Let's Dance and Live up That Dancing Floor with Poe Street Band!
You walk in with a smile and your red dance shoes on, you wave at some people you know, shake hands with those you just met and bob your head to that infectious song with which Poe Street Band greets you from the stage! Here is a table full of appetizers and sweets (wow!), next to the whites and reds, and here is that renown draft Czech Pilsner! Temptingl! By now you register that strong scent of the sweetkraut and pork and the sight of fresh Czech bread betrays your promise to skip the dinner tonight! One big portion, you scream, with an extra bread, please! After all, you know you will dance it off as you came to live up that dance floor!! And you do and with you the others who came to the Hall of Nation to shake off those worries, sorrows or blues! What a fun happy joyful glorious night it was!
Poe Street Band loves to find a way to connect people, so they can catch up, start new friendship, sing along, delve into fun on and off the the dance floor! It is our modest way to attract positive vibes and to remind the world that singing and dancing always uplifts your spirit and inspires you!!
And what about the historical Hall of Nation which we like to rock and live up?
It used to be a Kansas state exhibition hall during the 1915 Panama-California exhibition. It was a year when our Balboa Park, as we know it today, became a sought after developed urban park hosting an expo celebrating the completion of Panama Canal. (San Diego was hoping to be the first port of a call on the way from Panama, but Los Angeles snatched that from us!)
San Diego had barely 40,000 inhabitants in that time, the smallest population that would ever host an exhibition. Nevertheless, this small group of citizens had incredible drive, vision, knack to fundraise money and a noble goal to put that sleepy coastal town on the map. They did it and with a great success! And we admire it!!
That success was repeated in 1935 with California International Exhibition. One of the enthusiasts organizer behind the second Expo was Mr. Frank Drugan who, next to many other things, also established a House of Pacific Relations. (Pacific meaning Peaceful.) It introduced an idea of presenting a small international village featuring traditions of some minorities living in San Diego. And here it is - 15 Spanish hyciendas were built, each representing one nation that till today presents itself once a year on a stage and every Sunday by opening the little cottage to the public. In the first several years of this village the cottages would serve as small embassies where your visa or passport could have been obtained for the respective countries. How wonderful is that!!
Today we have 30 nations represented in the International Village and the Hall of Nation, made out of the 1915 Kansas building, is a place to share with public your heritage or any public program. What a beautiful idea of Mr. Drugan, what a way to enable people embrace diversity or learn about other countries! Let us hope even Mr. Drugan would break into a fast dance should he had visit us!!
Poe Street Band thanks you for coming, for dancing, for your great company. The Hall would be awfully empty, sad and lifeless without you!! So long till our next dancing"