DECEMBER 2007

How & Why Hip Hop is Darkening Oakland's nightlife or is it?

As you read this story please note that there's a lot more to this then what is being written. While this article focusing on what is happening today in downtown oakland, this is a years old problem that bears similarities to other poarts of the country where gentrification is taking place.. As you read this story keep in mind that there were serious crackdowns on Oakland nightclubs dating back to 1998 when California's now Attorney General Jerry Brown took over as Mayor. The first club he targeted was Geoffrey's Inner Circle which was a centerpiece for Black political power in the city. The owner Geoffrey Peete was major force to be reckoned with and his elegant establishment was a popular dance club at night, but during the day numerous African American leaders met and hosted round tables there. As soon as Brown became mayor of Oakland he started banging on Geoffrey's and insisted that he pay some super high price to have police officers outside his club to help move the large crowds. This was crazy because that's supposed to be the job of the police. Thats what businesses pay taxes for. It wasn't like the police were needed to break up fights or anything like that..What it really seemed like was political payback because Brown saw Geoffrey's as home base to those running against him What's even crazier about this is that Brown when running for Mayor would habitually campaign in front of Geoffreys. He would be there when the club closed handing out fliers asking for patrons to elect him. He later used his observations of Oakland police showing up at closing to help direct traffic as 1500 to 2000 people would leave on a Friday and Saturday night and said it was a waste of public resources. He wanted Geoffrey's to pay a high price for the police directing traffic. This was something Peete refused to do and soon afterwards Geoffrey's came under a lot of pressure as soon as Brown got into office resulting in him eventually having to shut his doors and scale back on regular parties. This was seen by many as Brown's attempts to shut down Oakland's Black political base. Over the years, the crackdown on nightclubs continued with almost all African American establishments coming underfire. What was at stake was Brown promising to bring ten thousand new residents to downtown Oakland. Translation: He was going to bring ten thousand new White people to the majority African American city. This was gentrification at its best (worst). During Brown's tenure big time developers laced the downtown and Jack London Square areas where many of the nightclubs resided with hundreds of condos that are unaffordable by the most people. These things start at 400-500 thousand a pop. Brown and others felt that the large numbers of Black folks coming to these areas would be a deterent to the ten thousand new people he was attempting to attract. Many African club owners tried to avert city pressure by hiring the police to come by and patrol the outside of their clubs. What was soon discovered was that it wasn't really the nightclubs being the problem. What was happening was there simply wasn't a whole lot for people to do so people no matter what age tended to gravitate to whatever was seen as the hotspot. In this case it was Jack London Square and downtown. The police started coming out in full force and pushing young Blacks folks out of these areas. This was happening in spite of protests by local Black businesses like Everett and Jones BBQ who who's owners would come out and protest the police harrassment. The main reason why so many people started showing up to Jack London and downtown was because Oakland Police under Jerry Brown were cracking down on a 30 year Oakland tradition called the sideshows. This was Oakland's version of crusing. So people were being moved out of east and West Oakland which led to them coming downtown where they were met with even more police pressure. All this oppression to displace young brothers and sisters eventually gave birth to what we call the Hyphy Movement in the sense that young folks started wylding out and literally creating situations where they would reclaim space. That would include having large crowds just showing up and having impromptu parties and sideshows in the middle of the streets. Car sound systems were used to get things cracking'. People just simply refused to move away.. Police would break up the gatherings and folks using pagers and later text messaging would bounce to another spot and start all over. This became the ultimate cat and mouse game. As we fast foward in time, the end result was the police chasing young blacks out of Jack London and downtown. A new era of Black nightclubs entered, many of them are mentioned in this Oakland Tribune article. Again came the police complaints of large crowds coupled with complaints from the new residents (gentrifiers) to these areas. So Black club owners started to get pressured again. Over the past year or so rumors started circulating that Oakland Police were shaking down Black club owners for money. According to stories in the SF Bayview Newspaper and the Block Report Radio, this was one of the investigative stories the late journalist Chauncy Bailey was supposedly working .. he was killed this past August. He was getting ready to blow the whistle on all this. Now we have this article pointing out the current state of affairs which shows that almost all of Oakland's Black nightclubs have been shut down. Hip Hop of course is one of the main culprits along with young Blacks. What's interesting about this is that over the years there have been city sponsored townhalls with residents and other interested parties being asked to come up with ideas. Numerous people have offered their services and submitted proposals on how to improve Oakland's nightlife. There were promoters that offered to open up night clubs targeting teens and 18 and overs. There were youth organizations that offered toi do night time activities for the youth, all they needed was the support from the city. Almost all these ideas were shelved and overlooked. The only solution that the city seemed to want is Police suppression. It's suppression that routinely visits our community while is all but absent at other events like Raider tailgate parties where last month two people got shot in separate incidents in the parking lot. What is currently going on in the town is not unique. Other cities are experiencing similar scenarios. At the same time we have other cities like San Jose where the local government has pushed to make sure they have vibrant attractive nightlife scene. Oakland wants that as well, they just don't want Black folks to be apart of it... Davey D Violence darkening Oakland's nightlife Downtown hip-hop-oriented clubs closing in face of security problems By Cecily Burt, STAFF WRITER www.insidebayarea.com/ci_7440626 OAKLAND — One by one, Oakland's troubled downtown nightspots are closing, a victim of their own popularity and a musical format that tends to draw a younger, more violence-prone crowd. But Oakland after hours isn't dead, just moving to a mellower beat, it seems, as the uptown area takes root and Old Oakland's resurgence fosters a booming nightlife. Still, the so-called uptown entertainment district has taken another hit with the closure of the once-posh @17th nightclub on 17th Street. Mingles on the Embarcadero closed a year ago; Sweet Jimmie's on San Pablo Avenue a few months before that. All three had featured disc jockeys playing hip-hop or Top 40 hits some nights, with radio ads drawing young, mostly African-American patrons from around the Bay Area. The clubs also drew the hangers-on who didn't want to pay the cover charge or kids who were too young to get in. Both, it seemed, would end up on the streets after closing time. It was mostly the scenes outside the clubs that caused headaches for their owners, security guards and Oakland police, who were often called in to keep the peace, shut down sideshows, and respond to fights, stabbings and shootings. The owners of @17th closed their doors voluntarily after two men were shot and killed and another wounded after leaving the nightclub in the early hours of Aug. 3, said Barbara Killey, the city's administrative hearing officer. Killey had been working with the owners to come up with ways to discourage problems inside and outside the business. Killey said the owners had agreed to install cameras outside the buildingbut hadn't yet done it when the shootings occurred. Once they closed, Killey told them they couldn't reopen until they had installed the cameras and better lighting and met other safety conditions imposed by the city. The club is still closed, and efforts to reach the owners were unsuccessful. Oakland police Lt. Paul Berlin said the downtown area has been "unbelievably peaceful" since @17th closed. There were five separate shooting incidents nearby in the past year, but nothing since the club closed. Mingles on Embarcadero was also constantly on the defensive over outbreaks of violence and drinking and loitering on the blocks around it near Jack London Square. Owner John Ivey voluntarily closed the venue a year ago after someone shot into a crowd of people leaving the club, killing a pregnant woman. Ivey had tried to discourage troublemakers by imposing a dress code that forbade baggy jeans and T-shirts, but there were still problems. Those problems did not occur on nights the clubs hosted jazz or blues, but that type of music doesn't pack the house, Berlin said. After years of complaints from police and city officials about violence and sideshows around his nightclub, Jimmie Ward excluded hip-hop entirely from his musical lineup and saw his business dry up. He closed the club and sold the building. A former San Jose nightclub owner later applied for a permit to open a nightclub in the same location, but police and city leaders couldn't support his plan to offer Top 40 hits that included hip-hop. The applicant was also up against a municipal ordinance that prohibits cabarets from opening within 300 feet of schools, churches or libraries. Elected officials, realizing that such an ordinance all but prevents the creation of a true entertainment district downtown, will consider an amendment Tuesday that allows discretion in granting permits to new clubs that adhere to strict conditions. Killey said the applicant has since said he plans to open a salsa club, which might work in his favor. "From a police perspective, I have no problem with any club opening up in Oakland," Berlin said. "However, we have to do it right, and have everything in place; the right amount of security, the right signage, the right people monitoring the customers and making sure we don't have loitering." Berlin said the owners and managers of @17th tried to do the right thing. In fact, they were very cooperative, he said. When Sweet Jimmie's was open, large crowds leaving both venues at closing time would create a critical mass in the area that often sparked sideshows, and sometimes, violence. It was better after Jimmie's closed, but not good enough. "Kids from Richmond, Pittsburg, the outlying areas, were coming in and acting up," Berlin said, adding that most of the victims who were hurt or killed were not from Oakland. "The club had security. They tried their hardest to make it work, and the city worked with them." Zazoos and Geoffrey's play Top 40 and hip-hop, but Geoffrey's draws an older crowd, and neither has been plagued by the same type of violence, Berlin said. So where is the younger, hip-hop crowd going now? Maybe San Francisco, said Abdul Qudus, 35, one of the partners of Air, a loungelike dance club on Ninth Street in Old Oakland that opened nearly two years ago. The venue doesn't play hip-hop, and it has a dress code, so young people aren't going there, or at least not more than once. "We're more like a bar lounge instead of a club," Qudus said. "We have a DJ, but we try to keep the music more on the mellow side, soul, reggae. "The dress code kind of deters them outside, and when they get inside, there's not Top 40-KMEL kind of songs. So even if they do get a chance to get in, they don't come back," he added. "The music and the vibe we create is different. If you like the hyphy kind of thing, you won't get that here." The amendment to the Oakland Municipal Code regarding cabaret permits will be discussed at the Public Safety Committee, Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., City Hall, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza.