To a lot of people, the words “East Oakland” conjure up thoughts of poverty and crime, liquor stores and drugs, sideshows and Raiders fans, hyphy and scraper bikes. And indeed, you can find all these things in East Oakland, some of them in larger quantities than you might like. What many people in Oakland (and even fewer elsewhere) don’t know about East Oakland is that you can also find several miles of parkland along the estuary nestled between Oakland, Alameda, and Bay Farm Island.
I personally appreciate this park because it allows me to ride on a 3-mile bike path all the way from High Street to Hegenberger without crossing so much as a train track or driveway, instead of braving the maniacal drivers and potholes of the city streets. Others have their own reasons: the joggers and dog walkers like having a place to exercise, the birders out in the early mornings enjoy the plentiful fowl, and the fowl themselves find plentiful marshes, channels and shoreline.
With a national spotlight currently fixed on Oakland’s violence and unrest (and with more destruction possibly scheduled for Wednesday night), now seems like a fine time to note one of the many bright spots you can find in East Oakland’s varied neighborhoods.
This boat — maybe about 40 feet long — must have been beached on this tidal flat near the mouth of East Creek Slough quite a while ago. By now it is just a carcass, rotting and decaying like roadside carrion. It seemed especially picturesque this afternoon as I rode home just after sunset, with the sky aglow, what may or may not be a planet hanging above the horizon in the Southwest (any amateur astronomers out there?), and jets coasting in for landings at OAK to the South. A person might be able to walk out to the old boat at low tide, but I just glance its way as I ride by, wondering what passengers or cargo it once held, and what voyages it might once have made.
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