Stagecraft Studios

Stagecraft Studios is now closed! opened circa 1928 closed Nov 2011.
Thank you for all the memories.

this place is closing ! go there and buy a chicken costume ($ 15) or a pretty Grecian Muse dress that you just like but aren’t sure you’ll ever be able to wear ($ 20)
everything’s musty and dusty and ripped but you have a sewing machine. you can fix that.
cash-​only. not sure how much longer it’ll be open.

Stagecraft is CLOSED.

CLOSED? The phone number is disconnected.

As previously noted the website isn’t particularly helpful. There are no hours posted anywhere on the website or on the building it’s self. The person I talked to at the store said that their hours are 10:30am to 6:00pm and they’re closed on mondays.
I think this store is wonderful! Yes the costumes are used and worn. It’s much like a thrift store. They had EXACTLY what i wanted and I was so happy they did, having been to Spirit, Halloween City, and Target and not finding what i wanted. They have a huge selection of rental costumes. They also carry Ben Nye cake makeup! I love this stuff, sooo much better than grease paint. And they have these animal mascot-​like heads that i found extremely entertaining.
I ended up renting a hat and a jacket for the weekend and buying three colors of makeup. Total cost to me was just under 60 bucks. The only thing they didn’t have that i needed to complete my captain spaulding costume was a pair of blue pants with white polka-​dots. Had they had them i would have considered fellatiating the salesperson.

Would it kill them to answer their phone or post their hours on their uninformative website? I mean, if the only info you’re going to give on your website is your phone number, answer the damn thing! Sheesh!
Lots of interesting items here. A lot of the rentals are pretty tore up, though. Great for accessories, but a bit too pricey for what you’re getting when renting costumes, in my honest opinion. They never really seemed too thrilled for your business, either. They’re in my neighborhood so they’ve been a good go to for last minute Halloween stuff like face paint, wigs, glasses, etc. It’s almost as if they don’t want to be open to the public and bad vibe you for it. Gee, sorry! Didn’t mean to want to give you my business!
But seriously… what are your damn hours? No one is answering the phone yet again. Sigh.

i go here every year for halloween — this place is fun, and the people who help «costume» me are the best!.They actually know and care about what they are doing. i only wish the halloween was more than once a year! i send all of my friends to stagecraft!!!

Went here for Purim. My wife had a lovely French maid outfit and I needed some accessories to be her pimp. I got a big hat with a feather, a bling cane and ring. If their sizes ran larger I would have rented a suit.
The guy who helped us was totally into his work and was a pleasure to deal with.

This place is an institution! My Mom rented stuff here in the 30s! They always have just the right thing that you need or know where you can find it. Plus they are awesome in a pinch.
Halloween 2009
Husband and I are debating even attending a party due to a family emergency — finally about 5 PM on Halloween evening — we decide we better try to attend and we better go dressed or not go at all. We hit Stagecraft and you know the routine — all the «cool» costumes are taken. The people there are really nice and you just go in and start scrounging around. We finally ended up with a Pimp outfit (totally cool and it fit) and a pumpkin Okay so they don’t quite «go together» but we made it work with the help of the crew at Stagecraft.
All in all we dropped $ 100 on two of the funkiest outfits ever — made them work together and we were the life of the party! People kept asking us how long it took for us to coordinate our outfits and wondered if we spent months thinking up our costumes. My husband said yeah it took all of 10 minutes! :) We were asked where we found such great costumes! We said STAGECRAFT!!!
YAY STAGECRAFT!!!
I do not recommend waiting until the last minute — but if you have to you have to.

This place is typically Berkeley, their costumes are kinda worn out, faded, and homeless looking, but likewise it’s very befitting of your average Berkeley customer. Just go in and don’t wave your hands around too quickly or they might see trails from all the acid they did back in the day. No seriously though, their biggest problem is that they charge WAY TOO much for their crap from China stuff.

Let’s face it – sometimes you need a giant parrot head in a hurry, or a gladiator skirt, or a marching band hat with eighteen feathers attached every which way. This place is magic. A kind of run-​down, tattering, care-​worn magic, which is the best kind anyway.

About a month ago, my wife and I went to a «Great Gatsby Affair» and for me the tux with tails was easy — but for her, a flapper dress is a bit harder to come by.
Thankfully we found Stagecraft Studios where she found the dress and she found some accessories at another place on San Pablo.
In the end, she won the costume contest, which was cool.
The Stagecraft dress was dirty and not well taken care of (rips in critical places) and it was literally the only Flapper dress in the joint (perhaps others going to the same event got their first), but the people were helpful.

Earlier in the year, I needed a costume for Purim. I was absolutely not going to be accepted as an honorary Jew unless I impressed. So where to go in the wee weeks of spring? Ask a theater person. And get youself a hand drawn map on a napkin because this place is easy to miss and you don’t want to be driving by back-​and-​forth slowly in this ‘hood.
More than acceptable lavender wig and turquoise cat glasses perfected my «Dame Edna» ensemble. They have lots of accessories. A little less reliable for the clothing part of your costume. But definitely good to get the ideas flowing, as long as you’re not traveling too far to get here.

The building looks totally sketchy and I had trouble either finding the store or finding the damned way in.
A lot of the costumes are damaged and/​or badly torn. You’d have to spend a lot of time fixing it yourself or paying someone to fix it for you.
The whole deposit system is confusing.
The associate wasn’t very helpful at all. She just showed me where to look and that was it. She then went back to wherever she was.
The racks are very close together and not well hung so it was hard to walk in between to find the costume I needed.
I would have seriously used Stagecraft as a last resort, but would never make it my first choice for costumes. Hell, I wouldn’t even want to recommend this place.

3 stars for being the tipping point: after careful vetting and calibration, I have determined that Stagecraft Studios is teetering on the fault line between sketchy and not-​sketchy north Oakland, between the so-​called «Lorin District» and the «Not Sure if We’re Rockridge or Temescal District.»
Oh, and it’s haunted. By the ghost of drive-​bys past.

This is where theatre groups rent their equipment and/​or costumes for plays, etc, however, it is a treasure trove for people (like me) who occasionally need a costume for a particular event. Halloween, is of course when they do a ton of business, but if you ever need that special pair of Elvis sunglasses /​sideburns or a Groucho schnoz, they have all the extra props too. Fun place just to visit, even if you aren’t buying/​renting.