Woody LaBounty, Part 1 (S7E11)
Storied: San Francisco
On his mom’s side, Woody LaBounty’s San Francisco roots go back to 1850. In Part 1, get to know Woody, who, today, is the president and CEO of . But he’s so, so much more than that. He begins by tracing his lineage back to the early days of the Gold Rush. His maternal great-great-great-grandfather arrived here mid-Nineteenth Century. Woody even knows what ship he was on and the exact day that it arrived in the recently christened city of San Francisco. On Woody’s dad’s side, the roots are about 100 years younger than that. His father grew up in Fort Worth, Texas (like I did). His...
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Josiah Luis Alderete/Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore, Part 2 (S7E10)
Storied: San Francisco
In Part 2, we start off talking about the significance of opening a Latinx-owned bookstore in the heart of the Mission, on 24th Street. The folks who run Medicine for Nightmares call the entire space at 3036 24th Street—the bookstore in front and gallery in back—"The Portal." Josiah talks about the intention to utilize that gallery space to highlight art and artists in the Mission. The gallery is also often home to community group meetings, further solidifying its importance. That's my kind of mixed-use. In the three years that MfN has been open, they've hosted more than 800 events...
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Josiah Luis Alderete/Medicine for Nightmares, Part 1 (S7E10)
Storied: San Francisco
This episode is a sequel podcast nearly five years in the making. We last talked with poet back in 2020, over Zoom, in the early COVID days. In this podcast, we pick up, more or less, with where we left off that summer. Back in those days, Josiah Luis still worked at in North Beach. He walks us through that store’s process of rearranging around social-distancing protocols that were new at the time. He says that the early days of the pandemic meant hunkering down at home and reading-reading-reading. But once it was deemed safe to reopen City Lights, Josiah was really happy to be back. One...
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Ask Me SF's Ellen Lo, Part 2 (S7E9)
Storied: San Francisco
In Part 2, we pick up with Ellen's life after she graduated from Washington University. Next up was a move to New York City. In the Big City, she consulted for a financial services company. It was 2007, just before the financial crisis of those years. She found the job market tight, so she got a job in Washington, DC, where she lived for four years. Ellen says that during her time in the nation's capital, she behaved like a New York snob, never really giving DC a chance. She'd go back to NYC just about every weekend. Some of her New York friends didn't realize that she'd moved, in fact....
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Ask Me SF’s Ellen Lo, Part 1 (S7E9)
Storied: San Francisco
One of Ellen Lo’s main motivations is to beautify the spaces she’s in. In this podcast, we meet and get to know Ellen. Today, she runs , a site and handle she populates with reviews of spots around The City she wants to share with the world. Sounds familiar, but we’ll get to that later in the episode. We start with Ellen’s childhood, which began in small-town North Carolina. It was a town so small, in fact, that the few times she’s gone back to visit, it hasn’t changed. Ellen’s time in North Carolina wasn’t easy. Hers was the only Asian-American family in her school and town,...
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Comedian/Union Organizer Nato Green, Part 2 (S7E8)
Storied: San Francisco
In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Nato details the three times he's left his hometown of San Francisco. The first was when he went to college, which was at Reed in Portland, Oregon, in the mid-Nineties. To get us there, Nato rattles off all of the ways that he was a "comedy head" before that was even a thing. At Reed, he met a guy who's dad was the manager of the Comedy Underground in Seattle. Nato's first time doing stand-up on stage was at the Comedy Underground, in fact. As he describes it, to say that he bombed that first time would be an...
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Comedian/Union Organizer Nato Green, Part 1 (S7E8)
Storied: San Francisco
Nato Green started hanging out at San Francisco comedy clubs when he was in eighth grade. Nato’s parents met when they both still lived in the suburbs of Chicago. They got married in 1968 and moved to San Francisco soon after that. Nato says that they “were in the counter-culture, but bad at it.” What he means by that is they didn’t take their subversive lifestyles all the way like many of their peers did. But they were definitely left-leaning folks. They settled in Noe Valley, which was quite a different neighborhood back then. It was much more working-class than it is today. Think:...
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Barbara Gratta/Gratta Wines, Part 2 (S7E7)
Storied: San Francisco
Part 2 picks up where we left off in Part 1. Barbara had just really become settled in San Francisco and was in what would become a decades-long process of learning the place (I can totally relate, btw). She hung out in the Castro more than the Mission, which in those days was a lesbian mecca. Café Flore (nowadays known as ) was a favorite. Eventually, though, Barbara moved to the Mission. The company she had been contracting with hired her and that provided the security she needed. She called an apartment at 19th Street and Dolores, across from Dolores Park, home. She's quick to point...
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Barbara Gratta/Gratta Wines, Part 1 (S7E7)
Storied: San Francisco
One set of Barbara Gratta's grandparents came to the US from Calabria, the toe of the boot of Italy. The other grandparents came from across the Italian peninsula—Bari. In this episode, meet Barbara. Today, she owns, operates, and makes wine at in the Bayview. But her journey began in White Plains, NY. All four grandparents came to Brooklyn in the 1920s. They all eventually moved north to raise families away from the bustle of New York City. Barbara's grandparents were a big part of her early life, the extended families getting together often for "big Italian Sunday dinners"...
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Whack Donuts' First Anniversary (S7 bonus)
Storied: San Francisco
It's been a damn year, y'all. In this bonus episode, we catch up with friend of the show , owner and creator of . His brick-and-mortar shop in EMB 4 just marked its one-year anniversary (and last year was a Leap Year!), and I dropped by to chat with Vandor about the time since he opened, where things stand now, and the road ahead. This Saturday, to celebrate Whack Donuts' birthday, Vandor is hosting a breakdancing jam event: 5x5 crew breaking battle $1,000 donuts line dancing free giveaways Follow for more info. And if you're able to, please to help offset some...
info_outlinePatrick Costello used to work at Anchor Brewing, where he was the production lead for the bottling and keg lines. He was also a member of the Anchor Brewing Union, where he served as a shop steward—essentially the union rep on the floor. Anchor's union was part of Local 6 of the ILWU. But Patrick wasn't exactly born into all of this.
His mom and dad met at a house party in the Mission in the 1980s. Patrick's dad was stationed in the Presidio and his mom came here from Nicaragua. His dad wouldn't leave his mom alone at this party, or so the story goes. They were married at a church in the Presidio soon after that. (Patrick and his wife recently got married nearby, at Tunnel Tops park.)
The family moved to Germany shortly after his mom and dad got married. This is where Patrick was born, in fact. They moved back in time for his younger brother to be born in The City. Then they went to Sacramento, where he went to school. After graduation, Patrick made his way back to The Bay, around 2010.
He worked for a while at Farley's on Potrero Hill, where he met Jerry, a maintenance worker from the nearby brewery. Farley's gave Anchor employees free coffee, and they paid it back with a keg now and then. Patrick loved chatting with the guy. One day, Jerry mentioned that the brewery was opening a bar and that Patrick should apply.
When he visited, the place was packed, with a line out the door. But the manager told Patrick that they didn't need help. He came back a week later—same thing. Same response. It went on three or four more times before the tap room figured out that they weren't going to get rid of this guy. They'd be better off hiring him.
He came on as a barback at first and hit the ground running. This was around the time that the Warriors were starting to win, and the place was always packed. Patrick learned fast.
When COVID hit, all the service jobs disappeared. But folks who ran the brewery brought a lot of the tap room workers over, to help keep them employed and also to keep up with demand. This is how Patrick got into the brewery. A production lead left, and he took over.
At this point in the recording, we take a step back as Patrick tells the story of how the Anchor Union came about. He says there'd been talk of forming a union for some time before Sapporo took over, because workers felt that management wasn't listening to their demands. When the Japan-based company bought Anchor, they felt it was a good time to try, with a large corporation now in charge.
At first, the efforts centered around educating employees on what a union means, countering popular misconceptions along the way. The campaign was tough and it took a minute, but they organized and got it done in 2019.
We do a sidebar on the rebranding of Anchor that happened, something most area beer lovers (including me) were not happy about. Not at all. Union members knew it was coming, but they didn't get into a room during the development stage, and it was too late. Many union members agreed, but they wanted to give it time for the beer-drinking public to decide.
The reaction was overwhelmingly negative, but ownership doubled down. The union made a statement. But it didn't matter. What was done was done.
Patrick says that workers felt the closing coming on. Orders had slowed down. There was a brooding feeling in the air. Supply chain issues affecting markets worldwide hit them. Then, in 2023, came the news that Anchor wouldn't be making its famed and beloved annual Christmas Ale. Shortly after that announcement, Anchor would be shut down totally.
Leading up to that, Patrick says employees found a way to get as much beer made and distributed as humanly possible. Even though he was a brewery guy, Patrick joined bar staff and worked for free the last night that the tap room was open. He says lines were out the door and that the whole thing was bittersweet.
In May 2024, Chobani yogurt founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya bought Anchor. My initial reaction was wondering whether Ulukaya would bring brewery employees, and therefore, the union, back to work. Not only is it the right thing to do, but also, no one knows the product or the equipment better. Ulukaya has said publicly that he wants to do this, but nothing is certain even as of this writing.
We recorded this podcast at Lucky 13 in Alameda in July 2024.