When Lucivaldo De Oliveira moved from his native Brazil to Oakland in 2011, he had one goal: opening a school for capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian style of martial arts.
For several years, while teaching at Melrose Leadership Academy, De Oliveira offered informal capoeira lessons every Sunday near Lake Merritt. “I only had one student,” he recalled. “Rain or no rain, I was there.”
In 2019, De Oliveira opened Axé Oakland in the Hoover-Foster neighborhood of West Oakland. (“Axé” translates to “life force” in the Yoruba language.) The capoeira studio is on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, right next to the I-980 freeway and about two blocks from I-580. In addition to being a capoeira school, Axé Oakland doubles as a cultural center and dance and fitness studio, offering high-intensity interval training, yoga, baile folklórico, and other classes.
Since opening Axé Oakland, De Oliveira has sought to provide a safe and inclusive community space for youth and adults in West Oakland. On top of teaching eight classes per week, he offers children’s capoeira camps during breaks in the school year, including during the OUSD teachers’ strike last May. About 30 kids were enrolled in Axé Oakland’s spring break camp last month. Adult capoeira classes typically see anywhere from 10 to 20 students.
However, the entire time it’s been open, Axé Oakland has faced multiple challenges, including hostility from a neighbor, recurring defacement, and hefty noise complaint fines. In recent months, the vandalism has taken an alarming turn. Members of the Axé Oakland community say they’re working to keep the studio alive.
Axé Oakland has been reported to OPD for ‘disturbing the peace’ over 100 times
On the morning of October 19, 2020, Joli Zahra Drevitch, then a fitness instructor at Axé Oakland, was teaching a class when one of the studio’s walls started shaking so hard that artifacts fell off the walls.
After Drevitch ran outside to see what was happening, she saw a woman repeatedly beating a hammer against a fence on one side of the capoeira studio. Drevitch instantly recognized the woman as a renter of a house on the same block. When Drevitch asked why she was upset, the neighbor told her Axé Oakland was “disturbing the peace” with the noise from its classes.
“I explained I’m a black women [sic] trying to run a business and respect the neighborhood,” Drevitch wrote in a police report she filed the day after. “She becomes defensive and says fuck my black business and acts as if she’s gonna throw the hammer at me.”
Drevitch mentioned in the police report that this wasn’t the first time the neighbor had lashed out. In a prior incident, the neighbor entered the gym, “getting in my face and yelling at me even when I asked her to leave the property,” Drevitch wrote.
“I’m at the point where I want a [restraining] order or something to protect myself from her,” added Drevitch. As a Black woman, she wrote, “I live in fear all the time this has to stop.”
Drevitch has since opened her own fitness business in Emeryville. She did not respond to requests for an interview.
According to dispatch logs obtained by The Oaklandside, between 2019 and 2023, Axé Oakland was reported to OPD for “disturbing the peace” 111 times. It is unknown exactly how many of these calls were made by the neighbor who complained previously or whether they were all made by the same person.
The Oaklandside reached out to this neighbor multiple times for this story and has not heard back.
The Oaklandside also reviewed screenshots of text messages between Axé Oakland and the neighbor and photos of vandalism on the facade. While The Oaklandside has verified that this neighbor has complained to Oakland police about noise emanating from Axé Oakland, we have no evidence this same person was involved in the vandalism of Axé Oakland. We are choosing not to publicize their name in this report.
Per the Oakland Municipal Code, noises such as music amplified with mechanical or electronic devices are deemed “excessive and annoying.” (Axé Oakland uses a speaker to play capoeira music during classes.) More than three noise violations within one year constitute a $1,000 fine.
OPD did not verify the number of times Axé Oakland has been reported for disturbing the peace. Police also could not confirm how many times Axé Oakland has been cited and fined for noise violations, nor the total dollar amount of those fines.
The Oaklandside independently obtained and reviewed copies of all the police, code enforcement, and animal services complaints made against Axé Oakland. They show from 2020 to 2023, a code enforcement inspector showed up at Axé at least three times to measure the noise levels but found no violations in each instance. Records indicate the neighbor requested the three noise readings.
Between 2021 and 2023, that same neighbor reported Axé Oakland to Oakland Animal Services (OAS) six times for “nuisance barking” and “possible abuse … by owner.” The reports were presumably about De Oliveira’s dog, whom he brings to Axé when he teaches classes, and capoeira student Ebele Ifedigbo’s dog.
In October 2022, an OAS officer went to Axé Oakland to look into those claims. The employee wrote in a report that “barking was not observed” and found a “[Belgian Malinois] and Black [pitbull], very healthy and cared for.” In that same report, the officer added, “[De Oliveira and Ifedigbo] felt this was just another call harassing them, as they have had many with others, like code enforcement.”
The city did, however, substantiate some claims. In late 2021, the neighbor reported Axé Oakland for storing a shipping container outside without approval from the city’s Planning and Building Department. A code enforcement inspector confirmed the violation, resulting in the city confiscating the container. De Oliveira said the shipping container “was here years and years and years before, and no one did nothing.” Last year, the city issued Axé Oakland a $2,000 fine for playing loud music outdoors at 2 p.m., Axé Oakland manager Juliana Romano said.
De Oliveira will go to civil court later this month to contest the noise complaint fines.
Ifedigbo, a capoeira student at Axé, said the same neighbor called OPD almost every Saturday morning during children’s capoeira classes last year, alleging they were disturbing the peace.
“It’s problematic because that scares the kids, as nice as the police officer may be,” Ifedigbo said. “You see a police car coming, you see one or two cops come in and looking around. That’s scary.”
Last year, a group of Axé Oakland students and instructors walked around the block to ask nearby residents and business owners how they felt about the studio’s noise levels. Ifedigbo, who participated in the effort, told The Oaklandside the “vast majority” of neighbors said they did not mind the noise. Some neighbors, Ifedigbo added, have enrolled their children in classes and camps at Axé.
“We have signatures from neighbors that positively vouch for what we’re doing,” Ifedigbo said. “They’re saying, ‘We need this, we love seeing the kids, we love hearing y’all’s music on Saturdays.’”
Juliana Romano, manager of Axé, provided photos of the neighbors’ signatures to The Oaklandside. The list includes six names and addresses, all within 250 feet of the capoeira school.
One of the signatories was Mohammed Mussa, owner of Mo Business Center, Axé Oakland’s next-door neighbor. Mussa runs a barbershop on the lower level of his building and rents the upper level to several families with children, some of whom have taken classes at Axé Oakland.
“The noise is not a problem,” Mussa said. “I personally enjoy it. When I see kids walking and playing there…it’s beautiful.”
Axé Oakland’s facade has been repeatedly vandalized
Last year, an unknown person or a group of people started repeatedly vandalizing the studio, smashing windows, splashing paint on the facade, supergluing the front door shut, and spray-painting it with “Shut the fuck up!” and “Fuck yuppies.” (The term ‘yuppie,’ short for “young urban professional,” was coined in the 1980s and evolved into a pejorative against people accused of gentrifying cities.)
One of the instances happened soon after Parents’ Night Out, a monthly event Axé Oakland hosts for children so their parents can have some time for themselves. At the time, Axé Oakland had not installed security cameras. Security camera footage from neighboring businesses, including a grocery store across the street from Axé, was too blurry to identify the suspect or suspects, according to De Oliveira.
The next day, Axé Oakland manager Romano approached the neighbor who had frequently reported the capoeira studio to law enforcement, asking if she knew anything about the vandalism. The neighbor said she didn’t but suggested Axé move to a different location because they’re in a residential area, according to Romano.
“She made it seem like the whole community didn’t want us there and that they were vandalizing us,” Romano said.
The city of Oakland’s Planning and Zoning Map shows that the building Axé Oakland leases is in an “urban residential zone,” defined in the Planning Code as an area with “multi-unit, low-rise residential structures, and neighborhood businesses.” Property records from the Alameda County Assessor’s Office show the building is classified as a “single-tenant retail store”—in other words, a commercial space.
Several hours after that conversation, Romano followed up with the neighbor via text message, asking if they could find a way to work together and inviting her to Axé Oakland to meet the students and teachers. In response, the neighbor wrote in part, “I appreciate that you are trying, but after five years of daily harassment and noise nuisance the only option is [for you] to find a location that is suitable for this type of activity,” according to screenshots Romano shared with The Oaklandside.
The neighbor added, “After YEARS of constant harassment, and mental anguish, the gym does not and never will have my support. I would applaud you for doing the honorable thing and finding a place that is appropriate for the disruptive activities.”
Niki Brown, a student and instructor at Axé Oakland, said since the October incident, an unknown person or people have spray-painted the building with explicit words, glued the locks shut, and shattered the windows at least once per month.
“It has been going on for so long that we have even thought about moving locations,” Brown said.
Romano estimates the vandalism has cost Axé Oakland more than $1,000. The last instance of vandalism occurred on March 12.
The Axé Oakland community takes matters into their own hands
Whenever the exterior of the capoeira studio has been vandalized, members of the Axé Oakland community have come together to scrape paint off the facade and place wooden boards on broken windows. In March, De Oliveira installed security cameras overlooking the front of the capoeira school.
In an effort to combat further vandalism, Axé Oakland students, teachers, and parents painted a mural on the building’s facade on April 20. Illustrated in collaboration with Daniel Camacho—an Oakland-based Mexican artist who worked with De Oliveira at Melrose Leadership Academy for a decade—the mural depicts a “roda,” or two people playing capoeira, against a neon green backdrop, along with dozens of students’ handprints, traditional capoeira instruments, and words of positivity such as “healing,” “resilience,” and “peace.”
For now, Axé Oakland continues holding capoeira classes and events. Its earliest capoeira class starts at 9 a.m. every Saturday, and the latest goes until about 8 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial arts form that involves music and dance, has a long history. Enslaved people from Africa introduced capoeira to Brazil around the late 19th century, according to the Smithsonian Magazine. The Brazilian government outlawed it in 1890, believing capoeira was associated with gangs and criminal activity.
That didn’t stop enslaved people from practicing capoeira. Many retreated to quilombos—autonomous and clandestine villages in the remote Brazilian rainforest—to practice what they believed to be a form of self-defense. The Brazilian government didn’t lift the ban on capoeira until 1937. Today, capoeira is one of Brazil’s most iconic sports.
Growing up in Salvador, Bahia—the birthplace of capoeira—De Oliveira was introduced to capoeira at age 6. He and 20 other children in the neighborhood trained in an apartment garage with Mestre Sabia, the founder of Ginga Mundo Capoeira, an international martial arts school.
De Oliveira said Mestre Sabia was more than just a capoeira professor—he would bring food to his students’ homes and provide a safe and healthy outlet for many children in the community.
“Where I grew up, it was a rough neighborhood,” De Oliveira said. “My mestre changed my life.”
At 15 years old, De Oliveira started teaching capoeira to other kids in his neighborhood. Over the years, he’s traveled to France, Spain, China, Australia, the Czech Republic, and many other countries to teach the sport. His brother, who now lives in Barcelona, is also a capoeira instructor.
De Oliveira’s students, or capoeiristas in Brazilian Portuguese, refer to him as Mestre Chipa, in accordance with capoeira tradition. (When capoeira was illegal in Brazil, capoeiristas were given nicknames, or apelidos, to conceal their identities and avoid capture.) By sharing capoeira with youth in Oakland, De Oliveira said, he hopes to spread the same joy he experienced as a child in Brazil.
“[The kids] don’t have many spaces like this in this neighborhood,” he added. “It’s the only good thing we have here, and we want to fight for that.”
