January Mini Courses   

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

Forbidden City (1938-70) was the foremost Chinese-themed nightclub venue in San Francisco. Its extravagant floorshows, singing, comedy and burlesque drew top Hollywood celebrities and 2,200 guests nightly. A half-dozen similar local marquees proffered risqué dancing, exotic dining and glittering revues: the Chinese Skyroom, Club Shanghai, the Dragon’s Lair and Kubla Khan. WWII accelerated mainstream acceptance of popular Asian entertainment via USO shows, bond drives and a million servicemen patronizing Chinatown clubs while heading to or returning from the South Pacific war. 

A dynamic program of video clips profiles top stars of the genre including singer Larry Ching “the Chinese Sinatra,” ballroom duo Dorothy Toy and Paul Wing, Toy Yat Mar “the Chinese Sophie Tucker,” club owner and entertainer Mai Tai Sing, and bubble dancer Noel Toy, “the Chinese Sally Rand.” The class draws insights from the research, documentaries and interviews of local Asian American writers and journalists extolling the autonomy, self-expression and upward mobility provided by these establishments for a generation of mixed-ethnicity Asian American entertainers. 

Join us for a multimedia lecture presented by award-winning broadcaster, writer and storyteller Dave Radlauer. He’s recently been recognized by the Art Deco Preservation Society of California for longstanding efforts preserving and interpreting Bay Area jazz history.

 

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

This mini-course is an overview of the early, middle, and later years of Alice Eastwood and her extraordinary life and accomplishments as the curator of botany for 60 years at the California Academy of Sciences located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park; local hero for rescuing almost 1500 original Academy key specimens and the Academy’s board minutes in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and just before the fire engulfed it; guide in Colorado to Alfred Russell Wallace (the other Darwin); Honorary President of the 7th International Botanical Congress at 91 years.  

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

More than 270 operas have been based on the plays of Shakespeare—and the number keeps growing every year! The Bard of Avon never ceases to fascinate opera composers with his vivid characters, eloquent language, and gripping stories. San Francisco Opera’s Dramaturg (Scholar in Residence) Kip Cranna will use video examples (with subtitles) to explore some of the best of the Shakespeare operas dating from the 18th Century to the present day and ranging from tragedies like Macbeth and Hamlet to comedies like Much Ado About Nothing and The Merry Wives of Windsor. As Shakespeare so apt put it, “If music be the food of love, play on!”

**This class will be taught In-Person**

Although the Summer of Love (1967) usually figures large in any accounts of San  Francisco in the 1960s, there was much more going on during that decade. This mini course will begin with the "City Hall swim" of 1960, when police used a fire hose to wash  protesting students down the City Hall steps, then look at the civil-rights demonstrations  of the early 1960s, the anti-war protests of the mid- and late 1960s, and the Haight Ashbury-hippie scene of the mid- and late 1960s, before concluding with the disaster at  Altamont in1969.

**This class will be held In-Person: the first class in the classroom, and the second class on a walking tour. In addition to the September 10 classroom talk, there are two walking tour dates and you will choose only one. A link to choose will be sent to you. The two dates are: Thursday, January 14th, 1:30 - 3:30 and Friday, January 15th, 1:30 - 3:30.)**

Frederick H. Meyer was one of the architects who rebuilt San Francisco after the earthquake and fires of 1906 left 80% of the city in ruins. In this two session mini-course, Meyer's downtown buildings and the apartments housing the downtown workforce will be described, walked by, and visited where possible. Market Street treasures, Humboldt Bank Building, Monadnock Building, and Bankers Investment Building, along with the New Montgomery Street Rialto building will be on the walk as will Meyer designed apartments for downtown workers choosing to live downtown such as the Belgravia at Sutter and Jones and the Warrington on Post Street.