East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
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The East Bay Express is the local alternative to mainstream media. We seek to promote truth, expose wrongdoing, and give voice to the voiceless. We are dedicated to local arts and culture. Get News, arts, and dining coverage for Oakland, Berkeley, and the greater East Bay.
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
14h ago
When Carolina Ixta was a kid, she’d go get haircuts with her mom and sister at a salon in Fruitvale, at 31st and International. Her mom’s highlights would take hours and the sisters would get bored, so they’d go grab food at the Wendy’s down the street, then pick up fruit from a frutero to bring back for everyone to eat at the salon.
Details like this, little memories from childhood, are woven into Shut Up, This Is Serious, Ixta’s debut young adult novel. The book centers on Belén Dolores Itzel del Toro, a young woman trying to get through her senior year of high school in Fruitvale. Belén is ..read more
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
14h ago
Imagine walking up Richmond’s Macdonald Avenue, from the RYSE Center to the Richmond Museum of History & Culture, and seeing “asphalt art”—open studios and galleries, maybe even a live theater performance in Civic Center Plaza. Long-disused buildings bustle with shops, restaurants and live/work spaces.
That’s part of the vision of a group of city residents planning the proposed Richmond Arts Corridor, which would also include 23rd Avenue from Macdonald up to the NIAD Art Center. A March 1 Zoom conference announced the plan’s progress.
“We see this as igniting a ‘Richmond Renaissance,’” sa ..read more
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
14h ago
Setting out to resolve a puzzling question about why women over the age of 50 choose or are forced into lives of fear over flat-out fun and fulfillment, New York Times bestselling writer Caroline Paul uncovered the answer of her dreams: They don’t have to.
In her new book, Tough Broad, the Bay Area-based former firefighter and lifelong outdoor adventurist tells stories of explorations she took in nature with women during the pandemic. The book is published by Bloomsbury and was released March 5.
Paul’s investigation of BASE jumping, boogie boarding, airplane wing walking, orienteering ..read more
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
14h ago
THURSDAY JAZZ THE CHARLIE HUNTER & SCOTT AMENDOLA DUO
Musical sparring partners for three decades, Berkeley-reared and North Carolina-based guitar wizard Charlie Hunter and Berkeley drummer Scott Amendola regrouped for their latest groove-centric musical dialogue. The show is sold out, but their creative communion is well worth an attempt to procure an unused ticket at the door or, at worst, catching it from the sidewalk. It’s been a decade since they released new music, but their duo book encompasses Duke Ellington and Hank Williams, Cole Porter and the Cars, and dozens of originals. Thi ..read more
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
14h ago
Toriano Gordon closed the Vegan Mob’s Oakland hub last September. Gordon refurbished the former Kwik Way with his brand’s distinctive color, a neon green that illuminates Lake Park Avenue day and night. The atomic-age carport is still intact but empty. When Gordon and I spoke about his new cookbook, Vegan Mob: Vegan BBQ and Soul Food, A Plant-Based Cookbook, the chef said that his best sales had always been in the East Bay. The decision to close the Oakland location was a personal one.
Gordon has changed his business model. Instead of running a restaurant, the chef is diversifying. To date, h ..read more
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
14h ago
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In the coming days, your hunger will be so inexhaustible that you may feel driven to devour extravagant amounts of food and drink. It’s possible you will gain 10 pounds in a very short time. Who knows? You might even enter an extreme eating contest and devour 46 dozen oysters in 10 minutes! APRIL FOOL! Although what I just said is remotely plausible, I foresee that you will sublimate your exorbitant hunger. You will realize it is spiritual in nature and can’t be gratified by eating food. As you explore your voracious longings, you will hopefully discover a half-hidd ..read more
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
1w ago
Just when it seems that San Francisco’s dope, sex and rock ’n’ roll scene in the 1960s has been covered from every conceivable angle, along comes Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker’s entertaining documentary, Carol Doda Topless at the Condor, to remind everyone how untamed it could be.
The world was truly a different place in 1964, and San Francisco’s North Beach was different-er than the rest. The nighttime hubbub at the neighborhood’s bars, clubs and strip joints was hipster/flipster central in those pre-Flower Power days. Lusty bohemians and cocktail-hour entertainers from Thelonious Monk ..read more
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
1w ago
NASA and private space exploration companies—listen up, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and others—could learn a lot from Rhonda Benin. The East Bay-based jazz and blues vocalist remains, at age 69, all about discovery.
Returning March 23 to Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage like a celestial sun on an annual orbit, Benin, along with six top female vocalists and a band of first-rate female instrumentalists, will shine their lights and celebrate the 10th anniversary of “Just Like a Woman.” Benin founded the show to bring visibility to women artists during Women’s History Month.
This ..read more
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
1w ago
The songs Nicole Laby writes for her band, Frances8, deal with real-life situations in a literary manner that’s one step removed from the usual pop music approach. “I like to dig beneath the surface,” Laby said. “I’ve been a therapist for 30 years. I work with a lot of people who are dealing with family dysfunction, so I see music as a vehicle to work through my own traumas and issues.”
She added, “After we play a show, people often come up and tell me that our songs speak to their own troubled history. It’s gratifying to help others who are struggling and connect with them through the music ..read more
East Bay Express | Oakland & Berkeley News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
1w ago
In Frederick Wiseman’s 44th documentary, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, no omniscient narrator appears on screen or via voiceover to introduce the characters. The four-hour film (!) begins with a medium shot of the Roanne train station, the exterior of which is painted a charming shade of mustard yellow. The director’s camera remains at that medium distance throughout the narrative, lingering from scene to scene, while allowing the images to explain themselves.
Wiseman only deviates from that semi-distant observational—and deliberately anti-expository—point of view when he enters the Troisg ..read more