Over the past six months Sarah Filley and Alfonso Dominguez in cooperation with participating retailers have achieved by leaps and bounds their goals and hopes for Oakland grass-roots urban revitalization project, Popuphood. With six months of free rent, Popuphood’s 5 retail businesses: Marion and Rose’s Workshop, Crown Nine, Manifesto Bikes, Piper and John General Goods and Sticks + Stones Gallery in Old Oakland created a tightly-knit community of entrepreneurial and commercial success. The press, both print and television, reached from local to national and international, from East Bay Express to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Popuphood increased creative activity, provided a unique and positive identity, and stimulated the local economy of this neighborhood and to Oakland itself. Popuphood also strengthened ties with the larger community by incorporating two of its businesses, Crown Nine and Marion and Rose’s Workshop with the iconic Oakland Art Murmur as art spaces!

On May 4, also coinciding with Oakland’s 160th birthday, Popuphood celebrated six months of success with several of its associated businesses negotiating leases to remain in Old Oakland. There was music, live art, and food vendors along 9th street. Crown Nine presented Philip Striebe’s C A L I F O R N I A P O L A R O I D , and Marion and Rose’s Workshop exhibtion of Clusternook by Wonderboom is on view for just a few more weeks until May 19.