Category Archives: Oakland North

Jan 31 0 comments
Oakland North

Oakland at Work: A sailor’s life for me

Pro­duced for Oak­land North’s new series, “Oak­land at Work.“

Though Mary Swift-Swan has tra­versed the Bay Area’s many estu­ar­ies and coast­lines since she was 3 years old, she didn’t set­tle into the non­stop, unpre­dictable life of a sailor until she was well into her 30s. Now, as a licensed cap­tain and the owner of After­guard Sail­ing Acad­emy, located near Oakland’s Brook­lyn Basin, she spends almost every day on the water—giving sail­ing lessons, lead­ing ocean tours and prepar­ing for the occa­sional long dis­tance race. Though her ves­sels usu­ally stay in the Bay, she some­times sets her sails for San Diego, Hawai’i or Cabo San Lucas.

But her favorite part of the job, she says, is men­tor­ing stu­dents from Oak­land Inter­na­tional High School and Oak­land Street Acad­emy, through a youth pro­gram she began, which teaches kids the basics of sail­ing and boat build­ing. “Some of these kids have never been out­side of Oak­land,” said Swift-Swan, who makes a point of tak­ing her stu­dents through­out the East Bay, around the penin­sula and up and down the coast­lines of Marin dur­ing their time together. “I fell in love with the kids of Oak­land,” she said. “They’re the rea­son I decided to open my busi­ness here.”

Nov 23 0 comments
Blog, Oakland North

Infographic: The Costs of Occupy

Check out this info­graphic I made for Oak­land North, which illus­trates some of the costs incurred by the City of Oak­land as offi­cials attempted to man­age the Occupy Oak­land protests.

Byrhonda Lyons did the reporting:

A week after Occupy Oak­land pro­test­ers were evicted from Frank Ogawa Plaza for the sec­ond time, the city is still pay­ing for the cleanup and secu­rity. Cur­rently, the city pro­vides 24-hour patrolled secu­rity to make sure no more tents are pitched in the plaza and has upgraded its secu­rity sys­tems, as well. As things begin to calm down, many res­i­dents are left won­der­ing:  How much did Occupy Oak­land cost the city? And was it worth it?

Using infor­ma­tion released by the City Administrator’s Office, city bud­get reports and our own report­ing, Oak­land North reporters have cre­ated an info­graphic that weighs the costs of Occupy Oakland.

All of the graph­ics I’ve ever never up to this point now seem like crude, child­ish doodles.

Click the image for view full-size image.