Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) in San Francisco, California, is the oldest multidisciplinary arts nonprofit addressing Asian Pacific American issues. The organization's mission is to produce and present art that enriches and empowers Asian Pacific American communities. Notable participants include author and Asian American studies scholar Russell Leong, playwright and author Jessica Hagedorn, author Janice Mirikitani, poet and historian Al Robles, and actor and filmmaker Lane Nishikawa.
Kearny Street Workshop was founded as an artists' collective in 1972 in the International Hotel (I-Hotel) on San Francisco's Kearny Street. The founders Jim Dong, Lora Joh Foo, and Mike Chin and other early leaders were involved in the Asian American movement, a Civil Rights Movement-inspired period of organizational and community building in the 1970s. The National Endowment for the Arts provided some initial funding through the Neighborhood Arts Program (NAP), an initiative of the San Francisco Arts Commission. Though the founders were initially distrustful of government funds, NAP liaison Bernice Bing and founder Jim Dong eventually agreed to use a $2,000 NAP grant to fund a graphics workshop for KSW participants. [1]
In its early days, KSW shared space with a dry goods store on the ground floor of the I-Hotel. [1] [2] The organization originally focused on cultivating Chinese American arts and activism. [1] However, the organization quickly expanded to cater to a multiethnic constituency, holding classes for Asian American activists and artists to practice photography, creative writing, and silkscreen printing. [3] Within the first few years, hundreds of Bay-area students were attending classes, salons, workshops, and exhibitions each day. [4] KSW also opened Jackson Street Gallery in an adjacent I-Hotel storefront space in 1974, where Workshop members held exhibitions, poetry readings, and musical performances. [2]
KSW played a key role in developing Asian American activist iconography during the I-Hotel anti-eviction movement. Students and other KSW members painted a block-long mural on the Jackson Street side of the I-Hotel in support of its tenants. Screenprinted posters advocating for the I-Hotel tenants' rights appeared throughout San Francisco's Chinatown, Manilatown, and Japantown during the decade-long fight for the I-Hotel. Artists from KSW also aided in the anti-eviction protests by organizing rallies, attending court hearings, hosting exhibitions on affordable housing, and publishing poetry and pamphlets that depicted life in the I-Hotel. [2]
KSW also provided summer youth programming that was intended to provide a diversion from gang violence in Chinatown. Workshop members also spearheaded the development of the annual Hop Jok Fair, which not only promoted Asian American artwork, but introduced many low-income Chinatown residents to available social and health services. [1]
In 1977, both residential and business tenants were evicted from the I-Hotel. The workshop's headquarters relocated to a small storefront in North Beach, San Francisco. However, this relocation separated the organization from its key communities and constituents in Chinatown and Manilatown. [4]
KSW was able to return to Chinatown by 1981, leasing a basement space in a hotel on Clay Street. During its time in this space, members organized the Asian American Jazz Festival as well as the Kearny Street Workshop Press. [4]
In 1995, KSW was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and relocated to South Park, San Francisco. [4]
KSW finally relocated to a gallery and performance space in San Francisco's SoMa in 2010.
KSW's past and present programs include a small poetry press, writers' workshops, visual arts, martial arts, readings, music, gallery exhibitions, performances, and film screenings, as well as the Asian American Jazz Festival and the annual artists festival APAture.
KSW's press published poetry by Bay-area Asian American authors such as Virginia Cerenio, Bob Hsiang, Jaime Jacinto, Genny Lim, Lenny Limjoco, and Jeff Tagami. [5]
KSW founded the Asian American Jazz Festival (AAJF) in 1981, with the help of organizers and KSW members George Leong and Paul Yamazaki. [6] Until it ceased production in 2006, the AAJF was the longest continuously-running jazz festival in the San Francisco area. Notable participants include Mark Izu, Fred Ho, Vijay Iyer, and Jin Hi Kim.
APAture is an annual multidisciplinary arts festival founded in 1999. Its mission is to promote emerging Bay-Area-based artists of Asian and/or Pacific Islander descent. [7] Notable participants include Gene Luen Yang, Ali Wong, Hasan Minhaj, Jane Kim, and Goh Nakamura. [8]
The Chinatown–International District of Seattle, Washington is the center of Seattle's Asian American community. Within the Chinatown International District are the three neighborhoods known as Seattle's Chinatown, Japantown and Little Saigon, named for the concentration of businesses owned by people of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese descent, respectively. The geographic area also once included Seattle's Manilatown. The name Chinatown/International District was established by City Ordinance 119297 in 1999 as a result of the three neighborhoods' work and consensus on the Seattle Chinatown International District Urban Village Strategic Plan submitted to the City Council in December 1998. Like many other areas of Seattle, the neighborhood is multiethnic, but the majority of its residents are of Chinese ethnicity. It is one of eight historic neighborhoods recognized by the City of Seattle. CID has a mix of residences and businesses and is a tourist attraction for its ethnic Asian businesses and landmarks.
The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in 1848, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches, a post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture. San Francisco's Chinatown is also renowned as a major tourist attraction, drawing more visitors annually than the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Chinatown neighborhood in Oakland, California（Chinese: 屋崙華埠), is traditionally Chinese which reflects Oakland's diverse Chinese American, and more broadly Asian American community. It is frequently referred to as "Oakland Chinatown" in order to distinguish it from nearby San Francisco's Chinatown. It lies at an elevation of 39 feet.
The International Hotel, often referred to locally as the I-Hotel, was a low-income single-room-occupancy residential hotel in San Francisco, California's Manilatown. It was home to many Asian Americans, specifically a large Filipino American population. Around 1954, the I-Hotel also famously housed in its basement Enrico Banduccci's original "hungry i" nightclub. During the late 60s, real estate corporations proposed plans to demolish the hotel, which would necessitate displacing all of the I-Hotel's elderly tenants.
KSW may refer to:
Francis Wong is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, and erhu player.
Kearny Street in San Francisco, California runs north from Market Street to The Embarcadero. Toward its south end, it separates the Financial District from the Union Square and Chinatown districts. Further north, it passes over Telegraph Hill, interrupted by a gap near Coit Tower.
This is an alphabetical index of topics related to Asian Americans.
The San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade is an annual event in San Francisco. Held for approximately two weeks following the first day of the Chinese New Year, it combines elements of the Chinese Lantern Festival with a typical American parade. First held in 1851, along what are today Grant Avenue and Kearny Street, it is the oldest and one of the largest events of its kind outside of Asia, and one of the largest Asian cultural events in North America. The parade route begins on Market Street and terminates in Chinatown.
The Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco is a community-based, non-profit organization established in 1965 as the operations center of the Chinese Culture Foundation located in Hilton San Francisco Financial District, at 750 Kearny Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, California, United States.
Intersection for the Arts, established in 1965, is the oldest alternative non-profit art space in San Francisco, California. Intersection's reading series is the longest continuous reading series outside of an academic institution in the state of California.
Marcel Diallo is an American musician, poet, artist and community builder, known for his founding of the Black Dot Artists Collective, The Black New World and his revitalization efforts in West Oakland's historic, predominantly African-American Prescott neighborhood aka the Lower Bottoms.
The Asian Arts Initiative (AAI) is a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia which focuses on art and the Asian-American community. It was founded by Gayle Isa, who also served as AAI's first executive director until June 2018. Its current executive director is Anne Ishii.
Alfred A. Robles was a Filipino American poet and community activist in San Francisco. Born in 1930, he was the second eldest in a family of ten brothers and sisters and grew up in the Fillmore district of San Francisco. A community character, he was instrumental in the political fight against the city to stop the demolition of the International Hotel on Kearny Street. He was also a prominent member of the San Francisco-based Asian American writers' collective Kearny Street Workshop.
Active since 1995, Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. is a Filipina American artist trio known for their use of humor and camp to explore issues of culture and gender. Founded in San Francisco by artists Eliza Barrios, Reanne Estrada, and Jenifer K. Wofford, the group's full name, Mail Order Brides/M.O.B., conflates a once-common stereotype of Filipina women as "mail order brides" with an acronym suggestive of an organized crime organization. The group has often been referred to in shorthand as "M.O.B."
Basement Workshop emerged as the first Asian-American political and arts organization in New York City, in existence from 1970 to 1986. Created during the Asian American Movement, it became an umbrella organization for a diverse group of young Asian-Americans seeking creative and new ways of intersecting artistic expression with political and community activism. The rise of the Black Power Movement and protests against the Vietnam War provided a partial yet weighty backdrop for Basement’s inception.
Kularts is a San Francisco, California,-based non-profit organization founded in 1985. It presents contemporary and tribal Filipino arts. Its mission is to expand the understanding of American Filipino culture, through sponsoring productions and presentations in the United States. Through its programs of performances, visual arts, community dialogues, and festivals, the organization hopes to advance the spirit and integrity of ancestral Filipino art and cultures.
Manilatown was a Filipino American neighborhood in San Francisco, which thrived from the 1920s to late 1970s. The district encompassed a three block radius around Kearny and Jackson Streets, next to Chinatown. The neighborhood was known for the International Hotel, a single room occupancy (SRO) hotel where many of the residents lived. Manilatown was also home to many businesses that catered to the Filipino American community, such as Manila Cafe, New Luneta Cafe, Bataan Lunch, Casa Playa, Sampagita Restaurant, Blanco's Bar, Lucky M. Pool Hall, and Tino's Barber Shop. At its height, over 1000 residents lived in Manilatown, and it contained a total of 30,000 transient laborers. From the late 1960s-70s, the neighborhood was transformed by city initiatives that aimed to gentrify the area. By 1977, the neighborhood had been largely destroyed, and it became part of Chinatown.
The Hilton San Francisco Financial District is a skyscraper hotel located east across Kearny Street from Portsmouth Square on the border between the Financial District and Chinatown neighborhoods of San Francisco, California. The site was formerly occupied by the San Francisco Hall of Justice, which served as the headquarters of the San Francisco Police Department, until it was moved to 850 Bryant in 1961. The Chinese Cultural Center leases approximately 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m2) within the building for rotating exhibitions at a nominal cost due to lobbying from the local Chinese-American community.
The Portsmouth Square pedestrian bridge is a prominent architectural landmark in Chinatown, San Francisco that spans over Kearny Street from Portsmouth Square to the second floor and third floor of the Hilton San Francisco Financial District hotel, which houses the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco.