THE SHIPPING MUSE
An indie creative community takes root in Oakland’s MacArthur Annex.
A cleverly configured clutch of 33 lightly used shipping containers has found a new home in the shadow of the Grove Shafter Freeway, just a block west of the MacArthur BART station. Stacked three stories high and faced west and south for maximum light and air, MacArthur Annex feels like a happy hybrid while reflecting its Oakland locale at a critical juncture.
Amid the rise of the Temescal and Uptown neighborhoods — and ascending rents and fears of gentrification — the annex’s twenty-seven 150-squarefoot spaces have become storefronts, offices and studios for entrepreneurs, artists and writers, at relatively affordable prices. Meanwhile, its eco-friendly construction embodies the spirit of creative reuse and the area’s history.
“The way I always think about it is, the port is right there,” says architect Matt Baran, who worked with owner and developer Caleb Inman to create the compound, which rolled out last fall. “If you drive anywhere in Oakland,
you’re always confronted by containers, either on the backs of trucks or loaded onto ships.
“My neighbor has a Victorian, and the guy down the street has a Victorian, but instead you’re connecting to a context that has these maybe more distant connections. You’re looking at a larger picture.”
The project is also holding a mirror up to a creative class finding its feet amid the city’s seismic shifts. Yes, the annex overlooks a newly opened beer garden and pizza spot, Arthur Mac’s Tap & Snack, a nod to a similarly situated San Francisco institution, Zeitgeist (and co-helmed by the same Farm League group that runs Uptown’s wildly popular Drake’s Dealership). MacArthur Annex also harbors some of the DIY passion and creative energy that’s fueled the Bay Area music and art scene since the ’00s.
The same low-key, like-minded friendly excitement sparked by indie co-ops, backyard house parties and pop-up art openings was in the air at the annex’s Second Sundays open studio, music and art event in February.
Kids in brightly colored sunglasses slouched outside the annex as the No Worries food truck served up vegan Filipino platters next to Rolling Sloane’s stand selling pop tarts and pecan pie slices. In the courtyard inside, visitors plucked ’60s sundresses and ’80s dolman-sleeve knits from Ringo Vintage’s racks and sniffed candles in Foggy Notion, the apothecary owned by former Vetiver cellist and photographer Alissa Anderson.
Near a table of goodies raffled off as an ACLU benefit, neighbors checked out the sculptural works by Kristina Lewis in a space shared by Small Works and Sweeney/Kaye Gallery. Listeners watched from the floors overlooking the courtyard as local band Never Young generated waves of shoegaze pop below. It felt like an indie utopia in the making, dreaming in solar-powered, sustainably built boxes. While some of the faces were familiar, others were new. Here are some of the more genre-bending tenants of MacArthur Annex.
Contact Records
Politicized, passionate and veterans of local bands Grass Widow and Trainwreck Riders, respectively, Hannah Lew and Andrew Kerwin know the score — and the married San Francisco natives were convinced they’d never get to live the Bay Area dream.
“For years now, we’ve been feeling like everything is out of our reach, and all these people with a ton of money are setting up a paradigm we can’t
exist in. Then this came about,” says Lew of the 19-by-7½-foot space that houses their store, Contact Records. “It feels a little dystopian to be in a shipping container. Is this what we can really afford in 2017 in the Bay Area?”
Thanks to subsidized rent, the pair were able to open the first storefront at the annex, and judging by the smiling regulars and customers flipping through the vinyl at a recent Second Sundays, it’s holding its own simply by serving up what its owners love.
The Sheer Mag, Big Star, Kleenex and Liliput LPs, and international pop obscurities, in the front window announce Lew and Kerwin’s fascinations. Between the crammed, multilevel bins of vinyl, a rakishly tilted shelf of cassettes and a turntable listening station, they pack a lot of inventory into the sunlit space.
Their only conditions: The LPs have to be in great shape and the music has to be good. Otherwise they carry every genre, making sure to rotate in gems like, say, the odd Beatles “Butcher” cover. And Lew’s proud that they can cater to the neighborhood’s nostalgic oldtimers as well as indie nerds and beat makers searching for fresh samples, all while selling their collectibles at fair prices.
They’d been stockpiling LPs for years before they learned of the annex. Quitting their jobs at 1-2-3-4 Go! Records in S.F. and Oakland, they embarked on an epic cross-country recorddigging trip across the Midwest to gather even more inventory.
“We kind of have the luxury of only carrying stuff we believe in,” says Lew, who also plays in Cold Beat and releases music by bands like Tropic Green. “We don’t have to carry Taylor Swift records.”
Lower Grand Radio
Unity was in the air upstairs at MacArthur Annex at Lower Grand Radio in February.
Next to a compact broadcasting setup — read: a mixer and laptop — friends toting skateboards checked out an exhibit of candy-colored decks painted with cuddling nude dudes created by Unity Skateboarding’s Jeffrey Cheung. Meanwhile, Alex Shen, who runs the Internet radio station, was selling mixtapes and giving away copies of Everybody Sk8s, a zine filled with anecdotes from “badazz womxn/non-cismale skateboarders and rollerbladers.” Everybody was on the same page that day, Shen explains later by email, while on tour in Japan with his band, Meat Market, and his group with Cheung, also called Unity.
“Jeffrey has always been into skateboarding but felt like the common culture around it lacks the presence of queer identity. Unity skateboarding has been an outlet for him to blend painting and skateboarding while bringing people together to do something much like Lower Grand Radio, without the pressure of outside regulations,” Shen says of his space mates. “Just get together with friends and do something positive and affirming — set the bar as high as we want. Maybe no bar at all, you know what I mean?”
Shen started his Internet radio project after volunteering at KALX and DJing for UC Santa Cruz’s KZSC. It seemed like the perfect way to keep busy and meet new people.
“There are so many people doing radio streams with legendary programming around the world, but it did feel really good to do it from my windowless garage and go live whenever it felt right.”
His mission, like that of the best public radio, is centered around his community — and free-form, uncensored mobile programming Anyone can DJ for Lower Grand—whether they’re a friend like Andrew Oswald, who runs Secret Bathroom Recording Studio, or teens at the Oakland Public Library, where Shen works. Techno, dance hall, funk, metal, women’s issues — all are permitted. (The shows are archived at www.lowergrandradio.com.)
“I think as you get older, it is easy for your world and community to get smaller,” Shen continues. “I thought creating a space for people to hang out and share music with, potentially, an infinite amount of people, or anyone with an Internet connection, would be really cool.”
The Hanged Man Co.
Foraging florist, fortuneteller and printmaker Matthew Drewry Baker clearly believes in magic, both “within and without,” as he puts it on Instagram.
His MacArthur Annex studio and shop is an expression of that belief. Baker has transformed his container space into a wildly romantic jewel box with witchy, deep blue-green walls ornamented with vintage perfume bottles and other treasures and presided over by twisting masses of jasmine mixed with freesia and calla lilies, all drawn from friends’ Bernal Heights gardens or foraged from the edges of busy byways.
“I think a lot of florists overlook fennel, for instance, by the freeway and in the cracks of the sidewalk — it grows to such an exuberant height,” Baker says. “Passion vine — there’s a huge lot by the side of the Bernal Heights freeway that doesn’t belong to anyone and nobody cares about.
“We live in the Bay Area and there’s so much beauty,” he adds. “We don’t have to necessarily fly flowers out of Holland. Why use pesticides and poison? I try to forage and glean as much as I can myself because a lot of farmed things are too straight up and down, too perfect, anyway. I want it to resemble how things naturally grow in the wild, not a product of agribusiness. I want things that are a strange shape or have their own movement.”
At a recent March Second Sundays event, branches of yellow mustard blossoms and nasturtium greet strangers at the door. Boughs of plum and Michelia Magnolia hover near the door near moon calendars by artist friend Annie Axtel.
Beneath a cumulus cloud of dried hydrangeas, Baker — resplendent in a jaunty straw hat, striped tank, strings of beads, and turquoise and silver bangles and rings — is giving tarot readings on a lace-layered table. I’ve always thought the Tower and Five of Wands cards were bad news, but conventional interpretations fall away in Baker’s fortune-telling sessions, in a way that feels deeply intuitive.
Flowers and divination “correlate weirdly,” Baker muses. “When you’re foraging, walking around and driving around and looking to see what’s growing wild, you make mental maps of your area. It’s similar when you’re paying attention to what’s going on with yourself and the energy. You make mental maps and it’s more about paying attention and being really observant.”
Inspired and tutored by his gardening, tarot-reading mother, as well as former employer and “Foraged Flora” author Louesa Roebuck, the Martinezbred Baker started the Hanged Man Co. three years ago.
Baker also makes rune symbol-embellished talismans and linocut cards, which evolved from his drawing and printmaking studies at the Academy of Art University.
Florimancy, of course, plays into his divination work — and he’s been studying the lost language of flowers for a series of divination dinners to begin this spring. “My card is the Hanged Man — a card that’s apt for my business,” he offers. “It’s about removing yourself from the thick of things and honing your instincts, using action through inaction, allowing things to come to you and trusting you’ll be on the right path.
“There’s something about nature, the floral arrangements, and not trying to force it, letting a branch that’s so strange dictate to me. I use it as an ally and not something to fight against.”