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Young
designers in Oakland’s Temescal District? You bet. Amy Cools has been
exploring clothing design since she was a child, and last summer she
opened her cheerful shop, afterglow, on Telegraph, where she stocks her
own creations (AC Clothing and Bags—dresses, pants, tops, jeans and
purses) and features other local designers (Nicacelly, Porcelynne, Cara
Lynden and Riquelle Small, to name a few), as well as some Oaklandish
offerings.
Self-taught in the
art of design, Cools loves to work with bright, saturated colors and to
showcase vintage fabrics. Check out her empress-waist knit dresses in
red/pink or blue/green, her lightweight, berry-colored hoodies with
rainbow-striped waist and cuffs, her zip-cardigans that incorporate
vintage materials, or her patch-stripe petticoats made of extra pieces
of vintage fabric. She chose her shop’s name because it reminds her of
“lingering joy and things that last.”
Says
Cools, “I make everything with wearability and comfort in mind, so my
customers feel comfortable, free and beautiful in their clothes.”
afterglow, 4233 Telegraph Ave.¸ Oakland, (510) 654-7514, www.acclothingandbags.com.
—Kate Madden Yee
Erik
Lyngen believes he has printer’s ink in his blood. “I’m not fit to do
much else besides run a bookstore,” he says. After working at Oakland’s
Walden Pond Bookstore, Lyngen teamed up with business partner Nick
Raymond to reopen Book Zoo in a new Oakland locale last November. The
store, formerly sited in Berkeley, buys, sells and trades used, rare
and out-of-print tomes, and stocks some new selections in its poetry,
radical politics and children’s sections.
If
you stop by to look around, you’ll find an eclectic mix, from Maxfield
Parrish Masterworks by Alma Gilbert and The Real Mother Goose
(illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright, first printing 1916), to Hunter
S. Thompson, Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Woolf and Isak Dinesen. Book Zoo
also hosts free events like author readings and even live music. For
Lyngen and Raymond, running an alternative bookstore is practically
countercultural. “This is the most important way to use space,” Lyngen
says.
Book Zoo, 6395 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, (510) 654-BOOK.
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