First Person

Blues City Diary

Notes and Reflections on Oakland, Where There’s Plenty of There and Here

    I didn’t have to read in the Oakland Tribune to learn that those living in the Oakland flatlands suffered from more stress than the hill dwellers. Shootings occur frequently in my neighborhood. We’ve become so jaded that when I talked to my spouse, who was traveling in the East, I didn’t even mention the latest one that occurred on May 1. As I drove home, I found police cars blocking my entrance to the block. Before this shooting, one took place on April 17. A man was chased down the block and was shot by a gunman, who was in pursuit.
    The one person who has responded to the problems on my block is Paul Brekke-Miesner of the Oakland Police Department, yet we still haven’t received our speed bumps, even though we followed the rules. Even after we filed for an application and one of our neighbors, Rosalyn Wright, went from door to door gathering signatures. Moreover, a boarded-up house on our street attracts unsavory characters; it is a cesspool of blight. Downtown officials have known about it for more than a year but haven’t done anything.
    But the situation is not entirely grim. The kids from our block who’ve finished college buoy our spirits. Some of them who are about to enter college stop by the house. Others who have finished return to the neighborhood from time to time. Some don’t return to Oakland, however. The condo frenzy has lifted prices beyond their reach. But it seems that with the housing crisis, these condos are going belly up.
    David Nicolai, who conducts tours at the Pardee Home Museum, told me about a bankrupt condominium complex located near the museum, the former home of father and son, Enoch and George Pardee. Enoch was elected mayor of Oakland in 1876. George was elected mayor in 1893 and governor of California in 1902. When Katrina happened, the inaction of the Bush administration was contrasted with George Pardee’s effective and swift response to the 1906 earthquake. Seems that there isn’t enough interest to keep the Pardee House tours going. David knows Oakland history inside out. If the Pardee mansion is closed for lack of interest, artifacts that tell a story about early Oakland will no longer be available to the public. Paintings, furniture and souvenirs from trips abroad, books and a photo of George, John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt posing together.
    By coincidence, I ran into Susan Hirshen at the Berkeley Y in April. She, like David, has also made a contribution to Oakland. She was one of the organizers of Festival at the Lake, which used to be one of the highlights of the Oakland season. Susan and her partner, Denise Lewis, were also responsible for the creation of Preservation Park where the organization of which I am chairperson, the Before Columbus Foundation, which administers the American Book Awards, has an office. We were one of the original tenants. C-Span broadcast our 2007 awards ceremony from Laney College in December.
    One landmark that won’t be converted into a condo is Mountain View Cemetery, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York City’s Central Park. I pointed it out to Nuruddin Farah, the Somali novelist who was temporarily living across the street from the cemetery. Said to be in line for a Nobel Prize for literature, he was here be interviewed
for a possible Regents’ Lectureship. We took him to Mexicali Rose, a Mexican restaurant that rewards its patrons with generous portions. They play oldies-but-goodies rock ’n’ roll tunes on the sound system. On Friday nights you can get a crab enchilada.
    I was asked to choose some of the country’s best restaurants by a Spanish magazine, and of course I chose my favorite, Everett and Jones. I stopped by City Hall to get some suggestions from Ignacio De La Fuente, whom I’d interviewed for my book, Blues City: A Walk In Oakland. He recommended a place called Tamarindo located on Eighth Street. Every time I see Councilperson De La Fuente, I propose that Lake Merritt, named for Dr. Merritt, who dismissed Robert Louis Stevenson as a “scribbler,” be renamed Lake Peralta after the Peralta family who came to California in the 1700s. Through some finagling by Oakland’s first mayor, Horace Carpentier, the family, headed by Don Vicente Peralta, was swindled out of its land, which included Lake Merritt. He said he’d introduce a resolution.
    Another City Hall person who provided me with information was Councilwoman Nancy Nadel. I asked her about a project called the Blues Walk of Fame. This project was originally brought forth by Ronnie Stewart of the Bay Area Blues project. As you know, Seventh Street used to be alive with music and commerce. The West Oakland walk of fame will be part of a broader Seventh Street streetscape improvement project that will make the pedestrian experience down Seventh Street a lot safer and more pleasant than it currently is, with sidewalk-embedded names of the various blues artists to the widening of sidewalk corners to make crossing Seventh Street less like crossing a rushing river.
    The $4.8 million project has multiple funding sources: the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the West Oakland Project Area Committee (Redevelopment), ACTIA, TLC, as well as an early commitment from my council district’s flexible funds.
    The memorial piece for each blues great will be circular with a bronze Oakland oak tree and the name of the artist below the tree. There will also be informational plaques along the walk explaining in more detail the specifics of the artists’ contributions.
    Ronnie Stewart, who plays a mean blues guitar, insists that Oakland be given credit for its role in blues history. One of the ways he accomplishes this is to organize an annual blues awards show. One night, March 29, Oaklanders took refuge from the shootings, the obnoxious boom cars, the muggings, holdups, car break-ins and one-sided press by attending the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame and Awards Show sponsored by Stewart’s Bay Area Blues Society. The audience was treated to music by Duane Thompson, Terrible Tom Bowden and Xymphoni, Tia Carroll, the Mekesmo Band, Ernie Johnson, Teddy “Blues Master” Watson and Little Wolf and the Alvin Sykes Band. Hollywood Jenkins was among those who received an award. He was modeling a fur coat that Snoop Dogg had bought for him. The highlight of the evening was Lady Esther of Esther’s Orbit Room, the last of the old Seventh Street blues houses, flanked by an entourage who appeared like ladies-in-waiting as the Queen of Oakland blues mounted the stage to address the audience. Everybody was decked out in their finest and the audience and lobby were full of handsome men and beautiful women. Mayor Dellums did a few choruses from the old classic “Sixty Minute Man” and praised
one of the honorees, Joel Dorham. I got an award for my song “The Prophet of Doom,” a blues song based upon Greek myth. It was recorded by jazz diva Cassandra Wilson on the CD Sacred Ground by the Black Saint Quartet led by Oakland’s David Murray from Justin Time Records.
    This was Oakland at its classiest and finest. Not a word about this glorious event was carried in the newspapers the next day.
    Finally, we lost a poet, Reginald Lockett, whose poetry, according to California poet laureate Al Young “breathed Oakland.” This writer is now part of Oakland’s literary pantheon next to Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson, Gertrude Stein and Ina Coolbrith. Writers, politicians, university people were among about 300 people who gathered to give Reggie a send off. He translated the soul of Oakland into words.
    Ishmael Reed’s latest book, Mixing It Up, Taking on the Media Bullies, from De Capo, is hot off the presses.

—By Ishmael Reed

—Photography by Richard Nagler