Education

Codex International Book Fair attracts Bay Area bibliophiles

Bibliophiles from throughout the Bay Area gathered Sunday at Richmond’s Craneway Pavilion for the first day of the Codex International Book Fair, which will be open until Wednesday, February 13. The fair was hosted by the Codex Foundation, a not-for-profit group that partners with book arts organizations around the world to preserve the hand-made book as a form of art. The fair featured 180 exhibitors who came to Richmond from around the world to display and sell their creations. The…

Winless and in the playoffs, a look back at the Richmond Oilers girls’ soccer season

At halftime of the Richmond High School girls’ soccer team’s regular season finale against St. Joseph-Notre Dame High School, the conversation between the Richmond High coach and players was not focused on the game. The Oilers had lost all 19 of their games so far in the season, in what had been a challenging and frustrating year. Unlike earlier matches, when the Oilers were down by scores of 4 or 6 to nothing, the game with the Pilots was tied…

Young poets to stage Richmond-set ‘Romeo and Juliet’

Richmond Artists With Talent will perform Saturday a one-night-only urbanized version of Romeo and Juliet, swapping William Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter verse for street slang and slam poetry in a familiar tale of two star-crossed lovers — this time from the wrong sides of the tracks. Te’s Harmony, written by Donte Clark of RAW Talent, presents a gritty, albeit artistic, view of Richmond, a city divided by a North-versus-Central gang turf war through the eyes of Te (Clark) and Harmony (D’neise…

Richmond students prepare for countywide Poetry Out Loud contest

It was less than two weeks until Contra Costa’s Poetry Out Loud recitation contest and 9th grader Allyson Gayoso, a 14-year-old from Richmond’s Salesian High School, was reciting a poem from memory with the confidence of a seasoned orator. Inside a small, quiet office, Gayoso practiced the words of “On an Unsociable Family,” an 18th century poem by English poet Elizabeth Hands. Her audience consisted of her mother, who had arrived a moment before to take her home. Gayoso read…

Police seek to bridge gap between foster youth and officers

The Richmond Police Department held its first annual Foster Youth Conference on Saturday at the LaVonya Dejean Middle School on Macdonald Avenue. About 100 foster youth, foster parents, Richmond police officers, staff from West County Children and Family Services and community members filled the multipurpose room early in the morning for a day full of workshops to promote community involvement and provide resources needed by children and teens in foster care. “There are caring adults here who understand that it…

Richmond Art Center features artists abroad and close to home

Striking block prints illustrating scenes from the Cuban Revolution, pastel canvases full of memories from a childhood in Philadelphia, and a medley of photographs, sculptures and paintings from black artists throughout the Bay Area – in its first exhibitions of the year, the Richmond Art Center covers a lot of ground but keeps the connections local. The Art Center opened its three newest exhibitions on Jan. 12. Its main gallery is host to The Art of Living Black, the 17th…

Richmond, Oakland leaders supporting proposed state regulation of ammunition sales

In the wake of recent mass shootings—including one in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which took 26 lives, and one in late July at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, which left 12 dead—an East Bay politician is pushing for new state restrictions on the sale of ammunition in California. The move has received widespread support from city and school officials in cities like Oakland and Richmond, which struggle with high rates of violent crime.

Free workshop offers classes in healthy eating and exercise

In a bare classroom at the Coronado YMCA in Richmond, a small group of women—and one man—dance around in a misshapen circle as they imitate activities from running to praying. The instructor, Sonjay Odds-Eggleton, sings out, “My name is Sonjay and I like to squat,” as she squats down and pops back up twice. The other people in the circle copy her movements and improvised lyrics. They move a bit slower, but after a couple times around they nearly have…