Oakland officials and law enforcement are bolstering security for tonight's First Fridays event, after several post-event incidents in which violence has broken out near the event area.

Following a series of street brawls that broke out after the May edition of Oakland's First Fridays, leaving at least seven people injured, officials have announced an enhanced, multi-agency security plan that involves extra police and drones for tonight's event.

As NBC Bay Area reports, Oakland police will be out in full force, prioritizing things like parking and traffic violations, and DUIs, and they will be getting assistance from CHP and the Alameda County Sheriff's Department.

"This is the first time in my time addressing these issues that all of our departments are coming together as one to serve our residents and our merchants and our visitors," said OPD Interim Chief James Beere at a press conference Thursday. "It’s a game changer in my view."

Additionally, Oakland's Department of Violence Prevention will have people on the ground looking out for "teen takeover" type gatherings, in which hundreds of teens, loosely organized via social media, descend on a particular location, which often leads to violence. The phenomenon has been trending nationally, not just in Oakland.

"Violence is not an option in Oakland," said Mayor Barbara Lee at the press event. "The safety enhancements that we are rolling out target the late-night hours."

The OPD plans to deploy drones to monitor post-event crowds, like those that lingered on the streets of Uptown in the hours after the May event — and like those that similar lingered after the First Fridays event in September, when six people were shot in separate incidents all several blocks away from the event footprint. Two people were also killed in a late-night bar shooting in downtown Oakland in the hours after the March event this year.

Following the brawling that occurred in May, organizers of First Fridays continued to defend their event, though several sponsors subsequently backed out of supporting it.

Any subsequent incidents at tonight's or next month's event could pose an existential threat to First Fridays, which could ultimately suffer the fate of other free street gatherings in SF like Pink Saturday and Halloween in the last two decades.

Previously: Another Oakland First Friday Sparks Violence, Street Fights, and Organizers Again Defend the Event

• More than 100 activists in East Oakland held a “Die-In” protest Thursday, as nearly 2 million California residents are set to lose Medi-Cal coverage June 1, while 3 million households may lose CalFresh food assistance. The cuts are part of the bill that was known as President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” prompting almost $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over the next ten years and leading to nearly 12 million Americans potentially losing their medical insurance. [Oaklandside]
• Two students from a middle school in the East Bay were airlifted to the UC Davis Burn Center when a chemical was accidentally spilled following a lab experiment. [KPIX]
• Darryon Harry Chun, 28, was charged with murder in the 2024 fatal shooting of a man in a wheelchair in the Mission. [NBC Bay Area]

National:

• About 34 people were injured and one was killed on Friday after an explosion on a barge at a New York City shipyard. [BBC]
• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned Friday and her last day will be June 30, so she can be with her husband, who was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. [The Hill]
• Authorities in Southern California evacuated over 40,000 people Friday as a tank containing 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate, a "highly volatile" and "highly flammable" toxic substance, at an Orange County aerospace facility is currently leaking and could potentially explode at any moment. [CBS News]

Video of the Day:

• In honor of ‘90s-era, Harlem-based, hip-hop pioneer Rob Base, who died at age 59 Friday following a cancer diagnosis, here’s his classic hit “It Takes Two,” alongside the late DJ E-Z Rock. The track was sourced from the 1972 soul hit, “Think (About It),” written by James Brown and performed by Lyn Collins.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Zendaya and Tom Holland recently adopted their third dog from a shelter while visiting Zendaya's family in Oakland.

Just a couple months after rumors swirled that Zendaya and fellow A-lister Tom Holland got married, the couple recently adopted a pocket bully while visiting an Oakland shelter, as first reported by Elle magazine.

The Oakland-born actress told Elle she loves visiting her family in Oakland in between films while going full “auntie mode” with nieces and nephews. She said she likes to come up with projects for the family to work on together when she’s home, such as remodeling her grandmother’s kitchen.

According to the Chronicle, Zendaya and Holland also have a miniature schnauzer named Noon and a Doberman pinscher called Daphne. Regarding the third pup, Zendaya, aged 29, acknowledged the decision was a bit impulsive.

“Logistically, it wasn’t probably the smartest idea,” she said, speaking to Elle. “But emotionally, it was. He’s a wonderful addition to our family. I saw his little face and I was like, ‘I can’t leave you behind.’”

As SFist reported back in April, Zendaya said Arizmendi was her favorite place to eat in Oakland.

Related: Zendaya Gives $100K to Struggling Cal Shakes

Image: Zendaya attends the Louis Vuitton Cruise 2027 on May 20, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images)

A drop in the number of homeless individuals on the streets may be a regional trend as we see Alameda County is reporting a decline similar to one seen in San Francisco over the last two years.

Alameda County released its preliminary numbers from its point-in-time homeless census on Monday, and it's mostly good news all around. Oakland saw a very significant 20% in the number of people living on the streets since 2024, while the county as a whole recorded a 13% overall drop.

The latest numbers are for sure a relief for local officials, after 2024's point-in-time count saw a 9% rise in homelessness in Oakland, and a smaller 4% drop countywide.

San Francisco released its preliminary point-in-time count last week and recorded a 4% drop in homelessness in the same two-year span. And while San Francisco changed its methodology for the count this year, conducting the census in the early morning hours instead of at night, Oakland made this switch in 2024 and theirs is therefore a more apples-to-apples comparison.

Advocates and city officials say the numbers, particularly taken in the context of other cities in the region, reflect the positive results of local programs to prevent new homelessness and to convey people into stable housing.

"What’s consistent across these communities is they invested dollars into getting people back into housing,” says Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, speaking to Bay Area News Group.

As the Chronicle notes, advocates are concerned that the positive trend in Oakland could be temporary, as the city continues to remove hundreds of beds and tiny-home cabins from its shelter system due to budget cuts.

Around 1,300 volunteers conducted Alameda County's federally mandated point-in-time count one morning in January, and this year found 8,201 individuals experiencing homelessness, down from 9,450 in 2024.

And while Oakland saw a significant drop this year, some of that may be due to people crossing city lines into other areas, like Berkeley, which saw a 4% uptick since 2024. (In 2024's count, Berkeley saw a significant, 45% decline in homelessness, while Oakland saw an uptick.)

But Jonathan Russell, director of the Alameda County Department of Housing and Homelessness, tells Bay Area News Group this is overall good news. "We see it as momentum, and we want to keep it going," Russell says.

The region as a whole has seen a mixed bag of trends when it comes to these counts. Sonoma County, which has been conducting annual point-in-time homeless counts for a number of years, recorded its lowest number of homeless in 18 years in its 2025 count, with a drop of over 20% from 2024, and its latest numbers for 2026 have not yet been released.

Meanwhile, Santa Clara County's last count in 2025 saw an 8% increase in homelessness. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, as Bay Area News Group notes, has been campaigning for governor on the claim that he decreased homelessness in his city, which is only partly true — the number of unsheltered homeless fell by 10% in San Jose proper, while it remained flat in the county as a whole.

While Oakland's drop in the homeless count seems dramatic this year at 20%, compared to 2022's count and without accounting for 2024's uptick, it marks only a 13% decline over 4 years.

As Russell, the county's homeless czar, tells the Chronicle, his department is now focused on growing and maintaining the county's shelter stock. "Our goal is not just to open new [shelters] and let others close, but to really sustain them. So a big part of our first investments going into this year is going to be enhancing and increasing shelter funding for current providers to make sure they can stay open," he says.

Related: New San Francisco Homeless Census Shows Slight Drop, But Methodology Also Changed

Oakland’s city administrator resigned Friday after text messages between him and a top lieutenant were made public discussing female employees and colleagues in degrading ways.

The text messages of Oakland City Administrator Jestin Johnson were recently taken into possession by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of the agency’s corruption investigation into former Mayor Sheng Thao, who hired Johnson in June 2023, as Oaklandside reports. The messages were reportedly made available through the city’s public records portal last week prior to Johnson’s resignation Friday.

According to the Chronicle, Johnson’s contract, which was set to expire in January 2027, granted him a salary of $340,000 a year, plus $750 per month for transportation. Johnson is reportedly Oakland’s highest-ranking official.

“On Friday evening, I learned about certain degrading and unprofessional communications involving Mr. Johnson,” said Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, who kept Johnson in the role when she became mayor last year. “Under my watch, I will not tolerate transgressions of this nature.”

ABC 7 reports that Assistant City Administrator Elizabeth "Betsy" Lake, who’s worked for the city for eight years, will take over the city administrator position on an interim basis. Lake previously practiced law for 30 years.

In Johnson’s text exchanges with another top official, Harold Duffey, he said one female employee had a “helluva walk” and that another made him “a little giddy,” explaining he had a hard time looking her just in the eyes.

Per Oaklandside, the subject of one of the more egregious text exchanges was Johnson’s former assistant city administrator, LaTonda Simmons, implying that she used her femininity to influence powerful men and calling her “emotional.” Johnson fired Simmons last June.

"Reducing women to sexualized functions and labeling women as emotional undermines and delegitimizes their value. Given his references to me and what his text shows, it comes as no surprise," Simmons said in a statement. "I reported to then-Interim Mayor, now City Council President, Kevin Jenkins, and others that Jestin was disparaging me and interfering with my work, but I received no support."

Oaklandside notes that Simmons’s spokesperson, Reese Walters, was awarded a $1 million settlement last year in a lawsuit against the city, which alleged that during her time as the Department of Violence Prevention’s public information officer, her boss Guillermo Cespedes regularly spoke about her offensively and inappropriately. She said he also paid her less than male colleagues in similar roles and fired her for submitting whistleblower complaints.

Related: Federal Judge Rejects Motion By Sheng Thao and Co-Defendants to Toss Evidence In Corruption Case

Image: OpenGov

• A legionella outbreak linked to Kaiser's Santa Clara Medical Center in the South Bay has led to 18 people contracting the infection. Kaiser completed treatment of its water system Monday, as the illness is spread through inhaling mist from contaminated water. [KGO]
• Oakland police have charged 23 people so far in connection with the group of dirt bike and ATV riders who took over the Bay Bridge Sunday — four received felony charges and 19 were cited and released on misdemeanor charges. [KPIX]
• As Tahoe’s Sugar Bowl ski resort begins upgrading its cabins, the resort is selling its old, “classic alpine” style gondolas, which were built in 1953, for $10,000 each. [Chronicle]

National:

• The Trump administration has proposed a rule allowing people to send handguns to each other through the US mail for the first time since 1927. The rule only applies to mailing guns within state lines, as more restrictions apply to mailing guns outside state lines. [Associated Press]
• The US State Department will soon begin revoking the passports of US parents who owe more than $2,500 in child support, activating an old provision of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. [New York Times]
• Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says he doesn’t believe “people managers” hold any value in the future, nor those who “resist change.” [Fortune]

Video of the Day:

Be sure to catch one of the Top Chef Band’s famous front stoop sessions on Fillmore Street some time. SFist just might be listening to “Golf Clap” on repeat tonight.

Oakland First Fridays, an event that began as a beloved, arts-driven street fair that activated a long dormant Uptown, continues to attract and/or inspire conflicts among attendees, and last Friday's was no exception.

As SFist earlier reported, there was an incident around 1:37 am Saturday in which a vehicle jumped a curb on 18th Street, a few blocks from the First Fridays event and in the hours after it had officially ended, and injured seven people, including a 15-year-old girl.

But that came after a series of large brawls broke out in the street between 9:30 and 10 pm, minutes after the event's official end time and around the intersection of 18th Street and Telegraph Avenue — with the crowds clearly tied to First Fridays.

As you can see documented in the Instagram reel below, Oakland police were working to separate people who were engaged in physical fights, and teargas was deployed to disperse the unruly crowd.

Those tensions appear to have lingered in the area for several hours, and as KTVU reports, more brawling was occurring on 18th Street when the car drove onto the sidewalk — and its driver can be seen in social media video exiting the car and fleeing the scene on foot.

It's become a pattern for these events that violence can stem from the large gatherings even if it does not occur in the space of the First Friday party itself.

Several hours after the March First Fridays event, two people were killed in connection with a bar fight that happened in downtown Oakland, eight blocks away from the event.

And six people were shot, two of them fatally, in multiple street incidents in the hours following the September 2025 First Fridays event, all within several blocks of the event.

Similarly, in the hours after the July 2024 event, a young woman was fatally shot outside the Fox Theater.

A mid-April shooting in East Oakland that left Derrick Hubbard dead, as well a second female victim, has now been linked by police to an earlier beef that occurred at the April First Fridays event.

First Fridays has come under fire before, and organizers remain defensive, arguing that the event itself has not seen any violence. But this may be an academic point, after several years of a pattern of violence around, and stemming from, the event.

First Fridays organizer Vanessa McGhee tells KPIX that the event takes place not in Uptown but in KONO, Koreatown/Northgate, a few blocks away — the event footprint is Telegraph Avenue between 22nd and 27th streets. And the event technically only runs from 5 pm to 9:30 pm.

And speaking about this past Friday night's violence, McGhee tells KPIX, "We believe the city needs to step up and figure out a way to create some programming or structure or a place for these kids to hang out in a positive way."

Oakland City Councilmember Carroll Fife tells the station that she supports First Fridays, but there is a broader problem at play in the city.

"I've seen social media pages where they're coming to specifically fight [at the event]," Fife tells KPIX. "That is a huge problem we are trying to address."

The tradition of the First Fridays street fairs dates back to 2005, and for many years was a peaceful affair. The event, now organized by the Koreatown/Northgate Community Benefit District (KONO), went on hiatus during the pandemic and had to pause and relaunch a few times in recent years for financial reasons.

The popularity of the event seems to have returned, but much like with popular free nighttime street gatherings in San Francisco where drinking is involved — like the former Castro Halloween and Pink Saturday — violence unfortunately seems to follow.

Previously: First Fridays Organizers Push Back on Blame for Shootings

Top image via @sstackss925/Instagram

Seven people were injured, two of them critically injured, after a driver allegedly struck them on the sidewalk in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood Saturday in an early morning hit-and-run.

A driver and two passengers of a red Hyundai sedan allegedly fled the scene on foot after the driver drove onto the sidewalk on the 500 block of 18th Street in Oakland, striking seven people around 1:37 am Saturday, as Bay Area News Group reports. The victims include a 15-year-old girl, three women ages 18 and 19, and three men ages 21 through 23, who are mainly all from Oakland.

Most of the victims, who had been attending Oakland’s First Friday event earlier in the night, reportedly knew each other. Two people are in critical condition, and three had major injuries, as KPIX reports.

Following March’s First Friday event in Oakland, two bystanders were killed and five injured in a shooting inside a downtown bar, as SFist reported.

Police are asking anyone with information about the alleged hit-and-run to call 510-238-3426.

Related: Two Killed, Five Injured by Stray Bullets During Late-Night Fight in Oakland Bar

Image: Google Street View

LA-based band Moonchild, who were scheduled to play in Berkeley Wednesday, said they were aware of the Bay Area’s reputation for car break-ins but didn’t anticipate thieves would make off with their entire U-Haul of gear.

The theft occurred Wednesday morning ahead of Moonchild’s show at UC Berkeley Theatre that evening as part of the Grammy-nominated jazz trio’s West Coast tour. As KPIX reports, a crew member had parked the 20-foot U-Haul full of the band’s equipment outside the Executive Inn and Suites, near Oakland’s waterfront, around 4:30 am when the thieves struck soon after, making off with the U-Haul in around two minutes.

According to KTVU, someone driving a sedan can be seen on surveillance video backing up next to the band's U-Haul truck. A passenger then exits the vehicle, and the U-Haul’s driver-side door opens soon after, the lights turning on. The car and U-Haul are then driven off.

For anyone who’s spent some time in the Bay Area, this is an all-too common occurrence, so much so that SFist rarely reports on it, except for that time it happened to Sean Lennon. There was also the time a would-be thief was foiled by a Good Samaritan on a bike near Bottom of the Hill a few years back, and someone stole a U-Haul full of 500 handmade puppets that same year.

Moonchild member Andris Mattson said he realized the truck had been stolen when he checked the Airtags attached to some of the gear around 6 am. He told KPIX the tags, which were scattered throughout Oakland and San Leandro, were all reportedly stripped off and thrown in the bushes. He said it seemed like the thieves were part of an organized operation.

Mattson estimates the cost of the lost gear to be in the six figures, much of it irreplaceable.

"Some of these instruments we lost, we’ve had them for years. It’s a symbiotic relationship," Mattson said, speaking to KTVU. "It’s not something you can replace."

The band had previously toured in the Bay Area and was reportedly familiar with the risks of car break-in in Oakland, but they weren’t necessarily aware that the U-Haul would become a target. Nevertheless, Mattson said the band still loves Oakland.

"Our experience in Oakland playing music has always been a positive one,” Mattson told KPIX. “We love our fans here, and what happened yesterday in no way impacts our feelings towards our Oakland fans."

Moonchild was forced to postpone the rest of its West Coast tour and hopes to reschedule its Berkeley show for some time in July.

The band’s GoFundMe has reached about 75% of its goal of $60,000 to replace its lost gear.

Previously: Random Hero on Bike Foils Attempt to Steal Band’s Gear Outside Bottom of the Hill

Image: Moonchild/Facebook

As the Catholic Diocese of Oakland faces mounting debt over the hundreds of child sexual assault lawsuits filed against its clergy members in recent years, the diocese announced the closure of over a dozen locations in the East Bay.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland announced plans to shutter 12 parishes and a pastoral center in the East Bay, with seven planned closures in Oakland and others in Alameda, Castro Valley, Crockett, Fremont, and Walnut Creek.

Many of the affected churches had already been consolidated with neighboring parishes. Bishop Michael Barber said in a statement that the decision followed extensive discussions with parish leaders and acknowledged the impact on congregations.

“I deeply understand the sacrifice this will require,” Barber said. “We cannot allow nostalgia and sentimentality to hold back the message of the Gospel. While we love our local church building, the church has never been solely a building.”

As the Chronicle reports, the diocese’s financial strain stems from more than 300 lawsuits filed between 2019 and 2022, after a change in California law temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse claims dating back decades. SFist reported in 2024 that the diocese was accused of hiding more than $106 million in assets to avoid having the money go to the victims in the lawsuits.

Last week, according to KGO, the diocese was ordered to pay $16 million in one case, although that was reportedly not a factor in the closures.

Bankruptcy filings from 2023 estimate total liabilities between $100 million and $500 million, per the Chronicle.

Barber said the diocese’s financial strain has been worsened by declining Mass attendance and falling Catholic school enrollment, alongside a shrinking and aging pool of clergy. With fewer priests available — and the average age continuing to climb, maintaining all 80 parishes is no longer feasible.

KGO spoke to residents who were in shock over the closures, as many consider their church a second home. Some clergy members are determined to keep their parishes open.

"We don't know exactly what the change is going to be,” said Father Leo Edgerly of Our Lady of Lourdes in Oakland, speaking to KGO. “I know our name is on the list of parishes that may close, but the process is still open.”

According to KPIX, officials said the diocese’s Mission Alignment Process, launched in 2021, analyzed data to identify the most strained locations.

Barber said the restructuring is intended to refocus resources on core religious services and outreach.

Previously: Oakland Catholic Diocese Accused of Hiding $106 Million in Assets So They Wouldn't Have to Pay Sex Abuse Victims

Image: Lawrence M./Google Maps

The judge in the federal corruption trial involving former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and three co-defendants has denied a motion by the defendants to toss evidence that they say was obtained inappropriately by investigators.

There was a blow this week to the defendants' side of the federal corruption case that ensnared former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, her romantic partner Andre Jones, and local father-and-son business partners David and Andy Duong. As Bay Area News Group reports, attorneys for the co-defendants had filed a motion to toss a trove of evidence that they say was obtained after "presenting dishonest or reckless information."

According to the ruling by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, "Defendants present no credible evidence that the government intended to deceive or acted with reckless disregard." And Rogers further denied a motion for an evidentiary hearing.

This development paves the way further toward a potential trial or plea deal, but we still could be many months away from that.

At the heart of the evidentiary issue, per the news group, is star witness Mario Juarez, who until recently had not been named in court records. Attorneys for the defendants have alleged that that federal prosecutors have built a case around the "self-serving spin" of a man with a “shockingly long history of criminal charges and civil disputes," and a "decades-long track record of defrauding business partners."

Juarez's name arose early in this case, way back in June 2024, before Thao's ultimate resignation from the mayor's office. Juarez was implicated as a "straw donor" who may  have funneled money from the Duongs into Thao's 2022 mayoral campaign. And just 11 days before the FBI raids targeting Thao and the other co-defendants, Juarez's home was allegedly shot up — and he was allegedly severely beaten up as well, one month earlier. (A 25-year-old man, Hermelindo Olber Ramos Ramos, was charged last year with shooting at Juarez's home.)

Things have moved slowly with this case. The quartet of defendants would not be indicted until January 2025, and in November 2025, we learned that Juarez was a star witness in the case and had apparently been coorperating with investigators.

As Bay Area News Group reports via court filings, federal prosecutors strongly denied that their case rested so heavily on Juarez's testimony, telling the judge, "The government had been investigating defendants’ bribery scheme for over a year before interviewing [Juarez]." Prosecutors acknowledged Juarez's past run-ins with the law, and they say that they had already collected a host of text messages and other evidence in the case before they had even met with him.

The trial is currently scheduled for October 19, pending any further delays. Thao and Jones are accused of soliciting and accepting bribes, including a $95,000-per-year no-show job for Jones at the Duongs' company — though earlier filings suggest there is evidence that she had sought far more.

In exchange, Thao allegedly worked to get lucrative city contracts for the Duongs and their waste management company, California Waste Solutions, as well as a startup housing company focused on prefabricated tiny homes. The alleged corruption playbook is oddly similar to the one that played out in San Francisco several years earlier, involving both waste management and a startup tiny-home company.

The San Francisco probe ended in multiple convictions, including that of former SF Public Works chief Mohammed Nuru, who is serving a seven-year sentence.

Related: State AG Rob Bonta Dragged Back Into Sheng Thao Scandal, With Claims There Is ‘Compromising’ Video of Him

Top image: Sheng Thao speaks onstage at the TAAF Heritage Month Summit at The Glasshouse on May 02, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by JP Yim/Getty Images for The Asian American Foundation)

The city of Oakland is going to take a page out of San Francisco's playbook to try to discourage sex-work activity on a notorious section of International Boulevard.

Oakland is launching a pilot program that will bring water-filled street barriers to several side streets that lead off of International Boulevard, in order to divert the frequent car traffic from customers of sex workers. San Francisco has had some limited success with a similar effort on several notorious blocks of Capp Street and Shotwell Street in the Mission District — though area residents filed a lawsuit last fall claiming the city's efforts were not doing enough.

The area in question in Oakland is called The Blade, and for many years it has been a hotbed of street-level sex work, often using the side streets of 9th, 10th, and 11th Avenue in order to conduct business with International Boulevard being the main drag.

As Oakland City Councilmember Charlene Wang tells KTVU, "This is an area where there's an elementary school as well as a health clinic. And really the intention is, since much of the trafficking activity takes place on the side streets off of International. International is like the main corridor. But you know, the purchasing activity happens on the side streets, is to block off those areas so that can't happen there."

The pilot program will bring new bollards or barriers to the area, "to force [the activity] onto International Boulevard" where it's more visible and subject to enforcement, Wang says.

Oakland previously did something similar along 16th Avenue — and much like the activity moved from Capp Street over to Shotwell in SF, the sex workers just moved a couple streets down in Oakland too.

Per KTVU, the pilot program does not require full city council approval, and it will begin in June. Wang tells the station, "It’s an experiment. Honestly, I think it’s a 50/50 chance that it’ll be successful."

Previously: Those ‘Anti-Sex Work’ Barriers Are Now Coming to Shotwell Street

Top image: Sex work in action on International Boulevard and 11th Avenue, via Google Street View

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Bay Area artist Julie Engelmann completed a new 100-foot mural on the exterior of Oakland Ice Center honoring Olympic figure skaters, Alysa Liu and Kristi Yamaguchi, who both trained there during their professional careers.

Peninsula artist Julie Engelmann completed the 100-foot mural over four weeks after pitching the idea to the rink, which commissioned the work with sponsor support and secured approval from both Liu and Yamaguchi, according to Oaklandside.

Engelmann said the mural reflects both her background in figure skating and her desire to convey the pride that residents feel for the Bay Area, while highlighting the achievements of two local, Asian-American Olympic champions.

As KTVU reports, the rink’s general manager, Glenn Martin, said the center has seen an uptick in visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of Liu, and the project was designed to stand out amid a growing number of large-scale Liu murals across the region and in Los Angeles. The Ice Center plans to invite both skaters to view the piece in person.

The mural is visible from classrooms at Oakland School for the Arts, where Liu studied, drawing attention from students who watched Engelmann at work and documented the process, per Oaklandside. Skaters and other onlookers also followed along over the four-week installation.

“What an amazing tribute, what an amazing work of art,” said Kellie Allyn, a former competitive skater, speaking to KTVU. "We’re lucky to have such amazing artists here.”

Oaklandside reports that the rink, where Liu first learned to skate as a child, continues to serve as her training base. It opened in 1995 and is now operated by Sharks Ice, with programming that draws hundreds of skaters at a time, many of them Olympians.

Martin said the center typically sees enrollment spikes following each Winter Olympics.

Image: chickennano/Reddit

• Amy Hillyard, the local coffee shop owner who went missing from her home in Oakland on March 25, left the house without her phone, keys or important medication, and the front door was left wide open. She was reportedly dealing with grief over the deaths of a close friend and one of the family dogs, in addition to the stress of being a caregiver for family members. [Chronicle]
• A new bill that’s up for a vote with California lawmakers could lower residents’ PG&E bills by 30% while also ensuring wildfire survivors received their full settlements. [KGO]

• More signature collectors were spotted paying people on the street to sign petitions relating to the billionaire tax, except now they're wearing masks. [New York Times]

National:

• In an attempt to take the attention off the Melania drama, Trump posted a “snuff” video Thursday showing the graphic surveillance footage of an undocumented man from Haiti allegedly bludgeoning a gas station clerk in Florida. [Guardian]
• Meanwhile, Iran has been posting AI-generated Leggo-themed propaganda videos about the US that are pretty spot on. [Forbes]
• A sheriff’s deputy in Southern California was caught perusing dating apps during a standoff with an armed suspect. [CBS News]

Video of the Day:

South Korea must’ve gotten wind of SF’s legendary Hunky Jesus Contest and said, “Hold my beer.” Maybe “Seoul Jesus” can make his way to Dolores Park next year — just need to figure out where to put the gigantic crane.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist