LOL and squeeee! It’s Oakland’s Internet Cat Video Festival
on May 13, 2013
An estimated 6,000 cat lovers gathered in Oakland on Saturday for the Internet Cat Video Festival. Yes, you read that right—Internet Cat Video Festival.
The street festival, described on its website as “celebrating felines and exploring the low art of Internet cat videos together, in real-time,” took place on two blocks of Grand Avenue between Telegraph and Broadway, and featured much more than just videos. In addition to live music on the “Save a Kitten” stage, there were also ample “Cativities” (a mouse toss, cat face painting, clay cat sculpting) and “Kitty City,” an assortment of two dozen vendors hawking cat-inspired wares, like cat toys, cat food and cat apparel.
Oh, and there were cats. Five adoption agencies—the East Bay SPCA, Cat Town, Hopalong Animal, Island Cat Resources and Adoption and the Feral Cat Foundation—had booths set up with cats and kittens available for adoption. Festivities continued all afternoon, until the sun went down and dozens of cat videos were projected onto The Great Wall of Oakland, the exterior of an Uptown building.
The event was a collaboration between The Great Wall of Oakland and the Walker Art Center, located in Minneapolis, and all proceeds went to benefit the East Bay SPCA. The Walker Art Center held the first Internet Cat Video Festival in August, 2012. Since then, the center has received more than 50 requests for events all over the country, including Austin, Memphis, and Portland, OR.
Check out Oakland Cat Video Festival for more info about the local event. And enjoy this Walker Art Center-curated cat video playlist.
This post was amended to correct the number of attendees from 2,500 to 6,000, and to add Island Cat Resources & Adoption.
-
- An estimated 2,500 cat lovers were estimated to be in attendance throughout Saturday’s festivities.
-
- A four-week-old kitten up for adoption at one of the four cat adoption booths sponsored by the Easy Bay SPCA, Cat Town, Feral Cat Foundation, and Hopalong Animal Rescue.
-
- About a dozen vendors were on hand selling the best in cat-inspired arts and crafts.
-
- Journey, a Sphinx, was one of a handful of cats brought along to the festivities by their owners.
-
- “Cativities” included facepainting, origami cat ears, clay cat sculpting, cat painting, and more.
-
- Oh, and mouse toss.
-
- Another spectator, along for the ride in a cat-stroller.
-
- Another successful adoption at Saturday’s Oakland’s Internet Cat Video Festival.
2 Comments
Oakland North welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Oakland North assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.
Oakland North
Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.
There were 6,000 + people at OakCatVidFest at the Great Wall of Oakland last Saturday!
[…] Cat Office Organization at Jogjaers.comPractical Permaculture – Keeping Cats Out Of The GardenLOL and squeeee! It’s Oakland’s Internet Cat Video Festival .cmamtop-content-widget {text-align: left;} .cmampos1-content-widget {text-align: right;} […]