By Sarah Han
You wanna know who’s really gentrifying Oakland? According to Oakland Unseen, the three main groups are 29% SF transplants, 26% hipsters, and 16% fuckin’ hipsters. And did you know that Mayor Jean Quan is an aspiring socially conscious hip-hop artist? You might’ve seen her handing out mixtapes at BART.
Oakland, the fake newspaper you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. Tell the kids knocking on your doors selling subscriptions to the Oakland Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle that there’s a new local publication they should be hawking.
Oakland Unseen is satirical look at The Town, presented in the style of The Onion and The Colbert Report. Edited by Oakland native Matt Werner, the fake hyper-local newspaper touches on real issues that affect the city and the Bay Area, such as gentrification, crime, and government shortcomings.
Oakland Unseen started as a Tumblr that Werner created during the run-up to the elections last October. Initially, it was something he did in his free time, just to see what the response would be. At first, mostly journalists, bloggers, and people invested in local politics took notice, but then Werner realized a growing number of people were stumbling upon his Tumblr and sharing the articles. “Jack White Flight: Hipsters Flee Oakland in Record Numbers” got around 25,000 hits in a little under a week, for example. “For a fake news site about a city that’s populated by about 400,000 people, it’s a very high percentage,” Werner told me on the phone. Now Werner is compiling the articles he’s published online (as well as creating some brand new content) and putting them out in print form.
Interestingly, by day, Werner is a technical writer for Google, the epitome of the sector being blamed for the demise of Bay Area culture and individualism. Would a city that’s crippled by serious problems, I wondered, find these articles offensive or funny?
That’s yet to be seen, but what Werner has that most stereotypical “tech gentrifiers” don’t is that he’s not an “outsider” coming in. He was born in Oakland and has lived in the city for most of his life. He also has varied connections to, and roots within, the arts, politics, and culture of his hometown. A former McSweeney’s guy, Werner also writes news stories for Oakland Local, volunteers as a webmaster, and does grantwriting for non-profits. He has written two serious non-fiction books about Oakland’s social movements and its underground hip-hop scene. His day job at Google allows him the creative freedom to do these things on the side, but he also does not bite the hand that feeds him. You’ll notice a lack of Silicon Valley sass or tech hate in his satire.
Werner started Oakland Unseen in part because he felt like there are a lot stories about his city that aren’t being told by the media. But he recognizes that there’s not a huge audience for these untold stories. “There’s a niche audience that enjoys that kind of stuff, but most mainstream 20 to 30-year-olds don’t like very serious, long winded books. They get their news from Colbert or they love reading The Onion.”
He also claims that Oakland Unseen isn’t meant to be mean-spirited, and that he doesn’t even have a strong economic or political agenda that he personally wants to push. “I’ve been dissatisfied with the news coverage of Oakland — that it’s a haven for crime, drugs, gangs, and shootings. I just want to show there’s other stuff happening in the city.” Werner says his satire is lighthearted, but that it’s also purposely open to interpretation. He wants the militant radical friend he grew up with, the hip-hop artist he knows, and the hipster artist kid who brings his vintage typewriter to Uptown cafes to all get (and laugh at) the stories and experiences he’s writing about.
Speaking of Uptown hipsters — even Werner admits it’s a little funny that the print launch of Oakland Unseen will be at this Friday’s Oakland’s Art Murmur, or what Werner calls the “hotbed of hipsterism.” But, he explains, “They do see that it’s funny. People get it.”
Get a copy of Oakland Unseen this Friday from 6–10 p.m. at the 25th Street Collective.
All excerpts courtesy of Oakland Unseen, including top illustration by Susie Cagle.
