Arts & Entertainment
A music video recorded by a coalition of Richmond-based artists, featuring an inmate and a parolee in support of President Barack Obama’s campaign for reelection, has gone viral on YouTube, attracting more than 80,000 views with at least 60,000 people having watched it in the past week. The song, titled “Change,” features the vocals of R&B singer Waymond “Suave” Anderson, who is serving a life sentence at the California State Prison in Lancaster following a 1997 conviction for murder. In…
The Mexican flag, carried carefully without touching the floor, dwarfed Marco Negrete, a diplomatic attaché from the Mexican Consulate General in San Francisco, as he carried it onto the stage in Richmond’s Restaurante la Revolución. From the stage, Negrete stood before the band’s instruments, and gazed out at hundreds of people who had gathered from all over the Bay Area to celebrate El Grito de Dolores – Mexican Independence Day. “¡Mexicanos!” he yelled. “¡Vivan los héroes que nos dieron la…
Richmond residents Lesley Riley and Pam Pruitt have visited the Solano Stroll on the Berkeley and Albany border for many years, and while they said they’d love to see a similar event in Richmond, they enjoyed seeing Richmond groups expanding their reach to the 38-year-old street fair. Lesley Riley feels that the Solano Stroll is mostly for the residents of Albany and Berkeley, as many of the vendors are from there, however she also feels there is plenty to enjoy…
Donte Clark was the sixth and final poet from Richmond Artists with Talent to perform at the Madeline F. Whittlesey Community Room on Friday night. Midway through his poem, he forgot his lines. After pausing to recollect himself, and with the encouragement of the crowd, he restarted his poem, completed it and earned a standing ovation. “Every now and then I have those moments,” Clark said. “And what are you going to do in those moments? Are you going to…
Dodging guitars, cords and speakers scattered throughout the room, Noel Perez makes a beeline to the small padded booth in the RYSE center. He squares himself with the microphone, phone clenched in hand, awaiting the go-ahead from his producer. Music floods the small space, almost bursting from the room. The bass pounds like the heartbeat of the song, while sweeter melodies, ribbons of piano notes and guitar riffs, layer upon the foundation — a fusion of notes, rhythm and beats…
SF MIME returned to Richmond Thursday night, with a live outdoor performance in Nicholl Park. About 50 people braved chilly weather and a stiff wind to watch the play, a political satire poking fun at both investment bankers and Occupy Wall Street. Written and directed by Michael Gene Sullivan, the play had the full title, “For the Greater Good, or The Last Election: A Melodrama of Farcical Proportions,” and included live music, plenty of singing and slapstick. “They definitely have…
Over the last five weeks, seven Richmond teens—under the guidance of two adults, Loriana Valente and Pancho Peskador—have spent hours spray painting the walls of a building in Richmond. On the corner of 41st Street and Macdonald Avenue they worked, transforming the dull brown walls of the West Contra Costa County Children’s Services building into a vibrantly colorful depiction of their vision of life in Richmond.
Energy as tangible as an electric current charged through the Craneway Pavillion on Saturday night as people flowed into the glass-lined room by the bay. The cavernous space was converted into a derby stadium for the 2012 B.ay A.rea D.erby (B.A.D.) Girls Championship showdown between the San Francisco ShEvil Dead and the Richmond Wrecking Belles.
On Tuesday night, at the last city council meeting before a month-long recess, the council wrapped up by approving nearly a dozen expenditure items, most notably the resurrection of Richmond’s only beach—Point Molate.