By Donna Tam
Special to AsianWeek
Occasionally responsibilities and concerns will pop up for kids of today, from worrying about being safe in their neighborhood to making a change in their community. For four Asian Pacific American girls from the South of Market area (SOMA), these affairs are a part of daily life. Mitzah Capulong, Micaiah Capulong, Jennifer Peng-Nguyen and Joanna Torno are interns for the community network youth-service agencies in SOMA called the SOYAC Youth Collective (Serving Our Youth and Community) — and serving their community is what they do.
SOYAC started in 1999 with the goal of organizing a research and assessment project to allow the voices of youths to be heard. By conducting local surveys, SOYAC was able to create an assessment of what youths experienced and needed in their neighborhood. This 2002 youth-led assessment has been used by many organizations to help them gain insight to the lives of these youths, and has incited organizers of SOYAC to create a campaign this summer to fight for youth prices at the Loews Theater in the Metreon Sony Entertainment Center.
“By looking at the youth assessment and realism documentary that [SOYAC] did, they identified the Metreon as a very important issue in their neighborhood in the South of Market area,” said Kuusela Hilo, a staff member of the South of Market Community Action Network, who is assisting SOYAC in its campaign this summer. “The Metreon is South of Market and makes so much money, yet [SOYAC] did an assessment of their community and they are not receiving anything.”
Currently, the Loews Theater in the Metreon only has adult, children and senior citizen prices. Since teens do not qualify for the discounted children price, which is $5.50 and covers children up to age 12, they must pay the general admission adult price of $9.25. And since the Metreon is one of the only places youths in SOMA can go to for entertainment, they have little choice but to comply or miss out.
“We basically [have to] do everything outside of our neighborhood. The Metreon is the only entertainment we have [in our neighborhood], but we can’t even have that without paying 10 dollars, paying the adult prices. They’re jacking us,” said 13-year-old Torno. “We don’t have the same jobs that adults have, and SOMA is a low-income neighborhood.”
Earlier this month, the girls had the opportunity to meet with the management at Loews. Their meeting, unfortunately was not successful.
“We went to have a meeting with Loews Theater’s management, and he was totally rude to us,” said 14-year-old Miztah Capulong. “He didn’t even listen to what we had to say. He was just like, why should we lower our prices just to be nice, we’re the top theater in North America and we make a lot of money.”
According to the girls, the manager, Joey Nardine, cared very little for the concerns of the youth in SOMA, despite the presentation of more than 1,000 signatures the girls had collected in petitions over the last two months.
“He was like, why do we need your business when we make millions on every movie,” Torno said. “He didn’t even care. He didn’t even look at our petitions. He said we could have a million petitions, and he would [still] not help us.”
Nardine was unavailable for comment concerning this issue.
The members of SOYAC are not discouraged and have dropped off a tape of their meeting with Nardine for Supervisor Chris Daly of District 6, who has been following SOYAC’s campaign. SOYAC has now launched a boycott against Loews Theaters at Metreon, and it vigorously encourages Loews to “stop displacing low-income youth of color.”
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