Uptown Unveiled was amazing. There were thousands of pedestrians enjoying the streets, some beautiful art, and plenty of great music. I couldn’t stop smiling for most of the night – I just loved seeing so many different people out enjoying Oakland.
I hope many of you could make it. If not, here is some of what you missed, offered in the order I took the photos (on my iPhone), mostly without comment.
This was on the fence of the empty Uptown lot we saved from being a parking lot. It's a nice idea, but I assure you, not true.
Living in the O 
It was so much fun! I had a great time taking photos, too. Wish they had stuff like that more often… 🙂
Awesome—thanks for posting! I spent most of the evening bemoaning the fact that I didn’t have a camera with me to capture all of the energy! Go Uptown!
Nice post. I loved this event too, it was great to see so many Oaklandians out enjoying the city. More photos from the event here:
http://blog.stephenloewinsohn.com/
-Steve
Awesome shots! I’ve tried taking a few over here:
http://oaklandnorth.net/2009/06/19/slide-show-uptown-unveiled/
It was an amazing event.
I saw a ton of professional-looking photographers out and about last night. Any idea of where I might find more pictures of Uptown Unveiled, Becks?
The Crucible displacing their art in the street level area of the Cathedral Bldg (pictured) is really great. One of the guys involved said that the exhibit will be there for 3 months…a fine way to attract people to this landmark. Now, for the upper floors…
Yes I thought it was great that so many Oaklanders were out on the street and the diversity was incredible. I toured the Fox too and had a blast . The public art featured was also inspiring. BUT there were some real problems as an events organizer–the main ones being only one table for anythng for kids to do plus the lack of food booths. The only real food booth was a BBQ places called Looney’s and it’s a Berkeley business–no much for Shop Oakland! Also, the sound overall was deafening for an old fart like me. I felt bad that I had invited some friends with kids who couldn’t find anything for their 7 year old to do and had to escape because of the volume of noise. But for the younger set it was clearly a hit.
One guy came up the table and was complaining about the lack of food choices and mentioned the Temescal Street Fair where there was so much good food and I had to smile and agree (as it’s an event I co-coordinate)
I was working the arts area and met a lot of great folks though–some of whom want to get involved in shaping the art sculpture/tot lot
Karen Hester
http://www.hesternet.net
I second that complaint about too little food. I luckily got a sandwich at Fat Cat Cafe, but it took a half hour of waiting to get it! Otherwise, I would have had nothing to eat, since none of the vendors offered vegetarian food.
I didn’t mind the loud music, but I could see how others might have. I ran into a friend of mine who had his two kids with him and one of them was covering his ears because it was so loud.
Agree with you about the food and the music. Also think that there was a serious lack of involvement with the merchants other than the bars/clubs with what was happening on the street. Beause of the lack of food we left about 7 and fortunately go in to Luka’s. But never got around to get back to Telegraph. If this ever happens again, it would help to get someone who has help organize Temescal, or Lakeshore or Alameda Park Street to help organize the event, so there was more to do.
On the good side, the inside of the Fox is fantastic, and it was worth going down just for that. And the various art installations were fun to see.
Also, one *really* silly oversight—some friends mentioned that there were people knocking on the Uptown leasing office to find out about renting there, but it was closed and they apparently didn’t have a booth at the festival. Err….????
I think I would call that more than silly. But, they did have the art gallery open in their retail space (though I’m not sure they had any info there about the apartments).
I posted my responses and flickr photos here:
At the City Council meeting where they discussed turning the open space into an art space instead of a parking lot, I ceded dto510 my speaker time with the proviso that he raise the need for better access to burritos and beer in the Uptown area. Beer was pretty obtainable during Uptown Unveiled, but I had to walk up to La Bonita to get a burrito.
Ironically, one place that had food (early on) was the small counter/catering place, but they had the loudest, screechiest music of all.