Great Escape: Oakland Art Murmur

If you only ever venture to Oakland for church or the A's games, you might be missing out on one of the Bay Area's best free events: the Oakland Art Murmur

For one night a month, normally sleepy Uptown (beginning at about 18th and extending up, though only a few blocks around 23rd and Telegraph get really mobbed) transforms into a sea of camera-and-beer-toting revelers. Local galleries throw open their doors to the masses, and vegan cupcakes abound. 

Show up between 6 and 9 p.m. on the first Friday of the month, and you'll be treated to art movies projected on buildings, motion-sensitive shrubberies, and a crush of people the likes of which you haven't seen since the Giants won the Series. 

It's exactly the sort of activity that draws vague comparisons to Brooklyn. Which I detest, not least because it's so unfair to the O, which, despite bleeding population in the last census, has really been putting its best foot forward on the culture front. 

 Brooklyn is America's unofficial fourth largest city, encompassing tornadoes and trailer parks, terrorist cells and taxi rackets, organ trading and underground ping-pong, the country's oldest continuously-operated roller-coaster and its largest morgue, 11 ethnic Mafias you haven't even heard of yet—the point is that Oakland, however affordable and inching toward awesome, just can't compare.  

Still, the Oakland Art Murmur is, I will admit it, just a little wee bit "Brooklyn"— where Brooklyn is metonymy for a diverse mob of creative young types with tight pants and big cameras.  By which I mean it it is hip, and fun, and free. And very hip—did I mention that?

Curious? The event returns this Friday.