Talk:East Oakland, Oakland, California

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Contents

[edit] New Chinatown

"New Chinatown" as described in your East Oakland article, is not any sort of official, accepted, or accurate name to describe a district or neighborhood here, in District 2, in Oakland.

I have lived here for 29 years, in the "Lower San Antonio", "Greater Grand Lake", "Clinton Park", "Brooklyn tract".... all of these are the same approximate area, and all have some historic and verifiable basis for being called by these names.

"New Chinatown" was coined by some Chinese Realtors based in Oakland's Chinatown, approximately five years ago. A sign appeared one day on International Blvd. (formerly E.14th St.) at 5th Ave. saying, "Welcome to New Chinatown". The sign was immediately removed. The merchants on that strip, a mix of Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Laotian, African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, one German, had gotten together and voted to form "Eastlake Merchants Association". Eastlake had become a popular term to unify and describe the area immediately east of Lake Merritt. This was a way to define the general area and include the Brooklyn, Clinton etc. neighborhoods under one umbrella. This neighborhood is at the nexus of several, and has the smaller "Clinton Park" designation, within greater "Brooklyn", and then "San Antonio" and "Lower San Antonio". "Eastlake" is admitedly a modern consensus reached name... however there was a process in arriving at this name.. a group of established merchants representing the diverse nature of the area voted and came up with this "Eastlake" name, and it has been generally well received. Everyone I have talked to admits "Eastlake" is not a historic name. Some choose to call the area, "San Antonio, Brooklyn, Clinton Park".

As the owner of La Estrellita Restaurant (a well loved establishment in the area for over thirty years) said: "I live in the Fruitvale, and you don't hear anyone there (in this overwhemingly Hispanic district) trying to change the name to "New Tijuana" or "El Barrio"..

This district 2, in Oakland, has been noted by the City as being the most ethnically diverse in the city. I inquired about the "New Chinatown" label about two years ago, when I saw several Chinatown based realtors using this name, and the Council office said, "we aren't hearing it being call New Chinatown, and don't see it as an issue".

The use of the name "New Chinatown" suggests at worst "steering", by realtors with a biased investment, and at best, simple, general ignorance by others.

The local realtor's board should be putting some effort into clarifying names of districts and neighborhoods, as they have a responsibility to insure accuracy. There was some effort put into this, and I will follow up on this. Apparently, there is a lot of "room" to get names put in the Multiple Listing Service for neighborhood designations, (as lobbied by realtors), so this brings up another interesting issue, which may lead to answers as to why "New Chinatown" has become OK for some to use.

I have no objection to a neighborhood or district's entitlement to call itself what it wants to after some sort of large scale community process with accountabilty and legitimate process. The mere idea that an increase in population of one ethnic group and the people who would benefit financially from this increase would justify a name change to an neighborhood is objectional, offensive, and disturbing to me.

I am of Irish descent. If I were to bring all my friends and relatives from Ireland and create a little enclave, could I go ahead and advertise us in the Multiple Listing Service and Newspaper AND in MAPS such as on Wikipedia etc.. as "New Dublin", or "Little Ireland". I surely think Fruitvale could make a case that it is ripe for being changed to "New Guadalajara"; and frankly I could make more of a case that the influx of Hispanics there would justify that name change, more than the Chinese influx here in Brooklyn, Eastlake, Clinton Park, Lower San Antonio.

Thank you.

Ellen Lynch —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.200.116.137 (talk • contribs) 06:01, 15 January 2006


In defense, a Chinatown is usually a compact shopping area, so the name may not extend over surrounding residential areas or the whole district. And I've heard "New Chinatown" used for the Richmond district in San Francisco and San Gabriel/Monterey Park in LA.
On the con side, the name is not very distinctive, both because of its use in other cities, and because application of the name may continue to change as Chinese businesses and people continue to move around.
The article should make it clear that it is a generic term for an Asian business district, and not a renaming of an existing neighborhood. JWB 16:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Fruitvale is definatly a distinct neighborhood/district of Oakland as like any distinct city it deserves an article. Fruitvale is in East Oakland, but East Oakland is not a neighborhood it is a geographical grouping of the low income flatland neighborhoods of oakland south of downtown. Furitvale has its own community center, business district, bart station, and most importantly neighborhood council which is what wikipedia uses as a measure for notability for individual neighborhood articles.71.142.91.34 21:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
The official name of "New Chinatown" (according to the city) is Eastlake, as noted above. Please note that there is an article for the San Antonio district that has subsections for all the neighborhoods it is comprised of (Eastlake, Jingletown, Murder Dubbs/The Twomps, etc). Steve CarlsonTalk 19:00, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


I think the small neighborhood of Glenview is not East Oakland and shouldn't be merged in it. Its a nice quiet area by itself without the riches of Montclair or Piedmont, but not the gangs and poverty of east oakland.

[edit] East Oakland after WWII

It is my understanding that West Oakland is what was predominately Black during and after WWII, with many areas of East Oakland remaining predominately white into the 1960s. Neanderthalprimadonna 02:04, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge of Jingletown, USA

If we do merge the article, where exactly would we put the information? Should we rework the article to include something small about each Neighbourhood?--JUDE talk 19:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I was just completing the merge suggestion for another editor. I had actually recommended that the article Jingletown, USA be deleted as it it unreferenced, and there is nothing about the neighborhood that makes it any different then a million other neighborhoods, but here are my suggestions.
* If merge - move the neighborhood section to the end of the article and perhaps give a short paragraph about each. I see that a number (but not all) of the neighborhoods have short articles with similar problems, you may want to bring them in also and redirect the articles to here.
* If no merge - Consider if you believe that Wikipedia should have an article about this (or these) neighborhood(s) and what it would take to make appropriate for Wikipedia.
Signed Jeepday (talk) 02:30, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree with both of your suggestions. I vote merge IF the other neighbourhood articles are merged here and each of them gets a small portion of the article at the end. I vote delete entirely if the other neighbourhoods do not get a small portion. You're exactly right. The article was only created because of the reference to the neighbourhood in the Green Day song, which isn't significant enough for an article to itself.--JUDE talk 03:47, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I have placed {{Mergeto|East Oakland, Oakland, California|date=May 2007}} on all the neighborhood articles listed (at least I don't think I missed any). Lets see what happens over the next few days. Jeepday (talk) 04:06, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I do not agree with this proposal. East Oakland is a huge area and the individual neighborhoods don't necessarily have much in common besides being in the same city. It's completely normal for individual nieghborhoods of major cities to have articles on wikipedia. Some of these places are quite substantial, even if their articles are currently poorly written stubs.
In regards to Jingletown, it has been part of the Fruitvale article for some time; if there is anything worth salvaging from the article that used to be about the Green Day song it should be merged into that article, not this one. -Nogood 05:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Do not agree with any of the merges. --JWB 06:40, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Can you be more specific? are you suggesting the material should be deleted instead of merged? Jeepday (talk) 12:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
No, why should material be deleted?JWB 17:08, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Most (if not all) of the articles fail multiple Wikipedia policy and guidelines for inclusion like verifiability, no original research and notability. The suggestion is to bring them into one article, where hopefully the content will be brought up to standards and not completely deleted. So if the articles were not merged into this one, what would be your proposal? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Cities and shops and Wikipedia:Places of local interest contains some information that indicate what the likely outcome of a WP:AFD would be. Jeepday (talk) 02:33, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Those links appear to caution about adding non-notable individual local sites, not large neighborhoods which are more populous than most towns in the nation, which are specifically listed as notable. The articles in question do not appear worse than stub articles in general. I would recommend dropping the idea of this reshuffle as there is no evidence that it will increase the probability of improving the content, or of heading off deletion. --JWB 06:05, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
It would appear we have a difference of opinion. Would you care to add references to the articles in question to meet the Burden of evidence requirement of Wikipedia's core content policy verifiability? If you would prefer to run the articles through WP:AFD we can do instead. Jeepday (talk) 02:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Again, references or lack of are independent of whether the material is moved between articles. Like any other Wikipedia editor, I add references to various articles as they are available. For clarity, can you name any specific facts in the articles that you think are false or questionable? --JWB 23:55, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I vote to merge Jingletown w/Fruitvale as a section within Fruitvale. As a lifetime Oaklander, my sense of the city is that "true" east Oakland starts at High Street. Between High Street and the Lake, you have the Fruitvale (and Jingletown), Greater San Antonio, Eastlake, and the Lake. Michaeljwsiegel 13:29, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Remove indent

  • No offense but you kind of have the process backwards. Per WP:V The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source., We don't write article and wait for something to be published to support the article, it should already be published. I have always maintained [1] and it came to light to related to East Oakland, Oakland, California neighborhoods when I placed a {{prod}} on Jingletown, USA that unreferenced un-notable material should be removed from Wikipedia. Two other editors recommended a merge instead. No editor has shown any indication of improving the articles. So I will reveres the question to you can you show any material any of the related article that meets Wikipedia content policy of verifiability? Please review Burden of evidence, I wanted to completely delete all the unreferenced, un-notable content and agreed instead to bring to here where it could all be brought to expectations. You are opposing that merge, and it is not my intent to get in an argument. I have responded to your every objection with reference to policy and guideline. You are the sole vocal objector. The majority of the content we are discusing fails multiple Wikipedia content criteria, I am not going to do an opposed merge, so the choice is yours, you can commit to improve it, we can merge it, or I can take it to AFD and let the community decide. Jeepday (talk) 00:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for confirming that you have no evidence for your claim and no familiarity with the subject. Have you even ever visited this area? An editor with some familiarity with the area would be much better placed to judge the overall credibility of the existing content, and focus attention on actual problems.

Let's start with the Jingletown, USA article itself. You have not even participated on the article's talk page. I will concentrate on the local content instead of the Green Day song, which I don't know about. The article already contains references for the most specific subjects, the three arts schools mentioned. It's hard to tell what you are asserting is nonverifiable in the local content - is it hard to confirm that this is the name of a neighborhood in Oakland, California? Let's start with the ten Google hits for "Jingletown", eliminate the three hits for Wikipedia and mirrors, and see what we can verify from the remaining seven pages, without even clicking through to other pages on their sites.

  • Story about name from cannery workers and jingling coins: [2]
  • Story about the art scene in JingleTown [3]
  • Presence of art district and artists: [4], [5], [6], [7]
  • Latino population: [8]
  • Cotton mill: [9]
  • New housing: [10], [11], [12]

Again, would you like to point to any claims that are unsubstantiated?

You are of course free to initiate AfD rather than actually addressing the content - by the way, your threat puts the lie to your earlier suggestion that you are defending the content against AfD by others.

I suggest you focus your verifiability improvement work on areas of knowledge you actually have some knowledge of. --JWB 04:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

All content on Jingletown has been moved to San Antonio, Oakland, CA, as that is the official name of the district that Jingletown is located in. Steve CarlsonTalk 19:01, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Elmhurst, Oakland, California into East Oakland, Oakland, California#Elmhurst

At the moment Elmhurst, Oakland, California is a stub. Articles grow more quickly when more people view them, and more people will view the parent article. The information as it stands at the moment is more useful when considered as part of the parent article where it can be discussed alongside the general information on East Oakland. When and if the info on Elmhurst grows beyond a couple of paragraphs it can be then broken out in WP:Summary style into a stand alone article. SilkTork *What's YOUR point? 09:38, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Southeast Hills

This section has been moved to the Oakland Hills, Oakland, California page. The Oakland Hills are demographically different than the flatlands. Binksternet (talk) 15:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] the artesian well(s)?

I read in Michener, James A. [1959]. "IV: From the starving village", Hawaii, Fawcett Crest Book. New York: Ballantine Books, p.593. ISBN 0-449-21335-8. “...and when after a long walk through Oakland they stood before a well he had recently dug he pointed with unconcealed admiration at a pipe protruding from the ground, from which gushed a steady volume of water that rose fourteen feet into the air.
“Does it run like this all the time?” Whip asked.
“Day and night,” Overpeck replied
“What does it?”
“Artesian, that's what it is. Artesian.”
“How many gallons a day?”
“A million four.”
“How long will it last?”
“Forever.”” 

and in "Alameda". Pacific Bank Handbook of California: San Francisco, Cal., USA. (1888). p.22. Retrieved on 2008-03-08. “Lake Chabot, referred to above, has a capacity of 15,000,000,000 gallons of water, besides the supply of the old lake near Temescal, which last, with the large artesian well at East Oakland, was the only water supply previous to 1875.” 

Is the well still around? Still running? Visible as described (spectacular)? Or has it been capped? “Inquiring minds wanna know”. A Google search results in what seems to indicate that there are several artesian well drillers around there.
Thanks in advance, --Jerome Potts (talk) 07:39, 8 March 2008 (UTC)