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The Hotel Utah Open Mic
(hosted by JJ
Schultz - jj@theutah.org)
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SF Bay Guardian reader's poll "Best open mic" |
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| #5 on about.com's rank of the best open mics in the United States |
 2006 |
 2007 |
 2008 |
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Every Monday Night
Sign-up by 7:30pm
House Guitar, Piano and PA
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500 4th St. (at Bryant)
San Francisco, CA (map
it!)
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MySpace! http://myspace.com/theutah
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Facebook! 'The Utah' Facebook group
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Adam Balbo was born where there is more than corn: Indiana, which is in a country called the United States of America, just south of Canada. Indiana is an imaginary retangle. It is one of the provinces surrounding Chicago, the capital of the universe during Adam Balbo's childhood. Because Adam Balbo's homeland is a made-up retangle, like all made-up shapes, it is often times misleading to speak of it as a single place. Adam Balbo is from a semi-autonomous region known as Northern Indiana, which is very flat. It has trees and farmland between cities and towns. In Indiana, the sun rises and sets almost daily, though not everyone notices. Recently, Indiana has got high technical devices like automobiles, computers, and cell phones that the much of local population quickly has learned to use.
One distinguishing feature of Adam Balbo's homeland is the weather. Winters are cold; summers are hot. Although quite far from any ocean, Adam Balbo once tried to go to the bottom of the sea to see someone who he had heard was living there writing a book. Adam Balbo made it down only about 20 feet or so before his ears started to hurt from the water pressure.
So, Adam Balbo decided to move to China, which is currently called the People's Republic of China. Despite the fact that tribal leaders, the world over it turns out, tend to add redundant names to their lands and clubs in misguided attempts to get respect, Adam Balbo didn't realize this at the time, and it does not bother him so much now. At first, in the mid-sized city of Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, Adam Balbo taught the native lingua of what used to be a backwater group of European islanders called English, which you may have heard on TV.
No matter what people tell you, many Chinese don't speak Chinese. Fortunately for Adam Balbo, who has studied the official language Mandarin for a few years, some actually do. Beijing, the capital, was home to Adam Balbo for the following couple years. There, Adam Balbo fixed broken English at a weekly magazine. The magazine had lots of words and pictures in it. It had stories and opinions, too. It also had yet more invisible lines about which the employees knew but few spoke. Beyond these lines journalists and editors could not cross. If they did, other people, who stubbornly insist that no one can challenge their jobs, told them they could not do so.
Although Adam Balbo misses the dumpling place on Maizidian St. in Chaoyang district, some friendly people, and bringing his own beer to the bowling alley, he now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, where they import their corn. And Adam Balbo is now, happily, very close to the ocean. He is currently preparing another attempt to walk to the bottom of it.
