#013: OAKLAND
A City Full of People Making Things Because They Have To
A little late, but a good one: Oakland.
People ask all the time: you get to travel a lot—what’s a city you want to spend more time in? The answer is always the same: Oakland. It’s the coolest city that I always wish I could go back to. It’s the kind of city that doesn’t need to persuade you. Oakland just is: loud, warm, complicated, funny, deeply neighborhoody, and full of people who are making things because they have to.
It’s a port city and a protest city and an immigrant city. It’s also a city where you can eat Eritrean food for lunch, go look at serious contemporary art made by artists with disabilities in the afternoon, drink a pristine martini at night, and still have time to watch the light change over Lake Merritt like it’s the main event.
You don’t “do” Oakland by ticking off landmarks. You move by appetite: for a walk, for a perfect bowl of noodles, for a gallery that’s small but sharp, for a bar that feels like it has always existed. Oakland is best experienced without a plan.
