653 Chenery Street
in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood

1-415-586-3733
[email protected]

Open to walk-in trade and browsing
Tuesday to Sunday
noon to six

 

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But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!

Monday, March 6th – 7-9 pm
A Reading for Al-Mutanabbi Street: Beau Beausoleil, Judith Ayn Bernhard, Neeli Cherkovski, Agneta Falk, Jack Hirschman, Michael Koch, Jessica Loos, Dorothy Payne, Kim Shuck, plus Steve Arnston, piano

“The only war is the war on the imagination” – Diane di Prima.

Al-Mutanabbi Street destroyed by car bomb, March 5, 2007.

Residents shop for books at Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad April 5, 2011. REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen

Poets read to commemorate the March 5, 2007 destruction by car bomb of Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad’s bookseller’s street named for the 10th century Iraqi poet. This tragedy, in which 26 died and a great many bookshops and stalls were decimated, marked a sad and vivid turn in the second Iraq war, which began with the American invasion in 2003.

Ever since that event, with the motto “Al-Mutanabbi Street starts here,” poets, writers and artists across the world have sought to show solidarity with the Iraqi people by endeavoring to keep the memory of that terrible event alive through their words and art. Readings are being staged far and wide on March 5th and the days immediately around it, including ours on Monday, the 6th, in which many of our most politically committed poets will address the tragedy and its implications.

Al-Mutanabbi Street reopened for business and culture four years after the bombing, and the poets and artists want to see to it that no one forgets the enmity that the power mad have for thinking, questioning and creative individuals and that resistance is a creative act in and of itself.

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The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project

Our events are put on under the umbrella of the nonprofit Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project (the "BBCLP"). That's how we fund our ambitious schedule of 300 or so concerts and literary events every year.

The BBCLP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit...
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The Independent Musicians Alliance

Gigging musicians! You have nothing to lose but your lack of a collective voice to achieve fair wages for your work!
The IMA can be a conduit for you, if you join in to make it work.

https://www.independentmusiciansalliance.org/

Read more here - Andy Gilbert's Feb 25 article about the IMA from KQED's site

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