East Oakland

Driving around Oakland's Eastside is unnerving. On International Avenue we'd driven past a man loading a gun, crouched behind a car door, and I'd sank lower into the passenger seat and felt my heart leap in my chest. Astrid tells me that two people were shot dead last night just around the corner from the hotel. Today, in the glaring sunshine, the streets are mostly deserted — except for the obligatory dealers and prostitutes sitting on the corners.

We'd met up with a mural artist called Desi W.O.M.E. who said he'd take us to see some of his paintings (don't call it graffiti: it's art, not crime) so we could get some footage for this music video for Cornershop that Astrid is directing. But then at 2 o'clock he'd had to go and he'd left us on our own.

"You'll be fine," he'd said. "People don't be trippin' on neutral people."

"But how will anyone know that we're neutral people?" I'd worried, wondering what exactly 'trippin' meant, and Desi had looked at us — two pasty white women in a hire car — and laughed.

"At the very worst, they'll just think you're cops."

Astrid had arranged to meet a guy called eNinja on the corner of 88th, so we made our way up there together to give him some money. In exchange, he and his friend Chonkie will dance for the video out on the street the next day. I was excited to meet them – I'd seen a beautiful film of them "turf dancing" on the day of their friend June's funeral. June, they tell me, died when he was shot in the back of the head through his car window, driving through someone else's territory just a couple of blocks away.

Yes, driving through the Eastside is unnerving: but I left all my fears in the desert, didn't I?

"If I do get shot at in Oakland," I thought to myself. "After making shit up on my blog about getting shot when I was in Arizona… then be it on my own head."