|
You might have noticed there are several small Oakland businesses supporting NovoMetro with ads on our site. By sticking together, and keeping our dollars local, we make our city stronger. We appreciate that these businesses, which do not have the huge bank accounts of large corporations, encourage and dig what we're trying to do: show our Oakland online. So the next time you want to try a new restaurant or go shopping, please, please visit one of our bold and only-in-Oakland advertisers that believe in Oakland's today and tomorrow.
Thanks!
the NovoMetro team
==========================================================================================
A note from the founders:
Oakland is a city that reveals itself slowly, and even then, not to everyone. For some, Oakland will always be hidden behind labyrinthine freeway interchanges and a veil of mis-perceptions.
It’s our mission at NovoMetro to expose the Oakland we see by telling the stories of the people who make this city extraordinary. The idea for NovoMetro – the new city - came after years of failing to see our Oakland reflected often enough in the local media. Oakland is more than its murder rate and struggling schools.
For one, not all the public schools are failing. In the coming days we will take you to public schools where the teachers and administrators take the mission of parity in education seriously. Schools where students are succeeding in neighborhoods that may surprise you.
One often hears that Oakland has more artists per capita than any other American city. We haven’t been able to verify that claim, but we have found a city crackling with creative energy in every corner of its 56 square miles. Carolyn Norr, a writing teacher in the Oakland public schools, reminds us that there are poets in every classroom. There are painters hidden behind what appear to the uninitiated like shuttered storefronts. Ordinary warehouses by day, thump with homegrown music at night.
Of course, it’s not all art. Like a port city should be, Oakland is alive with commerce. This is a city where high-tech entrepreneurs share space with potters. Ly Nguyen takes you past the kitchen doors of Binh Minh Quan to show how a 12-table restaurant on the edges of Chinatown serves as an engine of opportunity for Oakland’s newest immigrants.
New restaurants and nightspots are opening in Oakland all the time. Our entertainment reporters will uncover the personalities behind the counters and the desks.
But don’t mistake our mission for airy boosterism. There will be hard decisions for Oaklanders and their elected officials to make in the coming years. How will development be sustained in the city without turning Oakland into a refuge solely for the well-heeled? How will we decide to tackle a rising crime rate? How will we make sure every student in Oakland’s public schools receives the education that is theirs by right? NovoMetro will wade in and take sides.
Oakland is a city of neighborhoods with residents who hold strong ideas about the direction the city should take as it reinvents itself every day. Like the city itself, NovoMetro will change constantly. In addition to the stories we post, there are plenty of spaces for you to make your mark on the site. We don’t believe our articles represent the first and last draft of the Oakland story. Like Wikipedia, anyone can edit our archived articles.
Use NovoMetro to tell everyone what you think about a new restaurant, or share your opinion about one of our opinions. Tell us where your favorite dog park is, or post a poem you wrote at a particular café.
At NovoMetro we love maps almost as much as we love a good profile. We urge you to explore the city through our site. Our maps will evolve. Streets, shops, and schools will become layered with stories, articles, memories, poems, music, and art.
We are reminded of a story Robert Reed, the entertainment reporter who stars in our first video, tells about his arrival in Oakland seven years ago. Exhausted and without a plan, he emerged from the Greyhound Bus Station on San Pablo after a two-day journey from Detroit. A homeless woman told him to get back on the bus. Oakland is a city full of trouble, she said. She almost had him buying a return ticket when she changed her tone. Don’t take my word for it, she said. Maybe you’ll discover a different Oakland. He did.
-----Alex Gronke & Priyanka Sharma-Sindhar
|
