East Bay Yesterday

Idora Park was much more than just the largest amusement park that ever existed in Oakland. Developed by real estate moguls who also owned a network of electric streetcars, this “mecca of pleasure seekers” played a significant role in the development of the East Bay, especially after the park sheltered thousands of refugees following San Francisco’s devastating 1906 earthquake. Idora served as a s...

Before the 1960s, coffee was a faceless commodity: hot brown beanwater with caffeine. Alfred Peet began a revolution in America’s coffee culture when he opened his first shop in Berkeley in 1966. Peet changed the way coffee was imported, the way it was roasted, the way it was sold, and even the way it was savored. He also trained multiple generations of people who would go on to be leaders in the...

The 16th Street Station was built in 1912 to serve as the western depot for Southern Pacific’s transcontinental railroad. For millions of people migrating to California, their first up-close glimpse of the Golden State was getting off the train in West Oakland and entering the station’s 13,000-square-foot main hall. The room’s massive, arched windows allowed light to fill the soaring space. For we...

In 1949, a group of pacifists launched America’s first listener-supported radio station. Despite government repression, infighting, and countless financial crises, KPFA has managed to survive 75 years. This episode explores the stories of some of the people who helped the station achieve this remarkable milestone. Featuring interviews with former and current staff members and volunteers: Larry Ben...

With the weather warming up, now is the perfect time for a deep dive into Lake Merritt (not literally!). First, this episode explores the wild side of this body of water (which is technically a tidal estuary) with Constance Taylor, a naturalist with California Center for Natural History. Next, I interview C.J. Hirschfield, former director of Children’s Fairyland, about the enchanting amusement par...

There’s a small stretch of Oakland’s shoreline unlike any place else. Nestled between the restaurants of Jack London Square and the modern apartment blocks of Brooklyn Basin sits 5th Avenue Marina. This collection of rusty warehouses, eclectic studios, and surreal art installations recalls a bygone era, when crafty Bohemians dwelled amongst decaying shipyards. Schultz, a man who bought a chunk of...

It would be easy to overlook the significance of Indian Rock and Mortar Rock, two relatively modest outcroppings located in the Berkeley Hills. Unlike the towering cliffs of Yosemite, which dominate the landscape, these boulders are partially obscured by the homes and trees that surround them. But for nearly a century, some of America’s most influential climbers have used these rocks as a training...

After spending more than three decades working in the underground economy, Titus Lee Barnes compiled his stunning stories of “the street life” into a self-published book titled “Drug Lords of Oakland: The untold stories of California’s most notorious kingpins of the 1970s, 80s and 90s.” Starting with the rise of infamous heroin kingpin Felix Mitchell, Barnes traces the trajectory of bloody turf ba...

Emeryville is a tiny town – less than 2 square miles. It’s nestled between Oakland and Berkeley, right at the foot of the Bay Bridge, and most people probably think of it as a place to go shopping. Two major freeways cut through Eville and from your car, while you’re inevitably sitting in traffic, you can see giant signs for Ikea, Target, and Bay Street mall. If you’re not from the Bay Area, you m...

In 1970, Dr. Marcus Foster was hired as the first Black superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District. Widely recognized as one of the greatest educators of his generation, he was brought here to help rescue a deeply troubled system. Within three years of his arrival, exactly 50 years ago this month, Foster was assassinated by a shady militant group that called itself the Symbionese Libera...

When Oakland’s most prominent graveyard celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2015, SF Gate honored the occasion with this description: “There are 177,000 people at historic Mountain View Cemetery, many of them famous and all of them dead.” The permanent residents of this picturesque site may indeed be deceased, but their stories live on through Michael Colbruno’s blog “Lives of the Dead.” Since 200...

19-year-old Laura Brown started the Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center in 1972. In the early days, Laura would answer the clinic’s phone using different voices so it sounded like there were multiple people working there. From its humble beginnings in a tiny Temescal house, this DIY project would eventually grow into an institution that would serve countless patients, help many people from poor...

These days the East Bay’s waterfront is lined with parks, restored wetlands, marinas, and beaches, but for most of the twentieth century this shoreline was a dirty, dangerous wasteland. Factories stretching from Emeryville to Richmond treated the San Francisco Bay as a garbage bin. The habit of using the Bay as a dump was so common in Berkeley that the city legitimized the practice by creating a m...

Long before BART or AC Transit, East Bay commuters relied on the Key System, a network of electric streetcars, for local travel and even to cross the Bay (there used to be tracks on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge!). Despite serving millions of passengers annually, the rails were ripped out and the network was completely dismantled by 1958. This episode explores the forces that brought down the K...

Up until the 1850s, the East Bay was home to hundreds of grizzlies and some of the tallest redwoods in the history of the planet. Within about a decade of the Gold Rush, nearly all of the bears and the trees were wiped out. This episode looks back at the local environment before colonization—and explores how such a massive wave of devastation was able to change the landscape so quickly. Note: This...

As a librarian at the Oakland History Center, Dorothy Lazard helped countless patrons research their connections to the past. In her new memoir “What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World,” digs into her own history, examining the forces that shaped her young life in San Francisco and Oakland. After getting bounced around between relatives, schools, and towns in her early years, Dorothy found...

For the past eight years, Olivia Allen-Price has been solving local mysteries and debunking myths on her KQED podcast Bay Curious. Each week the show tackles listeners’ questions on topics ranging from architecture to salad dressing. Now a new book called “Bay Curious: Exploring the Hidden True Stories of the San Francisco Bay Area” has compiled some of the show’s best investigations along with a...

Did you know that downtown Oakland is built on ancient sand dunes? Or that the East Bay hills used to be honeycombed with quarries and mines? Or why Fruitvale was such a great place to plant orchards in the 1800s? These are just a few of the stories Andrew Alden explores in his new book “Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City.” (Heyday) According to Alden, Oakland has the most rock diversity of a...

In her new book “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock,” Jenny Odell takes a tour of the Bay Area. She begins at the Port of Oakland and travels as far as the Pacific Ocean before turning around and heading back to Mountain View Cemetery in the East Bay hills. Along the way, she also brings readers on a different kind of journey. At each location, she uses these physical spaces to illus...

Oakland’s largest city park is named after Joaquin Miller, an eccentric writer who lived on the property more than a century ago. After gaining international attention as the flamboyant “Poet of the Sierra,” Miller transformed the Oakland hills by planting an estimated 75,000 trees. He called his estate “The Hights” [sic] and it became a renowned creative hub under Miller’s stewardship, attracting...

Delilah Beasley didn’t have much education or money, but when she saw that African Americans were being ignored by history books, she knew she had to do something. Beasley ended up spending nearly a decade interviewing elders and digging through crumbling archives to compile “The Negro Trailblazers of California,” a book that rescued dozens of notable Black figures from historical oblivion. Howeve...

Journalists Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham have been investigating the Oakland Police Department for more than a decade. Their coverage of violent misconduct, corruption, and sexual abuse has led to multiple resignations and terminations within the department, but even more shocking is the relative lack of consequences for many of the officers responsible for this illegal behavior. Winston and...

Oakland’s Paramount Theater is now recognized as one of the grandest examples of Art Deco architecture still in existence, but this masterpiece almost met the same fate as many other prestigious movie palaces of its era. Originally constructed in 1931, the Paramount was a torn and tattered dump by the late 1960s. At the time, the Oakland Symphony was looking for a new home, and its leaders realize...

For the past year, I’ve been part of a team developing Rooted in Richmond, a free app that allows visitors to take a self-guided tour through the city’s history. The tour covers 16 locations over 6 miles and includes maps, photos, videos, 3D renderings of historic objects, and more. Topics range from sacred Ohlone shellmounds to the formation of environmental justice groups in the wake of a toxic...

Elsie Robinson was a pioneer of women in media, an early advocate for equal rights, and at one point the highest-paid woman writer in the nation. Before launching her journalism career, Elsie’s life was an astonishing rollercoaster that included everything from a marriage to a wealthy Victorian gentleman to a job working deep within the bowels of the Sierra foothills mining for gold. So how is it...