Residents rebel as Oakland tries to shut down a popular lakeside party

On a recent Friday evening at Lake Merritt, a dance circle formed around an elated 5-year-old and someone who looked like their grandfather. The  crowd cheering them on was composed of professional dancers, families, party regulars of all ages and abilities, a couple unhoused people, and curious passersby. 

Days Like This has turned the lake’s pergola into a dance floor almost every week since 2020, But its three-year streak was threatened this September when one of the organizers, Oakland resident Morgan Simon, was served a cease-and-desist order for operating the events without permits. 

Simon, who started DLT with fellow local and community organizer and activist Sulaiman Hyatt in response to pandemic-era isolation, has had to step back from hosting in order to comply with the order and avoid potentially hefty fines. But that hasn’t stopped the music, yet. 

Days Like This is run entirely by volunteers and powered by donations, which support sound equipment, DJs, and have even been used for mutual aid for community members. So although the city has succeeded in ousting one of its primary stewards, patrons continue to dance to house music, Afrobeats, hip-hop and funk in front of two speakers and a DJ as the sun sets behind the pergola’s arches. The number of partygoers has dwindled slightly from its height of 300 due to official promotion of the event ceasing, but not much else has changed. As always, it begins every week at 4:30 p.m. with a dance class, and ends at 10 p.m. with a collective rendition of the electric slide.

The love for Days Like This is well documented on Reddit threads, Instagram posts, and in a September KQED story. It even made its way into a national survey of house dance and music culture conducted by the Library of Congress, according to Simon. Many partygoers refer to the gathering as a source of healing and connection. Some call it a ceremony. One couple who met at Days Like This even celebrated their marriage at the party this year.

However, not everyone is in favor of gatherings with amplified music around the nation’s first wildlife refuge, next to water, which can carry sound far beyond the park’s borders. Despite the cease-and-desist, the event hasn’t yet been shut down.

Leeann Alameda and Ana-Marie Jones, members of the Lake Merritt Community Alliance, are perhaps the most vocal dissenters of DLT and similar louder events. However, they have never complained to the party organizers directly.

“I don’t live right near the pergola. I live up the street and I can hear it in my place,” Alameda said.

Simon and Hyatt said they use a decibel reader to ensure the noise level is considerate of neighbors and that they follow a “leave it better than you found it” ethos. In addition to picking up trash before and after the party, they’ve even used their own funds to paint over vandalism.

“We worry that if Days Like This were to leave the lake, others who may come in its place wouldn’t necessarily take such precautions,” said Simon, who also leads a social-justice investment firm and the Cuba-based Orisha House Project dance company.

Alameda and Jones said parties around the lake in general, of which DLT is just one, have reached “oppressive” levels in recent years and have contributed to an environment where residents who object to unpermitted uses of the lake are afraid to speak up.

“We have a level of unpermitted partying turning this area, this precious area, into an unregulated outdoor nightclub every single weekend. … But if you say it, then you get labeled as being either a racist or you’re anti this-immigrant group or whatever,” said Jones, who works in emergency management and public safety and identified herself as mixed race.

But many return to the party each week precisely because it offers dancing in a safer environment than the typical nightclub: The gathering boasts a trained de-escalation team, a medical doctor and a therapist as volunteers. Every week, Hyatt, who works in conflict intervention and mediation, gets on the mic and leads the crowd in consent role playing.

“Patrons have literally told us that this dance party has saved their life by supporting their mental health,” Hyatt said. “There is a lot to be said on how dance and community mitigate and reverse mental illness, loneliness, anxiety, depression, etc.”

“Evidence shows that people being out-and-about promotes a sense of safety and reduces crime,” said Simon. “We think there is a real opportunity here for the city to promote public safety by easing access to public space, especially in the evenings.”

Simon and Hyatt have tried to secure permits for the event in the past but said they hit roadblocks immediately, starting with the fact that permits aren’t even available after sundown. As such, the organizers haven’t been able to get a firm answer as to the cost, but a Tier 2 event permits for over 300 people typically cost $451, which exceeds an average night’s donations.

More than 1,400 people, around 700 of whom live or work within walking distance of the lake, have signed Hyatt and Simon’s petition, which calls for changes to the lake’s permitting process and asserts the “right to dance freely.”

“The current permitting structure for Lake Merritt is really designed for big annual events who have large budgets,” Hyatt said. “What the local community is looking for is a permitting process that is streamline, and free or super low cost.”

Isaac Kos-Read, a Lake Merritt homeowner and a commissioner for Oakland’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission, agreed the process needs to be streamlined in order for it to have a chance of being adopted by the groups that frequent the lake.

“It’s 2023, why doesn’t every public space come with a QR code and the ability to see who has it reserved when?” Kos-Read said.

Like Alameda and Jones, Kos-Read can get weary of the lake’s 24/7 cacophonous soundtrack or of DLT’s bass bouncing off the water and into his apartment as he tries to get his infant to sleep. But as a fellow community organizer who started the popular dance party Salsa by the Lake, Kos-Read appreciates that the lake plays host to such events. He advocates for more diverse programming that includes all Lake Merritt communities from bass-lovers to bird-lovers.

“What I see happening [due to the lack of permitting] is de facto privatization of public space without discussion or process, whether you’re living, or vending or even dancing,” he said. Vending at the lake has increased alongside parties since 2020, creating similar issues over policy and enforcement.

“Even a perfect system is meaningless without enforcement. And it starts with self-enforcement. It’s going to take organizers, residents and the city. There needs to be a dialogue about how to steward this amazing asset,” he said.

Event organizers and the city may be headed toward compromise. Oakland’s Economic and Workforce Development Department began overseeing the special events permitting process in February 2023 (previously Oakland Police Department handled special events) and instituted a single interdepartmental team that now holds weekly meetings with permit applicants, and other forums for dialogue, including with the Days Like This organizers.

Following a meeting in early November, Simon said she’s sad that the order prevents her from continuing to steward the event, but she felt encouraged that conversations were beginning.

“We’d love for a community board to go beyond permitting to support the active programming of prime areas in Oakland,” she said. “Such a board could help create guidelines for safety, sound levels and cleanliness to ensure harmony with surrounding neighborhoods.”

In the meantime, the right to electric slide remains, for now.