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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.

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!

re-surfacing

Hello. We are back. Slowly surfacing from a long period of change in the company. Some of us traveled and moved to other states, and took up residence and became vessels of change in new cities. Some of us went to grad school… Some of us got married… Some had babies… And most of us spent the past few years pondering- staring at the artistic climate of our world… Our country… And our city. And in this pondering we were able to take stock and realize that the world is a different place now- much different from when we began our journey as novice artists. Money for the arts, for underground voices, and impossible possibilities has been tempered. Yes. The landscape has changed… We are ready to change with it. In the next few months, and coming years, Trade City will be re-surfacing in a little pocket of community in Los Angeles, the Mid-City- aptly named for where our journey finds us- in the middle of some place… We never ascribed to an easy definition for our company, but rather hoped to live in the middle of all artistic thought, and with that said Trade City will be chronicling our resurfacing on this blog. My posts will keep you updated on the happenings of Trade City and the happenings of like-minded groups. What else might you find here? In the tradition of Trade City, we will have a column devoted to a young artist, this artist has just found himself in Los Angeles after graduating from college with a theatre design degree. He is just learning the ropes of this city, and he is going to take us along for the ride. As he learns what it means to live as an artist in this city we hope to give our audience a first hand look at the world through the eyes of someone who is still learning. Maybe in this way we can harken back to our roots, as an organization that has no preconceptions- that is without rules and boundaries. His posts will be listed under the heading, “Outside/In”… And with that Trade City begins again. We hope to carry you all along for the journey. If you did not know us before check out our history page, and if you did know us before- we hope that you will come back and join us on our new journey forward.