Category Archives: WHERE

TONIGHT: Art & Wine Gallery Night with Friends of OAM

Fun event tonight at two very cool uptown galleries, Classic Cars West and Warehouse 416. I’ve written about both in previous posts, which I’ll link at the bottom…

Tonight is a fundraiser and membership drive for Friends of OAM. Tickets are $15 for the individual event. Or with the purchase of an annual membership of $50, you get free admission tonight and to all other quarterly gallery nights such as this one. Your contribution is tax-deductible and supports an organization doing great work in our city.

Friends of OAM work to “support the Oakland Art Murmur in its mission to increase awareness of and participation in the visual arts in Oakland.”

Classic Cars West is hosting Passage by Night, a unique installation of work by collaborative team Isaac Amala and Liz Simpson, featuring sculptural and painterly constructions from neckties.

And Warehouse 416 presents In Search of Sheba: Black Women Artists 2014 in honor of Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March). Numerous artists’ works in a variety of mediums (sculpture, painting, textile fashion, video, photography, pen & ink, and découpage) will be featured.

Hope to see you there…

FOAM-gallery-night

Historical posts:

Blog Restart. Giving it another go…

So I’ve been thinking for awhile about restarting this blog. I miss it.

For all intents and purposes, I stopped working on it around July of 2012, which is when I started working double-time for a brief spell, finishing one gig at the same time I was starting a new one.

My old job had been part-time for a small tech startup in Emeryville, close to my old West Oakland digs… I was working 25-30 hours a week, so I had another 10-15 to spare which I devoted to this blog.

I didn’t realize when I first started how much time I was actually putting in. I had the time so I used it. It was only when I was interviewed by some folks from the Oakland Library for a piece about the blog–I had done a series on independent bookstores, including theirs, so they, in turn, were covering me–that I realized how much time I was putting in.

She asked, “How many hours would you say you put in each week in the production of your blog?”

I started counting… well, there’s the actually going out and experiencing and photographing stuff, there’s the editing and processing of photos, there’s the research to augment what I write, and of course there’s the writing. It all adds up rather quickly.

And so while I thought I’d continue the blog once my brief double-time stint ended, the reality was that my new gig was full-time, and I no longer had the 10-15 hours to spare each week. I kept thinking I’d get back to it, things would slow down at work, I’d post more photos and less writing, etc. But weeks stretched to months and months to beyond a year and the further I got from the last post, the less likely I was to write a new one. It seemed too far gone.

But now with newly acquired time on my hands, I’ve decided it’s not too far gone. It’s never too late.

So here I am. I am going to try again…

I don’t have a wealth of material stored up so I’m going to start things off with a piece of my own art below, newly created for a recent graduate school application. If you have any thoughts about it, or about this blog in general, or what you’d be most interested in seeing in future posts, or if you just want to say hi, I’d truly love to hear from you…

CherryBlossoms

Radio Radio by Mark Mason

laney college radio, college radio, alternative radio, oakland internet radioHey Peeps… here come’s my second ever guest post. Mark Mason has picked up the slack I’ve let gather in a wake of meetings, deadlines, to-do lists, and spreadsheets.  Thank you Mark.  And thanks to the fabulous folks at 9th Floor Radio for pitching the idea. As you all likely know by now I’m a bit of a music freak and a big fan of all things eclectic, interesting, and alternative (which no longer means what it used to). 9th Floor Radio fits the bill with 20+ shows that cater to musiphiles of all stripes, and all of it’s immediately downloadable.  I’m listening to an archive of Straight from the Crate as I put this together and I gotta say… it’s pretty damn sweet (because I’m old and I love those old school grooves). But enough of me, here’s Mark’s great writeup…

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Radio is dead. Ok, you can still turn the dial and get a crackle and hiss followed by music and chat. But is that really what you want? How many times have you been in your car or at home and tried in vain to find a station which appeals to your sense of restless discovery, only to be confronted with a commercial soaked station full of predictable programming? It’s frustrating.

This is where the internet has breathed new life into the tired old format of radio. Instead of a DJ stifled by advertising commitments you now have the power back in the hands of music lovers.

One such station is 9th Floor Radio, an internet radio station located in Oakland, California. The station, originally broadcasting from the ninth floor of the Laney College administration building, hence the name, has a formidable roster of shows. From the soulful melodic grooves of Her Blue Majesty, the punk, metal and primitive heavy rock of Kick Out the James to the Nu Jazz, Neo Soul and Funk of Jazzology-Remixed, no one need feel left out. All shows are archived at www.9thfloorradio.com, ready for listeners to download and listen at their leisure.

A show which could be said to embody the spirit of the station and boasts of “always playing the darker weirder and louder side of Rock n Roll” is Dr. Feelbad. The Doctor, otherwise known as Ian Spangler, plays anything from The Melvins and Boris to interviews with the serial killer Ted Bundy– a provocative mix for sure.

When asked why 9th Floor Radio is important he says, “As I enter the booth I’m reminded of my relationship to music. I have some of the strangest, saddest, heaviest, and scariest records anyone ever had the pleasure of owning. I like to use my show as a big ‘go to hell’ to those who believe music is either unimportant or purely to be consumed at their convenience, and the good folks at 9th Floor make it possible for me to do just that.”

And it’s not just the diversity of the station which makes 9th Floor important. With the love of music and freedom of expression at the center, there comes a sense of community. The Doctor agrees, citing station manager Melissa Dale as a major factor for the success of the station:

I can’t say enough about all the work Melissa and her army of technicians do to give validation and exposure to those of us who are obsessed with sounds and music. There are more than 20 shows on 9th Floor, not to mention the television shows that keep us all looking like we know what we’re doing. Shows like Straight from the Crate and Electric Velvet Sound remind us that there’s plenty of older music we’ve never heard before. While shows like The Missing Box and 9thUBRadio help us breathe easy knowing there are plenty of thoughts we have yet to think. All of this is delivered to you commercial free, thanks to Melissa’s devotion to making sure the almighty dollar won’t poison the intentions of all involved.

It is exactly this kind of heartfelt enthusiasm, the very lifeblood of the station, that will sustain and grow it stronger in the years to come.

Radio is dead. Long live radio.

Mark Mason is a writer from Oakland, California. He has recently completed work on his debut novel, for which he is seeking representation. For a sample of Mark’s work go to http://doobler.hubpages.com