Mosswood Meltdown 2023

Back in 2013, I was a recent transplant to Oakland from San Francisco. I was the first of my friends to make what would soon become (unbeknownst to me) an exodus from the increasingly expensive city life taken over by an explosion of tech startups. 

As a shy twenty-two-year-old newbie to the town, I’ll admit I felt a bit out of my element. Oakland was a different beast from San Francisco. It was sprawling, neighborly, proud, gritty, calm, yet rambunctious all at once. 

A regular at my friend’s coffee shop gave him a weekend ticket to a small festival at Mosswood Park he helped organize, known as Burger Boogaloo then. It was the first time the show would be held at Mosswood. My friend had to work, so I took the ticket and went by myself to a nearby park I had yet to visit. 

Back then, it was a smaller affair. There was no second or third stage, no celebrity host, just a concrete amphitheater and some grass where people threw down some blankets and sipped tall cans of cheap beer and ate vegan-friendly food from local vendors.

I met a friend’s newly one-year-old baby, Henry, as he danced with his mom and dad, a friend’s ex-girlfriend, who hours later would confess she was tripping on acid, and an alumni who I shared classes with but never could stammer up the courage to talk to before. For whatever reason, people seemed more approachable in this setting, guards down, enjoying music.

Even the bands were mostly Bay Area locals: Peach Kelli Pop, Jonathan Richmond, Shannon and the Clams and the Fuzz graced the stage for an eager, albeit humble sized festival crowd.

Though I had gone to the festival alone, I finally felt at home in this new town across the bay. I learned that Oakland had a whole life bubbling beneath its surface - underground music, clubs, parties, markets. If you could conceive, you could find a community to nurture it. 

Oakland wasn’t trying to appeal to city-slicking outsiders; it was a place for outsiders to make a home for themselves. 

Over the past ten years, I’ve witnessed impressive acts grace the stage, like the late-great Ronnie Spector, Iggy Pop, Devo, Bikini Kill, Jesus and Mary Chain, Le Tigre, Damned, Kim Gordon, Thee Oh Sees, etc., etc.

While I mourn for the $50 weekend ticket price, and grasp for my early-twenties outlook on Oakland’s potential and possibilities, I still pay homage to my neighborhood walking-distance festival that still feels like a lost misfits family reunion each time I go. 

I’m left inspired by the generations of feminist punks who paved the path before me, and for new generations of folks who are not afraid to look and say and feel exactly as they are. 

I still hear Le Tigre’s lyric “one step forward, five steps back” ringing in my ears. Yeah, “Feminists, we're calling you” and we’ve got a lot of work to do. 

But for a moment, I can sink back into my little microcosm community, feel seen and held. 

Oakland still has that “I-don’t-care-what-you-think-about-me-and-I’ll-do-what-I-want” grit and tenacity I fell in love with and Mosswood Meltdown is a welcomed reminder of this.