L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020 www.italoamericano.org 20 L'Italo-Americano T he first week- end in October is usually busy for S a n F r a n c i s c o . R e s i d e n t s a n d travelers greet the San Fran- cisco Fleet Week to honor all men and women serving in the armed forces and celebra- te the oldest Italian Heri- tage Parade of the United States. It usually takes three hours for all people on the floats, organizations, and cars to go around North Beach, while approximately 150,000 attendees wave and shout at them in a festive mood. This has been the tradition for many years, since the inaugu- ral parade in 1868 in San Francisco's downtown, featu- ring the bands and marching units of Italian fraternal orga- nizations, including the Gari- baldi Guard, Swiss Guards and Lafayette Guards, and also after 1994, when the Ita- lian Heritage Parade became that moment in the year to honor the accomplishments and the culture of all Ita- lians and Italian-Ameri- cans. This year is different thou- gh. 2020 is the year in which all events in the way we know t h e m h a v e g o n e v i r t u a l . That's also the case of the San Francisco Italian Heritage Parade and Festival. A few d a y s a g o , t h e c o m m i t t e e behind the event announced a series of social distanced and virtual events celebrating I t a l i a n H e r i t a g e M o n t h . While this year's celebration is different, we will still have many opportunities to toast and mark the day. "The health and safety of the hundreds of groups that march and thousands of Bay Area residents that attend the Italian Heritage Festival and Parade is our top priority for 2020," S t e v e L e v e r o n i , Chairman of the Board, San Francisco Italian Heritage Festival and Parade, stated. " W h i l e w e c a n ' t h a v e t h e parade in its usual format or take a Summer vacation to Italy this year, we welcome everyone to North Beach and our virtual events to expe- rience the next best way for us to celebrate Italian Ameri- can culture and our heritage day this year." On the weekend of October 10th and 11th, during the so- c a l l e d I t a l i a n H e r i t a g e Weekend, North Beach will be the place where to get together safely, support local business, and enjoy all open spaces. Starting in March, restaurants and merchants have been struggling to stay afloat and the shelter-in-place mandate did not allow people to go for lunch or dinner at restaurants. Many restau- rants are now back and open for outdoor seating, and there are also many to-go options, perfect for park and piazza dining. You can find a full list of restaurants on the parade website (www.sfitalianherita- ge.org). For those planning to stay after sunset, the San Francisco Italian Athletic Club and Sts. Peter and Paul Church will be lit up in t h e r e d , w h i t e a n d g r e e n colors. All main celebrations thou- g h w i l l b e v i r t u a l , w i t h a High Mass at Sts. Peter & Paul Church at 10am to be streamed on the chur- ch website. A show presen- ted in a 30 minute video, fea- turing dignitaries, music, performances, and represen- tatives of Italian and Italian- American organizations and businesses, will follow at 11am on Sunday for those watching live or anytime after on-demand on the Italian Heritage Facebook and You- tube pages. More will happen over the weekend, with pro- gramming put together by the Italian Cultural Institute, the Museo Italo Americano, and CIAO Bay Area. We talked to Italian Heri- tage Parade President, Bill Mastrangelo, to learn how the committee got ready for a dif- ferent celebration and how t h e y p i v o t e d t o m a k e t h e planning exciting. W h i c h k i n d o f v i b e should we expect? We want people to celebra- te our Italian Heritage in a way that feels safe for them. Foot traffic and tourism are down significantly in North Beach and we want to remind people that we can celebrate and support the businesses that have always supported us. We are encouraging peo- ple to order in from your favorite Italian place and have it delivered, pick up food to eat in the park or enjoy the outdoor seating at one of the m a n y p a r k l e t s i n N o r t h Beach. What are you perso- nally looking forward to the most? The most interesting part is how all our partner organi- z a t i o n s c a m e t o g e t h e r t o make this weekend happen. We partnered with Sts. Peter a n d P a u l S c h o o l , t h e S a n Francisco Italian Athletic Club, the North Beach Mer- chants, San Francisco Travel, The Consul General of Italy in San Francisco, and the Italian C u l t u r a l I n s t i t u t e j u s t t o n a m e a f e w . T h a t s a i d , everything we are working on for that weekend is new to us. I am interested to see how the Virtual Parade Show, our new Instagram filter and the Aug- mented Reality Scavenger Hunt work out. We could be laying the groundwork for future events outside of the parade that would expand the celebration of Italian Heritage M o n t h b e y o n d a s i n g l e weekend. How did the team pre- p a r e f o r t h i s v i r t u a l event? The board spent several meetings going over virtual ideas and interactions on what we anticipated we could do that weekend. We gathe- red a lot of feedback from the neighborhood organizations and community. Ultimately when it came time to make the call on where we would focus our effort, everyone was prepared to jump on a com- mittee and get this going. I n a d d i t i o n t o a l l t h i s , many other organizations will make sure the program- ming continues, still virtually. The Italian Cultural Insti- tute Free Italian Movie Sun- days series continues after the successful series in the sum- mer. Every Sunday in Octo- ber, the Italian Cultural Insti- tute will host the film series CINEDAY, featuring ten Ita- lian contemporary films in Italian with English subtitles available to the first 300 to register. View the full schedu- le by visiting the Italian Cul- tural Institute website. From October 19 to Octo- ber 25th, the Week of the Italian Language in the World will highlight "Italian Between Word and Image: Graffiti, Illustrations, Comic Books," a theme that can be developed both in a socio-lin- guistic key and by emphasi- zing expressive forms such as comics books, graphic novels and children's books. The full events schedule is available on the I t a l i a n C u l t u r a l Institute website. The Museo Italo Ameri- cano in collaboration with t h e L e o n a r d o D a V i n c i Society of San Francisco, is presenting a new online illu- strated lecture series, "Four Historical Italians Who Went to China and Left a Mark." The series of four lectures by Dr. Vincent Fausone, Chinese history expert and past presi- dent of the International Chi- nese Snuff Bottle Society, will talk about four important Ita- lian travelers to China: Marco Polo in the 15th century, Mat- teo Ricci at the end of the 16th century, Giuseppe Casti- glione in the 17th century and Evaristo Caretti in the 20th century. Not only did each of these men report their know- ledge of China to the West, but also each one made uni- que contributions to Chinese rulers and Chinese culture. 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