#popuphood

The Tour Crew pulled into the Bay with a mission last week: Transform an empty storefront in downtown Oakland into a full-blown library of artists' sketchbooks with just three days, three pairs of hands and an ocean of seriously strong coffee.

    We're really proud of the results — our once-empty room is now a hub of inspiration, complete with reading room, drawing table and nearly 7,500 sketchbooks from around the world. We feel lucky to share all of this creativity with the blossoming arts community here in Old Oakland, where our partners at Popuphood are busy incubating new local businesses and awakening street life in this diverse, historic neighborhood.

    So, Oaklanders! San Franciscans! Alamedans! Berkeleyites! Cyborgs from Silicon Valley! Come and visit us at the Pop-Up Library from now until June 17th. We'd love to show you what our global community has been working on... along with hundreds of your neighbors, too.

  The Pop-Up Library

483 9th St., Oakland, CA

June 6-10, 1-5pm

June 13-14, 1-5pm

June 15, 6-10pm (Closing Party!)

June 16-17 1-5pm

Hey Guys,

Have been thinking about what a startup can do for a local community and found this wonderful program out of Oakland. Fast Company wrote a great piece on them recently! Check them out and show them some love. They are always looking for great local businesses and people.

[19] Discover New Old Oakland, For the Love of Oak

I like to represent Oakland, California for the street cred. I lived there for exactly one week after I was born before moving to the island of Alameda and then onto good ole suburban Walnut Creek. 

Oakland, alike Berkeley, California, alike Eugene, Oregon, alike Butler, Pennsylvania, alike so many other cities in the world, have a mass amount of empty storefronts. Vacant buildings with unique architecture calling out to be inhabited. One of my unexplored passions is urban planning. I love to brainstorm ideas to increase traffic in desolate city downtowns. Shopping malls are killing the local downtowns (see Eugene, Oregon) while chains are wiping out local businesses. But I believe corporate chains and locales can work together to revive downtowns everywhere with the incorporation of the building's original architecture in keeping with the fluent feel of the city block and the collaboration between businesses.

The short POPUPHOOD, produced by local Oakland photographer Eva Kolenko, captures a movement started in December of 2011 in order to revitalize Oakland, California. 

"The POPUPHOOD is a new urban initiative and small business incubator revitalizing Oakland, block by block. This is an innovative strategy for breathing new life into the city’s retail sector in downtown’s hip, historic Old Oakland neighborhood..." 

Featuring the founders and participants of POPUPHOOD, the film is comprised of footage from the pop up businesses including Marion and Rose’s Workshop, Sticks + Stones, Crown Nine, Piper + John General Goods, Turtle and Hare and Manifesto Bicycles.

Capturing the very essence of Oakland, the short eloquently projects the goals of POPUPHOOD. The movement is built upon community support for locals in a situation where owning a storefront is hard to come by for small businesses and boutiques.

The theme of the short is to promote and to help sustain fellow local and their passions. The idea that the city where you live and work should also be the city where you shop, eat, go out, live - consume.

POPUPHOOD is reinvigorating and enriching Oakland's culture and community by investing in the future of the city and its inhabitants. 

The POPUPHOOD project is not a new idea, pop up stores occur frequently, but the process behind the idea is. The short captures the soul of Oakland in a creative manner that led to a mass availability of publicity through social media and online platforms including Twitter and Facebook - increasing the momentum of the movement. 

With any creative movement or idea, the medium is key to reaching an audience. The typography of POPUPHOOD's logo is hip and fresh, the video is compelling and inspiring while the movement in general is smart, wherever it be occurring.