Gabriel Granillo

1 month ago | eastbayexpress.com | Gabriel Granillo

Briana Loewinsohn’s Raised by Ghosts begins with a note to the reader: This is not a love story. It is a love letter. In the Oakland-based cartoonist’s latest book, a semi-autobiographical young adult graphic novel set in early 1990s Oakland, notes are a kind of currency for young Briana and her high school classmates, a way to connect with friends and disconnect from the sober realities of homelife.

2 months ago | wweek.com | Gabriel Granillo

Sure, Marvel and DC have their multimillion-dollar franchises of dead superheroes who won’t stay dead, their spinoffs and crossover events. But comics are so much more than that, and the proof is on the corner of Southeast Division Street and Orange Avenue at Books with Pictures. “Our fundamental goal is to be welcoming and comforting to people that either don’t usually know comics or want to get into comics,” says Books with Pictures store manager Nick Orr.

2 months ago | wweek.com | Gabriel Granillo

In Portland, ball is life. Just don’t say that out loud unless you want to get a cease-and-desist letter. Back to the Basket, a vintage basketball shop on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, formerly Ball Was Life, knows this firsthand. After receiving a threatening letter in 2022 from Ballislife, a basketball-focused media company, Back to the Basket, which sells everything from sneakers to memorabilia, rebounded with a rebrand.

2 months ago | wweek.com | Gabriel Granillo

Ask one person about Frida Kahlo and they’ll point you toward the myriad kitschy trinkets and souvenir items—everything from tote bags to keychains to socks—brandishing the artist’s “don’t fuck with me” stare and her signature monobrow. Ask another person about Kahlo and they’ll tell you she was a feminist and queer icon, a bold woman whose work unabashedly confronted unrequited love, violence, abortions and disability.

2 months ago | wweek.com | Gabriel Granillo

It’s an almost universal experience for kids of the Latin community: You’d go to your abuela’s house for a holiday or birthday party or simply for the chisme, have a cafecito and enjoy some mazapán. “Everybody and their grandma knows about mazapán,” says Braulio Gonzalez, owner and operator of La Lucha Coffee, a new cart inside the Buckman neighborhood’s Enso Winery that opened in November. “For me it was a nostalgic candy growing up.