“Oakland California: The most exciting city in the country.”
I am a Historian. When I began posting on Oakland several months ago, I wondered if I was insane. Who wants to read about sleeping in a Oakland backyard with a very beautiful young woman from Nebraska? I am also a Cultural Bohemian Messiah who has reveled in poverty. I have taken of the Zionists and the Christian-right.
This morning I discovered the Oakland Artist, Seldon Connor Stile. We have looked at Beauty and Bohemianism thru the same lens. I will use him as the model for the New Artist who will not be interested in fame and money, and will more than likely be an unknown failure. “There is nothing there, there.”
Giles was a member of the East Bay Six who met in his tiny house in Oakland with the tile roof. There was much drinking and talk about art. Giles moved to Tiburon and painted the wharf where Sam’s restaurant would be built.
Giles is now my Spirit Guide in my Return to Oakland, the place of my birth.
Jon Presco
Yes, you read that right. Oakland is hella exciting.
While it often seems to lose out on “cool factor” when compared to another Bay Area city that shall remain both nameless and expensive, Oakland topped all other major American metropoles in a listicle put out this week by real estate blog Movoto.
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa660.htm
The Society of Six was a group of artists who painted outdoors, socialized, and exhibited together in and around Oakland, California in the 1910s and 1920s. They included Selden Connor Gile, August Gay, Maurice Logan, Louis Siegriest, Bernard von Eichman, and William Clapp.[1] They were somewhat isolated from the artistic mainstream of the San Francisco Bay Area at the time, and painted in more avant-garde styles than most of their peers, especially after being inspired by modern trends represented in the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915.
William Henry Clapp (1879-1924) was the last to join the group and had the most cosmopolitan background, including art training in Montreal and Paris and a six-month stay in New York City. Having lived in Oakland in his youth, he returned in 1917, settled in Piedmont, and began teaching life drawing at the California School of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley. He was appointed acting director of the nearly new Oakland Art Gallery in 1918 and served as its director from 1919 to 1952. In 1923 he organized the first of six annual Society of Six exhibitions at that venue. Although he brought exposure through the gallery to more radical styles of painting, his own work adhered to the features of American Impressionism.
Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947) was the oldest member of the group, more than twenty years older than Siegriest (1899-1989) and von Eichman (1899-1970). Nancy Boas, author of The Society of Six: California Colorists, called Gile “the forceful center of the Six–teacher, provider, and provocative critic.”[2] Primarily self-taught, he enthusiastically embraced a vigorous style using broad, rapid brushstrokes and intense, non-naturalistic colors. His home was the social center for the Six, who would follow their days of plein-air painting with critique sessions, food, and drinking.
Though Gile was steadily employed at jobs other than art until the age of 50,[2] his artistic output, primarily from marathon weekends spent painting, was considerable.[16] 1915, the year of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition marked the beginning of his maturation as an artist, despite that fact, Gile and the Society of Six would not exhibit their art beyond a few occasional paintings until 1923.[17] From their first exhibition at the Oakland Art Gallery on March 11, 1923 to the sixth and final show as a group in 1928, Gile and the Society of Six were generally well received by critics.[18] In the spring of 1927, Gile quit his job as an office manager for Gladding, McBean and Company and moved from his cabin on Chabot Road in Oakland (also known as the “Chow House” where the Society of Six would meet on weekends),[19] into a cottage he had kept since the early 1920s on San Francisco Bay in Tiburon, Marin County to paint full-time.[20]
“…as a loner, independent, and very proud. [Gile] enjoyed cordial relationships with some of his neighbors, often chatting with them on the street or in doorways,
but he consistently refused their hospitality…In the end Gile was a sick, alcoholic old man surrounded by paintings he never sold, lonely, and not painting. The process of painting and camaraderie that he had enjoyed were past now.”[25]
A few months before he died, Selden Gile checked himself into the Marin County Hospital and Farm, where he spent the rest of his life. On June 8, 1947, Gile died of cirrhosis of the liver.[26]
Movoto judged the 50 largest metro areas in America on a host of factors, such as park acreage, percentage of young adults, low concentrations of big box stores and fast food restaurants, diversity of its population as well as bars, museums and movie theaters per square mile.
“This isn’t a perfect definition,” wrote Movoto blogger David Cross, “but you can think of our list as ways to fight that ever-present boredom everyone faces at some point or another.”
The list didn’t even take into account Oakland’s hosting of the Internet Cat Video Festival this spring. If watching cat videos projected onto a giant wall with thousands of your closest friends isn’t the textbook definition of excitement, we don’t what is.
Even the New York Times, a paper whose never sleeping hometown didn’t even crack the top five, agrees–ranking Oakland number five in its global list of “must visit” places last year.
However, not everyone is so enthused about the media’s recent portrayal of Oakland’s sudden transformation into an epicenter of coolness.
“I take issue with the idea that Oakland is worth visiting only because new has supplanted old…That notion supposes that everything I’ve loved about my city for the last 27 years is void,” Oakland-born playwright Chinaka Hodge told local hip hop blog 38th Notes. “The [New York Times] blurb invites those who would not otherwise be interested in the cultural backbone of my city to descend and take, as opposed to respectfully visit and interact.”
https://rosamondpress.com/2014/07/09/the-eastwoods-of-oakland-2/
https://rosamondpress.com/2014/07/09/eastwood-american-royalty-2/
https://rosamondpress.com/2014/06/05/oakland-1968-2/
https://rosamondpress.com/2012/06/06/oaklands-imperial-marines/
https://rosamondpress.com/2012/06/03/dirty-harry-and-oakland-jonny/
https://rosamondpress.com/2011/09/01/will-bohemianism-rise-in-oakland/
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/02/23/our-home-on-miles-2/
- The Mast are like the Fool in the Tarot. I posted this on Thanksgiving of 2008.Bohemians helping Bohemians take our World back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool_(Tarot_card)
Barack Obama has shown the world that when little people pool their
resources together, WE can change the world. This power of change can
be applied those who are fond of Artists, Writers, Musicians, Crafts
People, and others Creative Souls, whose patronage supports Bohemian
establishments such as Coffee Houses, Craft Shops, Restaurants,
Health Food Stores, Galleries, Fairs, Concerts, Music Stores, ect.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism
In what can be described as Reverse Elitism, it is time we Bohemians
take care of one another! I am deeply concerned about the fate of the
Bohemian Capitalistic Lifestyle that has a long history of
Survivability, but, may not weather the current economic downturn
that is hitting the Service Industry hard. Below Main Street, at the
bottom rung of the Service Industry, are what can be described as
Bohemian, even Hippie establishments that have survived outside the
mainstream capitalist institutions with very little, or no backing
from the Banks – that are now failing! What kind of fools are they?This survivability has been made possible by a pulling together of
community resources and like-minded people who give their support in
a variety of ways. Quite often Musicians and Artists become
carpenters and laborers with the understanding once a new coffee
house is open for business, their artwork will hang on the wall, and
patrons will enjoy a fresh cup of Java accompanied by some Jazz
tunes. It is this Community Spirit that is needed in these hard
times.This creative community service should be rewarded and supported by
all its members, and their family and friends. Your vision and ideas
are most welcome here. Together we can overcome these adverse times,
and be an inspiration to everyone! If we Artists, Writers, Musicians,
and Freethinkers can not inspire the world, what are we good for!For too long, Artists and other so-called Leftists and Elitists, have
been attacked by the Right-wing. With the election of Barack Obama we
have seen how the computer can bring people together to contribute to
our Democratic process. There is a Change coming, and you can keep it
energized by backing and patronizing those who have worked hard for
alternative solutions and change.During hard times, the tendency is to isolate and wait for the axe to
fall. But history has shown that in past Depressions, people have
survived by coming together and pooling their resources – along with
their Hope! It is this Unity of Purpose that has made this Country
Great – and enjoyable – in the best of times, and in the worst of
times! As my late friend Denny Dent said;“We are taking our world back!”
http://1worldcurrency.net/chat-room/
The Eugene Anarchists Revisited
- In light of the Young People’s Revolution in Egypt, and the theft of street activism by the Tea Party Patriots, it is time to reinvent, or, resurrect the so called Hippie Peace Movement in America and in Europe. Being an original Hippie who took part in the million person Peace March in Washington D.C. in 1970, I believe I am qualified to return Democratic Activism to its peaceful roots. After the Terrorist attack on 911, the Anarchist movement was dead, along with the peace movement. When we saw the huge crowd at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, we saw a real victory for the young men and woman of my generation. We had come into our own via the One Vote, and not via a masked man dedicated to violence and insurrection as an alternative the Voice of the Peaceful Majority.It is in the creation of covert and closed alternative lifestyles and revolutions that killed the great movements founded by my peers – that have changed the world. The people in the streets of Egypt are using the Hippie Peace Movement as their model, and not the anarchists, or, gay activism, that took power away from the Civil Rights Movement, and the Hippie Movement, leading American activism down a dead end street, where it died. The Right-wing resurrected American Activism, and stole THE FIRE I and my brothers and sisters lit. Surely no one is going to object if I spark and rekindle what is mine. I paid my dues!
I know the King and Queen of the Anarchist of Eugene very well! They know their movement has come to a dead end.
As for the gay activists, as a theologian I have been attacking the foundation of the Christian-right and its cultural warfare it wages in the name of Jesus and God. In theory, I have taken away their religious permission to look down on anyone, least turn this Democracy into a religious state. For many years I have been seeking a truce between Secular and Spiritual groups so that we may join forces in a New Enlightenment and Activism, that will be a model to all peoples of the world.
Rosamond Press 
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