Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, June 30–July 5
The fireworks already started, we hope with the help of Coyote’s rainbow glitter of a calendar you all had fun at Pride, but come on: skip soccer for books, you nerds. The ball goes in the net eventually, but who knows what twists are ahead in the weird novel your local booksellers are stocking? But also, go to the movies this week because all the writers are taking a break–even the Friday Poetry at Tamarack schedule shows nothing listed for this Friday. (Everyone likes vacations, especially anarchists). Boots is hanging out in town, popping up hither and yon, and his movie is on all the screens; it’s still Pride Month for another few days, so The New Parkway (who says “Sorry about our messed up website”) is showing very gay movies for Frameline and also Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu which has Pedro Pascal and Baby Yoda in it, and is campy enough to be included in the line up? Maybe? My favorite part of celebrating the Fourth in the Bay is that you hear the muffled thump of fireworks and see some blurry flashes through the fog. If you're going somewhere hot enough to actually see the rockets in flight, get ambitious and bring too many books with you so you have literary fodder for future conversations at ORB Happy Hours (three totefuls is squeaking into the right territory for a three day weekend, but barely).—MS
Tuesday, June 30
Some Like It Hot with Film Critic Matías Bombal, 1pm, Orinda Theatre (Hot Side of the Hills). If this is not already your favorite movie, change that tout suite at the Hotel Coronado as it pretends to be on a Miami beach. There's Miss Marilyn Monroe in a wiggle dress, Miss Jack Lemmon in a wiggle dress, and most importantly, Miss Tony Curtis wiggling and playing the sax. The most delectable movie ever made, official ORB position because I haven’t seen that many movies honestly. Tommy says I should watch Love in the Afternoon, so my education is finally getting underway. [Orinda Movies]
Alameda County Reparations Commission (ACRC) Final Report and Recommendations: Community Feedback Session, 1:30pm, County Admin Building (Lake-ish [next to OPL Main]). So, Alameda County has settled on some plans to address historical racism! Advocate for the plan to do so by showing up and hollering for justice. According to the meeting schedule, this is under the auspices of the library for some reason? More here about the whole deal. And you can read the 233 pages of recommendations so you're like, informed. [insta]
Kids' Summer Movie Nights, 4pm, Claremont Branch (Upper "We're Comfortable" Berkeley). The Peanuts Movie exists because unlike the Garfield guy, Charles Schultz never said no to a franchise. If you get your ticket from the librarian within the allotted window, your children can go watch it; if you miss it, quelle tragique, the football got away again. [BPL]
ONLINE: Deborah Lutz on This Dark Night: Emily Brontë, 5pm, Womb House Books' Online Womb (The Internet). There are so many Brontës, but the one under discussion tonight is Emily, who wrote Wuthering Heights and also poems. A new biography is out, with archival deep dives, and the author will talk about all the desolate moors and windy heaths. [eventbrite]
Small Business and Co-op People's Assembly, 5:30pm, Understory (Fruitvale). Are you, like ORB, a SBO? We, as a SBO, believe we should be exempt from taxes, get a personal police presence protecting our next happy hour (July 23, Aloha Club), and a lot of special balloons. OK but seriously, these folks hanging at Understory are the good little mom n pops making Oakland what it is. They probably also don’t read The Oakland Report except in mockery thereof. [Restore Oakland]
The Intimacy Trials by Aja Couchois Duncan, 6pm, Central Library (Downtown Berkeley). The Intimacy Trials is post-apocalyptic poetry by Aja Couchois Duncan, of Ojibwe, French, and Scottish descent living here in the Bay, who will be reading and talking with Ámate Pérez (Nahua) and Theresa Harlan (Kewa Pueblo, adopted Coast Miwok). Come for a night of Indigenous voices and remember that this land is Native land in the week of celebrating a revolution partially fought because King George said colonists had to respect Indigenous land rights and couldn't settle the Ohio Valley. And so they revolted and massacred the Lenape and others instead. Some people have already survived an apocalypse, and are still here. [BPL]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Gay One] Historic Queer Bars of San Francisco Walking Tour, 6:30pm, TBD (North Beach and Chinatown). Rock Paper Scissors leaves Oakland, gets historical in West Bay's North Beach and Chinatown, stopping at five important sites for West Bay gays, sites which were also bars because some libations and lubrication will start you sliding towards liberation. Important for the lushes among us (whomst): "NOTE: This is not a bar crawl. Majority of these spots are no longer bars." [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Full One] SOLD OUT Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can't Forget, 7pm, KALW Public Media (The Shell of the Financial District, Retaken by Local Culture). Author and memoirist Reyna Grande shares true stories of living as a Mexican immigrant in the United States with Angie Coiro. Of her recent book, "These essays are heart-big," says Ingrid Rojas Contreras. Grande tells honestly of her experiences of building family, finding family, family separation, and how the border still lives in her mind and heart. [eventbrite]
Marissa Nicosia's Shakespeare in the Kitchen, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Berkeley End of College Ave). Some of us wanted to be Med/Ren majors until the classes with cool titles like "Witches and Heretics" turned out to mean reading Augustine and learning what a synod is. This, on the other hand, is exactly what we were looking for. Grab a turkey leg and listen to Marissa Nicosia talk about food in Shakespeare, cooking from Renaissance recipes, and more with Ali Madani -- two scholars who definitely have a favorite Crusade. [Mrs D's]
Also: Gods, Power & Sacrifice: Art of Mesoamerica at Mother Tongue Cafe & Bar (Not Quite Temescal, Kaiser Permanente Adjacent)
Wednesday, July 1
Tern Town Birdwalk, 8am, Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center (Greater South Oakland). Sometimes bird nesting habits make you headdesk (see: pigeons), and groundnesting birds in this world in particular make me feel like they really should remember they have wings and use that to their advantage. But we aren't helping the cause much either: we plopped buildings on our beaches and coastlines, putting the California Least Tern on the endangered species list because they like to lay their eggs directly in the sand. The Bay Area is the northernmost end of the California Least Tern's breeding range and there's a bird sanctuary for them on an island in the bay near Hayward. Bring binos and an apology from our species to theirs, both for the endangering and that rather dismissive name. [EBRPD]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Lunchiest] Mid-day Interlude of Stories, 12 noon, Wetlands Garden at the Salesforce Transit Center (Where the Buildings Are Sinking Because the Land Is A Marsh But Then They Built Wetlands on TOP of the Building WTF). Lunchtime narrative nutrition! Join Writers Grotto authors Lauren C Johnson (The West Facade), talented nonfiction storyteller Kristen Cosby, and maybe more, but these two on their own will fill you up and leave you satisfied. [insta]
An American Tail: A Celebration of Home and Heritage, 2pm, Elmhurst Branch OPL (Deep East). Spielberg-produced cartoon movie that celebrates immigration as the American way. The '80s were so woke. [OPL]
[West Coast Bonus Event The Homocidalest] ZYZZYVA Movie Night with Ingrid Rojas Contreras: Strangers on a Train, 6pm, Big Roxie (The Mission). Zyzzyva, Ingrid, the Roxie, Hitchcock, and T Kira Madden! Talk about copia (the only aesthetic for meeeee). How could you say no to so much murder and so much noir? [roxie]
FREE Book & Wine Trivia Night, 6pm, Book Society (Fancy Berkeley). You can get in the door for free at Book Society today, and show off all the things you learned about wine and books during your years spent waitressing and grad schooling. Maybe you spent your twenties in more remunerative and professional ways, but that's not going to win you trivia night now is it. [Book Society]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Gary Paul Nabhan with Tim Weed - Water in the Desert, 6pm, Book Passage (Corte Madera). Gary Paul Nabhan, ethnobotanist, food historian, and desert appreciator who writes about all of the above, now writes about himself and how he ended up studying spirituality, seeds, and all things ecological for Milkweed. Tim Weed, a musician who lists a lot of collaborators, joins him for to create a sonic and storytelling sensorium. [Book Passage]
FLOATING TO SHORE Poetry Open Mic, 7pm, Night Heron (Downtown). Hosted by Alie Jones, with special guest Jelal Huyler, a biracial Black poet from Oakland. Jelal will drop so much wisdom in poetic and philosophical ways: go sit by him and say hi from me (he'll be sitting at the table in the cafeteria where the black kids stop and white kids start -- to steal his own line). Important: "he does not condone linear time, and sayeth fuck capitalism in perpetuity." Step up to the mic yourself to bring your prayers, spells, memories, and leave your baggage behind. [insta]
I Married You for Fun, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Based on a play by Natalia Ginzburg, BAMPFA says this is an Italian screwball comedy set in a fabulous midcentury modern apartment and that sounds like something I'd marry for fun. [bampfa]
Also: The Berkeley Slam: New S*** Show at The Starry Plough Pub (Berkeley)
Thursday, July 2
[West Bay Bonus Event] The Last Angel of History, 6pm, SFMOMA (SoMa). John Akomfrah’s movie is playing at the museum: a "cinematic essay" that explores Pan-African experience through a sci-fi lens, speculating on Afrofutures with the help of writers Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delaney, Greg Tate, and Ishmael Reed, as well as astronauts. [sfmoma]
Only Yesterday, 7pm, BAMPFA (Oakland). For the Studio Ghibli fans. Quiet, jewel-toned, ordinary midcentury Japanese life drawn by hand because that's the best way to make art that lasts. Less drama than the italians, more ink. [bampfa]
Friday, July 3
BAMP First Friday Mural Tour, 5:30pm, Oakstop [17th & Telegraph] (Downtown). We have art on our walls, and we're so lucky artists live among us and make this city beautiful. Now, granted, murals do have a role in anti-graffiti ideas of what a city should look like, but also they're so darn pretty. Enjoy the Town's colorful gowns. [The BAMP]
Le jour se lève, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Noir written by a poet, made on the cusp of the German invasion of France, about a murder told in melancholy flashbacks. Black and white never looked so good. [bampfa]
Purple Rain, 7pm, Paramount Theatre (Downtown). There will be an organ playing live and a Prince living again on screen. The Kid and the Revolution, a musical extravaganza, purple everywhere. That's America to me. h/t to Stephen at Screenslate for flagging all the Paramount screenings this summer! [Paramount]
Saturday, July 4
All About Abalone, 11am, Coyote Hills (Fremont): Visitors Center (Fremont). So shiny and shimmery. The rainbow of iridescence seems to mostly be a side effect of practical shellbuilding matters -- if you can't make it to Fremont, read Ann Vileisis's entrancing book on the history of California's abalone and how the Russian near extinction of California sea otters created what looked like "natural" overabundance of abalone decades later that Asian immigrant fisheries and American harvesters devastated. [EBRPD]
Oakland Municipal Band Summer Concerts, 1pm, Edoff Memorial Bandstand (The Lake). Oakland is historic and the lake has history in particular -- in addition to recently learning that the square pillars scattered around the lake mark the historic edge of the lakeshore, now I've learned that "the Oakland Municipal Band has been presenting free concerts at Lakeside Park since 1912," so celebrate their 104th birthday by wearing a straw boater and your finest mustache. [Oakland Municipal Band]
July 4th Tintype Portraits Pop-Up, 1pm, Mercy Vintage (Rickittyrockettyridge). Since you're already wearing your boater and finest linens, sporting a mustache and spats, go get your tintype portrait taken to memorialize your moment. And as the giant flash blinds you, the world starts to spin, you are thrust back into Oakland of 100 years ago, and only you, time-traveller, can set Oakland on the path that will save the Key System. [insta]
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 5pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). The film dudes (inclusive) could tell you things about this movie, but I am so fucking Not That Guy I don't even know what this one's about really, other than being some kind of Cold War satire. I just like rom coms, y’all. [bampfa]
Healing the Landscape: Fire, 8:30pm, Dumbarton Quarry Campground on the Bay (Fremont). Since you already were in Fremont this morning for abalone talk, pop a tent and stick around. There's going to be plenty of accidental fires set tonight – but there's bad fire, and there's good fire. Warm up at the campfire and learn how fire can heal a landscape. [EBRPD]
Summer of Solidarity Party, 9pm, Tamarack Oakland (Downtown). Come through for the Minneapolis protesters being indicted by the feds for exercising their American rights. Plot revolution while dancing to an "all-vinyl DJ crew promoting leftist street culture" -- positively patriotic. [insta]
Sunday, July 5
The Girl with a Pistol, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Avenging Italian woman travels abroad, realizes her shitty runaway fiance is just another guy, and she can live life better on her own terms. Ciao, bella! [bampfa]
