Oakland First Fridays — Local services in Oakland

Oakland's most iconic event. People of all walks of life coming together to eat and watch live performances. From break dancing, to double Dutch, to every genre of music live or DJ'd, if you do nothing else, attend this event.

Observe the times, as it ends early,and definitely bring cash to buy art from local artists and crafts people. Graffiti art, street wear, vintage sports wear, hand made jewelry, woke stuff, and other neat things that are uniquely Oakland can be had here.

This event is completely safe, so you can bring the kids. People do not openly drink much but they do openly smoke. After dark, the nearby area and bars can get ugly, but that is almost always long after dark, past midnight. The area is completely safe during the hours of First Friday, formerly known as the Art Murmur.

If you do go back far enough to call it the Murmur, the art gallaries are all between Telegraph and Broadway, in the mid to high 20's, and Saturday afternoon is a less hectic time...

First Friday is Oakland's Uptown community event held each first friday on the month (weather permitting). Here, you'll see street performers, crafts, artwork, trunk sale, fortune teller, puppet show, commercial vendor, music stage, and no event is complete without food trucks. Some established eateries usually incorporate their offering in line with event. Parking is hard as couple of my buddies had to park blocks away. There's no drinking in public, but you can get a drink at nearby beer garden and people watch. Safety is not an issue because OPD are position directly on each exit/entrance, and are seen walking inside of event. Bring a sweater for the evening as it gets breezy afterwards. Lastly, let loose...

I encourage everyone to go at least once. On every 1st friday of the month, Oakland shuts down the street for the festival and there's different types of music playing throughout and awesome food. I recomend Cacao the chicken and waffles/cupcake thing or the Gorgeous Gorrilla they sell oxtail stew. There used to be a gator dish at one vendor but i never see it now😢 There's really cool unique Vendors. Everything i buy here i get tons of compliments on. I bought a bowtie from that place called Jazzy Bow Ties (funny because my nickname's Jazzy)... still get compliments and i had the thing...