Top Chefs, Part 2 (S8E23)
Storied: San Francisco
In Part 2, Aft joins us to chat about the band—Top Chefs. We start with the story of how TJ met Aft. A mutual friend of his and Loveberry’s, Lucas Hanson, put on a show at DNA Lounge called “Liam Berry and Friends.” TJ was just getting out of high school at the time. They asked him to join them on stage, something he’d never really done before. TJ had been playing smaller sets in restaurants, but joining a band at a bona fide venue was new for him. Loveberry (Liam) had met Aft at something called a “sound gig” for a set they would play as part of the effort to keep People’s...
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TJ, Loveberry and The Top Chefs Band, Part 1 (S8E23)
Storied: San Francisco
There’s a band in San Francisco comprising musicians from The City and whom I discovered on social media playing shows on a stoop here in SF. I can’t quite be sure when I discovered them, or whether it was me or my wife, but either way, right from the start, we knew we’d stumbled upon something special. Something truly unique. Something joyful, beautiful, free … something for the people. People could gather around with neighbors, some they know, some they might be meeting for the first time. Community is something of a buzz word lately, especially in light of things like...
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Todd Kurnat, aka Ink Letterman, aka DJ Circuit 73, Part 2 (S8E22)
Storied: San Francisco
In Part 2, we begin with Todd and me rapping about how much digital technology has changed just in our lifetimes. Even when he was in school in Colorado, San Francisco had been a goal for Todd, a destination. He got his impression of The City from skateboarding magazines and TV shows. But before moving here, Todd went to Europe, as he puts it, “chasing a girl.” He even tried living overseas. When that didn’t work out, he moved back to Grand Rapids to save money. In 2001, he made the big move west. When Todd arrived, he had a job already lined up for him. He just needed to find a place...
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Todd Kurnat, aka Ink Letterman, aka DJ Circuit 73, Part 1 (S8E22)
Storied: San Francisco
Todd Kurnat is everywhere. In this episode, meet and get to know Todd. These days, he’s also known as for his art and DJ Circuit 73 for his musical stylings. We begin in Michigan. Both sets of Todd’s grandparents grew up in Greenville, Michigan, about an hour outside Grand Rapids. His parents met in high school in that small town. They eventually moved to Grand Rapids, the big city in that part of the world. His dad worked at a transportation company and his mom was a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital. It was the early Seventies—around 1972 or so. Todd was born in 1973. His mom had done...
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The Golden Gate Park Band (S8 Bonus)
Storied: San Francisco
Listen in as I chat with German Gonzalez, musical conductor and principal director of the , now in its 144th year. We recorded this podcast in Golden Gate Park in June 2026.
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The San Francisco Mime Troupe, Part 3 (S8E21)
Storied: San Francisco
In Part 3, we hear from Keiko and Michael about the history of the . In the late-1950s, a San Franciscan named R.G. Davis taught a class in movement—mime, dance, physical interpretation of stories … that sort of thing. A performing troupe sprang out of that class, and it was known as the R.G. Davis Mime Troupe. It was the era of the early Civil Rights and Anti-War movements, and the troupe became more and more political, basing much of their work around social issues of the day. The group started off doing silent mime work, but shifted later. Michael offers us the definition of mime at...
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Michael Gene Sullivan of the San Francisco Mime Troupe (8E21)
Storied: San Francisco
Both sides of Michael Gene Sullivan’s family are from Detroit. In Part 2, we get to know Keiko’s fellow member. Michael was born in Livonia, Michigan, a small town outside of Detroit. His parents met at a summer camp, but we need to rewind a bit before we get to that. When his dad was a boy, he was kidnapped. Yes, really. He and his brothers, all Black boys, were taken from Detroit to work on a plantation in Louisiana. One day, three years later, a car pulled up to the plantation. Some people got out of the car, grabbed Michael’s dad and uncles, and threw them into the car (not minding...
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Keiko Shimosato Carreiro of the San Francisco Mime Troupe (S8E21)
Storied: San Francisco
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro was born in the Bay Area … the Boston Bay Area. In Part 1 of this episode, meet Keiko. Today, she’s a longtime member of the collective. But her story goes back to her parents’ migration to the US from Japan after World War II. Keiko’s dad got a Fulbright scholarship to come to this country. He studied medicine. Her mom came to visit the US for one year, but in that time, met Keiko’s dad at a Japan Society picnic in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two weeks after they met, her dad proposed, and roughly a year later, they had their first child—Keiko, named thusly...
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Theo Ellington, Part 2 (S8E20)
Storied: San Francisco
In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. While in college at Marymount, Theo ran the Boys and Girls Club program with Phillip Redd. He liked the connections and impact he had made in SoCal, and wondered whether he could do the same at home. This was back when Barack Obama was first running for president, and there was a prevailing sense of hope and possibility pervading life for a lot of folks. And so Theo moved back home. He transferred to Notre Dame de Namur in Belmont after his sophomore year, and got a degree there three years later. Upon his arrival in The City and...
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Theo Ellington, Part 1 (S8E20)
Storied: San Francisco
Today, Theo Ellington is the secretary at the Ruth Williams Opera House. This born-and-raised San Franciscan is also running to be the next D10 supervisor. In Part 1 of this episode, meet Theo. His maternal grandfather, Clifton Weeks, came to SF because his sister, Marie Weeks (Theo's great-aunt), had come here. Clifton and his sister had grown up in rural Natchez, Mississippi, but they came out West during the Great Migration. Their first landing spot was The Fillmore. Clifton found work as a laborer, where he helped build roads and bridges. He also did a little work at the shipyard back...
info_outlineThe story of Soleil Ho starts with their grandparents.
In this episode, meet and get to know the food writer and COYOTE Media Collective member who’s been on my radar since they replaced longtime Chronicle food writer and mysterious human Michael Bauer. In Part 1, we dive into Soleil’s family story.
It begins two generations back, when their grandparents came to the US from Vietnam in the Seventies. They were refugees from the US war in their homeland. On Soleil’s mom side, the grandparents brought Soleil’s mom and seven other children from Vũng Tàu to Freeport, Illinois. They had first ended up in a refugee camp in Arkansas. It wasn’t easy finding a new home for such a large family, but an older refugee from Nazi Germany who lived in Freeport took them in. Soleil’s mom was around 10 years old when she got to Freeport.
Soleil’s dad’s family comes from Central Vietnam. After the Viet Cong took over, they put his dad (Soleil’s paternal grandfather) in a re-education camp, where he remained for around 10 years. After that, he was released and was able to flee his homeland for the US to join his family (also a large one). They also ended up in Illinois, where Soleil’s parents eventually met.
The story of how their parents met goes something like this: The Illinois Vietnamese scene was relatively small, and folks mostly knew one another. By Soleil’s description, their maternal grandfather was “the guy,” meaning he threw parties and made connections. So their parents’ families just hung together, sometimes at big parties like at Lunar New Year, and there was always a lot of food.
It was a shotgun wedding, with Soleil present in fetal form. They have a younger sister and their parents are now divorced.
Soleil was born in 1987 in Illinois. Their mom had moved to Chicago to go to school there. Their earliest memories take place in Chicago, in fact. With two young parents working a lot to support their family, Soleil and their sister spent a lot of time with their maternal grandparents. They remember learning to make sandwiches in their grandparents’ kitchen.
Another early memory that I find fascinating and a little funny is of Michael Jordan individually wrapped hot dogs. It was Chicagoland in the Nineties, so it makes perfect sense that Bulls merch was everywhere. And that extended to food, remarkably.
There’s one memory from preschool involving contraband Gummy Bears. Fun stuff. As Soleil got a little older, they developed a love of vampires. In art classes, when asked to draw hand turkeys or Santas, Soleil would do so, but they would add fangs and bloody teeth.
Fast-forwarding a bit, Soleil says that around the time they went off to college, they realized that the family had moved around 20 times. They moved to New York City when Soleil was eight. Their mom worked in fashion and lived on the east side of Manhattan. From there, they moved to Brooklyn.
When I express awe at living in NYC in the Nineties, Soleil is quick to point out that this was Giuliani’s New York. Policies of that administration transformed much of the city, especially Manhattan. We’ll just leave it at that.
It was around this time that Soleil started to develop a “taste in food,” as they say. Their mom was now a single mom, working a lot, and like many families, they had the drawer full of take-out menus. Through this, Soleil learned about various Chinese cuisines, Indian food, and dishes from many other cultures, all represented right there in the kitchen.
After Brooklyn came a short stint in Long Island before returning to Brooklyn, where Soleil went to high school. They compare that school to Lowell here, where you have to test to get in and “all the smart kids” go.
With a quick, feeble calculation in my head, I ask whether Soleil starting high school around 9/11. They confirm and share their story of that day—suffice to say that they saw the whole thing happen in real time.
I ask whether they’re scarred from 9/11. Soleil says that, yes they are, but mostly existentially. Then they pivot to talking about how it brought about an end to illusion about the world, which is a net good thing. But seeing 9/11 in the greater context of conflict around the world really opened their eyes.
(Our second guest that day, Honey, seen in the first photo with Soleil above, took issue with a canine passer-by, which I’ve left in the recording because duh.)
September 11 led to Soleil’s becoming an activist anti-war person, starting in 2003 with Iraq. Rather than being scarred by 9/11, it allowed them to put their own life into context. As a Vietnamese person with a French first name, they started questioning things like: Why was it so easy for the US to go to war after 9/11, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq?
When it came time for college, Soleil says that they wanted to “get as far the fuck away from New York as” they could, which for them meant Iowa and Grinnell College. They chose the school to be closer to their grandparents, who still lived in nearby Illinois, and because Grinnell essentially billed itself as a place for folks to figure it out, so to speak.
By the time Soleil graduated college four years later, the sub-prime crash had happened and the subsequent recession had begun. They worked on a farm, which was hard but helped them better understand food systems. And then they moved to Minneapolis and began working in a restaurant, where we wrap up Part 1.
Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the rest of Soleil Ho’s story, including how they helped found COYOTE Media Collective.
We recorded this episode at Strawberry Creek Park in Berkeley in March 2026.
Photography by Jeff Hunt