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Monday 9am - 6pm Tuesday 9am - 6pm Wednesday 9am - 6pm Thursday 9am - 6pm Friday 7am - 6pm Saturday 9am - 6pm Sunday 9am - 6pm

Black Bird Bookstore

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Black Bird Bookstore

A community bookstore in the Outer Sunset.
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We sell a hand-curated collection of new adult and children's books including fiction, poetry, travel, local interest, memoir, maker, socio-political, non-fiction, graphic novels, puzzles, and a collection of home goods, toys, ceramics and other gifts.

03/31/2025

✨ Community Spotlight: Carah Jo ✨

Outer Sunset artist Carah Jo celebrates opening night for their solo exhibition ‘Fruit Garden + Altar’ at Black Bird on Friday, April 4th from 7-9pm!

Carah Jo grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with an upbringing that was “submerged in Southern Black American tradition.” Their creative expression began at an early age, and has developed and grown in the seven years since moving to San Francisco. Jo’s purpose with their art is to not only spark imagination in the viewer, but also to work toward freeing themself and others from the confines of race, gender and class.

‘Fruit Garden + Altar’ works to deconstruct harmful ideologies and construct new, liberating ones. A place that fosters individual and communal growth is integral to this. To Jo, Black Bird is a representation of what is possible in the future they are imagining in this work.

You can view Jo’s latest pieces on the walls of Black Bird this Friday night. Delicious gluten-free treats will be available for sale from local bakery .

02/11/2025

✨ Community Spotlight: Mel Waters ✨

San Francisco born and raised artist Mel Waters celebrates opening night for his solo art show at Black Bird on Friday, February 14th from 7-9pm!

Mel Waters is a Black and Filipino Artist whose current works explore and celebrate street life and culture around San Francisco, focusing primarily on Black, Brown and Asian communities.

Mel was born in San Francisco, and has stayed long enough to witness the effects of the wealth gap and the decline of certain populations. His paintings are filled with nostalgia for the past, as well as storytelling for the communities of the present.

You can view current body of work on the walls of Black Bird this Friday night through the month of March.

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12/27/2024

✨Community Spotlight: Jun Yang✨

San Francisco-based artist Jun Yang celebrates opening night for his solo art show ‘Q***r by Nature’ at Black Bird on Friday, January 3rd from 7-9pm!

Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, lived in Ireland, Belgium and France before settling in San Francisco.

Jun is self-taught. His paintings, murals, and textile sculptures draw inspiration from his childhood traumas, healing journey, experiences of grief, the Q***r immigrant experience, and cultural shock.

For the past several years, Jun has focused on the creation of POC (People of Color) Q***r bodies through painting, sewing fabric sculptures, and sculpting figures out of clay. His works reflect on the evidence of survival, growth, and nourishment.

10/07/2024

✨ Staff Book Recommendations: Serrana Gay ✨

Book: ‘Craft: Storied I Wrote for the Devil’ by published by

Serrana’s Literary Style: “My favorite thing to read is fiction (probably because it’s also my favorite thing to write.) I enjoy work across genres as long as the sentence level is interesting … but sometimes, a good plot or a great world is enough to hook me.”

In ‘Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil’, Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences - of ambition, fear, longing and belonging — and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.

Serrana is a writer of fiction whose stories, although fiction, stem from emotionally complex personal experiences. Writing, for Serrana, is as much an act of catharsis as it is of creation.

Copies of Serrana’s recommendation are available both in-store and online (link in bio.)

09/05/2024

✨Community Spotlight: Sachi Cunningham✨

Outer Sunset-based water photographer and filmmaker Sachi Cunningham celebrates opening night for her solo art show ‘seasachi swim’ at Black Bird on Saturday, September 7th from 6-9pm!

Sachi remembers her dad calling her downstairs to watch a PBS documentary featuring Aaron Chang, a water surf photographer, when she was 16 years old. Already having developed a love for water and photography, she was excited and motivated by the realization that doing both simultaneously was possible.

From that moment on, her journey carried her through many iterations of photography and filmmaking. She apprenticed with a surf photographer in Japan, worked a Hollywood film assistant job, was on Los Angeles Times’ first video team, and taught multimedia journalism at San Francisco State University, amongst other creative and journalistic pursuits.

On one particularly memorable assignment, she filmed 13 women surfing at Mavericks, some of the world’s most powerful waves, and was instantly inspired. “I saw these women and I was like… this is the story of my career.”

SheChange is Sachi’s most recent documentary following four of these women big wave surfers over the span of a decade as they used existing laws to create change and gender equality within the sport. Their efforts catalyzed equal pay in the World Surf League, the first US-based sports league in history to pay women and men equally.

You can see the trailer for the documentary as well as photos primarily from the past 5-10 years of Sachi’s career on opening night at Black Bird.

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08/08/2024

✨Community Spotlight: Jeana Loraine✨

Outer Sunset-based artist and business owner Jeana Loraine celebrates the opening of her solo art show at Black Bird tomorrow night, Friday, August 9th from 6-9pm!

A child of artists and creatives, Jeana began drawing at a young age, eventually fulfilling her dream of going to art school for the craft. After graduation, she turned her focus to digital art, which became her preferred medium. In Zurich, Switzerland, she became the manager of a music venue. The owner gave her the creative freedom to design and execute posters for the business, a job she still holds today, 20 years later. “The style I work in now is all pretty much self-taught” as a result, Jeana said.

Jeana moved to the Outer Sunset from Switzerland with her husband 11 years ago, inspired by the nautical surroundings and muted colors of the landscape. She didn’t know anyone in the area at the time, and found community-building a challenge. This inspired her decision to open up , a community space that hosts events, from musical open mic nights to writing workshops to group art exhibitions.

“The Outer Sunset is my favorite place in the world ... there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Celebrate with Jeana (and her dog Finn) this Friday night here at Black Bird.

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07/24/2024

Page McCargo and the Edgelands Design landscape team are the greenthumbs behind Black Bird’s backyard garden oasis; a space designed for gathering around books, coffee and people.

Page’s love of plants started at a young age. She grew up in Colorado where she would spend her childhood weekends outdoors with her mom learning about the local flora. Page has spent the last ten years doing the same thing here in SF, developing a deep knowledge of our native plants and the city landscape. She started her landscaping company, , to fuse her love of working with people, plants, and the outdoors. She is drawn to the aesthetic of integrating native plants and utilizing mixed materials, like driftwood and redwood, a style which can be seen in the design of our garden.

Black Bird’s garden is open daily 9am-7pm to enjoy with coffee, a book, and a friend.

07/10/2024

We have indoor seating starting at 7am!

A place to sit, read, sketch, contemplate, converse, and enjoy your morning coffee and treat.

Table designed by Luke Bartels

06/26/2024

✨ Community Spotlight: Charles “Chuck” Fabbiani III ✨

Celebrate opening night for San Francisco-native film photographer Charles “Chuck”Fabbiani III”s solo art show at Black Bird this Friday, June 28th from 6-9pm!

Charles, also known as , is a third-generation San Francisco native and self-taught photographer with the hopes of preserving the city’s history through photographs.

The nickname 35mmpelicula developed as a nod to both Charles’ shooting style and his
Latino roots.

He finds inspiration during long walks through San Francisco neighborhoods, namely the Mission, Excelsior, Market Street, Downtown and the Dogpatch. These are districts he finds not only the most impacted by the changing city, but also the most personally nostalgic: they remind him of the people and places he grew up with.

While street photography is his current medium, Charles does not want to be boxed into any one specific photographic style. He hopes to one day publish a book of his own, maybe enter the world of photojournalism... to continue evolving and expanding.

In an effort to create accessibility in an at times inaccessible art world, Charles will be raffling off his prints the night of his opening. We hope to see you there!

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06/12/2024

✨Community Spotlight: Michael Genhart✨

Celebrate Pride Month this Saturday, June 15th at 9:30am during a storytime with local picture book author , reading from his storybooks ‘They’re So Flamboyant’ and ‘Rainbow: A First Book of Pride.’

When Michael’s daughter began applying to colleges, he was brought back to memories of reading picture books together when she was young: one of their favorite shared activities. Knowing he would miss her when she moved away prompted the idea of writing picture books himself.

After 2 years as a student of the craft, Michael began writing from the perspective of his lived experience: first about themes that came out of his full-time psychology practice, then later through the lens of being a gay man and dad, followed by his experience growing up in a multicultural, Mexican-American and Swiss-American household.

Michael keeps a physical pen and pad of paper with him wherever he goes, finding many of his ideas come while shopping at Safeway or taking a walk. By the time he sits down at the table to write, he has a good idea of what he wants to say. He always writes to music, as well, because he imagines writing a storybook is like writing a song: both have limited time and only so many words to tell a story that hopefully people will resonate with.

His forthcoming books include picture book biographies highlighting the true stories of LGBTQ+-rights activist Edith Windsor and chicana muralist Judy Baca.

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06/07/2024

✨Community Spotlight: Anna Beurskens✨

Local artist, business owner, and interior designer debuts her solo art show ‘Park Culture: A Series of Wrapped Panels’ at Black Bird! The show is on display now through June 23rd, with a celebratory closing party on June 21st at 6pm, featuring a performance by harpist .

Anna learned to crochet and sew when she was just 6 years old, and has loved the medium of textiles and fibers ever since. Today, she makes wrapped panels, a technique she created and has fine-tuned over the last few years. For Anna, the constraints of this particular technique allow more room for creativity in color, texture and composition.

Within both her artistic and interior design practices, Anna owns the ecological responsibility of what she brings into the world. She sources most of her fibers from SCRAP, a non-profit and creative reuse center that supports arts in the community. Each piece is unique because it is fully dependent on the reclaimed resources available to her at the time of its creation.

All of the pieces showcased are handmade in Anna’s studio - her living room floor - with the help of her cat, Chesterfield. Come see them for yourself now hanging from the walls of Black Bird! Also available online at linesbyanna.com

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05/22/2024

Give the gift that keeps on giving: The Monthly Box! Available in 3, 6, and 12-month subscriptions.

Each book will be hand-picked by our booksellers, personalized to the reader’s interests, and wrapped with a handmade touch. ✨

Read more and order online through the link in bio.

Address

4541 Irving Street
San Francisco, CA
94122

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 6pm
Tuesday	9am - 6pm
Wednesday	9am - 6pm
Thursday	9am - 6pm
Friday	7am - 6pm
Saturday	9am - 6pm
Sunday	9am - 6pm

Telephone

+14157425203

Website

http://blackbirdsf.com/

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