Never miss local events! Sign up for Berkeleyside’s arts and culture newsletter, The Scene. And check out our roundup of affordable things to do anytime in Berkeley.
Around Berkeley
🎨 Artists Vincent Avalos, Kin Folkz and Javier Perez, whose works are part of ACCI Gallery’s “Giving Flowers” group show, will talk about their creative journeys and share where they draw inspiration from. Saturday, Oct. 12, 4 p.m. ACCI Gallery. FREE (RSVP)
📚 “Birth of a Book: Bay Area Novelists in Conversation” features three queer writers with new novels, Tomas Moniz (All Friends Are Necessary), Dominic Lim (All the Right Notes), and sam sax, whose Yr Dead was recently longlisted for the National Book Award. Thursday, Oct. 10, 7 p.m. Pegasus Books Downtown. FREE
🎸 Berkeley guitar adventurer John Schott plays the first of three 2nd Thursday concerts at the Monkey House, starting with a series of improvisation-laced solo, duo and trio guitar pieces with fellow fret-frolickers Scott Foster and Myles Boisen. Thursday, Oct. 10, 7:30 p.m. The Monkey House. $20
🎶 Making her Back Room debut, award-winning Nashville songwriter Claudia Nygaard plays a solo set focusing on her trenchant originals, delivered with her trademark wit and candor. Thursday, Oct. 10, 8 p.m. The Back Room. $18
🎶 Founded in Sonoma in the late 1990s, guitarist/vocalist Harrison Stafford’s great roots reggae band Groundation hits Cornerstone as part of the Gathering of the Peacemakers tour while featuring some of the Bay Area’s most prodigious horn players, like trumpeter Darren Johnston and trombonist Jeff Cressman. Thursday, Oct. 10, 8 p.m. Cornerstone. $27/$30
😂 The city is hosting Live Oak Laughs, aka LOL, a stand-up comedy show for ages 18 and up. The featured comics are Dennis Gaxiola, an Air Force veteran who has appeared on TV more than 25 times, Steph Sanders, who grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and has worked as a professional comic for over a decade, and Nicole Tran, who has worked with Adam Ray and Cedric the Entertainer. Friday, Oct. 11, 7:30 p.m. Live Oak Theater. $20 (RSVP)
🕺 An all-women salsa sextet from the Colombian cultural center of Cali, Las Gauracheras, apply their unusual vibraphone-percussion-bass-piano-and-vocals instrumentation to an expansive Afro-Latin repertoire designed to get dance floors bouncing. Friday, Oct. 11, 8 p.m. Freight & Salvage. $44/$49
🐢 The Berkeley Indigenous Peoples Day Powwow and Indian Market is once again being held at the MLK Civic Center Park. The event marks the 32nd anniversary of Indigenous Peoples Day, a holiday that originated in Berkeley in 1992 as a counter-protest to Columbus Day. Planned activities include a gourd dance, round dance, Native American foods, a “prettiest shawl contest,” and much more. Saturday, Oct. 12, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. FREE
🎥 As part of the Mill Valley Film Festival at BAMPFA, award-winning Berkeley documentarian Connie Fields presents her new film Democracy Noir, which follows the efforts of three women — a politician, a journalist and a medical professional — as they resist the increasingly authoritarian regime of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Saturday, Oct. 12, 1:30 p.m. BAMPFA. $18.50
🇭🇺 Bay Area lever harp expert Amelia Romano, a classically trained musician with a passion for South African and Latin America music, plays a solo recital focusing on her boundary-breaking compositions to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Orly Museum of Hungarian Culture, “where Budapest meets Berkeley.” Saturday, Oct. 12, 2-4 p.m. Orly Museum. $20
🎷 This triumvirate of jazz-steeped East Bay luminaries brings together alto saxophonist Jesse Levit, keyboardist/accordionist Colin Hogan, and drummer Isaac Schwartz to explore music by their favorite composers, including Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane and Lee Morgan, reimagined with electronic sounds and an international array of grooves. Saturday, Oct. 12, 7-10 p.m. Jupiter. FREE
🎹 UC Berkeley music student Jackson Green, the recipient of the music department’s Piano Jury Prize, will give a recital featuring music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Claude Debussy and more. Saturday, Oct. 12, 8 p.m. Hertz Concert Hall, UC Berkeley. $5-$16 (RSVP)
📫 You’ve got mail! San Francisco visual artist and writer John Held Jr. leads a mail art workshop at BAMPFA. You’ll have the opportunity to dabble in the niche art form (perforated sheets of paper and other art supplies will be available) and watch Held ceremoniously unseal and explain mail in what he calls a “Letter Opening Performance.” The event is included with gallery admission. Sunday, Oct. 13, 1 p.m. BAMPFA
📚 Prolific UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild discusses her new book Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right at Epworth United Methodist Church in conversation with Troy Duster, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at Cal, an event presented by Ashby Village. Sunday, Oct. 13, 2 p.m. Epworth United Methodist Church. FREE
🎹 A highlight of last month’s Monterey Jazz Festival, pianist Sean Mason’s quartet played a dazzling set that seemed to encompass nearly a century of jazz history, and for his Freight & Salvage debut he’s joined by Wynton Marsalis Septet drummer Domo Branch, Juilliard-trained bassist Corentin Le Hir, and trumpeter Tony Glausi. Sunday, Oct. 13, 7 p.m. Freight & Salvage. $34/$39
🪧 October marks the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, or FSM, at Berkeley. The student-run Berkeley Forum is holding a panel discussion on the movement and the current state of free speech on college campuses featuring student activism expert Dr. Robert Cohen and three FSM veterans: Bettina Apthker, Lynne Hollander Savio and Jack Radey. A Q&A with the speakers will follow. The event is being held in person at the West Pauley Ballroom on the top floor of the M.L.K. Student Union at UC Berkeley, but if you can’t snag a ticket, it’ll also be livestreamed. Tuesday, Oct. 15, 5:30 p.m. FREE
👞 El Cerrito resident Jordan Herrmann, a retired civil engineer who spent 22 years working as a state park volunteer at Mt. Tamalpais, regularly leads architectural walks in Berkeley (and occasionally San Francisco). His upcoming walk, during which he’ll highlight early 20th-century Berkeley architecture, begins at 10:15 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 17, at the intersection of Rose Walk and Euclid Avenue. You can stay updated on his future Bay Area tours by setting up a Meetup.com account and joining his “Walking with a Guide” group. $10
🎃 Pumpkin sales from Westbrae Nursery’s East Bay Pumpkin Patch at 1272 Gilman will benefit Cornell Elementary School. Pumpkin prices range from $2.50 to $27, with no entry fee. (Don’t miss the fall-themed bake sales from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Oct. 12 and Oct. 19. And read our story about the patch from last year.) Open Sept. 28 through Oct. 31, 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Beyond Berkeley
👟 As part of Oakland Style Week, SoleSpace Lab hosts the traveling exhibit The Art of Sneakers, a three-day celebration of how sneaker culture has impacted sports, pop culture, and fashion. The event includes conversations with sneaker designers and rare kicks on display. On Saturday and Sunday, there will be a meet-and-greet with WNBA Valkyries general manager and former WNBA player Ohemaa Nyanin. Friday, Oct. 11, 6 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 12, and Sunday, Oct.13, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., 369 3rd Street, Oakland. Donation-based
❤️🩹 East Bay Getting to the Zero, a local organization whose work includes promoting “health equity and promote healing for all people impacted by HIV,” in partnership with La Clinica de la Raza HIV prevention department TRUCHA and Rainbow Community Center, will host a free screening of the documentary Viviendo sin Fronteras: Más Allá del VIH (Living Without Borders: Beyond HIV) that follows the lives of five Latinx community members navigating the healthcare systems and what it’s like being HIV positive. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles. Friday, Oct. 11, 6 p.m. The New Parkway Theater, 474 24th Street, Oakland. FREE (RSVP)
🧛 Dracula fans will have the opportunity to hear from Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew, to learn how Bram Stoker brought his 1897 gothic horror novel to life. Dacre will share notes, maps and other interesting tidbits. Attendees will also have the chance to ask questions. Friday, Oct. 11, 6 p.m. Camron-Stanford House, 1418 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. $14.64
🎸 Pioneering Berkeley proto-punk band Psycotic Pineapple reunites at the Ivy Room for an afternoon of mayhem and geopolitical commentary from guitarist and frontman Alex Carlin (aka Alexi Karlinski), who’s spent years riding the rails to perform around Russia. The Uptones’ Eric Din plays an opening set. Sunday, Oct. 13, 4 p.m. The Ivy Room. $15
🎬 Litquake, San Francisco’s literary festival, will show Adrian Tomine’s film Shortcomings, adapted from his graphic novel and directed by Randall Park. Tomine will be joined by Andrew Farago, curator at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, for a conversation following the screening. Read our Q&A with Tomine on the iconic Berkeley spots highlighted in the film. Wednesday, Oct. 16, 6:30 p.m. The New Parkway Theater, 474 24th Street, Oakland. FREE
If there’s an event you’d like us to consider for this roundup, email us at the-scene@berkeleyside.org. If there’s an event that you’d like to promote on our calendar, you can use the self-submission form on our events page.
The Oaklandside’s Arts and Community reporter Azucena Rasilla contributed to this list.