Nine San Francisco artists will exhibit and perform tonight on stage at the Great American Music Hall to support City Hope Community Center and its associated social outreach programs in the Tenderloin.

City Hope Director Paul Trudeau and Brenton Gieser, the organization's art director, selected artist friends and acquaintances they admire to pull together stories about the Tenderloin as a community, Gieser told us. 

Each of tonight's stories focuses on a neighbor or neighbors that have connected to the Tenderloin through the organization, which was founded in 2005 to help the area’s marginalized residents build healthy relationships and provide a safe space for the community.

Attendees can meet Albertino, who captured Trudeau during the construction of City Hope and mysteriously sent him a bag of the footage; Joe McDaniel will relate the story of his battle from addiction at home on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation to sobriety in the Tenderloin.

Tenderloin street photographer and documentarian Felix Uribe, Jr. of the Tender Souls portrait project will talk about his work, and guests will get an update on Lasonya Wells, who was jailed for stealing Scott Weiner’s phone in 2015.

Other artists will offer personal stories that illustrate their connection to the neighborhood through visual and experiential performances, Gieser said.

“Many of the subjects within our stories are people who are served by City Hope, or serve City Hope,” Gieser told us. “So part of their stories relate back to City Hope, but they all go much further,” and are “explicitly about the community of the Tenderloin first.” 

City Hope encourages tonight’s artists to share their works widely and hopes to have an encore performance at some point, but none is currently planned.

Tickets for tonight’s show are available on Eventbrite.