Rob AriasFor our readers that only browse our website stories, we regularly share Emeryville-related news from local sources on our social media channels that include Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. This edition of our ‘E’ville Wire’ focuses around the bordering Northern West Oakland area of San Pablo Avenue that has seen its share of news-worthy stories.
The sad conclusion to the tragic death of Emeryville artist Antonio Ramos came to a close in an Alameda County courtroom last week. Ramos was killed in 2015 while contributing to a mural underneath the I-580 overpass as part of the Oakland Superheroes Mural Project. 23-year-old Marquise Holloway, a reputed member of the West Oakland “Ghost Town” gang, shot Ramos when he confronted him about stealing his photography equipment. According to prosecutor Matthew Golde, Holloway was given multiple chances, leniency and was provided a litany of public resources that he persistently rejected. Holloway pleaded ‘no contest’ to the charge and will serve 25 years in state prison prior to any parole hearing.
Fair Deal Meat Market at Market & 36th recently closed their doors after 84 years in business. In a story penned by famed Everett & Jones BBQ family members Shirley Everett-Dicko and Yvette Jones-Hawkins, they explain the historical and cultural importance of the Chinese family of butchers to Oakland. Fair Deal provided wholesale meats to many of Oakland’s pioneering black-owned BBQ businesses and also served as a social hub for them for generations. “Fair Deal Meat Market is the thread that ran through just about all BBQ restaurants in Oakland and the Bay Area.”
The Historic California Hotel recently announced the lease-signing of Crave BBQ as their anchor restaurant tenant. Founder Rashad Armstead started Crave as a pop up serving barbecue out of a West Oakland gas station before pursuing a brick & mortar location. The restaurant is part of a larger revitalization effort called SPARC (San Pablo Area Revitalization Collaborative) being fronted by EBALDC that includes plans for a music venue, recording studio and a black culinary collective. Crave hopes to open its doors to the public in “early 2019.”
Javi’s Cooking replacing Locol
New signage for “Javi’s Cooking” recently appeared at the former Locol spot on 35th & Market. Locol opened in 2016 with the ambitious idea to serve affordable, healthy fast food in urban areas that included Watts, San Jose and two locations in Oakland. Locol closed their downtown Oakland location after about a year and their West Oakland location back in June before shuttering the other locations.
Javi’s, who already have a location in Hayward, will serve “traditional Argentinean” food including Empanadas, chimichurri and sweets. Javi’s owner Javier Sandes once posted up in Emeryville with his “Primo’s Parrilla” mobile food truck that served food off an open flame grill. Sandes was eventually shut down by the city before reemerging as Javi’s Cooking in 2012.
No timetable for their opening has been provided but we have reached out to them and will update this post when we hear back.
Browse Javi’s Menu on their website →
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Reputed gang associate sentenced for murder of muralist
By Jeff Shuttleworth
A reputed gang associate who started a life of crime at the age of 13 was sentenced at an emotional hearing today to 25 years to life in state prison for fatally shooting a mural artist in Oakland three years ago.
Marquise Holloway, 23, pleaded no contest June 4 to first-degree murder for the shooting death of 27-year-old Antonio Ramos of Emeryville in the 3500 block of West Street in Oakland at about 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 29, 2015.
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A Black Cultural Corridor Takes Shape on Oakland’s San Pablo Avenue
By Nastia Voynovskaya
On a recent Sunday, in the parking lot behind the California Hotel on Oakland’s San Pablo Avenue, the Harvest Festival is bustling. Parents line up for plates of barbecue; kids decorate pumpkins in the pumpkin patch; and neighbors of all ages hang out while a DJ spins funk, soul and old school R&B.
The scene is just one example of how longtime, mostly African-American West Oakland residents are revitalizing a formerly blighted stretch of San Pablo Avenue with the help of East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC), one of Oakland’s largest affordable housing developers. Soon, the California Hotel will be at the center of a new cultural hub that will include a music venue, recording studio, restaurant, black culinary collective and a youth-focused music education program.
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Farewell Fair Deal
By Shirley Everett-Dicko and Yvette Jones-Hawkins
There was a place in Oakland at 3605 Market Street where Flint’s, Everett and Jones, Carmen’s and other BBQ business owners gathered to socialize; usually in the morning, way before the sun could melt the dew off the meat trucks. We would park our business trucks, vans and cars at the back door and casually gather inside the back of the store, behind the heavy sliding door that made a loud bang when it met the wall. A family of butchers in starch white smocks greeted you on those cold mornings with free coffee an occasional donut, lots of smiles and bad jokes. Like men in a barbershop-laughin’, gaggin’ and raggin’ on one another, Fair Deal Meat Market was the barber shop for BBQ joints with its old time charm and friendly faces.
Read more on EverettAndJones.com →
Feature Image: ebaldc.org
[…] Rashad Armstead on Market Street. Armstead backed out of his planned full-service restaurant at the California Hotel after financing for the $300,000 project fell […]