These days, mentioning the California city of Oakland conjures up images of tear gas and violence. It’s not a place that people associate with innocent fun right now.

But Oakland isn’t all protesters and police. We bring you a report from a recent visitor to that city, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit….

Chief Judge Kozinski sent me this missive, which begins:

David: I was in the Bay Area [last week] and on Monday night visited with my first cousin once removed, Shira Yaziv, who operates Athletic Playground in Oakland.

Attached are pictures of Shira showing me the, um, ropes. I know that many of your readers already think I’m upside-down, so here’s concrete proof of that fact.

Here is one of the photos (the other two, in case you want to see them, appear on the next page):

That looks painful! Okay, back to Chief Judge Kozinski:

BTW, we had a terrific KFF (Kozinski’s Favorite Flicks) the following evening. We showed La Mission, a film located and shot in San Francisco, near our courthouse, and as special guests we had the film’s young star, Jeremy Ray Valdez, and the film’s director and writer, Peter Bratt.

Valdez is pretty sexy, but not as sizzling as the surprise guest for the evening:

Jeremy and Peter spoke and answered questions after the movie. Among the questioners was Justice Breyer, who made a surprise appearance, along with brother Chuck [also a federal judge], and a number of other judges of our court, the district court and the bankruptcy court. Sorry you weren’t there, you’d have enjoyed it.

And if you haven’t seen La Mission, you MUST see it. It’s a very powerful and touching film; gives me goose bumps every time I see it.

Speaking of Justice Breyer, he’s starting to hire clerks from Chief Judge Kozinski. It’s unusual to see a Republican appointee to a circuit court feeding to a Democratic appointee on the Supreme Court, but one of Justice Breyer’s recent clerks (Erika Myers) and one his future clerks (Joshua Geltzer) are Kozinski chambers survivors alumni.

And speaking of filmed entertainment, if you’re a Kozinski fan, check out this interesting interview with His Honor….