The minimal, piano-sampling production with thunderous bass on Larry June’s brand new mixtape, Sock It to Me, is heavily indebted to Atlanta trap, but the San Francisco rapper (who is originally from Georgia) makes the Southern aesthetic his own with off-the-wall rhymes and adlibs that uninhibitedly bare his eccentricities. The adlibs, in particular, are the record’s most amusing and inventive feature: June peppers his blasé drawl with high-pitched calls of “yee-hee,” “sock it to me,” and the Austin Powers-esque “yeah, baby,” which he inserts between almost every line. These odd verbal tics complicate June’s nonchalant-sounding flow and cool-guy posturing, revealing a self-effacing, jokey side to the otherwise ice-cold lyricist. He performs at Venue in downtown Oakland on January 15 as one of the opening acts for Atlanta trap rapper 21 Savage. Wolfpack Keith (aka Stunnaman) is also featured on the bill. On Twitter, Keith and Larry June have been hinting at a collaborative mixtape for later this year. It should be one of 2016’s most interesting releases.
Diana Block is a founding member of San Francisco Women Against Rape, the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, and California Coalition for Women Prisoners. She also spent thirteen years living underground with a political collective in support of the Puerto Rican Independence and Black liberation movements. Since returning, she has committed herself to anti-prison work, and is now releasing her first novel, Clandestine Occupations. The book, which is being published by PM Press, tells the story of a fictional San Francisco activist named Luba Gold who goes underground in 1984 to support the Puerto Rican Independence movement. As the story progresses, it probes into relationships of solidarity across generations of female activists, while exploring such relatable emotions as love and betrayal. Block will be at E. M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore (410 13th St., Oakland) on January 14 at 7 p.m. for an official book launch party, reading, and discussion.
For the past eighteen years, Youth Speaks poets have been keeping the words of Martin Luther King Jr. fresh and loud with their annual Bringing the Noise performance on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. King’s words are as resonant today as ever, and Youth Speaks’ talented poets will be reinterpreting, renewing, and responding to his inspiring speeches. This year’s showcase will also feature performances by Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, members of the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars, and organist and vocalist Tammy Hall. The performance will be held at The Nourse Theater in San Francisco (275 Hayes St.) on January 18 at 7 p.m. This cornerstone of Youth Speaks’ annual programming always makes for a moving beginning to a new year.
Plenty is, indeed, lush — but in a subtle way. The group show currently on view at Athen B Gallery (1525 Webster St., Oakland) features nineteen artists, both local and from outside the Bay Area. Scott Cooper’s finely executed ink paintings included in the show encapsulate its overall sense of muted opulence. “Inspiration Shelf” features slightly slanted shelving stacked with elaborate pieces of art, each cleanly rendered in flat, translucent tones. Meanwhile, Michael Reeder’s paintings on wood panel feature emotionless figures emitting smoke while dressed in vibrant, clown-like palettes that feel almost contradictory to the subjects’ apathy. In Laura Berger’s “Purification,” simply rendered naked women lounge in and around a minimalist vase. Collectively, the works make for a rich feast that’s worthwhile but not overwhelming.
American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that the fight for civil rights could not wait. In his words: “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” With that in mind, here are two ways to honor his legacy on this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day:
March: The Anti Police-Terror Project is hosting its 2nd Annual March to Reclaim MLK’s Radical Legacy on Monday, January 18, capping off a full 96 hours of direct action. Participants should meet at 11 a.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza (14th Street and Broadway) in downtown Oakland to see speakers and performances before the group walks toward Emeryville. The march will be the last in a series of demonstrations coordinated with other activist organizations beginning on Thursday, January 15 and running throughout the weekend in both Oakland and San Francisco. (AntiPoliceTerrorProject.org.)
Service: What better way to honor Dr. King than by giving back to the community? The City of Richmond is hosting a day of service along the Richmond Greenway, a stretch of previously abandoned railroad tracks that the city would like to turn into an open space resource. Beginning at 9 a.m., volunteers will be planting trees and flowers and engaging in other services to beautify the area. Activities last until 2 p.m. and will be held on the greenway between 4th and 16th streets. Visit RichmondGreenway.org for details.
Credits: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz
This week, the Oakland City Council is grappling with big increases in garbage collection rates for apartment buildings, and questions about the impact of bank lending on low-income communities. The council will also consider a resolution that would establish a Black Business and Arts District. And the city is taking steps to establish a bike sharing program similar to San Francisco’s. The full agendas for this week are online here.
Not on the agenda: The council’s Community and Economic and Development Committee was supposed to hold a hearing on the proposed affordable housing impact fee on Tuesday, according to a city memo dated December 18, but the item has been moved to January 26 along with other important housing legislation.
[jump]
Garbage fees: Last year, business owners protested massive garbage and recycling rate hikes that were included in the city’s new contract with Waste Management (WM). Those rates were renegotiated, but now apartment building owners are being hit with big “push service rates.” Push services rates apply when WM employees move garbage bins from the property line into the street to empty them. The rates start at $183.19 a month if WM employees move the bins from 0 to 25 feet, and the rates can soar as high as $931.22 a month if the bins need to be moved more than 100 feet from the property line, according to a staff report. The council is attempting to lower the rates, which are a significant financial hit to both landlords and tenants.
Black business and arts: On Tuesday, the Community and Economic Development Committee will decide whether to designate much of 14th Street in downtown Oakland a “Black Business and Arts District.” The resolution to establish the district would “highlight, celebrate, preserve, and support the contributions of Oakland’s black artists and business owners and the corridor as a place central both historically and currently to Oakland’s black artists and black owned businesses.”
Responsible banking:On Tuesday, the Finance Committee will receive an informational report on JP Morgan Chase’s lending and community investment activities in Oakland. The council made JP Morgan Chase’s representatives promise to disclose detailed lending data by census tract, and to improve outreach and services to low-income Oakland residents as a condition of awarding the bank the city’s depository services contract in 2014.
Sharing bikes: Also on Tuesday, the Public Works Committee will hold a hearing on launching a bicycle sharing program for Oakland. The plan is to set up seventy stations across the city with 850 bicycles. A $149 annual pass is required to use the bikes. The program would launch this summer and is funded with state clean air money.
1. The US Supreme Court will hear arguments today in a case that could deal a severe blow to public-employee unions nationwide, The New York Times$ reports. The case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, seeks to overturn a law that requires public employees who choose not to join a union to still pay union dues in exchange for unions representing them if they’re fired or disciplined and in bargaining for higher wages. Anti-union forces are financing the case to overturn the law on First Amendment grounds, and if they win, unions could lose substantial amounts of money, thereby lessening their political influence.
4. Solar power is now the largest form of renewable energy in California, surpassing wind and hydroelectric power, KQED reports (h/t Rough & Tumble). Solar now represents 6.7 percent of all power used in the state, compared to 5.3 percent for wind and 5.9 percent for hydro. In addition, the solar percentage does not include home rooftop solar.
1. It appears increasingly likely that the NFL will not approve the Oakland Raiders’ application to move to Los Angeles and will instead allow the San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Rams to move there, the Bay Area News Group$ reports. As the Expressnoted this week, Raiders’ owner Mark Davis faces an uphill battle in his bid to move the team because he lacks the financial resources to build a new stadium and because he’s unpopular with fellow owners. The league is scheduled to vote on the issue next week.
2. Deep-pocketed opponents of the Golden State Warriors’ plan to build a new arena in San Francisco have filed suit to block the proposal, the Chron reports. The opponents, who are wealthy donors to UC San Francisco Medical Center, contend that the city failed to adequately address traffic and transportation problems that the new arena would create for the hospital. They also say the arena needs voter approval.
[jump]
5. Silicon Valley billionaire Sean Parker donated $500,000 to the effort to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use in California, the Chron$ reports. Parker, the first president of Facebook, is expected to contribute millions to the cause.
Congratulations on making it through the first week of your new ascetic lifestyle. You’ve abided by your resolutions all year so far! Wow! Go out and treat yourself to some fun this weekend. Here’s how:
Matt Ingalls of the San Francisco Tape Music Festival.San Francisco Tape Music Festival
Once a year, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival invites listeners to experience experimental, fixed-media compositions in complete darkness through its high-end, immersive speaker system, which festival organizers purport is the best way to take in the challenging, abstract, and non-melodic works at the event. The only requirement for a piece to be considered “tape music” is that it can’t be composed for a live band or orchestra, and instead utilizes recorded media as a means of sonic innovation. The festival features 32 local and international composers — some of whom are in their eighties and have been involved in electroacoustic music since its beginnings — presenting a variety of works, including contemporary pieces as well as some early cylinder recordings dating to the late 1800s. Maggi Payne, an electronic music pioneer and director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, is one of the most prominent Bay Area composers at the event. She will present her piece, Black Ice, which uses a Moog synthesizer to create a dynamic, textural sound collage. The festival takes place Friday through Sunday at the Gray Area Grand Theater. — Nastia Voynovskaya
Jan. 8-10. $15-$40. SFSound.org/Tape
[jump]
Peet’s Theatre.
Credits: Kevin BernePeet’s Theatre Grand Opening
Although Berkeley Rep first found its permanent home in Berkeley (2071 Addison St.) in 1980, the theater formerly known as the Thrust Stage is now being renamed Peet’s Theatre in recognition of the theater company’s new partnership with Peet’s Coffee & Tea. To celebrate the grand opening of the newly named venue, Berkeley Rep will throw open its doors on Saturday, January 9 for a day of free activities. The event includes backstage tours of the theater, Peet’s coffee tastings, a photo booth with Berkeley Rep costumes, food trucks, and Mad Libs playwriting. Attendees can also see a demonstration of Meyer Sound’s cutting edge Constellation Acoustic System, perform a part on stage, meet local playwrights, and participate in theater workshops on a range of topics including stage combat with Dave Maier, improvisation with Bobby August, and story creation with Anthony Jackson. — Sarah Burke
Sat., Jan. 9, 12-3 p.m. 510-647-2949. Free. BerkeleyRep.org
Wayne Harris in Mother’s Milk.
Credits: DOUG MCKECHNIEMother’s Milk, A Blues Riff in Three Acts
Recently extended until January 31 from a six-week run at The Marsh Berkeley (2120 Allston Way), Mother’s Milk tells the coming-of-age story of a young Black man trying to find his roots. The show is steeped in gospel and blues music, and although it’s set during St. Louis’ influential civil rights movement, it is very much a personal tale. Wayne Harris, who stars in the solo show, navigates his mother’s impending death as she battles breast cancer amid a colorful cast of characters — from the women at church to a slightly inebriated preacher. Harris is a veteran Marsh storyteller and has produced five solo shows, including Tyrone “Shortleg” Johnson and Some White Boys, which won the 2012 San Francisco’s Fringe Festival’s “Best of Fringe” award. He takes the stage in Mother’s Milk with musical director and piano accompanist Randy Craig and bassist John McArdle under the direction of David Ford. — Erin Baldassari
Through Jan. 31 $20-$100. TheMarsh.org
The Sentence Unseen: Celebrating Resilience
“What I want you to know about children with incarcerated parents is that we are a group of children who seem to be rare, but actually we are around you every day,” said Daniel Zechao Yan, one of the subjects photographed for the show The Sentence Unseen: Celebrating Resilience, currently on view at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (659 14th St.). The exhibit offers a portal into the oft-overlooked lives of people, especially youth, whose loved ones are incarcerated. Featuring portraits by documentary photographer Ruth Morgan and mixed-media artwork by Dee Morizono, the show challenges assumptions about people who are currently behind bars and promotes alternatives to incarceration through models of restorative justice. It confronts the trauma and loss endured as a result of incarceration while also shining a light on the ways in which art can be used to heal broken communities. As one of the youth in the exhibit, Jazree “Jaz” Ridley, put it, “My father did the crime, do I have to do the time? I am not my father’s choices.” — E. B.
Through Jan. 25. Free. CommunityWorksWest.org
Work by Bella Feldman.
Credits: Vessel GalleryBella Feldman at Vessel Gallery
Bella Feldman’s recent work includes a sculpture that resembles a menacing underwater mine. Two glass orbs are outfitted with sharp steel spikes and anchored to militaristic mounts made of heavy metal, then tethered to one another with a hefty chain. The piece embodies a glaring tension between force and fragility — a recurring characteristic in the 85-year-old artist’s body of work.
Feldman’s glass mine fits neatly into her “War Toys” series, an arsenal of combat-inspired steel and glass sculptures that she has been developing over the course of her prolific career — which now spans 62 years. The series is remarkably uniform and consistent, but also includes wildly imaginative works. Each sculpture is a fictitious piece of weaponry educed from the sprawling gap between the reality of war and the average American’s mediated experience of it. Feldman critiques that area of ignorance by creating sadistic imaginings of aestheticized violence — alluding to a mythologized theater of war for which each of her sculptures acts as a prop. — S. B.
Bella Feldman and Ron Weil will be giving artist talks at Vessel Gallery (471 25th St., Oakland) on Saturday, January 9 at 2 p.m. Free. Vessel-Gallery.com
If your pockets are feelin’ light and you’re still yearning for more suggestions, we’ve got a ton, and these ones are all FREE! We’re Hungry: Got any East Bay news, events, video, or miscellany we should know about? Feed us at Sa*********@************ss.com.
Gary Cornell, who brought Black Oak Books in Berkeley back from the brink of closing in the mid-Aughts, said today that he will shutter the new and used bookstore by the end of January. Doors will remain open for the next few weeks as the store hosts a sale to empty its inventory.
Black Oak Books will close to the public at the end of January.
Cornell first bought the store in 2007 or 2008, he said, from the previous owners who were struggling to adapt to the internet age of book selling and had racked up debt with the IRS.
“When they got into trouble, I wanted to rescue it,” Cornell said. “But at some point, you have to say enough is enough.”
[jump]
Cornell had become fond of the store, which specializes in scholarly works and new books, while he was a professor on sabbatical in Berkeley. He spent two years in the city before moving there permanently from Connecticut, he said.
“Every time I came to Berkeley, it was one of my favorite places,” Cornell said. “I just loved it and went in every day and was friendly with the owners.”
He initially operated the store at its existing location on Shattuck Avenue but said it didn’t generate enough sales to make the rent his landlord wanted. Cornell purchased a building on San Pablo Avenue at Carleton Street in southwest Berkeley, hoping the area would turn into the next Temescal, and moved the store there in 2009, he said.
Although sales did increase slightly after the store moved and went up marginally this past year, Cornell said the bookstore never generated enough foot traffic to cover costs. Though he said he didn’t take a salary or expect to have the store pay for its rent, he was still having to subsidize the business to keep it open.
“Bookstores are low margin businesses. You need a lot of sales, you need a lot of foot traffic,” Cornell said. “We just weren’t getting it.”
With Berkeley’s minimum wage increasing to $11 in October 2015 and rising to $12.53 this year, Cornell said it just didn’t make sense to keep the store open anymore.
“I would have had to increase my subsidy, and I’m busy and getting older,” he said. “I’m not against [the minimum wage increase], but it has the effect of changing the mix of businesses you might get, and quirky bookstores are one of the businesses that may be affected.”
Black Oak Books follows Shakespeare & Co., a used bookstore that had operated in Berkeley for 51 years before closing in June.
Black Oak Books owner Gary Cornell is hoping to sell most of the books at the store before the end of the month.
Although the brick-and-mortar location will be gone, Cornell said the store will still have an online presence. He found a space in El Cerrito to keep what’s left of the inventory and said he would consider reopening the store if he found the right location.
He already has a tenant lined up for the San Pablo Avenue location. Though he declined to divulge who will be taking over the space, he said it is not a retail business.
The store is discounting books by 40 percent throughout this month, Cornell said. He’s hoping to get rid of most of his inventory by the end of the month when the doors close to the public. But, he said he might still be selling books in February on a limited basis.
“We have a lot of great books that we’re selling for less than even Amazon will charge,” he said. “We would rather sell them to people than return them to the publisher.”
The minimal, piano-sampling production with thunderous bass on Larry June’s brand new mixtape, Sock It to Me, is heavily indebted to Atlanta trap, but the San Francisco rapper (who is originally from Georgia) makes the Southern aesthetic his own with off-the-wall rhymes and adlibs that uninhibitedly bare his eccentricities. The adlibs, in particular, are the record’s most amusing and...
Diana Block is a founding member of San Francisco Women Against Rape, the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, and California Coalition for Women Prisoners. She also spent thirteen years living underground with a political collective in support of the Puerto Rican Independence and Black liberation movements. Since returning, she has committed herself to anti-prison work, and is now releasing her...
For the past eighteen years, Youth Speaks poets have been keeping the words of Martin Luther King Jr. fresh and loud with their annual Bringing the Noise performance on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. King’s words are as resonant today as ever, and Youth Speaks’ talented poets will be reinterpreting, renewing, and responding to his inspiring speeches. This year’s...
Plenty is, indeed, lush — but in a subtle way. The group show currently on view at Athen B Gallery (1525 Webster St., Oakland) features nineteen artists, both local and from outside the Bay Area. Scott Cooper’s finely executed ink paintings included in the show encapsulate its overall sense of muted opulence. “Inspiration Shelf” features slightly slanted shelving stacked...
American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that the fight for civil rights could not wait. In his words: “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” With that in mind, here are two ways to honor his legacy on this year’s Martin Luther...
This week, the Oakland City Council is grappling with big increases in garbage collection rates for apartment buildings, and questions about the impact of bank lending on low-income communities. The council will also consider a resolution that would establish a Black Business and Arts District. And the city is taking steps to establish a bike sharing program similar to...
Stories you shouldn’t miss:
1. The US Supreme Court will hear arguments today in a case that could deal a severe blow to public-employee unions nationwide, The New York Times$ reports. The case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, seeks to overturn a law that requires public employees who choose not to join a union to still pay union dues...
Stories you shouldn’t miss:
1. It appears increasingly likely that the NFL will not approve the Oakland Raiders’ application to move to Los Angeles and will instead allow the San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Rams to move there, the Bay Area News Group$ reports. As the Express noted this week, Raiders’ owner Mark Davis faces an uphill battle in his...
Congratulations on making it through the first week of your new ascetic lifestyle. You've abided by your resolutions all year so far! Wow! Go out and treat yourself to some fun this weekend. Here's how:
San Francisco Tape Music Festival
Once a year, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival invites listeners to experience experimental, fixed-media compositions in complete darkness...
Gary Cornell, who brought Black Oak Books in Berkeley back from the brink of closing in the mid-Aughts, said today that he will shutter the new and used bookstore by the end of January. Doors will remain open for the next few weeks as the store hosts a sale to empty its inventory.
Cornell first bought the store in...
