Save the I-Hotel

The human barricade surrounding the International Hotel was six deep: two thousand arm-linked protestors chanting, We won't go! Save the I-Hotel! Inside, dozens more crammed the halls, blocking the stairwell with mattresses, desks, their own bodies. Now it was past midnight, and police in riot gear were closing in, armed with batons and shields. Fire engines blocked both ends of Kearny Street.

"I hate this street," Vicente said.

"It's nothing," Fortunado responded. He stood at the hotel-room window watching the protest below, his fingers between the slats of blinds. "Just traffic."

"I'm telling you, it's the Chinese again. Their parade always clogging the city." Vicente sat on the edge of his bed, folding a thin gray sweater over his lap. They were in his room on the third floor, next door to Fortunado's. "Don't worry, Nado. We'll make it through."

Fortunado closed the blinds, wiped the dust from his fingers. "We will," he said.

Eviction had threatened for more than a decade, and now it was happening. The mayor of San Francisco had approved the hotel's demolition and ordered the removal of its final tenants: the elderly Filipino men who had lived in the I-Hotel for more than forty years. Earlier that day, protest organizers had gathered the tenants in the lobby to prepare them for the fight and told them to stay in their rooms until the very end. "But pack a bag," they had said, "just in case." Fortunado had hurried upstairs, awoken Vicente from a nap, and though he had meant to tell him about the eviction, instead told him they were taking a weekend trip, just the two of them. He didn't name a specific place, but Vicente was easy to persuade. These days, he barely recognized the world as it truly happened: he never knew the day or time, oldest friends were strangers, and just three weeks before, Fortunado had found him on the corner of Kearny Street and Columbus, only a block from the entrance of the I-Hotel, asking strangers to help him find his way home. Now, in his mind the shouting in the halls and the sirens on the street were simply the ruckus of a Chinese New Year. He knew nothing of an eviction, had no sense of the end coming.

His hands shook as he folded another sweater. Distant sirens drew closer. Fortunado thought, This is what it means to be old. Now, he wished youth back, and if granted, he would offer it up to Vicente, who would make better use of it. He imagined Vicente springing to his feet and running down the stairs to claim his place in the barricade, his fists raised and ready to defend their right to stay. He was, Fortunado always knew, the stronger one.

It was August 4, 1977. If evicted that night, they would have lived in the I-Hotel for forty-three years.

They never meant to stay so long.

They had met on a September night in 1934. Fortunado had been in the States for five months, working fifteen-hour days in the asparagus fields just outside Stockton; this trip to San Francisco was his first chance to get away. He stepped off a Greyhound bus at the end of Market Street and wandered the grid of downtown, unable to distinguish the places that welcomed Filipinos from those that refused them. It was dark when he finally spotted a trio of Filipino men smoking cigarettes outside a barely lit doorway, and though no one said hello, they stepped aside to let him through.

He entered a long, narrow dance hall filled with mixed couples, Filipino men with white women. A gray-bearded man with a cane circled the room, calling out, "Dime a ticket, ticket a dance!" and in the corner, a half-dozen women sat in metal chairs, each waiting for the next customer. A banner that read WELCOME TO THE DREAMLAND SALOON sagged on the wall above them.

Fortunado bought three tickets, moved closer to the dance floor. He watched the couple closest...