My Trip to Rockridge

On my trip around Rockridge I learned that not Oakland is the same. Rockridge is a nice place if I didn’t know it was Oakland maybe I would have thought it was a different city. Rockridge is a place were there are a lot of retail stores really expensive by the way. I liked that there was a lot of people, it seems like a really united community, and it looked pretty save although a lady we interviewed said there was a lot of crime.
Before we got there I thought we were going to get a lot of interviews and that it was going to be easy to go up to them and ask them if they could be interviewed but it wasn’t. My group got rejected more than teen times. Some people said they didn’t have time and others just didn’t want to.
Some differences I saw between Rockridge and Fruitvale was that in Rockridge was that in Rockridge there is a lot of Farmer Markets here in Fruitvale the closest one would be in Macarthur avenue and people own cars like BMWs . Also in Rockridge in my opinion the majority of people were white. Some similarities I saw between these two places were that these two places have a lot of retail stores and little shops. In Rockridge there were tons of shop in every block and here in Fruitvale there is quite a lot of shops as well especially in International boulevard and in Fruitvale village.

Oakland

I was born and raised in Oakland and I like that Oakland is a community were everyone can have fun together. In Oakland there are a lot of places to go and things to do. Some of the things that I really like about Oakland are that they celebrate days like 5 de Mayo and Dia De Los Muertos with big festivals were you can enjoy with the whole family and were you can feel you are in Mexico. The have folkloric dancing, marches from schools around town and all kinds of music.
Something I don’t like about Oakland would definitely be the about of crime that there is in the city. All they talk about in the news is how another person got killed or shot. Every year the death rate is higher and the more people try to do to stop it just doesn’t work. Recently the amount of police officers were increased but that just doesn’t seem to make this people stop.People are afraid to walk around the city late at night because they know what could happen to them. My personal opinion I like to ware jewelry like gold bracelets and gold rings but I am afraid to ware them when I am walking around either at lunch or on my way to the store. I have had friend who were assaulted and had there money taken away. That is just not right.
But not everything in Oakland is bad, Oakland has beautiful parks that people don’t even know about or knew they were there. Last year in a class I took called Inner Strength we went to a park called Lake Temescal and it was beautiful. Besides parks Oakland also has beautiful churches and temples were you can visit.

My trip To Chinatown

Yesterday May 27 2008 we took a trip to Chinatown here in Oakland. It was the first time I went to that part of the town. Chinatown has a lot of places to walk around and see the different kinds of shops. While walking around we saw over ten stores that sold groceries, stores that had the carts outside full of fruits and vegetables. Some vegetables I had never seen before. Before I went there I predicted that there weren’t going to be a lot of diversity but once we got there I saw all kinds of people, I was surprised.
Some differences I saw between Chinatown and Fruitvale were that here in Fruitvale there was a lot of Latinos compared to Chinatown were the majority of people were Chinese. Like I said before I was surprised that besides Chinese there were lots of white people most of them being some kind of business men because they were all dressed very professional and look really busy.
Some similarities I noticed between Fruitvale and Chinatown were that both have very busy streets. There were tons of cars in the street and parked all over. As well as Fruitvale there were lots of people walking in the sidewalks shopping in the little marts and looked like they were having fun. Almost every store we went into had music and I noticed the same thing the day we were walking around Fruitvale.

The Garbage Trip to the Bay!!!

This garbage right here was once in the hands of a human being. This person who once had this piece of garbage thought that one little piece wouldn’t affect anything or anyone, they never thought what would happen if everyone threw a little piece of garbage into the drain, the drain that heads to the bay, the bay that we have surrounding our community. Once this waste hits the bay the water will get contaminated worse than it already is. Life under the sea would get affected, this small piece of garbage can be “POISON” for the little harmless fish. In our trip to Walnut Creek the drains were clean, compared to the ones in Oakland. This picture shows only one drain but I guarantee you that at least half of the drains we have in Oakland are similar or worse that this one.

My Journey Around Fruitvale

If I compare my experiences in Fruitvale to my experiences in Walnut Creek I would definitely say that interviewing people in Fruitvale was way harder. This time it was harder because here in Fruitvale there were lots of people but many of this people dint want to cooperate with us. Some did but when they saw the recorder they would back off.
Something new I learned about the Fruitvale community was that if you would like to go around and interview people you need to contact the Fruitvale management a day in advance. This really sucked because in the Fruitvale plaza was were a lot of people we could have interviewed.
Some positive things I liked about Fruitvale Village were that there was a lot of diversity. We could have interviewed different kind of people if we were allowed to after all. About Fruitvale in general I like that there is tons of different places and shops we could visit.
Some negative aspects that I didn’t like about Fruitvale were that there were a lot of homeless people and many of them if not all of them were drunk and that aspect makes the community look bad.
What I learned about my topic in Fruitvale was that many people don’t like the fact that there is a lot of tagging around graffiti. But some of this same people commented that they like some of the graffiti around town. For example Pete Villasenor one of the librarians said that some teens should get paid to create murals around town. “Graffiti is art.”