BIRD & BECKETT CULTURAL LEGACY PROJECT
Poets read for the 3300!
Thanks to the poets listed below, and the many folks who showed up to support the 3300, we raised $980 this afternoon!
It’s not too late to channel more funds to the 3300 Club. Â Drop off checks made out to the 3300 Club at the bookshop, and we’ll make sure the funds are delivered to owner Nancy Keane.
These poets lent their voices to the cause, and made donations as well!
Q. R. Hand
Kim Shuck
Avotcja
Ed Mycue
Marvin Hiemstra
Gail Mitchell
Lucy Lang Day
Clara Hsu
Bill Vartnaw
It’s a benefit, so bring some serious dough! Give ’til you feel it! Make your checks out to “3300 Club.”
Funds will go to Nancy Keane, who has operated the 3300 Club for lo these many years to distribute as she sees fit.
Why support the 3300, besides the fact that it’s a human tragedy close at hand?
We quote an article in the SF Examiner:
For half a century the history of the 3300 Club has traced the history of the Irish in the Mission, from the 29th Street boys going off to war after Pearl Harbor to longshoremen and ironworkers calling the place their own, from St. Patrick’s Day banners displayed year-round to the latest redhead tending bar, fresh from Drogheda, County Louth.
“It’s a little early for St. Patrick’s Day, don’t you think? asked Audrey Tobin, 85, sitting inside the 3300 Club one recent evening, nodding toward the St. Patrick’s signs along the wall, listening as the jukebox finished up Nina Simone’s version of “It Had to Be You.”
As Ella Fitzgerald sang “Too Young for the Blues,” Tobin bounced to the music on a bar stool by the door, her eyes bright under a yarn cap. She talked about coming to San Francisco from Oklahoma in 1969 and finding good friends at the 3300 Club at 29th and Mission. She’s been a regular ever since.
“This was an Irish bar, and it’s still mostly all Irish,” said Tobin, touching a hand to her white hair.
“But I’ll tell you, honey, Mr. Jack Keane would turn over in his grave if he knew there was poetry in the 3300 Club.”
Read the whole piece here: Â Edvins Beitiks Dec. 1999 Examiner article on the 3300 Club