East Bay Yesterday

By East Bay Yesterday

What's East Bay Yesterday about?

East Bay history podcast that gathers, shares & celebrate stories from Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and other towns throughout Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.

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East Bay Yesterday episodes:

04.04.2024
“The neighborhood time forgot”: A strange sliver of waterfront
There’s a small stretch of Oakland’s shoreline unlike any place else. Nestled between the restaurants of Jack London Square and the modern apartment blocks of Brooklyn Basin sits 5th Avenue Marina. This collection of rusty warehouses, eclectic studios, and surreal...
03.06.2024
“Climbing was all I had”: A history of bouldering in the Berkeley Hills
It would be easy to overlook the significance of Indian Rock and Mortar Rock, two relatively modest outcroppings located in the Berkeley Hills. Unlike the towering cliffs of Yosemite, which dominate the landscape, these boulders are partially obscured by the...
02.09.2024
“The streets have changed”: “Drug Lords of Oakland” author on the rise and fall of local kingpins
After spending more than three decades working in the underground economy, Titus Lee Barnes compiled his stunning stories of “the street life” into a self-published book titled “Drug Lords of Oakland: The untold stories of California’s most notorious kingpins of...
01.09.2024
"Rotten City" no more: The history of a tiny town's transformation
Emeryville is a tiny town – less than 2 square miles. It’s nestled between Oakland and Berkeley, right at the foot of the Bay Bridge, and most people probably think of it as a place to go shopping. Two major...
11.17.2023
“He was bringing people together”: Why was Dr. Marcus Foster murdered?
In 1970, Dr. Marcus Foster was hired as the first Black superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District. Widely recognized as one of the greatest educators of his generation, he was brought here to help rescue a deeply troubled system....
10.26.2023
Unearthing “lives of the dead”: A tour of Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery
When Oakland’s most prominent graveyard celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2015, SF Gate honored the occasion with this description: “There are 177,000 people at historic Mountain View Cemetery, many of them famous and all of them dead.” The permanent residents...
10.11.2023
Abortion, poetry, and stink-bombs: A different kind of “self-help” movement
19-year-old Laura Brown started the Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center in 1972. In the early days, Laura would answer the clinic’s phone using different voices so it sounded like there were multiple people working there. From its humble beginnings in...
09.07.2023
Tales from the pit: Lessons from Berkeley’s landfill
These days the East Bay’s waterfront is lined with parks, restored wetlands, marinas, and beaches, but for most of the twentieth century this shoreline was a dirty, dangerous wasteland. Factories stretching from Emeryville to Richmond treated the San Francisco Bay...
07.28.2023
"End of the line": How we lost the Key System
Long before BART or AC Transit, East Bay commuters relied on the Key System, a network of electric streetcars, for local travel and even to cross the Bay (there used to be tracks on the lower deck of the Bay...
07.07.2023
Long Lost Puzzle: What happened to the grizzly bears and old growth redwoods?
Up until the 1850s, the East Bay was home to hundreds of grizzlies and some of the tallest redwoods in the history of the planet. Within about a decade of the Gold Rush, nearly all of the bears and the...
06.16.2023
“You get to play a game of detective”: Longtime librarian Dorothy Lazard uncovers a whole new world
As a librarian at the Oakland History Center, Dorothy Lazard helped countless patrons research their connections to the past. In her new memoir “What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World,” digs into her own history, examining the...
06.01.2023
A curious conversation: Myth-busting and more with Olivia Allen-Price
For the past eight years, Olivia Allen-Price has been solving local mysteries and debunking myths on her KQED podcast Bay Curious. Each week the show tackles listeners’ questions on topics ranging from architecture to salad dressing. Now a new book...
05.17.2023
From volcanoes to potholes: Excavating stories below the soil with Andrew Alden
Did you know that downtown Oakland is built on ancient sand dunes? Or that the East Bay hills used to be honeycombed with quarries and mines? Or why Fruitvale was such a great place to plant orchards in the 1800s?...
04.19.2023
“Time is not money”: Challenging clocks, nostalgia, and more with Jenny Odell
In her new book “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock,” Jenny Odell takes a tour of the Bay Area. She begins at the Port of Oakland and travels as far as the Pacific Ocean before turning around and...
04.06.2023
"Who was Joaquin Miller?": Assessing the legacy and land of a controversial icon
Oakland’s largest city park is named after Joaquin Miller, an eccentric writer who lived on the property more than a century ago. After gaining international attention as the flamboyant “Poet of the Sierra,” Miller transformed the Oakland hills by planting...
02.23.2023
"We were being erased": The woman who saved California’s Black history
Delilah Beasley didn’t have much education or money, but when she saw that African Americans were being ignored by history books, she knew she had to do something. Beasley ended up spending nearly a decade interviewing elders and digging through...
01.26.2023
“Is reform possible?”: Investigating Oakland’s dysfunctional police department
Journalists Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham have been investigating the Oakland Police Department for more than a decade. Their coverage of violent misconduct, corruption, and sexual abuse has led to multiple resignations and terminations within the department, but even more...
01.04.2023
Saved from the wrecking ball: The resurrection of Oakland’s Paramount Theater
Oakland’s Paramount Theater is now recognized as one of the grandest examples of Art Deco architecture still in existence, but this masterpiece almost met the same fate as many other prestigious movie palaces of its era. Originally constructed in 1931,...
12.08.2022
Rooted in Richmond: Touring a "cultural gold mine"
For the past year, I’ve been part of a team developing Rooted in Richmond, a free app that allows visitors to take a self-guided tour through the city’s history. The tour covers 16 locations over 6 miles and includes maps,...
11.02.2022
What happened to “America’s most-read woman”? Rediscovering Elsie Robinson
Elsie Robinson was a pioneer of women in media, an early advocate for equal rights, and at one point the highest-paid woman writer in the nation. Before launching her journalism career, Elsie’s life was an astonishing rollercoaster that included everything...
09.30.2022
“It’s okay to talk about sex toys”: Nenna Joiner digs deep into pleasures of the past
After years of working a corporate job in downtown Oakland, Nenna Joiner woke up one morning with a dream: They wanted to be in the sex industry. After their job applications were rejected by every adult pleasure shop in the...
09.07.2022
Nurses, Novelists, Politicians, and Punks: Miriam Klein Stahl’s “Hella Feminist” portraits
Miriam Klein Stahl came to the Bay Area in the late ‘80s seeking a community of queer punks that she’d read about in underground zines like Homocore. She wasn’t a musician, but she loved working with her hands and quickly...
08.13.2022
“What made Julia Morgan different?”: Exploring the early years of a superstar architect
Julia Morgan wasn’t just one of the most renowned architects of the 20th century, she was a true pioneer of her profession. She was the first woman to be admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which was the...
08.04.2022
“If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with”: When Ronald Reagan sent troops into Berkeley
[This is a re-broadcast of an episode originally aired in 2019.] 50 years ago, a group of students, activists and community members transformed a muddy, junk-filled parking lot into a park. When the University of California, under heavy pressure from...
06.24.2022
“They’re scared of this book”: Oakland history under attack
Over the past few years, there’s been a huge upsurge in efforts to remove books about gender and race from libraries and schools, and in some cases even ban them from being sold to minors altogether. One of the books...
06.04.2022
“Oakland isn’t a bad place”: Ed Howard’s lifelong mission to uplift The Town
Looking back to the West Oakland of his childhood during the World War II era, Ed Howard remembers a place where kids felt safe roaming the streets, Black businesses thrived along 7th Street, and a flood of newcomers from the...
05.06.2022
How to not pay rent: Long-term squatter Violet Thorns on “the art of becoming untouchable”
Instead of waiting around for a solution to California’s housing crisis, about a decade ago Violet Thorns decided to move into one of the hundreds of vacant homes scattered throughout Oakland. During the Occupy era, she was part of a...
04.20.2022
“They wouldn’t sell us rice”: A Filipina elder’s memories of survival and song
Growing up in West Oakland during the 1940s, Evangeline Canonizado Buell remembers the neighborhood as “a melting pot of… adobo, linguisa, tamales, blues, and jazz.” From an early age, this child of Filipino immigrants learned how to connect with her...
03.28.2022
From playgrounds to the pros: The rise (and fall?) of Oakland as a sports mecca
Why has Oakland produced so many all-star athletes? This is the question that propels Paul Brekke-Miesner’s book “Home Field Advantage: The City That Changed the Face of Sports” through decades of local history, from the playgrounds to stadiums. His exploration...
03.11.2022
“They were real macks”: How the Ward Brothers inspired a cult classic
Although most “blaxploitation” flicks from the 1970s were action thrillers, “The Mack” feels more like a documentary. The film was shot on location in pool halls, barber shops and speakeasies throughout Oakland and features real people, not professional actors, as...
02.09.2022
“A new Pacific frontier”: The beginnings of Berkeley
In many ways, Berkeley is a city defined by dichotomies. The hills and the flatlands, academia and industry, counterculture and The Establishment. Despite the city’s progressive reputation, Berkeley has never been a monolithic place. The tensions between conflicting political and...
01.27.2022
"He stole the town": Oakland's founding father was a villain
Some cities were founded by warriors, prophets, or idealistic visionaries. The man who established Oakland was an unscrupulous lawyer looking to get rich quick. This 1877 newspaper quote captures the sentiment shared by many residents about The Town’s first mayor:...
01.12.2022
“Black Art was her language”: Searching for the mother of a movement
In 1968, an exhibition titled “New Perspectives in Black Art” opened in the Kaiser Center Gallery of the Oakland Museum. The show was curated by Evangeline “E.J.” Montgomery, a woman who was at the nucleus of the West Coast’s vibrant...
11.22.2021
"More than just the 1960s": Following the footsteps of rock & roll legends
The Bay Area’s status as a rock & roll mecca may have peaked during the psychedelic sixties, but the party didn’t stop after the hippies took the flowers out of their hair. Following the height of the Haight-Ashbury scene, a...
11.03.2021
“The porters were fed up”: C.L. Dellums and the rise of America’s first Black union
In the early 20th century, the largest employer of Black men in the United States was the Pullman Car Company, which operated luxurious trains that carried millions of passengers around the booming nation in an era before airplanes and interstate...
10.12.2021
“Like a neon space carnival”: The trippy memories of a 90’s “Raver Girl”
Samantha Durbin’s acid was just kicking in as she entered an Oakland donut shop to score a handmade map to a secret warehouse party. On that chilly winter night in 1996, she ended up dancing to pulsing beats and kaleidoscopic...
09.22.2021
“There’s no reason to be San Francisco”: The mixed legacy of Oakland’s ambition
Thanks to its natural deepwater port, San Francisco quickly emerged as the West Coast’s leading metropolis during California’s Gold Rush era. In the decades since, many of Oakland’s development patterns have been influenced by its competitive relationship with the sparkling...
09.08.2021
“It was my whole universe”: William Gee Wong on growing up in Oakland’s Chinatown
William Gee Wong almost didn’t exist. A few years before Wong was born, his father was shot four times over a dispute involving Oakland Chinatown’s underground lottery. Thanks to the quick work of doctors at Highland Hospital, Wong’s father survived,...
07.28.2021
“Dear Brown Eyes”: How a stash of old letters helped heal a family
A few years ago, Aussie Holcomb was going through a divorce, and her relationship with her dad wasn’t going well, either. Feeling lost and lonely, she began reading her grandparents’ old love letters, which had recently been uncovered after sitting...
07.16.2021
“Who ordered the hit?” Investigating Mac Dre’s tragic murder
The quickest way to start a dance party in the Bay Area is to play a Mac Dre song. Countless times, I’ve seen mellow crowds instantly transform as soon as the first few beats from hyphy hits like “Feelin’ Myself”...
06.16.2021
Hoover-Foster Stories, Vol. 2: “You become an art anthropologist”
When Andre Jones (AKA Natty Rebel) does a mural in Oakland’s Hoover-Foster neighborhood, he doesn’t just paint whatever he feels like. Andre meets with longtime residents, shop owners, and other local artists to dig into the area’s rich history. He’ll...
05.04.2021
Hoover-Foster Stories, Vol. 1: BBQ, books, and big banks
Oakland’s Hoover-Foster neighborhood encapsulates more than a century of Black Liberation struggles. It was a destination for migrants fleeing the Jim Crow South to find work in the East Bay’s booming shipyards or as Pullman Porters. The newcomers brought their...
04.07.2021
“We’re no longer afraid to be Black”: Before the Panthers, this group was the vanguard
Before Huey Newton and Bobby Seale started the Black Panther Party, they spent years learning from the leaders of the Afro-American Association. During the early 1960s, when the struggle for racial justice was evolving from a civil rights movement led...
02.27.2021
“We’re uncovering a lost civilization”: A look at the New Deal’s local legacy
It’s nearly impossible to summarize the magnitude of the New Deal’s impact in the Bay Area. From the creation of Lake Anza, Woodminster Amphitheater, and Treasure Island to countless murals, schools, and other public amenities, federal funding dramatically transformed the...
02.11.2021
BART, bathhouses, and beyond: The friendship behind “The Cruising Diaries”
Two decades ago, Brontez Purnell fled his Christian family in Alabama, landed in a warehouse full of punks in East Oakland, and quickly got to work hooking up with as many guys as he could get his hands on. Janelle...
01.15.2021
“We were here before California was a state”: Talking Latino history with Jose Rivera
When Jose Rivera started researching the Bay Area’s Chicano history, he was frustrated by how difficult it was to find information. To remedy this problem, Jose created Oakland Latinos Unidos as a platform for sharing stories that are often left...
12.29.2020
“It was like a carnival”: The betrayal of Oakland’s 1946 General Strike
In 1946, a few hundred department store employees, mostly women, walked off the job and started a picket line in downtown Oakland. Within a few weeks, more than 100,000 workers joined them, filling the streets with protesters who danced under...
12.04.2020
Goodbye, Telegraph Avenue: An audio time capsule of the past decade
Greetings to whoever finds this time capsule. If you want to know what’s inside, you’ll just have to listen.
11.06.2020
“We’re not selling a neighborhood”: A new guidebook spotlights landmarks of conflict and resilience
Amidst this year’s bombardment of campaign ads and nonstop election news, it’s easy to forget that the ballot box is only one of many ways that people participate in politics and drive systemic change. Although often ignored by history books,...
10.08.2020
“A home burned every 11 seconds”: A deadly tragedy that could happen again
On the morning of October 20, 1991, towering clouds of black smoke blocked out the sun as “diablo winds” whipped flames hot enough to melt gold throughout the hills above Oakland and Berkeley. By the end of that day, 25...

What's East Bay Yesterday about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

East Bay Yesterday episodes:

“The neighborhood time forgot”: A strange sliver of waterfront

“Climbing was all I had”: A history of bouldering in the Berkeley Hills

“The streets have changed”: “Drug Lords of Oakland” author on the rise and fall of local kingpins

"Rotten City" no more: The history of a tiny town's transformation

“He was bringing people together”: Why was Dr. Marcus Foster murdered?

Unearthing “lives of the dead”: A tour of Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery

Abortion, poetry, and stink-bombs: A different kind of “self-help” movement

Tales from the pit: Lessons from Berkeley’s landfill

"End of the line": How we lost the Key System

Long Lost Puzzle: What happened to the grizzly bears and old growth redwoods?

“You get to play a game of detective”: Longtime librarian Dorothy Lazard uncovers a whole new world

A curious conversation: Myth-busting and more with Olivia Allen-Price

From volcanoes to potholes: Excavating stories below the soil with Andrew Alden

“Time is not money”: Challenging clocks, nostalgia, and more with Jenny Odell

"Who was Joaquin Miller?": Assessing the legacy and land of a controversial icon

"We were being erased": The woman who saved California’s Black history

“Is reform possible?”: Investigating Oakland’s dysfunctional police department

Saved from the wrecking ball: The resurrection of Oakland’s Paramount Theater

Rooted in Richmond: Touring a "cultural gold mine"

What happened to “America’s most-read woman”? Rediscovering Elsie Robinson

“It’s okay to talk about sex toys”: Nenna Joiner digs deep into pleasures of the past

Nurses, Novelists, Politicians, and Punks: Miriam Klein Stahl’s “Hella Feminist” portraits

“What made Julia Morgan different?”: Exploring the early years of a superstar architect

“If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with”: When Ronald Reagan sent troops into Berkeley

“They’re scared of this book”: Oakland history under attack

“Oakland isn’t a bad place”: Ed Howard’s lifelong mission to uplift The Town

How to not pay rent: Long-term squatter Violet Thorns on “the art of becoming untouchable”

“They wouldn’t sell us rice”: A Filipina elder’s memories of survival and song

From playgrounds to the pros: The rise (and fall?) of Oakland as a sports mecca

“They were real macks”: How the Ward Brothers inspired a cult classic

“A new Pacific frontier”: The beginnings of Berkeley

"He stole the town": Oakland's founding father was a villain

“Black Art was her language”: Searching for the mother of a movement

"More than just the 1960s": Following the footsteps of rock & roll legends

“The porters were fed up”: C.L. Dellums and the rise of America’s first Black union

“Like a neon space carnival”: The trippy memories of a 90’s “Raver Girl”

“There’s no reason to be San Francisco”: The mixed legacy of Oakland’s ambition

“It was my whole universe”: William Gee Wong on growing up in Oakland’s Chinatown

“Dear Brown Eyes”: How a stash of old letters helped heal a family

“Who ordered the hit?” Investigating Mac Dre’s tragic murder

Hoover-Foster Stories, Vol. 2: “You become an art anthropologist”

Hoover-Foster Stories, Vol. 1: BBQ, books, and big banks

“We’re no longer afraid to be Black”: Before the Panthers, this group was the vanguard

“We’re uncovering a lost civilization”: A look at the New Deal’s local legacy

BART, bathhouses, and beyond: The friendship behind “The Cruising Diaries”

“We were here before California was a state”: Talking Latino history with Jose Rivera

“It was like a carnival”: The betrayal of Oakland’s 1946 General Strike

Goodbye, Telegraph Avenue: An audio time capsule of the past decade

“We’re not selling a neighborhood”: A new guidebook spotlights landmarks of conflict and resilience

“A home burned every 11 seconds”: A deadly tragedy that could happen again