Features

If you’ve been traveling south on Interstate 880 from downtown Oakland recently—on your way to the A’s game, for example, or maybe to cruise International Boulevard after you’ve perused the offerings in redbook (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll explain some other time)—then you’ve probably noticed the new Bud Lite billboard next to the overpass just before the High Street exit. It shows two teenage-looking female models—one Latina, one African-American—dressed invitingly, staring out indifferently at the passing cars. I think their look is supposed to represent some sort of challenge—try us out if you’re up to it, man, but you’ve got to bring your A game. Anyway, far up on the right-hand corner of the billboard, away from the two young women and the oversized Bud Lite logo, is the message: “Serve Chilled.” Serve chilled? Is that supposed to mean that the best way to break down these young women’s icy looks is to get them beer-drunk? Or does the message mean that it is the women themselves who are supposed to be served—properly cooled-out, of course—to the would-be male consumers driving by in their cars? I think one of our clever friends at the ad agency made this deliberately ambiguous. 

In any event, after you pass the Bud Lite billboard on 880, you can get off the High Street exit and turn right on International towards the Fruitvale, if you like. There along the boulevard, if it is late enough and the police haven’t rousted them, you will find actual teenage Latina and African American girls—not models made up to look like ones—sitting at bus stops or lounging in storefront doorways, waiting on dark corners for men to drive by in cars to pick them up, to rent their services and bodies for a half an hour or so. 

The Bud Lite chilled dark girls billboard might appear in other parts of Oakland—or other parts of the Bay Area—but so far the gateway to the Fruitvale area prostitute stroll is the only place I’ve seen it. I’m sure this is only a coincidence and that the Bud Lite folks are only trying to make an honest buck, which they are allowed to do under our capitalist system, and do not intend to encourage the exploitation of Latina and African American teenage girls. But everything has a context, and a consequence, friends. For yourself, you’re free to draw your own conclusions. 

Meanwhile… 

With more than two and a half years left on the job he’s still supposed to be doing for us, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown’s campaign for his hoped-for next job continues to build momentum. At http://jerrybrown.org, the Brown For Attorney General committee is inviting all interested parties to make campaign donations on their credit cards. For your convenience, they have included a suggested amount of $5,600 for starters. In an accompanying signed online letter, Mr. Brown himself explains that magic number, writing that “recent state law limits donations to $5,600 from any one individual or corporation. Please give as much as you can.” We don’t mean to be picky, but we’ve come a long ways from the days, haven’t we, when Mr. Brown would only accept $100 contributions per donor, and no more, so that no-one could accuse him of being a tool of the big-money guys. 

Principles, principles. Principles fade as gray hair invades. Isn’t that part of a Dylan Thomas poem, or something? 

Meanwhile, a visit to the mayor’s blog at http://jerrybrown.typepad.com gives you some insight as to the Oakland “accomplishments” Mr. Brown is promoting in his state campaign. 

On March 23 of this year, the mayor writes, “San Francisco Chronicle writer Dan Levy’s latest story about the condo boom in downtown Oakland [‘Downtown Brown: Oakland’s mayor has made dramatic progress in his ambitious plan to bring 10,000 new residents to the city’s core’] is great news for those interested in this town’s revitalization. Formerly abandoned lots are being transformed into housing as part of the 10K Initiative. 

“According to Levy, ‘Six years after Brown made his bold pronouncement, Oakland is close to fulfilling what has become known as the mayor’s 10K Initiative. With two years to go, ‘10K’ is 85 percent complete.’” 

But Oaklanders with long memories will be tempted to point out that the purpose of Brown’s original 10K proposal was not merely to bring 10,000 new residents downtown. Oakland, after all, has many residential neighborhoods, and any student of post Prop 13 California knows that cities now actually lose money on residential neighborhoods alone, if one wants to look at this as a capitalist enterprise. The original hype of 10K, at least as Mr. Brown proposed it, was that it would attract retail back into a depressed downtown area. In fact, under the heading “The 10K Initiative—Creating More Than Housing,” the city’s official 10K website says just that, telling us: “The 10K Housing Initiative is not just about housing—it is also about creating an environment that is conducive to residential development, through the transformation of the downtown into a more livable space that incorporates streetscapes, parks, commercial, retail, and other amenities.” 

If you leave the International Boulevard stroll where the teenage prostitutes hang and drive north until you come to the shores of Lake Merritt, and then west towards the estuary, you will come to the mayor’s old neighborhood, the place where Mr. Brown’s 10K initiative has been the most successful. Along Second, Third, and Fourth streets between Alice and the produce section, developers have put up row after row of lofts and condominiums (many of these were begun during the time of Mayor Elihu Harris, of course). Drive along these streets and you will see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new residents, some of whom have now been there for more than six years. 

But drive along the streets of the loft district and what you will not find is a new Walgreens Drug Store. Or an Albertsons or Safeway. Or a row of new restaurants, or department stores, or any of the tax-base-rich retail outlets that we were promised would come with the new Oaklanders. Perhaps they will, perhaps not. But they ain’t got there yet. 

Where are these people now shopping? I’m not sure. Across the estuary in Alameda, I imagine. Or around the freeway to Emeryville. Shouldn’t the city be doing a study to find out, since this is such an integral part of present Oakland policy? 

The truth is, the assertion and assumption that retail would automatically follow the thousands of new residents downtown has always been the flaw in Mr. Brown’s 10K initiative, a sort of cause-and-effect thing that we were always supposed to take on faith at the beginning, and which gets mentioned less and less (or, more often, not at all) as the process has moved forward, and Oakland money has been committed to this scheme. 

We hear now that the retail will come in the uptown area—not the loft area—in the proposed (and heavily subsidized) Forest City Project. But the Forest City Project has yet to be built. And so, we shall have to wait and see if Mr. Brown is a visionary or merely a visitor whose accomplishments will begin to quickly fade as soon as he closes the door behind him. 

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