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 from a marriage to a wealthy Victorian gentleman to a job working deep within the bowels of the Sierra foothills mining for gold. So how is it possible that her name has been largely forgotten?

Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert confront this mystery in a fascinating new biography called “Listen, World! How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson became America’s Most-Read Woman.” In this episode, recorded at the Oakland Library in front of a live audience, we discuss Robinson’s unlikely rise from the Oakland Tribune to the upper echelons of national media, her legacy, and the challenges of uncovering this nearly forgotten story. To see photos and links related to this story, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/what-happened-to-americas-most-read-woman/

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your support. Please donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

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 area, Nenna decided to launch their own business. They started by selling sex toys and porn DVDs out of a box at bars (and sometimes even at BART stations), but from these humble beginnings grew a mini-empire.

More than a decade later, Nenna now owns two Feelmore Adult Galleries, plans to open a sex-themed bar called Feelmore Social later this year, and is running for a seat on Oakland’s City Council. Nenna’s first position in politics was as a member of the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, which led them to an interest in the East Bay’s sex history. Years of purchasing adult artifacts from Oakland collectors and now-defunct sex shops deepened their knowledge of former bordellos, theaters, underground sex clubs, and nightlife institutions.

For obvious reasons, “sex history” isn’t an easy topic to document, but in this episode Nenna discusses everything from how to find brothels on old maps to their personal journey in the sex industry. To hear about why Ronald Reagan is responsible for the lack of strip clubs in Oakland, the rise and fall of burlesque theaters, the unintended consequences of the Red Light Abatement Act, and much more, listen to the full episode now. To see photos related to this story, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/its-okay-to-talk-about-sex-toys/

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your support. Please donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

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 realized that she could contribute to this thriving scene by drawing flyers and creating illustrations. Miriam’s rebellious passion infused her heavily politicized images with confrontational power and urgency.

More than three decades later, she’s still making radical art, but now her work is adorning museums as well as punk clubs. An entire wall of the Oakland Museum of California’s Hella Feminist exhibition is covered with 200 paper-cut portraits of “women/nonbinary humans whose lives and work intersect and impact the East Bay.” These figures range from Gilded Age bohemian poets and pre-WWII civil rights leaders to witches, welders, and high school activists.

The co-creator of this Hella Feminist portrait project is local author Kate Schatz, who Miram also collaborated with for a series of best-selling books such as “Rad American History A-Z” and “Rad Women Worldwide.” In this episode, Miriam discusses her philosophy of public art, her career as an art teacher at Berkeley High, and the histories of the women and nonbinary people featured in her illustrations.

See images related to this episode at: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/nurses-novelists-politicians-and-punks/

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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 most important architecture school of its era, as well as the first woman in California to earn an architecture license and eventually the first woman to win the American Institute of Architects’ highest honor. Then there’s her buildings. She’s best known for Hearst Castle, but over her long career she designed hundreds of impressive structures – the Berkeley City Club, Oakland’s YWCA, the Asilomar Conference Center, El Campanil at Mills College, and the list goes on and on.

As a woman, Morgan didn’t always get the recognition she deserved, but in more recent decades, she’s been the subject of numerous books, documentaries, and museum exhibits. However, a new book takes a different approach by imagining Julia’s early years, as a young woman growing up in Victorian era East Bay. In “Drawing Outside the Lines,” Susan J. Austin tells the story of the architect’s formative time at Oakland High School and UC Berkeley during the 1880s and 90s. The book is a work of historical fiction, but Austin spent years on research in order to make the story as realistic as possible. In this episode, Susan J. Austin discusses her favorite Julia Morgan buildings, why she thinks Julia Morgan’s story will be relevant for young readers, and some of the famous figures, such as Gertrude Stein and Frank Norris, who make cameo appearances in “Drawing Outside the Lines.”

To see photos related to this episode: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/what-made-julia-morgan-different/

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your support. Please donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

[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 Gov. Ronald Reagan, tore up the grass and surrounded the land with a heavily-guarded fence, this response triggered a surreal and tragic set of events. The maelstrom of violence that engulfed Berkeley in May 1969 would be almost impossible to believe if the cameras hadn't been rolling.

Dozens were shot, hundreds were arrested, and thousands were teargassed – protesters and innocent bystanders alike. During the military occupation of Berkeley by National Guardsmen, a helicopter launched a chemical attack on the University campus, children were surrounded by bayonet-wielding soldiers, and journalists were detained under the supervision of brutally sadistic guards. Amidst this upheaval, Gov. Reagan told a group of reporters, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with, no more appeasement.”

This episode explores the conflict with Tom Dalzell, the author of “The Battle for People’s Park” (Heyday Books), and through archival audio captured by KPFA-FM reporters in 1969 and 1970.

If you enjoy the episode, please support East Bay Yesterday: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

To see photos related to this episode: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/if-it-takes-a-bloodbath-lets-get-it-over-with/

To purchase “The Battle for People’s Park, Berkeley 1969”: https://aerbook.com/maker/productcard-4196911-4706.html

Episode art: Photo: Ted Streshinsky; courtesy of the Streshinsky Family. Image used by kind permission of Heyday Books.

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 frequently targeted by these campaigns is “The 57 Bus,” which examines a 2013 incident involving a nonbinary teenager who was lit on fire by an Oakland High student while taking AC Transit home from school. The book was a bestseller and won critical acclaim for its nuanced portrayal of what it’s like to be a young person who doesn’t fit into “traditional” gender roles, as well as its critical look into the failings of America’s criminal justice system, but now it’s being illegitimately denounced as “pornographic” by parents parroting the talking points of conservative organizations like Moms for Liberty. In reality, there’s nothing sexual in the book—they’re simply scared of it.

Besides book banning, there are hundreds of anti-LGBTQ laws being proposed across the country right now, not to mention rising cases of violent intimidation like the Proud Boys’ disruption of a “Drag Queen Story Hour” event right here in the East Bay earlier this month. Amidst this reactionary backlash, I interviewed the author of “The 57 Bus,” Dashka Slater, a longtime Oakland resident and former East Bay Express staff writer. In this episode, we discuss the battle over controversial books, the political power of historical narratives, and, of course, the disturbing crime at the center of “The 57 Bus.” Listen now on Apple, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

To see images related to this story, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/theyre-scared-of-this-book/

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your support. Please donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

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 South created a prosperous, tight-knit community. His own memories present a jarring contrast to the contemporary media’s portrayal of this neighborhood as a dangerous slum. “Any time they see a group of Black people together, they say it’s bad,” Ed recalled. “But me and my friends weren’t bad. And Oakland isn’t bad.”

From his early days as community organizer based in DeFremery Park, Ed was motivated to challenge these negative messages, and as he climbed each level of his career ladder, he brought friends from his community with him. After becoming one of the first Black mechanical engineers at Kaiser Industries, he created a program to train and hire more Black workers, a model that was soon adopted by other local companies in the 1960s. Ed went on to produce “Black Dignity,” one of the first TV talk shows hosted by an African American. His resume doesn’t end there: Ed built a thriving nightclub in East Oakland, he created a consulting firm to help launch other Black businesses, he directed a documentary about Ron Dellums, and he even invented a comb specifically designed for Black hair. Now, at the age of 84, Ed is running the West Oakland Stories Positive Feeling Movement, a local history project aimed at countering persistently derogatory narratives about his home town.

In this episode, Ed Howard shares the life lessons that informed his philosophy of positivity. Considering the seemingly nonstop barrage of horrific news that we’re all now constantly bombarded with, I’ll admit I was a little skeptical at first, but Ed won me over with his pragmatic optimism. If you’re feeling depressed, cynical, and frustrated, listening to Ed share the wisdom he’s gained from overcoming countless challenges might just give you a glimmer of hope.

You can learn more about West Oakland Positive Feeling Movement and donate here: http://westoaklandstories.org/

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 loose network of dozens of squats, but since then nearly all of those were evicted as local property values soared. After her community crumbled, Violet found herself living in a squalid, burned out building with no money and few resources. As a trans woman she was desperate to remain in the Bay Area, despite not being able to afford this region’s astronomical rents. Then one day, she noticed a vacant lot on a residential street that was so overgrown with fennel that she knew the owners hadn’t been there for years.

Today’s episode is about how Violet built a tiny home and a thriving garden on that abandoned land and gotten away with living there for nearly eight years without paying rent. Listen now to hear about the rise and fall of an anarchic squatting scene, how to deal with angry landlords, the Gold Rush-era laws squatters use to stave off evictions, guerilla gardening tips, and much more.

See photos related to this episode at: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/how-to-not-pay-rent/

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your support. Please donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

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 Black, Portuguese, Mexican, Greek and Japanese neighbors through food and music, skills that she later built into careers as a guitar teacher, historian, and program coordinator for the Berkeley Co-Op. Her memoir, “Twenty-Five Chickens and a Pig for a Bride,” intertwines her personal journey of overcoming abuse and discrimination with the growth of California’s Filipino community, mixing tantalizing stories of backyard pig roasts with infuriating memories of racist harassment.

In this episode, Evangeline shares some of the wisdom, humor, and music that she’s accumulated throughout her nine decades living in the East Bay. Listen now to hear a conversation that covers everything from the agricultural origins of Bay Farm Island to the long legacy of the Spanish-American War. See photos related to this episode at: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/they-wouldnt-sell-us-rice/

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your support. Please donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday

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 helps explain not only the origins of this highly concentrated pool of athletic ability, but also why so many local stars have used their visibility to call attention to social struggles, long before Colin Kaepernick famously took a knee to protest police violence.

An Oakland native who grew up playing ball in the Eastmont neighborhood and began covering sports at Castlemont High more than half a century ago, Brekke-Miesner brings deep knowledge about such iconic athletes as Bill Russell, Ricky Henderson, Frank Robinson, Curt Flood and many others to our conversation in this episode. Along the way, we also discuss the impact of Prop. 13 on youth sports, some very unlikely superstars, and why The Town might be better off without the billionaire owners who keep breaking our hearts. To see photos related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/from-playgrounds-to-the-pros/

East Bay Yesterday can’t survive without your support. Please donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/eastbayyesterday