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Alexis Madrigal examines port city costs
The Port of Oakland stirs before dawn. Cranes rise like steel giants against a fog-stained sky, the air thick with diesel and salt. A container ship groans into a berth, water churning beneath it. Forklifts beep, chains...
Gabby La La’s visual memoir captures extraordinary in the ordinary
For musician, artist and mother Gabby La La, art has always been a part of life.
Whether watching her father sketch bubble letters at the coffee table or immersing herself in her own creative expression, drawing became second...
Cartoonist depicts memories, mixtapes and the magic of writing notes
Briana Loewinsohn’s Raised by Ghosts begins with a note to the reader: This is not a love story. It is a love letter.
In the Oakland-based cartoonist’s latest book, a semi-autobiographical young adult graphic novel set in early...
Aaron Carnes releases second edition of ska book
For many in the Bay Area, the times seem very, hopelessly dark. There’s no escaping the chaotic hellscape that the country—and world—currently finds itself in. It doesn’t take a therapist to know the importance of investing in...
Richard Schwartz gives ‘Poppy Talk,’ not poppycock
There was a time in California, before ranchos and missions, before housing developments and freeways, when Spanish sailors viewed the coastline, seemingly ablaze in orange, and called it tierra del fuego, “land of fire.”
The blaze the sailors...
Climate workers reclaiming ‘just transition’
The concept behind a “just transition,” enabling fossil-fuel workers and others to move from their current climate-damaging jobs to ones that pay as well and have equal benefits, is obviously rational. But implementing this concept isn’t easy,...
Nancy Pelosi speaks truth about power in new book
When House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and her husband attended the Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson show at Shoreline Amphitheatre a few weeks ago, they sat in section 102. I sat in 101.
The Pelosi entourage arrived right...
