Oakland, in better days gone by,: In front of my apartment building on 1800 Lakeshore Avenue, where I wrote my first book, Behind the Big Top. Now living half a block from Piedmont, I avoid Oakland lake the plague.
A message I sent yesterday to Laura, my neighbor in the building where I live, which she once managed, after returning from m trip to Zoppe Family Circus.
OMG, a Lyft driver bringing me back from Redwood City on the
freeway, his car starts making bangs, I ask Luis if it’s the car, and he
seems to say yes (speaks almost no English, possibly recruited at the Southern boarder, pre-Trump), but keeps on driving. Then I
smell rubber burning and he exits onto Broadway, near maybe second
street, goes into the trunk to get out tools. I get out and flea up
Broadway wanting to get another Lyft home. I keep walking, looking
for a place where it would be easy for Lyft to FIND ME, which is
something you'd think they could and should do, rather then directing me
across the street or up to an interaction. I settle on Grand Avenue, and from
there summon a Lyft for home.
What is wrong with the picture I have just walked through? On the ghostly vacant street, a black man or two every block or three. Old Asian lady with cart waiting at bus top. Any whites? Maybe a couple. And it dawns on me, that I was in DOWNTOWN OAKLAND on a Saturday afternoon. DOWNTOWN. I see no people going into or coming out of the the lower level shopping mall across from where DeLaurs newsstand once operated. I remember when there was Swansons. When Oakland was such a wonderful place.
The last time I went down there, to the lawn bowling greens at the lake (I used to love watching the games), one of the greens was totally neglected and weeding out. No bowlers showed up, so I went to call for a Lyft, but thought, I will have to stand in front of a store, without the luxury of being able to move on if something coming my way looks like parole city pride. So, as with yesterday, I kept on walking, up to a sane and prospering location.
I much prefer confining myself to the delightful city of Piedmont Avenue.
What is wrong with the picture I have just walked through? On the ghostly vacant street, a black man or two every block or three. Old Asian lady with cart waiting at bus top. Any whites? Maybe a couple. And it dawns on me, that I was in DOWNTOWN OAKLAND on a Saturday afternoon. DOWNTOWN. I see no people going into or coming out of the the lower level shopping mall across from where DeLaurs newsstand once operated. I remember when there was Swansons. When Oakland was such a wonderful place.
The last time I went down there, to the lawn bowling greens at the lake (I used to love watching the games), one of the greens was totally neglected and weeding out. No bowlers showed up, so I went to call for a Lyft, but thought, I will have to stand in front of a store, without the luxury of being able to move on if something coming my way looks like parole city pride. So, as with yesterday, I kept on walking, up to a sane and prospering location.
I much prefer confining myself to the delightful city of Piedmont Avenue.
D / upper wastelands
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