Vibe Report Era

Gertrude Stein said it couldn’t be done, but our correspondents have been setting out to find out what’s there, here, and our preliminary investigations confirm it: there’s a bunch of Oakland. Tell your friends! Not only that, but people live in Oakland, and even do things like eat food and care for each other and connect words into sentences and verses.  

For example: poetry was read at Tamarack, and the people on the stairs heard it, or at least heard something. At the Oakland Museum, we watched a family reunion for all the children of Oakland's Hintil Ku'u Ca preschool, now grown strong and full of light—as a bird flew in the lights above—and then later in the week, brought different kids to OMCA where they dance to “vibrant rhythms,” ate French fries, and evaded capture. At the newly regularized Daytrip Counter, the bathroom was investigated and seen to be un-vengaboyed (and the pesto brothy beans were approved of). Up in the hills by the Mormon temple, that you can see from all over, you know the one we mean, lamb was consumed, Greekly, amidst the blue and white reminders of culture, both forgotten and made up. We caught the opening act, at the tiniest telephone you’ve ever seen, amidst obscure guitars, and ventured into the West Bay to put bricks in the sea of purple they're building in Ballhalla. Finally, in a taken-over Temescal alleyway where it was cold enough to remind you that summer is a lie, the proposition was entertained—with cake, pizza, and wine—that NEA funding or no NEA funding, we are what we’ve got, and it’s enough.

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