Oakland Chinatown - Murals, Vendors and the Produce Market
My first morning in Oakland Chinatown, chasing the feel of New York's Chinatown without driving into San Francisco. Shot mostly from the car, in hard morning sun.
- Date
- Mon, Oct 26, 2026
- Hours
- 8:47 – 10:10 a.m.
- Light
- Low, hard sun
- Gear
- Nikon D7500, 18-200mm
- Frames
- 105 shot · 12 here
- Where
- Oakland Chinatown and the Produce District
I've always loved the feel of Manhattan's Chinatown and the old Brooklyn streets: crates on the sidewalk, people who've been working since before sunrise, nobody posing. Salt of the earth. I wanted that here, without driving into San Francisco. The closest thing I could find was Oakland Chinatown, so on a Monday morning in late October I went for the first time.
I'll be honest about how these were made. I didn't want to come back to a broken window, so I barely left the car. I drove slow loops around Webster Street, pulled over when something caught my eye, and shot from the car or a few steps from it with the 18-200mm. It's a limitation, and you can see it in the angles. It also made me sit and watch longer than I would have on foot, waiting for someone to walk into the frame.
The light did a lot of the work. From 8 to about 10 the sun was low and hard, cutting down the cross streets and catching faces under the awnings. The murals pulled me in first: the Girl with a Pearl Earring, a snarling fox on a roll-down door. I'd park across the street and wait for someone to walk past and finish the picture. The vendors were setting up for the day: a woman in a pink cap under the red heart sign, someone sorting ginger root, a woman in a red apron hauling boxes.
Around 9:30 I drove down to the Produce District by the water. It's only a couple of streets of forklifts, pallets and men wrapping limes, with less color and more work. It didn't hold me the way Chinatown did.
