SELLING THE BAY, ONE STORY AT A TIME WITH ILONA CAMPBELL

What do Burning Man, Brooklyn vape shops, Bay Area history, AI, world travel, motherhood, and real estate have in common?

Apparently, Ilona Campbell.

What starts as a conversation about Oakland history quickly turns into a wild ride through entrepreneurship, reinvention, travel, identity, technology, and the stories that shape the places we call home. If you've ever wondered how someone ends up building a life that's anything but ordinary, this one's for you.

Summary

From refugee kid to Bay Area Burner, Brooklyn vape-shop owner, world traveler, postpartum mom, real estate agent, and Oakland history nerd, Ilona Campbell has lived about five lives already, and somehow woven them all together into one fascinating story.

Ilona joins Siobhan to trace her journey from arriving in San Francisco from Ukraine at age three, to spending a decade immersed in Burning Man culture, to opening one of Brooklyn's first vape lounges and unexpectedly landing in Time Magazine. When the vape industry shifted from grassroots innovation to big-money regulation and corporate competition, she made the difficult choice to walk away, return to California, and rebuild a life centered on family, community, and purpose.

Along the way, the conversation gets candid about motherhood, pregnancy, postpartum identity loss, entrepreneurship, travel, and the challenge of figuring out who you are when life keeps changing the plan.

Today, Ilona has found an unexpected niche blending real estate with local storytelling through her social media platform, Campbell Sells the Bay. What started as marketing houses evolved into uncovering the hidden stories of Oakland and the East Bay—from Fairyland inspiring Disneyland and Lake Merritt's history as America's first wildlife sanctuary to conversations about redlining, neighborhood identity, gentrification, and what happens when AI companies move into working-class communities.

Part history lesson, part life story, and part exploration of where technology, culture, and community collide, this episode is a love letter to curiosity, resilience, and the power of asking better questions. Because sometimes the best way to understand where we're going is to learn how we got here.

Ilona Campbell

Ilona Campbell is a Bay Area–raised real estate agent, content creator, and self-described history geek specializing in Oakland and the East Bay. A former Burning Man organizer and founder of one of Brooklyn’s first electronic cigarette lounges, she now blends real estate with deep local storytelling, creating short-form videos about neighborhood history, architecture, and the complicated legacies of development and gentrification. Ilona currently works with The Grubb Company and shares her work and historical dives on Instagram as @campbellsellsthebay.

Resources & Mentions

Burning Man Project
https://burningman.org/

Black Rock Arts Foundation / Burning Man Arts
https://burningman.org/programs/burning-man-arts/

Symbiosis Gathering
https://symbiosisgathering.com/

Lightning in a Bottle
https://www.libfestival.org/

BottleRock Napa Valley
https://www.bottlerocknapavalley.com/

Outside Lands
https://www.sfoutsidelands.com/

Children's Fairyland (Oakland)
https://fairyland.org/

Peralta Hacienda Historical Park
https://www.peraltahacienda.org/

Confederated Villages of Lisjan (Ohlone)
https://www.confederatedvillagesoflisjan.org/

Sogorea Te' Land Trust
https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/

Lake Merritt (City of Oakland)
https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/lake-merritt

Lake Merritt Institute
https://lakemerrittinstitute.org/

Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)
https://museumca.org/

OpenAI
https://openai.com/

Richmond OpenAI Campus Announcement (Background Reading)
https://www.openai.com/

MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies)
https://maps.org/

The Grubb Company
https://www.grubbco.com/

Campbell Sells the Bay (Instagram)
https://www.instagram.com/campbellsellsthebay/

Burning Man Decompression
https://regionals.burningman.org/

Jam Cruise
https://jamcruise.com/

Children's Fairyland & Walt Disney History
https://fairyland.org/history

Oakland History Collections (OMCA)
https://museumca.org/collections/

Sogorea Te' Land Trust – Indigenous Land Rematriation
https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/

💡 Key Takeaways

  • Curiosity can become a career when you follow what genuinely fascinates you.

  • Local history creates stronger communities and deeper connections to place.

  • Social media is most powerful when it starts conversations, not arguments.

  • AI isn't going away—learning to work with it may be more useful than resisting it.

  • Travel has a unique ability to expand perspective and reshape priorities.

  • Growth and change in cities are complicated, and rarely fit into simple narratives.

  • Community storytelling may be one of the best antidotes to modern isolation.

“Travel and Burning Man are the two things I recommend to everyone—there’s no age limit on either.”

~ Ilona

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