was defending its nest

 
 
 

 
 A deserted spot where I stop to bask in vitamin D
it matches my gloves as it were
 
 
 

 
Closer to home a jumble spot
the past is always with you
in fact it's not even the past
 
 
 

 
Summer sky on 9th street




 
 
 
 Time to change the light bulb
in graffittiland


 

 
Uh-oh Spike
What's coming this way?
 
 
 
 
 Not the jail on wheels
to harsh our mellow
 
 
 
 
 
People have a right to self defense 
(original period Black Panther artwork)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tropical moisture 
pronounced radiating rays
from my secondary smoke spot picnic table
 








 

April-August 2021