Friday Night Crawl
Downtown, various locations
Oakland
Feb. 2, 2024
I walked around the rain-slicked streets of Old Oakland on Friday night, wondering if the Night Crawl might have been canceled.
There were plenty of diners around; a good sign. Participating restaurants offered special deals for the event. After a planned pause, Oakland’s First Fridays are officially slated to come back in April, and it’s understandable that the cold, rainy weather might keep crowds away for the Night Crawl events.
The giant windows between Broadway and Clay St. downtown framed happy diners enjoying the scene and staying dry. But I wasn’t sure who was involved in the Night Crawl or where to go next. Undeterred under my umbrella, I decided to walk around, double back, and see if it was still happening.
Finally, on 9th Street, I uncovered a handful of galleries, studios, and shops greeting a slow but steady stream of patrons.
I ducked into the brightly lit Omiiroo gallery on 9th Street and found the artist himself greeting a few art-goers.
The Kenyan artist, who moved back to Oakland from Los Angeles during the onset of Covid, has been making a living as an artist for 30 years. He said it’s been hard, but worth it. His massive paintings of Kenyan women in traditional garb were mosaics of bright colors and prints. Delicately rendered roots and plants made up the eyes and nose of their faces; up close, their skin shone under the gallery lights, speckled with light and texture, beacons of beauty.
E14 Gallery next door, which sells gifts and art, displayed portraits by local high school students. The vibes were subdued, but the student portraits, framed by handwritten text with their life stories — of immigrants, working-class families, kids traumatized by war or family separations — prompted closer inspection. The owner noted that the holiday crawl last December brought out good crowds, and handed me a flyer showing the participating Night Crawl shops and galleries, and inviting me to check them out.
Around the corner, the artist Donald O. Green, who grew up in the Bay Area, worked as an artist and taught art at local schools for over 50 years, was exhibiting and selling his works to raise money to help pay for medical bills. His portraits and collages of faces embellished in jewel tones and gold elements recalled Basquiat and Picasso in equal measure — elemental and regal at the same time. Lips, noses, and eyes were fractured and pasted on in an array of colors, conjuring a kind of fractured story of a life, a face with more than one story. Intricate prints were hand-drawn in the margins of faces and clothes, hypnotic details that speak to lives, cultures, and histories that live beyond the frame.
I walked in and through the restaurants and shops and alleyways, finding plenty of good vibes and an easygoing atmosphere that shimmered with a lovely vitality, but I couldn’t find the live jazz. I did fund artists, shop owners, and locals who love and invest their lives and livelihood into the city. They brought the evening into the light.
