April 20, 2021 • Sean J Patrick Carney on the ground in Oakland 5733 San Leandro Street, Oakland, CA. Photo: Kirk Crippens and Torre McQueen. Courtesy of the Oakland Cannery Collective. WITH FEWER THAN HALF A MILLION RESIDENTS, Oakland’s complex art ecosystem rivals those of cities twice its size. Muralists, art-school grads, experimental musicians, artist-activists, graffiti writers, and Burning Man sectarians live and work throughout Oakland’s deindustrialized shoreline corridor and flatlands. Its DIY cultures are eclectic and often political, owing to the city’s distinctive history of liberation movements, mutual-aid networks, and labor organizing. Fifteen years ago, Oakland was, relative to tech-gentrified San Francisco, semi-affordable. Today, Oakland artists battle colossal belligerents as varied as their aesthetic practices: parasitic developers, disingenuous politicos, cannabis carpetbaggers, and pandemic-induced housing and unemployment crises.