shooting happened at a bar <\/a>six hours after March\u2019s First Fridays ended. Still, the event is getting a bad reputation, and some vendors say they are feeling the impact.<\/p>\nOakland Blooms is the theme for this First Fridays event in Oakland. While there was a good crowd on Telegraph Avenue, some vendors, like Kai Smalls, said they noticed a difference after the fatal shooting in March.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like they definitely do impact like the amount of people who want to come,\u201d Smalls said. \u201cI came in contact with somebody and was like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve heard about that event is great, but I heard there was a shooting.\u2019 I\u2019m like, I\u2019m there a lot, and it\u2019s not that case. That\u2019s one bad incident, so you can\u2019t like label that for the rest of the season, and it had nothing to do with this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shooting was blocks away, at 3:30 in the morning, well after First Fridays. Mayor Barbara Lee had set forth a plan to make Oakland safer by adding more officers to the Broadway and Telegraph Avenue corridors and increasing traffic and parking enforcement the same week of the shooting. While it didn\u2019t happen at First Fridays, organizers felt the loss deeply.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know we have gone home,\u201d Venessa McGhee, First Fridays director, said. \u201cOur event is safe and we have a good time. It still doesn\u2019t feel like a win when at the end of the night if somebody doesn\u2019t make it home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The event on this night had a special Praise on the Pavement gathering to pray for positive change in Oakland. Those who attended feel the city is unfairly put in a negative spotlight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have a good reputation,\u201d Star from Oakland said. \u201cSome things do happen, but I think a lot of people like Oakland and California, the Bay Area and San Francisco. We are not that bad. Everything happens around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Oakland Police Department\u2019s crime data, violent crime is so far down 27% this year compared to last year, with a 31% decrease in murders. Smalls says the community plays a part in fueling the fear and encourages people to come down for themselves to see what this event is all about.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s not fair,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s doing a disservice to the actual event because this is a really great community event that everybody comes out for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Andrea Nakano Oakland First Fridays was back with a focus on healing after two people were killed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-251847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}