Culture
The sound of screeching tires, the smell of burnt rubber, and the sight of circular black skid marks in the middle of intersections are commonplace in Richmond, especially in the North & East neighborhood. With main thoroughfares of 23rd Street to the west and San Pablo Avenue to the east, the North & East neighborhood has ultimately become a hub for speeding cars, donut spinning, and sideshows. A sideshow in July brought an estimated 200 cars to the intersection of…
The atmosphere was joyous at Veterans Hall in Richmond Saturday, where more than 100 people celebrated Native American culture with drumming, singing, crafts, food and the traditional dancing contest. This year’s 13th Annual Richmond Contest Powwow was held during Native American Heritage Month and on Veterans Day, which organizers saw as an opportunity to honor the many native people who have served in the military. “It is great that we are finally being recognized,” said Jordan Wilson of Stockton, whose…
On Sunday mornings, preschool children gather in a small classroom in Richmond and listen to a teacher sing songs akin to nursery rhymes with Tibetan characters. A toy yak, paper mache nomads and pictures of snow-capped mountains in the room help the students imagine the Tibetan homeland. The Tibetan Association of Northern California runs the school on Dalai Lama Avenue, inviting students to come away for a couple of hours to learn writing and speaking in their native language. It…
Cristal Banagan, a mother of four and longtime Richmond resident, thinks public libraries are becoming “obsolete.” None of her four kids has visited the library. “At the stage we are with technology in this world, they’re unnecessary” Banagan said. “And these kids, that’s what they know.” That, however, may not be true, now that Richmond is introducing reforms to help people engage more with the library’s resources through new programs and community outreach. The management is drafting plans to renovate…
A delegation of Richmond city officials will travel to sister-city Zhoushan, China, next month for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez sees the trip as a chance to show solidarity with Richmond’s Chinese community. “Since COVID, the United States has seen a terrible rise in hate speech and violence against the AAPI community, particularly Chinese people,” Martinez said in an email. “Conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID run rampant, and I want to…
On a cloudy Saturday morning, Carmen Román and her husband, Pierr Padilla, filled the basement of the Golden Gate Library in Oakland with a symphony of sounds, using their feet, hands and traditional Afro-Peruvian instruments. A small group of children shrieked with glee and bumbled around the room, dancing as their parents nodded to the beat being created by Román and Padilla opening and closing the top to their cajitas, a box-shaped Latin percussion instrument, and hitting it with a…
It’s Bridge Week in Richmond and through Saturday, people can attend events that showcase the proposed Richmond Greenway Bridge over 23rd Street, a project that would close the Greenway trail’s remaining gap, providing an uninterrupted 17-mile biking and walking path from Berkeley to Marin County. The proposal grew out of the Richmond Greenway Gap Study, which was funded by a $280,000 grant from the California Department of Transportation. “It’s going to blow everyone’s minds. It’s going to be really cool!,”…
The parking lot of Richmond’s Veterans Memorial Hall is filled with the growling of engines as rows of hulking lowriders set up for an upcoming show. Just beyond the crisp chrome clad lines of a blue Chevy Impala, Daniel Vargas and Cruz Arroyo gently unpack tiny versions those classic cars they love but never could quite afford. From afar, Vargas and Arroyo’s remote-control miniature models may seem overshadowed by their larger counterparts. But at one-tenth scale, these lowrider replicas are…
“People of Richmond” is a regular series in which reporters pose a question to people in the community. Answers are presented verbatim, though sometimes edited for brevity. Q: What do you like most about living in Richmond? “I love being right on the water, I love that wherever I go I’m close to the water. I do the Bay Trail a lot, I live on the Bay Trail. I love watching the wildlife change through the seasons and I love…