Re-posted from http://www.mikemcgee.net:

On Monday night, at MACLA in downtown San José, California, I hosted the return of the San José Poetry Slam. The co-slammasters at the helm are Kat Dietrich and Chris Bundy, who finally made the move to bring the slam to MACLA (with lots of pressure on my part) after a two-year run at Britannia Arms pub on Santa Clara Street.

The night couldn’t have been any better, with newer local favorite Chris Locksin running the door,  Tristissima at the scorekeeper’s table, and about 50 people ready to slam or witness slam, Silicon Valley Style.

Students Liam and Lorian drove all the way down from Dominican University, which lies well north of San Francisco. Liam took loads of pictures throughout the night for a school project. Max Hare came down from Stanford University and made it all the way to the second round. Turns out there’s a hefty handful of Stanford kids who love performing and slamming, and with his skill on the mic, I imagine he one of their leaders.

The doors opened at 7:30pm and people began signing up right away. With MACLA being an all ages venue, it was heartwarming to see some of my youth poetry students finally get a chance to weigh their words on the same stage with older slam veterans such as Kim Johnson and Anis Mojgani, who performed a subtle, stellar feature between two marvelous rounds of poetry. There were poetry fans of all ages chanting and lauding his verses as he performed the first slam feature of the year – and of this new venue – in the welcoming, darkened, black box theater.

We had a more-than-full sign up list for Round 1, taking on 11 slammers, narrowing the field down to the top 5 for Round 2. It felt like old times for me in a room full of new faces, many of whom drove from Santa Cruz or the East Bay and San Francisco just to be there.  So many in fact, that all five of the 2nd Rounders were from everywhere but San José.

Third place went to Dusty Rose of Berkeley.
Second Place went to Baraka Noel of Berkeley.
First place went to Kevin Holmes of UC-Santa Cruz.

Along with our standard cash prizes, I gave out a mini “We Own The Night” poster for third, and let Baraka and Kevin duke it out over a mini “Superbad” poster and my Young MC tape. The tape ended up making a new home in Berkeley.

At the end of the night, as people helped stack chairs and mingle, Chris Bundy and I celebrated the success of the show. It truly felt like a re-birth. MACLA has been a haven for some of our slam finals and Battles of the Bay, but now it is definitely our home to stay.  We were so happy last night.

In 1998, I began performing shortly before the very first San José Poetry Slam, just two blocks away from MACLA, in what used to be Café Babylon. That was in the fall. Ten years, five slammasters, and four venues later, we’re back on the street we started – First Street. Kind of poetic, really. The venue is perfect for us, and vice versa.

So we’ll be running every 2nd Monday of the month at MACLA. I intend to host through June, and hopefully onward from there. The next SJPS is March 10, 2008. It six bucks at the door. Sign up is at 7:30pm, show at 8:00pm. Come have a great time with us.
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Word to the nerd.
2008: Doing it!

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This entry was written by Mike McGee, posted on 13 February, 2008 at 3:35 PM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged dominican university, downtown, macla, Performance Poetry and Spoken Word, poem, San-Jose-California, santa cruz, slamming. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.