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Join Us for Our Grand Opening!

We’re pleased to announce that the Popwagon will be having it’s grand opening on Saturday, April 28! We’ll be parked downtown at Figueroa and 7th street taking part in the opening festivities for the Metro Expo line.

Help us cut the ribbon, then stick around for some artistic surprises curated by long-time Trade City collaborator Paloma Parfrey.

  • A dance performance by Movement Movement -choreographed by Mecca Vazie Andrews
  • Some Low-Fi Disco Punk by Sister Mantos
  • Experimental percussion and environmental jazz by Corey Fogel
  • Rio Parfrey playing classic children’s folk music on appalachian dulcimer
  • Solar beats by SYCONS
  • Street Buddy – an Anti-Rock entity of shifting shapes and perspectives
  • Puppetry by Coral & Sherry
  • A Performance by Paloma Parfrey

Here’s the Facebook Event Page.

Popwagon Production Meeting

Last Sunday, a group of us met at the Popwagon to go over the details for our big grand opening. In honor of  CicLAvia, (which was on the same day) curator Paloma Parfrey, musician Oscar Mantos and performance artist  Lila de Magalhaes rode their bikes from Silverlake and covered the entirety of the Expo line.

The grand opening will take place on April 28,2012 as part of the inaugural celebration for the Metro Expo line. More details to come.

Thanks to The Metropolitan Industrial Power Company (Alexander Wiske) for the photos.

Call for artists and volunteers

Hey Los Angeles artists!

We’ve started planning our first season of programming for the Popwagon. We really want to make this a community-driven project and a”vehicle” for all the great ideas zooming around in the minds of our fellow Angelenos. If you’ve got an idea for a project that would work well in a 20′x 8′ mobile space, fill out the submission form, and we’ll do our best to figure out a way to bring it to the public.

Hey volunteers!

We’re going to need some help getting the Popwagon rolling. If you’ve got some special skills, or if you’re an enthusiastic, helpful kind of person, we’d love your help. Introduce yourself by filling out the submission form.

No matter what, be sure to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook to stay up to date.

Popwagon Fact Sheet

Interesting Things Appear Here

Everything you could ever want to know about our fancy new mobile stage…

LENGTH: 23′

STAGE LENGTH: 16′

WIDTH: 8.5′ closed / 17′ open

HEIGHT: 10′

WEIGHT: 3500 lbs

POWER: External generator (3500 watts max.)

EQUIPMENT: A full suite of lighting, sound and video equipment is available.

HOW IT WORKS: The side door is supported by two cables attached to winches and lowered using exterior winch controls. The door/floor can be used with the cables attached, or else three jacks can be placed in position to bear the weight when the cables are removed. The floor can also be lowered to ground level to act as a ramp.

SETUP TIME: Less than five minutes to park, detach the tow vehicle, and lower the stage.

BUILT: January 2012

Meet the Popwagon

The Trade City Popwagon

Rather than waste a perfectly good bottle of champagne, we’re christening the mobile stage right here on the website! The official name is… “The Trade City Popwagon.” Special thanks to everyone who participated in the naming survey. We had many many great names to choose from, but this one seemed to encapsulate everything we’re going for. Let’s see where it takes us!

Let's Drive!

Los Angeles is a city of cars and highways. Our neighbors are the people driving ahead of us in the fast lane and our idea of a close-knit community is a parking lot with too few parking spaces. The city is defined by it’s mobility. We are what we drive. We are the traffic.

So how do art and theater fit into such a place?  Before any grand artistic visions can be fulfilled, a live event must first entice people off their couches, through the gridlock, into a convenient parking spot, and into the venue… Unless, of course, the venue can drive itself!

So yes – we’ve decided to embrace the auto-driven nature of L.A. Culture and take to the road in our very own stage on wheels. There’s a long tradition of theatre companies traveling from town to town, staging shows from the back of a wagon. Why not introduce a modern-day, Twitter-enabled  version that can traverse the sprawl of Los Angeles and bring our brand of art-making to its diverse communities?

We’ll be able to reach audiences who wouldn’t normally make the trip to the theatre or gallery opening, and we won’t be thwarted by high rents and topsy-turvy real estate markets. We can catch people off-guard, frame our work in an unusual context and get people to experience art in a cool new way.

So if you find yourself in your car, stuck behind a big white trailer, please don’t fly into a road rage. It might just be us, hauling a big load of trouble.