Most afternoons, Sister Ilive cooks Jamaica’s national dish, akki and saltfish, for diners at Sweetfingers on East 14th Street in San Leandro.
But on Monday, her day off, it’s more like life in Westmoreland or Kingston. “Like Jamaica, free time,” she said, watching “Divorce Court” with reggae musician Messenjah Selah in the flat above
the yellow-and-green restaurant.
Ilive, 54, a reggae artist who performs some Saturdays at Sweetfingers, is one of the growing number of immigrants from the island who are beginning to call California — for its weather, music and liberal politics — home.
While a majority of the some 736,000 Jamaican immigrants nationwide live on the East Coast, 11,348 live in California, according to census figures. Of the 739 Jamaicans in Alameda County — a 6 percent increase from last year — many live in Oakland.
But census numbers, which can be underreported, do not always tell the full story. That comes from the Jamaicans living in Oakland.
“Three, four years ago, you could hardly find a club to go to for music,” Ilive said. “They’re everywhere now.”
And Jamaican restaurants like Sweetfingers don’t just serve up rice and beans, curried goat or oxtail, either. With Hype! TV and Irie FM radio from the Caribbean, and reggae shows Friday and
Saturday nights, it’s the place for the Caribbean family to chill out, pass the time and feel the music.
Selah, 34, plays there, although he would like to play more outside of the community. “No disrespect to downstairs, but I want to be seen by more people in bigger venues,” he said.
Still, Selah, who moved here from Atlanta last year because it was “a little slow on the reggae scene” there, recognizes that the contacts he has made with the community have helped his career.
“You can do your thing here,” he says. “NewYork’s more critical and you have to prove yourself. Not that I have a problem with doing that. But, damn, can you give these talented artists a break?”
Sister Ilive, who moved to California from Pennsylvania more than 10 years ago, became the restaurant’s assistant chef after she rented out a room in Sacramento to a friend of the owner of Sweetfingers Restaurant, Chef Clive Barnes. “I wanted to be a part of their restaurant,” she says. “It’s a family place. They’re loving, they feed you, you get paid on time.”
Jamaican restaurants in the area have benefited from the increase in the number of Caribbean immigrants.
“Business has taken off real good,” Sister Ilive said.
David Schumacher, who works in his family’s restaurant, Vital Ital Calabash, on Adeline and Emerson streets in Berkeley, agrees but said it’s not just Jamaicans who patronize the restaurant.
“Our regulars are everyone: punk (rockers), bald-headed bikers, experts from the neoprimitive culture, the burning man crowd, even professionals like architects,” he said.
Schumacher said running a restaurant as a Rastafarian also comes with a worldview. “It’s a public service, a mediation on love and violence,” he said, reaching into a refrigerator to throw fruit into a blender for smoothies. “Everyone who comes here is our brother and sister. When they come here, they call us home.”
Regulars at Vital Ital Calabash come for the homestyle stews and soups, which Schumacher, who was born in Mandeville, Jamaica, makes himself. “The stuff you can get in the hills of Jamaica,” he said.
Other regulars include actor Danny Glover and reggae musicians J.W. Reed, Luciano, Richie Spice and Sizzler, he says.
“We are African-owned so we’re a representation of African, black, self-sufficiency,” Schumacher adds.
At Jamaican Soul on San Pablo Avenue near University in Berkeley, Patrick Matteson, who moved to Richmond from Orange Bay, Jamaica, in 1989, agrees there are plenty of Jamaicans coming to the area.
He points to Howard “MacGyver” Powell, who comes to the restaurant five days a week for the curry tofu and the rice and peas. MacGyver recently moved here from Montego Bay.
Sweetfingers chef Sister Ilive is surprised that it’s such a mix of people who want Caribbean food and culture. But their openness to Caribbean culture is one of the reasons she loves the people in the Bay Area. “People want to talk, hang out. People have time to be themselves.”
Still, it remains to be seen whether Caribbeans will stay in California.
Ilive misses Jamaica — the beach, the sun, sand, seeing the fish in the clear water, singing and smoking. She likes to make a little money here, but when “reality hits” six days a week, she knows “to make it, you have to work to survive.”
For Selah, at least, it’s another year in California until it’s on to Jamaica, Europe or Africa.
“I’m not going to be here forever,” he said. “Jamaica is waiting.”
Abbie Swanson is a student at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism.
