The Oaks Card Club in Emeryville, California, has been in Cole Tibbets’ family for over a century. He has memories of coming into the card room as a kid with his dad, hearing stories about the guys who lived in the boarding house-style apartments on the top floor. He’s now the manager, greeting regulars as they approach the front door, but he’s worked every job in the building.
“I learned to play poker before I knew how to read,” Tibbets said.“It was part of the fabric of my life growing up.”
The same is true for generations of Emeryville residents. In a city that’s now defined by retail outlets, biotech offices, Pixar studios and a Chevy’s Fresh Mex, the squat brick building on the corner of San Pablo Avenue now feels like the closest thing Emeryville, a tiny town of 12,000 wedged between Oakland and Berkeley, has to a cultural center.
