Peeling back some East Bay history with a podcaster-in-the-know

Who knew that Bruce Lee taught ballroom dancing in Oakland? Or that the walnut groves that once covered Walnut Creek dated back millennia?

Liam O’Donoghue does. The Oakland-based creator of the East Bay Yesterday podcast — available via Apple, Spotify and others — knows all the fascinating stories that shaped Oakland, Berkeley and the rest of the East Bay.

A former journalist, O’Donoghue started the podcast in 2016 “to feel more connected” to his hometown and deliver the type of fleshed-out back stories and real-life voices you won’t find on Atlas Obscura. With 83 episodes under his belt, he’s covered everything from the region’s earliest baseball teams to the country’s first Black union, John Muir and more.

Q

How do you see the grand arc of East Bay history?

A

We look around and see how fast things are changing, especially in the past 20 years with the tech boom, development and the price of real estate, (but) we have to remember that when we look back on the last 150 years of California history, things have always been changing fast. You can pick almost any decade to prove it. The exciting thing is we can look back at these crossroads and have this critical view, look at issues like development and say, “Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to plow through thriving neighborhoods.”

Q

AThe reason John Muir ended up moving to Martinez in the late 1800s was because he met and married Louisa Strentzel and went into business with her father managing the orchards on his farm. People would see him come into the bank with dollar bills stuffed into pillowcases. I think his burial site is a really overlooked East Bay destination.

QThe Transcontinental Railroad was a game changer for the Bay Area ...

AIt really changed everything. Oakland was a small town before the railroad got there. Tons of industry developed around the terminal. At the Oakland Long Wharf, people would get off and take a ferry into San Francisco. Another terminus was at Point Richmond, where people would take a ferry to San Rafael. At one point, the Bay Area was the most passengered ferry system in the world. History goes in cycles. Those ferries went out of business in favor of the trains. Now they’re trying to bring the ferries back again.

Q

What don’t we know about John Muir?

What can you tell us about the country’s first Black union?

AOne of the defining struggles in the years before the 1960s marches for racial equality was the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. In the early 20th century, the Pullman Car Company was the biggest employer of Black men in the country. By the 1920s, the workers were fed up with the low pay and abusive conditions. Oakland activist C.L. Dellums helped them organize, and that was a training ground for future struggles, including the 1940s struggle to desegregate the U.S. military. People like Thurgood Marshall would come to Oakland and meet with Dellums at his house.

Liam O’Donoghue started the East Bay Yesterday podcast in 2016 “to feel more connected” to his hometown and deliver the type of fleshed-out back stories and real-life voices you won’t find on Atlas Obscura.

Q

ABefore (Bruce Lee) was a kung fu master, one of his side hustles was as a ballroom dancer and instructor (in Oakland). He would hang out at various hotels, like The Leamington, and charge couples $1 for a dance lesson.

And on one of my Oakland walking tours, a 96-year-old man said when he was a kid, he would go down to the airport and watch Amelia Earhart fly her plane. She had an office in Oakland.

Q

AAny little-known East Bay pop culture factoids?

Any curious Contra Costa County morsels?

There’s an abandoned hotel in Byron, the Byron Hot Springs Hotel, that is closed to the public. But in the 1920s, it was a resort to Hollywood’s elite. I was going cherry picking in Brentwood with my wife and some friends and decided to check it out, but we got chased away by a security guard. What is fascinating about the site is that the government took it over in 1941 as an interrogation place for prisoners of war during World War II.