Eleven blocks of Telegraph Avenue were blocked off on Sunday to make room for the 11th annual Temescal Street Fair in Oakland. 

From 40th Street to 51st, restaurants, shops, merchants and performers gathered with Oakland locals.

“Neighbors in this district look forward to it as a representation of Temescal,” says Morgan Henry, information volunteer for the fair.

The Temescal District is a neighborhood in North Oakland that runs along Telegraph Avenue and is named for the Temescal Creek that runs throughout.

The street fair took place in the heart of the neighborhood, spanning a stretch of Telegraph that is home to some of Oakland’s popular restaurants; Dona Tomas, Genova Delicatessen, and Lanesplitter Pizza.

Through the thick crowd of families with small children, young couples, and meandering browsers, different types of music played. Outside of Flying Yoga, dancers on silk hammocks swung to music played from a stereo. 

A little further up, Kinetic Arts Center, a trapeze arts school based in West Oakland, has a stage set up with young students swinging for the audience. 

Musicians play along the street or on one of four stages.

The fair, Henry says, “gives local merchants a chance to have visibility.”

All along the blocked-off stretch of road, booths have been placed to sell goods and services. Local yoga studios, creameries, hand-printed shirt vendors beg the passers-by to take a peak.  “Uh oh,” one artist says to a browser, “your aura—I got a painting just for it.” 

Kinich Cota, a jewelry maker whose business, Argtesana Cota, is based in San Francisco, attends the fair for the first time this year.

Cota sell her products with her husband while their young child sitting behind the booth. 

This, Cota says, is her first year as a licensed businessperson.  “Before this, I was a wandering craftsmen.”

Louise Garbanino has attended the fair since its beginning.  She sells fleece and cotton hats which she makes from her Oakland-based business. 

It isn’t just goods people are selling at the fair. 

Bay Area Music Therapy is a service that “provides music therapy services for people of all ages,” says Shelley Tsao. Bay Area Music Therapy is present at the fair because they have a studio nearby.

“This is our neighborhood,” Tsao explains.  The Oakland location is close, around the corner from the Rockridge BART station. 

“I think [the fair] has helped the neighborhood a lot. It’s a common thread for the Temescal neighborhood, and for Oakland,” says Henry.