Out and About: Park Life

Out and About: Park Life

Gallery mixes art, off-beat: Aidin Vaziri | Think the Inner Richmond is where culture stops and cheap eats begin? Derek Song and Jamie Alexander are determined to fix that with Park Life, the new design and retail space they opened a few weeks ago on Clement Street, where customers can pick up everything from weird Japanese toys and hand-printed fanzines to custom T-shirts and one-of-a-kind household items. In the back half of the store, bare walls yield to monthly installations by local artists like Andrew Schoultz, Brendan Monroe and Tucker Nichols. "We wanted to create a gallery space where people who have never bought art would feel comfortable," says Song, a former curator for Giant Robot in San Francisco. "It's kind of a mix of the highbrow and lowbrow." Like its clientele, the finely edited, brightly lit store remains a work-in-progress. Next up: A publishing imprint called Paper Museum Press, which will put out books by many of the artists whose work is displayed on the walls. "We knew we couldn't do a straight gallery," Song says. "It's just not us."