826 Valencia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
826 Valencia is the name and address of a nonprofit writing workshop and tutoring center in San Francisco whose aim is to help students ages 8-18 "with their writing skills, in the realm of creative writing, expository writing, or English as a second language." It was founded by Bay Area writer Dave Eggers (author of the autobiography A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the novels You Shall Know Our Velocity and What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng) and is run by a small regular staff along with hundreds of volunteers and professionals. The center offers adult writing workshops, scholarships, drop-in tutoring for students, and in-classroom visits, among other educational activities.
826 Valencia also runs San Francisco's "only independent pirate supply store." Located in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District, the store is the front entrance of the tutoring center and has the look and feel of an authentic pirate shop. The store sells pirate clothing, eyepatches, compasses, spyglasses, pirate dice, skull flags, and secret treasures. It features handmade signs, scattered around the store, offering tongue-in-cheek wisdom, such as "Uses for Lard" (#5: "Lard Fights") and "Guidelines for New Shipmates" (#4: "No forgetting to swab"). Unsuspecting visitors are sometimes treated to surprise "moppings." Shoppers can also find back issues of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, books published by McSweeney's, and essay and story compilations written by 826 Valencia students. The books of student writing published by 826 Valencia so far are "I Might Get Somewhere," "Waiting to Be Heard," "Talking Back," and their newest book, "Home Wasn't Built in a Day," which includes a foreword by Robin Williams.
There are now six chapters that make up 826 National: a second writing center, 826NYC in Brooklyn, New York, features a superhero-themed supply store, and another at 826 Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan is home to a monster store. The 826 Seattle writing center in Seattle's Greenwood neighboorhood is host to the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company. Additional satellites of 826 Valencia — located in Los Angeles (826LA) and Chicago (826CHI) — are developing stores that will open in 2007.
