{"id":1953146,"date":"2025-08-10T22:34:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T22:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1953146"},"modified":"2025-08-10T22:34:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T22:34:22","slug":"laurel-streetfair-and-world-music-festival-thousands-attend-annual-event-in-oakland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/laurel-streetfair-and-world-music-festival-thousands-attend-annual-event-in-oakland\/","title":{"rendered":"Laurel StreetFair and World Music Festival: Thousands attend annual event in Oakland"},"content":{"rendered":"

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OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) — <\/span>Since the late 1990s, the Laurel Street Fair and World Music Fest<\/a> has united Oakland. Thousands packed the streets on Saturday for the annual event.<\/p>\n

“Very nice, the atmosphere. Diversity – excellent. The food is great!” is how Oakland resident Sandy describes the event.<\/p>\n

“Family, community. This is probably one of the best family-focused festivals in Oakland and the Bay Area,” says Tom Samway, also an Oakland resident.<\/p>\n

Eight city blocks packed with various crafts and cuisines, rhythms and rhymes.<\/p>\n

“Now, I don’t want to jinx it, but for 24 years, we have had no problems,” says Lutillian Maxon, one of the founders of Laurel Street Fair.<\/p>\n

MORE: Outside Lands kicks off at Golden Gate Park with music, marriage and good eats<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Maxon says safe streets is one reason this event has continued to grow. Earlier in the week, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and Oakland Police Chief Floyd Mitchell presented mid-year crime statistics.<\/p>\n

“Homicides have decreased 21% year-over-year from the same time last year,” explains Chief Mitchell.<\/p>\n

Data from OPD points to a 29% drop in violent crime for the first 6 months of 2025 – compared to the same time in 2024. Aggravated Assault: Down 18%. Rape: Down 24%. There’s been a 41 percent decrease in robberies. Some residents say they sense a change too.<\/p>\n

“The crime that was blatant, on the street, just in front of your face, is definitely reduced. So yes, I would say there is huge change that has been happening,” says .”<\/p>\n

Even vendors, like Jaydon Perez, who operates some the inflatable jump houses, says, despite the perception of crime in Oakland, there was no concern signing up for this event.<\/p>\n

“Oakland, I know it may have a bad name, but you just have to hope for the best, you know. And look, it seems to be pretty good so far,” says .”<\/p>\n

When asked if Oakland is getting safer, Sandy responds: “Yes, I do. I feel like it is getting better. I haven’t seen any crime in this neighborhood. But Oakland is great. Anybody that wants to come to Oakland – come to Oakland! Oakland is awesome. Yes!”<\/p>\n

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Copyright \u00a9 2025 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source abc7news.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) — Since the late 1990s, the Laurel Street Fair and World Music Fest has united Oakland. Thousands packed the streets on Saturday for the annual event. “Very nice, the atmosphere. Diversity – excellent. The food is great!” is how Oakland resident Sandy describes the event. “Family, community. This is probably one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1946363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[342172],"class_list":["post-1953146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-342172"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/San-Francisco-preps-for-3-weekends-of-Golden-Gate-Park.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1953146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1946363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1953146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1953146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1953146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}