East Bay Yesterday

Walter Riley first got involved with political organizing when he was a 12-year-old boy protesting against Jim Crow-era segregation laws in North Carolina. Since then, he hosted an event with Malcolm X, managed a campaign for the Black Panther Party, helped lead the struggle for ethnic studies, and participated in countless political actions. His new book, “Civil Rights and Structural Attacks,” co...

Berkeley’s waterfront has undergone many transformations. For millennia, the shoreline was dotted with Ohlone village sites, thriving amidst an abundance of fish and fowl. In the decades following the Gold Rush, factories and neighborhoods sprouted up, clogging the former wetlands with human and industrial waste. Over the past century, the waterfront transitioned into a place for recreation and na...

In a small, bunker-like laboratory in the East Bay hills, Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin created some of the world’s most powerful psychedelic drugs. Astonishingly, he didn’t try to hide his activities. On the contrary, Sasha published instruction manuals on how to make his mind-expanding compounds, and his farm in Lafayette became a mecca for scientists, therapists, artists, and others who were drawn...

During the 1960s, America’s Cold War era monoculture was shattered by the arrival of birth control pills, civil rights protests, anti-war riots, LSD, rock & roll, and an unprecedented upsurge in youthful rebellion. As the Bay Area emerged as ground zero for this constellation of revolutionary movements, Rolling Stone magazine was created to document stories that the mainstream media was either ign...

In February, America’s nuclear arms treaty with Russia expired, ushering in “a global rush for new weapons,” according to New York Times. Much of the next generation of the US nuclear arsenal will be developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which has been designing and testing nuclear weapons since the early 1950s. The Lab’s history of hiding hazardous health impacts, security failures...

The USS Hornet fought in some of the biggest naval battles in world history, picked up astronauts returning from the first moon landing, and is allegedly one of the most haunted places in America. Three decades ago, this aircraft carrier was sold to a scrap dealer and seemingly destined for destruction until a group of preservationists saved the Hornet and turned it into a floating museum. Since t...

On December 21st, 2025, the Bay Area lost one of its oldest and most distinguished residents: The legendary Betty Reid Soskin passed away at the age of 104. To pay tribute to her extraordinary life and to celebrate her legacy, I’m re-releasing this interview that was originally published back in 2019. Even though she’s gone, her story is just as powerful, and inspirational as ever. In this episode...

Historic houses offer a tangible connection to a city’s past, but maintaining them is difficult and expensive. Some of Oakland’s most unique structures are currently endangered due to deferred maintenance and budget shortages. Fortunately, there are also several homes that have developed models for how to survive despite these challenges. Their goal isn’t merely to exist, but to serve as resources...

If you were born after 1990, it might be easy to think that the world has always had wheelchair ramps, closed captions, and bathroom stalls for people with disabilities. But none of those things existed until a few decades ago - and they all had to be demanded. Until a group of confrontational activists emerged out of Berkeley in the 1960s, it was legal to discriminate against people with disabili...

Everyone has opinions on the Bay Area’s problems with housing, transit and public infrastructure, but Darrell Owens digs deep into the historical roots of these issues on his Substack “The Discourse Lounge.” When Darrell is analyzing a topic like gentrification, he doesn’t just start in the 1990s or 2000. He’ll go back more than a century, because, yes, the origins of our current demographic trend...

How did Jessica Mitford go from being an elite British debutante to fighting on the front lines of America’s early civil rights struggles? While two of her older sisters befriended Adolph Hitler, Jessica came to Oakland, organized the first investigation into police brutality, helped desegregate all-white neighborhoods, and became a famous muckraking journalist. This astonishing tale is vividly to...

In recent years, volunteer-led groups like Urban Compassion Project have struggled to deal with illegal dumping in Oakland. Despite removing more than half a million pounds of trash this year, piles of garbage continue to plague our streets. How did this problem get so bad and why is it so hard to fix? As usual, I turned to history for answers. Before Waste Management took over in 1986, trash coll...

In 1973, Chile’s democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende was toppled by a right-wing military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. As news of the brutal repression that followed spread around the globe, a group of activists in Berkeley opened a cafe to serve as a hub of organizing against Pinochet’s fascist regime. Modeled after gathering spaces in Chile that combined music, f...

Tobie Gene Levingston left behind his life as a Louisiana sharecropper in the mid-1950s to work at an Oakland metal foundry. Within a few years, he started the East Bay Dragons, which grew to be one of the most legendary Black motorcycle clubs in the world. This episode goes into the Dragons’ clubhouse for a deep conversation with two long-time members, Melvin Shadrick and Picasso, to explore how...

There’s an area southeast of Lake Merritt that’s lined with abandoned buildings, boarded up storefronts, vacant lots, and decrepit warehouses. The neighborhoods here, Clinton and San Antonio, are some of Oakland’s oldest. Although there are also beautiful Victorian houses, long-established churches, and several thriving immigrant communities, including a stretch of Vietnamese establishments known...

From the gold rush to the tech boom, this region has been shaped by successive waves of business growth and decline. Every generation, new investments, innovations, and industries have led the way in building the Bay Area, attracting immigrants, and impacting every aspect of life here. For better or worse, the legacy of these trends is the world we live in today. In this episode, urban geographer...

On March 25, I interviewed Alexis Madrigal and Noni Session in front of a sold out crowd at Spire in West Oakland. Madrigal is the author of an essential new book called “The Pacific Circuit: A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City.” He is also host of KQED’s Forum, a longtime journalist, and a dear friend. Noni Session is a third generation West Oaklander and the execu...

On the western outskirts of Crockett, on the bluffs overlooking the Carquinez strait, there’s a small unincorporated neighborhood called Valona. These days, this community isn’t that different from any of the others that stretch along this northern edge of Contra Costa County, but things used to be a lot different. If you were in Valona a century ago, you might have felt more like you were in a tr...

Anyone who has ever driven on 880 and noticed that there appears to be ancient brick walls closing in on you as you pass through Oakland’s Jingletown neighborhood has probably wondered about the history of this post-industrial landscape. The California Cotton Mill was founded in 1883 and employed more than 1200 workers at its peak. Many of the workers were Portuguese immigrants who created a tight...

Since the dawn of the smartphone era, everybody has carried a camera with them at all times. If anything, there are too many photos and videos being recorded at concerts. We all know the annoyance of being distracted from the music by outstretched arms holding up glowing screens in front of the stage. During the early years of the Bay Area punk scene, however, there was usually only one person wit...

Despite being one of Oakland’s most iconic buildings, the history of the Fox Theater is filled with unsolved mysteries. In preparation for his ongoing tours of the nearly century-old structure, architectural historian J.M. Marriner has been digging into the archives and looking for answers. This episode features our conversation on everything from arson and art theft to mushrooms growing in the ba...

About 20 years ago, Joey Santore went from illegally riding freight trains across the country to working as a “train man” for Union Pacific. His official duties, which included driving the trains, gave him a unique look at the decline of the East Bay’s industrial sector and blue collar workforce. Spending time in decaying factories and train yards also sparked his interest in nature, as he saw pla...

“Contrary to popular belief, most Native American people in the United States live in urban areas and not reservations.” Those words are from “Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women’s Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program,” a new book by historian Caitlin Keliiaa. Caitlin grew up in Hayward and her family is part of what she describes as the Bay Area’s large, thriving, and divers...

Many communities in the East Bay’s flatlands are built in areas that were either wetlands or completely underwater less than two centuries ago. Following the Gold Rush, much of the Bay was filled in so that industry, neighborhoods and landfills could be developed along the shoreline. Now these areas are at risk not only from increasing sea levels, but also rising ground water that contains toxic c...

Although Oakland has one of the highest concentrations of lesbians in the country, the history—and impact—of this community is relatively unknown. Lenn Keller tried to change that by creating the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, a wide-ranging collection of photographs, activist materials, meeting notes, videos and more. In this episode, Keller shares stories of why some of the world’s first lesbian of...