Peet’s Coffee and Tea, Fruitvale Ave., Oakland, CA.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men–#610
Peet’s Coffee and Tea, Fruitvale Ave., Oakland, CA.
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Saturday morning at Peet’s on Fruitvale Avenue is so absolutely, positively Oakland! The use of Oakland as an adjective is intentional, because there’s really no better better way to describe the atmosphere of this place (at this time and on this day). If there is a single language, ethnicity, age, religious group, or subculture that is not represented in this crowd, I can’t imagine what it might be. And the diversity is present on both sides of the counter, among the patrons as well as the employees. There are almost as many dads with strollers or baby wraps as there are moms equipped with the same; and, for a small space in which accidentally elbowing someone else is almost inevitable, the mood is surprisingly light and forgiving. People’s smiles seem to say, “It’s Saturday morning at Peet’s, and it’s all good.”
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men–#609
The Walgreens on the corner of High and Redding has got to be one of the busiest stores of its kind. There is always a long line, and the line always moves slowly. On those days when I have no more emails to read and no more iPhone games that need tending, I pass the time in that line just looking around and absorbing the particular brand of diversity that reveals itself in this little corner of Oakland.
The man in this drawing is one of those folks who comes to Walgreens to buy his groceries. I don’t mean that he drops into the store to pick up a couple of items that he forgot to grab at the local supermarket. For a lot of complicated and not-so-complicated reasons, a number of folks in the neighborhood find Walgreens to be the best place to purchase not only their snacks and soft drinks, but also their staples. This says a lot about the poor selection of foods available at so many of the corner stores in our city. If Walgreens has a better food selection than your corner grocery store, then your local grocer is probably not prioritizing the selling of food … but I’ll bet he sure stocks a wide array of liquors.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men–#608
I loved everything about this guy. His entire look was a throwback to an earlier time, from his handlebar mustache and soul patch to his ’80s-style weightlifting shirt to his left-is-right-and-right-is-wrong hoop earring.
If the Village People was a group of hardcore body builders, at least one of them would look like this.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men–#607
I ran into this gentleman at the Piedmont Grocery, on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. He moved slowly and tentatively up and down the aisles in a way that suggested both a lifetime of wear and tear and the grace and serenity of old age.
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How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
Posted by Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men–#606
From what I can see, African American men have adopted several different ways to deal with male pattern baldness. Some shave their heads entirely, a look that many a brother can rock with style and confidence. Other men keep the same hairstyle they wore before baldness set in, only without as much hair in the middle. (Think Roscoe Lee Brown.) One thing you won’t see on many Black men is the comb-over. This style is largely (and, some might say, fortunately) incompatible with tightly-curled hair. As a result, most Black men just can’t wear a comb-over; but some of those who can, well, they actually do.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men–#605
La Farine Bakery, Fruitvale Ave, Oakland, CA.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men–#604
Trader Joe’s Grocery Store, Alameda, CA.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men–#603
On Saturday morning, my fabulous partner and I headed out to Livermore Premium Outlets with nothing but our wallets. We emerged a couple hours later with six pairs of shoes. Oddly enough, I wasn’t really planning to buy any shoes at all. I am, however, happy to say that those six pairs of shoes cost us less than we would have paid for three pairs at the normal retail price.
I haven’t made many mall trips in the last few years, and I haven’t purchased any new shoes since 2011. On Saturday, though, we immersed ourselves in the entire all-American shopping mall experience. We strolled, we browsed, and we even had lunch in the food court. There was a Japanese food stand that was handing out delicious samples of stir-fried chicken, and we chose to eat there.
The man in this drawing was in line right behind me at the food court. This was an interesting coincidence, given that I could count the number of Black people I saw at this mall on my fingers and toes. This is not to say that the crowd was not diverse. That’s one of the interesting things about the San Francisco Bay Area. There are so many different ethnicities present, that even in the absence of any one group, non-white people still might outnumber their white counterparts by a large margin. That seemed to be the case at the Livermore Premium Shops.
I chose to include this guy in the series because he was one of only two Black men I saw during my entire shopping trip (and I only caught a brief glimpse of the other man, out of the corner of my eye). The man in this drawing was also an interesting subject because his mustache and beard, the hair on his head, his eyes, and his skin were all different shades of the same color brown, kind of the way that a Crayola crayon and the paper wrapped around the crayon are basically the same shade, but rendered in different textures and different levels of saturation. It would not be entirely inaccurate to say that if this man was object, he would probably be a crayon.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men–#602
Cock-A-Doodle Cafe, Oakland, CA.
Ajuan Mance