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Monday 6am - 3pm Tuesday 6am - 3pm Wednesday 6am - 3pm Thursday 6am - 3pm Friday 6am - 3pm

Shapeshifters Cafe

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Shapeshifters Cafe

Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Shapeshifters Cafe, Cafe, 571 5th Street, Oakland, CA.

09/02/2026

Early morning meeting? We open at 6 AM. Team lunch? We have sandwiches, cookies, chips. Need delivery? Just let us know! We have bagels, coffee, breakfast burritos, sandwich platters, big salad bowls, fresh squeezed orange juice, chocolate chip cookies made from scratch.

Order online at Shapeshifters Café / Catering: https://shapeshifterscafe.com/catering/

Thank you! And have a great day!

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08/06/2026

us for Happy Hour this week, tonight and Saturday!

We have two beers on tap from Origin Brewer, .brewer . Get them while they last!
🍺 Galileo Pils, 5.4%
🍺 56013 IPA, 6.2%

Tonight! Thursday, August 6, 2026, 4-7pm
Show starts at 7pm in the cinema
Do-Over Music Series featuring live improvised music with film projections and visuals. Every first Thursday with a different lineup!

Saturday, August, 8, 2026, 4-7pm
Show starts at 7pm in the cinema
It Could Be ∞ + Dyemark featuring live drawing, improvised compositions, film, and a special intermedia performance.

Link to tickets and more details in our bio!

07/17/2026

🍊Good morning!

07/09/2026

We'll be open this Saturday, 11AM-3PM! We're a stop on the Jack London Hopscotch Tour! And we'll have a few specials for Hopscotch hoppers!

Free RSVP: https://HopscotchJL.eventbrite.com

10 local artists. 10 unique hopscotches. 1 neighborhood-wide adventure! 🎨🎉

Join us on Saturday, July 11 from 12–3 PM as we celebrate the completion of 10 brand-new hopscotch murals throughout Jack London. Each local artist started with the exact same hopscotch template, then transformed it into something completely unique—resulting in a colorful collection of public art that’s equal parts playful, creative, and unexpected.

Pick up a Hopscotch Tour map, explore all 10 murals, and stop into participating businesses along the route to collect stamps for your Hopscotch Passport.

Complete the Hopscotch Hunt and earn a special prize from a participating business!

Whether you’re hopping from mural to mural, discovering local businesses, admiring the artwork, or just enjoying an afternoon in the neighborhood, this event is designed for all ages (and yes, pups are welcome too) 🐶

Participating businesses include and more to be announced.

07/02/2026

We’ll be open for happy hour before the show tonight! 4-7pm. And also on Sunday, open for brunch before the matinée screening, 11am-2pm. We’ll see you here!

⭐️ Live Music Tonight and Screening on Sunday! ⭐️

Do-Over Music Series - BRISTLE / Fowl Figures
Thursday, July 2, 2026, 7pm, $10

The Do-Over Music Series at Shapeshifters Cinema, organized by Lisa Mezzacappa and Jordan Glenn, is a monthly series of sound performances presented by a rotating cast of local luminaries and special guests. The first set features performances of creative - improvised - composed - electronic - acoustic - music. The second set opens up to a live improvised collaboration of sound and visuals made using images culled from the Shapeshifters 16mm film collection.

Set 1: 7pm sound performance by BRISTLE
Randy McKean - alto sax, clarinets
Cory Wright - tenor sax, clarinets, flute
Murray Campbell - violin, oboe & English horn
Lisa Mezzacappa - acoustic bass

Set 2 (8pm): expanded cinema + improvised music by Fowl Figures (Anthony Russell & Marissa Deitz):

Films, film loops and other visual interventions by Ellie Vanderlip

- - - - - - - -

Mare's Nest by Ben Rivers
Sunday, July 5, 2026, 2pm, $15

Mare's Nest unfolds in a world without adults, where main character Moon wanders through unfamiliar landscapes, encountering solitary figures who reveal alternative ways of living. Guided by a sage and her interpreter in a remote mountain hut, she seeks meaning amid uncertainty. Inspired by a text written by author Don DeLillo, the film reflects the ongoing fascination of director Ben Rivers with lives unfolding apart from mainstream society and follows Moon's quiet observations as she moves through this enigmatic realm towards an open, unknowable future.

06/24/2026

Come in for breakfast & lunch this week, 6am-2pm. Friday closing early at 11am. We'll be open on Saturday afternoon for Happy Hour from 4-7pm and Sunday from 12-4pm!

⭐️ Live Music and Workshop Coming up this weekend! ⭐️

Agnes Martian, Matthew D. Gantt, Sally Decker & Mike Nigro
Saturday, June 27, 2026, 7pm, $16

Started in 2019 as a weekly ritual of open-ended sonic exploration, Oakland-based Agnes Martian soundtracks a pataphysical planetarium that charts undiscovered constellations of deep inner/outer space, exploring tension and transcendence in liminal spaces between propulsive groove, ecstatic repetition, and ambient meditation. Matthew D. Gantt presents a suite of experimental compositions, game engine simulations, and generative audio-visual environments. Sally Decker is a composer, performer and songwriter working with feedback, synthesizers, text and voice. She explores the emotional potential of sounds as portals of connection. Mike Nigro is an American electronic musician and label operator currently based on Sydney, Australia.

Printing Imperfect Movies At Home
Instructor: Alex Mejía
Sunday, June 28, 2026, 1-5pm
In-person at Shapeshifters Cinema
$60 + $15 materials fee

DIY printing using copy machines and home printers is a living tradition across movements and subcultures as an accessible and cost-effective way to create things like personal zines, poetry chapbooks, scene reports, and insurgent manifestos. In this workshop led by Alex Mejía, participants will experiment with this wonderfully imperfect, lo-fi, high-contrast, black & white aesthetic using text, found footage and animations as source material that will be printed directly onto 16mm film leader to create homemade movies without cameras or photochemical processes. Building on the lo-fi zine aesthetic/practice, participants will engage in simple writing exercises that respond to the images – turning mistakes, glitches, and distortions into language-based material. Participants will leave the workshop with handmade, printed 16mm film loops, as well as video capture of the footage, to carry into future moving image projects.

06/17/2026

🌞 Summer Specials! Featuring locally-grown yellow corn and heirloom tomatoes.

🌽 Summer Caesar Salad with roasted corn, heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, chopped romaine, shaved parm, and a spicy chipotle caesar dressing or a pesto vinaigrette, with your choice of roasted chicken breast or sliced avocados from California.

🍅 Heirloom Tomato Caprese with slices of heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella and our house-made pesto (*no nuts) on a torpedo roll.

📽️ We'll see you here this week *and* this weekend, Saturday 4-7pm before the screening and Sunday 11-2 before the matinée on the Summer Solstice! 🌞🌿

06/16/2026

This weekend come in and grab a bite to eat and enjoy our delicious hand-crafted beers or w**e, lemonade, and more before the shows. We'll be open on Saturday afternoon at 4pm and early Sunday at 11am for the matinée!

⭐️ Two shows coming up this weekend! ⭐️

Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues
Program 16: Q***r Joy, Friendship & Community
Presented in association with San Francisco Cinematheque
Saturday, June 20, 2026, 7pm, $15

Dovetailing off the history, legacy and celebrations of Pride month, Program 16: Q***r Joy, Friendship & Community magnifies the spaces and relationships established, cultivated and celebrated by the LGBTQIA+ community.

Screening: Sisters! (1973, 16mm film) by Barbara Hammer, Swing, Swish, Sway (2026, 16mm film + DV, shown on DV) by TT Takemoto, A Spell for a Q***r Home (2023, DV) by A. Madden, The Neighbour (2021, DV) by Cedoy, nakładamy się (2022, 16mm film shown on DV) by ewelina węgiel and How to Carry Water (2023, DV) by Sasha Wortzel

Revelations of Divine Love
with director Caroline Golum in person
Sunday, June 21, 2026, 2pm, $15

An irreverent biopic vividly realized through fantastic psychedelia and handmade sets with an ever-topical feminist approach, Revelations of Divine Love, by Caroline Golum is inspired by and adapted from the memoir of 14th-century mystic and philosopher Julian of Norwich—an account of religious ecstasy, plague, and revolt considered to be the first English-language book to be authored by a woman. Running time: 73 minutes. In English and Latin with English subtitles.

Vital Signs is a new film series organized by Bay Area filmmaker and curator Jonathan Kiefer to showcase new and recently-released, feature-length, contemporary, independent and artist-made films that have shown around the international film festival circuit but may or may not have been picked up by distributors and are otherwise hard to find. Films may feature obscure themes, unusual perspectives or eccentric material, but they have all been sifted through the Vital Signs filter so you can be sure they are all films worth leaving your home to see in community with like-minded art film/film art appreciators.

06/11/2026

New Hours! Shapeshifters Café is now open before every show! Grab a bite to eat and enjoy our delicious hand-crafted beers or w**e, lemonade, and more. We'll be open at least two hours before the show, even for our Sunday matinees.

⭐️ Two shows coming up this weekend! ⭐️

😺 Catnapped! by Takashi Nakamura
Presented with an introduction by werring yuli
Screening and Fundraiser for Shapeshifters Cinema
Friday, June 12, 2026
Two screenings! 6pm (dubbed version) & 8:15pm (subtitled version)
$12-20, sliding scale (all proceeds will support Shapeshifters Cinema)
🍺🍷🍪 Café Open from 4:00-8:00PM

Created by Takashi Nakamura and released in 1995, this obscure, feature-length anime film tells the story of siblings Toriyasu and Meeko whose dog is stolen away and taken to a phantasmagoric, otherworldly place ruled by cat-people to be used as a weapon. Toriyasu and Meeko face off against the evil Princess Bubulina, whose touch can turn almost anything into a balloon, in order to save their pet and also the cat world. The film is being presented (with permission from the director) by local artist and anime aficionado werring yuli, along with a short presentation about the film, the director and the significance of both to the world of anime.

🎞️ Short Film Festival – Presented by HFP International
Saturday, June 13, 2026, 6pm, $12
🍺🍷🍪 Café Open from 4:00-6:00PM

The 7th edition of the Oakland Short Film Festival invites you to experience the world through a radically different lens. Spanning two distinctive screening programs, our 2026 selection brings together 9 short films from 8 countries - bridging independent voices from Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States. This year's curation is a vibrant tapestry of cinematic forms: from the quiet truth of documentary and the boundless imagination of animation to the raw emotion of student works and avant-garde experimental film. Each piece stands as a testament to the power of short-form storytelling to collapse distances and reveal deep, shared truths.

05/09/2026

Open today from 10AM-5PM! Mexican-French Toast, Breakfast Burritos, Mimosas from 10AM-2PM. Then at 1PM we'll be hosting Mr. B's Chili Cook-off! Special chilis by Mario Benjamin, plus a house-made vegan chili. Sounds by DJ SPooN and E-Solo. B**r on Tap: Saison with Lavender and Honey and Session IPA with Simcoe, Mosaic, Nelson.

📸: Photo of Gilbert and Mario by Sara M Guerrero-Herrera

Address

571 5th Street
Oakland, CA
94607

Opening Hours

Monday	6am - 3pm
Tuesday	6am - 3pm
Wednesday	6am - 3pm
Thursday	6am - 3pm
Friday	6am - 3pm

Telephone

+15108361234

Website

http://shapeshifterscafe.com/

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