East Bay Yesterday

Did you know that downtown Oakland is built on ancient sand dunes? Or that the East Bay hills used to be honeycombed with quarries and mines? Or why Fruitvale was such a great place to plant orchards in the 1800s? These are just a few of the stories Andrew Alden explores in his new book “Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City.” (Heyday) According to Alden, Oakland has the most rock diversity of any U.S. city, and in today’s episode we discuss stories below the soil. The conversation covers everything from earthquakes and volcanoes to landslides and potholes. Check out photos related to this episode at: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/from-volcanoes-to-potholes/ East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your donations. Please make a pledge to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday This episode is supported by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals. I highly recommend checking out their new podcast, “Revolutionary Care: An Oakland Story,” a series about the history of treating sickle cell a

In her new book “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock,” Jenny Odell takes a tour of the Bay Area. She begins at the Port of Oakland and travels as far as the Pacific Ocean before turning around and heading back to Mountain View Cemetery in the East Bay hills. Along the way, she also brings readers on a different kind of journey. At each location, she uses these physical spaces to illustrate different ways of thinking about time itself. Are there really 24 hours in a day? By the end of this book, you won’t be so sure. I interviewed Jenny onstage at the Backroom in downtown Berkeley on April 4, 2023 in front of a live audience. The conversation covers everything from deconstructing linear conceptions of history to traffic jams on 880. Original music for this episode was produced by Mark Pantoja. Thank you to KPFA’s Brandi Howell for recording this event and Kevin Hunsanger for production. To see photos related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/time-is-not-money/ If you

Oakland’s largest city park is named after Joaquin Miller, an eccentric writer who lived on the property more than a century ago. After gaining international attention as the flamboyant “Poet of the Sierra,” Miller transformed the Oakland hills by planting an estimated 75,000 trees. He called his estate “The Hights” [sic] and it became a renowned creative hub under Miller’s stewardship, attracting artists and authors from as far away as Japan. Although Miller’s literary fame has faded in the decades since his passing in 1913, his name is still familiar to the countless Bay Area residents who flock to Joaquin Miller Park for its stunning views and shaded trails. In 2022, Oakland made history by transferring control of Sequoia Point, a nearly five-acre parcel in Joaquin Miller Park, to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an organization led by local indigenous women focused on returning land to Native people and revitalizing Ohlone culture. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, this deal made Oakland “the first city

Delilah Beasley didn’t have much education or money, but when she saw that African Americans were being ignored by history books, she knew she had to do something. Beasley ended up spending nearly a decade interviewing elders and digging through crumbling archives to compile “The Negro Trailblazers of California,” a book that rescued dozens of notable Black figures from historical oblivion. However, Beasley didn’t just focus on the past. Her weekly Oakland Tribune column, “Activities among the Negroes,” documented the East Bay’s Black community at a time when positive portrayals of people of color in the media were almost nonexistent. This episode explores Beasley’s life as a historian and journalist through a conversation with the authors of “Trailblazer: Delilah Beasley’s California,” a new work by Dana Johnson and Ana Cecilia Alvarez. We discuss Beasley’s motivation, her impact, and why her work still remains so valuable. Check out photos and links related to this episode here: https://eastbayyesterday.c

Journalists Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham have been investigating the Oakland Police Department for more than a decade. Their coverage of violent misconduct, corruption, and sexual abuse has led to multiple resignations and terminations within the department, but even more shocking is the relative lack of consequences for many of the officers responsible for this illegal behavior. Winston and Bondgraham’s new book “The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover Up in Oakland” proves that this pattern of impunity has characterized the department since its very inception.  “The Riders Come Out at Night” compiles more than a century of OPD scandals in order to understand why the department has been unable to reform itself according to the demands of a court-ordered consent decree, despite two decades of federal oversight. History repeats itself in scandal after scandal as a toxic stew of racism, machismo, resentment, carelessness and lethal violence is brushed aside or even rewarded, while t

Oakland’s Paramount Theater is now recognized as one of the grandest examples of Art Deco architecture still in existence, but this masterpiece almost met the same fate as many other prestigious movie palaces of its era. Originally constructed in 1931, the Paramount was a torn and tattered dump by the late 1960s. At the time, the Oakland Symphony was looking for a new home, and its leaders realized that beneath decades of grime lay a unique gem. After extensive restoration, the Paramount reopened in 1973, and has been hosting icons like Bob Marley, Prince, Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Seinfeld, and Chris Rock ever since.  On today’s episode, the Paramount’s head curator David Boysel discusses the turbulent history of this 2,996-seat venue as well as the backstory to his never-ending quest to keep the building in perfect condition. Expect to hear about the Paramount’s famed architect Timothy Pflueger, the many historical mysteries that Boysel has solved over the years, the network of local artisans wh

For the past year, I’ve been part of a team developing Rooted in Richmond, a free app that allows visitors to take a self-guided tour through the city’s history. The tour covers 16 locations over 6 miles and includes maps, photos, videos, 3D renderings of historic objects, and more. Topics range from sacred Ohlone shellmounds to the formation of environmental justice groups in the wake of a toxic industrial accident.  Now that the app has launched, I wanted to share a preview of the oral histories I gathered to accompany various tour stops. In this episode, you’ll hear audio clips featuring: –Shirley Ann Wilson Moore on how Black residents stood up against a front yard cross-burning –Flora Ninomiya on what happened to flower nurseries owned by Japanese-Americans during World War II –Melinda McCrary on saving a long-long treasure from a flooded basement –Ahmad Anderson on how Martin Luther King Jr’s visit inspired a generation of Black political leaders –Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez on the remarkable transform

Elsie Robinson was a pioneer of women in media, an early advocate for equal rights, and at one point the highest-paid woman writer in the nation. Before launching her journalism career, Elsie’s life was an astonishing rollercoaster that included everything from a marriage to a wealthy Victorian gentleman to a job working deep within the bowels of the Sierra foothills mining for gold. So how is it possible that her name has been largely forgotten? Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert confront this mystery in a fascinating new biography called “Listen, World! How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson became America’s Most-Read Woman.” In this episode, recorded at the Oakland Library in front of a live audience, we discuss Robinson’s unlikely rise from the Oakland Tribune to the upper echelons of national media, her legacy, and the challenges of uncovering this nearly forgotten story. To see photos and links related to this story, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/what-happened-to-americas-most-read-woman/ Eas

After years of working a corporate job in downtown Oakland, Nenna Joiner woke up one morning with a dream: They wanted to be in the sex industry. After their job applications were rejected by every adult pleasure shop in the area, Nenna decided to launch their own business. They started by selling sex toys and porn DVDs out of a box at bars (and sometimes even at BART stations), but from these humble beginnings grew a mini-empire. More than a decade later, Nenna now owns two Feelmore Adult Galleries, plans to open a sex-themed bar called Feelmore Social later this year, and is running for a seat on Oakland’s City Council. Nenna’s first position in politics was as a member of the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, which led them to an interest in the East Bay’s sex history. Years of purchasing adult artifacts from Oakland collectors and now-defunct sex shops deepened their knowledge of former bordellos, theaters, underground sex clubs, and nightlife institutions. For obvious reasons, “sex history” isn’

Miriam Klein Stahl came to the Bay Area in the late ‘80s seeking a community of queer punks that she’d read about in underground zines like Homocore. She wasn’t a musician, but she loved working with her hands and quickly realized that she could contribute to this thriving scene by drawing flyers and creating illustrations. Miriam’s rebellious passion infused her heavily politicized images with confrontational power and urgency. More than three decades later, she’s still making radical art, but now her work is adorning museums as well as punk clubs. An entire wall of the Oakland Museum of California’s Hella Feminist exhibition is covered with 200 paper-cut portraits of “women/nonbinary humans whose lives and work intersect and impact the East Bay.” These figures range from Gilded Age bohemian poets and pre-WWII civil rights leaders to witches, welders, and high school activists. The co-creator of this Hella Feminist portrait project is local author Kate Schatz, who Miram also collaborated with for a series

Julia Morgan wasn’t just one of the most renowned architects of the 20th century, she was a true pioneer of her profession. She was the first woman to be admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which was the most important architecture school of its era, as well as the first woman in California to earn an architecture license and eventually the first woman to win the American Institute of Architects’ highest honor. Then there’s her buildings. She’s best known for Hearst Castle, but over her long career she designed hundreds of impressive structures – the Berkeley City Club, Oakland’s YWCA, the Asilomar Conference Center, El Campanil at Mills College, and the list goes on and on. As a woman, Morgan didn’t always get the recognition she deserved, but in more recent decades, she’s been the subject of numerous books, documentaries, and museum exhibits. However, a new book takes a different approach by imagining Julia’s early years, as a young woman growing up in Victorian era East Bay. In “Drawing Outsid

[This is a re-broadcast of an episode originally aired in 2019.] 50 years ago, a group of students, activists and community members transformed a muddy, junk-filled parking lot into a park. When the University of California, under heavy pressure from Gov. Ronald Reagan, tore up the grass and surrounded the land with a heavily-guarded fence, this response triggered a surreal and tragic set of events. The maelstrom of violence that engulfed Berkeley in May 1969 would be almost impossible to believe if the cameras hadn't been rolling. Dozens were shot, hundreds were arrested, and thousands were teargassed – protesters and innocent bystanders alike. During the military occupation of Berkeley by National Guardsmen, a helicopter launched a chemical attack on the University campus, children were surrounded by bayonet-wielding soldiers, and journalists were detained under the supervision of brutally sadistic guards. Amidst this upheaval, Gov. Reagan told a group of reporters, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it

Over the past few years, there’s been a huge upsurge in efforts to remove books about gender and race from libraries and schools, and in some cases even ban them from being sold to minors altogether. One of the books frequently targeted by these campaigns is “The 57 Bus,” which examines a 2013 incident involving a nonbinary teenager who was lit on fire by an Oakland High student while taking AC Transit home from school. The book was a bestseller and won critical acclaim for its nuanced portrayal of what it’s like to be a young person who doesn’t fit into “traditional” gender roles, as well as its critical look into the failings of America’s criminal justice system, but now it’s being illegitimately denounced as “pornographic” by parents parroting the talking points of conservative organizations like Moms for Liberty. In reality, there’s nothing sexual in the book—they’re simply scared of it. Besides book banning, there are hundreds of anti-LGBTQ laws being proposed across the country right now, not to mentio

Looking back to the West Oakland of his childhood during the World War II era, Ed Howard remembers a place where kids felt safe roaming the streets, Black businesses thrived along 7th Street, and a flood of newcomers from the South created a prosperous, tight-knit community. His own memories present a jarring contrast to the contemporary media’s portrayal of this neighborhood as a dangerous slum. “Any time they see a group of Black people together, they say it’s bad,” Ed recalled. “But me and my friends weren’t bad. And Oakland isn’t bad.” From his early days as community organizer based in DeFremery Park, Ed was motivated to challenge these negative messages, and as he climbed each level of his career ladder, he brought friends from his community with him. After becoming one of the first Black mechanical engineers at Kaiser Industries, he created a program to train and hire more Black workers, a model that was soon adopted by other local companies in the 1960s. Ed went on to produce “Black Dignity,” one of

Instead of waiting around for a solution to California’s housing crisis, about a decade ago Violet Thorns decided to move into one of the hundreds of vacant homes scattered throughout Oakland. During the Occupy era, she was part of a loose network of dozens of squats, but since then nearly all of those were evicted as local property values soared. After her community crumbled, Violet found herself living in a squalid, burned out building with no money and few resources. As a trans woman she was desperate to remain in the Bay Area, despite not being able to afford this region’s astronomical rents. Then one day, she noticed a vacant lot on a residential street that was so overgrown with fennel that she knew the owners hadn’t been there for years. Today’s episode is about how Violet built a tiny home and a thriving garden on that abandoned land and gotten away with living there for nearly eight years without paying rent. Listen now to hear about the rise and fall of an anarchic squatting scene, how to deal wit

Growing up in West Oakland during the 1940s, Evangeline Canonizado Buell remembers the neighborhood as “a melting pot of… adobo, linguisa, tamales, blues, and jazz.” From an early age, this child of Filipino immigrants learned how to connect with her Black, Portuguese, Mexican, Greek and Japanese neighbors through food and music, skills that she later built into careers as a guitar teacher, historian, and program coordinator for the Berkeley Co-Op. Her memoir, “Twenty-Five Chickens and a Pig for a Bride,” intertwines her personal journey of overcoming abuse and discrimination with the growth of California’s Filipino community, mixing tantalizing stories of backyard pig roasts with infuriating memories of racist harassment. In this episode, Evangeline shares some of the wisdom, humor, and music that she’s accumulated throughout her nine decades living in the East Bay. Listen now to hear a conversation that covers everything from the agricultural origins of Bay Farm Island to the long legacy of the Spanish-Am

Why has Oakland produced so many all-star athletes? This is the question that propels Paul Brekke-Miesner’s book “Home Field Advantage: The City That Changed the Face of Sports” through decades of local history, from the playgrounds to stadiums. His exploration helps explain not only the origins of this highly concentrated pool of athletic ability, but also why so many local stars have used their visibility to call attention to social struggles, long before Colin Kaepernick famously took a knee to protest police violence. An Oakland native who grew up playing ball in the Eastmont neighborhood and began covering sports at Castlemont High more than half a century ago, Brekke-Miesner brings deep knowledge about such iconic athletes as Bill Russell, Ricky Henderson, Frank Robinson, Curt Flood and many others to our conversation in this episode. Along the way, we also discuss the impact of Prop. 13 on youth sports, some very unlikely superstars, and why The Town might be better off without the billionaire owners

Although most “blaxploitation” flicks from the 1970s were action thrillers, “The Mack” feels more like a documentary. The film was shot on location in pool halls, barber shops and speakeasies throughout Oakland and features real people, not professional actors, as extras. But the driving force of the film’s authenticity came from the Ward Brothers, a family of pimps who dominated the Bay Area’s underground sex trade during this era. The movie’s protagonist, Goldie, was modeled on Frank Ward, the crew’s charismatic leader, and the rest of the brothers lent their clothes, cars, and expertise to the production, which was filmed on a shoestring budget. Immortalized by dozens of rap hits that sampled the film’s streetwise dialogue and funky soundtrack, “The Mack” went on to become a cult classic that’s still relevant five decades after its release. However, Frank Ward never got to enjoy the film he inspired – along with Blanche Bernard, he was murdered in October 1972, sparking a persistent rumor that the Black P

In many ways, Berkeley is a city defined by dichotomies. The hills and the flatlands, academia and industry, counterculture and The Establishment. Despite the city’s progressive reputation, Berkeley has never been a monolithic place. The tensions between conflicting political and cultural forces are what have made it so dynamic and unique. Although Berkeley’s reputation will forever be tied to the student uprisings of the 1960s, the century or so leading up to those conflicts is just as fascinating. Charles Wollenberg wrote the definitive book on Berkeley’s early years, “Berkeley: A City in History” (UC Press) and on today’s episode we cover major milestones between the Gold Rush and the Great Depression. Listen now to hear about Berkeley’s first businesses, a socialist mayor, some very ironic squatters, Bernard Maybeck, single family zoning laws, Phoebe Hearst, a boozy urban legend, and even an extremely symbolic sword fight. To see photos related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episod

Some cities were founded by warriors, prophets, or idealistic visionaries. The man who established Oakland was an unscrupulous lawyer looking to get rich quick. This 1877 newspaper quote captures the sentiment shared by many residents about The Town’s first mayor: “If the early settlers had taken Horace W. Carpentier to a convenient tree and hung him, as they frequently threatened to do, the act would have been beneficial to immediate posterity.” Featuring an interview with local historian and author Dennis Evanosky, this episode travels back to Oakland’s origins to explore what made our founding father such a widely detested villain. See photos related to this episode here: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/he-stole-the-town/ East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your support. Please donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday