This is an excerpt from a piece that originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 23, 2015.
By Jon Carroll
Every city needs gathering spaces. They foster a sense of community. There probably won’t ever be a demographically appropriate public gathering, but utterly balanced or not, jolly mingling of the let’s-all-have-a-good-time kind can really boost morale and encourage communication.
Oakland does more and more of that. It’s just getting to be a more joyful place to live. The city absolutely has problems, is famous for having problems, and yet there is also a fair amount of hard-won city pride. We like living here.
On Monday night, I went to the New Parkway Theater to see the Warriors playoff game. The Parkway is on its way to becoming a great civic treasure; it supports worthy causes, will try almost any idea in programming, and serves good quesadillas. Reports: The pizza ain’t bad, either.
Tracy is slowly accepting the notion that spectator sports are a perfectly valid waste of time. Like everybody, she likes the playoffs best, the fate-deciding games. So this was perfect: a playoff game, a congenial crowd, Oaklandy waiters buzzing around with platters of food, bros high-fiving, just the whole deal.
Lots of people showing the colors; these were people who cared enough to purchase merchandise.
So the Warriors fell behind early, but the valiant Parkway never lost hope, urging on its heroes. And when they suddenly went on a run, led by little-used subs, either players exceeding their supposed sell-by date or much younger players looking for a toehold in the bigs, the place got very loud indeed.
There was the arm-pump thing and the fist-bump thing and the standing up and writhing in place thing; it was quite great. And when the game ended, everybody walked out of the place satisfied and pleased, and nods of recognition at a experience shared lasting halfway to the car.