Golden Gate Donuts

The new Oakland rises in condo blocks, shiny tanks of brewpubs, and fine-leaved husks of French pâtisserie, but the old Oakland loiters here over coffee and crullers, scuffing latex fields from Lotto scratchers with the smooth edges of nickels. Golden Gate Donuts is a place where you come to hustle the odds.

Beyond the case where sugar-beaded cakes and ring-bloomed old-fashioneds stack on racked trays there’s an honor roll of past winners: lines of taped-together scratchcards cascading like crepe-paper streamers down a wall painted donut-box pink. The gentlemen who (most mornings) anchor the brick bench in front made the big hit years ago, cashing out pensions from the steel mills that flared in West Oakland, all that remains of a Black middle class that packed up and surged beyond the eastern fingers of the bay, though hope is perennially on the upward here. Last week a customer got four numbers and the mega, says Brian, Golden Gate’s owner, as he sells me a Mega Million. One more and he woulda got one-point-four million!

In other words, this place is overripe: due for a hit as plush and fine as the yellow crumb in the buttermilk bar, under improbably craggy heights.