Oakland merchants are making it easy to buy unique goodies this season with extended hours, a thriving online marketplace and holiday shopping events galore.

This Friday, for example, from 6 to 8 p.m., more than 100 Oakland shops will join in a citywide Open House to celebrate the season. Shoppers around Lakeshore will find carriage rides and face painting. Merchants from Fruitvale to Rockridge, all around Lake Merritt, uptown, downtown, Montclair, Laurel and East MacArthur Boulevard will offer refreshments, specials and entertainment. [Click here for more holiday shopping fun.]

Oaklander Pamela Drake, 63, organized the Open House after a similar event she spearheaded in October met with raves.

"It's not just about keeping money in the community," she said. "It's about taking care of ourselves and being together in a place we feel good about."

Drake, who has lived in Oakland since 1973, said she's seen it blossom in the past five or six years, as artists and other young people have flocked here to open galleries, coffee shops and other creative spaces.

"You can feel the energy around town," she said. "It's fine if the rest of the world sees us as 'gangster land.' It lets us enjoy the city and keep it to ourselves. But it’s also great if you don't live here and you want to come explore."

People who are reticent to brave the crowds but still want to shop within the city limits need look no further than Oakland Unwrapped!, an online marketplace featuring creations and products from nearly 200 Oakland businesses and artists.

Erin Kilmer-Neel, of OneCalifornia Foundation, created the site as an alternative to Amazon.com. She said she wanted to make it easy for shoppers to find Oakland creations.

"Maybe they have to shop at midnight after the kids go to bed," she said. "Maybe they went to a festival and found something by a great artist but didn't buy it. Now they can still buy the art even though the fair is over."

Kilmer-Neel said Oakland Unwrapped! has grown from fewer than 50 businesses in 2007 to 170 this year. It gets twice as many monthly hits as it did last year, she said, a sign of a growing awareness about how buying local can help the city.

She listed three reasons people make this choice. For one, she said, it makes the city's economy stronger; studies have shown that $68 out of every $100 spent locally stay in the community. This helps both the shops where you spend your money, she said, and related businesses, from Web designers to accountants, that merchants use for commercial needs. It also contributes to Oakland's quality of life.

"Local merchants are what make a community unique and interesting, give it its flavor and make it a place people want to live," she said. "It’s a way of preserving the local culture."

Finally, there's an environmental argument, she said. Many independent businesses are in city centers, located within the existing infrastructure rather than in sprawling malls that require car trips and are built by "paving over green space, altering the drainage system and creating new cement."

New movements spur shopping
Just before Thanksgiving, a number of Oakland businesses and advocates joined forces to create Oakland Grown, a Web site and campaign to strengthen the city's economy and promote independent merchants and artists. Consumers can visit the site to find small businesses and pledge to shop in town; the first 50 people to make the pledge get a free t-shirt. Merchants can sign up free and receive a window decal to let shoppers know they're part of the campaign.

"The feedback I have gotten from merchants is that their customers are very conscious of supporting them by shopping local," said Shari Godinez, who runs the program for the Oakland Merchants Leadership Forum. "It's a movement that’s taking hold really fast."

Another recent effort to promote shopping in Oakland was Plaid Friday, created by Blankspace Gallery co-director Kerri Johnson and Lena Reynoso of The Compound Gallery. About 75 shops participated in the event to provide both an alternative to Black Friday and a way for residents to explore their neighborhoods and meet merchants. Johnson, 35, of Oakland, said she doesn’t yet have final numbers about how many people came out for the event, but added that several hundred visited Blankspace to shop and socialize. And, she said, there has been talk of taking the event national in 2010. The galleries have a special sale going on through Dec. 20.

"Oakland is the kind of place that, if you don’t know where to go, you think there’s nothing going on," she said. "It’s one of those cities that you have to kind of discover. It's part of my job as a business owner to make that easy. This is not just a city you drive through to get to San Francisco."

City officials have taken note of the local shopping trend. City Council President Jane Brunner is a partner in the Oakland Grown initiative. Vice Mayor Ignacio De La Fuente helped raise money for this Friday's Open House. And the city contributed $50,000 to the Oakland Grown project, said spokesman Harry Hamilton of Oakland's Cultural Arts and Marketing division.

"The city definitely recognizes the importance of local and independently-owned businesses," Hamilton said. "From 85 to 90 percent of Oakland businesses are small and locally-owned, and that represents an important investment for the city. The Oakland Grown program is both a source of civic pride and an economic development tool. The more revenue we can drive into those business, the more returns the city will see."

Oakland businesses making do
There are no hard numbers to indicate how well merchants have fared this holiday season, Hamilton said, because of the six-month lag in sales tax reporting. But feedback from consumers and merchants about Oakland Grown has been positive.

Many merchants say they're doing just fine.

"We’re up over last year, but not by a huge amount," said Chris Hanrahan, 39, co-owner of Endgame, a tabletop game shop in Old Oakland. "But any percent is better than nothing."

Pete Glover, co-owner of Rowan Morrison gallery and art bookstore, said sales have been "decent" but "not overwhelming."

"I guess fine art sales have been pretty slow, as we are hearing from galleries all over, but not nearly as bad as one might expect considering the tough economic times. Luckily, our business has a pretty low overhead so we don’t have to constantly worry about art sales to keep operating."

Glover said the gallery's Found Paper Journal has been a big seller, as have its self-published art books. Many of the sales have come from the internet, he added, though holiday events such as last weekend's "Local Love," featuring independent shops on 40th Street and Piedmont Avenue, also have helped.

"I guess just getting the word out about our business and our products is the biggest challenge," he added. "There are so many excellent handmade and creative products that one can buy locally, which is excellent for the consumer, but can make it hard to stand out if you are a retailer or manufacturer."

Oaklandish director Angela Tsay said the Oakland-themed apparel shop, which also runs a grant program to support innovative Oakland initiatives, is doing "slightly better"  than during last holiday season. But the organization has spent more too, she said, on advertising and staffing. She said shoppers seem more aware of the benefits of keeping money in the community, and that many small businesses are getting stronger and more connected.

"I think that, when Oaklandish started in 2000, there was still the sense of being an underdog city. That's changing some," said Tsay, 37, of Oakland. "People want a way to express their civic pride. Apparel is a great way to do that. It's about pride of place and a sense of identity."

La Borinqueña Mex-icatessen's Tina 'Tamale' Ramos is a member of Oakland Grown, and is active in the Old Oakland neighborhood where she lives and works. The nearly 65-year-old shop has been in her family for generations.

"People are realizing that, in order for local businesses to exist, they need to think about how they’re spending their money," said Ramos, 40. "If you come to local businesses, you get a personal touch. We get to know our customers and develop those relationships. This is one of those years where people seem to really want to show support. They're going out of their way to do it."

Nikolai Lokteff, 45, of Oakland said he likes local shops because he wants to find gifts that are "a little unusual." Lofteff, a treasure hunt designer, lives near Piedmont Avenue and said he appreciates being able to walk a few blocks, rather than get in a car, to find special items.

As she browsed for gifts inside Piedmont Avenue's design shop Nathan & Co, Ariel Gallegos described buying local goods as "a value I've come to from places I've worked." Gallegos, 24, of Oakland, works in Pixar's café and books reservations for Chez Panisse.

"The economy is really hard right now and that puts a lot of stress on mom-and-pop shops. It makes it hard for them to survive," she said. "If you live in the area, I think you have a responsibility to support the places around you."