This is the Oakland blog for people living out loud. True to the Oakbook philosophy, we’ll tell you where to go, what to do, and what’s really going down in the town and around the Bay. From parties to films, peace protests to flag football, if there's a there there, we'll blog it.
Invite us to things. We're great at parties.
If you've got events, photos, videos, announcements or general news on all the happenings in the Bay, send 'em over to Kwan Booth at kwan (at) theoakbook.com. And don't be afraid to leave a comment. Don't be shy...come over and talk to us. You just might get lucky!
The company that launched a million blogs turns 5 today.
It was just 5 short years ago that Matt and the WP team unveiled the publishing platform that essentially changed the way people viewed media and content creation (sorry Blogger) and made it so much easier for people (including our grateful OB staff) to share their inner most feelings, political commentary and pictures of their cats in amazingly compromising positions with the rest of the world.
So if you’re like a bazillion other people and currently run a WordPress blog or three, get your hind parts over to 111 Minna tonight and toast the company that made it all possible. Or if you’re the antisocial type (as are a lot of bloggers) just come through, get toasted, hear some tunes, stare at the crowd then come home and blog about it. It’s all in the spirit of the party.-kwan
A couple hundred bikers taking over the streets of West Oakland? Naw, it’s not the hood version of Critical Mass, it’s Scrape the Town, an event created by San Francisco’s Transparent BMX that went down on April 6. The event brought nearly 200 BMX riders out for a day of riding, tricks, BBQ and mayhem. While BMX riding has been lost some of it’s mainstream popularity over the last few years, these vids prove that there’s still a lot of air left in those tires. Props to Invisible Stripes for the original post.
Some great footage of the event here and here and here.
You all know Pandora right? For the last eight years the Bay Area streaming music site has been providing customized radio through it’s Genome Music Project-just type in the names of bands or songs you like and sit back as your player streams tunes tailored to your liking. The system uses hundreds of musical attributes, or “genes” to cross classify msic by tens of thousands of artists. While the doesn’t always get it right, the breadth of music they’re able to cover is pretty astonishing-from radio hits to lesser known indie to some of the more low key grime and dubstep.
Since the RIAA turned on internet broadcasters last year the and began demanding insanely high royalty rates, Pandora and similar sites like SomaFM and LastFM have been fighting to stay afloat. In early January Pandora was forced to block all listeners outside the US when talks around liscensing and royalties ended.
Now that’s the sucky part. The good news is that, at least for the moment Pandora is alive and thriving in the states and tonight, all you luck music heads get the chance to come out and celebrate for the hell of it. The event is a chance to meet other users and music lovers and get away from your screen for a while and into the realm of real people. Pandora founder Tim Westergen will be on hand to talk about the company, the ups and downs of being a new media entrepreneur and I’m sure, to tell you about all the cool new music he’s discovered through the site. The event is free but reservations are required. RSVP with Angie at tour@pandora.com
