In the Mix

Night at the Museum

So Cool, So Fun, So Oakland 

    If youthful visits have left in their wake a lingering notion that museums are stuffy places, prepare to be surprised. The Oakland Museum of California’s rollicking, frolicking, butt-kicking, something-for-every-age monthly First Fridays After Five! event will shake your booty and turn you on to a new reality.
    It takes place on the same night and at roughly the same time as the city’s popular monthly block-party-and-
gallery-hopping Art Murmur happening (7 p.m. to 10 p.m., www.oaklandartmurmur.com). But the museum experience is an independent event and starts two hours earlier. There’s music, food and drink; and fabulously dressed sophisticates interspersed with the hip and the more casual; art-gazing in galleries; kicking it up on the dance floor and much more. In the summertime, moms and dads with strollers, picnic baskets and kids lounge on the museum’s enclosed garden lawn to watch handpicked movies supplied by KQED. Films move inside during winter.
    Take a recent Friday, 7 p.m., a couple of hours after kickoff. Who are those people breathing in, breathing out, reclining on yoga mats—stretching in TGIF joy? Turns out they’re participants in a Natural Sciences Gallery yoga class where, after the session, one can wander through unique slices of California’s flora and fauna. What about those folks creating a buzz in the Collector’s Gallery, which has paintings, crafts and other arty things for sale? It’s a group of Berkeley artists showing their drawings.
    Priya Haji, from Berkeley, is sitting on a barstool at the entrance to what is usually the restaurant. Right now, about 30 people, moving in unison to the jazz-blues-soul sound of vocalist Rhonda Benin and her band, Soulful Strut, are doing the electric slide. The scene captures the essence of Oakland’s diversity. There are young and old and, at a glance, representatives of all of the city’s ethnicities. “A friend told me about this event, and I thought I’d check it out—and I wanted to hear the band,” says Haji, who runs a company that supports women artisans and fair trade. “It’s really cool, and I’ve met lots of friendly people.” She gives a nod toward the fellas to her right and left.
    Attendance varies month to month, depending on the program—typically between 500 and 1,000—says communications manager Elizabeth Whipple. For singles, she notes, “we’ve had cruisy nights and will develop more.” The regular monthly Friday event started in late 2005. “The museum is an inclusive community resource. [We thought] why not use the gorgeous facility for a monthly party? We can accommodate hundreds of people.”
    In marketing terms, Whipple adds, First Friday After Five!, or FFAF, is a logical extension to the exhibitions and education programs. And the concept seems to be working. Katherine Nauman, a dancer from New York visiting East Bay friends, is strolling through the main gallery. She stops to admire Robert Arneson’s 1989 bronze-on-wood sculpture Wolf Head.
    “We were looking for interesting local things to do,” Nauman comments. “And this is so cool! I’ve done this kind of thing at night at the Brooklyn Museum. There’s something rather wonderful about being in a museum after hours.” A night at the museum? Seems it all comes alive after dark.
    The Oakland Museum of California’s First Fridays After Five! Dec. 7 event will run from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Dance to the Afro-Cuban sounds of Candido Oye-Oba and friends. Shop for gifts at the Holiday Extravaganza. $8 for adults, $5 for seniors and students, free for members and kids under 6. Visit www.museumca.org for the full program.

OAKLAND MADE

Mad About Chocolate

    Dennis Kearney had a little shmootz on his smock when he came out to greet me. It was ganache on his right sleeve—kind of sexy for a chocolatier. But then chocolate is seductive, and even scientific, for a guy like Kearney.
    You see, Kearney’s company, Coco Délice, evolved out of his day job as an environmental scientist. So for him, making chocolate is more than just an art, it’s a melding of the perfect food compounds. “I’m not so into visual,” he admits. “I’m more into the taste and what goes into the chocolates—pure ingredients, no stabilizers.”
    But his kitchen looks nothing like that of a mad scientist. In fact, it’s nestled in a cottage behind a sunny garden on a quiet Oakland street. On the day I came by, his assistant, Jennifer Jones was squeezing ganache into trays of chocolate molds. Kearney added his signature ingredients, like caramel and organic sea salt; and a surprise pairing of Italian sparkling wine and cayenne pepper. “This one has a one-two punch,” he laughed. “The sweetness of the wine and 30 seconds later, the heat of the cayenne.”
    But it was the organic lavender infused in mead wine that made my knees buckle. Its soothing scent seduced me even before the deep chocolate morsel kissed my tongue.
    How could a guy who writes heady scientific reports all day be such a genius with chocolate? Maybe it goes back to his youth, baking treats with his grandma and later studying as a pastry chef in France. Or maybe it’s more cerebral. “With my writing I do a lot of technical stuff,” he says. “This enables me to use the other side of my brain.”
    You can find Coco Délice Chocolates (www.cocodelice.com) in the East Bay at Whole Foods, The Pasta Shops and Piedmont Grocery. 

More Bang for the Book

    Steve Bowman feels that if he’d had his grooving under better control he wouldn’t have been bounced from Counting Crows in 1994, when Geffen Records was still counting sales of the Bay Area rock band’s debut album, which would reach some seven million. “I was a good player but not a great musician,” the Oakland-born drummer admits. A charter member of the band, Bowman played on all tracks of the album, 1993’s August and Everything After—except the one that turned out to be a smash, “Mr. Jones.” He had been unable to deliver the groove singer Adam Duritz wanted, so Denny Fongheiser (a studio musician hired to play percussion on the disc) took over and nailed it.
    Although Bowman continued to perform and record with such artists as Third Eye Blind, John Wesley Harding, Penelope Houston and Luce, he realized his playing remained in serious need of improvement. To that end, he began writing and practicing a series of exercises designed to better coordinate his hands and feet. Oakland House Press recently published 99 of them in Groove Control, an instructional book with a CD containing examples of each. Bowman says the book’s white cover, which boasts only the title and his name, is a nod to the Beatles’ so-called White Album. “You know,” he offers, “Ringo’s my favorite drummer.”

10 Ways to Read Oakland

    So you’ve brewed and viewed at The Parkway and bought a green T-shirt with “The Town” printed in yellow. But have you read up on your city’s history? Many writers have paid tribute to Oakland’s diversity and dynamism, and while Jack London is the most recognized Oakland-based author, several writers have written literary landmarks since the 20th century. Each of the following books offers armchair tourists an informed glimpse into the city’s past. If you’d like to visit old Oakland and get beyond Gertrude Stein’s notorious aphorism, here are 10 titles that will take you there.

1. Oakland: Story of a City by Beth Bagwell (Presidio Press)
The compiled writings of this celebrated Montclarion columnist make for the most comprehensive rendering of Oakland history, from its beginnings in 1852 to the 1980s.

2. Blues City: A Walk in Oakland by Ishmael Reed (Crown Publishing)
The famed city resident and poetic guide takes readers on a cultural tour through Oakland streets, accompanied by the city’s literary and political giants.

3. American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Post-war Oakland by Robert O. Self (Princeton University Press)
In his award-winning nonfiction study, this Oakland scholar discusses the changes in the city’s economic and ethnic make-up after World War II.

4. No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland by Chris Rhomberg (University of California Press)
A Yale scholar details the history of Oakland’s unions, whose labor strikes once rattled downtown streets.

5. Oakland: A Photographic Journey by Bill Caldwell (Momentum Publications)
Hundreds of images and bird’s-eye views capture Oakland’s growth from its horse-drawn carriage days to its modern and metropolitan present times.

6. The Fifth Book of Peace by Maxine Hong Kingston (Alfred A. Knopf)
In the 1991 Oakland hills fire, this prize-winning author lost her house and manuscript. Her effort to regenerate her book is the subject of The Fifth Book of Peace, a multigenre work that she describes as a “nonfiction-fiction-nonfiction sandwich.”

7. Oakland: The Soul of the City Next Door by Serena Bartlett (GrassRoutes Travel)
This is the perfect field guide to Oakland, for both tourists and residents alike in search of action-packed itineraries.

8. Oakland’s Neighborhoods edited by Erika Mailman (Mailman Press)
The author of such novels as Woman of Ill Fame and The Witch’s Trinity edited this anthology of neighborhood histories and creative writing by local residents.

9. Temescal Legacies: Narratives of Change from a North Oakland Neighborhood edited by Jeff Norman (Shared Ground)
Perhaps North Oakland’s first historical study, this book chronicles the development of the Grove-Shafter freeway and the subsequent dislocation of the surrounding community. Longtime residents, including beloved Oakland cartoonist Morrie Turner, tell their neighborhood stories.

10. More Like Wrestling by Danyel Smith (Three Rivers Press)
Oakland native and Vibe magazine editor in chief, Smith sets her debut novel in her hometown in the 1980s, when Oakland public school kids raised money for Lake Merritt’s necklace of lights.

Sounds of the Season

    When Terrance Kelly formed the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir 21 years ago, the idea of having a gospel-singing choir that includes Buddhists, Jews and Muslims, in addition to Protestants and Catholics, didn’t sit well with some church folk. After all, the term “gospel” refers to the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostles.
    South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, however, recognized the significance of the 55-voice choir’s multicultural makeup when he heard a performance at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in 1994. “This is what it should be like,” he told the singers, according to Kelly.
    The choir was the outgrowth of a gospel class Kelly taught at Jazz Camp West. “People wanted to be able to sing gospel more than just that one week out of the year and without having to join a black Christian church,” he explains.
    Although the choir performs African-American gospel music, less than a third of its members are black. “Getting people to be able to let go, which is part of the African tradition,” Kelly says, has been a challenge. “I don’t give them sheet music. I require that you commit it to heart, and that way you can release yourself when you’re singing.”
    The choir has become a first-rate purveyor of African-American gospel music. Besides three CDs of its own, it has appeared on albums by Tramaine Hawkins, Linda Rondstadt, M.C. Hammer, Carlos Santana and the Kronos Quartet.
    The full choir gives a free holiday concert at noon Wednesday, Nov. 28, at City Center Plaza in Oakland, and presents its 22nd annual holiday concert three days later, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 1, at the Paramount Theatre (tickets $10–$35). The choir’s 15-voice ensemble performs its annual Christmas Eve shows at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Dec. 24 at Slim’s in San Francisco (tickets $15). For more information, phone (510) 839-4361 or visit www.oigc.org.