Photography
Eight women in helmets, bulky protective pads, tight spandex and rollerskates gather in a pack. Just behind them, two girls — the jammers — are side-by-side, preparing to attack the rink in front of them. A referee blows a whistle twice, sharply, which is followed by a clacking of skates and the soft thud of bodies slamming into each other. The Richmond Wrecking Belles were off to a fast start against The Oakland Outlaws in the Bay Area Derby Girls’…
Editor’s Note: The following is a guest column on Richmond social history by George Livingston Jr., a decorated celebrity photographer and the son of longtime political leader George Livingston, who was the first African American elected Richmond mayor. For more of Livingston’s work, visit Livingston Entertainment. _____________ Last summer I talked to Mrs. Deanna Brown Thomas, daughter of music legend James Brown. We spoke of a Grammy Museum exhibit that would be on display in Los Angeles. We talked about…
Nunez Tattoo’s third Tattoo Expo was held in the Craneway Pavilion this past weekend, hosting 41 tattoo artists, 20 painters and about 20 vendors. Named “Tattoo for a Cause,” 25 percent of the proceeds from the artists and vendors will go to the Children’s Hospital & Research Center in Oakland.
It was a year of indelible images in Richmond, and we were privileged to be behind the camera lens to capture a few of them.
Winnowing down the thousands of images we gathered in Richmond’s streets, parks, boardrooms, shores, restaurant halls and other spots was no easy task, and the results are no doubt imperfect. Undaunted, we present to you a handful of the images that hit us hardest, with some candid reflections from the photographers who captured them.
Sculpting our bedroom lives. Turning gas tanks into robots. Finding beauty in roadkill. Four artists open their homes to Richmond Confidential.
Richmond resident Marilyn Langlois, who is also Gayle McLaughlin’s mayoral aide, returned from Haiti a few weeks ago, her first visit to the impoverished country since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck in early 2010.
Fred Casanares got to Point Pinole Park a little before 8 a.m. on Saturday. He fired up the grill at 10 a.m. with almond wood, because it burns cleaner than charcoal. For the next five hours, Casanares cooked hundreds of pounds of burgers, hot dogs, quesadillas, and skirt steak, while smoke wafted around the festival and the persistent long lines in front of the grill. “I can’t even calculate how many people I’ve fed,” he said, wiping the trails of…
Roughly 2,500 people collected 25,500 pounds of trash from the Contra Costa County shoreline and creeks during Saturday’s annual coastal cleanup day, said The Watershed Project, the event’s local host. Shimada Friendship Park was the main cleanup station for Richmond’s 26th annual event, which saw about 400 volunteers collect more than 1,774 pounds of trash and 400 pounds of recyclables. “When people come together to work on something that impacts us all, it empowers community, it helps people engage with…
Baxter Creek in Richmond received some negative attention this week after it was highlighted on Save the Bay’s list of most polluted creeks in the Bay Area. But while the creek has a history of pollution problems, a considerable amount of conservation work has made many portions of it cleaner than other creeks in the Bay Area, said Juliana Gonzalez, Healthy Watersheds Program Manager of The Watershed Project. The creeks on Save the Bay’s list were chosen to highlight creeks…