East Bay Yesterday

On December 21st, 2025, the Bay Area lost one of its oldest and most distinguished residents: The legendary Betty Reid Soskin passed away at the age of 104. To pay tribute to her extraordinary life and to celebrate her legacy, I’m re-releasing this interview that was originally published back in 2019. Even though she’s gone, her story is just as powerful, and inspirational as ever.

In this episode, Soskin shares stories of growing up in Oakland during the 1920s “when the hills used to burn every year.” She traces her journey from working in a segregated union hall during World War II to co-founding one of the East Bay’s first Black record stores to becoming “America’s oldest National Park ranger” at the age of 85. And she explains how living for roughly a century has allowed her to see patterns in history that give her hope for the future.

To see photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/eby-qa-5/

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

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

Historic houses offer a tangible connection to a city’s past, but maintaining them is difficult and expensive. Some of Oakland’s most unique structures are currently endangered due to deferred maintenance and budget shortages. Fortunately, there are also several homes that have developed models for how to survive despite these challenges. Their goal isn’t merely to exist, but to serve as resources for the neighborhoods that have grown up around them.

To explore why saving historic homes matters, this episode features interviews with:

-Naomi Schiff of the Oakland Heritage Alliance

-Holly Alonso and Miguel Lopez of the Peralta Hacienda

-Nancy Donald and Patty Donald of the Cohen-Bray House

To see photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/how-to-save-a-house/

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

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

If you were born after 1990, it might be easy to think that the world has always had wheelchair ramps, closed captions, and bathroom stalls for people with disabilities. But none of those things existed until a few decades ago - and they all had to be demanded. Until a group of confrontational activists emerged out of Berkeley in the 1960s, it was legal to discriminate against people with disabilities. All that changed thanks to the radical students who built one of the most successful movements of the 20th century.

Today’s episode features my interview with Scot Danforth, the author of “An Independent Man: Ed Roberts and the Fight for Disability Rights” (UC Press). Listen now to hear about how a man who couldn’t move his arms or legs changed laws, architecture, and society’s view on people with disabilities.

To see photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/he-wanted-people-to-take-risks/

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

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

Everyone has opinions on the Bay Area’s problems with housing, transit and public infrastructure, but Darrell Owens digs deep into the historical roots of these issues on his Substack “The Discourse Lounge.” When Darrell is analyzing a topic like gentrification, he doesn’t just start in the 1990s or 2000. He’ll go back more than a century, because, yes, the origins of our current demographic trends really do stretch that far. He also knows how to grab readers’ attention with headlines like “Why new apartments look ugly” and “Bay Area nightlife sucks – here’s how to fix it.”

In addition to his writing, Darrell has been active with numerous “hands on” projects – from restoring long lost street neighborhood landmarks to installing “guerilla” bus benches at AC Transit stops lacking adequate seating. In this episode, Darrell and I discuss the origins of Nimby and Yimbyism, establishing criteria for historical preservation, the history of public housing, and much more.

To see photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/my-neighborhood-looks-the-same-as-it-did-50-years-ago/

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

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

Special thanks to the sponsor of this episode: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. To learn more about BAMPFA’s current exhibit “Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread,” visit: https://bampfa.org/program/lee-shinja-drawing-thread

How did Jessica Mitford go from being an elite British debutante to fighting on the front lines of America’s early civil rights struggles? While two of her older sisters befriended Adolph Hitler, Jessica came to Oakland, organized the first investigation into police brutality, helped desegregate all-white neighborhoods, and became a famous muckraking journalist. This astonishing tale is vividly told in Mimi Pond’s new graphic novel “Do Admit! The Mitford Sisters and Me” [Drawn & Quarterly].

Given America’s current context of rising fascism, government repression, and historical erasure, the timing of this book could not be more appropriate. Although one of her older sisters teasingly called Jessica a “ballroom communist,” her lifelong struggles for racial and economic justice illustrate a true commitment to solidarity.

In addition to discussing The Mitfords, this episode also covers Pond’s earlier graphic novels about her career as an Oakland diner waitress in the late 1970s and early 80s. In “Over Easy” and “The Customer is Always Wrong,” Pond shares wild, behind-the-scenes memories of the sex-and-drug-fueled restaurant where she worked while trying to make it as an aspiring cartoonist.

To see photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/the-ballroom-communist/

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

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

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/

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

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

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/

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

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/

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

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/

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

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