| Lower Bottoms | |
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| — Neighborhood of Oakland — | |
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Lower Bottoms
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| Country | United States |
| State | California |
| County | Alameda |
| City | Oakland |
The Lower Bottoms (also known as The Bottoms[1]) is the informal name of a neighborhood in West Oakland in Oakland, California. The neighborhood boundaries are Mandela Parkway to the east, 7th Street to the south, West Grand Avenue to the north, and the former Oakland Army Base to the west. It includes the "central station development" of the former 16th Street Train Station, which served as a film location for the 2005 film Rent[2] and Vallejo rapper E-40's "Tell Me When to Go" video. It is also the hometown of playground basketball legend Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell.
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The neighborhood has suffered from high rates of crime [3] and poverty since the decline of Oakland's industrial economy in the late 20th century. The neighborhood earned its nickname after the construction of the Cypress Freeway in the 1950s that split the West Oakland neighborhood in two and isolated Oakland Point from the remainder of West Oakland. The one housing project is Campbell Village Court.
Seventh Street was an African-American cultural center of Oakland from the 1940s to the 1960s, due to nightclubs such as Slim Jenkins' Place, Esther's Orbit Room and the Lincoln Theater, which drew top blues and jazz performers from across the United States.[4] The decline of Seventh Street has been blamed on the construction of the Cypress Freeway and subsequent BART elevated track lines which run along the street.[5]
At the corner of Ninth and Center Streets, Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, was gunned down in a failed drug deal on August 22, 1989.[6]
The Bottoms is undergoing gentrification,[7] similar to neighboring "Dogtown" area of West Oakland. Once the most devalued neighborhood in Oakland, the Lower Bottoms now has some newly rehabilitated Victorian homes that have recently sold for $700,000. It is now a slightly more sought after area to live in because of its location as a historic center of the Bay Area and its proximity to San Francisco.
Several community organizations are based in Lower Bottoms, including the Lower Bottoms Neighborhood Association, the Prescott-Joseph Center, UNIA, Alliance for West Oakland Development, Prescott-Oakland Point Neighborhood Association, The Lower Bottom Playaz theater troupe, City Slicker Farms and Mo Better Foods. In 2006, a locally owned and full-service grocery store, named Mandela Foods Cooperative, opened in Lower Bottoms, providing neighbors access to fresh produce. Mandela focuses on nutritional education and affordable foods grown locally. Bikes 4 Life, on the corner of 7th and Peralta, is a community bicycle shop that sells new and used bikes, offers repairs, trains youth and organizes bike events for the community.
The entire neighborhood lies within the boundaries of Oakland's Downtown-West Oakland District 3 City Council seat represented by West Oakland resident Nancy Nadel, who was re-elected, in 2008, to her fourth term (four years) on Oakland's City Council.[8]
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