All Aboard!

Welcome to the parklet project for the MLK Cafe, located at 3860 Martin Luther King Jr. Way in the Longfellow neighborhood of Oakland, California. 

Longfellow is known for its wide variety of transportation options including BART at MacArthur Station, several AC Transit Transbay lines, the Emery-Go-Round, local shuttles, freeway connections and many bike lanes. In fact, the neighborhood has a deep public transportation history and the MLK Cafe Parklet will pay homage to the rich and vibrant past of this transit corridor. 

The design for the parklet was inspired by a photograph taken a few blocks away from where the MLK Cafe is located now. During the late 1800s, the Oakland Consolidated Railway Company transported residents from Berkeley to Oakland via Grove Street (later renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Way in 1984). In fact, before the time of railways and back when the landscape was covered in farmland, Grove Street was the thoroughfare used to transport residents via horse and buggy.

To learn more about the project in detail, click the link below:  http://littlehumworkshop.com/mlkcafeparklet

Buy a Train Ticket. Get a Drink Ticket.

We need $3,000 more to achieve our funding goal and build the parklet. If all goes according plan, we will build the parklet October 17–18, 2015.

We are reaching out to the community for help. The cafe is selling train drink tickets for $20 each. The ticket is a replica of what passengers would have received on the Grove Street line of the Oakland Consolidated Railway. One ticket will be good for one drink of your choice at the MLK Cafe. To redeem: the MLK Cafe will punch the ticket and return it for you to keep as a souvenir. MLK Cafe is an Eritrean restaurant with a full bar. Yelp reviews: http://www.yelp.com/biz/mlk-caf%C3%A9-oakland-3

Other Ways You Can Help

The team is in need of reused lumber to help build the planters for the parklet. If you are able to make a donation of this material, please contact Yuriko Jewett via email - mylittlehum (at) gmail (dot) com with a photo and description of the material and your contact information. Thank you!