Oakland’s Eastlake Little Saigon neighborhood will be swarmed by adorable hordes of Bulbasaur and Butterfree this Saturday, accompanied by phone-toting trainers trying to catch ’em all—and perhaps get their COVID vaccination and eat a bowl of delicious pho while they’re at it.
With Saturday’s event, dubbed Summer Fest, the East Bay-based community org Good Good Eatz is tapping into the power of Pokémon Go to bring foot traffic back to the neighborhood’s restaurants and grocery stores.
“Our mission is to help small food businesses, as well as business and cultural districts in Oakland, pivot into the 21st century,” says Tommy Wong, who runs Good Good Eatz along with co-founder Trinh Banh. “Pokémon Go is still widely played nationally and internationally by a really diverse group of people. It definitely had its heyday when it first started, but it’s still going strong now. And so it’s a tremendous opportunity for us to connect Little Saigon with a way to attract more customers and bring vibrancy back to its streets and parks.”
With help from Good Good Eatz, the Oakland Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce and San Francisco-based Pokémon Go developer Niantic, Little Saigon’s neighborhood fixtures are turning into temporary PokéStops and PokéGyms—congregation points for players looking for virtual goodies and battles. Participants include popular bo kho (and fusion taco) specialist Pho Vy, banh mi standard Cam Huong and pho joint Mekong Restaurant.
More orthodox community outreach will be available at Clinton Park, in the heart of the neighborhood. Asian Health Services will provide COVID testing and vaccinations to visitors, and the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment will set up a booth for visitors to sample retro video games.
It was the AAPI advocacy group National CAPACD that connected Wong with the creators of Pokémon Go. “Niantic was reaching out to them because of all the recent AAPI hate crimes with the very generous offer of turning any Asian-owned business in the U.S. or Canada into a PokéStop,” says Wong.
