Celebrating the spirit of San Francisco and the Bay Area.
The great vibes divergence
Why does San Francisco feel so weird during this tech boom while Oakland is more or less still Oakland?
25 Things I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
I moved to San Francisco 9 months ago from the East Coast bastion of Boston. Despite having experience living in a major US city, I found quite a few surprises coming here. Some have been great, w…
East bay heritage : a potpourri of living history | WorldCat.org
SustainOSS: The Report
On June 19th, 2017, one hundred people gathered in San Francisco to create a cultural shift in how we think about the sustainability of…
Who Rules Oakland? : Indybay
The Oakland Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies in the East Bay have recently pressured government officials to crack down on Occupy Oakland. Furthermore, they have popularized a narrative portraying Occupy as "harmful to local business." We critically examine ruling class networks of shared ownership, governance, and political advocacy impacting communities in Oakland by revealing links between the directors and executives of major corporations that are members in the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. In subsequent parts to this series we will provide more detailed information about the directors and executives of these companies, and provide an analysis of their social cohesion, profit-driven collusion, and political influence. More broadly, we will explore networks and institutions of economic and political power in the Bay Area.
The Ascendance of Bay Area Dance Music
The contemporary sound of Bay Area dance music is high-energy, omnivorous, and life-affirming.
Explosivity by Javier Arbona-Homar | East Bay Booksellers
How explosions across history reveal the violence embedded in San Francisco’s landscape Offering a novel approach to contemporary landscape studies, Explosivity unearths the hidden legacies of violence that have shaped the physical and cultural environment of the San Francisco Bay area.
The End of Textuality - Real Housewives of San Francisco
Authenticity in the age of GenAI
The End of Textuality - Real Housewives of San Francisco
Authenticity in the age of GenAI
An Abundance of Influence
A group of YIMBY Big Tech donors took over San Francisco politics. Now they’re setting their sights on the rest of the country.
The Water’s Edge: Empire, Race, and the Global History of Oakland, California, 1848-1980
Author(s): Klein, Andrew Nelson Carver | Advisor(s): Kelley, Robin D.G. | Abstract: This dissertation explores historical intersections between capitalism, race-making, environmental change, and U.S. foreign relations from the vantage of Oakland’s waterfront. It tracks the evolution of this geostrategic coastline since it emerged as a coal-powered nexus of railroads, steamships, and military installations during American colonization. Revising the story of Oakland’s development from a global perspective, my project documents how local boosters, businessmen, and bureaucrats forged intimate ties with far-flung territories administered by U.S. troops and landowners. Combining social and environmental history with methods from Black studies, I map the transformation of Oakland’s fertile estuary into an infilled hub of postindustrial commerce, a vital node of military logistics, and a focal point for racialized labor migration. Simultaneously, this dissertation reveals how, over the long twentieth century, Black, Indigenous, Chinese, and other working-class Oaklanders found footholds on the harbor, often repurposing its imperial routes for dramatically different ends. Drawing on archives and oral histories in Cuba, Hawai‘i, and across the continental United States, I trace Oakland’s tradition of radical internationalism, most visible in the antiwar and Black Power movements of the sixties, to multi-generational struggles over the governance of coastal land. I argue that Oakland’s waterfront both bridged the continental and overseas expansion of an ascendant world power and came to serve as a proving ground for alternative forms of globalization. “The Water’s Edge” therefore offers a critical reappraisal of the generally place-bound history of North American urbanism and far-reaching lessons for building just cities in a present defined by global environmental crises.
Popular events in San Francisco · Events Calendar
Discover the hottest events in San Francisco, and get notified of new events before they sell out.
The Second Gold Rush — Oakland Public Library
The Second Gold Rush — Johnson, Marilynn S. — More than any event in the twentieth century World War II marked the coming of age of America's West Coast cities. Almost overnight, new war industries prompted mass urban migration and development, producing social, cultural, and political changes that would persist well beyond 1945. For the San Francisco Bay Area, Marilynn S. Johnson argues, World War II was to the twentieth century what the gold rush was to the nineteenth.<br />Focusing on Oakland, Richmond, and other shipyard boomtowns in the East Bay, The Second Gold Rush chronicles the defense buildup, labor migration from the South and Midwest, the development of federal migrant communities, and the social and racial conflicts that pitted newcomers against longtime Bay Area residents. Johnson follows this story into the postwar era, showing how struggles between conservative and liberal forces over employment, housing, and civil rights shaped the urban political landscape into the 1950s and beyond. Tracing the cultural legacy of war migration, she also explains how Southern religion and music became an integral part of Bay Area life.<br />Urban historians have paid surprisingly little attention to World War II and the social and cultural transformation of wartime cities. In The Second Gold Rush, Johnson places the human drama of the war at center stage, recreating the texture of daily life in the workplace, the home, and the community.<br/>"At last, a close-in account of California during its moment of rebirth, World War II. . . . A book that helps us to understand California's past and also its present."--James N. Gregory, author of <i>American Exodus</i><br/>More than any event in the twentieth century, World War II marked the coming of age of America's West Coast cities. Almost overnight, new war industries prompted the mass urban migration and development that would trigger lasting social, cultural, and political changes. For the San Francisco Bay Area, argues Marilynn Johnson, the changes brought by World War II were as dramatic as those brought by the gold rush a century earlier.<br /><br />Focusing on Oakland, Richmond, and other East Bay shipyard boomtowns, Johnson chronicles the defense buildup, labor migration from the South and Midwest, housing issues, and social and racial conflicts that pitted newcomers against longtime Bay Area residents. She follows this story into the postwar era, when struggles over employment, housing, and civil rights shaped the urban political landscape for the 1950s and beyond. She also traces the cultural legacy of war migration and shows how Southern religion and music became an integral part of Bay Area culture.<br /><br />Johnson's sources are wide-ranging and include shipyard records, labor histories, police reports, and interviews. Her findings place the war's human drama at center stage and effectively recreate the texture of daily life in workplace, home, and community. Enriched by the photographs of Dorothea Lange and others, <i>The Second Gold Rush</i> makes an important contribution to twentieth-century urban studies as well as to California history.
The Color of Power — Oakland Public Library
The Color of Power — Douzet, Frédérick — <p></p><p> <i>The Color of Power </i>is a fascinating examination of the changing politics of race in Oakland, California. Oakland has been at the forefront of California’s multicultural changes for decades. Since the 1960s, the city has been a shining example of a fruitful liberal black-and-white political partnership and the successful incorporation of black politicians into the political landscape. But over the past forty years, the balance of power has changed as a consequence of dramatic demographic trends and economic circumstances. The city’s formerly dominant biracial political machine has been challenged by the demands of new multiracial interests.</p><p></p><p>The city, once governed by a succession of black mayors and majority black city councils, must now accommodate rapidly growing Asian and Latino communities. While the black-led coalition still relies on white progressive support, this alliance has weakened due to a shift in the progressives’ agenda and the voting habits of the black community, the rise of a Hispanic-Asian coalition, and a strong demographic decline of the African American population. With similar demographic changes taking place across the nation, Oakland’s experience provides insight in to the multiracial future of other American cities.</p><p></p><p> <i>The Color of Power</i> investigates Oakland’s contemporary racial politics with a detailed study of conflicts over issues like education, elections and political representation, and crime. Trained as a journalist, a political scientist, and a geographer, the author provides a unique perspective supported by numerous maps and extensive interviews.</p><p>Winner of awards from the French Society of Geography and the French National Academy of Sciences</p><br/>Trained as a journalist, a political scientist, and a geographer, the author provides a unique perspective supported by numerous maps and extensive interviews.<p>Winner of awards from the French Society of Geography and the French National Academy of Sciences</p>
San Francisco Progressives Declare War on Affordable Housing
Opposition to high-density housing is the ultimate in misguided Nimbyism.
