I celebrated the beginning of the holiday season with a trip to downtown Oakland for a drink with a very good friend. We were heading to the bar Make Westing, but it was closed for a private party. The bouncer there was very friendly and apologetic, and he recommended that we try a different bar just one block away. Cafe Van Kleef has lots of character. Decorated with quirky antique and collectibles attached to just about every inch of wall space, it’s quite an interesting place to visit. But with smoking permitted in the alcove right outside the open front door, it was not exactly what I’m looking for in a quiet spot for early evening drinks. Still, make no mistake; Cafe Van Kleef is one of the most popular spots in downtown Oakland and, according to my friend, their greyhound, made with fresh squeezed pink grapefruit juice, is indeed the best in the city. If you don’t mind a little second hand smoke and you love vodka and grapefruit juice (which they squeeze at the bar), then check it out!
Today’s drawing is a composite of the people of African descent I encountered in my way from Make Westing to Cafe Van Kleef. Since Van Kleef has an antique kind of vibe, I made a frame for this picture that recalls the Belle Époque aesthetic.
If you’re in the Berkeley, CA area, do drop by the East Back Alternative Book and Zine Fest. Located at 2050 Center St. in Berkeley, this event brings together more than 80 writers and artists from the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. The event includes workshops and speakers, along with tables and booths hosted by an array of amazing cartoonists, fine artists, illustrators, poets, memoirists, and everything in between. Doors open at 10am and the event ends at 5pm.
I hope to see you there! Look for me at the 1001 Black Men table.
The yellow in these guys’ clothes represents their construction safety vests. There’s a lot of construction going on in the East and Southeast parts of Oakland. I’m not quite sure what they’re doing to Highway 880, but the overpass at High Street near Home Depot hasn’t looked right for months. Then there’s the construction on the Oakland Airport BART extension. That’s the construction project depicted in the photo I’ve incorporated into drawing. These guys were working on the extension at the point where it will run along Hegenberger, I liked the way their hairstyles and beards seemed to be complimentary–short hair vs. long hair, headband vs. no headband, full beard with no mustache vs. goatee with a mustache. It might seem like a silly reason to remember someone, but I love patterns and pairings, even in human beings. Of course, these guys were like a magnet for my nerdy pattern-loving gaze.
This is Marcus. He was waiting to cross Clay street in downtown Oakland. I know that the background in this drawing depicts New York, not Oakland … but I really like New York, and so I took a few liberties in this portion of my picture.
One of the things that I love about men’s clothing is how little it changes. Actually, I should revise that statement: One of the things that I love about adult men’s clothing is how little it changes. Drive through the business district of any American city and you’ll see what I mean. Sure, there are different kinds of suits–zoot suits, sharkskin suits, polyester leisure suits; but when it comes to the work environment, men’s suits rarely stray from the fundamentals. Take, for example, the guy in this picture. He was standing outside the Elihu Harris building on Clay Street in Oakland. Almost everything he was wearing would not be that out of place for a working man living (and dressing) in 1927. (I know this because one of my prized book possessions is a reproduction of the 1927 Sears Catalog.) More than the fashion turnstile that is youth fashion, the trends in working men’s suits can best be described as slight variations on a theme. One year pants will be cuffed, and a couple years later they won’t. Then, five or ten years later, cuffs will come back into vogue.
As someone whose fashion aesthetic was pretty firmly established by the time I was 15 (weird, I know), I can appreciate the consistency in the menswear realm. Although it has run off the rails a few times–most notably, during the 1970s–the matching pants and jacket thing remains a firm foundation.
A natty dresser always attracts my attention, and I really like cool color schemes. This guy was wearing green as an accent to his red hair and beard–I think–and it really worked for him. The big earrings had a retro feel that was just enough of a discordant note to create interest without disrupting the overall coherence of this updated preppy look.
There’s a certain quality I’ve noticed in the faces of people who are seated in hospital waiting rooms. It’s kind of an irritated, frustrated, deflated look that would be anger if anger wasn’t a futile response to the situation.
On Saturday night I walked into a tree. I was looking down at my phone to find to find the correct address of the holiday party in Bernal Heights, a neighborhood in San Francisco. I smacked into that tree hard, forehead and elbow first. The next morning my elbow was so sore I could hardly move my arm. That’s how I ended up in the radiology department at Kaiser Oakland. This a drawing of the guy who was sitting a couple seats away from me in the waiting room. The radiologists were actually moving fairly quickly through the list of patients, but that didn’t seem to matter to this guy. Every time another name was called that wasn’t his, his eyes got a little narrower and his nostrils flared a bit more. When they finally called his name, his broke into a grin, just for the slightest moment, and then he quickly returned to the icy stare I’ve captured in this picture.
