Look at us!
Welcome to the newest Oakland Review of Books! In line with our astro-vibe, our motto is always be launching, and so we’ve spruced up our digs (with a new collage from our pal Gregory Hom and design guidance from the guy behind everything, Justin Carder).
Take a look! Tell us what you think! And stay tuned for what's coming in the next six weeks:
1. A modest subscription campaign, with nothing less than existential implications for ORB, for independent media at large (and, indeed, for the fate of the entire galaxy, or at least the Oakland part of it that matters). For six weeks, we’re going to show you what a sustainably funded Oakland Review of Books looks like, in hopes that you’ll sustain us with funding. We’ve been operating through the generous sponsorship of East Bay Booksellers, and our current roster of 83 strikingly good-looking and perspicacious Founding Members. But what we need to really take off, based on some advanced calculations that we used the latest LLM technology to make possible, is somewhat more than that.
To break down that math: 250 Founding Members (averaging out at $10 a month) gets us to the roughly $2,500 a month that we’ll need to pay writers for about three bangers and three shorter reviews a month (layered on top of the vibe reports and in-house writing that get written pro bono), with other sources of funding (Thanks Brad!) covering basic expenses. And if we get more? We can do more.
We have revamped our membership benefits—such that now, there are benefits—so be sure to look at those. We hope you’ll keep supporting us if you are, if you can. But if you can’t, nothing will be behind a paywall, and there’s NOT A FLOF in sight. (All current members will, of course, be grandmothered in).
2. The Six Senses of Oakland. What’s that smell and how does it make you feel when you hear that sound in your mouth? For six weeks, we’re going to stare into Oakland until it stares back, asking and answering what does it mean to see Oakland? To smell us, taste us, etc? We’ll be publishing longer essays, more reviews, deeper dives, and even funner shit than the usual amount of fun that our shit normally possesses. We’re going to stretch a little, and we’re going to be tired afterwards. And while we’re going to post a lot of stuff that you might not get around to immediately, we hope you eventually do, and that when you do, you ask yourself: Do you want more of this? Do you want this to be what we’re like all the time?
If so, money sure does help us with that! We’re a team of volunteers doing this in our spare time, and that’s not going to change. This is a project fueled by just the desire to do this. But writers need to be paid, and we need money to pay them. And as close as we can manage, every dollar that comes in through membership subscriptions will go right back out to the writers.
So! This week is Sight Week. Today, we’re posting the longest essay anyone has or ever will write about the film Freaky Tales, which is Aaron Bady’s much-too-short love letter to “the love letter to Oakland” that we all saw at the Grand Lake Theater last year (and lie about it, if we didn’t). On Wednesday, we’ll run Cole Hersey’s account of discovering the actual Lake Merritt Monster—which he really did, it’s definitely really there—and on April 2, Maya Weeks will look for failures of sight in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (spoiler: there’s no there there). Finally, we’ll close out the week with a review of the recent “Proximitivist” installation you might have seen around the town under all the Flock cameras. It hasn’t gotten a lot of press, but for our tax dollars, it’s one of the most compelling new movements in the art world, and like everything good, it comes out of Oakland.
Please support us if you can! And if you can’t support us with money, your eyeballs will do just fine.
Happy Seeing!
\O/