West Oakland Walk

For two years I spent my early mornings walking the streets of my neighborhood of West Oakland.  It is a place steeped in history and diversity, from ship workers to blues musicians, Portuguese fish mongers to the Black Panthers.  Yet, as freeways were built and factories moved in, the neighborhood was bisected from the rest of city, isolated and marginalized by many.  Over my many walks through West Oakland, I began to find intimate moments of resilient beauty and ritual born out of the neighborhood’s very isolation.