Hammer's Boyhood Home

4516 Fairfax Ave.

This was MC Hammer’s boyhood home. He also lived in North Oakland, near where the Black Panthers’ headquarters was. Hammer told me that, starting from when he was 8 or 9, he used to walk the 7 miles down to the Coliseum, to do his ticket hustle, sometimes every day. Nowadays, you wouldn’t even think about something like that. But back then, Oakland was real community-oriented. It was safe for a little kid to be out on the streets by himself.