the art of celestial navigation
Join us for another "Flipping the Boat" Talk at the Maritime Museum, where we'll dive into untold stories and flip the script on history!
Please join Manilatown at the San Francisco Maritime Museum for a special talk with Bruce Castleman, docent at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, as he discusses the fascinating skill of Celestial Navigation.
In addition to being a docent for several years at the SF Maritime National Historical Park, Bruce is also a retired United States Navy Engineer who presents programs on the historic ships, Eureka and Hercules.
PLEASE NOTE: This event will be taking place at San Francisco's Maritime Museum, 900 Beach Street.
RESERVE YOUR SPOT VIA EVENTBRITE
About the Flipping the Boat project:
“Flipping the Boat'' is a community engagement project that speaks to the power and agency of Filipino and other Bay Area residents to navigate their boats, ships, communities and lives. This collaboration 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 will take 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 will be 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 will provide 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 boatmaking.
On Sunday, August 4th we will invite 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. Participants will be invited to walk with us from Aquatic Park, 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.
"Flipping the Boat" is 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, the Manilatown Archive, or the Manilatown Heritage Foundation please contact us at: mhf@manilatown.org