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_outlineOn 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 SF Heritage. 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 dad’s mom was single and fell on hard times in Texas. She came to San Francisco, where she had a step-brother.
Woody’s parents met at the Donut Bowl at 10th Avenue and Geary Boulevard (where Boudin Bakery is today). Donut Bowl was a combination donut shop/hot dog joint. At the time the two met, his dad worked as a cook there and his mom was in high school. His mom and her friends went to nearby Washington High and would hang out at the donut shop after school. The next year or so, his parents had their first kid—Woody.
They came from different sides of the track, as it were. Woody’s mom’s family wasn’t crazy about her dating his working-class dad, who didn’t finish high school. But once his mom became pregnant with Woody, everything changed.
The couple had two more sons after Woody. One of his brothers played for the 49ers in the Nineties and lives in Oregon today. His other brother works with underserved high school kids in New Jersey, helping them get into college.
Woody shares some impressions of his first 10 years or so of life by describing The City in the mid-Seventies. Yes, kids played in the streets and rode Muni to Candlestick Park and The Tenderloin to go bowling. It was also the era of Patty Hearst and the SLA, Jonestown, and the Moscone/Milk murders. But for 10-year-old Woody, it was home. It felt safe, like a village.
Because I’m a dork, I ask Woody to share his memories of when Star Wars came out. Obliging me, he goes on a sidebar about how the cinematic phenomenon came into his world in San Francisco. He did, in fact, see Star Wars in its first run at the Coronet.
He attended Sacred Heart on Cathedral Hill when it was an all-boys high school. He grew up Catholic, although you didn’t have to be to go to one of SF’s three Catholic boys’ high schools. Woody describes, in broad terms, the types of families that sent their boys to the three schools. Sacred Heart was generally for kids of working-class folks.
After school, if they didn’t take Muni back home to the Richmond District, Woody and his friends might head over to Fisherman’s Wharf to play early era video games. Or, most likely, they’d head over to any number of high schools to talk to girls.
Because parental supervision was lacking, let’s say, Woody and his buddies also frequently went to several 18+ and 21+ spots. The I-Beam in the Haight, The Triangle in the Marina, The Pierce Street Annex, Enrico’s in North Beach, Mabuhay Gardens. There, he saw bands like The Tubes and The Dead Kennedy’s, although punk wasn’t really his thing. Woody was more into jazz, RnB, and late-disco.
We chat a little about café culture in San Francisco, something that didn’t really exist until the Eighties. To this day, Woody still spends his Friday mornings at Simple Pleasures Cafe.
And we end Part 1 with Woody’s brief time at UC Berkeley (one year) and the real reason he even bothered to try college.
Check back next week for Part 2 with Woody LaBounty. And this Thursday, look for a bonus episode all about We Players and their upcoming production of Macbeth at Fort Point.
We recorded this episode in Mountain Lake Park in March 2025.
Photography by Jeff Hunt