This brother at the Pier One in Emeryville was making himself at home on an ottoman, which was pretty peculiar, since Pier One isn’t the kind of place where people are encouraged to use the display furniture as a waiting area.

Ajuan Mance 

Farmer Joe’s Market, MacArthur and 35th, Oakland CA.

Ajuan Mance

This morning I realized that I’d completely skipped drawing #428. It threw off the numbering on all of my posts from 429 to 434 (but not the numbering on the drawings themselves). I’ve gone in and corrected the numbering on the posts, and now I’m adding drawing #428. Although I am a professor, and although my own style of dress might well be described as professorial, I am always surprised when I am on a college campus and I see someone who is dressed like the classic post-baccalaureate instructor. Such was the case with the man in this drawing, who was entering Woo Hon Fai Hall on the Berkeley Campus. I don’t know that he was a professor. As he was entering the BAM/PFA building, the likelihood is that he was a visitor seeking some information about an upcoming film program. Still, his outfit was kind of thrilling to me, including his throwback 1980s style scarf.

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…seen at the Berkeley Farmer’s Market.

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East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest, Berkeley City College, Berkeley, CA.

Saturday wasn’t just a cool day for meeting interesting and creative book and zine folks. It was also a great day for Black men in cool sweaters. I don’t own many cardigans because I sometimes find it hard to get just the right fit; but that doesn’t mean I don’t know a good one when I see it.

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Confession: The guy in this drawing was not actually crying when I saw him, but his big expressive eyes made me want to take a few artistic liberties.

I wonder what kinds of things do make him cry: Something beautiful? Something really sad? A Raiders win at the Superbowl? A Raiders loss on any given Sunday? Shirley McClaine’s steely maternal love in Terms of Endearment?  The emotional climax of the movie Avatar? I’ll probably never know.

Ajuan Mance

I never fail to notice the guy in the cricket sweater. It’s one of my two favorite types of sweaters; and I like sweaters a lot, so that’s really saying something. This man was standing at the corner of Center Street and Milvia, seemingly trying to get his bearings. He was with a college-aged woman who may have been his daughter. If she was a Berkeley student, then she must have confined her activities to areas closer to campus than the BCC area, or at least to the streets and shops on the other side of campus from BCC. I say this because she seemed as uncertain of her whereabouts as her dad. Since his clothing reminded me of the old-school “race man,” I have set this drawing against a background that consists of the page from a 19th-century tract on “Negro uplift” and Booker T. Washington.

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The key to wearing any afro that’s longer than about .25 inches is maintaining the proper shape and symmetry. There are a couple major categories of afro hairstyles. One consists of what some people call the casual ‘fro. It’s loosely shaped, but generally symmetrical (think Lenny Kravitz).  The man in this drawing is wearing what can only be called the traditional ‘fro. It’s both symmetrical and smoothly shaped (think the early Jackson 5).  This man was standing outside the city office building at 1947 Center Street in Berkeley, and I would never have seen him if I hadn’t turned the wrong way on my wait to the East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest. I wandered into the farmer’s market and all the way to this building before I realized I needed to go the other direction.

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I spent this past Saturday at the East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest. This was my third zines and alternative publishing event this fall, and it was definitely worth the trip. The festival was lively and packed with  more than 80 talented artists and writers, and it was very well attended, and even those people who didn’t purchase anything from me were fun to talk to. My table was between two very cool independent publishers, author Ian Kahl (writer and publisher of anxiety is a rambling dagger) and cartoonist Nancy Husari, whose comic broadsides are laugh-out-loud funny. While the event wasn’t packed with African American folks, there was a nice diversity of both artists and attendees. This tall, slim guy lingered at one of the tables across the way from me. I think he was friends with the sellers. His boyish face was a interesting contrast with his height. If he wasn’t so tall and so very self-possessed, he could easily have passed for 14,

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Brooks Brothers, Union Square, San Francisco, CA.

Ajuan Mance