30 Years of East Bay History: An Excerpt

The East Bay Express compiled this short history of the last 30 years in the East Bay to celebrate their 30 years in existence. Definitely worth a read. Here are some random hi-lites and lo-lites that jumped out at me from the first 11 years.

1978: A BART ticket from MacArthur to Embarcadero was sixty cents, fifteen cents less than the toll on the Bay Bridge. Dinner at Chez Panisse cost $17.50

1979: On one chilly night in April, 653 fans huddled together like homeless refugees behind the home team dugout and watched the A's play the hapless Seattle Mariners, reputedly the smallest crowd ever to watch a major league baseball game.

Also two intriguing new African-American faces appeared in Oakland to join Mayor Lionel Wilson: Calvin Simmons became conductor of the Oakland Symphony and Robert Maynard who took over as editor of the Oakland Tribune, which had recently been described as "arguably the second worst newspaper in the United States."

1980: "With his tinted shades ... and his Fabian hair-do, [Al] Davis may well be professional sports' Doctor Strangelove," wrote John Kritch on February 15. "But however cunning his maneuvers are on the gridiron, he has topped them all with his escape from Oakland." The escape would not be completed this year, but the insult would hang over the city like a pall.

1982: Theater critic Robert Hurwitt reviewed a one-woman show by the oddly named local actress and comedienne, Whoopie Goldberg. "This woman is hot," he wrote.

1983: Over the last two years, in Oakland alone, World Airways laid off 800; Crocker Bank, 350; Del Monte Cannery, 380; GM parts 480; Kaiser Aluminum 350. Highly skilled blue- and white-collar workers now join the chronically unemployed.

In Oakland, the police took down several of the city's most notorious heroin drug lords, including Felix Mitchell and Mickey Moore, but a new drug began appearing on the streets- Crack.

1985: The Necklace of Lights was restrung and relit around Lake Merritt for the first time since the aftermath of the attack at Pearl Harbor in 1945.

Exactly 40 years after Pearl Harbor, Lukas Brekke-Miesner was born.

1986: In September, the body of former Oakland drug kingpin, Felix Mitchell, who had been killed while in prison, was borne through the streets of Oakland. Mark Michaels described the scene: "Mitchell went in style all right, taking his last cruise through his old turf in an elegant, gold-plated, horse-drawn hearse, complete with a top-hatted driver, followed by a caravan of Rolls-Royces carrying his family and close friends." It was a grim spectacle for a city still coming to grips with the crack epidemic.

1989: In the end, there were two stories this year: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Cypress structure in the Loma Prieta Earthquake

Also in West Oakland, Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton was shot and killed in the infamous Acorn Housing project by a young alleged drug dealer during what prosecutors later described as an argument over a cocaine deal.