Oakland Enlists Community to Make First Friday Safe

First Friday resumed peacefully last weekend with appeals to end violence in Oakland and moments of silence to commemorate the the fatal shooting of Kiante Campbell, an 18-year-old Oakland high school student at February's street fest.

I like the straightforward tone set by newly-elected Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who stood on a stage and called out: "If you love Oakland, thrown your peace signs up."

Oaklanders, including Mayor Jean Quan, wore green and white shirts that read "Respect Our City". The street festival, which draws thousands to its mix of food, music and arts and crafts, resumed in a smaller area with a shortened time format after the shooting that left one dead and three wounded last month.

Some elected officials still ask if Oakland is focusing its limited police resources at the right issues - directing traffic around the First Friday crowds in Uptown rather keeping the peace in some of Oakland's more crime-ridden neighborhoods.

It's not an easy question to answer. First Friday and the Art Murmur movement that organized the monthly open houses for galleries and clothing stores between Broadway and Telegraph Avenues from 19th to 25th Streets had grown from strength to strength, drawing Oaklanders and visitors from around the Bay.

The shooting erupted nearly an hour after the Feb. 1 street fest ended. An account in the Feb. 27 Chronicle still cannot pinpoint who shot Campbell, but he was one of three partiers who drew guns at each other at 20th and Telegraph, a few feet away from one of First Friday's most popular dessert vans that straddles that intersection.

For last week's First Friday, authorities shrank the area of the street fest to five blocks along Broadway and Telegraph,. curtailed the festivities to close by 9 pm, one hour earlier, and strictly enforced laws against drinking in the street.

"After what happened last month, we knew that we needed to change," a First Fridays spokesman said. "We had to look at how we were addressing this and recognize the gravity of it."

The Chronicle quoted a third generation East Oaklander, Lukas Brekke-Miesner, as saying, "We're not involved because violence happened at First Friday. We;re involved because this city has a violence problem."

Where First Fridays go remains to be seen. I want them to work, I want to take more friends to disabuse them of their bias about violence-prone Oakland. I guess it's up to all of us to make this effort.

Should Oakland Downsize First Friday?

First Friday & Art Murmur are good. Shootings are bad. When those two issues collide...

I watched several Oakland City Councilmembers the other week debate whether to cut back on First Friday street fairs (also known as Art Murmur) after a young man was fatally shot and three others wounded on February 1 at the end of what had been another crowded and busy monthly downtown festival.

Councilmembers Larry Reid and Desley Brooks said the street fair should be scaled back to the art walk it once was for neighborhood galleries, and that Oakland can't afford to shift 30 officers from their regular neighborhood beats to provide beefed up security for the monthly event. Lynette Gibson McElhaney defended the First Friday, pointing out the positive publicity it has brought Oakland and warning councilmembers not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

These monthly events bring thousands of people to the city's uptown and downtown districts - the music, the food, the dancing and street theater - and the economic activity is vibrant and spreading. The Trib reports that the next First Friday event will be smaller - but I hope the city's reaction will be moderate. I always have time for Robert Gammon at the East Bay Express, who says no one called for an end to football at Candlestick Park when two fans were shot in 2011. He believes it would be a mistake for Oakland to downsize or eliminate First Fridays, and I agree with him.

What do you think? Should we downsize First Friday in the name of preventing crime and other mishaps?

Southern With A Twist

A few blocks north of Broadway from Oakland's Paramount Theater is a restaurant, bar and lounge called Pican.

The lounge area has a "quiet" sports bar / after-work feel with sports channel TVs, soft cushions and low lighting to make you peer at beautiful people sipping drinks and sharing late-night desserts.

The bar has a rich and eclectic shelf of whiskeys - with dozens of bourbons - and other spirits to test your palate. Most notable for me is the surprise appearance of Martin Miller's Gin (I mean, where else in Oakland, never mind the entire Bay Area, can I find my favorite gin - only here, so far).

In the words of a friend, "Calling this 'crab soup' would be like describing the QEII as 'a pretty big boat' - words don't do it justice, you gotta eat it to believe it."

The plush interior of the restaurant bills itself "A Taste of the South". The menu is worth lingering contemplation - I have wolfed down the succulent southern fried chicken with its light, crunchy skin, a spicy root vegetable etouffee for those who avoid meat, and a list of mouth-watering offers from the Louisiana delta: cast iron catfish with oyster and artichoke cornbread dressing, lobster and Louisiana blue crab thermidor, crawfish mac 'n cheese, shrimp and grits. Someone stop me.

My girlfriend, bless her heart, avoids meat, but she does like a good drink. Give her a particular Pican cocktail she calls her best drink ever - namely the Lavender Lemon Drop (Sobieski Vodka, Stirrings triple sec, fresh lemon juice and housemade lavender syrup) - and it's slam dunk time, let me tell you.

This place is definitely worth a check-out. Entrees run about $20-$40, and there's usually a prix fixe option for between $50-$75 per person.

Oakland's Art Murmur Goes From Strength to Strength

Surely but steadily the word has spread about Art Murmur, that food, art, clothing and music street festival that invades a strip of downtown Oakland on the first Friday evening of every month.

I went there last June when the side streets between Broadway and Telegraph Avenue, from 25th Street down to 21st Street, filled with lively crowds walking through art galleries and trendy vintage clothing boutiques that would otherwise be closed that time of night. Some 21 galleries and nine other mixed venues are the primary sponsors, but so much more is now making the event a regular street festival.

When a friend from London who fancies herself a foodie visited me this week to do some stories about the final week before the presidential election, I thought we'd take a look at Art Murmur as a new way to disabuse her of various negative stereotypes about Oakland. What a great idea! And how Art Murmur has grown! Now it stretches from West Grand Avenue down to 18th Street. Telegraph Avenue is completely closed to traffic and offers itself as a broad boulevard through which enormous crowds now wander - winding through an exotic blend of international food stalls and trucks, live bands, street dancers and open deck tour buses on which people dance to the music.

Food trucks drew long lines of customers (in November!) wafting with aromas from Italy, India, Mexico,Poland, Germany, Southeast Asia, pastries dripping with chocolate and raspberries and cream, soups and potato latkes, spinach knishes, burritos and stir fries - it just kept on going for blocks and blocks!

On the sidewalks were more food vendors, jewelry stands, eclectic T-shirt and leather goods. This is not just one block but changes from street to street along Telegraph. The side streets, too, are filled with cavernous indoor galleries where more artists, sculptors, clothing vendors, musicians and foodies gather. Even an auto body shop has opened its doors, with welders sipping beer in deck chairs while visitors look at classic cars and old wrecks ready for rebuilds.

Around 21st street, we stumbled upon a grove of old Detroit monster beauties - the kind of cars I grew up with that you almost never see around these days. An enormous white 1961 Continental convertible with gleaming whitewalls staked out one corner, its hard-top roof down and trunk lid open. I swear a sofa and table could sit inside that trunk. Nearby and similarly strutting their wares were 1960s examples of a Pontiac GTO, Camaro, Corvette and Cadillac convertible. On the next block, not to be outdone, was a corral of big motorcycles, Harleys, Ducatis and more.

What we thought would be a quick one-hour stroll lasted hours. Our last purchase, from two young women sitting on the sidewalk, was a small bag of chocolate truffles, dipped in rum and other obscenely sweet liqueurs. My friend was speechless - someone who knows New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Berlin has seen it all. But seeing it all in Oakland, on a Friday night, was more than she ever expected. Well done, Art Murmur!