In the 'hood

Tuesday, July 10^th, 2012

Oakland. The city across the bay. Home to the Silver and Black of the Raiders. I don't think I know of another Oakland, so this has to be the place. Some days, I feel that I know what cities are like. Today was not one of those days.

I've been to this shipper before, the Gatorade bottling plant, masquerading as Quaker Oats on my bills. It is a squat facility, but long and narrow. The workers here are union it seems, which is awesome for them. I'm not sure if this is related to the previous statement, but the lady who helped me this morning was rather curt and impolite. I was to pick up a load at 0600. She said come back at 0700. Let me rephrase that. I heard come back at 0700. So I did. I even found the truck stop here in Oakland. More on that later.

The business end of the bottling plant faces south on 57^th, just off International Avenue. Predictably, International avenue has a host of restaurants from various places, mostly Mexican food. There are little grocery stores, a few churches, but the shiniest building was a crematorium, advertising its services in bright green neon. The building here are low brick affairs, with what appear to be square metal patches along the roof lines, each patch having a rod capped with a nut on the ends. Earthquake measures presumably. Driving down 57^th, one gets the impression that you are really driving through a narrow aisle of a drop-yard; trailers in various stages of empty and loaded flank you on either side, like boxy honor guards. There is a dubious turn around for tractor trailers at the end of the road, which dead ends incidentally, but one can make the turn if you watch the mirrors closely enough.

So I'm backed in at 0715. A tricky maneuver, but nothing that cannot be done without patience and stopping to make sure you're not backing into anything. A lot. Then I wait. In the mean while, my 14 hours clock is ticking away. I've got to be parked and done by 1116. The long and short of it is that I used every single minute I had left of my time either waiting or coasting into a parking place at the truck stop. I finished with 00:00 left on the clock.

Now, about that “truck stop.” I do not think it would be fair to call this place a truck stop. Normally, with the mention of “truck stop” acres of blacktop come to mind, trucks parked in rows either idling or sitting silent. This is nothing of the sort. There are two fuel lanes, a scale and not much else. The C-store is minimal and sparse. The guy working the counter was quite pleasant, and there is laundry and showers. Parking? Not so much. If you drive along the facing avenue, you will see about a score of trucks parked along the roadside. A four lane road, flanked by buildings, the BART line and another rail line. Everything here is topped with barbed and razor wire. The auto parts pick-n-pull place looks like a military installation, minus the towers. The trees along the avenue all have aquare, trailer sized dents in their foliage.

The people here seem cautious. Unless they are asking you for money. To be fair, this only happened twice, but I probably slept through most of the day. Well, I did, but I gave one lady an apple and and orange, but she still insisted that she wanted some money for food. So I gave her a dollar in quarters. The next lady came by asking for change, and I told her that I gave it to the first lady that came by. She then inquired if I would like some company. For those that do not know, she was offering ... well, you'll just have to either not know or ask someone else.

I won't miss Oakland, but if I'm ever here again for any stretch of time I'm hopping across the Bay. At least they have seafood over there.