hungry i

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The hungry i was a legendary San Francisco nightclub operated in the mid-1950s and early 1960s by Enrico Banducci at 599 Jackson Street in the North Beach district. The hungry i was instrumental in launching the careers of singer Barbra Streisand and comedians Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Professor Irwin Corey, Woody Allen, Dick Cavett, Phyllis Diller, the Smothers Brothers, and Joan Rivers. Poet Maya Angelou began her career at the hungry i as an attractive young ersatz Caribbean singer.

The hungry i was launched by Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, who sold it to Banducci in 1950. How the club's name came about is something of a mystery. According to one story, the lower-case "i" was meant to represent "intellectual." Banducci swore that it was literally Freudian and was short for "the hungry id." In another story, the sign was not finished in time for the club's opening, and next-day reviews in the San Francisco papers cemented the name for all time. In another story, artist Mark Adams came up with the name. "It (the lowercase 'i') designated the first-person singular, with all of its various cravings," he explained in a 1985 interview.^[1]

The hungry i and Banducci were also instrumental in the careers of actor/comic Ronnie Schell, comic Bill Cosby, and minister Malcolm Boyd. Musically, The Kingston Trio recorded two famous albums at the hungry i^[2], including the first live performance of their version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Tom Lehrer's final satirical album, That Was The Year That Was (1965), was also recorded there, as well as The Limeliters' Our Men In San Francisco album.

Vince Guaraldi of Peanuts TV show fame and Free Willy, folksinger Glenn Yarbrough, the Gateway Singers, and comedians Godfrey Cambridge and Professor Irwin Corey were also given career boosts from their appearances at the hungry i. The folk-rock group We Five were signed to A&M records after Herb Alpert saw them perform there.

Legend has it that a teenaged Streisand begged Banducci for a single night at his nightclub, insisting that she'd one day be a huge star despite never having appeared anywhere at the time. Banducci went with this totally unknown singer, and the result was so good that she was held over for two months of shows, attracting nationwide acclaim.

When the comedy and folk music scene wilted in the mid-1960s with the rise of hard rock and Vietnam war protests, Banducci closed the club and sold its name to a topless club at another location nearby at 546 Broadway, where the name doubtless still draws in unwary tourists interested in history. Banducci and many of the club's performers reunited in 1981 for a memorable one-night performance, captured in the nationally televised documentary hungry i Reunion, produced and directed by Thomas A. Cohen.

An exhibition on the history of the hungry i opened March 28, 2007 at the San Francisco Performing Arts Library, now the Museum of Performance & Design, and was on view through August 25, 2007. Alumni who performed at the hungry i during its heyday — as well as club owner Enrico Banducci and his daughter — gathered for an opening celebration March 27th. Among those reminiscing on their time at the club were Orson Bean, Shelley Berman, Father Malcolm Boyd, Travis Edmonson, Tom Lehrer, The Kingston Trio, Mort Sahl, Ronnie Schell, Ernie Sheldon, and Glenn Yarbrough.

[edit] Current Hungry i Club

The Hungry I stands in the corner of 546 Broadway St as a topless strip bar operated by Déjà Vu. It is one of the longest standing bars of its nature on Broadway Street where the strip-club phenomenon started in the sixties after the opening of the neighbor Condor Club.