Kofy Brown

I met Tanya at a party shortly after she and Phil moved to West Oakland. She told me she was going to open a restaurant in the neighborhood. When Brown Sugar Kitchen opened, I didn’t know it was hers until I walked in and saw her cooking. Now I eat here about once a week. West Oakland has a buzz; there’s a spirit and I can feel it. I’ve lived here long enough to see attitudes transformed. I chose to live here because it’s an industrial neighborhood. It’s cool. The people are impassioned. It’s a perfect place to build a community. There’s a mix of incomes but people have a shared vision and they look out for each other. West Oakland has a history of people pulling together. This community has a spark and when you live here you start to appreciate it. It’s a real melting pot, true diversity. What we have here is rare. People talk to each other, not to say, “Be like me,” but to say, “Who are you, what are you doing?”