October 08, 2005
Dive
By Ipeleng Kgositsile
Venue: The Leftist Lounge
This is why I love Oakland. Last Friday, went to pick up my girlfriend after work at one of our local watering holes, The Radio Bar, on the corner of 13th Street and Broadway. On our way out, found out from someone about a roving party called The Leftist Lounge (www.leftistlounge.com/westcoast/home.htm) at the Oakland Noodle Factory (http://oaklandnoodlefactory.org/) in West Oakland.
For those that don’t know, The Oakland Noodle Factory is a warehouse space on the corner of 26th and Union in West Oakland. Last Friday, it was home to The Leftist Lounge---a party started two years ago in Boston---that was benefiting three grassroots political organizations in The Bay Area. The beneficiaries? The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (www.mxgm.org), Just Cause (www.just causeoakland.org), and Left Turn (www.leftturn.org).
The party was hot. It was like a house party in someone's basement during high school. Not enough circulating air. Sweat for days. I looked like Whitney Houston in what's the name of that video where she's wearing all white and sitting in a pool of her own sweat by the end of the song? It's from the early-to-mid-nineties. Annoying. Can't remember the name of the song. Anyways, I danced my ass off. So did the hundreds of people who were there shaking their groove things. They sweated. I sweated. The walls were sweating. They were decorated with posters of revolutionaries such as Angela and Che and Steve Biko. Alongside them, quotes from people like Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and Harriet Tubman. At the end of the party, two teachers I know were taking some of the posters to decorate their classrooms in Oakland. Another friend also participated in some of the thievery. Just two days ago I found a poster of Edward Said (don’t know who he is) rolled up in a circle underneath my couch on my living room floor.
During the party, I finally put a face to one of my next-door neighbors. He's one of those white boys who smokes hella pot and listens to hella Black Uhuru on Volume 11 at two and three in the morning. Adore him. He's in the biz. As in the restaurant biz, a cook. Mom's a baker at one of my favorite bakeries in the area. Arizmende Bakery. So glad that he didn't fit the stereotype that I had in mind---he's not a white boy with dreadlocks.
We met the white boy downstairs in a room dedicated to smoking. Cigarettes. It was adjacent to the bar, looked like it was once someone’s laundry room. Maybe you had to be there. In spite of its grossness and insane wafts of smoke the room was cute.
Even cuter---when we entered the party the doorman (not quite twenty-five) asks to see my ID. Love when that happens. Really, I love when the jaw drops after seeing my DOB. When they ask how, I tell them grape juice, vodka and cigarettes.
They say that that’s what’s up is happening in such cities as New York and Los Angeles and Chicago. Don’t know that that’s true. When I woke up on Saturday one of my first phone calls was to one of my friends who is part of MXG. I wanted to know if he knew about The Leftist Lounge, if the kids are doing such parties in New York. They’re not.
Thank you Oakland. The Leftist Lounge is one of those things that makes you say, Don't believe the hype! Oakland is what’s up. You know what else is what’s up? Quiet as it's kept, there are young people in this country who are on the frontlines when it comes to fighting for economic and social justice in Ms. America. Even quieter than it’s kept a lot of those young people are black and brown. It felt so good to be in a room filled with black and brown people, my people, dancing their booties off to Dawn Penn, Rob Base, Show Biz and AG in the name of raising some money for MXG, Just Cause, and Left Turn.
Different beat, same song. Check out this month's Essence (www.essence.com), the one with Beyonce Knowles on the cover. There's a hot little spread on sisters doing activism in this country. God Bless all of them, all of those who are committed to the fight for freedom and equality in this country. One of the women featured is Monifa Akinwole-Bandele. She’s a founding member of MXG. As it happens, her hubby is my friend who I spoke with on Saturday morning.
Long live MAB and LAB and Dawn Penn. Long live the fight. This one, of course, goes without saying---long live The Leftist Lounge. Check out their events at www.leftistlounge.com/westcoast/home.htm.
Ipeleng Kgositsile is living the good life in The Bay Area. You can check out her weekly musings on Tobacco Free Kisses (www.tobaccofreekisses.blogspot.com).
Posted at October 8, 2005 02:59 AM