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February is black history month. There’s a lot of it around here. This is a tiny sample. The Black Panther Party Museum opened in January of 2024. It showcases the Oakland-grown party’s numerous community projects like free breakfast for kids, escorting seniors to banks to deposit money and providing food to families, along with publishing […]

This expedition satisfied three top interests of mine: WPA art, weird museums and cool architecture. My first stop was the downtown San Rafael post office. It’s a basic looking Spanish style building with vaguely Mayan Revival window grates. Inside is a lovely mural titled “San Rafael Creek—1851” (1937) that looks like it was painted last

January 7, 2026 I took BART to the City to start this trail leg at Glen Park. The Brutalist interior is massive volumes of grey concrete walls and white marble floor. The escalator descends dramatically to the platform which is improbably lit by skylights far above. At the entry level is a marble “mural” designed

With Expedition 67, I started a series on Veteran’s Memorial Buildings. It could be a long series since almost every city seems to have one! For this expedition, I visited the buildings in Richmond, Albany, El Cerrito and Berkeley. The Richmond building is the plainest and oddest architecturally. It looks abandoned now. Someone held a

I was in town for a dance weekend and decided to hang around for part of Monday for a spontaneous round of sights in Monterey. Did some research and found some WPA mosaics and a former Carnegie library! Monterey is chock full of history; this is a very small sample. Before the Spanish arrived, various

Well, it’s back to libraries again! It’s been on my list to visit local Carnegie libraries and there are quite a few just in Oakland. I went to Melrose, Golden Gate, Temescal and once again to the old Main Library (now the African American Museum and Library).  The others are at Mills College (now used

I visited Oakland’s Main Library mostly to see the diorama exhibit. But first, a bit about the library. This is Oakland’s third main library. The first one was where City Hall is now, from 1978 to 1902. The second one was a gorgeous Carnegie library and now houses the African American Museum and Library (which

The Railway Museum in San Francisco is small and easy to miss, hidden on a tiny street called Don Chee Way off the Embarcadero. Don Chee worked for SF Railway and headed the historic F-Market and Wharves Lines heritage street car project.  The museum has a fun display of old tokens, Fast Passes and paper

September 6, 2025 My main plan was to visit the museum but on the map, Mt. Diablo is so close by I decided to add it. Turns out the 10 mile drive from the edge of the park to the summit takes half an hour. It took me a little more than that because there

There are many local (and all over) Veterans Memorial buildings that serve the needs of war veterans (through the American Legion) as well as the community by providing event rental spaces, dance classes and senior centers.  Most of them are approaching 100 years old and I appreciate that they’re still useful! Many have been renovated