Poet/Educator/Activist Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco Poet Laureate, hosts six individuals who we’re proud to present in the shop tonight.

Audience welcome.

A live stream will carry the event for those not comfortable venturing out, whether due to dark of night, lack of transit or any other reason. But rest assured, the in-person experience will be rewarding indeed, for you and for the artists. View the live stream here!

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$10-20 sliding scale cover charge cash at the door

byob&glass: please pack it in/pack it out. please wear a mask if you’re unvaccinated, otherwise, relax and know you’re welcome here!

$5-10 donation requested to view the livestream: youtube / fb

no one turned away for lack of funds, but please do what you can to help us compensate the artists and sound engineer! donate here

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jxtheo (j-thee-o), also known as Jean (JT) Teodoro, is an environmentalist, proletarian internationalist, poet and educator. They were born in Quezon City, Philippines and raised in both QC and Unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land (San Francisco, CA). They are a founding member and vocalist of the hip-hop & rock band Boondock Squad. They are also a founding member of Anakbayan San Francisco and have worked as an instructor in social sciences, creative writing, literature and boxing.

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Free Press is a diverse jazz/world/blues/soul/improv collective that performs at venues including, ironically, Le Colonial as well as Club Deluxe, Revolution Cafe, Lost Church, Cadillac, Britt Marie and Kapwa Gardens. The band comprises:

• Annelise Zamula, (flute/sax), who has toured the U.S., Canada, and Europe with the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet, performing at the Lilith Fair in Vancouver, B.C. and opening for the Indigo Girls at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theatre. In 2008 she performed with the Montclair Women’s Big Band at the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.
• Dave Mihaly, (percussion/guitar), who has performed with the End of the World Coretet, Jolie Holland, Sean Hayes and also teaches music.
• Christie Harbinski, (vocals/bandleader), who sings in gospel choirs such as Glide, numerous jazz groups such as Free Press and the Aida Jazz Trio.
• Jibril Alvarez (piano), who is a San Francisco-born Filipino Community & Cultural Ambassador, musician, bandleader and producer, as well as house pianist at the International Hotel Manilatown Center in downtown San Francisco. Classically-trained from the age of seven, Jibril now explores musical genres from the timeless African & indigenous Filipino “Kulintang” traditions through Gospel, Blues & Jazz, to Funk, Hip-Hop, World Music, Sound Therapy and beyond.
• Phillip Ryan (guitar), who has played at cafes and open mics with Jibril for 10-plus years including Jack London Square.
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Tongo Eisen-Martin, named San Francisco’s eighth Poet Laureate in 2021, is a revolutionary educator and organizer whose work centers on issues of mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings of Black people and human rights.

He has taught at detention centers around the country and at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, and holds an M.A. from Columbia.

His books of poetry include the include the forthcoming collection from City Lights Blood on the Fog, as well as his debut book, someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015), nominated for a California Book Award; and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights, 2017), which received a 2018 American Book Award, a 2018 California Book Award, was named a 2018 National California Booksellers Association Poetry Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Griffin International Poetry Prize.  In their citation, the judges for the Griffin Prize wrote that Eisen-Martin’s work “moves between trenchant political critique and dreamlike association, demonstrating how, in the right hands, one mode might energize the other—keeping alternative orders of meaning alive in the face of radical injustice… His poems are places where discourses and vernaculars collide and recombine into new configurations capable of expressing outrage and sorrow and love.”

From an interview following his appointment as Poet Laureate: