Birdman jazzing up Oakland neighborhood With neighborhood approval, artist creating music district in 5-block stretch of Oakland

Michael Parayno replaces a stolen birdhouse that he installed on a fence along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Oakland. Michael Parayno replaces a stolen birdhouse that he installed on a fence along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Oakland. Photo: Russell Yip, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Russell Yip, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Birdman jazzing up Oakland neighborhood 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

Someone has been stealing Michael Parayno's birdhouses. Of the 16 wooden houses he's strung up on fences and buildings along Martin Luther King Jr. Way, six have disappeared in the past week. He estimates that at least 50 have been stolen in the last month.

No matter, Parayno can whip out a new birdhouse in 10 minutes. Besides, he said, stringing a length of wire through a new birdhouse, this is part of the plan.

"I'm going to outproduce the thievery, know what I mean?" Parayno said. "Eventually people will go, 'Yeah man, just leave the Birdman alone, he's trying to do something.' "

That "something" has surprisingly little to do with birdhouses. Parayno is creating a five-block music district along a stretch of MLK Way that runs through Longfellow, a neglected neighborhood wedged between prosperous Temescal and Emeryville. The heart of the district will be the Birdland Jazzista Social Club (or Oakland Birdland for short), a venue Parayno opened in July.

For Parayno - who peppers his rapid speech with expletives and off-the-cuff neologisms - the music district is the answer to a problem that he's noticed every time he travels to Rio, Manila, New Orleans, or any other city that knows how to party.

"You come back here; and you're like, 'God, this place is really boring,' " Parayno said. "The Bay Area is kind of boring that way. Everything shuts down too early for music."

Parayno envisions a neighborhood completely permeated by music every weekend: soloists will play in liquor stores and barber shops, blues and jazz bands will play in the alleyways, and Birdland will be packed with eager revelers.

Where do the birdhouses come in? They're part of Parayno's livelihood. He hammers, drills and strings up hundreds of them every year to supplement his income from teaching Asian-American history at the city colleges of Alameda and San Francisco.

They also hearken back to Parayno's first music project - Berkeley Birdland. Founded in 2010, Berkeley Birdland started as gatherings of Parayno and a few friends to eat Filipino BBQ and listen to jazz. Over the next two years, it morphed into weekend concerts held in Parayno's garage. Parayno handed out BBQ to his friends as well as strangers drawn to the music from the North Berkeley BART station across the street.

He also charged a door fee to pay his musicians for one-night gigs - and according to musicians, he paid well. G.G. Amos, a blues guitarist who repeatedly played at Berkeley Birdland, said Parayno's venue became one of the most popular venues for jazz and blues in the Bay Area.

"Michael is a real visionary and was able to attract a lot of people to help bring Birdland to life - it's a miracle of a place," Amos said. "I and almost every musician I know has said it's the best place they ever played."

Fines from city

Birdland's good times quickly ran into trouble. Over the years, Parayno amassed several fines for allegedly obstructing the sidewalk with his shows and for serving free food to the public without a permit. Parayno said he eventually owed the city $40,000.

That turned out to be a tiny road bump in Parayno's plans. He took a sojourn from Berkeley in 2012 to set up Birdland workshops in Manila, Bangkok and Jakarta, creating a global franchise founded on music and BBQ.

When Parayno returned to the Bay Area this year to set up a home base, he immediately set his eyes on Oakland - specifically Longfellow, a blighted neighborhood with strong historical roots in the African American community. Huey Newton and David Hilliard, founders of the Black Panthers, grew up in the area. Marcus Book Store, one of the oldest African American bookstores in the United States (San Francisco's Marcus store is believed to be the oldest), is just a couple of blocks down the street from Birdland's venue. To Parayno, it had all the ingredients for a much greater musical project than a single jazz club.

"This is the freakin' beachhead, D-Day right here," Parayno said. "We're going to jazzify the whole neighborhood."

According to residents who have lived in Longfellow for decades, Parayno couldn't have come at a better time. After years of neglect from Oakland, Longfellow is slowly turning itself around.

"This was the worst neighborhood 10 years ago," said Asmerom Berhe, the owner of MLK Café and one of the businesses participating with Birdland. "It's come a long way now."

Neighborhood shifts

Today Longfellow is in transition, taking on more of the features that define its neighbors - youth and white skin. A chic restaurant, Café Dejena recently moved into the area and, like Birdland, is drawing in flocks of visitors. For small business owners like David Cole, owner of Svartik Metalworks, Birdland is a much-needed shot in the arm.

"He's really the first person since I've been here who has made any attempt to get the neighborhood galvanized around an idea and move it in a really positive direction," Cole said.

Blanche Richardson, who has been operating Marcus Books for the majority of her career, is equally happy that Parayno is bringing energy into the neighborhood. She hopes that it will provide an anchor for the historical black community that is slowly disappearing.

"You had generations of black people living in this neighborhood," Richardson said. "Now the elders aren't here and the children aren't here. ... I don't know how it's going to go from here."

Parayno can't predict what will happen next for his music district. But like his stolen birdhouses, he said he's prepared to weave it into his plan. You start the smallest thing and it magnifies and suddenly kind of derails you into one long journey," Parayno said. "It's kind of fun."

Birdland Jazzista Social Club: Jazz & Blues Venue. 4318 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. Open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. http://birdlandjazz.org.