The hungry i was originally a nightclub in North Beach, San Francisco. It was launched by Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, who sold it to Enrico Banducci in 1950.

How the club's name came about is something of a mystery. According to one story, the lower-case "i" was meant to represent "intellectual." Banducci swore that it was literally Freudian and was short for "the hungry id." In another story, the sign was not finished in time for the club's opening, and next-day reviews in the San Francisco papers cemented the name for all time.

Originally located at 599 Jackson Street on the ground floor of the International Hotel, the hungry i and Banducci were also instrumental in the careers of actor/comic Ronnie Schell, comic Bill Cosby, and minister Malcolm Boyd. Musically, The Kingston Trio recorded two famous albums at the hungry i, including the first live performance of their version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Tom Lehrer's final satirical album That Was The Year That Was (1965) was also recorded there, as well as The Limeliters' album Our Men In San Francisco (1963).

Jazz legend Vince Guaraldi, folk singer Glenn Yarborough, the Gateway Singers, and comedians Godfrey Cambridge, Professor Irwin Corey, and Mort Sahl were also given career boosts from their appearances at the hungry i, as well as Dick Cavett and Woody Allen. The folk-rock group We Five were signed to A&M records after Herb Alpert saw them perform there. John Phillips, later of The Mamas & the Papas, and his The Journeymen were the house band in the early '60s.

The young Barbra Streisand begged Banducci for a single night at his nightclub, insisting that she would soon be a huge star. Banducci agreed to sign the singer, who had never performed professionally but was eventually starring in I Can Get It for You Wholesale on Broadway. The resulting concerts (March-April 1963) were well-attended, giving Streisand nationwide acclaim.

When the comedy and folk music scene wilted in the mid-1960s with the rise of hard rock and Vietnam war protests, Banducci closed the club and sold its name to a topless club at another location nearby at 546 Broadway, where the name doubtless still draws in unwary tourists interested in history.

2012-06-25 00:53:27
The text content above is mostly taken from an article on the English Wikipedia site. It has been edited, often to the point of being quite different from the wiki article. When the text is substantialy original, the wiki article will be listed as a source and this notice will become a copyright notice. To maintain compatibility with the original, until copyright is declared it is released under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 license. The original wiki article is located here.