Oakland, CA

This article contains a hard truth. And hope. And now, here’s the news: Within two years—dating back to 2014—70% of our orange-brown kelp forests died along a 520-mile stretch of coast, from Monterey, California, to Cape Arago in southern Oregon. Closer in—along the continuous coastal counties of Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino—95% of the bull kelp […]

The San Francisco Bay is the biologically richest estuary in North America. Olympia oysters are a vital part of that, the population of which has drastically dwindled from its original abundance. What was once a main food source for the Ohlone people was later gobbled up to near extinction by settlers during the California Gold […]

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries psychologist Abraham Maslow coined the term peak “experiences”: surging upflows of heightened clarity, awe, vitality and love. He also identified another category, “plateau experiences.” These are gentler but more enduring states, characterized less by ecstatic fireworks than by a leisurely delight in being alive. I believe you’re in a phase […]

Breakfast at my house really didn’t extend beyond bowls of cereal or, occasionally, toast and scrambled eggs. Sandwiches never made an appearance until lunch time. When I ate my first breakfast sandwich, it was a gray and soggy affair under the golden arches. An uninspiring meal that left me entirely disinterested in any other iterations […]

Berkeley-based author Ayelet Waldman is like the suffragettes and early feminists she came to admire while writing her new novel, A Perfect Hand (Knopf, 2026). A New York Times best-selling author, Waldman is clever, articulate and blessed with the determination to express unusual insights through multiple publishing outlets. Waldman has written novels, nonfiction, the Mommy-Track […]

Using AI for creative writing is like lining up for a marathon, then getting into a car and driving to the finish line. “You didn’t run the race just because you show up at the end. You have done nothing,” said award-winning writer Dave Eggers in a late-July interview. We were speaking about the art […]

Appearing Oct. 28 at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus, activist, author and educator Angela Davis delivered a strikingly musical performance. The program’s title and theme anchored on jazz-pianist and composer Billy Taylor’s iconic song, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” Recorded by Nina Simone in 1967, it became emblematic […]

Above Andres Giraldo Florez’s Snail Bar, a cafe sits at the top of the stairs. Uniformity is not central to the design aesthetic. Formerly an apartment, the conversion from someone’s living room into a retail space remains informal. The curtains, sofa cushions and blanket throws belong to another era. One in which Stevie Nicks’ “Gypsy” […]

Dr. Angela Wellman spent 20 years passing Black music from one pair of hands to the next. Now she’s stepping down, and her conservatory still rents in a city that zeroed out its general-fund arts grants. The video is old: Victor McElhaney, young, drumming with the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music (OPC) at the Art & […]

The pandemic cannot take credit for elevating tufting to a fine art. OK, maybe it can a little bit. The centuries-old hand craft, believed to have originated in ancient Persia, involves punching yarn through a stretched backing fabric, then pulling loops of extra yarn through the fabric from the outside. Used primarily to make rugs […]