August 4th Commemoration

August 4th 2024 marks the 47th anniversary of the International Hotel Eviction. Please join us for our Annual Commemoration with a full day of events starting at San Francisco's Maritime Museum and ending at our beloved International Hotel Manilatown Center home.

3pm @ Maritime Museum, 900 Beach Street
Launching of the "Flipping the Boat" miniature community boats into Aquatic Cove. Please meet at the Maritime Museum's Blue Room where we will gather to remember and reclaim Manilatown's connection to San Francisco's maritime legacy before we take the short walk to Aquatic Cove to launch the miniature boats holding our community's hopes and dreams. We will then gather our little boats and take a 30-minute walk from Aquatic Cove, through Fisherman's Wharf, through North Beach, through Chinatown and Historic Manilatown to the International Hotel Manilatown Center.

6pm @ International Hotel Manilatown Center, 868 Kearny Street
Our Commemoration continues with a 6pm screening of the 2023 restoration of Curtis Choy's classic documentary, "The Fall of the I-Hotel" followed by a Candlelight Vigil honoring the evicted tenants of the I-Hotel.

The August 4th Commemoration is made possible from the generous support of the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workplace Development.

About the Flipping the Boat project:

“Flipping the Boat'' was a community engagement project that speaks to the power and agency of Filipino and all San Francisco Bay Area residents to navigate their boats, ships, communities and lives. This partnership between the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and San Francisco’s Maritime Museum celebrates our sovereign ways of being and encourages us to take the helm of our community “ships” to direct our own destiny.

Each month, from April to July 2024 free intergenerational and family-friendly workshops took place at the International Hotel Manilatown Center to teach people how to create their own miniature boats that will bear their dreams and wishes for themselves and for the city of San Francisco. Participants were encouraged to let their boats stay at the Center as part of a growing exhibit of boats representing the voices of our community.

Also from April-July 2024, the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and the San Francisco Maritime Museum provided workshops and lectures focusing on traditional Philippine ancestral music and dance related to the maritime world, the Filipino-American connection to San Francisco maritime history, celestial navigation and traditional boat making.

On Sunday, August 4th we are inviting all workshop participants and the larger community to join us at San Francisco's Aquatic Park for a special launching of our community boats into Aquatic Cove to symbolically reclaim our ancestral connection to the waterways, releases our wishes, and bring our boats back to our Manilatown home. Attendees will also be invited to walk with us from Aquatic Park, through Fisherman's Wharf, through North Beach and to the International Hotel Manilatown Center in Chinatown to commmemorate the 1977 I-Hotel Eviction, the most dramatic housing rights battleground in America’s History. We will recall the names and stories of the I-Hotel tenants (many of whom were merchant seamen, longshoremen and fishermen), and transition from a Commemoration event to a Reclamation event in which participants will actively reclaim our connection to each other as one San Francisco Bay Area maritime community.

Image: "Sultan Sin Sulu" by Cheryl Ramalho

"Flipping the Boat" was made possible from the generous support of the Center for Cultural Power, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workplace Development.

For more information about Flipping the Boat or the Manilatown Heritage Foundation please contact us at: [email protected]

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

International Hotel Manilatown Center, 868 Kearny Street, San Francisco, United States