Oakland Noir

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Eddie Muller: I grew up in San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, so my impression of Oakland — an impression the media fostered — was the badass black brother across the bay. Definitely dangerous. That was my image of Oakland from an early age. The Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, right down to Jack “The Assassin” Tatum and the outlaw Oakland Raiders. Scary, mean, borderline uncivilized. It took awhile to wise up and grasp the political and economic realities behind the image. Now that I’ve lived in the East Bay for almost thirty years, I’ve come to understand and appreciate the hardscrabble, working-class roots of Oakland — and I prefer it to what San Francisco has allowed itself to become.

Jerry, as a transplanted East Coaster, what were your first impressions of the city?

Jerry Thompson: Like you, I saw the city as a place soaked in racial and political contradictions. Scary, fabulously underrated, and fabulously criminalized. It’s the mothership of delicious and dangerous bad lighting and double gin martinis.

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