Oakland We Love You

There were only so many pieces of graffiti we could film before Astrid looked at me and said: "We need to meet more people." These are some of the stories we heard after we started getting out of the car and introducing ourselves:

Gordon

Gordon lost his right leg last July after it went gangrenous. He was on his way back to the hospital when we met him, although he didn't want to go: it's been hard, living like this, and he's scared they're going to want to amputate his other leg now, too. "There's a hole in my foot this big," he told us, shaking his head. Gordon is homeless and spends his nights trying to get some sleep in bus shelters. He has a cousin in Oakland, but he doesn't want to bother her. "She don't really like having me around," he said. "And I don't want to be a burden." Astrid hugged him before he left, and I wondered if the last time someone touched him was when they cut off his leg.

Tevere

Tevere is six years old and the only thing he's interested in is dinosaurs. "This is a Triceratops," he said, holding up his drawing for the camera. "He ate plants and lived in the Cretaceous period." Gordon wondered where the hell Tevere learnt to say all these crazy-ass names. "Didn't you like dinosaurs when you were a kid?" I asked him. "Well, yeah," said Gordon, closing his eyes like he was trying really hard to remember being someone's child. "Yeah, I guess I did."

Chonkie and eNinja

Chonkie and eNinja are turf dancers, marking out their territory on street corners. They've been dancing for years, but it's only in the last while that they've been getting paid for it. Now everybody wants them on their tour. "We're going to Europe this summer," Chonkie tells us. "They're flying us to London in a private jet."

Toni and Antoinette

Toni and Antoinette stopped to watch us filming the dancing. "I've seen those kids on TV," said Toni, and I told her we were making a music video for an English band. "What? You've heard of them in England?" she exclaimed. I said she could be in the video too, if she wanted, and she picked up her baby girl and they smiled for the camera. "We don't have any pictures of us together yet," she said, and I promised I'd print her out a copy and mail it to her.

Nathan

Astrid asked Nathan if he was proud of Oakland and he shook his head and said no. Why not? "It's so violent," he said, like it's obvious. And it is. The mural behind him is a tribute to two young girls who were killed in the building last year. One of the girls was shot in her bed, when a bullet fired through her bedroom window. But Nathan doesn't want to talk: he wants to dance. We filmed him for a while until the yellow school bus pulled up. "That's my mom," he said, pointing at the driver, and we felt a little odd, like we'd just been caught doing something we shouldn't have – filming someone's son. But Nathan's mom just laughed and said oh yeah, he loves to dance, that kid.

Tanisha

Tanisha's housing block has been taken over by gangsters, who broke in in the middle of the night and shot a tenant in front of his kids, telling them they had one week to pack up all their things and get out. Astrid filmed an interview with Nanci: aren't you scared? "No," said Nanci, looking pointedly at the camera. "I'm not scared. I know the police will do right by us, because that's their job." A cop pulled up on a motorbike and Nanci told him the whole story. He listened, he understood, he got them an attorney. It made no difference: every single tenant in the complex has since been evicted.

Monetta and Tachelle

I started talking to these women after the car pulled off, but just as I was asking them if I could take their portrait their pimp appeared from around the corner wanting to know what the fuck was going on. I backed off.

DD and his Cadillac

"May I take your photograph?" I asked DD, after spotting him across the street working on his Cadillac. "Hell no," he said, pulling his cap down over his face. "Well, can I take a picture of your car, then?" I asked, and all of a sudden it was a different story. He turned up the speakers so loud the whole street could hear, and then he stood there posing for me, letting me take as many photos as I liked. "You gettin' those rims in?" he asked.





[Astrid's back in London now, editing the footage, which will be released in September as a video for the new Cornershop track "Milking It". More photographs from our three days together over here.]