Manny Yekutiel: The Most Hospitable Person in San Francisco?

Josiah: Our guest today just might be the most hospitable person in San Francisco, but he doesn't work in a hotel. Manny Yekutiel is the owner of Manny's, a cafe and event space that's a fixture in the community and has almost become like a living room for the neighborhood it's based in. When I visited this past week, it was full of people having coffee, lounging on couches with their shoes off, connecting and laughing with friends. It's a vibe basically every hospitality business owner I know would love to have. So, how does Manny make it happen? Keep listening to find out how because the ways that Manny connects and cares for people in this city is going to inspire you to join in and live a hospitable life regardless of where you live or what your business is. 

Josiah: For people who are just listening to the audio here, we are sitting at Manny's in the Mission District of San Francisco. I wonder how you describe this space.

Manny: It's a civic and political event space with a cafe, bar, bookstore, and restaurant. So when you walk in, there's a place that looks just like a cafe and it is cafe, get some food, get a beer, and keep walking. There's a small political bookshop with about 300 titles organized by issue area. In the back, where we are now, is kind of a lounge hangout spot during the day. Classic coffee house kind of lounge. People put their shoes off on the velvet chairs, which I love. Looks like they're relaxing. They are. And actually, cities really need spaces like this, where you can just go and chill. There used to be more of them. They're hard to come by now. And mainly at night, we host programming that is themed around politics, social justice, government issues, and civic life. It's a civic event space.

Josiah: And it's an incredible programming lineup. I've attended a number of events here and I always sense, regardless of the topic being covered, I feel like there's such an interesting connection, not only with the speakers or people who are talking, but among people attending as well. And that's, that's really cool experience. Tell me a little bit about kind of the backstory of this. What led to you opening this place up?

Manny: I noticed that there were a lot of people who wanted to get more involved and engaged. in civic life, whether it means certain issues, climate change, women's reproductive rights, gun violence prevention, LGBT rights, or just learning about politics, meeting local elected officials, and not having a physical place to do that. It just struck me as strange that there are places to do pretty much everything else around us. You know, there's ice cream shops who want ice cream. Corner stores if you want a bag of chips, sports bars if you want to catch a game. These are places that we know to go to for these particular things, But where do you go to engage in civic and political life? Where do you physically go? well, it seems strange that I didn't know of a place that did that given, you know, Trump's election and that campaign and all these people around me who are asking this question, you know, I want to get more involved. Where do I go? How do I do it? I thought well there should be a place I'll build it

Josiah: It's one thing to have the idea, though. It feels very hard to actually build a place like this. Did you feel like it had to be in the Mission District?

Manny: It needed to be around a BART station so that people from the East Bay could easily get here. So I only really looked a couple blocks away from three BART stations, 24th, 16th, and Civic Center. because the farther ones south are too far south and the ones north are too expensive because they're downtown. I gave up looking for a space because I couldn't find one, ran out of money, took a full-time job on a mayoral race in 2018, and then a couple weeks later I found this place, and it all just fell in I guess.

Josiah: I love it. You talk about programming. I feel a lot of people want to have a strong lineup of programming across different kind of lines of things, but it's really hard to pull it off. I'm curious how you think about programming here. Who do you get on stage? How do you think about that?

Manny: The way I think about that work is we want to meet people where their interests are. So we're not trying to force people to care about things they don't care. We try to do as many things as possible so that if that's the thing that you care about or you're interested in, You can, you'll be able to find it here. So we have various matrices, local, national, local, state, national, international affairs and politics. And then, so that's one set of frameworks. And the second set of frameworks is the spectrum from soft to hard politics. Soft being like a poetry reading, sign making, a lighthearted conversation on spirituality and religion. I mean, these are political, but they're also easy entry points. all the way to hard politics, which would be a fundraiser for a politician where you're giving money to support a candidate, and everything in between.

Josiah: And you host a lot of events. I think sometimes people think about doing one or two a month. Is there something about the frequency of hosting so many events that allows you to address that whole range?

Manny: I just think that's because I'm an overachiever. Pretty much. I mean, we probably don't need to do quite so many. We did 21 events last week. But part of me feels an urgency because I feel very privileged to own a space that does political events in San Francisco right now and want to use it as long as I have it. Small businesses are hard to run, and these places don't exist forever. And so I want to fill it with as much stuff as I can while I have the privilege of being alive and the privilege of doing this work. And two, I do think that if a place is going to be serving the community, it needs to be activated regularly. Otherwise, it's just a space.

Josiah: Amazing. You've been running this for a number of years now. If you could go back to talk to yourself when you were opening this place up, is there anything that you've learned along the journey that you would advise yourself back then?

Manny: Oh my god. I kind of miss the version of myself that I was before I opened it. A little bit. And I need to remind myself of the things about that Manny that were great.

Josiah: How would you describe that Manny?

Manny: I was… How do I say this? Well, I was in love at that point too, and that was really great. My heart was very open. I had seen less, and so I was less cynical. I'm not cynical now, but I hold myself to a pretty high standard of cynicism. In politics, if you start to become very cynical, it's the end, right? But I was particularly innocent. a believer in politics then. I have seen a lot of great things and met a lot of extremely inspiring people in this space and out of this space. I've also seen a lot of things that have made me sad. Thousands of events here talking about the issues of the world. Sometimes it can be easy to fall into a feeling of fear and despondency or at least to be around it. And so there's a little bit of sheen that's been lost being in it. I feel, but in some ways I feel healthier than I've ever felt and more and stronger, both physically and emotionally than I've ever than I felt before and proud of myself. So if I can go back to 2018 Manny, I would say I wasn't actually that worried about it all working out because I was pretty lost when I decided to start it. So the fact that I even just opened it was like was a huge. So I was I was like even if it all fails like you fucking did it. But I would I wouldn't have changed anything actually.

Josiah: It's the journey. Hindsight's always 20-20, right?

Manny: Yeah, I've had such a great time doing this. I have a great job. I love my job. I love my team. I have a really good team. I've had a really good team since I've opened. The thing is, I've worked with amazing people here. Young, old, all different kinds of folks. Every kind of person has worked with me at Manny's already, and I just have a great team.

Josiah: How do you assess who would be a good team member? Because I feel like there's a lot of folks that are well-intentioned but not necessarily have a set of traits that's going to make them a good team member. How do you think about that?

Manny: I pretty much know instantly if someone's going to be right or not. I come from the campaign world, so I worked on four campaigns before, one, two, three, four, five campaigns before I started this. Campaign people and organizers are a certain breed of person. They're kind of like dancers in that they're kind of screwed up a little bit. I dated a dancer, so I can speak from personal experience on that. Rob, if you're listening, I still love you. I doubt you're listening, but I do still love you. And so I like to hire campaign people, organizers,

Josiah: I love it. It's interesting you touch on kind of viewing politics. And I feel your work transcends politics. You talk about political subjects on stage here in the gatherings that you host. But you look at other forms of civic engagement. And I wonder if we could talk about some of those, maybe starting with the Civic Joy Fund. Tell our listeners a little bit about that and what you're proud of achieving through that. Because I've seen this around the city in different ways. And I think it's been really cool.

Manny: You're about to see a whole lot more. The Civic Joy Fund is my non-profit that, or the non-profit that I founded and run, I should say. It's not mine. The point of the Civic Joy Fund is to add massive amounts of vibrancy to San Francisco's streets to help our city recover. So that's with paying for and coming up with ideas that bring musicians to play on the streets and artists to paint on the streets and partying and disco to happen on the streets. But it's all tied with adding vibrancy to the streets through music and art and activation. as a tool of recovery.

Josiah: Interesting. Tell me a little bit more about what you see the role of joy and vibrancy being in recovery. What does that spark?

Manny: Well, it's a city that attracts a lot of people. One of the reasons why it attracts a lot of people is because of how vibrant it can be and has been. And that has to do with things like music and art and nightlife and culture. And it's where moths to the flame of San Francisco Joy, because those things, they're not just about joy, but part of it is, what ties it all together is joy and celebration. And so I think it's a very important tool of recovery because it's the thing that's going to remind people why San Francisco is worthy of saving.

Josiah: That sounds compelling. Joy is amazing to experience, but it sounds like it takes a lot of work to make that happen. What were the ingredients that you found?

Manny: People don't move to Tallahassee because of its joyous nature, because of its nightlife, because of what it does, what happens there. They might move there for other reasons, no offense to Tallahassee. But people do move to San Francisco because of what you can do here outside of work.

Josiah: So now, one of the other things that you're involved in is Downtown First Thursdays, right?

Manny: Tell me a little bit more about that. This is a new monthly street party downtown with the goal of bringing at least 10,000 people to downtown once a month to have a good time, to celebrate themselves, to celebrate our city, to remind each other that we've got a great downtown. There's lots to do there. And it's a recovery strategy. We had our first one two weeks ago. We don't know exactly how many people came because we had to stop counting, but north of 15,000 People showed up and danced and ate and did the thing that San Franciscans do really, really well, Which is hang out outside and have a good time.

Josiah: So you need space to do that. I'm hearing music. I'm hearing food What are other core ingredients of creating money? Yeah. Yeah. What is there anything else that comes to mind in terms of what creates that vibe? How do you how do you make it happen?

Manny: What creates that vibe gay people? gay people So you need like a good chunk of them and for making this cake Because we know how to have a good time and we know how to we love it. We love a disco. We love a dance You know good food places to sit the right disposition. It happened to be a gorgeous sunny, San Francisco day, Which is a rare occurrence, so good weather. But I think the gathering and enjoying yourself, basically, there's an agreement. The agreement is we're gonna be good to each other. You know what I mean? San Franciscans, we're pretty good to each other. We have this festival, Outside Lands, and I've been to a fair amount of festivals, and Outside Lands is one of those festivals where no one pushes each other. Right? Is that right? I feel like no one pushes each other at Outside Lands. No, you've been pushed? Less so than others. In the tents, yeah. There's less pushing. The reason I moved here was I spent a summer here in 2010, and it was the way that people touched each other and talked to each other that I loved so much. People say good morning to you here, like you're in a small town. They'll be like, good morning.

Josiah: So it's the best of a big city and the best of a small town.

Manny: Yeah, I sometimes wish we could be more like a big city in our housing policies, in our nightlife hours, and some of those things, but we can be parochial a bit.

Josiah: Well, let's stay with this a moment longer. What does being a good neighbor or a community participant mean to you?

Manny: What is being a good neighbor to me just as an individual?

Josiah: Yeah, like how can, I'm curious, how can we be good San Franciscans?

Manny: I think it's acknowledging people's humanity, you know, just like looking at folks, saying hello. I was at the page last night struck up a conversation with a bunch of strangers. We had a wonderful conversation for hours. Like that is I think the thing that sets us apart from other cities is We are, I think, a very pure California city. And I think being Californian is a state of mind, and it has to do with acknowledging people's humanity, being interested in them, interested in each other, in each other's stories, in each other's opinions, listening.

Josiah: Can business owners play a role in this? You own this place. It seems that business owners can play a role in making cities more neighborly. Is that possible in your experience? Of course.

Manny: How so? Well, businesses are like living, breathing things. They're organisms. And they have their own spirit. And if the spirit of a small business is welcoming and loving and interested in the people that come in it, then it will spread that outside of its walls. And if a business's spirit is exclusive, pretentious and mean-spirited, that will also affect the community. I think San Francisco is a city with a lot more of the former than the latter.

Josiah: Last question for you, I'm curious before we go, what are you thinking about these days? What are you excited by and looking forward to?

Manny: I'm really pumped about Downtown First Thursdays. I'm an activist. I'm a campaign person. I'm not a music festival party planner person. That definitely was not something I was gonna put on my resume. But I was out there, and let's be clear, I did not actually organize it. It was my idea, I raised the money for it, and I hired the people who know how to actually do these things, so they did all the actual hard work. But I did walk around and I was like, wow, this is cool. People are having a good time, having fun, dancing, sweating, making out. Kids are playing with the hula hoops in the street and they're doing it downtown. And to see a vision come to reality like that, And to do it as a 34-year-old gay man, you know, it's pretty cool. I feel very proud of it and I'm excited to see it grow and metastasize benignly and help our downtown recover. So DFT, DFTSF.com.