Spotted: on the street in Oakland
Occupation: Barista at Kilovolt Coffee and sales associate at Sway Boutique
What job do you like better?
Honestly, I like coffee better because I get tips and tips definitely help you with rent, especially if you get good tips like I do.
What’s your favorite coffee drink?
A vanilla cappuccino to drink. My favorite to make—this is taking me back to when I worked at Starbucks—is this drink made with apple juice that you steam for a long time. I like making that drink cause you rarely get to work with apple juice and caffeine. Some people take shots of it.
Tell me about your facial piercings!
Right now I just have my septum—I have a medusa and I have a smiley. I got the septum ring from etsy, for like $16.50 from Tribalik. They’re in Spain so that’s cool. I had my friend do my lip ring, he works at Anchor Bay Tattoos and Piercings in Hayward. It hurts when they stab you through your mouth. The smiley actually doesn’t hurt at all, and no one really knows about it, so it’s like my secret weapon.
What's your sleeve about?
It’s Japanese Jakusa inspired.
Why green hair?
Green has always been my favorite color. Back in high school I was kind of on my emo hype and I already had green hair. Now everybody’s doing green hair again, so noone’s going to look at me like I’m weird. I work at two places where I can have piercings and tattoos and cool hair and since I’m starting to get a little older, I might as well have some fun with my hair while I still can, cause you know, in the future I probably won’t do any of that.
Where did you get your shoes?
These are American Apparel.
Are you from the Bay?
I’m from Sacramento and I was in New York growing up. Queens represent! I moved to San Francisco and lived there for almost three years. I’ve been living here for almost a year now and I really like Oakland a lot more than I like SF.
Any reason?
San Francisco is kind of dirty. And it’s over-priced and there are a lot of homeless people, but they’re not just homeless, they’re aggressive which can be annoying. It’s also a harder dating scene. It’s really hard to date if everybody there is on vacation and you may never see them again.
The job market is great and they pay you well, but the thing is that you work so much just to afford rent that you don’t get to enjoy the city you’re in. Living in Oakland you can work hard, have your nice place and still have a day or two off to enjoy the city. The way it should be.
You also go to school? What is your degree in?
I go to the academy of art in San Francisco. My degree is in editorial styling. I’ll be graduating with a bachelor’s. I do advertising, music videos, movies, anything from spreadsheets to plays—it just depends on what the person wants. I also do product styling. I was contacted to do a contest for a Mac Makeup advertisement and we did the commercial for it.
When was the last time you said “I love you” and meant it?
Not too long ago. A couple days ago I found out that my brother is beating his cancer and I told him I love you and I meant it a lot. It made my whole week, it made my whole life, actually. It was like, “YAY! That’s so awesome!”
WOW! Congratulations to him! What kind of cancer?
He has lymphoma cancer, which is a bone marrow cancer and it’s really agreesive. I think they always start at stage four and there’s only five stages. He’s beating it, he actually did a stem cell. [whoa!!] Which no one donates money to, but who cares how much it costs, his cancer is pretty much gone.
