Infamous in Oakland

Oakland, California is a beautiful town full of all types of characters. Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein and Jack London all spent time here. Stein famously said of Oakland, “There is no there there. I'm not sure why she would say that. 

Oakland can also be a cold place. Many people wander the streets at night with nowhere to lay their heads. It's estimated that 40% of the homeless population is Black while we are only 13% of the national population. This fact has been normalized. 

The coldest part though is that many people living in the streets may never have an abode of their own again. One evicted is enough for one to be barred from leasing for life. 

It physically hurts me to see all this housing being built around the Bay Area and know that you can never qualify for leasing because your credit score isn't high enough or whatever excuse they use to legally discriminate against Blacks. 

No, this housing is for the monied immigrants and transplants from the Midwest. Actual natives get no love in the housing market. Thus, they are forced to leave the Bay and head to places like Pittsburgh, Antioch or 

even further– down South to places like Atlanta and Houston.

Recently I found housing in a spot in Oakland. I was elated and eager to leave a living situation that was untenable. I may have jumped the gun. There were a lot of rules and regulations where I had been for nearly 2 years. You see, it was a board and care. The price was right. They called it “The Program.” There were many rules. We had to be in by 9 pm and couldn't go outside until 7 am. We could not snack in our rooms. We could not dye our hair because the owner didn't want us to damage “her” sink. 

The biggest, most detrimental rule was that we were not allowed to shower in the day time. We could only shower between the hours of 6 pm and 8 pm. If we were out during these hours, we were literally assed out. We would have to wait to the following day. We could wash up in the sink. That's it. Toward the end of my stay she even disallowed us from using wipes because she didn't want them going down her toilet. It didn't matter that I told her that I was intelligent enough to put them in the trash. It was her way or the highway.

It wasn't long before I went into a deep depression. I wouldn't go anywhere. I did the bare minimum. Fortunately, I was able to stay on a medication regimen. A blonde about my age watched us take our meds. When I first got there she gave me my key on a lancet which she referred to as a"dog collar.” That struck me as odd. 

I looked for work for the longest time with the help of a job coach. He was a super nice Mexican guy. Very positive. I was able to find a remote position. 

After that job ended I was back to square one. I began working with a new job coach. She was a sistah and super motivated to help me. The restrictions on the hours I could leave the house and be back proved to also be an obstacle to finding work. I was extremely thankful that I could make ends meet with my disability insurance. 

I applied to a waiting list for a place in Chinatown and six months later I was invited to attend an interview. Shortly after that I was notified that my application was accepted. I saw a glimmer of hope that I didn't have while I was living in The Trap, also known as Ghost Town. 

Since I moved to my new crib that is subsidized by the Oakland Housing Authority I've encountered a lot of hostility from certain neighbors. It's been an intervention of the cruelest kind. I have become infamous from Oakland to Sacramento for smelling like shit. They even gave me a new moniker– Skunk. The skunk is a beautiful black creature but when crossed or frightened sprays a scent that will knock you out.

I'm all about growth and learning. I am committed to getting to the bottom of this issue with my doctors and with myself. I'm not dead yet. As long as I am breathing I will grow. God’s got me.

Meanwhile, I am suing everybody. Many people have violated my privacy, especially violated HIPPA. Some Latinas eager to knock me out of the box out of their superiority complex when it comes to Black women. I got something for them. Big. Fat. Lawsuits. You see, these people are the new house niggas.

I've made many mistakes in my life, but this is still my Town and I will not just lay down and die like roadkill. Nope, ain't doing it. I'm a Jones. A double Jones. I mind my business, pay my rent on time and am courteous to my neighbors. I live in a way Christ has commanded us to live. Yet, I've been called everything but a child of God. 

It's funny to me that Sex and The City is one of the biggest franchises in entertainment history yet people act so chaste and frigged in real life. It's a tale about a writer living a single life. When it debuted I was also in the thick of my journalism years living in Oakland on E. 18th Street by Lake Merritt. 

I subscribed to HBO just to watch the ladies take a big bite out of the Big Apple. If I had a dollar for every time I was told by a gatekeeper that I wasn't really a writer, I'd be very rich. Their disbelief is out of racism. The forces that be have actively scrubbed the internet of the work I produced as a journalist and editor for YO! Youth Outlet, a youth paper I co-founded (I even named the muthafuckah) and was Senior Editor of for about 10 years before I was blacklisted. At the same time, I suffered complications due to bipolar disorder. 

I've been made infamous here in Oakland. I don't have a car. I have to use public transportation. I have a life to live. I cannot seek a gig until my symptoms are under control. Until then everyone can do like Whitney Houston would say, “Eat my ass!” I still have a long American heritage. I simply can't be erased. Try as you might, the mighty Califia energy lives in me, a writer touched with fire.

Facebook Watches Us: Trump's War on Wokeness Comes Home

I don't know how they did it but Meta has piped into my crib. You see, my building is secure with cameras throughout. I found a comfort in this initially but my feelings lately have changed. I feel surveilled.

I think that the good people at Meta have taped into our video server and seek amusement by just watching us. I have been made aware that the whites enjoy watching us in our most private moments. Zuck. you hired some real sick fucks.

They have tapped into our feed no doubt for DOGE and the Trump administration in search of the Woke. Trump has declared a war on the so-called Woke. This is how they plan to annihilate us, playing with our lives to the point of attempting to drive us to the point of madness. Blackmail, too. Putting an eviction on our credit which would lead to permanent homelessness. 

They are engaging in psychological and spiritual warfare with the tenants of my building. Their plan was sophmoric. I figured it out within weeks. The plan was to make me feel like my personal issues were somehow very public. To weaken my confidence by making me feel that I "stink."

Dumb, poor, white trash. Absolute basura, that crawled out here from the Midwest trying to take a piece of prime affordable housing. What they fail to realize is that this is Huey's town. It is the only Chocolate City on the West Coast and due to our history, will ALWAYS be a Chocolate City. 

I insist that Oakland Police Department and Menlo Park Police Department launch an investigation into Meta abusing it's immense power in the Bay Area to try to evict Black tenants to swap in white ones. Some white people are so stupid. How on earth they have all that they have is beyond me. 

On second thought, I know how-- from theft, rape, murder and racketeering. Trump said he wanted war. Like Pac said, I got myself together and I'm preparing for war. I'm indigenous mixed with Negro. This is my country by at least 15 generations. Let's fight. Im a heavy weight. Like Muhammad Ali, I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Viva la peuple!

What Whitney's Death Means To Me

Whitney Houston's death shocked the globe. Houston's songs were a fixture for three decades. If you lived through the '80s and/or '90s chances are Houston's voice had graced your ear in some memorable way. Since her passing she has been honored from Detroit to Dubai. 

She was to pop music what Billie Holiday had been to jazz. She left this life the most awarded singer of all time. We hear little of this Guinness Book of Records fact in the media these days. Her greatest accomplishments have been usurped by her greatest fail, orchestrating her very own death with drug and alcohol abuse at the age of 48. How will she be remembered?

Whitney Houston was my generation's answer to Diana Ross. She was statuesque and glamorous with a voice of pure soul. We presumed she had a certain class about her in the early years and readily put her on a pedestal reserved for virgin princesses. I suppose it was a lot of pressure being R&B royalty at 22 and in the mid-80s. Cocaine was ubiquitous in Hollywood and omnipresent back home in Newark, NJ. Add the pressure of living in the public eye and the excess of a music business celebrity lifestyle and Houston's eventual drugs addiction can read as probable.

By 1992 Houston had married Bobby Brown and rumors of their drug use circulated through the Black community. Some said Bobby got her hooked on coke. Some said don't believe the hype and contended that Bobby was simply on marijuana before Whitney introduced HIM to coke. Still, some couldn't truly admit that Whitney was an addict until watching her and Bobby's reality show, "Being Bobby Brown" where their strange behavior could only be explained as that of folks hiding something. When that tabloid shot surfaced of Whitney's vanity sink covered in what was suppose to be her vice trash-- cigarette boxes, a beer can, some crack rocks on a plate-- her public image noose-dived. She spent the years since on the fringes.

Bill O' Reily proclaimed on his show that Whitney wanted to kill herself. Some folks were in an uproar over his statement. Albeit he was curlish with his words, I think he made an interesting point. According to Sigmund Freud,  all self-destructive behavior can be explained by a death drive, a  death wish, we have as humans in this society to kill the pain of living.

If one subscribes to Freudian theory, the compulsive, repetitive behavior of abusing drugs and alcohol was Whitney's way of living out her death wish. No one would imagine on a conscious level Houston wanted to leave her prized daughter Bobbi Christina. However, she knew the dangers of her lifestyle but continued on a destructive path as her demons took over. Houston clearly lived in a world of pain and pressure as even she knew her voice was no longer The Voice. Under normal circumstances it's difficult for a singer to maintain the voice of her youth into the golden years. However, with abuse to the cords and body a singer cannot often maintain her optimum sound.

Yet she did what all great talents do, she mounted a comeback.

Many great women in the music industry have fallen victim to drug abuse and premature death while navigating the scene. Phenomenal singers from Billie Holiday to Janis Joplin to Amy Winehouse suffered from infamous addictions before untimely deaths. Fast and loose living is not a recipe for longevity.

If only she would leave Bobby they said. She finally left Bobby. Still, her drug addiction ensued. Ray J, her sometime companion, claimed he had no knowledge of her cocaine use. Either the man is an idiot or he's lying. Neither of these possibilites bodes well for his character in my opinion.

Houston's life will serve as one of the great cautionary tales of fame, love and drugs. While watching her tell her story to Oprah in 2009, I was struck by what a survivor she was. A real tough broad. May she alwaysbe rememberedas TheVoice. She certainly will be to me.

To Catch A Snake

To Catch A Snake

When I was 3 years old I was playing alone on our balcony when I saw a jump rope miraculously turn into a green snake and slither across the cemented ground. That's when I knew that I could see and sense things that others could not. 

I had the gift of discernment. Fast forward to 2025. According to Chinese astrology, we are living in The Year of The Snake and I have been bitten, I suspect, by a good friend. 

I met her nearly 20 years ago on a junior college campus where I took a Statistics course. One day after class I was walking to my candy apple red Mitsubishi Eclipse when I heard a voice addressing me from behind. The voice flagged me down with a bevy of, ”Girl, girl, girl.”

I turned around to discover a woman who was as wide as she was tall. She had dyed blonde hair and gang tattoos all over the parts of her body that I could see. I stopped to talk to her. She asked me my age. I told her. I must have been about 32. She said she was looking for a girlfriend for her son, who had to have been 6 years my junior. I let her know that I was in a relationship but that I was flattered. 

The following week our instructor put us in a group together with several other students. We gravitated to each other and would hang out outside of class and group meetings. 

The first thing I noticed about Linda was her loud mouth. She always had to be heard and have the last word. What I've learned in life is that the loudest person in the room is the weakest, most insecure person in the room. Let's say she was very insecure. Anyway, I passed the class but she didn't. Nonetheless, we would stay in touch. 

Our friendship quickly turned rocky. We had a love/hate dynamic that I found troubling. We would go months without talking. I couldn't stand how competitive she was with me. She had been a teenage drop-out/runaway at 13 turned into a teen mom at 14. She liked to wear a facade of toughness and for the most part I would let her. I really didn't care either way.

We did the on again, off again thing some friends do as if they were lovers. I really grew to trust her because she groomed me to look at her as though she was my consigliere. You know how you get a vibe off someone that they are not cool people to be around? I catch vibes all the time as an empath. So, let me tell you how shook I was to find out that my good friend was not really a friend to me. 

 

I suspected there was something odd about our bond when she got 2 cars just like I had– a Mitsubishi Eclipse and a Ford Focus. Wouldn't that throw up a red flag to you? On some Single Black Female shit, am I right?

I'm a Taurus and she's a Gemini. It's said that we can find harmony in our friendship but I'd have to say Katie provoked the majority of our quarrels. She would turn on me like a vicious, junkyard dog. Truth be told, she was just a mean girl.

During our last hiatus Katie (name changed for privacy) got a body by Stanford Medicine. She dropped 125 pounds and got all the surgeries to remove her flabby skin. She also had her gang tattoos removed. I was happy for her. 

I, on the other hand, had picked up 25 pounds since we'd last spoken. I'd gained the weight while caring for my mother in her last days. She was very dejected to hear about my mother's passing. However, as soon as she could she had to point out the irony of her losing weight and me gaining weight. I was like, “whatever.” 

I made the choice not to fall into the trap she tried to set up for me. I'm too mature to be jealous of the next female. What I felt was that I was dealing with someone with the emotional intelligence of a goldfish. In The Year of The Snake I found one that I called a friend. I began to hold her at arm's length. This is something I had to do with the contrarian. The thing is that I loved her but I love myself too much to deal with someone I can't trust. Toxicity is not my get down.

I have a gift for picking up vibrations. Katie gave up good vibes until she turns into a transformer. Then hold your hats, folks. In the last couple of years I've been single. Not much to write home about. While we were on good terms, Katie would always probe me for information about my dates. I look at it as a little invasive but I didn't see the harm of sharing these things with someone I considered to be a good friend.

One thing I noticed about Katie that I never liked is the amount of gossiping she engaged in. I should have known that she was spilling my tea as much as she spilled everyone else's.

Her treachery was confirmed to me last week when we fell out for good. It started with a simple text I sent her on what I thought was the day after her latest surgery. I basically texted her, “Tag bitch, you're it!” I didn't think much of it. We curse all the time. Well, she decided she'd get all bent out of shape. She reached deep into her gutter world to accuse me of “opening my legs” to 7 men. I was flabbergasted. First off, I'm grown. I don't report to her. Second, that's a straight lie. And third, we can't all let cobwebs form over our stuff.

I will not use this opportunity to bash her because I was raised to have more class than that. I'll just say she's in no position to judge me. None at all.

So, I find that I must ghost a good friend because she's a snake. I know with certainty that she spread my supposed business in the streets. The best parts of her will be missed. But that Alpha female energy won't be missed.

If there's one thing I learned from Coppola's Godfather saga I would say it would be to keep your friends close but your enemies even closer. I'm still trying to figure out which end of the spectrum Katie is on. Who really sent her my way. Time will tell.

My Memories of Philo: How Kevin Weston Lives On

Until I got the call from an old colleague that another one of my former colleagues from my Pacific News Service days was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of leukemia and that he was in fact weeks away from dying, I didn't realize just how much I loved Kevin Weston. 

He wasn't just a friend, sometimes a rival, he was my brother. He meant so much to so many and my gut burned while my heart bled to think he wouldn't just be around the Bay, pen and paper in hand, speaking truth to power as our key mentor and boss Sandy Close, Executive Director of PNS, had always encouraged us to do. What the fuck now? He passed a little over a decade ago and he has been memorialized all over the Bay. It's time I tell folks the Kevin I knew.

I recall the first time I saw Kevin. He was lounging on a cyan blue loveseat fitted next to Malcolm Marshall, son to Mr. Joe Marshall who had a long running show on KMEL radio, what at the time was the Bay Area’s premiere Hip Hop station called Street Soldiers that encouraged wayward youth of all persuasions to do better.

Kevin sat there, round eyed, hair long yet crowning his hair in waves that defied gravity in its majesty. The thing I remember most were what I'd learned would be his trademark headphones that he wore like a W.A.S.P. wears her favorite pearls everyday. He was a cool cucumber from the get. 

It was a Monday which was the day we held our editorial meetings. I was curious what this cat had to say.

We circled the motley seating and got down to business with an assortment of 20 or so writers and editors. We discussed the hottest topics of the day. What I was left with about Kevin, Philo to his friends, was that he was a quiet genius. He could tie events together that would appear incongruent to most.

In no time Kevin was a regular around the office in the Transbay Plaza across the street from the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco's Financial District. Boy, those were the days.

Picture it. It was the mid-nineties. All these foreigners weren't hear yet. The Bay was not besieged by mid western Hoosiers. Local talent actually had a shot at landing good jobs. I went from being a founding member of the youth paper I named YO! Youth Outlet to become Senior Editor of our monthly rag in a matter of 2 years. 

We were bumping shoulders with movers and shakers, from Maya Angelou, to Toni Morrison, Gloria Steinem, Pam Grier, Eric Benét, Robin Williams to the darn so-called inventor of the internet, Al Gore himself. 

Let's not discuss all the great places we could have lunch. Being in power positions during our lunch hours we sometimes run a couple hours long. We got to write these meal breaks off as brainstorming sessions. We'd hit up Pepito's just below our office that made the best burritos ever. 

I had phenomenal mentors like our Editor Nell Bernstein, Joan Walsh, Lisa Margonelli, Hugh Pearson and photographer Rick Racamora. Our most famous colleague Richard Rodriguez got famous for writing about bilingual education, ESL, Hunger of Memory, but he was never interested in assisting Black youth. 

Kevin and I had a special bond. We made the cover of the most popular paper in the world, USA Today, together. The topic was OJ Simon and we set the media and nation ablaze. 

Kevin actually got a chance to go on Rolanda, which was a popular talk show that rivaled Geraldo and Sally Jessica Rapheal. I was down south at a family reunion and wasn't answering calls which was just as well. I don't much like public speaking. 

Eventually, Kevin even made the New York Times. These gained him much respect from the young men in the office, particularly Russell Morse who hung around him like a puppy dog.

One memory sticks in my mind. I was all of 21, living in the Polk in my own studio. My rent was $525, I kid you not. I waited for the new Junior Mafia project with Biggie Smalls as I wrote a lot of Arts & Entertainment pieces. I copped one of the first copies of it from the Tower Records on Van Ness.

I called Philo on my landline and told him he had to come through and hear it. So, he slid by and I played the slaps. The stand out was Get Money. We loved it. It represented a change in zeitgeist from earning a living to just getting it by any means necessary. If you weren't born yet, you really missed out.

We smoked some bomb and climbed the fire escape to reach the roof. The view was gorgeous. We were feeling a little naughty so we looked in a few of my neighbors’ windows and laughed at the naked ones and lost it when we caught one jerking his chicken. 

The last time I saw Philo was at PNS reunion around 2010. He embraced me and pinched my cheeks. His soon to be wife Lateefah Simon who I interviewed for Ms. Magazine (She won a 6-figure prize being honored with a Mac Arthur Genius Award). 

It was great seeing the whole gang. I corresponded with him on messenger to let him know that I was praying for him and his family. Shortly before he passed away I posted a picture, chest out, chin up, hair long, arms akimbo. Kevin left a one word comment, DIVA. I was touched. I even shed a tear.

I couldn't make his services. Some homegoings are like that. I didn't want to break down in public withoutsomeonedesignatedtocomfortme. Kevin meant so much to those he crossed paths with. He was a leader. He made white boys like Russell Morse feel cool. It seemed like everyone wanted to claim a piece of Kevin. I preferred to step back and give the floor to Lateefah and their sweet baby girl. 

The Diva in Flatland Diva is all Kevin “Philo” Weston. It's my homage to him as Flatland is a moniker I acquired from Huey P. Newton's first paper that Sandy Close edited, The Flatlands.

Can you see how I'm a little miffed that Google and Yahoo are trying to erase me by removing my blog from its search engine yet every hate group under the sun gets love from Silicon Valley? I’m indigenous. You are all invaders to me.

Rest easy, Philo. In Jesus's name I pray, Amen.

Photo by Unknown 

Photo by Rick Rocamora

Photo by nephew to which Philo named me DIVA. Thanks for everything Kevin. Even the last meal of Chicken Masala we ate around the corner from the office when I was so manic you had to talk sense into me between bites of chicken and rice. Lol. Miss you.