In Which I Walk Brooklyn (Oakland)
Oct. 13th, 2018 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aI dunno why I so rarely see WOBO's walk announcements. Oh wait, I do know. Despite my saying that I want to see their notifications and listing them as "See First", Facebook still hides them, in their never-ending quest for lucre. Anyway, this last week I saw their first walk announcement since I did their quarry walk a few months ago, and I immediately signed up.
This time, it was a walk of "Brooklyn", which was a small town just east of Lake Merritt that existed for less than two decades before Oakland annexed it in 1872, the first of several annexations that resulted in the sprawling monstrosity that is now the city of Oakland.
Interestingly, Brooklyn is where the phrase "East Oakland" came from, because it became the eastern third of Oakland when it was annexed. Then when more to the south and east got annexed a few decades later, that was all part of East Oakland too.
I biked down to the walk, enjoying a nice sweep around the north and east shores of Lake Merritt. But I knew that the walk started in Clinton Square, southeast of the Lake, on International Boulevard, and I was leery of the neighborhood. So, I locked my bike at Lake Merritt and walked the last several blocks. Clinton Square was less sketchy that I expected ... but still a little sketchy. I was glad I'd locked my bike up with its fellows in full view, on the Lake.
The walk was quite different from the quarries walk I did a few months ago. Where that was a mile and a quarter of walking at a time with brief stops in beautiful parks, this one was two and a half blocks of walking at a time with frequent stops at beautiful houses. And, there were numerous attractive Victorians, some well-restored, some not, usually interspersed with less attractive apartments, businesses, or more recent developments.
The places that we walked varied widely. We initially walked north of Clinton Square, and that was somewhat sketchy and run-down. Then we got into more hilly areas northeast of the Lake, and those areas picked up considerable and were quite attractive. Then as we looped back and neared International again, the neighborhood deteriorated, until it was quite bad at the end of our walk, southeast of Clinton Square, near the freeway. Those were the areas where the sidewalks on some side streets were entirely blocked by piles of garbage.
It was obvious that we were somewhat out-of-place in the neighborhood, which was predominantly Asian, especially Vietnamese, and to a lesser degree black. At one point a black woman driving down one of the too-busy roads spent quite a while screaming at us as she went by, all of which I could make out was, "You too many white people!" She was obviously saying we didn't belong, because one of the walkers yelled back, "I live two blocks away!" Two other times, women were quite passive-aggressive in pretending that we weren't allowing them a way to get through our group (though we were). It seemed to all be about exerting ownership, which surely goes straight to the gentrification of Oakland.
However, other people were shockingly inviting. We were looking up at an 1889 house that's a ways back from the street, up a hill, and one of the homeowners raced out first to hear about her house, then to invite us up to her lawn where we could see it better She even invited us in to see the house, which shocked me given that there were 20-30 of us. One of our walkers noted there were too many of us, and the group leader said we needed to move on to keep our schedule. Later, we were also invited in to see a gospel church which had once been a telephone company building, but we also declined.
The other highlight of the walk was when we became entangled in a political event. We stopped to look at some murals at East 12th Street & 13th Avenue, and they were painting a new one! This was part of a campaign event for Nikki Fortunato Bas, where the idea was to paint their vision of a more inclusive Oakland. Ms. Bas was pleased as anything to see us and excitedly asked if we were from Oakland (many people were, and I know several of the people lived in the Brooklyn area, hence their interest in the walk), then told us about her event and introduced us to someone who used to do the news for one of the local stations, who was impossible to hear because of the traffic on East 12th. She was clearly hoping to pick up some votes, but it was also a nice community-building event.
Shortly afterward we headed back toward Clinton Square and dispersed. It was a nice walk, nice to see some pretty buildings, and even nicer to learn more of the history of the area.
I retrieved my bike, then got some fast food west of the lake, but the area still turned out to be iffy. I'd thought about exploring more afterward, but decided I'd gotten my sunshine and exercise for the day, so I headed home and did some long-neglected laundry. (Exciting days.)
This time, it was a walk of "Brooklyn", which was a small town just east of Lake Merritt that existed for less than two decades before Oakland annexed it in 1872, the first of several annexations that resulted in the sprawling monstrosity that is now the city of Oakland.
Interestingly, Brooklyn is where the phrase "East Oakland" came from, because it became the eastern third of Oakland when it was annexed. Then when more to the south and east got annexed a few decades later, that was all part of East Oakland too.
I biked down to the walk, enjoying a nice sweep around the north and east shores of Lake Merritt. But I knew that the walk started in Clinton Square, southeast of the Lake, on International Boulevard, and I was leery of the neighborhood. So, I locked my bike at Lake Merritt and walked the last several blocks. Clinton Square was less sketchy that I expected ... but still a little sketchy. I was glad I'd locked my bike up with its fellows in full view, on the Lake.
The walk was quite different from the quarries walk I did a few months ago. Where that was a mile and a quarter of walking at a time with brief stops in beautiful parks, this one was two and a half blocks of walking at a time with frequent stops at beautiful houses. And, there were numerous attractive Victorians, some well-restored, some not, usually interspersed with less attractive apartments, businesses, or more recent developments.
The places that we walked varied widely. We initially walked north of Clinton Square, and that was somewhat sketchy and run-down. Then we got into more hilly areas northeast of the Lake, and those areas picked up considerable and were quite attractive. Then as we looped back and neared International again, the neighborhood deteriorated, until it was quite bad at the end of our walk, southeast of Clinton Square, near the freeway. Those were the areas where the sidewalks on some side streets were entirely blocked by piles of garbage.
It was obvious that we were somewhat out-of-place in the neighborhood, which was predominantly Asian, especially Vietnamese, and to a lesser degree black. At one point a black woman driving down one of the too-busy roads spent quite a while screaming at us as she went by, all of which I could make out was, "You too many white people!" She was obviously saying we didn't belong, because one of the walkers yelled back, "I live two blocks away!" Two other times, women were quite passive-aggressive in pretending that we weren't allowing them a way to get through our group (though we were). It seemed to all be about exerting ownership, which surely goes straight to the gentrification of Oakland.
However, other people were shockingly inviting. We were looking up at an 1889 house that's a ways back from the street, up a hill, and one of the homeowners raced out first to hear about her house, then to invite us up to her lawn where we could see it better She even invited us in to see the house, which shocked me given that there were 20-30 of us. One of our walkers noted there were too many of us, and the group leader said we needed to move on to keep our schedule. Later, we were also invited in to see a gospel church which had once been a telephone company building, but we also declined.
The other highlight of the walk was when we became entangled in a political event. We stopped to look at some murals at East 12th Street & 13th Avenue, and they were painting a new one! This was part of a campaign event for Nikki Fortunato Bas, where the idea was to paint their vision of a more inclusive Oakland. Ms. Bas was pleased as anything to see us and excitedly asked if we were from Oakland (many people were, and I know several of the people lived in the Brooklyn area, hence their interest in the walk), then told us about her event and introduced us to someone who used to do the news for one of the local stations, who was impossible to hear because of the traffic on East 12th. She was clearly hoping to pick up some votes, but it was also a nice community-building event.
Shortly afterward we headed back toward Clinton Square and dispersed. It was a nice walk, nice to see some pretty buildings, and even nicer to learn more of the history of the area.
I retrieved my bike, then got some fast food west of the lake, but the area still turned out to be iffy. I'd thought about exploring more afterward, but decided I'd gotten my sunshine and exercise for the day, so I headed home and did some long-neglected laundry. (Exciting days.)