East Oakland man tasered, another rolls a joint; sideshows in East Oakland

Followers of my blogs may remember a YouTuber by the name of EASTOAKLAND106 (his capitals, not mine) who uses video to capture life as he experiences it in East Oakland between 106th and International Blvd, and the San Leandro boarder.

In the first blog post we saw two young men exact a unique form of street justice in dealing with an alleged drug dealer, and EASTOAKLAND106's camera took us to a side show.

This time he has more videos. The most recent one was of an obviously out-of-control person; our fearless YouTuber describes the event in this way:

This man was on a few pills and some drank i guess. As you seen in the street he was throwing hella shit in the street bottles pots, pants, pipes he was doing way to much so he came from the other side of his gate and they tased his ass you can hear it when they shoot the taser and the red marks on his clothes he went down for the count.

The second video has his friend from our first drug dealer video rolling a joint and describing the special features of his Buick Park Avenue that he wants to sell:



In this video, uploaded October 3, a group of young women are hanging out of a car turning in a circle in an intersection in East Oakland where Sideshows took place. One of the women falls off the trunk of the car as its moving.



And unless you think, as I did, that the Sideshow only happens at night, not so. Here's a video uploaded in June that has a daylight street party. In the video another group of women drive up to a set of young men twice: first to flash them, then to stop and talk to them. And no the women were not stopped; they slowly drove the car up to the men and stopped.



That Oakland Councilmember Larry Reid and others want to have a legal venue for these "happenings" is a good idea if only to stop the kind of traffic interruptions and safety threats the Sideshows bring. It's also clear there's little in the way of alternative entertainment geared for this demographic anywhere in Oakland, let alone East Oakland.

For those who may ask why I'm presenting this, it's because the vast majority of Oakland or San Francisco bloggers don't show it. What we get is a kind of upper-middle-class view of another part of Oakland on the North end of town. Few blogers, if any, pay attention to East Oakland.

Moreover the view of some in general is to want to sweep Oakland street culture under the visual rug. The mainstream media only shows East Oakland when someone's shot but it does not give anyone a view of what happens in the area on a regular basis. That should change.