Crosscurrents

Yetunde Olagbaju grew up in Minnesota but has embedded herself in the Bay Area’s creative scene as a multidisciplinary artist and youth arts educator. Her work ranges from video, and installation to performance, and often deals with themes of personal memory, ritual, and vulnerability. She sat down with KALW’s Jen Chien to talk about building human connections through the practice of art.

Water is the defining feature of the Delta, and recreation on the water is a big part of the economy and culture of this place.

Today on Crosscurrents:

• Getting to know boat culture on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
• An interview with Bay Area artist Yetunde Olagbaju
• More poetry from Youth Speaks as Brave New Voices returns to the Bay Area 

Major California rivers drain into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and over decades of building dams and reservoirs and pumps, it’s become the major hub of California’s water system — a system that may change again if Governor Jerry Brown's controversial plans to build tunnels for water transport go through.

Bay Area choreographer and director Erika Chong Shuch has been making all kinds of performance work, ever since she discovered her love for it at UC Santa Cruz over two decades ago. She’s presented work in theaters for more than 1,000 people. But her latest work is for an audience of just 12. It's what she calls an “intimate adventure,” both personal and collective.

Today on Crosscurrents:  

• As the state contemplates water tunnels in the Sacramento - San Joaquin Delta, we'll meet a farm family that’s worked that land for generations
• Bay Area artist Erika Chong Shuch creates a day-long performance to provide a dozen people with life-long memories
• More poetry from Youth Speaks to get us in the mood for this week's International Poetry Slam

Photographer Matthew O’Brien grew up in the East Bay, but he found one of his favorite and deepest subjects a continent away in Colombia.

Pretend you’re looking at a map of the Bay Area, then scroll out a bit.  Find Martinez and Benicia, and draw a line east to Stockton.  From there, go north to Sacramento, then back to Martinez.  Look closely at that triangle and you’ll see a puzzle of waterways and islands that make up the California Delta.

Today on Crosscurrents: 

• As the state debates water tunnels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, we’ll meet the people whose lives it would affect
• East Bay photographer Matthew O'Brien tells us about his multi-year project photographing Colombia
• Poetry from Youth Speaks

   

More than twenty years ago, writer and educator James Kass was in graduate school at San Francisco State University. He had a small idea: a writing workshop for city teens.

If you drive east on the Bay Bridge out of San Francisco and look down at Treasure Island, it’s hard to miss what look like enormous piles of dirt. These mounds are actually the remains of old Navy barracks, ground into pieces.

This auditory guessing game is part of Audiograph, a crowd-sourced collaborative radio project mapping the Bay Area’s sonic signature.

Audiograph tells the story of where you live, and the people who live there with you. Every Thursday, we tell you the story behind our weekly mystery sound on Crosscurrents, and here in weekly blog posts.

Today on Crosscurrents:

• An in-depth look at Treasure Island’s radiation cleanup
• A conversation with Youth Speaks founder James Kass
• A preview of this week's International Poetry Slam competition

At the Conservatory of Classical Ballet in San Leandro, nearly 20 young people line-up in rows, paying rapt attention to their teacher, Carlos Carvajal.

It seems as though you can’t look up at the sky without seeing the long neck of a construction crane.

Today on Crosscurrents:

• Going up in a crane to see what San Francisco’s development boom looks like from a bird’s-eye view.
• A profile of dancer Carlos Carvajal.
• Finding the right note in a garden full of pianos.

Click the audio player above to listen to Damu's audio story  

Evergreen Cemetery is famous for its service to the community of East Oakland. For example, Huey P. Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party was cremated here.

African Americans are disproportionately incarcerated for marijuana charges. That’s true nationwide, and in Oakland, too.

Today on Crosscurrents:

• A new program designed to give communities ravaged by the War on Drugs a leg up in the legal pot industry.
• A quiet cemetery in East Oakland that hides a long history.  

Earlier this year, Oakland City Council voted to stop banking with JPMorgan Chase because of the corporation’s investment in causes like the Dakota Access Pipeline and private prisons.

Today on Crosscurrents:

• How some people in Oakland are trying start one of the nation’s first city-run banks
• From 99 Percent Invisible, a look at the rich history of Colma

This weekend, a long-awaited, brand new housing development will open up in San Francisco.

These days, it’s known mostly as a techie destination, but the Bay Area has a long history with analog gaming. There are several dozen social board gaming groups in the region.

Today on Crosscurrents:

• As housing units open up at San Francisco’s Shipyard, we look back at this massive redevelopment in the city’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood
• From The Moth, a local author grapples with his wife’s mental illness  

Walking into the San Francisco Library in Bernal Heights on a Saturday afternoon, I see it’s packed with excited, brightly clad kids and caregivers here for story time. Instead of a librarian, they’re circled around a tall figure. Wearing a black sequined gown, stilettos, and a platinum blonde wig, and seated with a book in her long painted nails, it's Yves St. Croissant, aka Sean Santos, one of San Francisco’s beloved Drag Queens.

“My only friend in the whole wide world is a hippo named boo boo butt," reads St. Croissant. "Yay!”