Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, September 30 - October 5
There are too many movies, and it’s all Mill Valley’s fault. Closer to home, the Drunken Film Festival starts crawling from bar to bar on Saturday, for a seven day tour of Oakland. Or sit by the lake and watch the gulls squabble long enough and eventually you can get a nice certificate. All around the Bay it’s Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week (we didn’t get a copy of ORB’s style guide to MoAD in time so we’ll stet the misnomer for the Oakland Bay Area, for now). Out of town, the first ever North Bay Print and Poetry Festival is on. Closer in, friends of ORB Local Economy launch this week, and there’s a bunch of cool shit later in the month you can go to. But even if you can’t get to an event, after you buy a book from East Bay Booksellers, read it over a coffee next door. All are welcome during daytime hours we hear. T Swift comes to town in 2D on the big screen only at Grand Lake Theatre. UC Botanical Garden’s annual plant sale is on Thursday until they run out (you picked up the compost last weekend, right?). Rain is coming, and the acorns are plonking down and the bay nuts are purple and golding, and that means it’s book release season because in addition to the Heyday Harvest and Transit Books 10 year anniversary party (anyone have a top hat I can borrow?), Litquake is arriving very soon, carrying authors into our port cities to appreciate the damn fine thing we have going on here, on all sides of the Bay. But most importantly, Aaron finally got a silent film in the main calendar listings, so will someone drive to Fremont with him to watch it? -MS, AB, AL
PS: ORB is having a happy hour at Two Pitchers on Webster, Thursday, 5-7! Come by, say hi! We’re friendly, we bite.
Tuesday, September 30
[West Bay Bonus Event] Mobilize Against ICE, 8am, Immigration Court (Get off at Montgomery). All day every Tuesday until ICE GsTFO. They are taking grandmas in Richmond and snatching men in Oakland courts. First they came for... you know how the poem goes. [insta]
Archival Ethics and the Preservation of Student Movements for Justice, 4 p.m., Social Sciences Building (Cal). Jessica Tai, University Archivist at the Bancroft Library. will discuss the ethical acquisition of campus protest materials and student activist archives. The recent acquisition of the UC Berkeley Free Palestine encampment collection is the case study. That old debate: incriminate yourself or leave gaps in the archive, which is the greater sin? (UCB)
[West Bay Bonus Event Twa] Take Place Reading Series, 7pm, the Poetry Center at SFSU (So West that Hwy 1 is East). Join Fourteen Hills for their reading series featuring Liliana Torpey (Oakland writer and translator), both MFA candidates at SFSU. Open mic to follow. [instagram]
Death 2 Spotify Forum: Week 2, 7:15pm, Bathers Library (Telegraph). After the packed kickoff for the Death to Spotify series last week, dig into Radio + Alternative Streaming. Speakers: Tshego Letsoalo (Music Director at KALW), Gabriel (DJ/Host of "Vinelands" the local music show on KEXP), West Bay Fault Radio, a radio station from Australia and one far up in Humboldt. Presale tickets are *SOLD OUT* but there will be limited walk-in space for each event in the series. [insta]
Also: Unchecked: The Future of Journalism in a Factless World at SFPL (West Bay) / Black Men Vote at Clio’s (The Lake) / Transit Month Wrap Party with Muni Diaries at KALW (West Bay) / Modern Romance Book Club at North Branch BPL (Berkeley)
Wednesday, October 1
Craft in a Time of Crisis: Asian American and Pacific Islander Writers on Meeting the Moment, 6 pm, David Brower Center (Downtown Berkeley). Jeff Chang (you know the guy), Cathy Park Hong (Minor Feelings, if you recently crawled out from under a rock), and Colleen Lye (Cal English prof) with Terisa Siagatonu (local performance poet). SOLD OUT on the website but it’s free and open to the public so you could probably still show up and they’ll let you in. Otherwise, grab the last few tickets to hear Chang at Local Economy in a few weeks. [UCB]
RPSC Book Club Presents Free Bookbinding Workshop! Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, 6 pm, Rock Paper Scissors Collective (Uptown). You could have made a long stitch binding of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis for FREE with instructor Alexandra Sarette. BUT SOLD OUT SORRY (You are doing so great at leaving the house to do booky stuff, keep it up). RSPC's book club meets later this month to discuss Kafka, who once came up with a concept for travel guides with the motto: Just Dare. [eventbrite]
Everything is Now, 7PM, BAMPFA (Berkeley). It’s sometimes good to remember that the east coast has also contributed (a little) to culture (but only a little). J. Hoberman will discuss his book on the 1960s NYC Avant-Garde, and present a program of films that represents all of it. [BAMPFA]
Oakland Divest, 7PM, Oakland Liberation Center (Fruitvale). Join the coalition pushing for an ethical investment policy in Oakland – that is, no money towards genocide. The volunteer meeting happens once a month, so get mobilized for October. BDS now, however you can. [EastBay4CeaseFireNow]
Bay Area Sci-Fi Wizards, 7pm, Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley). Charlie Jane Anders, Sarah Gailey, Susanna Kwan, Lio Min & Annalee Newitz. New books! About witchy magic, a West Bay that’s under the Bay, cozy robots with noodles, and more. [Pegasus]
Also: Martin Jay book chat at Cal (Berkeley) / Grad students theorize borders at Cal (Berkeley) / Junior Carpenter Workshop at Elmhurst OPL (Deep East)
Thursday, October 2
In Covid's Wake 3pm, Social Science Matrix (Cal). Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee have some opinions about how the Covid response went (not well -- ok fine, we can agree on that) but good lord their book is blurbed by George Will, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Yglesias, and the fucking Free Press, so go and pour them some “just asking questions” juice. [UCB]
Making Stories, 3:30 PM, Rockridge Branch OPL (The Neighborhood Formerly Known As Shafter). A workshop for kids to work alone, in pairs, or in small groups to write and illustrate stories. Create a book, a zine, a comic, a story, a kamishibai (why not!), a play, or whatever! [OPL]
The Onion Presents: Bad Pedophile, 4:00 pm, The New Parkway (Uptown). Mainstream distributors are scared of Trump and dropped the Onion Epstein mockumentary. <3 Indie theatres forever <3. However! This is the baby brigade timeslot. Guys. GUYS. [New Parkway]
Stop Flock! 4:30 PM, City Hall (Oscar Grant Plaza). OPD is proposing to integrate hundreds of private cameras and license plate readers into a massive surveillance network using Flock: a company that actively collaborates with CBP, ICE, and Trump. Show up to the Privacy Advisory Commission and tell them hands off (or zoom in). [Indy Bay]
ORB HAPPY HOUR, 5-7 PM, Two Pitchers/Lovely’s (“Northlake”). Come get a drink with us! (or a burger at Lovely’s!). Meet the luminaries of ORB, and tell us what’s going on in your Oakland. But beware! Once we chat with you, you are in the orbit forever. Those are the rules, we make the rules.
Eco-Porn and Propaganda: The Erotics of Ethnonationalism, 5pm, Dwinelle (Cal). lan Fleishman on the ecological erotics of propaganda films produced by Nazis and FDR. This will make no one mad. [UCB]
Articulate, 7 pm, Mrs. Dalloway’s (College Ave). Part memoir, part cultural exploration, Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice details a life lived among words in varied sensory forms and considers why and how those words matter. Vibrate the air and each other. Deaf author Rachel Kolb is in conversation with Anne Finger. [MD’s]
Flowers of Shanghai, 7pm, BAMPFA (Middle Berkeley). Two hours in a Shanghai brothel circa1890: everyone’s gambling but I think the British already won. [BAMPFA]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Hamnet, 7:15PM, Sequoia Cinema (Mill Valley). Every screening of Hamnet at the Mill Valley Film Fest is already on standby, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll go wait in line. Jessie Buckley is a shoe-in for Best Actress with her turn as Shakespeare’s wife. New York Magazine’s Bilge Ebiri called it “the most devastating movie [he’s] seen in years.” ORB’s Annie says this is the time she’ll finally learn that guy Paul playing the Bard’s last name is pronounced MEZ-kull, not Mez-CAL. [MVFF]
Rhapsody: Part 2, 7:30pm, Clio’s. Rawiyah Tariq and Jihan McDonald present "The Artist as Utopia" for a sold out crowd -- get your tickets earlier next time, it’s busy out there. Or stay home and read a book for once. [eventbrite]
Also: Kitchen Table Poetry Reading at York Street Collective (West Bay) / Everything is Now (again) at Mechanics Institute Library (West Bay) / SMARTBOMB: Waves Of Knowing at SFMOMA’s Free First Thursday (West Bay) / Hmong Cannabis farmers in Northern California documentary at Cal (Berkeley)
Friday, October 3
The Alabama Solution, 4pm, BAMPFA (Cal). “A scalding portrait of life on the inside that exerts a grip worthy of a thriller.” With the filmmakers, Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman. See the trailer, if you want to get a sense of the kind of rage-depression migraine this will give you. (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival: I think they heard about the annexation plans and are going on the offense). [BAMPFA]
[Bonus West Bay Event the Former] Poetry in the Alley, 4:45ish pm, Kerouac Alley (North Beach). Last gathering for the season, it’s getting gloomy, and we're only out here in the last of the sunshine. Write a poem, bring a poem, read a poem. Put some colors in it. What would a tree write? Or just listen in. [insta]
First Fridays “Black Artist Walk,” 5pm, 25th & Telegraph (Downtown). You know what First Fridays is, and it’s reminding you Oakland artists are the reason for gathering: “this special activation highlights healing through art, featuring an array of talented Black artists showcasing their work.” [artist lineup here]
[Bonus West Bay Event Part the Latter] Living Poets Vol I West Bay Release Party, 6 pm, Golden Sardine (North Beach). Local fave poets Kevin Madrigal Galindo, Erica Lewis, Toph Baby and Charlie Getter read. The alley crew is all ears. [insta]
Special Guest Gallery Chat: Inside Black Spaces, 6 pm, OMCA (The Lake). Pop up talk and walk through with curator Dania Talley, architect June Grant (blinkLAB architecture), and activist Dominique Walker (Moms 4 Housing) to explore the making of the exhibition and urgent themes of housing justice, displacement, and Black community resilience in the East Bay and beyond (will someone ask if they can add more maps?). [OMCA]
Meet Coyote Media (again), 6pm, Local Economy (College Ave). ORB rolled deep to the Coyote Media launch last weekend, but if we didn’t see you there, maybe we’ll see you here. [Luma]
Poetry! 6:30pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Misha Crafts (trans poetics visitor from the West Bay), Chloê Langford (an artist who works with writing, performance and video games and who Tamaracked in the Spring), and Raul Ruiz. Hosted by Willa Smart and Joni Prince (of the 200 hosts). The mic will be ON. [Tamarack]
Promised Sky, 7:15pm, BAMPFA (Cal). Three surrogate mothers look after a refugee in Tunisia, whose family was killed, and struggle with whether to keep her or give her up to the authorities. (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival). [BAMPFA]
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 7:30pm, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum (Fremont). A 1956 classic, and a chance to see a non-silent movie with the silent movie people. (insta)
Steamboat Bill, Jr, 7:30pm, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum (Fremont). Celebrate Buster Keaton’s 130th birthday with Greg Pane’s live piano accompaniment, some shorts, and possibly Keaton’s best feature. [Niles Film Museum]
Also: The Flower Farmers at Mrs Dalloway’s (College Ave) /
70th Annual Armenian Food Festival and Bazaar at St. Vartan Armenian Church (Cleveland Heights) / Make Your Own Piñata at the 81st Avenue Branch Branch OPL (Deep East) / Discussion about Solutions Journalism at Cal’s School of Journalism (Berkeley) / Mending Party at 2727 California (Berkeley) / What if we… story and drawing time at Central Library (Berkeley)
Saturday, October 4
Black Cowboy Parade and Heritage Festival, 9AM, Defremery Park (West Oakland). Do NOT miss this adventure in fancy boots, hooves, and history. Ropes, reins, and harnesses all day long (in case you didn’t get enough leather at Folsom). [VisitOakland]
Banned Books Week: Family Storytime, 10:30 AM, OPL Main Children’s Room (Downtown). Read banned books with babies. Maybe make this the family outing this week instead of the Bad Pedophile Baby Brigade. [OPL]
Community Line Dance Celebration, 1:00 PM, West Oakland Branch OPL (West Oakland). Line dance class led by Oakland’s own Chrystal Moore. Learn classic and contemporary dances that celebrate Black culture and heritage. Dancers will receive a free OPL-West Branch “clack” fan while supplies last. Rhythm can be learned, right? [OPL]
ancestors taught me: a poetry/writing workshop, 1:30pm, The Sanctuary (Grand Ave). Led by poet Amalee Beattie: participants can expect to learn from the work of writers in the Black radical tradition while doing writing exercises intended to expand the idea of what a poem is, and grow together in disruption of colonial modes of learning. Amalee’s poems are awesome, let her teach you. [Google Doc RSVP form]
Celebrate Dioramas!, 2:00 PM, Main Library History Room (Downtown). Come meet the diorama makers and see which creation wins Best in Show. Judges Alexis Madrigal (host of KQED's Forum, author of The Pacific Circuit) and Dorothy Lazard (author of What You Don't Know Will Make a Whole New World) will decree the official winner, but the crown has already been given in my heart [cough PIGEON on a BUS cough]. Liam O'Donoghue of East Bay Yesterday hosts Oakland-themed trivia. Watch out for the Pegasus-alum trivia hawks, they’re circling. [OPL]
The Memoirs of Robert and Mabel Williams, 2pm, La Peña Cultural Center (Oakland part of Berkeley). Robert and Mabel Williams stood at the forefront of the struggle for justice, fighting for Black liberation and international solidarity that helped shape the path of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. [KPFA]
COMPENSATION, 4:00 pm, New Parkway (Uptown). “The life of a deaf African American woman in the early 1900s parallels with another living in the 1990s,” this criterions SO hard. With post-film discussion [New Parkway]
Arms Embargo Now, 4pm, Oscar Grant Plaza (Downtown). Demand an arms embargo. At least 280 shipments have left the Oakland Airport in the first 6 months of this year, carrying deadly military cargo destined for Israel. OAK is a gear in the machine we can pour some grit into. [insta]
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, 4pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Filmmaker Christine Turner (who will be there in person!) chronicles how musician Sun Ra turned his truly out-of-this-world persona into something bigger than an alter ego. Technically part of the MVFF incursion but Sun Ra was already here. “Imagination is a magic carpet” -- sounds like a trip. (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival) [BAMPFA]
[Bonus West Bay Event The Younger] Antiphony Book Launch, 4 pm, Canessa Gallery (Jackson Sq). By a Roman (poems) by Catherine Theis. By a Roman includes meditations on the role of the female artist, motherhood, and language itself: “The wondrous animation of your spark your light,” etc. Reading with Carrie Hunter & Jared Stanley. [insta]
[Bonus West Bay Event The Elder] Toon Talk: The Very Fine Clock, 4pm, Cartoon Art Museum (Ghiradelli Square kind of?). Discussion about Edward Gorey’s collaboration with Muriel Spark for the children’s book The Very Fine Clock with local artists Briana Loewinsohn (Ephemera, an illustrated memoir), MariNaomi, and Amy Martin. A children’s classic from two literary heavyweights finally brought back into print by Transit Children’s Editions (seriously, I need to borrow a top hat for the Fine Fete: haberdashers please reach out). [Cartoon Art]
Strike Debt Bay Area Book Group, 5pm, RSVP for location (Somewhere in the East Bay?). Read and discuss the first three chapters of The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart (The CBC Massey Lectures) by Astra Taylor. Timely as hell. [Indy Bay]
No Other Choice, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). OK, so this is a Park Chan-wook film about “a laid-off paper executive arrives at a radical solution in order to get his job back.” Is it murders, Park Chan-wook? Is the “radical solution” tons of bloody murders? Your clue is that it is based on The Ax by Donald Westlake. (It’s murders). (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival). [BAMPFA]
Also: Mills College Art Museum Centennial at Mills College (Millsmont) / Friends of the Library Fall Book Sale at San Leandro Main Library (Slightly South Oakland) / Oakland Bay Area Delta Bioregional Unconference for Regeneration at Laney College (The Lake-ish) / Ehécatl Tonatiuh Danzantes Aztecas at César E. Chávez Branch OPL (Fruitvale) / Sewing Circle at Central Library (Downtown Berkeley) / From Protest to Prosecution: mapping the legal landscape of dissent in the trump era at 2727 California (South Berkeley) / Unbound Bookstore pop-up and Clara Hsu’s DragonBeard! (Cantonese play, with English subtitles) at Central Library (Berkeley) / Creative Writing Retreat at Dominican University (North Bay) / Mahjong and Mooncakes at Open Test Kitchen (Oldtown) / Filipino Island Festival (Alameda) / ”Mythology of Tomorrow” opening at 120710 Gallery (West Berkeley) / Made in the East Bay Art Sale at JCAS (The Lake)
Sunday, October 5
Beyond the Golden Gate Walking Tour, 10 AM, Oxford and Center (Cal). PhD candidate Andrew Hardy tours a flock of people through the history of UC Berkeley's relationship to East Asia, from its professoriate to its architecture, and shares Cal’s enmeshment with American Empire in East Asia. [Google Docs]
Coffee with Bay Area Current, 10 AM Tamarack (Downtown). You beered with Coyote last Sunday, natty wined with them Friday, now sober up with the Current. There’s capitalism to topple. [insta]
Solidarity Cinema, 12:30 pm, The New Parkway (Downtown). DIY Museum & Bay 2 Gaza Mutual Aid present part two of the program. Five short films from Palestinian filmmakers, proceeds to families in Gaza. [eventbrite]
Oakland Ballers Championship Celebration, 1pm, City Hall (Downtown). Something like baseball was played this summer! We won! My children nearly made it through one full game! There’s gonna be a parade! It ends at Prescott Market! [insta]
The Memoirs of Robert and Mabel Williams, 1 pm, Marcus Books (Longfellow). OK so you dioramaed too hard yesterday afternoon and missed out. Second chance. Family member Lisa Williams and co-editor Akinyele Omowale Umoja in conversation about the Williamses: fearless advocates for armed self-defense, whose radical activism influenced Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party. [insta]
Steal this Story, Please! 3:30pm, BAMPFA (Middle Berkeley). Amy Goodman will be there to watch and talk about a documentary about Amy Goodman. (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival). [BAMPFA]
Living Poets East Bay Release Party, 5 pm, Tall Boy (Temescal). Sunday night poetry in a “martini dive bar”? Sure why not, Mondays don’t exist anyway. The last release from the Deen team, the Apocrypha anthology, had a reading at Beast Crawl in 2024, but they haven’t crossed the bridge since. Readers this time include Tureeda Mikell, Darius Simpson, Mimi Tempestt and the very beary best Micheal Foulk. Tarot by Lauren Parker, MCed by a local poetry enthusiast. Come back any time, folks. [instagram]
The President’s Cake, 6:30pm BAMPFA (Middle Berkeley). A nine-year-old bakes a cake for Saddam Hussein. The first Iraqi feature to play at Cannes, won Camera D'Or, part of the Mill Valley Film Festival. [BAMPFA]
First (Oakland) night of the Drunken Film Festival, 7pm, The Double Standard (Downtown). Short films showing in some of the best bars in the Bay, good drinks and movies with descriptions like “Going to the movies is an ecstatic experience.” Who knows what the hell is gonna happen once they press play. (NOT part of the Mill Valley Film Festival). [DFF]
Also: The Bon Marché 2nd-Hand Market + Costume Swap at Abrams Claghorn (Solano Ave) / Free First Sundays at OMCA (The Lake) / Rich City Action Kayaking Camp at Point Molate (Richmond) / Gathering of Ohlone Peoples at Coyote Hills Regional Park (Fremont) / Wild Oyster Project Volunteer Work Day at REAP Climate Center (Alameda)
