Poetry Palace, Market Hall’s newest shop, is a whimsical children’s bookstore located in a baby airstream trailer right next to the tot lot. Parents and children alike love this new addition to Market Hall! Poetry Palace will be hosting their very first children’s story time this Sunday, July 18th at 2:30PM-3:30PM on our stage. They will be reading Toy Story 3. Bring the kids, dress them up as their favorite Toy Story 3 character, and enjoy a great Sunday afternoon together!

These warm summer nights have been ideal for our Movie Mania series at Market Hall! Every Saturday night at 8PM, Market Hall shows a free family friendly movie on our stage on a large projector screen. Families can bring their blankets, lawn chairs and children in pajamas and create a great summer memory. Have more than one kid? Parents have been occupying a listless child in the adjacent tot lot while one parent is able to stay with another child and continue to watch the movie. Can’t do that at your local cinema… for free nonetheless! Movie Mania goes through September 4th. This week’s movie is Monsters v. Aliens. See you there!

Spain has won the 2010 FIFA World Cup title. It was an amazing few weeks watching the best of the best in the World play against each other. Nearly each day we were able to see how great soccer can be (sorry MLS) if only we had the caliber of international leagues and teams. While there are many stories of fun days of soccer watching, I think the most hilarious part of this year’s games is Paul, the Octopus! Is anyone else intrigued by this ‘psychic’ octopus? If you haven’t heard about this famous octopus yet, I pulled a snippet from Wikipedia for your reference below. It’s really amazing and hilarious at the same time!

Paul (hatched January 2008) is a common octopus living in a tank at a Sea Life Center in Oberhausen, Germany, who is used as an animal oracle to predict the results of football matches, usually international matches in which Germany is playing. He came to worldwide attention with his accurate predictions in the 2010 World Cup.

During a divination, Paul is presented with two boxes containing food in the form of a mussel, each marked with the flag of a national  football team in an upcoming match. He chose the box with the flag of the winning team in four of Germany’s six Euro 2008 matches, and in all seven of their matches in the 2010 World Cup. He correctly predicted a win for Spain against the Netherlands in the World Cup final on 11 July by eating the mussel in the box with the Spanish Flag on it. His predictions have thus been 100% (8/8) correct for the 2010 World Cup and 86% (12/14) correct overall.

It’s been exciting for us to see the Market Hall vision come to life and figuring out all the kinks to make this place a success for the community. What’s even more thrilling is the positive support we have been receiving from the community. We only thought about this idea of a “temporary” project in August 2009. In nine months we were able to conceptualize the idea, design, entitle, draw construction documents, construct, and  get it operational. It’s amazing that we were open by May 1, 2010!

We sincerely appreciate the community’s continual support. This is a completely new concept that hasn’t been done before. There are no books or case studies about this yet, but that’s the exciting part for us; figuring it out, testing new ideas, and bringing something different to Hercules. The alternative would be to see an empty parking lot in the heart of Hercules for the next two years that brings nothing of value to the community.

In July alone, we will have several World Cup games, a bone marrow drive, the Movie Mania series, 4th of July festivities, An Evening of Hawaiian Music with Patrick Landeza and many more local musicians on our stage. There will surely be many great memories to be made at Market Hall this summer. We hope you share them with us!

We have been incredibly lucky to have a stage for talented, local performers play at Market Hall. We’ve had DJ’s spinning jazz, old school Americana, Top 40, Indie music, etc. The live bands at Market Hall range from reggae, rock, dance, swing, to cover bands Top 40. On Sunday, during our July 4th festivities, we will have bands The Lumberyard and Scouts of the Cascade playing live. Music always provides a great element to the warm summer nights in Hercules… know any bands or musicians who want to play at Market Hall? Have them email us at events@herculesmarkethall.com with a brief description and a either a link to a demo, video, or clip.

We are caught up on the wonderful madness that is the World Cup.

Despite Team USA losing on Saturday, the World Cup still provides great excitement for  us. Licking our wounds from Team USA’s Saturday loss, Sunday’s match between Argentina and Mexico lifted our spirits. We had no preference for which team won that match, we just wanted to watch a really good match between two really great teams. Watching several English Premier League players on the field made us wonder.. how much longer will it take the MLS to be on par with other international leagues?

We are thrilled to begin our Movie Mania series this Saturday at 8PM. We will be showing Happy Feet on the big screen on our Market Hall stage! Bring your blankets and come enjoy a night under the stars with your community! For more details check out our events tab! See you there!

We love our iPhone. We love the World Cup. We just found a great new application to merge the two:

World Cup App: Even if you’re stuck at a client dinner when you’d rather be at home screaming at your HDTV, you may still be able to stealthily follow the action under the table. Recently named by The New York Times as “one of the gold standards” in the category, the ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup app may be the best way of following the tournament for those who can no longer spend entire days on the couch. The app contains detailed descriptions of every tournament since the first one in 1930, as well as a “Teams” tab consisting of player news and biographies, a bracket predictor contest and an index of the top 100 national teams. A premium version boasts amplified features, such as live commentary and play-by-play, scoring alerts and in-game video highlights. The $7.99 price tag seems like a small price to pay for a tool that could be the difference between winning and losing the office betting pool.*

* Originally a trendCentral blog post, but thought it was so great, we’d pass it on to our blog followers!

Please join us on Sunday, July 11th from 11AM- 3PM for a bone marrow drive in honor of local resident, Jamison Vincent Abrenica.  Jamison was diagnosed with a severe case of aplastic anemia.  He is an adorable one-year old and we want to support his family and him as much as we can. Non-profit organization, Asian American Donor Program will be helping the Abrenica family during the drive. Please visit their website to find out how you can support this drive and how easy it is to lend a hand. www.aadp.org

Despite the random rainy days lately, summer is fast approaching us with the official season beginning June 21. Summers make me think of long warm days by the pool and beach, fun reading books, endless movie nights, and the sweet smell of popcorn. We think there was one summer where we watched every single movie out on the multi-plex display. Summers and movies go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly for us… which means what you ask? Check out our blog for an announcement soon! We hope you’re UP for it.