The last "Hungry i" reunion, just before Bruno Banducci passed away, drew people like Bob Shane and John Stewart, Mort Sahl and Travis Edmonson and many others who had performed there. It was not, I believe, held at the actual venue, because at last report, the old "i" was still a Deja Vu-owned venue for naked ladies and lay gynecologists.

I can remember North Beach as it was in the later 1950's, when the "Beat" poets and writers, et al, who had been the primary habitue's of "The Hungry i" and various cafe's and coffee houses, were being pushed out by the collegiate hipsters and the young banker and stockbroker types from Montgomery Street. That was the audience you heard in the background on the old Kingston Trio recording, "From the Hungry i." You could still get a great home-style Italian meal in the area, but change was on the way.

It wasn't until Carol Doda, the original silicone-enhanced topless dancer, appeared at the Condor Club that North Beach forever morphed into the tawdry tenderloin we all know and love. I had dinner at "The Stinking Rose" last January. Walking the few blocks nearby, a lot of the old landmarks were gone and a few still evident, but I felt I was looking at a sad, tired old dowager with garish makeup and pale, wrinkled skin - hanging on by a thread.