Strolling Oakland for art

Not all people associate Oakland with social gatherings involving art and culture — unless they’ve been to Art Murmur’s First Friday Art Walks.

Writer Patricia Yollin has, and she reports on the success and recent expansion of the endeavor for this week’s cover piece. She calls her experience “a revelation, almost embarrassingly so.”

At Swarm Gallery, she met Hernando Buitrago, 27, of San Francisco, who told her he felt as if his art experiences in the city had “been tapped.” Anyka Barber, owner of Betti Ono Gallery, said people have shown up for the Art Walk from Pittsburg, Antioch, San Jose — all over the Bay Area.

“So how is it that I never managed to do the Art Walk until it was assigned, even though I live in Berkeley? Am I biased against Oakland? I go there for lots of things, like restaurants or farmers’ markets,” Yollin says. “I concluded that I’m still San Francisco-centric about art, maybe because I lived in North Beach 16 years and worked at Fifth and Mission 26. Whatever the reason, I’ve been missing out.

“The streets along the Art Walk were full of life, the art was amazingly varied, people were engaged and engaging, and not everybody was super young, as I’d wrongly assumed. I’m definitely going back.” See Yollin’s story on Page 16. Next week: Summer movie preview.

Sue Adolphson, Sunday Datebook Editor