Roughly fifty demonstrators marched from Fruitvale BART on Friday night to Oakland City Hall in an anti-police rally called in response to the fatal shooting of Richard Perkins by Oakland police on November 15. But unlike protests earlier this year, police didn’t try to drive demonstrators onto the sidewalks to comply with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s policy banning nighttime street marches.…

A recent boxing showcase at a defunct West Oakland train station captured the historic spirit of the site. On Saturday June 11, Osric Pratt Promotions presented Unfinished Business, a showcase of Northern California boxing culture at the historic 16th Street train station in West Oakland. The event consisted of seven boxing matches, interspersed with hip-hop and poetry performances.…

First, a loud siren seared my ears. When I turned, I saw four men draped in bandages standing atop a white hearse.…

Last week, Oakland artist Jet Martinez finished his largest mural yet, on the side of the I. Magnin Building in downtown Oakland — to stunning effect. 

The Mexico-born artist  is known internationally for his gorgeous floral patterning inspired by motifs in Mexican folk art. But, according to a recent statement released about his new mural, he recently decided he wanted to contribute more directly to the community in which he lives by doing more local art.…

Jay Stone looked at home as he took the stage in a burgundy bathrobe last Thursday at The Night Light, a bar near Jack London Square.…

Despite some growing pains, the fest successfully expanded into a ten-day concert series that highlighted outstanding local talent. Jay Stone looked at home as he took the stage in a burgundy bathrobe last Thursday at The Night Light, a bar near Jack London Square. He was headlining the seventh night of Oakland Music Festival, which dominated the local concert calendar from September 30 to October 9 with shows taking place at different venues every night.…

Kamaiyah, Ice Cube, How to Dress Well, and Sigur Rós played in the rain despite the many delays, cancelations, and technical difficulties. Treasure Island promised one of its best lineups yet for its tenth anniversary, but severe weather literally rained on everyone's parade. Many performances were delayed or canceled, often with little communication to the public on Saturday.…

'Don’t build technology for Mordor.' On Saturday at Peter Thiel’s San Francisco home overlooking the Bay, protesters demonstrated against a collaboration between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm that Thiel co-founded. As reported in The Intercept, ICE will be using a new Palantir product called Investigative Case Management to to aid in its expanded deportation mission.…

Including a photo slideshow. Even at 10 a.m. this past Saturday morning, hours before a throng of anti-fascists and Trump-supporting white nationalists overtook downtown Berkeley’s streets, it was clear that most of the attendees were less interested in speeches, protesting, and free speech — and were mostly there just to tee-off on each other. Before the brawling began, officers stationed themselves at the entrances to downtown's "Peace Park."…

ACT for America, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as an anti-muslim hate group, showed up on Saturday morning in cities nationwide, dubbing its protest a "March Against Sharia." Berkeley was spared, but the group appeared in nearby Santa Clara, and in Roseville, a suburb of Sacramento.…

The Golden State Warriors paraded for the second time in three years in downtown Oakland yesterday. Players rode by in topless busses, paired with teammates and families, along with coaches, members of the team's ownership group, and of course the odd ambassadorial pairing of Mayor Libby Schaaf and MC Hammer.…

Here are photos from today's Warriors' championship parade.

The last time J Balvin was at Oracle arena was back on Feb. 15, 2015 when he was the opening act for Pitbull and Enrique Iglesias' joint tour. I was at that show with my mom as my date, and vividly remember her saying, “one day he’s going to headline his own tour here.” I brushed off her comment, it wasn’t that I didn’t believe that he was talented.…

The organization sets up at 27th Street and Northgate Avenue and at 6th and Castro streets. Blair Hippolyte and Jannie Rutledge, two Oakland residents who are homeless, sat on the sidewalk of 27th Street.…

With its thriving businesses and large immigrant population, Fruitvale is uniquely Oakland: diverse, welcoming, family-oriented, community-minded — and too-often overlooked. On a Saturday morning in November, an estimated 100,000 people flocked to Oakland's Fruitvale district along International Boulevard and a section of East 12th Street.…

And her joys as well, in an entertaining biodoc of film critic Pauline Kael. It's hard to believe from today's vantage point, but the liveliest, most intelligent cultural discussions in late-20th-century America — as well as some of the finest writing —- were about the movies. And the leading voice in most of those discussions belonged to a woman from Berkeley, Pauline Kael.…

Fantasy Island is back. Who wished for that? The people who tell you "there are more tears shed over answered prayers" are people who weren't going to answer your prayers anyway. I was a non-TV watching snob during Fantasy Island's six-year reign on TV, as it impressed upon its viewers the importance of not asking for trouble by wishing for anything.…

Once Were Brothers celebrates the timeless sound of The Band. Here's a quiz for roots music fans. Multiple choice.…

Israeli film Incitement traces the trajectory of a rightwing terrorist. Yaron Zilberman's Incitement is a fine example of the dramatized history lesson that fills in the gaps of our knowledge on the subject of who did what to whom, and why, in the seemingly eternal political turmoil of modern-day Israel. In this case the subject is the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a crime committed to avenge Rabin's rapprochement with the Palestinian people — with the emphasis on the assassin, a religiously motivated young Jewish idealist named Yigal Amir.…

Raucous satire Greed throws billionaire Steve Coogan to the lions. British actor Steve Coogan has made a successful comic character-acting career using two basic ingredients: his own voice and someone else’s writing. Time and again, in such outings as In the Loop, Coffee and Cigarettes, the Alan Partridge TV shows, and Stan and Ollie (with Coogan in deep character as Stan Laurel), Coogan arrives in a hail of dialogue, showering the audience with witticisms from his favored point of view – a man so exasperated with his situation that the best response he can think of is to stew in his own juices, noisily.…

Rewarding new doc explains the intricacies of the genetic tools that are ready to reshape the world. The documentary Human Nature, scientific as it is, may not break box office records but it’s far and away the most intelligent, thought-provoking movie of the young year. Using imaginative graphics and a well-spoken parade of biologists, biochemists, bioethicists, genetic engineers, and starters of start-ups, director and co-writer (with Regina Sobel) Adam Bolt explains the whys and wherefores of the family of DNA sequences called CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a powerful gene-editing tool that, among other functions, can give bacteria immunity from viruses.…

The Burnt Orange Heresy is rich, entertaining, and dirty. At the risk of overstating the obvious, let’s re-emphasize the three most important ingredients of any film: writing, writing, and writing. That perennial baseline comes to mind while watching Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy, a British-Italian co-prod crime pic that gets down to the foul details with an extraordinary amount of style.…

Ken Loach takes pity on an independent contractor delivery driver in Sorry We Missed You. Doesn’t matter in real life or in the movies, when you’re informed on your first day of work that you’re going to be the “master of your own destiny,” you’re better off quitting on the spot. So it is in Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, when the straw boss of the delivery company greets Ricky Turner (Kris Hitchen), his new “owner-driver franchisee” -- read: non-employee, no-benefits independent contractor -- with those words.…

While you can't work, entertain yourself with Dirty Money's tales of ill-gotten gains. A particularly hard part of this quarantine comes from an essential loss of American identity: If you're not working, and you can't buy things, who are you? Or, as Kilian Colin puts it in season 2's first episode of the Netflix series Dirty Money, "Your job is your life here in the U.S."…

Hillary Clinton is the subject of a new documentary series on Hulu. It's fair to describe Hillary as a warts-and-all portrait. The four-part documentary shuttles between the 2016 presidential campaign and Hillary Rodham Clinton's life.…

From the new releases everyone's talking about to the cult classics they should be, here are five things to stream and skip this week. Well, we still can't go to the movies — it may be the least of our problems, but it still really sucks. So this week we turn our attention to the world of streaming, where approximately 98.87 percent of our entertainment now exists.…

This Mexico City taquero serves tacos and tortas sure to satisfy soccer stars. Most gym-goers have a favorite post-workout meal. Some swear by chocolate milk with its blend of sugar, protein, and fat, while others swear by cottage cheese, oatmeal, or smoothies.…

The 10th restaurant from Bay Area restaurateur Hoyul Steven Choi offers a creative take on Korean-infused cuisine. You'd think that after opening nearly a dozen successful restaurants in the ultra-competitive Bay Area dining scene, restaurateur Hoyul Steven Choi would have calmed his new restaurant jitters by now. But Choi says that's not the case.…

Its inventive menu includes Italian sausage tacos, chicken soup tacos, and botanical teas. Most of us go to cafes for the coffee, the Wi-Fi, or the opportunity to plant ourselves near an outlet, put on our noise-cancelling headphones, and crank out some work on our laptops. Few visit cafes for the food, much less the social interaction.…

From plain cheese slices to pan pizza to slices drizzled with balsamic reduction, Graffiti Pizza has you covered. After the clock strikes midnight in Oakland, there's no shortage of tacos, burritos, or won ton noodle soup. But one of the most classic of late-night foods — pizza by the slice — was hard to find in Oakland during the wee hours.…

The Richmond pop-up is a new contender for best fried chicken sandwich. There's no shortage of smog check stations on Richmond's 23rd Street, but on a sunny Saturday afternoon, a steady stream of cars piled into Super Star Smog's tiny parking lot, causing a minor traffic jam on the adjacent side street. On a Wednesday afternoon, an otherwise quiet industrial and residential Richmond street filled with cars, and people hastily headed into what appeared to be a warehouse (but was actually a motorcycle club).…

The chamber of commerce is maintaining a list of local eateries still open for business. The Oakland Chamber of Commerce has compiled a list of more than 175 Oakland restaurants offering takeout or home delivery. The City of Alameda had a similar idea, and has created a website listing about 85 restaurants.…

Oakland-based Cream Co. Meats announced recently that, for the first time ever, it will start delivering its products on a retail basis. Statewide Covid-19-related shelter-in-place regulations mandated the closure of many restaurants and other businesses that regularly serve and sell Cream Co. products.…

Oakland’s Alphabet Rockers lands a second nomination for best children’s music album for record honoring gender and cultural diversity. The motto of the Alphabet Rockers is: "We make music that makes change." On its most recent album, The Love, the Oakland hip-hop collective lives up to that promise.…

Oakland Restaurant Week is more than just about eating great food. The program, presented by Visit Oakland in partnership with See Eat Love, also celebrates the history of cuisine in The Town so that diners can learn the stories behind their meals and get rare peeks at behind-the-scenes events. ORW20 - 15sec from Visit Oakland on Vimeo. Oakland Restaurant Week is more than just about eating great food.…

Scroll from the bottom up to read in chronological order.…