It has been very cold, and if you were accustomed to getting a tree corpse to put in your house as a celebration of the rebirth of Osirus, Dionysus, and people like that, you’ll find that the nice formerly incarcerated folks under the freeway at Delancey have moved their business to El Cerrito. The Home Depot in Emeryville still has you covered if you don’t want to do the drive up the 80, but you’ll have to tie the tree on your car yourself, and also attend this protest to atone for it. Anyway, the Solstice is when it's darkest before dawn, so fill it with Wintersongs or cracked nuts or drag, and we'll see you at the ORB holiday party on Thursday.-AB, MS
Tuesday, December 16
Block Flock, 12:30 pm, Oscar Grant Plaza (Downtown). We’re still doing this. Gather and then tell the City Council no again, alongside Batman and everyone else who doesn't want this company surveilling us. [instagram]
Bay Area Film Night 6pm, Grand Lake Theatre (Lake). Four powerful short films by local filmmakers Jamal Trulove, D’Lo Louis, Erica Eng and Davy Mansanalez. Go snack on culture and popcorn. [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Mission Local presents: The Immigration Crackdown and Resistance in San Francisco, 6pm, Grey Area (The Mission). Join Mission Local for a night learning about the xenophobic state overreach targeting your friends and neighbors and what you can do to get involved (in blocking it). Immigration experts Angela Chan, Antonella, Marissa, Milli Atkinson, and Shira Levine on what’s happening and how to stop it. [greyarea]
Bling It On! Book Bedazzling Workshop, 6:00 PM, Book Society (College Ave). Has the cover of Mrs. Dalloway -- the Woolf novel about post-war and -pandemic trauma -- just not been sparkly enough for you? Fix that design oversight. [Book Society]
When the Smoke Comes, 6:00pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). A free monthly creative writing space for the end and beginning of worlds. Explore how the creative can, must be, and already is political, led by Darius Simpson and/or Kevin Madrigal-Galindo (usually). [instagram]
All We Carry, 7pm, La Peña (Oakland part of Berkeley). As part of the Immigrant Voices Film Series, and a benefit for Kehilla Community Synagogue Immigration Committee, this film follows a young family’s journey from Honduras through US detention; upon their release, a Seattle synagogue sponsors the family while they await the final decision on their asylum case. [LaPeña]
Also: Buy and Give Local with Fibershed at the Farmer's Market (South Berkeley) / Greg Grandin’s End of the Myth with Lakeview Library’s Book Club (The Lake) / Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain Gang All Stars with Black Authors Book Club at the West Oakland Library (West Oakland)
Wednesday, December 17
It’s Hard to Photograph the Water Bill: Dorothea Lange as Environmental Prophet, 12pm, Bay Nature (The Internet). Join Bay Nature and poet and playwright Tess Taylor for an online talk on Dorothea Lange’s art, which focused on a California that’s never pristine, but always balancing questions of human dignity with the fragile accord we make with the earth, especially in the Central Valley, which right now is a bowl of cold soup. [Bay Nature].
Grown Folks Storytime, 12:15pm, Alameda Main Library (The Island That Used to Be a Peninsula). Eat lunch while librarians read to you. [Alameda Free Library]
Wednesday Night Lounge, 6pm, Dear John (The Laurel). Stop by with a book, your journal, or just yourself — this is a night to read quietly, write that story or letter you’ve been putting off, or simply unwind among friends and neighbors. [Dear John]
WHB December Book Club: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, 6:30pm, Womb House Books (Temescal). Discuss Sylvia Plath's masterful only novel and get real mad at Ted again. [eventbrite]
Ikiru, 7pm BAMPFA (Cal). A new restoration of this movie which is just, like, one of the best fucking movies. Man, this fucking movie. If Kurosawa weren’t so well known for his samurai stuff, and his versions of Denzel Washington movies, people might call this the best movie ever made about modernity, and sometimes they still do. [BAMPFA]
Noir City Xmas!, 8pm, Grand Lake Theater (Lake). Nick Rossi Trio plays at 7, followed by a screening of the 1948 holiday noir I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes (in which all Santa Clauses are bastards). [eventbrite]
Also: Father Circle at 81st Avenue Branch (Deep East) / Non-Gestational Parents Discussion at Local Economy (College Ave) / Yulin Kuang’s How to End a Love Story at Dimond Library Book Club (The Dimond) / Cookbook Lovers Club with Nichole Accettola at Book Society (College Ave) / Year of the Water Horse at Clio’s (The Lake)
Thursday, December 18
Pack the Port, 3 pm protest, 4:30 public comment, 530 Water St (Jack London). Stop Oakland's complicity in genocide and read Oakland Arms Embargo’s report while you ride the bus up to Local Economy for the ORB holiday party afterwards. [insta]
Oakland Review of Books Holiday Party (and Secret Santa)! 6pm, Local Economy (College Avenue, next to East Bay Booksellers). Join us, the editorial team, for a holiday party where we’ll introduce ourselves, tell you about why we started with the O & R of it all (we’ll get to Bs some day), and also deliver an informative and very brief lecture on what Herb Caen thought about Oakland. In addition, an Oakland-themed Secret Santa: Bring a piece of Oakland paraphernalia–a book, a pamphlet, an old-school souvenir, anything worth less than $20–and exchange it for someone else's piece of Oakland history. If you don't have anything, you can buy an Oakland book from a display at East Bay Booksellers next door and throw it in the mix. [Luma]
The ORB Holiday Party is the only event scheduled for Thursday evening in all of the Oakland Bay Area. Strange but true. Afterward, you could keep it going with the Bathers Library holiday party and yearbook release, and even keep keeping it going with East Bay Yesterday DJing at Eli’s (Mile High).
Also (fine, fine): Chinatown Records at 13 Orphans (Uptown) / Ale Libre screening and fundraiser (with director Maya Cueva) at Ninth St Independent Film Center (West Bay) / Costco in Oakland? community forum at City Council (City Hall) / Annual Holiday Donation Mixer at Black Panther Party Museum (Downtown) / Such a Pretty Little Beach at BAMPFA (Cal) / Poetry Circle at Claremont Branch BPL (Berkeley) / Evolutionary Blues...West Oakland's Music Legacy screening at Oakstop (Uptown) / "No feeling is final" poetry book club at West End Branch Library (Alameda)
Friday, December 19
[West Bay Bonus Event] Closing Reception: Midori's Dining Room & Solstice Celebration, 5pm, 465 Collective (The Mission). Join Queerly Complex + Comrades for a potluck (bring a snack) and performances (bring your eyes and ears), featuring Taneesh Kaur, Crystal Mason, Sindhu Natarajan & Ramya Shankar, Maria Allocco, Derik Cowan, and Carol Queen. Next day, Saturday (noon): a deinstallation and free ceramic shards for anyone who might need something sharp and pretty. [Queerly Complex]
Poetry! 6pm, Tamarack (Uptown). They’ve been doing this all year long -- if you haven’t been, go tonight. Readers are: kathy wu (working on a manuscript about copper, textiles, and stories of circuit production.), Hannah Lamb-Vines (“california, your feelings / are valid / i’m listening”), Claire Crews (artist of words and textiles), Laura Woltag (“The elephant seals were nearly/ hunted to extinction by colonists / for their blubber in the 19th century. / ... /Becoming what? Light? Edible? Smoke in the aging sky? / I think about their fat like love.”). [Tamarack]
Get Hype Open Mic, 6pm, Discover Community Cafe (West Oakland). Hosted by J.Rice and featuring the poet and author, Imani Nubian. Writer's workshop at 6pm, show starts at 7pm. Free and open to all. [instagram]
Stay Frosty, Stay Hyphy, Stay Woke Open Mic, 6pm, Eastside Arts Alliance (Deep East). Featuring: Myra (Oakland’s Poetry Youth Laureate 2024), Ericson Amaya (Salvadoran poet inspired by hip hop and revolutionaries), Jose Cordon (Poet Laureate of Antioch and Artist in Residence at Los Medanos College), and everyone else who signs up. [instagram]
Also: OakLuv Lights Up the Town (Free Night!) at Fairyland (The Lake) / Crazy Shades of Winter: An LGBTQ+ and Allies Holiday Art Show at 2727 California St Gallery (Berkeley) / Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (The Bodyguard) Screening at BAMPFA (Berkeley) / Film & Flick Friday with Network Effects Theater Company at Tempyl Skin Studio (Emeryville)
Saturday, December 20
Saturday Stroll: MLK Jr. Shoreline, 9:30 AM, Arrowhead Marsh (San Pablo Bay): Bundle up and take a winter walk along one of Oakland’s remnant saltwater marshes. You can even gawk at the birds, and then buy a book about them. [EBRPD]
ICE out of Home Depot!, 10am, 1001 Fruitvale Ave (Fruitvale BART). Oakland Home Depot refuses to provide laborers with a safe place to seek work, banning them from parking lots and denying them basic dignity and respect (fuck that). [mobilize]
Reading Rainbow Watch Party, 10:30am, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch (Berkeley). Butterflies in the sky watching the new reboot of Reading Rainbow featuring Mychal Threets! (West Branch Library was chosen as the first location to shoot the new episodes of Reading Rainbow!?) [BPL]
Bright Ideas: Ways to Spark New Writing, 2 pm, Claremont Branch BPL (Claremont). Spark ideas with Maw Shein Win, El Cerrito’s first poet laureate: create, invent, describe. A two-hour workshop for those who want to use their own brains and hands to write. [BPL]
Entwined Liberations, 2 pm, Alameda Main Library (Alameda). Local poet Noor Al-Samarrai reads poetry along with a screening Spaces of Exception by Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny, a documentary profiling the terrains of the Indian reservation and the Palestinian refugee camp as spaces of liberation. [AlamedaFree]
[West Bay Bonus Event] W. Kamau Bell and Nato Green, 3PM, Punch Line Comedy Club (Financial District). Don’t tell Elon comedy is still woke. [insta]
Yalda, ending the dark reign of empire, birthing the light of resistance, 7:00pm, Cone Shape Top (Temescal). Yalda is how the winter solstice is observed from central to southwest Asia to the caucasus; here it’s a metaphor for bringing an end to the dark reign of racial capitalism worldwide and inviting the birth of light and revolutionary change. Divination with the odes of Hafiz and also music. [magicsnail]
Also: Second Annual Winter Holiday Night Market at Planting Justice / San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus at Zellerbach Hall (Cal) / The Strange Love of Martha Ivers at BAMPFA (Berkeley) / Leaf Litter Alive at Tilden Nature Area (Berkeley Hills)
Sunday, December 21
Writing Poetry from Your Subconscious, 11:00am, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Izara Achamyalesh leads a workshop on your subconscious, exile, liberation, and poetry, also astrology. A “masks on, air circulators going” vibe; keep those viruses inside your face if you can. [insta]
Yalda Night of Song and Poetry, 1pm, OMCA (The Lake). We love OMCA enough that we’ll forgive them for doing a “darkest night of the year” midnight thing in the early afternoon. Mahsa Vahdat, Marjan Vahdat, and Atabak Elyasi celebrate this ancient Persian holiday marking Winter Solstice through music, poetry, and reflection (inside!) There’s gonna be some Hafez. [OMCA]
Mercado de Cambio and Winter Solstice Fundraiser, 1:00pm, HOMEfulness (Eastmont). Poor Magazine hosts a market and fundraiser for its tuition free school, with books for sale & poetry performed. Food, hot chocolate, desserts for purchase – the community and love is free. [insta]
Also: Free Pruning Class with Leslie Buck at Oaktown Native Plant Nursery (West Berkeley) / Bon Voyage Block Party and Holiday Market at Snail Bar (Temescal) / Winter Puzzle Challenge at 81st Ave Branch OPL (Deep East) / Lichen Palettes at Tilden Nature Area (Berkeley Hills)
