Event Pick: Pop-Up Magazine at the Ace Hotel This Week

The idea is deceptively simple: What if your favorite literary and culture print publications came to life before a live studio audience? The beloved Pop-Up Magazine answers that question in lively style, with a national series of on-stage events featuring eclectic authors, artists, and performers enacting their work in a cross between a variety show and a TED talk that’s less about life-hacks and more about life itself.

Xyza Cruz Bacani in Pop-Up Magazine Oakland, May 2019; Credit: Alex Welsh

Topics are as wide-ranging and quirky deep-divey as possible, for example, fast-food, Indian weddings, architecture, guest labor policy, and oneiric neurocognition. Contributors to the 2019 Spring Issue include writers Jon Mooallem (The New York Times Magazine), Mallika Rao (The Atlantic), Chris Colin (The California Sunday Magazine); filmmaker Denise Zmekhol (Skin of Glass); photographers Natalie Keyssar and Xyza Bacani; comedians Mohanad Elshieky and Michelle Buteau (Late Night Whenever); and audio producer Sam Harnett (KQED).

Francesca Mari at Pop-Up Magazine; Credit: Jon Snyder

When the show wraps up, everyone hangs out for cocktails and conversation — continuing the event’s theme thesis, that in-person culture is better than the internet. In fact, they don’t even stream, so being there is the only way to be there.

Friday, May 17, 7:30 p.m. at the Ace Hotel in downtown.

James T. Green at Pop-Up Magazine; Credit: Jon Snyder

Pop-Up Magazine; Credit: Jon Snyder

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