HoodStock '09!

On a cold, windy Saturday in a parking lot behind a crack house at 25th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Hood Stock '09 raged full force. An event where the predominately white hipster subculture met the black community of West Oakland.

Organized mainly as a music event it is quickly apparent

 that the young "arty" hipsters that seem to hide in West Oakland were out in full force. Musicians, artists, writers and graffitti artists were there to be seen, sell their stuff and have a good time. 

A local Bay Area graffiti artist, "GATS," drew the flyer for the event. He seemed excited for the "free, voluntary, ad-free gathering"  and that it was being  supported so heavily by the local artist scene in Oakland. 

The event hosted mainly punk, garage, and pop/rock type bands from all over the country. A few of the names were Japanther and Ninja sonik both from Brooklyn, NY, and Shannon and the Clams from Oakland, CA.

Noah Gonzalez, DJ and back-up vocals for the band Enigmatics, was asked to play by one of the event organizers Roberto Miguel when he needed bands. 

"It kinda just fell into our laps, said Gonzalez, I hear like, 1,000 kids are gonna show up!"

Jessica Schmidt, a 23-year-old recent graduate of California College of the Arts and pizza delivery driver, was also there to su

pport the local music/art/graffiti scene. When asked how she felt about the mainly white crowd in a predominately black community, Schmidt said she could see that, "although, the people putting on the show are Latino."

West Oakland has a reputation for being a bit dangerous. Many of the kids present at Hood Stock would normally not be out without a bicycle or a buddy. Schmidt is used to the neighborhood although many of her friends, she says, would not come into it for fear of the recent shootings. Many of the locals in the neighborhood  wandered in to see what all the racket was about. Tony "Juice" Lambert joined in after walking by on his way to the store. 

The event that night, which boasted a couple hundred people, ran from 12 pm till around 4 am the next morning when the cops had to shut it down. Sunday, the event raged on, again, with another few hundred people at 12pm on Sunday as well.