I Move to Oakland, Around the Corner from the Black Muslim Bakery

It looks like I’ve got a semi-stable home now. It has many things to recommend it, in particular: it’s cheap. I’ll be paying $70–$110 less each month than I was when I was living across the bay, depending on how things work out — and for a bigger room.

The house is in Oakland, just south of Berkeley, in a good area for bicycling, and (I’ll say it before you do) a great place to meet other politically radical nutcases like myself. In fact the house itself is home to (among others) a bunch of punks associated with the legendary Gilman Street warehouse that I remember from when I was a young punk rocker, oh, twenty years ago or something embarrassing like that. I had no idea it was still in operation.

The Goodwill thrift store is right up the street, as is something called the “Center for Creative Reuse” which looks delightfully like a thrift store designed by and for artists and weirdos. I scored some floppy discs there for a dime. That’s what I’ve been using to maintain The Picket Line via sneakernet between my laptop and the computers down at the public library (also right down the street) while I wait to get a phone line and home internet access.

Amtrak is a few blocks in one direction; BART several blocks in the other direction. A major AC Transit bus line stop is a block from my door, and I can hop on a less-wide-ranging but free bus a few blocks away. Or I can bike to Oakland’s Chinatown or to the U.C. Berkeley campus without having to face the kind of hills that were par for the course in San Francisco.

All in all, a very positive development. I can finally start unpacking and feeling like I have a home.


If you’re keeping track: “A record 6.9 million adults were incarcerated or on probation or parole [in the United States] , nearly 131,000 more than in , according to a Justice Department study. Put another way, about 3.2 percent of the adult U.S. population, or 1 in 32 adults, were incarcerated or on probation or parole at .” ―Associated Press


Tax Updates reports that the IRS’s third attempt at modernizing its computer systems, CADE, is finally up and running — years late and way over budget. This is the latest chapter in a running reality-comedy show I’ve featured at The Picket Line occasionally before ( and ).