In the 1940s through the 1960s, West Oakland’s 7th Street was one of the West Coast’s great Black blues and jazz corridors, home to clubs like Esther’s Orbit Room and Slim Jenkins’ Supper Club where artists including B.B. King and Etta James performed. It was the cultural heart of a thriving Black working-class neighborhood.

The individual clubs are gone, but the corridor is being revitalized as a heritage district, with a community co-op having purchased the Esther’s Orbit Room building. Visitors can walk the corridor and view the buildings that carried this history.