Oaklandside 510

It's that time again: election season. Oakland's got a mayor's race, three city council seats, three competitive school board seats, and three city or regional ballot measures on the table. 

To help you make sense of it all — and to tell you how we're covering it between now and November 3rd — we're joined by two of our editors: Darwin BondGraham, our news editor, who edits our city hall, housing, and public safety reporters; and Esther Kaplan, our deputy editor, who edits our education, transportation, and arts coverage.

Stories we cover in this episode:

• Who qualified for Oakland’s November election?
• Are parents poised for a school board takeover?
• Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee launches campaign for re-election
• Foreclosure tax will appear on Oakland’s November ballot
• BART, AC Transit and Muni are all-in on a November sales tax. Will voters bite?
• Barbara Lee breaks tie, pushing ‘strong-mayor’ measure onto the ballot

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].

Turns out those little green compostable bags many of us use to line our kitchen compost bins aren't actually being composted — at least not in Oakland. 

Oaklandside’s housing and City Hall reporter Natalie Orenstein breaks down why "compostable" labeling can be misleading and what you should be doing with your food scraps.

Stories we cover in this episode:

Compost bags

• Don’t put green ‘compost’ bags in your green Oakland compost bins
• Green bags don’t cut it. Here’s how to compost in Oakland instead

Public safety

• Flock’s pitch to police: Be like Oakland and Richmond

City Hall and development

• Meta trial claiming platforms addicted teens begins in Oakland
• Is a data center coming to downtown Oakland?

Education

• State budget brought good news for OUSD finances

Road safety

• Potholes are the worst. Learn how to report them

Nosh

• Burdell’s Geoff Davis is bringing back the neighborhood bar and grill

Events

• This week in Oakland: Kamaiyah at Latham Square, and the Afrobeats festival at Snow Park

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].

If you've driven on I-880 near downtown Oakland recently, you may have noticed a new billboard. It’s a black and white photo of a guy in a tank top, flexing, with a dramatic skyline behind him. The text says, "Son of Oakland: For the People, with the People."

On today’s episode, we talk with our City Hall reporter Eli Wolfe about who is behind this mysterious billboard and its links to the three-year saga of how one billboard company pushed itself into Oakland's city budget.

Stories we cover in this episode:

Billboards

• ‘Son of Oakland’ billboard over I-880 in Oakland turns heads
• Oakland billboard deal could help close the city’s budget gap
• How a billboard company melded its interests with Oakland’s in the new city budget
• Fierce competition among billboard firms boils over at Oakland council meeting
• Oakland billboard fight: Nonprofits will get millions and free advertising, but Clear Channel is pushing back

City Hall

• Who qualified for Oakland’s November election?
• Who was the city of Oakland’s highest paid employee in 2025?

Public Safety

• Gun violence crackdown led to 51 arrests, 76 firearms seized across East Bay

Arts and Community

• ‘The park cared for me’: Lincoln Rec Center rebuild breaks ground — will include a resilience hub
• Ready to ditch your phone for a film camera? Underdog Film Lab can help
• At 60, Too $hort has no plans to stop

NOSH

• Matt Horn closes last Horn Barbecue location amid wage theft accusations
• Pinkies up! Afternoon tea’s having a moment in the East Bay

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].

We talk with our road safety reporter Jose Fermoso about a gap in Oakland's BART map — a stretch of East Oakland that the trains fly right over, with no station in sight.

For years, a group in the San Antonio neighborhood, a couple miles southeast of the lake, have been pushing to change that. The group calls themselves the San Antonio Station Alliance — SASA. And recently, that dream got a lot more vivid, thanks to a group of design students from California College of the Arts who drew up what a station there could actually look like — creek and all.

Stories we cover in this episode:

San Antonio BART Proposal

• San Antonio BART station is still a fantasy, but here’s what design students think is possible
• BART skips over this Oakland neighborhood. Residents are campaigning for a station

Youth Programs

• A new youth writing lab lands in Uptown Oakland

Crosswalks

• Oakland’s most dangerous crosswalks: 112 injured, 9 killed over 10 years

Elections

• June election went ‘smoothly’ for Alameda County says new registrar

ICE and Immigration

• ICE used Eastmont Mall parking lot to transfer a detainee, say advocates
• Judge orders bond release for Oakland woman detained at Denver airport
• Oakland artist detained by ICE for 8 months faces daunting legal challenge

Oakland Firefighters Acknowledged

• Viral pigeon rescue earns Oakland firefighters PETA award

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].

Today, we're talking about places that make Oakland Oakland.

From historic homes and neighborhoods to landmarks and parks to cultural spaces, these places hold the stories of our city.

As Oakland grapples with tight budgets and deferred maintenance, we're exploring what it actually takes to preserve these spaces — and who's stepping up to do it.

We did this recently at a conversation at the New Parkway Theater, part of our popular Culture Makers series. For today's episode, we're bringing you that conversation. 

Featuring East Bay Yesterday host Liam O'Donoghue, Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation's Mandolin Kadera-Redmond, and Peralta Hacienda's Miguel Lopez, and moderated by our arts and community reporter Azucena Rasilla.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

More on this conversation:

• Culture Makers: Breathing new life into Oakland’s oldest spaces

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].

For the first four months of this year, twelve Oakland public high schoolers were embedded in our newsroom. They worked with Oaklandside reporters to examine what’s working in OUSD, what’s not, and how it all impacts students. 

They brought us stories we simply didn’t know about, and helped us understand them far better with their help.

Today, we sit down with one of our student fellows to talk about two stories she reported on: one on Oakland's glitchy free student bus pass program, and one on how social media makes school fights worse.

Then, our education reporter Ashley McBride talks with Castlemont High School's principal about why his school has been investing in a powerful alternative to AP classes — and how it could be a truly empowering choice for more Oakland students.

Student fellowship reporting discussed in this episode

• A free student bus pass is great — if you can get it
• As school fights spread on social media, OUSD struggles to keep up
• Skyline High School has 17 AP classes. 9 high schools have 0. OUSD has a serious college prep gap
• All of our stories these student reporters published

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].

Mayor Barbara Lee has named James Beere, a nearly 30-year veteran of the Oakland Police Department, as the city's permanent police chief. 

Public safety reporter Roselyn Romero joins host Tasneem Raja for a deep dive into who Beere is, how he got the job, why so few OPD chiefs have lasted long in the role, and one big way he's already different from his predecessor — he'll actually talk to the press.

We talk about what Beere is facing at the start of his new job: the department's 23-year federal oversight seemingly at the finish line, a staffing shortage and an overtime crisis Beere is trying to rein in, contract talks with the police union, and a recent officer-involved shooting near Fruitvale.

Stories we cover in this episode:

Oakland's new chief

• Barbara Lee names James Beere as Oakland's permanent police chief
• Oakland's interim police chief has long-term plans

Oakland has had a shockingly high number of police chiefs

• Hiring a police chief in Oakland has always been messy

OPD's federal watchdog

• Oakland police on track to exit federal oversight by September

Staffing and overtime

• Overtime at OPD is now much harder to greenlight, following investigation by Oaklandside
• Residents hope OPD's rampant use of overtime will be addressed in new police union contract

Accountability and access

• Former OPD Chief Floyd Mitchell refused to sit down with the press. Will the next chief be more accessible?

Recent fatal shooting by Oakland police

• Oakland police fatally shoot person near Fruitvale they say was armed

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].

This week's episode is Nosh-centric: Nosh editor Tovin Lapan and reporter Skylla Mumana join Tasneem to talk through three recent Oakland restaurant openings — a "Luka's remix" on Grand Avenue, Gwyneth Paltrow's goop kitchen, and a worker-owned flagship for Reem's — and what each says about the state of Oakland's food scene right now. 

Plus, a preview of Nosh's third annual Pop Nosh food festival on July 18.

Also this week: Oakland has a new interim city administrator, a deep dive into the data behind Oakland's illegal fireworks complaints, a book of Oakland High School students' medical writing now being taught at Samuel Merritt University, an update on the still-unsolved Oakland Museum of California heist, and six Oaklanders whose names happen to match their jobs.

Stories we cover in this episode:

Nosh

• Bar Skula — a 'Luka's remix' — opens on Grand Avenue, across from Lake Merritt
• Gwyneth Paltrow's goop kitchen has landed in the East Bay. We tried it
• Reem's ready to debut worker-owned flagship in Jack London Square

Events

• Taste the latest in East Bay cuisine at Pop Nosh 2026

City Hall

• Betsy Lake confirmed as Oakland's interim city administrator

Public safety

• It's 'a war zone': Oakland residents file hundreds of complaints each year about illegal fireworks
• Can Oakland's stolen museum artifacts still be recovered? A former FBI art crime sleuth says yes

Education

• Oakland High students wrote a book about medicine and culture. It's being taught at Samuel Merritt University

Arts & community

• When your name matches your job: 6 Oaklanders with aptronyms

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org and eastbaynosh.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].

We spend a lot of time on this podcast covering Oakland's hardest problems. Today, we did something different — we asked our reporters to bring us something good. 

Not feel-good fluff, but real progress and real people doing hard work to make Oakland better.

In this episode: 

• Oakland schools go phone-free this August in a rare moment of agreement
• Deadly traffic crashes hit a multi-year low
• Youth Radio reopens after two years dark
• OPD inches toward the end of 23 years of federal oversight
• Coliseum deal moves forward, possibly with more money on the table
• Homelessness in Oakland drops for the first time in more than a decade

Stories in this episode:

Cellphone ban in Oakland public schools starts in August

As school fights spread on social media, OUSD struggles to keep up

Oakland's roads are slowly getting safer 

Youth Radio is back on the mic

Oakland police on track to exit federal oversight by September

Oakland Coliseum sale to Black-led developer group inches forward

How hot is the Oakland Arena? A second bidder has emerged to buy it

Homelessness drops 20% in Oakland, the first decline in years

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].

Fiscal cliff. Structural deficit. Unanticipated emergency. If you've lived in Oakland for any length of time, you've heard the warnings — firehouses closing, academies canceled, the biggest deficit ever — and then watched the city keep running anyway. So what's actually going on?

City Hall reporter Eli Wolfe and housing and City Hall reporter Natalie Orenstein help untangle why Oakland lurches from one budget crisis to the next, why it never quite goes over the edge, and who absorbs the damage when it doesn't.

Stories we reference in this episode:

The structural deficit

• Oakland's big budget crisis: what you need to know
• In her first budget as mayor, Thao stares down Oakland's biggest deficit ever
• Police and fire cuts may be needed to fix Oakland's longterm budget problems

The "b" word

• Oakland accidentally published a report saying the city could face bankruptcy

Where the cuts land

• Oakland budget cuts finalized on eve of big leadership changes
• Oakland to cut $2.6M for youth, Meals on Wheels, and violence prevention
• Budget cuts devastated an Oakland public safety program. Now neighbors are scraping by

The current moment

• 'Nobody's Happy Budget': Oakland adopts $4.2 billion spending plan
• At vague preview of Oakland budget, officials pledge no layoffs or service cuts
• How is Mayor Lee balancing Oakland's budget?

Crime, the economy, and revenue

• New report links crime to Oakland's budget crisis
• Oakland made a big financial mistake failing to collect business taxes, audit finds

Find all these stories and more at oaklandside.org. Have feedback or story ideas? Email us at [email protected].