The first crack in the foundation wasn’t this most recent purchase of American Steel by ScanlanKemperBard (SKB) (for $82.5 million in all-cash). The first major blow to this community came 5 years ago when it was previously sold to 11-West. During that initial sale, my understanding was that many artists

At the close of 2021, we lost three legendary female writers in a single month. These writers were, of course, bell hooks, Eve Babitz and Joan Didion. The losses followed one another in such quick succession that the world hardly had a chance to give each woman their due in

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Oakland-based writer Jenny Odell had taunted me from bookstore shelves for years.  I was drawn to the title because I was drawn to the premise: To do nothing.  It was attractive, but almost cruel in its simplicity.  Nothing? How could I

I’ve written a lot of articles about San Francisco, but I’ve never written anything with the knowledge that I was going to be a resident of the City. It always felt too ambitious, too unrealistic and most of all… too expensive. But things changed, and I’ve signed a lease for an

Children who attend school in Oakland have it pretty fuckin’ rough. There’s no doubt about it. The schools in Oakland are notoriously underfunded and dysfunctional. And for many students, especially in low income neighborhoods, school is one of the only places that underprivileged kids are guaranteed a meal.  So why

I had found him online. He was a kooky sketch comedian, and he maintained an incredibly honest, introspective blog littered with cultural references I loved. He was beautiful in a wicked, ethereal way, but he wasn’t beholden to his beauty. His life seemed like one long, fascinating lurch towards the

If you’re a regular at Oakland house shows, you’ve likely shared a room with Nicholas Taplin.  In 2015, Taplin began filming DIY shows and sharing footage under the name Post-Consumer. Feeling “unconditioned socially” given his Quaker boarding school education on the East Coast, Taplin discovered this form of documentation both

Housing and food insecurity is nothing new to the Bay Area. From the most densely populated urban corridors to idyllic suburban streets and far flung exurban outskirts, access to nutrients and shelter is increasingly harder to come by for our region’s ever growing homeless population.  Desperate times call for innovative