Oakland night blur

August 12th, 2009, originally uploaded by qf8.

Signage

cheap burgers, originally uploaded by Lee Otis.

“Taylor’s Drive-In, Oakland,” write Lee Otis. I’m guessing it’s not serving burgers these days, cheap or otherwise, but I can’t say for sure. In any case, the beautiful images above and below, from MLK in Oakland, appear in two excellent sets by Lee Otis: Decay, and Oakland. Both are worth exploring.

sign for old bar, originally uploaded by Lee Otis.

 

Mr. Otis, who lives a few blocks from Oakland’s MLK, also happens to have served as a TA recently for a class on cultural landscape history, part of which focused on Oakland. He generously shares these these quite interesting and informative thoughts:

Martin Luther King Jr. Way (formerly Grove Street) is today one of the main thoroughfares connecting the cities of Oakland and Berkeley on the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay, a role that it has played for over a century. Like many of the other large streets in the area, the Oakland MLK saw its first major developments in the late 19th century as a streetcar line leading from downtown Oakland to the workers’ subdivisions that were springing up between Oakland and Berkeley. In fact the Grove Street Line was the first electric trolley line to connect the two cities, beginning in 1891. The remnants of historical workers’ cottages and streetcar-era commercial districts can been seen in many places along MLK Jr. Way.

Mrs. Bird

“Mrs. Bird,” originally uploaded by gwen.

[Gwen Harlow contributed a variety of compelling images to the MLK BLVD Flickr Pool; until recently, she actually lived on an MLK -- Martin Luther King Jr. Way, in Oakland, CA. She shares the following story, below. See more of Ms. Harlow's photography here; here's an Oakland set]

Mrs. Bird [2nd floor, front] was my neighbor at 10th & MLK from 1988 until the day I took this photo in June 2007, which was the day she moved out. The new owner wanted us all gone, so we had to go. I moved to that block in 1988
and lived in three other apartments before settling at 939 Martin Luther King Jr. Way (née Grove Street) in Oakland, California, in early 1993. I lived in that apartment until 2007. After Mrs. Bird left, for that last month I lived
there, I had been in our neighborhood longer than anyone. It’s kind of sad when the Old Lady of your block is only 38 years old.

There used to be a bunch of old-time residents in our neighborhood, but they disappeared one by one, either died or, more often, were pushed and priced out by the encroaching gentrification of Jerry Brown’s Oakland. Mrs. Bird had been in our neighborhood longer than anyone, since she was a little girl in the 50s, her father owned the little Victorian next door til he passed a couple years
ago; her brother lived in the brick studios on 10th until he died shortly not too long after their dad. I’ve known her longer than almost anyone outside my family.