Spacious Restaurant with Modern Lounge Area.

Founder-run labels, ceramicists, photographers and small-batch food operators make up the working population of this pocket of Old Oakland, sharing the upper floors of the 19th century commercial buildings on 9th and 10th Streets between Broadway and Washington with design studios, a handful of production companies and independent creative agencies. Swan's Market a block south functions as the anchor, with The Cook and Her Farmer, Popoca and Taylor's Sausage drawing a food-literate crowd through the arcade daily. Oaklandish on Broadway remains the reference point for locally made apparel and sets the tone buyers expect from this side of the Bay. Ratto's has fed studio crews on 9th for generations, Seven Mirrors handles the gallery function, and International Camera and Archer Bicycle round out a retail mix built on specialists rather than chains. Having scouted this district repeatedly for showroom space and pop-up shop placements, the pattern we rely on is that almost every neighbour here is the decision maker, so cross-promotion, shared guest lists and door-to-door collaboration on a press day get agreed in a single conversation. Examples of how that plays out sit in our work.

Value per square metre combined with genuine production freedom is why brand teams choose this address over Hayes Valley, Jackson Square, Union Square or Valencia Street. A comparable furnished footprint in San Francisco routinely costs three to four times this daily rate before you account for the slower approvals on any build, bar service or extended trading hours. Here you inherit a working kitchen, fitting rooms, garment racks, counters, stock room, sound and video equipment and a 90 inch screen, which strips a large chunk out of a showroom rental or sample sale budget. What you do not inherit is the automatic press credibility of an SF postcode, so this suits invite-led formats where the list is already built rather than launches relying on ambient discovery. 12th Street BART is a short walk and puts downtown San Francisco roughly twelve minutes away, which means buyers and editors staying across the Bay can attend without restructuring their schedule, and parking plus an elevator make load-in straightforward for content studio and photo shoot bookings. Teams weighing Oakland against other markets usually run it through the city compare tool first.

Arriving on this block feels calm and orderly, which is precisely what an appointment-led format needs. Mornings move in defined waves as courthouse staff, civic office workers and studio crews cycle between Bagel Street Cafe, Highwire and Oaklandia, thinning out noticeably after ten. Midday is the peak window, driven by the restaurant density around Swan's Market and the Broadway corridor rather than by shoppers. From late afternoon the pace drops away and the street reads closer to residential than commercial, which makes evening cocktail receptions, influencer events and controlled brand shoot schedules easy to manage without crowd interference. Because this space sits at basement level, pavement visibility is limited and guests need proper wayfinding, signage and a hosted door, all of which we handle through production and build. What we consistently hear from brand teams who activate here is that the quiet works in their favour once expectations are set correctly. The honest limitation: this block generates almost no spontaneous walk-in traffic and Sundays are slow, so it is the wrong choice for high-volume temporary retail, tourist-facing sales or any brand whose model depends on street frontage and passing footfall.