Oaklandside 510

This week, we're focusing on one story: Oakland schools' push to limit screens.

Last month, the school board approved limits on how students can use school laptops during their free time. That follows the cellphone ban that started this school year.

So what does all of this look like from inside the classroom?

To find out, we sit down with two Oakland Unified teachers, Lara Trale from Oakland High School and Al...

City Hall reporter Eli Wolfe joins us to talk about a scary accident that happened at Temescal Pool earlier this month, and why the city has no pool technicians on staff even though it has the money to hire them. It's part of a much bigger story about Oakland's struggle to fill city jobs.

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Stories we cover in this episode:

Temescal Pool Incident

• Were chemical injuries at Temescal Pool linke...

Twenty years ago, hyphy broke out of Oakland and the Bay Area and onto the national stage with its own slang, fashion, dance and car culture. This week, we revisit that moment with Eric K. Arnold, who has covered Bay Area hip-hop since the 1990s and chronicled hyphy's rise as it happened. We look back at the summer of 2006, what came after and the hyphy revival underway today, as a new generation of Bay Area artists reclaims the so...

Data centers have gone from a quiet real estate story to one of the most contentious issues in Oakland. We talk with The Oaklandside’s news editor, Darwin BondGraham, about a downtown developer's proposal, two tech companies moving into West Oakland, an organized opposition campaign, and a city councilmember's push for a moratorium.

Stories we cover in this episode:

Data Centers

• A movement against data centers gains steam in...

This week, we’re providing you with a round-up of recent reporting from our newsroom.

A group of counties in Utah is stepping forward to help build Oakland's long-fought coal export terminal.

AI-generated ads are showing up in Oakland's election season. 

AC Transit's Tempo bus line is about to lose state funding, meanwhile, Waymo has the green light to launch in Oakland

We also go over opportunities for you to get involved i...

If you've ever seen a tense situation start to escalate on the street and wondered whether to step in, we're here to help. We talk with our public safety reporter, Roselyn Romero, and Ana-Marie Jones of Oakland Speaks, about how to de-escalate conflict yourself, according to Oakland violence prevention experts — and when it's best to just call for help.

For a nonviolent situation, you can always call MACRO, Oakland's non-polic...

It's that time again: election season. Oakland's got a mayor's race, three city council seats, three competitive school board seats, and three city or regional ballot measures on the table. 

To help you make sense of it all — and to tell you how we're covering it between now and November 3rd — we're joined by two of our editors: Darwin BondGraham, our news editor, who edits our city hall, housing, and public safety ...

Turns out those little green compostable bags many of us use to line our kitchen compost bins aren't actually being composted — at least not in Oakland. 

Oaklandside’s housing and City Hall reporter Natalie Orenstein breaks down why "compostable" labeling can be misleading and what you should be doing with your food scraps.

Stories we cover in this episode:

Compost bags

• Don’t put green ‘compost’ b...

If you've driven on I-880 near downtown Oakland recently, you may have noticed a new billboard. It’s a black and white photo of a guy in a tank top, flexing, with a dramatic skyline behind him. The text says, "Son of Oakland: For the People, with the People."

On today’s episode, we talk with our City Hall reporter Eli Wolfe about who is behind this mysterious billboard and its links to the three-year saga of how one bill...

We talk with our road safety reporter Jose Fermoso about a gap in Oakland's BART map — a stretch of East Oakland that the trains fly right over, with no station in sight.

For years, a group in the San Antonio neighborhood, a couple miles southeast of the lake, have been pushing to change that. The group calls themselves the San Antonio Station Alliance — SASA. And recently, that dream got a lot more vivid, thanks to a gr...

Today, we're talking about places that make Oakland Oakland.

From historic homes and neighborhoods to landmarks and parks to cultural spaces, these places hold the stories of our city.

As Oakland grapples with tight budgets and deferred maintenance, we're exploring what it actually takes to preserve these spaces — and who's stepping up to do it.

We did this recently at a conversation at the New Parkway Th...

For the first four months of this year, twelve Oakland public high schoolers were embedded in our newsroom. They worked with Oaklandside reporters to examine what’s working in OUSD, what’s not, and how it all impacts students. 

They brought us stories we simply didn’t know about, and helped us understand them far better with their help.

Today, we sit down with one of our student fellows to talk about tw...

Mayor Barbara Lee has named James Beere, a nearly 30-year veteran of the Oakland Police Department, as the city's permanent police chief. 

Public safety reporter Roselyn Romero joins host Tasneem Raja for a deep dive into who Beere is, how he got the job, why so few OPD chiefs have lasted long in the role, and one big way he's already different from his predecessor — he'll actually talk to the press.

We talk about what Bee...

This week's episode is Nosh-centric: Nosh editor Tovin Lapan and reporter Skylla Mumana join Tasneem to talk through three recent Oakland restaurant openings — a "Luka's remix" on Grand Avenue, Gwyneth Paltrow's goop kitchen, and a worker-owned flagship for Reem's — and what each says about the state of Oakland's food scene right now. 

Plus, a preview of Nosh's third annual Pop Nosh food festival on July 18.

Also thi...

We spend a lot of time on this podcast covering Oakland's hardest problems. Today, we did something different — we asked our reporters to bring us something good. 

Not feel-good fluff, but real progress and real people doing hard work to make Oakland better.

In this episode: 

• Oakland schools go phone-free this August in a rare moment of agreement
• Deadly traffic crashes hit a multi-year low
• Youth Radio reopens after t...

Fiscal cliff. Structural deficit. Unanticipated emergency. If you've lived in Oakland for any length of time, you've heard the warnings — firehouses closing, academies canceled, the biggest deficit ever — and then watched the city keep running anyway. So what's actually going on?

City Hall reporter Eli Wolfe and housing and City Hall reporter Natalie Orenstein help untangle why Oakland lurches from one budget crisis to t...

For 20 years, Oakland First Fridays has turned a stretch of Telegraph Avenue into a monthly street festival. Now organizers say a false media narrative, one that ties off-site, late-night violence to the event, has driven away sponsors and put the festival's future in doubt. 

Arts and community reporter Azucena Rasilla and public safety reporter Roselyn Romero join us to explain what's happening, why the blame is misplaced, and...

The Australian men's national soccer team — the Socceroos — are calling Oakland home for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, training at the Oakland Roots and Soul facility in Alameda. Oaklandside freelance sports reporter Anne Marks tells us what that means for the city, how Oakland is welcoming fans from around the world, and what local restaurants are doing to celebrate.

Then: who belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Oakland sports?...

Oakland voters appear to have rejected Measure E, the $192 parcel tax that city leaders and unions had counted on to fund police, fire, homelessness services, and illegal dumping cleanup. 

We break down what happened, what it means for the city budget, and what it signals heading into the November election. 

Plus: Remembering Wilson Riles Jr., the 580 truck ban, cell phones and girls sports in OUSD, Sable Lounge opens, and ...