Tag Archives: Golden State Warriors

Three New Stories: Orlando, Prayer, Private Security, and the Warriors

Why Prayer Can Be A Powerful Tool For Social Justice

If I’ve ever written anything important, this is it, for feminist culture site The Establishment. Following the massacre in Orlando, I interviewed four queer faith leaders who told me how prayer and fellowship fuel their activism. I asked them to respond to people who posted online who were exhorting others not to pray and saying that religion is at the heart of all of society’s ills.

The halftime show at Oracle Arena features flamethrowers shooting fire from the baskets

How to Watch the Warriors: A Journey Into Fandom and Across the Bay

This travelogue through Oakland and SF is the culmination of my season of basketball-watching, condensed into the seven games it took the Warriors to lose the NBA Finals. I had to write this one before Game 7, since I was going to be off the grid, and I left it in the hands of my favorite editor, David Roth at VICE Sports, who did a bang-up job editing it and finishing the ending I wrote before I went to Redwood Magic.

Omar Mateen, George Zimmerman, and How Wannabe Cops Become Killers

My first piece for Complex Life, the new news site of the music magazine, is also my first news piece wherein my reporting consists entirely of synthesizing other sources. At first I felt weird about pitching and writing such a piece, except since I read a few dozen news stories for it, I guess it counts as a researched piece instead of just an aggregation. Anyway, the weird thing was that my editor’s editors demanded that I include George Zimmerman in the piece for the clicks. I was skeptical but I think he does fit the overall thesis that men obsessed with joining law enforcement, and thwarted in their quest, end up taking security-related jobs that suit their thirst for social control. G4S, the company I discuss in the piece, not only employed Omar Mateen but scores of other men who went on to commit violent acts, on or off the job.

? New Story: Warriors and Gentrification

In Oakland, a Team and a City on the Verge of Gentrification

L-R-Cody-Buddy-Brook-May-3

Of course, any story I write about the Bay Area is going to be a housing story. I spent two months talking to Golden State Warriors fans about basketball and their lives, and the parallel rise of Oakland’s economy and the Dubs’ stardom. My latest for VICE Sports.

Three new stories posted this week: Witchcraft, Guns, and Basketball

This past week brought publication of one of each of my three apparent, unexpected specialties: Sports, Guns, and Witchcraft.

 

Eskimo Love
Ernestine and Shannon Andrew hold up their signs outside Oracle Arena in Oakland
It was a joy getting to know Ernestine and Shannon Andrew, who I met in line to see my first NBA game, and hers. They took four planes to get to Oakland for the game.

 

(Paper) human targets
Paper targets are cheaper at the gun show
I went to a gun show at the Cow Palace, where you can take a class and get a concealed gun permit issued by the state of Utah, which grants you no rights in California. Why does such a thing happen? I found out.

 

3 witches around a cauldron
Sometimes real witches do look like Macbeth’s witches
Another dispatch from Pantheacon, in which I interview three witches steeped in ritual practices about what it’s like to create deep magic in the chaotic milieu of a huge convention in a corporate environment.