Love Our Lake Day
My wifi is down so I have no choice but to write this blog post directly from my iPhone 4S. Boy, I can’t wait for the iPhone 6 to come out! The City of Oakland was all about walking and biking today. Love Our Lake Day is an event sponsored by WOBO (Walk Oakland Bike Oakland) which took over many streets down Lakeshore Avenue of Lake Merritt and through Downtown Oakland. My friend and I started on foot from Glenview through Trestle Glen until we got to the Lake. It was still early where the festivities were still being set up so we decided to walk on the Grand Avenue side of Lake Merritt and start from Downtown. Latham Square was the location of one end of the event. To be honest there wasn’t a lot going on there. There was a band playing, one food truck (Docs of the Bay) an ice cream cart, and a table set up by Oaklandish. I got my temporary tattoo and moved on.
We walked down 17th Street to get to Latham Square so we took 14th Street to get back to the Lake. The part of the lake with the footbridge was another area with festivities. There were a handful of food trucks and vendors, tables promoting different mayoral candidates, and a very cool stage completely powered by bikes. The best thing in this area was seeing the completion of an art installment located under the bridge. “Undercurrent” is 20 steel columns of light and movement.
We made our way up Lakeshore Avenue to El Embarcadero for the end of the festivities. There was another stage powered by bikes, ethnic dancers, and more food trucks and vendors. We were quite hungry now having walked six miles already. I noticed that the food vendor/caterer Marus Kitchen was frying up empanadas to order. I ordered one of the combination plates which had a chicken empanada, beef empanada, and arroz con gandules (a Puerto Rican style rice). It was actually quite good and reasonable for $10 which includes a drink.
Today was a beautiful day with perfect Oakland weather. I didn’t feel like it was a crowded event and I’m not sure it was because there truly wasn’t a lot of people or because the event covered so much distance and people were moving. It was great to have the streets closed off for pedestrians on foot and bicyclists young and old. I was pleasantly surprised by the bands as well. I had a nice time at Love Our Lake Day. My only recommendation is to have a lot more food trucks and food vendors at this event in the future. After all this walking or biking, people need sustenance.
