This is how we zoo it! 🦩🦚🦏🐊🐬🐵 Have you heard the news? There's a free general admission pass to the @okczoo and Botanical Garden in every issue of our September magazine. That means you can empower people transitioning out of homelessness in Oklahoma City when you buy a copy of Curbside for a $2 suggested donation AND enjoy a trip to the zoo. But wait, there's more. Every issue also comes with a fun, kid-friendly activity guide complete with a word search, coloring page, a connect-the-dots monarch and a wild hidden pictures challenge. Find a vendor in green today. 💚 Illustration by Joshua Boydston (@joshuaboydston)

New month! New magazine! 📗 Our September issue just hit the streets of OKC. It's also our most popular magazine of the year. Y'all seem to go wild when each copy of Curbside contains a free admission pass to the @okczoo and Botanical Garden. The zoo ticket is good until the end of 2021! 🐅🐆🦓🦍🦒🦩🦚🦥🦔🦬🐫🐠🦜 We also chose to highlight Curbside vendors who are proud pet owners. 🐕🐈‍⬛ You can imagine the impact a pet could make in the life of someone who’s unhoused. Even Curbside vendors who’ve secured housing still face a climb to acclimate to a new life in a new home. Pets help with that because having someone to care for adds a layer of meaning to everyday life. These four-legged friends just bring everyone a little closer together. 🐶🐱 Pick up the new issue today for just $2. 💚 You can also catch Julila selling near the Oklahoma County Courthouse in downtown OKC. Cover illustration by Rachele Cromer (@rachelecromerr)

Tomorrow marks the opening of a new @homelandstores location on the Northeast side of Oklahoma City, 625 NE 36th Street. This is the second grocery store to open in the NE OKC community after a Smart Saver closed in August 2019 — leaving the area without a proper, full-service supermarket. Inside the store, you’ll find eateries, fresh coffee and just about all the essentials you’d expect from a grocery store. 🍏🍎🍐🍊🍋🍌🍉🍇🍓🫐🥦🌽🥕🍞 It’s also worth noting that Homeland and Hunger Free Oklahoma announced this location as the first grocery store in OKC to offer the Double Up Oklahoma Program which matches Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program assistance dollar for dollar — up to $20 a day — on fruits and veggies. Just use your EBT card to earn DUO Bucks that are redeemable for more fresh produce on a return visit. Did you know 600,000 Oklahomans are supported by SNAP each month? If you visit, be on the lookout for multiple murals from @shakurahmaynard throughout the store and strawberry banana cake from the @leosbbq located alongside the produce aisle. Here are a few photos of the store as it readied for its opening day. 💚

Our column Words Count highlights important and inspiring thoughts from the world of social justice through beautiful hand-lettering by Aditi Designs. ✍🏻 "OUR BACKS TELL THE STORIES NO BOOKS HAVE THE SPINE TO CARRY." Poet Rupi Kaur has no shortage of fans. Millions in fact. The poet struck gold with her 2014 debut effort “Milk and Honey,” and the above quote is just one of many personal lines that have proven to be universal. Everyone has a story, right? Is that what runs through your mind when you see a family panhandling at an intersection? What is their story? What led them to this moment? These are big, big questions no matter who you are. Let's hope everyone is writing a new page every day and can find the strength to carry lessons from the past into the present. You can see this in our August issue which is available for just $2 from a vendor in green. Pick one up soon because today is one of the last days before the new issue arrives. 💚

For the month of August, our advice column “Good to Know” features Melissa and Liz of @literacyokc. They seek to improve lives through literacy and typically serve about 1,000 adult learners every year. 📚 Here's some of their thoughts: "Reading has the ability to awaken us, to transform our perception of ourselves and the world around us. We want our adult learners to understand the functional components of reading as well as the joy that can be found within the pages of a good book. Applying our own love of reading, we strive to cultivate a class environment that intertwines the two elements and builds confidence that will inspire self-exploration and professional growth." Read the full column and more in our August issue which is available for just $2 from a vendor in green. Pick one up soon because the next issue is right around the corner. 💚 Illustration by @jayna_hadwiger

Under the dim yellow light in the cab of his truck, Michael Ross could turn a page and find his escape. 📖 Inside that car, which also served as his bedroom for months on end, Ross would stay up through all hours of the night, diving into fantastic worlds of Greek Mythology, the gritty realism of American Westerns and even lessons of faith from the Bible. Anything to give his mind a break from his own reality. His nightly sojourns were made possible by his daytime trips to different @metrolibraryok locations around OKC. “I would just keep reading until I couldn’t read anymore,” said Ross, who is now in housing with help from Curbside. “It took a lot of the tension out of my world. ... I could go into my books and leave my world behind.” Writer @adam_wk explores finding joy and entertainment in books and — perhaps most importantly — finding a place to sit and stay awhile. Read the full story in August's issue of Curbside. Pick one up from a vendor in green for just $2. 💚

Need some weekend plans? Stop by the grand opening of @sasquatchokc in @bricktown on Saturday, Aug. 28 from 5 to 8 p.m. 🍧 Like Curbside, Sasquatch is also a program of @homelessalliance. Sasquatch Shaved Ice is designed to provide supportive employment opportunities to youth including those who are low-income or have been involved in foster care or juvenile justice systems. The program is designed to help build job skills, improve financial literacy, increase high school graduation and higher education enrollment and provide a foundation for long-term financial stability and job readiness. 💚

Books have a power to delight, teach and transport us away from our current state of mind. We asked several Curbside vendors to share about books that have made an impact on their lives. 📚 The hope was to learn more about the person and when these special works entered the picture. The title wasn't nearly as interesting as the relationship between the vendor and the pages. Reading "Captain Underpants" brought Tiffany closer to her daughter. Copies of "Huck Finn" acted as a safety blanket when Gina was experiencing homelessness. Marcus drew parallels between his life and the Joad family in "The Grapes of Wrath." Authors Sam Anderson + Carlos Moreno also weighed in on books they love. 📖 Read the full story in August's issue of Curbside. Pick one up from a vendor in green for just $2. 💚 Illustration by @nekaschultz

Welcome home 🏡 John and Shasta!!! Outside of their apartment, the couple watched several ducklings race to keep up with their mother. 🦆 Those birds were gliding in a pond, but under water they were kicking like there’s no tomorrow. Ending homelessness isn’t too different. It sounds like a huge relief, but there’s a rush of emotions below the surface. It’s a big feeling with lots of new responsibilities. With help from a Curbside case manager, the pair have come a long way and are enjoying an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. Shasta has even secured a reliable car as well as further employment at a grocery store. John balances selling mags with picking up the kids from school and activities. Both are simply thankful somebody took a chance on them. Just look how it paid off. Thank you, OKC, for making stories like this possible for vendors like John and Shasta. When you support our vendors through our magazine and Curbside Flowers programs, you're helping provide the tools they need to find their way back home. 💚

Today, we join street papers around the globe to recognize International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. The @insp_agram has partnered with @niatero, a non-profit which works with Indigenous communities to promote their work and culture, and social art and design lab @amplifierart, to make a series of posters profiling global Indigenous women. The nine Indigenous women at the center of this project are from communities spanning the world, from the Philippines to New Zealand, to the Brazilian Amazon to Scandinavia, to the global north. The activists, artists, and scholars at the heart of “Thriving Peoples, Thriving Places” exemplify the ideals of guardianship, kinship, reciprocity, and wisdom. Their voices, work, and leadership benefit not only their own peoples and communities, but all of us who share this planet. In Oklahoma City, Indigenous individuals experience homelessness at a disproportionate rate. According to the most recent Point in Time Count, they make up 8% of the homeless population despite representing less than 3% of OKC’s general population. It’s a disparity that deserves our attention. We hope this holiday allows us all to gain a better understanding of Indeginous issues in Oklahoma as well as the impact Indigenous people make every day.

The story of Clara Luper is the story of Oklahoma City — of the country, really — and it lives in the pages of a book you can’t find on the shelves of your local paperback retailer. 📖 Self-published by Luper in 1979, “Behold the Walls” chronicles the formative years in the life of the civil rights stalwart who led young people in downtown OKC on a holy quest to smash segregation at home and across the country. The memoir is a first-person account of what change looked like at midcentury in the 46th state, whose first law on the books was to uphold segregation. Writer @jezygray asked the question, "How did this essential piece of civil rights history go out of print?" Read the full story in August's issue of Curbside. 💚 Pick one up from a vendor in green for just $2. 📸: Provided by @okhistory

New month! New magazine! 📘 Our August issue just hit the streets of OKC. The cover story deals with books and the power of reading. Stories have the ability to delight, teach and transport us away from our current state of mind. We focused on several books that have made an impact on the lives of Curbside vendors and a couple of surprise guests. We chose this topic in part because of a statistic we read from an OKC Metro Literacy Coalition report. Research shows children who live in poverty for at least one year and are not reading proficiently by fourth grade have a 1 in 4 chance of not graduating high school. We truly hope to see the odds improve so all Oklahomans have the tools they need to succeed in their lives. When our neighbors succeed, we all benefit. Pick up the new issue today for just $2. 💚 You can also catch Rob selling near NW 23rd Street and N Robinson Avenue. Cover illustration by @nekaschultz