This Craft Night Might Be the Hottest Party in Alameda

This story is part of Finding Your People, a series celebrating the Bay Area’s meetups and subcultures that bring people together IRL in an increasingly online world.

It’s almost 6 o’clock on a recent Thursday, and a 50-person line has formed in the narrow brick alleyway of the Alameda Brewing warehouse. Twenty-somethings with K-pop keychains; millennial parents pushing strollers; Gen X mothers with teenage daughters; tatted queer couples; and fashion girlies with bleached eyebrows are waiting to get into the hottest party on this side of the island: an all-ages craft night.

Wearing a silver dress shaped like an exquisitely frosted cupcake, Jenny Baquing flits about the line, exchanging smiles and hugs with regulars. When the doors open, she warmly welcomes each person and explains the instructions for tonight’s activity: coloring sticker designs — cowboy boots, teddy bears and kittens — that she’s laid out along with markers and pencils at each table, no art experience required.

This evening is part of the increasingly popular series of mixers Baquing calls Jenny and Cabbage. (Cabbage is her fluffy brown poodle.) Baquing appears comfortable in her element, a true social butterfly, but when we go off to the side to chat, she confesses that she started her craft nights a year ago because she struggled to make friends.

“When I was growing up, socializing was very difficult for me,” she admits.

Some of the event attendees describe themselves as neurodivergent, like Baquing herself. Many have told her they feel similarly out of sorts making small talk. It turns out shiny beads and cute drawings are the perfect ice breakers. “You technically could do all of these crafts by yourself at home,” she says, “but I think so many people come out because they want to be with other creative people. They want to make connections.”

Born in Oakland and raised in Antioch, Baquing, 38, has lived in Dallas, Japan and Los Angeles. When she moved back to the Bay Area two years ago, she realized she needed to expand her social circle in her home region.

“It can feel really vulnerable and scary and sad to say, ‘I want more friends, but I don’t know how to make them,’” she says. “When you are willing to come into a space like this, your bravery is really rewarded with friendship and community.”

Baquing’s first event, rock painting, drew 75 attendees. That one-off blossomed into a series, and she now hosts craft nights at least twice a month at rotating venues, including Oakland’s Temescal Brewing and Alameda’s Faction Brewing. Popular activities like purse-charm making have drawn upwards of 250 crafters. Her philosophy is simple: make the barrier to entry as low as possible, with supplies provided, and no cover charge or RSVP.

“I feel like you can kind of show up, like in the good old days when you would just show up at a friend’s house,” says Baquing. “It just feels like a big party.”

Each attendee has a different reason for coming to Jenny and Cabbage, but as laughter echoes through the warehouse and scissors and pencils change hands, it becomes clear that everyone arrives with a sense of warmth and openness.

Tamia Manning, 27, recently moved to the Bay Area from Chicago. After completing two masters programs, she says she felt out of practice when it came to making friends outside of a campus setting.

“This is really the first time that I’ve ventured out,” she says. “And honestly, it’s a process of relearning what my hobbies are, what my passions are.”

Now a volunteer for the event, Manning has played “bead fairy” on friendship bracelet night, and has done astrology readings for her fellow crafters on multiple occasions.

“I think joy is resistance,” she says. “I know people say that a lot, but truly it is.”

At a nearby table, Lucia Capezzuto, 20, draws Studio Ghibli-inspired characters freehand. As I join her table and start coloring in a cowboy boot, we chat about the phase of life she’s in. Many of her high school friends from El Cerrito have moved away, and bars and clubs aren’t an option since she’s not yet of drinking age. Instead, she goes to Jenny and Cabbage events to make friends of all ages.

“I’ve become insanely close to Jenny, and she’s truly like the biggest mentor to me,” Capezzuto gushes.

With blue hair, a lip ring and loud laugh, Capezzuto’s outgoing presence pulls shyer crafters like Natalie Vega into conversation. A fellow regular, Vega, 30, felt isolated working from home. After hearing about Jenny and Cabbage, it took her weeks to psych herself up to go.

“Coming to an event by yourself can be a little intimidating, but [Jenny] had, even just through her TikToks and Instagram videos, she had very good welcoming vibes,” she says.

Her first time attending, Vega told herself, “‘If it’s really bad, I can just head out.’ But it was lovely. … I was a little nervous at first, but very quickly, that went away.”

Baquing’s craft nights are a volunteer effort. In addition to a handful of regulars who sign up to help, her husband, Chris O’Brien, packs boxes and hauls tables so that Baquing can focus on designing the activities.

“I’m like the roadie,” he jokes.

The couple spends a lot of time talking about how to make it easier for people to connect face-to-face in our technology-addled world. They were both in college when Facebook began to take off, but any excitement O’Brien once felt about social media has curdled into disappointment.

“It felt like it was really going to connect a lot of people, and in a lot of ways it kind of did the opposite,” he reflects. “People are really isolated. They have every excuse in the world to just stay home.”

In addition to assisting with Jenny and Cabbage events, O’Brien hosts three trivia nights a week: Mondays at Dragon Gate in Oakland, Tuesdays at Doghouse in West Berkeley and Wednesdays at Raleigh’s near the UC Berkeley campus. The craft nights and trivia nights have created a positive feedback loop where people from one find out about the other and join in.

“I feel like people actually know how to connect with each other. It’s an ancient need that we all have,” Baquing says. “We’ve been doing it since the beginning of time, sharing stories and laughing together in community over food and something to do. And I feel if people are just given a little sunshine, then they can do the rest themselves.”

Back inside Alameda Brewing, the happy chatter of hundreds of eager crafters echoes through the cavernous space as Baquing proudly looks on. Everyone’s hands are busy, and she can now finally relax and color a few stickers herself.  

While Jenny and Cabbage is certainly growing, the goal, Baquing says, has never been to build a crafting empire. It’s actually a bit more simple: to find more creative friends of her own. One year in, she’s more than succeeded, and is now paying it forward.

“I actually feel very lucky,” she sighs. “I’ve never had this many people that I cared about at the same time.”

Jenny and Cabbage’s next events take place at Temescal Brewing (4115 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland) on Aug. 13 and at Faction Brewing (2501 Monarch Street, Alameda) on Aug. 20. Check the Jenny and Cabbage Instagram for additional details.