DeFremery / Lil Bobby Hutton Park
1651 Adeline St, Oakland
October 11, 2025
For the 18th year running, Life is Living (co-produced by Joan Osato with The Living Word Project, YaVette Holts with Bay Area Organization of Black Owned Businesses (BAOBOB), and Jocelyn Jackson and Kamakshi Duvvuru with People’s Kitchen Collective), took over the lawns of DeFremery Park in West Oakland last Saturday for a full day of programming for the people.
A handful of the wide array of vendors, including Major (top left) and Ruby Red Dee’s Boutique (center).
Vendors offered a wide variety of goods, many of them featuring deeply saturated and joyful colors, intricate patterns, and detailed design work.
As ever, food, music, and dance played integral roles to the festival, with Jennifer Johns headlining and head banging (jk, just some very fun swirling action, though she and the band were rocking out pretty hard) to a delighted and devoted if slightly sparse crowd as the afternoon wound down.
That bag? Fabulous. The barefoot man’s commitment to his vibe? Also excellent.
Some of whom came far better outfitted than others.
Some good, legible and helpful signage.
Held on the second Saturday of October each year, the festival works to share and “mark the ways art can mobilize for environmental justice to create a vibrant community…. [bringing] together over an estimated 75,000 people to West Oakland…in past years.” And not just the living, nor just the humans.
An altar to ancestors and a faery play area, plus some pups.
A welcoming, warm event brimming with genuine excitement to be in community, Oakland showed up ready to engage and enjoy.
