Enjoying the weekend in my hometown

Every city needs gathering spaces. They foster a sense of community. There probably won’t ever be a demographically appropriate public gathering, but utterly balanced or not, jolly mingling of the let’sallhave- a- good- time kind can really boost morale and encourage communication.

Oakland does more and more of that. It’s just getting to be a more joyful place to live. The city absolutely has problems, is famous for having problems, and yet there is also a fair amount of hard- won city pride. We like living here.

Last Friday I went to a skateboarding movie at the Oakland Museum. That’s not all the museum was doing; it was being its regular old museum self, with a movie as the chef’s special.

Tracy has been taking pictures of skateboarders in West Oakland, and she’s become very attached to the sport for its exuberant sense of play. She likes the kids, and they very much like having their pictures taken. A lot of the photos are of skateboarders competing with each other in a dozen different ways, using their skate park as a clubhouse as well as a venue.

The skateboarding in the movie takes place at Town Park in historic DeFremery Park, where the Black Panthers held a lot of their public events. It’s quite a deal: tennis, baseball, a basketball court where Bill Russell once played, swimming, a Victorian- era rec center and, more to the point, a skate park.

Keith “K- Dub” Williams, the guy who fought for the park, was there, and the guy from Levi’s who helped finance the park was there, and ( best of all) the skateboarders who were featured in the movie, all shy grins and modest comments and occasionally a burst of animation as they told some skateboard tale.

The crowd cheered loudly and stood frequently. Libby was there. Libby is pretty much everywhere ( except at meetings concerning the A’s), and we call her “Libby” because, perhaps, no one wants to deal with “Schaaf,” which can be a little chancy when said quickly.

Outside, the Off the Grid food truck Woodstock was under way. Lines stretched out as people waited to acquire foods of all ethnicities, and by that I mean

all ethnicities. OK, I didn’t see Scottish, I grant you that. But I may have seen Mongolian.

There was the camaraderie of waiting inline, which can be very jolly indeed. Sometimes there is even the camaraderie of standing- up- while- eating. The horizontal spaces had already been colonized by earlier diners, so places to sit were very rare.

In the museum plaza, there was dancing.

The next morning, I went down to the Oakland- Grand Lake Farmers’ Market, on Lake Park between Grand and Lakeshore. It, too, was a scene. Good- food hunters ( it’s no longer bargain hunters) and specialty food enthusiasts and people who sell jewelry and people who’ve gotten up at 3 in the morning in Fresno; they all came together.

There is a psychic advantage in cutting out the middleman. I buy some meat pies, and I deal with the guy who makes the meat pies. If you call him up with a question, he answers the phone. That actually happened. He told me I should cook it long enough to open a bottle of red wine and let it breathe.

On Monday night, I went to the New Parkway Theater to see the Warriors playoff game. The Parkway is on its way to becoming a great civic treasure; it supports worthy causes, will try almost any idea in programming, and serves good quesadillas. Reports: The pizza ain’t bad, either.

Tracy is slowly accepting the notion that spectator sports are a perfectly valid waste of time. Like everybody, she likes the playoffs best, the fatedeciding games. So this was perfect: a playoff game, a congenial crowd, Oaklandy waiters buzzing around with platters of food, bros high- fiving, just the whole deal.

Lots of people showing the colors; these were people who cared enough to purchase merchandise.

So the Warriors fell behind early, but the valiant Parkway never lost hope, urging on its heroes. And when they suddenly went on a run, led by little- used subs, either players exceeding their supposed sell- by date or much younger players looking for a toehold in the bigs, the place got very loud indeed.

There was the arm- pump thing and the fist- bump thing and the standing up and writhing in place thing; it was quite great. And when the game ended, everybody walked out of the place satisfied and pleased, and nods of recognition at a experience shared lasting halfway to the car.

And we walked down what used to be the scary, dark streets of downtown Oakland. There was a harsh wind coming off the ocean, but we were feeling entirely safe. Yes, yes, there is crime everywhere, but it’s not as though pedestrians have been driven from the streets. The more the better, quite literally.

Every person participating in Oakland increases Oakland’s human capital. That has to be the right way forward.

Lakeshore is so bustling on Saturdays that there are pedestrian traffic jams.