In recent years, volunteer-led groups like Urban Compassion Project have struggled to deal with illegal dumping in Oakland. Despite removing more than half a million pounds of trash this year, piles of garbage continue to plague our streets. How did this problem get so bad and why is it so hard to fix?

As usual, I turned to history for answers. Before Waste Management took over in 1986, trash collection was handled by the worker-owned Oakland Scavenger Company, a business founded by Italian immigrants more than a century ago. For this episode, I spoke with several retired third-generation garbage men: Robert Biasotti and the Muzio brothers – Tony, Dino, and Mike. I also unearthed a 1981 interview with Ed Lavagetto, whose father was one of the original Oakland Scavenger partners.

These conversations revealed not only a totally different system of trash collection, but a story that illuminates so many changes in American culture. It’s a story of poor immigrants grinding their way into the middle class. It’s the story of why Temescal, now one of Oakland’s trendiest neighborhoods, used to be called Little Italy. It’s a story of an old world mentality clashing with new values ushered in by the Civil Rights era… and it’s also a story of what’s been lost as mega-corporations have risen to dominance.

To see photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/we-let-everybody-throw-it-away/

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In 1973, Chile’s democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende was toppled by a right-wing military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. As news of the brutal repression that followed spread around the globe, a group of activists in Berkeley opened a cafe to serve as a hub of organizing against Pinochet’s fascist regime. Modeled after gathering spaces in Chile that combined music, food, art, and politics, La Peña emerged as a hotbed of leftist internationalism.

Over the years, La Peña evolved along with a changing political landscape. Besides hosting countless international activist groups, the space became a hub for Native American organizations, Latin American music lovers, hip hop, poetry, muralists, and more. In 2025, as La Peña celebrates its 50th anniversary, the United States is faced with a crisis Chile confronted decades ago: How do we respond to the dismantling of democracy by an authoritarian government? This episode weaves together the history of La Peña with America’s current dilemma.

Listen to the podcast to hear interviews with La Peña co-founder Eric Leenson, longtime director Paul Chin, and current executive director Consuelo Tupper. https://lapena.org/

To see photos related to this episode, visit: eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/respect-the-patch/

Don’t forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news: eastbayyesterday.substack.com/

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Tobie Gene Levingston left behind his life as a Louisiana sharecropper in the mid-1950s to work at an Oakland metal foundry. Within a few years, he started the East Bay Dragons, which grew to be one of the most legendary Black motorcycle clubs in the world. This episode goes into the Dragons’ clubhouse for a deep conversation with two long-time members, Melvin Shadrick and Picasso, to explore how the club has managed to thrive all these years – and what it feels like to cruise past another motorcycle pack on the highway going 140 miles per hour. [Note: This episode originally aired in 2018]

To see photos related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/respect-the-patch/

This episode’s art is a watercolor painted by Oakland-based illustrator and author Robert Liu-Trujillo. You can see more of Rob’s work at http://work.robdontstop.com/

Don’t forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news: https://eastbayyesterday.substack.com/

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There’s an area southeast of Lake Merritt that’s lined with abandoned buildings, boarded up storefronts, vacant lots, and decrepit warehouses. The neighborhoods here, Clinton and San Antonio, are some of Oakland’s oldest. Although there are also beautiful Victorian houses, long-established churches, and several thriving immigrant communities, including a stretch of Vietnamese establishments known as Little Saigon, this area has suffered from disinvestment and high crime rates for decades – why?

Answering that question requires a trip through more than a century of Oakland history – from the Gold Rush up through the Urban Renewal era and beyond. Exploring this story illuminates not only the problems of these neighborhoods, but helps explain the rise and fall of entire cities. “The leading edge of development follows the wealthiest residents,” according to Mitchell Schwarzer, the author of “Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption.”

In this episode, Schwarzer unpacks that diagnosis, and what it means for older neighborhoods left to crumble as investors chase new frontiers. This conversation was inspired by Schwarzer’s work with the San Antonio Station Alliance, a campaign advocating for the construction of a BART station and transit village. For photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/not-on-the-wealth-corridor/

Don’t forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news: eastbayyesterday.substack.com/

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From the gold rush to the tech boom, this region has been shaped by successive waves of business growth and decline. Every generation, new investments, innovations, and industries have led the way in building the Bay Area, attracting immigrants, and impacting every aspect of life here. For better or worse, the legacy of these trends is the world we live in today.

In this episode, urban geographer Richard Walker, author of “Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area,” discusses the pros and cons of these boom/bust cycles and explores the history of local development through the lens of Big Business. As the Bay Area’s economy faces an uncertain future under the threat of a global trade war and a looming “AI revolution,” this wide-ranging conversation gives context to our often bewildering present.

Don’t forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news: https://eastbayyesterday.substack.com/

For photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/industry-makes-and-breaks-the-bay-area/

Donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

On March 25, I interviewed Alexis Madrigal and Noni Session in front of a sold out crowd at Spire in West Oakland. Madrigal is the author of an essential new book called “The Pacific Circuit: A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City.” He is also host of KQED’s Forum, a longtime journalist, and a dear friend. Noni Session is a third generation West Oaklander and the executive director of East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, a community-funded organization that challenges displacement with cooperative economic strategies. Through her groundbreaking work with EB PREC, Session is rebuilding local institutions, such as Esther’s Orbit Room, and also removing housing from the speculative market to create permanently affordable, community-controlled homes.

Our discussion explored themes that connect Madrigal’s book and Session’s revitalization projects, the history of West Oakland’s role in the global economy, and much more.

Don’t forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news: substack.com/@eastbayyesterday

For photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/people-of-the-pacific-circuit/

Donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

On the western outskirts of Crockett, on the bluffs overlooking the Carquinez strait, there’s a small unincorporated neighborhood called Valona. These days, this community isn’t that different from any of the others that stretch along this northern edge of Contra Costa County, but things used to be a lot different. If you were in Valona a century ago, you might have felt more like you were in a traditional Italian village than a Bay Area suburb. You would’ve seen kids stomping grapes to make wine during harvest season and families making salami from scratch to hang in their cellars. And you definitely would’ve heard people speaking Italian, which was more common than hearing English around these parts.

But one thing hasn’t changed – looking down from Valona back then, and now, you’d see a giant brick factory, flanked by huge silos and loading docks. That is the C&H Sugar Factory, and in a lot of ways, that factory is the reason why Valona and the entire town of Crockett exists.

Today’s episode is a journey into the history of Valona and Crockett, and our guide is Barbara Pangi Denton, the author of a new book called “Sweet Success: How Industry, Immigrants, and Working Women Shaped a Town.” Listen now to hear Barbara discuss her deep Italian roots, the downfall of Crockett’s “golden age,” and the importance of community cookbooks.

Don’t forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news: substack.com/@eastbayyesterday

For photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/crockett-became-italy/

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Anyone who has ever driven on 880 and noticed that there appears to be ancient brick walls closing in on you as you pass through Oakland’s Jingletown neighborhood has probably wondered about the history of this post-industrial landscape. The California Cotton Mill was founded in 1883 and employed more than 1200 workers at its peak. Many of the workers were Portuguese immigrants who created a tight-knit, working class community, which eventually dwindled down after the Mill closed and the Nimitz Freeway tore the neighborhood in half in the early 1950s.

On February 13, 2025, I co-hosted an event in the former Cotton Mill, a sprawling 4-acre complex of brick lofts and warehouses, with Adesha Adefela, Ryan Nicole Austin and Beau Lewis, the creators of an upcoming hip hop musical called Co-Founders. We discussed how being in this historic, industrial space influenced the development of their show, the global impact of Oakland music, and their personal stories of being artists in the Bay. The event also featured an interview with Mario Hernandez, an assistant Professor of Sociology at Mills College at Northeastern University who specializes in the study of gentrification.

Listen now to hear a deep conversation about art, tech, and history… plus an exclusive clip from a new E-40 song on the forthcoming Co-Founders soundtrack! Special thanks to TK Campbell from Stay Diff for recording this event.

Tickets for Co-Founders available now: https://www.act-sf.org/whats-on/2024-25-season/co-founders/

Don’t forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news: substack.com/@eastbayyesterday

For photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/

Donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

Since the dawn of the smartphone era, everybody has carried a camera with them at all times. If anything, there are too many photos and videos being recorded at concerts. We all know the annoyance of being distracted from the music by outstretched arms holding up glowing screens in front of the stage.

During the early years of the Bay Area punk scene, however, there was usually only one person with a camera documenting the action – Murray Bowles. Back when this aggressively self-marginalized genre was relegated to sweaty basements, decrepit warehouses, and outdoor wastelands, Murray could consistently be found in the mosh pit, snapping photos of the glorious chaos erupting around him. As the scene’s popularity grew, buoyed by local institutions like all-ages club 924 Gilman and Maximumnrocknroll magazine, Murray’s images became the defining visual documentation of a punk rock renaissance. He was even immortalized (in cartoon form) on the cover of Green Day’s “Dookie,” the biggest selling punk album of all time.

“Hail Murray: The Bay Area Punk Photography of Murray Bowles, 1982-1995” (Last Gasp) is the first book to compile his explosive photographic catalogue and pay tribute to the man behind the lens. This episode features an interview with Anna Brown, a lifelong friend of Murray who compiled this posthumous retrospective. https://lastgasp.com/products/hail-murray

Don’t forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news. https://substack.com/@eastbayyesterday

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Despite being one of Oakland’s most iconic buildings, the history of the Fox Theater is filled with unsolved mysteries. In preparation for his ongoing tours of the nearly century-old structure, architectural historian J.M. Marriner has been digging into the archives and looking for answers. This episode features our conversation on everything from arson and art theft to mushrooms growing in the balcony carpet. 

If you want to see more photos related to this episode, check out my SF Gate article: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/fox-theater-oakland-landmark-mysteries-19988446.php

You can contact J.M. Marriner to get a copy of his booklet about the history of the theater and I also highly recommend checking out one of his tours: https://www.instagram.com/jmmarriner/

Subscribe to the Oakland Heritage Alliance email list to find out about upcoming dates: https://www.oaklandheritage.org/

Don’t forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news: https://substack.com/@eastbayyesterday

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your donations. Please make a pledge to keep this show alive www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

Special thanks to the sponsor of this episode: For 112 years, Children’s Hospital in Oakland has been a foundational part of keeping our local communities healthy and happy. UCSF is proud to celebrate its award-winning care at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in Oakland, throughout the East Bay, and around the Bay Area. Thank you to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in Oakland for being a proud sponsor of East Bay Yesterday.