Monthly Archives: February 2010

bayVAN

This post continues the chronicle of my escapades this past Friday night, another “First Friday” in Oakland. In fact, the rest of the week will highlight the various venues hit… expect posts to get shorter and images to get blurrier as evening progressed!

And a bit of a heads up… next week (while I am on vacation ~ woo hoo!) I’ve got some posts lined up about some of the key influential African American leaders in Oakland’s history. I took a walking tour last weekend (provided free of charge thanks to the city, despite their budget woes) and it was fascinating! I hope you will find it equally so… please tune in next week to read more about the first and second generations of black leaders who shaped the city we live in today.

Last note: cool show at the Stork Club tonight.  9-9:30ish.  Two drummers.  One sax.  Experimental.  OUT THERE.  Come check it out if you’re feeling brave…

In the meantime… second stop Friday night…. bayVAN, which stands for Bay Area Visual Arts Network. It’s a gallery, housed in a tiny but beautiful space nestled between Broadway and Telegraph Avenues, on the third story of 455 17th Street. But it’s not your run-of-the-mill conventional gallery… Their focus is “[sourcing] opportunities for artists to display, lease and sell original artwork outside traditional gallery venues,” and large scale residential and commercial applications seem to fit this bill quite nicely. They currently have an artists’ registry of 100 strong, and though their 2010 Open Call to Artists is currently closed, you can check back here for future openings later in the year.

BayVAN is headed by three women who’ve been formative in developing the East Bay arts community:

  • Brooke Baird is a painter and illustrator who has been working and teaching in the Bay area for 15 years. With non-profit management experience as well as skills in high-end art advertising and real estate marketing, she “takes great pleasure in using original art to bring together beautiful and unique spaces while creating economic opportunities for fellow artists.”
  • Kerri Johnson “is a working artist, arts administrator and curator. She is the co-owner of Blankspace gallery, a contemporary art gallery she co-founded in 2005. Ms. Johnson has been a member of the Bay Area fine art community for 9 years and has worked with internationally renowned artists including Keith Boadwee and Anya Gallacio.”
  • Nicole Neditch “has been part of the Bay Area Art community for over a decade, as an independent curator, arts administrator and graphic designer.” She opened Mama Buzz Cafe and Buzz Gallery in 2002, and later, with the help of other new gallery owners in the Uptown district, “founded Art Murmur, Oakland’s ‘First Friday’ art walk, which now hosts thousands of Bay Area residents at more than 15 galleries surrounding the Mama Buzz Cafe.” She also recently designed and executed the city’s new art & culture website: OaklandArts.org

The current exhibit, up for the next two months, is a group show that hosts a number of artists with whom they’ve worked over the past year: Brian Caraway, Jason Byers, Steuart Pittman, Modesto Covarrubias, Maryly Snow, Zoe Ani, Eric Larson, Martin Webb. The show is mostly small works, which seem well suited for the narrow profile of their space. It’s not clear to me if the gallery has other open-to-the-public hours, aside from First Fridays. You can check their blog or contact them directly.

First Friday, First Stop: MUA

Friends and I checked out the Art Murmur scene on Friday night… I missed the last one (it fell on New Year’s Day) so I was excited to mingle among the artists and hipsters once again.  My artist friend C came from San Francisco (I love that city folks are the new “bridge and tunnel” crowd… trekking to Oakland on the weekends for edgy art and sublime dining).  Unfortunately, she got hung up in traffic due to an accident on the bridge which gave me an extra hour to kill, so I met friends at MUA for a drink.  Or two…

mua lounge, mua on broadway, auto row restaurants

First of all, a bit of a disclaimer… I have yet to actually eat dinner at MUA, so those looking for a full dining review should just skip to the end and check some other links I’ve provided. But I have been to MUA a handful of times for drinks and/or snacks and I have to say, I just love this place. Everything about it, from the ginormous warehouse space and the way their minimalistic asian-shic decor perfectly meshes with the raw materials and scale of the larger industrial space, to the edgy urban art, the ultra-modern unisex bathrooms, and the artistry they apply to their simple but delicious food & drink preparations (and yes, I just mentioned bathrooms and food in the same sentence, but who really cares?). The whole place exudes a modern, but warm, aesthetic and the crowd inside (both staff and patrons) feels like modern-Oakland in my mind. It’s hard to explain, but it’s really one of the few spaces I’ve been in in Oakland where I really felt, for a moment, like I was in New York (or Brooklyn rather, because this is a huge space.)

mua, mua oakland

And that’s one of the things that’s so impressive about MUA. They’ve been open for 2 years now and I remember thinking when the first opened, ‘Man, that’s a big space. How are they gonna keep that full consistently?” But they do, and I’m so happy to see this enterprise going strong on a mostly abandoned stretch of Broadway’s Auto Row. Granted, there are a few other things going on there… but there are also a lot of large empty car dealerships, and a couple redevelopment plans already in the works for the area. Here’s one specific plan and EIR (Environmental Impact Report) if you’re interested. It’s actually pretty fascinating reading… The redesign of a city, in progress.

BROADWAY / VALDEZ DISTRICT Specific Plan and Environmental Impact Report

You can chime in if you have something to say. There are already great discussions going on here…
Building Up Broadway on A Better Oakland
Oakland’s Growing Pains on Living in the O

But I digress. Back to MUA, which is right in the thick of the redevelopment zone on Broadway at 24th Street… I meandered upstairs to see Ross Simonini putting the finishing touches on his portion of a two-man show in the upstairs area of MUA. The next two photos are his pieces, which were collaged creations of crayon, paint, and, if I remember correctly, “sandpapered” photographs. The room was rather dimly lit, but amidst the raw textured surfaces of compressed plywood and more sophisticated asian-influenced furniture, I thought his pieces looked, well, perfect. In fact, his whimsically constructed lanky figures, who seemed to be battling or dancing – I couldn’t quite tell, reminded me of the slender figures of Indonesian shadow puppet batiques. Beautiful. Simonini is also an editor at Believer magazine and has a blog here where you can read about more of his work, and many other artistic things of interest.

mua art show, ross simonini

William Saroyan, the other artist displaying works, is known more for his writing than his painting. His paintings were difficult to see by candlelight, and alas, I had a cold drink waiting for me at the bar downstairs, so I will have to go back to see his pieces by the light of day (the picture below does not do them justice). In the meantime, I’ll provide you an excerpt from Simonini’s recent blog post about the show…

“His vein of abstract expressionism came not from New York but from Fresno, his home, and contained an intensity of ferocious markings and firework colors, often quickly scrawled on butcher paper. As a writer, he received Pulitzer for “The Time of Your Life,” but turned it down, and was given an Oscar for his screenplay, “The Human Comedy,” but sold it to a pawnshop. Like Steinback, he wrote extensively about central California, though Saroyan was widely known for his work about San Francisco.”

Sounds interesting, eh? Go check it out… this place is cool.

mua art show, william saroyan art

More reading and reviews…
MUA on Yelp
MUA on City Homestead
MUA on Oakland Magazine
MUA on East Bay Express

Elements of Power ~ Voices of Change

oakland mural, oakland mural art, ghosttown mural art

I love this mural, despite its dilapidated state. Painted 10 years ago by folks from Laney College, the East Bay Institute of Urban Arts, and Pat McElroy on the corner of 31st and MLK, it’s definitely showing its years, not to mention the heap of dump-destined-junk dumped in front of it. I thought about going back to snap another shot without the pile of junk, but then decided it was more authentic to just show you how I saw it when I first came across it.

This is typical in West Oakland, and the symbolism does not escape me.

Here you have symbols of power and change for people of color – activists, political leaders, artists, musicians, migrant workers, athletes, and more – all stitched together into a positive tapestry of, dare I say, “hope”, and some thoughtless person obscures it with a bunch of trash they’re too lazy or cheap to dispose of properly. It makes me mad. Trash gets dumped here daily, and I don’t just mean kids throwing their candy wrappers on the sidewalk as they walk home from school (which also happens). I mean large trucks advertising dumping & hauling, who likely charge folks to take their trash away, and then come dump it in my neighborhood so they don’t have to pay the city dump fees. Argh. The city still ends up paying for it, through blight clean up crews, and even more so, reduced property taxes.

It sometimes feels like a losing battle… which reminds me of this essay I read yesterday. It’s a breakup letter to the city of Oakland, from a resident who, after many years of struggling to make this city a better place, has given up. She’s movin’ to the country. Check it out… Ode to Oakland.

I’m not there… yet.

mural artists in oakland, laney college mural

Directed by: Edythe Boone and Meera Desai (if that name rings a bell it’s because she was also involved in the Martin Luther King Jr. mural I covered when I first started this blog – To Ignore Evil…)

Art’s Crab Shak

My friend and I went to Art’s Crab Shak last night.  Now this is an Oakland experience.  And by that, I mean a real, old-school, home-style Oaktown experience.  Not for the faint of heart.

crab shak on broadway, art's crab shack, auto row restaurants

I’ve wondered about this place for years… I used to live right around the corner on 49th street and would drive past regularly, visit Mama’s across the street frequently, and yet never made my way in… until last night.

The first thing you notice is the sign that says “since 1963” – not an easy feat for a restaurant in the Bay Area. But originally it was Art’s Steakhouse, until 1992 when Milouda Kelley took ownership, switched the menu to seafood, and added “Crab Shak” to the old sign.

The second thing you notice when you enter, is how the interior is almost as much bar as it is restaurant. With the lack of windows, dim interior, and vintage vibe, it definitely feels more dive bar than fine dining. I wanted to take some pictures inside, but felt like dorky tourist, so refrained. You’ll just have to go see for yourself.

The third thing you notice after taking your seat in one of the the vinyl upholstered booths framed by circa-70s corkboard chock full of Christmas cards from years past, is that the menu says you must “pay before food comes.” Now that’s a twist. But it’s likely due to the fact that despite it’s divey aesthetic, this crab don’t come cheap!

But this is what you love about Art’s. It’s an experience.

We shared a “bucket” for two, which – if I had done my research beforehand – I would have known would not truly be a bucket. Instead it was a large platter heaped with gorgeous crab-legs steeped in garlicky mushroomy goodness. It’s not your classic east-coast style crab (what I grew up with), but it’s damn good, nonetheless.

“Buckets” come with a basket of garlic bread, a plastic bib (you will wear it!), a huge stack of napkins, and sani-wipes. Definitely not a first date place, unless you’re a bit wierd.

My only complaint would be the poor beer selection: basic bud, MGD, corona, etc. Can’t a girl get a nice pale ale to go with her crab?!?

bucket of crab, crab at art's

More reading…
Art’s on Yelp
Reason to Wear A Bib (East Bay Express)
Art’s on Eat Drink SF
Art’s on Not For Tourists