It’s strange to me that it’s now considered cool to live in my hometown of Oakland, CA. When I was growing up it was just dangerous. There were very few young “hip” people who were brave enough to move into an area that was known as one of the most notorious ghettos in the state of California. Even the people who lived there didn’t want to live there. A small two-bedroom house on the Eastside of town was the last place my mother wanted to raise her three children but what else could she do? Housing discrimination was a lot more blatant in the late 1980’s. Meaning no realtor was going to show her a property in Napa or Piedmont.
So we ended up moving to a street that was relatively quiet however trouble was never far away. On every major thoroughfare around our home there was drug dealing and wanton violence. I was only allowed to ride my bike down half of our block. My sister and I often times watched TV on the floor because we heard gunshots outside and didn’t want to get hit by a stray bullet. I witnessed so many crimes against humanity just trying to get from the bus stop to my house that I’m still unable to completely process it. Somewhere along the way Oakland has both traumatized me and desensitized me but now all of a sudden it’s the place to be for young people who want to be involved in some kind of cultural adventure.
I guess my main issue with those hoards of upper-middle class bred white folks who have come to gentrify certain sections of my city is that everything I experienced in Oakland has been real—real death, real poverty, real loss—while what they want to experience seems very superficial. To live in a brand new town home that was erected in a space that used to be a housing project while telling your friends that you stay in the ghetto is tantamount to a person going on a Safari and saying that they braved the harsh jungles of Africa. I feel like some of these people are trying to capitalize off of my pain and it makes me nauseous. There is way too much dried blood on the streets of this town for people to act like it’s charming. I don’t think they’ll ever understand.
-YB
When we become slaves to codes that make no sense life becomes unbearable to the senses and a part of us dies. Why do our passions need to be controlled? Why do so many people try to be gods on earth? Beautiful things will always be just outside of the honest man’s grasp. I could have tasted that fruit but I left it on the tree. How foolish of me. Now I must sit down in the shade and wait for that pear to fall on my head. It will never happen. So would I be wrong if I prayed for the wind to blow? Or would I be immoral if I pushed and shoved on its trunk until all the pears fell to the ground? I’m not greedy. I only want one. I suppose it will ripen soon enough. Its nectar will taste unbelievably sweet.
WG- Hey, hey [waves frantically in the face of black girl who is speed walking across campus]. Don’t I have that literature course with you?
I remember clotheslines. I remember when we had a washing machine but no dryer. We had a basket full of clothespins that used to sit by the back door. My grandmother used to have a clothesline too. I remember her pulling me down the street when I was a little boy. We were rushing back too her duplex so we could hurry and get the clothes off the line because it was beginning to sprinkle.
I am not a perfect gentleman nor do I try to be one. Sometimes when I have dinner or drinks with a young lady I pay the tab and other times I don’t. I always pay for whatever I eat or drink but whether or not I treat her depends. There is a woman who I have chilled out with twice in the two years since I’ve known her. The first time we hung out I invited her to go see The Foreign Exchange with me at a venue called The New Parrish in Oakland, CA.
