“This is old Italian neighborhood,” Al Bronzini says. “That’s the house I was raised in, right there.” Al is showing me some of the places that were important to him growing up in East Oakland, almost 80 years ago. “Boy this is different,” he says. “Wow.”
He’s a little too uncomfortable to park the car, so he points things out from the driver’s seat. He slows down in front of a squat building. “Fruitvale Banana Depot is that blue building over there,” he says. “We used to unload the bananas in the back by the railroad tracks.”
