It’s All Good Bakery in Oakland

The It’s All Good Bakery smells like sweets. There are all kinds of baked goods on display, such “sock it to me cake,” “7-Up pound cake,” chocolate chip squares, coconut cake, yellow cake, banana pudding cake, and sweet potato cake.

There are also Black Panther Party posters up on the wall and pictures from the civil rights movement. One of the posters says: “The Black Panther Party for Self Defense Opened the Party’s first office at this location.”

In October, 1966, the Black Panthers opened their headquarters on this spot, at 5622 Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Oakland. But today it is a neighborhood bakery, and it’s been a slow morning.

Only one customer has walked in so far, and she brought a sweet potato cake.

The lady at the cash registrar tells me that it is usually really slow on Mondays.

There are two different cash registrars. I have only seen three workers so far. None of them have made any sales yet.

In the bakery, I can hear the refrigerator running, and a lady stapling papers together, and machines operating in the background. I can hear the cars on the street driving by. This place is located right next to the BART tracks, so I when the train passes by it is pretty loud.

The walls in here are red and white. Flyers and posters on the countertop advertise Oakland events. There is also a microwave on the counter with a note telling people not to place aluminum in the microwave.

There is a TV on the wall, but it is turned off, and there is a chain on the wall holding the door open for customers to walk in. They have an old school bubble gum machine where you can insert 25 cents and get candy. I notice that there is an outlet super high up on the wall—it makes me wonder what they plug in there.

Oh wait—here is another customer who just walked in! He’s wearing a bright orange short. But in less than 30 seconds he walks out because they didn’t have the baked goods he was looking for.