as some of you gentle readers out there are perhaps aware, august 4th of this year marks the 30th anniversary of san francisco’s chinatown/manilatown I-Hotel eviction. today, july 26th, starts off the week dubbed “I-Hotel Home Week” by the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, and what better way to start off the somber (yet festive!) commemorating than a (H)API hour happy hour featuring performances (irreverent and/or irrelevant, you be the judge) by standup comics who were being evicted from their mother’s womb roughly around the same time elderly, low-income filipino tenants were being evicted from the I-Hotel? and drinks always make things better. and festive. and commemorative-y.
the idea is to build community & interest around the new I-Hotel Senior Housing & the Manilatown Center that now stand at the site of the original & iconic I-Hotel, which was torn down a few decades ago. so from now through 8/4 there’ll be various events (a youth organizing workshop, a Kearny Street Revival Poetry Night with sf-based poetry all-stars Al Robles, Janice Mirikitani, Jack Hirschman, Nancy Hom, Oscar Penaranda), culminating with a street fair the afternoon of saturday august 4th (the skyflakes and a bunch of other musical peoples & collectives will be performing throughout the day).
i guess i’m kind of promoting a multi-event here (full disclosure: i am one of the [possibly irreverent, possibly irrelevant, you decide] comics performing tonight, and i work with KSW)–but the 30th anniversary of the i-hotel looms large in the minds & memories of many, so perhaps there’s something worth considering & remembering here. you know, considering & remembering, like commemorating or something.
or perhaps not; you decide. anyway, some memories of the i-hotel stuffs and a bit more detail on exactly what is being commemorated can be found here. there’s also a fairly innocuous yet informative entry about it on wikipedia. commemorate, bitches.
next post: probably about vampires & piles of dead babies (you decide [not really, i’ll decide]).
