NPR at the Sundance Cafe for SFWF (Archive)
On Saturday 21st April, NPR broadcast from the Sundance Cafe on Third Street at the corner of 20th Street, as part of the San Francisco World Fair, a project of the graduating class of CCA’s MA Program in Curatorial Practice.
It was a good day:
Katina learns to box
Zefrey and Whizz do the do
Tracy Timmins and Jens Hoffmann
We were determined to get the local neighborhood involved as much as talk to the other artists in the Fair. We walked the Dogpatch area, took the local City Guide tour, repeatedly called local groups to ask them to participate, tried various different methods of reaching the Hells Angels to ask them if they wanted a slot (their clubhouse is nearby) and we distributed the door hanger Katina designed and you see here:
The World’s Fair itself, like the advent of the Third Street light rail, is a big sign that gentrification is, and has been, coming fast to the 3rd street/ Dogpatch area. NPR wanted to use its involvement in this art event to enable a discussion on this topic, breaching it with a number of interviews you can hear below.
The final schedule on the day looked like this:
With such a diverse group of folks represented in the programming, we think one of NPRs missions successfully came through: to amplify the neighborhood, bringing as many voices to the fore and onto the airwaves, where they belong.
12-12.30 - It was fitting that we started off the day’s broadcast with a discussion between Katina Papson and Deirdre Visser and Dia Penning about arts and their role in the community.
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12.30-1 - Our next guest was late so in the meantime Whizz indulged in some nepotism and invited her friends David Peterson and Jose Mineros, who together make up Big Booty Productions, onto the mic. These two lads live in the Tenderloin so we talked about that neighborhood for a while and what to do about its problems.
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But then our scheduled 12.30 guest, local resident Uzuri, turned up to talk to Katina. Katina had met her while walking round the neighborhood trying to raise awareness of the event. They chatted about relationships, communication, youth and family.
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1-1.30 -Then Amber Hasselbring came on the air with guest David Erickson to talk about the next day’s McClaren Park Earth Day and David’s 12-year old project at the nearby Muwekma Ohlone Park, where Islais Creek empties into the San Francisco Bay.
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1.30-2 - The conversation then swung closer to home with Sina and Natalie, two Dogpatch residents and guides of a walking tour that happens in the area every month as part of the href=”http://www.sfcityguides.org/” mce_href=”http://www.sfcityguides.org/”>City Guides walking tour program. The Dogpatch has always been an industrial area and has seen its fair share of street fighting but now things are changing.
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2-2.30 - Members of local youth arts and education group Baycat took to the airwaves to talk about Don Imus, recently disgraced radio host, and other things.
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2.30-3 - Carrying on the critique of the world today, Clinton, part of the Black Factory, the William POPE L project roamed the cafe asking people what their demands and suggestions were for a better world.
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3-3.30 - No one said there was going to be fighting on the schedule but that’s what we got in the next show. Well, not exactly fighting, more the marshalling of physical strength to fight one-on-one as a boxer. Simon from the Third Street Gym gave Katina a crash course on how to throw a punch while the Sundance Cafe filled with people stepping off the SFWF tour bus.
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3.30-4 - After all that excitement, Clinton took the microphone again for more crowd-wandering as part of the 141 Demands project. This project is on show at the YBCA….
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4-4.15 - We persuaded Michael, owner of the Sundance Cafe, to come on the mic to talk about the cafe, business and fair trade.
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4.15-4.30 - Community member Georgia was up next, to talk about her local pilates business and pilates in general.
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4.30-5 - The interviewer originally scheduled for the next show, Paul, was delayed by the new Third Street light rail muni line so after some music Nancy Zastudil, one of the World’s Fair organisers, talked to us for a while.
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Next to Nancy in the picture below is Petrushka Bazin, another of the MA students from CCA, who was on hand throughout the day to lend a hand in help whenever we needed it, which was great. All the CCA students we worked with were helpful and efficient.
We moved on to the topic of food as George from the SF Food Bank told us about this organisation which is close to the Sundance Cafe. Muni eventually delivered Paul albeit late but in one piece to talk about the poverty that exists in the Bay Area.
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5-5.30 - SF Village Voice is a new radio station set up in Bayview Hunters Point to give airtime to the voices coming out of that neighborhood. It is run by Fernando and Misha under the auspices of the Idriss Stelley Foundation. The two hosts talked politics and art and gave their views on how art and activism can truly reach a community.
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5.30-6 - We then moved on to talk with some of the other artists participating in the Fair. Here’s an interview with Rebecca Miller of Black Bird Space.
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6-6.30 - Daniel Cheekwas also in the fair and he stopped in to say hi too.
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Poppa Neutrino was also particpating in the Fair. We reached him by phone.
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6.30-7 - We finished off the day with Natalie Jeremijenko and her tadpoles.
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