East Bay Yesterday East Bay Yesterday

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 batch of new stories.

On May 18, I interviewed Olivia about the joys and challenges of investigating forgotten histories, legendary local figures, and all the quirks and oddities that make the Bay Area so unique. To make this special evening even more immersive, the event was held at the Camron-Stanford House, the last of the beautiful Victorian mansions that once surrounded Lake Merritt. If you want to hear about the origins of iconic local cocktails, the saga of the Bay Bridge troll, some very difficult trivia questions, and much more, check out the episode now: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/a-curious-conversation/
East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your donations. Please make a pledge to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday
This episode is supported by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals. I highly recommend checking out their new podcast, “Revolutionary Care: An Oakland Story,” a series about the history of treating sickle cell anemia: https://www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/sickle-cell

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 any U.S. city, and in today’s episode we discuss stories below the soil. The conversation covers everything from earthquakes and volcanoes to landslides and potholes. Check out photos related to this episode at: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/from-volcanoes-to-potholes/

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your donations. Please make a pledge to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

This episode is supported by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals. I highly recommend checking out their new podcast, “Revolutionary Care: An Oakland Story,” a series about the history of treating sickle cell anemia: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/sickle-cell

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 illustrate different ways of thinking about time itself. Are there really 24 hours in a day? By the end of this book, you won’t be so sure.

I interviewed Jenny onstage at the Backroom in downtown Berkeley on April 4, 2023 in front of a live audience. The conversation covers everything from deconstructing linear conceptions of history to traffic jams on 880. Original music for this episode was produced by Mark Pantoja. Thank you to KPFA’s Brandi Howell for recording this event and Kevin Hunsanger for production.

To see photos related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/time-is-not-money/

If you want to hear my interview with Jenny about her first book, “How to do Nothing,” check out episode 46 of East Bay Yesterday. That conversation was recorded in 2019 at the dearly departed Wolfman Books in downtown Oakland.

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your donations. Please make a pledge to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

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 artists and authors from as far away as Japan. Although Miller’s literary fame has faded in the decades since his passing in 1913, his name is still familiar to the countless Bay Area residents who flock to Joaquin Miller Park for its stunning views and shaded trails.

In 2022, Oakland made history by transferring control of Sequoia Point, a nearly five-acre parcel in Joaquin Miller Park, to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an organization led by local indigenous women focused on returning land to Native people and revitalizing Ohlone culture. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, this deal made Oakland “the first city in California to use municipal property as reparations for European settlers stealing Native American territories.” Sogorea Te’ co-founder Corrina Gould envisions this location becoming a place of ceremony, education, and a model for Native land management techniques. Sogorea Te’ launched the decolonization process by changing the name of the site from Sequoia Point to Rinihmu Pulte’irekne, a Chochenyo phrase meaning “Above the Red Ochre.”

Now, as Sogorea Te’ prepares for the next phase, which will involve replacing non-native trees with more ecologically appropriate plants, Corinna has begun to wonder about the man who planted some of those trees—but finding answers to her questions hasn’t been easy. Due to Joaquin Miller’s lifelong habit of mixing fact with fiction, understanding his legacy, specifically his relationship with California’s Native people, is a complicated and often bewildering undertaking. Making things even more difficult is the fact that several long out-of-print biographies about Miller contradict each other and newspaper articles about him are usually peppered with myths and inaccuracies.

With a section of the park named after Miller set to become a beacon of decolonization, the relevance of his legacy has gained new significance. Was he a champion of Native rights or a traitor? A brave ally to California’s Native people or a participant in their genocide? These are a few of the questions confronted in this episode of East Bay Yesterday, which features interviews with Corrina Gould, Oakland mayor Sheng Thao, author and historian Alan Rosenus, and Joaquin Miller Park writer-in-residence Kristen Caven. Listen now via Apple, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

Original music for this episode was produced by Mark Pantoja. To see photos related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/who-was-joaquin-miller/

This episode is supported by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals. I highly recommend checking out their new podcast, “Revolutionary Care: An Oakland Story,” a series about the history of treating sickle cell anemia: www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/sickle-cell

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. However, Beasley didn’t just focus on the past. Her weekly Oakland Tribune column, “Activities among the Negroes,” documented the East Bay’s Black community at a time when positive portrayals of people of color in the media were almost nonexistent.

This episode explores Beasley’s life as a historian and journalist through a conversation with the authors of “Trailblazer: Delilah Beasley’s California,” a new work by Dana Johnson and Ana Cecilia Alvarez. We discuss Beasley’s motivation, her impact, and why her work still remains so valuable. Check out photos and links related to this episode here: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/we-were-being-erased/

This episode is supported by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals. I highly recommend checking out their new podcast, “Revolutionary Care: An Oakland Story,” a series about the history of treating sickle cell anemia: https://www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/sickle-cell

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 Bondgraham’s new book “The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover Up in Oakland” proves that this pattern of impunity has characterized the department since its very inception. 

“The Riders Come Out at Night” compiles more than a century of OPD scandals in order to understand why the department has been unable to reform itself according to the demands of a court-ordered consent decree, despite two decades of federal oversight. History repeats itself in scandal after scandal as a toxic stew of racism, machismo, resentment, carelessness and lethal violence is brushed aside or even rewarded, while taxpayers cover the costs and victims’ families are left devastated. For Oaklanders desperately yearning for safer streets, this book paints a sad and frustrating picture about the relationship between law enforcement and public safety.

On January 21, I recorded an interview with Winston and Bondgraham in front of a live audience at Clio’s Books in Oakland. We discussed the history of the Oakland Police Department, the current scandal that has resulted in Chief LeRonne Armstrong being placed on administrative leave, and much more. For more info, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/is-reform-possible/

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your support. Please donate to keep this show alive:www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday