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Nicole Salaver, Part 2 (S7E3)

Storied: San Francisco

Release Date: 11/19/2024

Woody LaBounty, Part 1 (S7E11) show art 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) show art 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) show art 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) show art 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) show art 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) show art 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) show art 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) show art 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) show art 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) show art 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...

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In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1, with Nicole's move to New York. She didn't necessarily have a plan for this cross-country relocation, but she dove in head-first nonetheless.
 
Nicole of course turned to Craigslist to help her find a roommate. But she also hopped on FB Marketplace, which is where she eventually found someone. She moved in with an old friend from theater to an apartment in East Harlem on 125th Street.
 
She considers her time in NYC "epic." She learned a lot, she grew up, she did laundry in the snow ... character-building, all of it. She came to hate winter, being a California girl and all. But she auditioned, worked as a waitress and bartender, and had a few other jobs. She made it onto New Amsterdam and Law and Order. At this point in the recording, thanks to my dorking about Nicole being the first guest of this podcast to have also appeared on Law and Order, we talk about that long-running TV show.
 
There was also an "industrial sitcom" where Nicole played a lead character. Today, it is used to teach people around the world to speak English. Thanks to this and her own world travels, she gets recognized abroad.
 
After nearly 10 years, she returned to The Bay, around the time of the pandemic. Part of it was COVID, but also, she feels that the Hollywood myth had been demystified. Nicole arrived at a new perspective on the industry, one that felt exploitative. And so she came home.
 
Because Nicole and I recorded before Election Day, we go on a sidebar about what we thought might happen if you-know-who won. It's interesting to hear our chat about that from here. But I left it in for posterity, if for no other reason.
 
Nicole's husband got COVID while they were still in New York. It was early in the pandemic, and NYC got hit hard. He wasn't able to go to the hospital, and so Nicole masked the fuck up and took care of her partner. She avoided contracting the new disease. He recovered, but it made her think of what could happen if one of their parents got it. That informed their decision to return to California. They were able to get on one of the last flights out of New York in April 2020.
 
Once she got back home, she regrouped. It was still early during the shutdown and no one was shooting anything. She meditated, hiked, and cleaned her mom's house. In doing so, Nicole found a file cabinet full of her grandma's letters, including those from her time spent living in a San Francisco brothel. Her grandmother, Estrella Chavez, wrote about that time as well as her own ancestors, and Nicole was blown away.
 
She discovered that the California State Assembly had named her grandma the first Filipina-American to do activism and cultural work in San Francisco. She was also recognized by Willie Brown when he was mayor.
 
Around this time, she was also learning more about the uncle who gave her that camera—Patrick Salaver—and his work in the Civil Rights movement. Patrick was involved with the Third World Liberation Front that brought together many different ethnic student groups at SF State, including Filipinos.
 
Discovering all this family heritage made Nicole focus on her own legacy. She had gotten into producing events for the Filipino community in South of Market. She was rolling. But then, she got pregnant. With a kid on the way, Nicole realized she needed a job. And that's how she got work as program manager at Balay Kreative.
 
One idea she brought to her new job was starting a podcast to help amplify the stories of her community. Cultural Kultivators podcast serves to share Southeast Asian voices and stories and push the culture forward. Find it on Instagram and on all the podcast platforms.
 
Also, please follow Kindred Kapwa, Nicole's production company. Learn more about her "Patrick Salaver Project," the life story of her uncle.
 
We end the podcast with Nicole's take on this season's theme: Keep It Local.
 
Photography by Mason J.