Peet’s Coffee and Tea, Temescal neighborhood, Oakland.
Ajuan Mance
Category Archives: Black Men
1001 Black Men #829
This is one of the kind employees behind the service counter at Broadway Volkswagen. No matter how irritated and impatient the customer, he was able to maintain the placid expression you see in this drawing. There aren’t many people who could keep their cool the way he did. Watching him interact with each person in line was like watching a master at work.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #828
I love going to the Peet’s Coffee & Tea in the Temescal district of Oakland. It’s tucked into a busy-but-unassuming strip mall right off Telegraph, and it’s conveniently located between a great Italian deli and a well-stocked cheese store (just across the street). That makes it the perfect stop during specialty food shopping trips.
The Temescal Peet’s also features one of the most diverse groups of regular customers of any cafe in the area. In addition to African American, white, Asian American, Native American, and Latino customers, there are a critical mass of regulars who represent those parts of the African diaspora that do not have their roots in the Middle Passage.
The Temescal Peet’s has become a gathering place for folks from Ethiopia and Eritrea, and whenever I’m there I get a little bit of a kick out of being in a place where so many ways of being Black are on display.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #826
Here’s another portrait from Broadway Volkwagen.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #824
Broadway Volkswagen, Oakland CA.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #823
Seen from my car, at the corner of 40th and Telegraph, at the edge of the Temescal, in Oakland, California.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #822
It’s Rickey from Comic-Con! I saw him there in 2013, and I drew a profile portrait of him wearing an Adventure Time hat. In 2014, he had significantly longer hair and the beginnings of what promised to be an impressive beard. Weirdly enough, he did remember me, from when I approached him the year before. He’s a really nice guy with a great smile, and I hope we cross paths this summer, at SDCC15.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #821
Comic-Con 2014 was the first and only time I ever saw a Black person wearing Google glass.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #820
Here’s another drawing from the Comic-Con 2014 sketchbook that I dug out from the bottom of my backpack.
I first met Viktor Kerney at the Prism Comics booth at Comic-Con 2014. It was my first time tabling there, and he was very welcoming. Viktor writes the webcomic StrangeLore, a queer horror/supernatural story with gothic elements that centers the lives of men of color.
Ajuan Mance
1001 Black Men #819
This drawing comes from the way, way back machine known as last summer’s sketchbook. I was sitting across the aisle from this brotha, on the San Diego Trolley. This was during Comic-Con 2014. We were both riding from the Double Tree Mission Valley to the Convention Center, and I couldn’t take my eyes off his hat. It looked a little like the hat Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble used used to wear to their meetings of the Water Buffalo Lodge.
In preparation for doing this post, I spent a few minutes trying to track down the meaning of this hat. I knew this brotha was doing some kind of cosplay thing, but I have looked at this drawing at least 20 times since I first made it, and I could never figure out the meaning of this costume. It wasn’t until a few days ago that I was finally able to track down the name of the character the headpiece in this picture was supposed to represent.
I have to share with you my process, because it’s just more evidence that the internet hive mind is smarter that us all. I did a simple Google image search for “furry blue hat with an x on it.” This brotha’s hat came up on the second screen of results.
It turns out that this hat is worn by the Japanese manga and anime character Tony Tony Chopper, human/reindeer hybrid who also happens to be a physician for the Straw Hat Pirates. The x on his hat is a medical cross turned sideways.
The brotha in this drawing goes into the Black Cosplayers Hall of Fame, with special honors for shameless commitment to a shape-shifting, child-sized genetic experiment. Huzzah!
Ajuan Mance