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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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...
info_outlineWelcome to this bonus episode about Homeless Children’s Network (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 give back.
Cameron shares the origin story of Homeless Children’s Network. HCN was founded in 1992 with the intent to serve as a connection between six different shelters in The City. Their CEO today, Dr. April Silas, has been with HCN since the beginning. The idea was that folks experiencing homelessness were transitory, and it would be best if services they received in one shelter followed them.
Nowadays, they serve more than 2,500 clients per year. They have around 60 partnerships with other service organizations in The City. Please visit the HCN website for more info.
They are currently in the middle of their Jabali awareness campaign, a partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health that provides services around the fentanyl crisis. Cameron points to the Black population in The City being about 4–5 percent of the total, while Black folks experiencing fentanyl overdose deaths range from 30 to 40 percent of the overall number in SF.
The Jabali campaign aims to bring awareness to treatment as well as warning folks of the dangers of the deadly drug. HCN runs ads on social media and YouTube as well as billboards around town. They aim through these ad campaigns to be as ubiquitous as, say, a Sweet James or Ann Phuong. The goal is to make folks aware of HCN and its services before they might realize they need it.
A big part of Malik’s job also involves meeting people where they are, bringing those same messages as HCN’s ads. He says that this aspect of his role with HCN is perhaps the most rewarding for him.
Malik has learned a lot in his time with HCN, including in their work with SFDPH. He’s uncovered his own biases, which is part of what he works so hard to help others see. He emphasizes for folks the “us” aspect of it all. He says he relishes the give-and-take of seminars, the things he hears people say to one another.
When I mention the United Playaz motto, “It takes the hood to save the hood,” we go on a bit of a sidebar about communities looking internally to solve their own issues.
HCN has workforce development programs, and I ask whether anyone who’s been through their programs has come back to work with them. That has indeed happened.
Then our conversation shifts to ways that The City has adopted a “tough on crime” approach in the last couple of years to several areas that HCN deals with (see the recall of Chesa Boudin and shift rightward of our Board of Supervisors, among other signs). No one in the room the day we recorded agrees with that approach.
We end this bonus episode with ways that you can get involved with HCN, whether it’s donating, volunteering, attending a seminar, or something else. Please visit HCN’s website to learn more. Follow them on social media @hcnkidssf.
We recorded this episode at Homeless Children’s Network offices in The Fillmore in March 2025.
Photography by Jeff Hunt