In a mostly industrial portion of East Oakland, between Interstate 880 and the Alameda estuary, lies an artist’s haven. Eye-catching murals line the sides of vacant buildings and converted warehouses. Afternoon dog walkers amble past mosaics with glittering animals, flowers, and fruits. Several live/work lofts—built by and for artists—loom next to condominium complexes along the waterfront.
Business corridor spotlights
As part of The Oaklandside’s business corridor spotlight series, we’re diving into the history of Jingletown, its anchor businesses, and what’s coming next to the neighborhood. If you have ideas on other commercial corridors for this series, please email roselyn@oaklandside.org.
Called Jingletown, this vibrant pocket arts community is located within the Fruitvale district roughly two miles southeast of Lake Merritt. It’s bordered by the Park Street Bridge and Miller-Sweeney Bridge, which connect Alameda to Oakland. The Bay Trail, a 500-mile pedestrian and bicycle path that runs through the Bay Area’s nine counties, includes paved and planned routes in Jingletown and along the Alameda estuary.
So what’s with the name? “It’s the most common question I get—where the name ‘Jingletown’ comes from,” said Jan Watten, founder and curator of Gray Loft Gallery, the first legal live/work space for artists in Jingletown.
There is no official consensus on the origin, but two theories have emerged over the years. Around the mid-19th century, long before industrialization and commercial development took over Oakland, the region—which extended to Bay Farm Island in Alameda—primarily consisted of dairy farms, with cattle grazing on the land. At the end of the day, dairy farmers would jingle bells to bring the cows back in.
Watten puts stock in this theory. “Somebody came to an opening 10 or 12 years ago and said, ‘My great uncle used to be a dairy farmer, and he told me that this is how they got the name,’” she said.
The second theory traces back to Jingletown’s roots as a Portuguese immigrant community, as described in an excerpt from a 1984 booklet called “The Jingle Town Story”:
Years ago, between 1910 and 1920, the Portuguese settled here. They had been poor in their own country. Now, when they got here, they had money for the first time.
They did not trust the banks and kept the money in their pockets. When they walked on the streets they would jingle it in their pockets to show that they were not poor any more.
The younger kids who had not experienced poverty laughed about the older people and said to each other, “Here comes Mr. So and So jingling his money.” So they started to call the neighborhood “Jingletown” among themselves and that is the name that it still has today.
Leading up to this, about 25,000 Portuguese workers emigrated to Hawaii throughout the second half of the 19th century to work on sugar cane plantations, according to the Portuguese Historical Museum. Once their labor contracts in Hawaii were up, many workers heard from fellow Portuguese immigrants who had settled in California that there were more job opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Thus, around the early 1900s, roughly one-quarter of Portuguese immigrants in Hawaii relocated to Oakland’s Kennedy Tract (known today as Jingletown). From the early 1900s to the 1950s, most Jingletown residents were Portuguese people working in the California Cotton Mills Company Factory and canneries, according to a 1999 Oakland Tribune article.
With thousands of Portuguese families in Jingletown at the time practicing Catholicism, Mary Help of Christians—a Catholic church at the corner of East 9th Street and 23rd Avenue—became one of their main gathering spaces. Many children of Portuguese immigrants attended Lazear Charter Academy on 29th Avenue, which doubled as a community hub for immigrant families. The church and school still exist today.
Meet the “unofficial mayor” of Jingletown
Cynthia Elliott, a resident of Jingletown for 22 years, is known among her neighbors as Jingletown’s “unofficial mayor” for acting as a liaison between City Hall and the community.
“We look at an issue, we do as much as we can, and then we have very specific requests for help from the city instead of just yelling, ‘Fix it!’” Elliott told The Oaklandside.
Over the years, she’s advocated for safer streets and more beautification efforts in her neighborhood. In 2004, when Elliott learned that developers were looking to build condos and apartments in Jingletown, she and several other residents founded Jingletown Arts, Business & Community (JABC), a neighborhood group focused on strengthening connections through events and initiatives.
“When there’s a development in your neighborhood in Oakland, the developers are required to meet with neighborhood groups,” said Elliott. “So we started the neighborhood group to meet with the developers and talk with them about their plans.”
Since then, JABC has organized community-wide cleanups for Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service in January, Earth Day in April, and Creek to Bay Day in September. These cleanups are held biannually at Open Studios, where dozens of Jingletown artists showcase their work and people can purchase works directly from the artists. JABC is also one of many neighborhood groups that host National Night Out, an annual block party for community members to gather and reimagine public safety.
“The minute I got here, I fell in love with the neighborhood and the people,” Elliot said. “And 22-plus years later, people in Oakland know that I am a voice for our little neighborhood.”
“Cynthia knows everyone and everything happening around here,” said Watten, founder and curator of Gray Loft Gallery. “She is a godsend.”
From 2017 to 2019, Elliott also worked as an assistant for District 5 Councilmember Noel Gallo, whose jurisdiction spans from Jingletown to Glenview. Her role entailed meeting District 5 residents in the field and offering support to homeless community members.
In addition to bringing her neighbors’ concerns to City Hall, Elliott mends broken exercise equipment and chiropractic tables at her small business, Rough & Ready Repairs, which she runs out of her live/work studio on Ford Street. In 2002, she moved to Jingletown from San Francisco to be closer to Coast Guard Island, her biggest client at the time.
“I have a very mechanical mind, which segues into community action,” she said. “I look to see what’s broken and what you do to fix it. So, I reach out to city departments [and] organizations to say, ‘Hey, what can you do to help us out?’”
Born and raised in Sacramento, Elliott learned the value of civic engagement while watching her mother, a Mexican American immigrant, walk around the neighborhood to encourage people to register to vote.
“She pushed [my brothers and me] in strollers, or we walked along with her while she went knocking on doors to get votes for John F. Kennedy,” she said.
Places to shop, eat, and more in Jingletown
It’s hard to quantify the number of businesses in Jingletown since multiple artists and small business owners operate out of their live/work lofts. However, the portion of the neighborhood from 29th Avenue to Lancaster Street and between the Nimitz Freeway and the estuary is home to at least 21 storefronts.
Kefa Coffee is a cozy neighborhood cafe at the corner of 29th Avenue and Ford Street, lauded for its hefty breakfast sandwiches and strong coffee. (One Yelp reviewer wrote, “I don’t know what sorcery they use to keep the cheese gooey throughout the entire time you’re eating the sandwich, but it’s a game changer.”)
Gray Loft Gallery, the first live/work space for artists in Jingletown, has also been a fixture in the community, with origins dating back to 1984. Watten, curator of the gallery, aims to create a welcoming space where people can learn about and view art without feeling intimidated.
She believes access to galleries, particularly for underrepresented communities, is key to diversifying the arts.
“One of my missions is to give artists who have never had the experience of showing their art … the opportunity to show their art,” she said. “In almost every show, there is somebody who’s never had a show before, and this is their first gallery experience.”
Jingletown Art Studios is another hub for creatives. Nearly 20 painters, photographers, textile artists, and jewelry makers—some from New York, Tennessee, and Illinois—rent studio space there, according to studio manager Chuck DiGuida. Located in an electric purple building on the corner of Chapman Street and Derby Avenue, Jingletown Art Studios formerly housed the now-shuttered Institute of Mosaic Art, which relocated to Berkeley in 2013 and shut down permanently three years later.
Other businesses along the corridor include White Elephant Sale, which is Northern California’s largest and oldest indoor rummage sale, with most of the proceeds benefiting Oakland Museum of California; Event Magic, a party equipment rental service; and Voila Juice, a juice manufacturing company serving communities from Sacramento to Monterey.
“The neighborhood is kind of secluded, and it feels more homey that way somehow,” Patrick Murray, general manager of Voila Juice, said. “The neighbors are all friendly, and everyone is looking out for each other.”
Creative solutions to public safety concerns
Of course, Jingletown is not immune to the public safety challenges facing other parts of Oakland. Brenda Farmer with the Oakland Museum Women’s Board, which puts on the White Elephant Sale each year, said sideshows in Jingletown became more frequent after the COVID-19 shutdowns. During one of those sideshows, Farmer said someone pointed a gun at her as she recorded the scene.
“The neighborhood came together, and we came up with these cones and chains to block off this part,” said Farmer, pointing to an empty lot adjacent to the White Elephant Sale, where the sideshow took place.
The community has found other innovative solutions to improve safety. Street art at major intersections has helped combat speeding and beautify the neighborhood’s sewer drains. Residents also installed speed bumps and flower beds where sideshows would occur.
“We did it all guerilla style—didn’t ask for permission,” Elliott said.
Last summer, amid a spate of smash-and-grab burglaries at Jingletown businesses, residents came together to create a Slack channel through which they can share photos and information about happenings in the neighborhood. Today, the Slack channel has 130 members.
They also mapped out the location of every security camera in Jingletown—whether owned by residents or businesses—in case of an emergency.
“So if something happens, we’re checking in with each other and asking if they have any camera [footage] that we can send off to the police,” said Elliott.
What’s next for Jingletown?
Elliott said the owner of Kefa Coffee, Dina Kenna, plans to shut down permanently “in the near future.” The Oaklandside reached out to Kefa Coffee multiple times and has not received a response in time for publication.
In addition, there have been rumors that Amazon will open a fulfillment center adjacent to Jingletown at 3600 Alameda Avenue. However, the e-commerce giant has backtracked on those plans, opting to build more fulfillment centers in rural areas, said an Amazon executive in an interview with Modern Retail. Instead, Prologis—a real estate investment trust company headquartered in San Francisco—will construct an industrial warehouse there, according to the San Francisco Business Times.
As for events, Jingletown’s free Art Walk is this Saturday from 1-5 p.m. Jingletown Art Studios, Gray Loft Gallery, and several community artists will showcase their work, with live music from the Chickens on Wood Stringband between 2-4 p.m.
