Graffiti In Oakland: Alive & Well!

Published: January 24, 2010

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Happy belated New Year! I apologize for disappointing many people out there who have missed our posted content. The four of us have been very occupied with personal and business matters. We did not mean to make our readers feel neglected. Believe me, Old School Scholar has never forgotten any of you!

We will kick off 2010 with a FRESHH Symposium article care of John representing MixCrate.com! I am personally a big fan of MixCrate.com so please run over there now and support real DJs! The West Coast of the USA has some of the sickest back spinners and mixers delivering the goods like nobody’s business. If you do not believe me, go see for yourself right here! For now check out this short piece with photo-blogging dopeness straight out of Oakland! Enjoy!

Looking through my old photos, it’s been 20+ years since I last set foot in any of the Oakland train yards! It’s really hard to imagine all of the incredible pieces that I must have missed over the years (and I even live in Oakland). The yards themselves, however, remain pretty much as I remember… familiar, in a haunting sort of way. The 23rd/29th Ave & 54th Ave Yards are still masterpiece art galleries… The Yard at 105th is pretty scary, even @ 11:00 in the morning!

I just picked up a new “little” rig, a Lumix LX3 with the Wide Angle Conversion lens, and decided revisiting the Oakland Train Yards would be my first project. I’m working on a little video, but wanted to share some of the images that I came up with the other day from the Yards and around The Town.

First, however, is a scan from my photo collection. The back of the photo is stamped March 1986! No digital cameras, no low-pressure paints, no fancy caps or crazy colors…

Bonus points for identifying anyone in the photo! Me, I’m behind the camera.