Culture Currents

I recently was in Leimert Park and I met the owners of 2 Dollz, sisters Kamilah and Adrianna. 2 Dollz is a company that custom designs shoes. And when I looked down at these sistas’ feet, their shoe game was killin’ em. So all of you shoe collectors and fanatics as well as those who like to look unique and chic, check these sistas out in their own words. Then go and support Black business by showing your financial support.

Some e-cigarette users have had seizures after a few puffs or a day of vaping, according to an alert by the Food and Drug Administration.

Please join N’COBRA Saturday, 25 January, 12 Noon, for our first Bay Area commUNITY gathering for Reparations at the beautiful Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St. in downtown Oakland (near the 12th Street BART station). Be prepared to offer serious views and action plans.

This second part of Editor Nube Brown’s interview with Jalil Muntaqim reveals the many ways genocide is utilized by our government and uplifts building the unified movement to end it.

Harry C. Alford leaves deep prints having innovated and inspired wide Black economic energies.

I had the pleasure of escorting a group of boys and young men to a “most excellent” display of the coming opportunities for those who have an affinity for STEM, or Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. Presented by the United Negro College Fund, it was the STEM College to Career Expo at Fort Mason. Where do children of color fit into these four ways of thinking, in regards to the future of America? Right in the center! Yes, right in the middle!

The world, not just the current one but the future version, owes much to Janette’s brilliance, integrity and dedication to her fellow human beings.

Happy Kwanzaa! I will be traveling in Africa over the holidays. I am covering the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture in Dakar, Senegal, and then on to Festival in the Desert in Timbuktu, Mali. My radio show weekly broadcast may feature a surprise live interview from Senegal or Mali if technology serves me well.

A Bay View resident for 44 years, Rhonda Smith has been participating at the Women’s Building Annual Celebration of Craftswomen for almost three decades. This year the show takes place Nov. 11 to 13, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the Festival Pavilion in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center.

Gabrielle Douglas, is, at age 16, making a transition to being more explicit. She’s also learning that this comes with a price. Douglas should be praised for speaking out about what she faced. But instead it’s earning an outrageous response.

In addition to cultivating local demand for products and services, it is critical that brick and mortar businesses have some type of interactive internet presence, from a full blown e-commerce site to a simple but attractive website or Facebook page. These critical changes will help improve local businesses’ chance for survival in this progressively digital age. Technological advances increase convenience and customer satisfaction, and brick and mortar businesses must adapt to maintain their presence in this “digital undivide.”

“Duende” is a magical Black love story. The ending is happy, despite the tragedy, despite the horror.

Recently, the Bay View newspaper won the SF Bay Guardian’s 2009 Best of the Bay Award for best local newspaper because we are a “fight-back” publication. While at the party, I ran into my media-making buddies from Distortion 2 Static, a local Hip Hop TV show, who had also won a 2009 Best of the Bay Award, theirs for best local TV show, and I thought about the fact that I had never written anything to expose our readers to what they do.

Michael Jordan, as an NBA player, owner and cultural force, has always been proudly apolitical. Most famously, he refused to oppose segregationist Jesse Helms in his home state of North Carolina by saying, “Republicans buy sneakers too.” Yet Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s racist rant has so upended the NBA apple cart that even Jordan is speaking out.

Michael Brown? ... I had never heard of him ... had never heard anything he’d done ... before the news of his death came ... whoever he might have become ... whatever he might have achieved ... had he lived longer ... not been riddled lifeless by ... bullets from Darren Wilson’s gun ... and crumpled on the pavement of a Ferguson street ... for more than four hours in ... the heat of that August day ... and before ... I’d never heard of Trayvon Martin

Filmmaker N’Jeri Eaton hooked up with film cinematographer Mario Furloni to tell the story of the monthly “First Friday” festival in downtown Oakland in a documentary that includes the Oakland police murder of Alan Blueford on May 6, 2012, weeks before his high school graduation and the “First Friday” shooting in 2013 that claimed the life of victim Kiante Campbell. Check out filmmakers N’Jeri Eaton and Mario Furloni in their own words ...

Zin is a hip hop Pacifica Radio legend living in Houston who has a show called S.O.S. Radio in Texas. He also is an up and coming hip hop crooner, kind of like Nate Dogg, but with a Southern twang. He has a new album out called “Mental Graffiti,” which is definitely some conscious mellow music to ride to. I touched down with the man with many faces, so that he could let y’all know a little bit about his personal history as well as his new album.

We have lived in the past metaphysically for too long. Now it is time to nosedive into the future to start on the creation of the “New Us.” Don’t miss Matatu – all this week.

With intention on Land, Belonging and Racial Justice in the worlds of young women and non-binary people, GIRLFLY in the Gardens plants the seeds for dance and poetry’s blooming revelations.

Carl Winters, the Kalimba King, will play jazz, blues, gospel and freedom and civil rights songs on 12 kalimbas (African thumb pianos) and let participants play them.