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Woody LaBounty, Part 2 (S7E11)

Storied: San Francisco

Release Date: 04/08/2025

The Village Well’s Ed Center, Part 2 (S7E17) show art The Village Well’s Ed Center, Part 2 (S7E17)

Storied: San Francisco

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Young Ed was studying at UC Davis and exploring his sexuality. He didn’t consider himself bisexual, and instead thought that everyone was fluid. But he thought he had made a choice—that is, to be heterosexual. Part of that decision is that Ed always wanted a family of his own, and therefore, partnering with a woman was the only way to achieve that. But between relationships with women, Ed would visit “cruise-y bathrooms,” places known for their hookup potential. This was before the internet and smartphones. Stuff like this was...

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Megan Rohrer’s Book About San Francisco’s Transgender District (S7 bonus) show art Megan Rohrer’s Book About San Francisco’s Transgender District (S7 bonus)

Storied: San Francisco

Listen in as and I reconnect after nearly four years to talk all about their new book, . Look for it on Arcadia Publishing in August at your local bookstore. We recorded this bonus episode outside the front door of the Golden Gate Theater in the Transgender District in June 2025.

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The Village Well’s Ed Center, Part 1 (S7E17) show art The Village Well’s Ed Center, Part 1 (S7E17)

Storied: San Francisco

Ed Center and I begin this podcast with a toast. I’m proud to call Ed my friend. I met him a couple years at , where we recorded this episode and where my wife, , bartends. From the first time I spoke with Ed, I knew I liked him. His energy and humor and intellect and heart are all boundless. I’m hella drawn to people like Ed. His story begins in Cebu in the Philippines, with his maternal grandmother. Her family was poor and her parents died in the Spanish Flu of the 1910s. That loss plunged the surviving family members into what Ed describes as destitute poverty. Following that tragedy,...

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The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot Play, with Shane Zaldivar and Saoirse Grace, Part 2 (S7E16) show art The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot Play, with Shane Zaldivar and Saoirse Grace, Part 2 (S7E16)

Storied: San Francisco

In Part 2, we start off talking about the underground nature of trans and drag safe spaces such as Compton’s back in the Sixities, and well before that. Because of this, precise records of places and events are often hard to come by. Saoirse also speaks to the human psychology of needing other people to act in order to justify joining an action. Of course, everyone’s threshold for this varies. Shane joins in to talk about how queer history is the story of fighting back against hate when there’s nothing left to lose. Folks on the frontlines of these battles don’t always plan the fights...

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Frameline49 with Allegra Madsen (S7 bonus) show art Frameline49 with Allegra Madsen (S7 bonus)

Storied: San Francisco

I joined and of for another sit-down with Frameline Executive Director to talk all things Frameline49. If it weren’t obvious from that moniker, this year’s is the 49th annual Frameline film festival, the largest and longest-running LGBTQIA fest in the world. After listening to this bonus episode, please browse the , buy tickets, get your butt in a theater seat, and let’s continue to uplift the LGBTQIA community through art! We recorded this bonus episode at the offices in South of Marked in June 2025.

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The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot Play, with Shane Zaldivar and Saoirse Grace, Part 1 (S7E16) show art The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot Play, with Shane Zaldivar and Saoirse Grace, Part 1 (S7E16)

Storied: San Francisco

Saoirse Grace was one of the first successful in vitro pregnancies in Massachusetts. In this episode, Saoirse is joined by her Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play costar, Shane Zaldivar. The two share short versions of their respective life stories and how they got to the Bay Area and San Francisco. Then we dig into the history of the Compton’s Cafeteria riot, followed by a conversation on the play about the riot, their roles in it, and the actual lived experiences of trans people today. Saoirse, who plays Collette in the play, was born in Boston and grew up a little there, and a little in San...

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Kyle Casey Chu, aka Panda Dulce, and “After What Happened at the Library” (S7 bonus) show art Kyle Casey Chu, aka Panda Dulce, and “After What Happened at the Library” (S7 bonus)

Storied: San Francisco

Kyle Casey Chu, aka Panda Dulce is a fourth-generation Chinese-American. Her twin brother has autism, and the two went to Jefferson Elementary in the Sunset because the school had a good inclusive special education program. Kyle says that from an early age, she fought for her twin, all the way up to teaching classmates ASL to be able to communicate with her brother. After one year at Lick-Wilmerding High School, Kyle transferred to School of the Arts (now Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts) to major in music. She went to Sarah Lawrence College in New York after that, where she majored...

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Mike Irish of Emmy's Spaghetti Shack, Part 2 (S7E15) show art Mike Irish of Emmy's Spaghetti Shack, Part 2 (S7E15)

Storied: San Francisco

Part 2 picks up right where we left off in Part 1, with Mike’s move to The City. It was 2021, around the brief lull in COVID cases before Omicron hit. Full disclosure: This part of my episode on Mike has way more content about me than most of what I publish here on Storied. I guess you’ll just have to deal. Mike knew he could fall back on bartending here while he figured out his next gig in his new city. He’d taken one of what he calls a “big swing” with his move to New York City when he was 18. Now was time for another big swing, this one in San Francisco. He worked briefly at a...

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Homeless Children’s Network (S7 bonus) show art Homeless Children’s Network (S7 bonus)

Storied: San Francisco

Welcome to this bonus episode about (HCN). Malik Parker is the director of the Jabali Substance Use Disorder (SUD) program at HCN. He is originally from Fayetteville, North Carolina, but his mom is from Oakland. He left NC for The Bay the day after he graduated high school in 2011. Cameron Smith is HCN’s director of Afrocentric programs. He is from Columbus, Ohio, but has been in SF for more than 10 years now. Cameron came here on a whim; he had a friend who needed a roommate. His first job in The Bay was in San Jose at the YMCA as a basketball ref. He knew then that he wanted to serve, to...

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Mike Irish, Owner of Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack, Part 1 (S7E15) show art Mike Irish, Owner of Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack, Part 1 (S7E15)

Storied: San Francisco

Mike Irish is his actual name. Welcome to my episode with the current (it no longer works to say “new”) owner of one of my favorite places in San Francisco—. I’m not sure where to begin, but I suppose a sprinkle of backstory can’t hurt. Back in 2022, I recorded an episode with , then the owner and forever the founder of Emmy’s. It was a fun interview, and through that chat with Emmy, we discovered that we had been across-the-street neighbors in the Mission back in the early 2000s. Fast-forward to summer 2024 when I applied to be on and rated Emmy’s as my No. 1 pick among the...

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In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1, with Woody's brief time at UC Berkeley across The Bay. During that one year of college, he lived at his grandmother's house in the Outer Richmond. His parents had recently split up, and both his parents moved, separately, to Marin.
 
In fact, Woody says, his parents' moves north forced him to think about and start to consider that San Francisco was and would perhaps always be his home. Time has proven that to be true, of course. But to his young-adult mind, it just felt right for that moment. He'd spent a little time in Marin, and it wasn't a fit for young Woody.
 
A decade or so later, now married and with a kid, Woody and his wife moved to Durham, North Carolina, for nine months. It was yet another not-San Francisco town that provided a contrast with his hometown and reminded him how much he wanted to be here.
 
After that brief stint in college, Woody decided he wanted to entertain, and so he enrolled in a clown school run by Ringling Brothers in Florida. He got work with the PIckle Family Circus back in The City. He did a lot of vaudeville with them and even went to Japan and on other tours.
 
It was during his time in the circus that Woody met his wife. Nancy had a boyfriend at the time and was headed to Spain to teach English. Two years later, she returned to The Bay and Woody was single. Their first date was at Rock and Bowl, the spot on Haight Street where Amoeba is today. They walked down Haight after that to Mad Dog in the Fog. When they left Mad Dog, Woody knew it was love when Nancy asked him, "Where can we go play video games?"
 
In 1997, they had a baby, their daughter Miranda. That effectively ended the Performer chapter of Woody's life. Nancy is a midwife, and he needed to be flexible enough that he could watch his daughter while his wife was working.
 
After that stint in North Carolina, Woody came back with a renewed purpose—he decided to devote his life to letting people know how great San Francisco is. It would start with The City's past, and how that history informs the present and helps chart a path to our future. This led to the establishment of the Western Neighborhoods Project.
 
David Gallagher was married to a woman who Woody had performed with. David and Woody formed a board with a couple friends also interested in SF history. They settled on being a nonprofit and built a website, something that was pretty novel at the time. They interviewed folks and shared stories of the west side of town. They also had (and still have) a podcast.
 
Woody was with WNP for 20 years, until just recently. He talks about how the main objective of WNP was to gather as much forgotten history of the west side of San Francisco as possible, and then to make that available to as many folks as possible so that they might understand what came before and what could be possible in the here and now.
 
We take a sidebar to talk about the so-called Doom Loop, especially as it relates to hearing from friends and family who aren't in San Francisco, but will ask us things like, "What the hell is going on out there?" Not to diminish the real problems facing our and other cities, bu that media trope is tired and was always nonsense.
 
We talk briefly about the Outsidelands Podcast, which started way back in early 2013. Woody is no longer directly involved, but it's in good hands with WNP Executive Director Nicole Meldahl. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts.
 
From WNP, Woody joined SF Heritage, where he works today. SF Heritage's mission is "to preserve and enhance San Francisco’s unique architectural and cultural identity." Nowadays, Woody is the CEO and president of the nonprofit, and he says that in that role, he "doesn't get to do a lot of the fun stuff," being more on the business side as he is. Still, he of course believes wholeheartedly in the organization's mission—it was what drew him to SF Heritage, in fact.
 
We end the podcast with Woody's take on our theme this season—Keep It Local.

We recorded this episode in Mountain Lake Park in March 2025.

Photography by Jeff Hunt