Storied: San Francisco

Weekly podcasts about the artists, activists, and small businesses that make San Francisco so special.

Sharing Stories: Keoni Washington (S7 bonus) 12/17/2024

Frameline Film Fest's Allegra Madsen, Part 2 (S7E4) 12/10/2024

Frameline Film Fest's Allegra Madsen, Part 2 (S7E4) In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Allegra was bartending at Second City in Chicago. The day of her graduation ceremony, at Columbia College Chicago, she packed up all her belongings and drove to LA with a friend. Allegra really wanted to be in California. Not yet totally sure about what she was gonna do, she took the plunge, so to speak. She'd realized that she wasn't going to pursue art. But she figured, correctly, that in addition to the warmer climate, there would be opportunities to seize in Los Angeles. But Allegra soon found that the challenges of a pre-smartphone Southern California were overwhelming. But she gave it a go. Allegra managed to get what she refers to today as "the worst job she's ever had in her life"—taking school photos of kids. On September 11, 2001, as planes hit the Twin Towers on the other side of the continent, Allegra was at a school in LA taking photos of schoolchildren. Later that day, she had a job interview that, of course, required driving. The freeways were empty, which is an eerie sight. But she got that job. And that's the story of how Allegra Madsen became an art handler. Following a couple of years hanging art (Warhol's Mao and Brillo Boxes among the art Allegra handled), she dabbled in freelance work, putting art up on walls in the homes of Los Angeles billionaires among them. Several years into that, Allegra started to feel that energy—this time, pushing her away from LA. She packed up her red sports car again (a 1988 Porsche, by the way) and headed to The Bay. Going back to the time in her life when she immersed herself in books, Beat writers caught Allegra's imagination. She recounts her first visit to San Francisco and her eventual move north. Like me, she had no idea that she'd still be here all these decades later. It took Allegra some time to "unpack," so to speak. She moved around The Bay a little, before eventually settling back a block from her first spot in Oakland, where she lives today. She went to school at CCA (then known as CCAC) and studied curatorial practice. It's where she discovered and got really into social art practices, which she goes into in our talk. "Using art to build community," essentially. Her thesis project took place on Third Street, just as the light rail was being built along that corridor. Her thesis exhibition took place at the . A few years after getting her Master's degree, Allegra opened a cafe in Temescal in Oakland. The neighborhood was rapidly gentrifying at the time, and she wanted to have a space where folks from many different walks of life could visit and have a good experience. Allegra sold the café after about five years. She pivoted back to art and event planning. Most of her work took the form of events in the Bayview. And part of that event planning involved movie programming. This led to a role at the BVOH, where she did more movie showings. During her time at the opera house, she began to partner with Frameline. In 2021, she joined the film fest org as programming director. It was the first year since the pandemic started, and Allegra believes part of why she was hired is that she had proven that she could program movies in "weird" places. They hosted a movie as part of Pride that summer at Oracle Park and did some drive-ins (remember those?). In late 2023, Allegra became interim executive director of Frameline. She assumed the permanent job this February. Follow Frameline on Instagram and other social media to stay up to date on everything they do. We end the podcast with Allegra's take on our theme this season: Keep it local. We recorded this podcast in the office in South of Market in November 2024. Photography by /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/34356135

Frameline Film Fest's Allegra Madsen, Part 1 (S7E4) 12/03/2024

Frameline Film Fest's Allegra Madsen, Part 1 (S7E4) Allegra Madsen has a Polaroid photo of her birth. In this episode, meet and get to know Allegra. Today, she's the executive director of film fest, the biggest LGBTQIA+ movie event in the world. She might disagree, but Allegra is a big deal. (Quick side note: As we kicked off our recording, Allegra expertly solved a Rubik's Cube. No bigs.) We begin with the story of how her parents met. Allegra's dad is from Chicago originally. He taught transcendental meditation (TM) and moved all over the world. Eventually, he landed in Virginia, where he met Allegra's mom, who is from there and was just beginning to practice TM. The two met and settled down, and soon enough, they had a baby—Allegra. She was born in Virginia Beach, VA, to, as she puts it, "two hippies who were trying to change the world by sitting quietly." A lot of Allegra's family is still in Virginia, from which, as she points out, originated. That was when the high court ruled unanimously that interracial marriages are, in fact, protected under the Constitution. Her parents are of different races, and not everyone in the family looked on approvingly. Her parents never did get married. But they raised their biracial kid together. She was a fairly typical latch-key kid growing up in the Eighties, though she split her time between her parents' families. Schools were mostly segregated, too. By the time Allegra got to high school, though, local governments and school boards did what they could to integrate, at that level at least. But, she says, that meant that the students themselves segregated within the schools. Going between the worlds of her mom's family and her dad's, Allegra says she felt at home in both, however differently. She was the only mixed-race kid though, and so, as much as she strived to fit in with any one group, it was difficult. Allegra has been tall for a while, and she was urged to play basketball, which she did. She says she liked it, but her passion for the game outweighed her skill. As a teenager, she read a lot. She says that it was probably the main way that she discovered a broader world beyond her hometown. Books gave way to movies, and they all helped form in Allegra a curiosity about how people relate to one another and share space in the world. This was around the time that VCRs really took off. In addition to local video rental shops, the expansion of Blockbuster stores nationwide made it easier to rent movies. Her mom had a job at a cable company, and when young Allegra would visit her at work, she had access to cable movies that many of her friends went without. At this point in the recording, Allegra and I go on a sidebar about movies we used to love that don't hold up well nowadays. But at the time, movies and books were ways for her to escape The South. Soon enough, something started calling Allegra to leave where she's from. She graduated high school after only three years and got a job in the office of the construction company her dad worked for, helping her earn a little money. She saved and funded a fledgeling scuba career. Yes, scuba diving. Her dream was to move to the Florida Keys to work as a dive instructor. But that dream never came true. Instead, she spent the year that would've been her senior year in high school working at a music store. Her work provided Allegra with easy access to so much music. There was also a Ticketmaster counter inside the store. Being an employee, she and her coworkers were able to pull tickets for themselves before they went on sale to the public. I go on a tangent here about what a pain it used to be to buy concert tickets over landline phones. Allegra rattles off an impressive list of bands she saw back then—one that includes Missy Elliott and Bob Dylan. When she figured out that the diving dream was dead, Allegra moved to Chicago to go to college. She had family there—aunts, uncles, grandparents. But they weren't especially close. It's not that her extended family wasn't accepting of her parents' interracial relationship, but more that they weren't prepared for it. And so Allegra turned to her peers. She found two people in her first week of college who turned out to be lifelong friends. She says her college experience was mostly a good one, but that, in hindsight, she still hadn't come into her own, per se. She studied film photography and design. Although she wasn't enrolled in the motion pictures program, Columbia College Chicago was and is known as a film school. And Allegra says that those friends she made early on helped her dive more deeply into the world of movies—it made her more of an active moviegoer. Allegra says she always knew she was queer. She dated girls in high school, but never really talked with her parents about her budding sexuality. She never really talked with anyone about it, in fact. Instead, she simply dated women and that was that. Check back next week for Part 2 and Allegra's eventual move to the Bay Area. We recorded this podcast at 's offices in South of Market in November 2024. Photography by /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/34256210

Jacob Rosenberg and the Bay Area Hip-Hop + Skateboarding Scenes of the Nineties (S7 bonus) 11/21/2024

Jacob Rosenberg and the Bay Area Hip-Hop + Skateboarding Scenes of the Nineties (S7 bonus) Jacob Rosenberg had a front-row seat to some rad SF/Bay Area history. In this bonus episode, the filmmaker/storyteller shares some of that history, especially as it relates to his upcoming book, Right Before My Eyes. Jacob was born and raised in Palo Alto. He grew up in the Seventies and Eighties. His parents moved there from the East Coast and Midwest to raise kids in an environment that matched their liberal values more. He started skating in the Eighties and would visit Justin Herman Plaza/EMB in The City with his skateboard but also his camera. He was one of the first to capture the skateboarding going on at EMB who was a peer of the skaters he was documenting. He soon found enough success with photography that he dropped out of high school and moved to San Diego to do that work full-time. Two years or so later, he went to film school at Emerson College in Boston, where he met his mentor. That mentor passed away while Jacob was still in school, but he finished a movie that guy had been working on at the time of his death. After college, Jacob moved to Los Angeles, where he's lived ever since. At this point in the episode, I share with Jacob the draw that SF had on me from about age 12, thanks to skateboarding, Bones Brigade, and especially, Tommy Guerrero. I never got to visit The City when I skated, but it was always fresh in my imagination. Jacob then goes on a sidebar about Tommy. Jacob goes on to talk about the time frame covered in his book—1988 to 1998. His life changed at skate camp in the summer of 1988 (if my math is correct, this would be Jacob's last summer before high school). He met pro skateboarders that summer. Suddenly, unrelatedly, he was in Hawaii making a video for Hieroglypics. He cites 1988 as a pinnacle year for hip-hop. And he says that '91–'93 were the same for street skating. 1993 was also important for hip-hop. The conversation then shifts to what the two cultures—hip-hop and skateboarding—had in common. He cites his childhood hero, Chuck D. (who wrote the afterword for his book) who noted that members of both subcultures were disenfranchised youth who found a way to express themselves. Well-put. In the early Nineties, the dominance of ramp skating waned and gave way to street skating. With easier and more affordable access to video cameras, the scene got documented and documented well. Similarly, sampling and other recording equipment was getting cheaper and cheaper, and DIY hip-hop songs and videos flourished. And in a very specific way, a video that Jacob created and put Hieroglyphics' music in helped to unite the two groups in the Bay Area. Jacob says that his self-published book, Right Before My Eyes, is meant to be a coffee table book. He intends for people to see the world he was documenting all those years ago through his eyes. There are photos, of course, but the book also contains screengrabs from videos he made as well as ephemera from that time—stuff like photos of photos, the cameras he used to shoot, and more. Follow to see his work. And visit to buy Right Before My Eyes, available now. Photo by We recorded this episode over Zoom in November 2024. /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/34068741

Nicole Salaver, Part 2 (S7E3) 11/19/2024

Nicole Salaver, Part 2 (S7E3) 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 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. podcast serves to share Southeast Asian voices and stories and push the culture forward. Find it on and on all the podcast platforms. Also, please follow , Nicole's production company. Learn more about her "," the life story of her uncle. We end the podcast with Nicole's take on this season's theme: Keep It Local. Photography by /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/33984547

Nicole Salaver, Part 1 (S7E3) 11/12/2024

Nicole Salaver, Part 1 (S7E3) Nicole Salaver is the kind of person I wish I had met long before that happened. In this episode, meet Nicole. She's the program manager at these days. But her San Francisco roots go way, way back. Her maternal grandfather came to the US in the 1920s. He was one of the first Filipinos to own a restaurant and pool hall in Manilatown (please see our episode on ). He was a manong who lived at the International Hotel. Stories that Nicole's mom has told her were that he was more or less a mobster, paying off cops to keep his place safe. Nicole's maternal grandmother came to the states in the Fifties with her first husband. But he was an abusive alcoholic, and so her grandmother divorced him. She turned to the government for help for her and her four kids. They sent the single mother and her family to live at what turned out to be a brothel. But she wasn't aware of that at the time. The two met at the I-Hotel, where Nicole's grandmother helped the manongs with anything involving English—paperwork for green cards, lawyers, visas, etc. It was just a side hustle to her job at the US Postal Service. She knew all the manongs, but fell in love with Nicole's grandfather. They married and had three kids, including Nicole's mom. Her mom was born in the Sixities and grew up in the Seventies in San Francisco. Her dad's parents arrived in the US in the Fifties, after World War II. Her paternal grandfather was a merchant marine who cooked on a Navy ship. He met Nicole's grandmother on one of his voyages back to the Philippines and brought her back to the US. They had two boys—Nicole's dad and her uncle. Nicole says that her dad grew up a hippie in Sixties San Francisco, and retained that sensibility throughout his life. He worked for SF Recreation and Parks, smoked weed, and made art. He met Nicole's mother at a collage party while playing guitar in his brother's band. More on Patrick Salaver, Nicole's uncle, later. Nicole, an only child, was born at St. Luke's hospital in 1980. Her mom and dad lived in the Excelsior, where Nicole grew up. She went to Guadalupe Elementary. Her parents were agnostic, but her Catholic grandmother enrolled her in a Catholic school without telling them. Nicole's mom pulled her out on Day 1 and got her into public schools. She was supposed to go to Balboa High School, but it was the Nineties and that school was going through a rough time (see our episode with for more on that story). And so the family moved down to South San Francisco. From here, we sidebar to talk about The City of Nicole's youth, in the late-Eighties and early Nineties. She laments the massive loss of art and community that tech money wiped out. And she reminisces about taking Muni all over town. They went to film festivals, galleries, museums, restaurants. In her high school years, Nicole and her friends came to the Haight a lot. She'd also attend as many Filipino events as she could—Pistahan, Barrio Fiesta, and more. Her mom was a dancer and her dad a musician. They pushed her to do one of those two things or visual art. Of them, she gravitated toward art, but as she got to her teen years, she decided that acting and writing were more her jam. That all started when her uncle, Patrick Salaver, gave her a video camera when Nicole was 12. Nicole was and is a fan of "Weird" Al Yankovic. She says she digs quirky humor. She watched lots of SNL, In Living Color, Golden Girls. Using the camera her uncle gave her, she and her cousin created soap operas, commercials, talk shows, SNL-type sketches, and more. But despite loving creating that stuff, she saw that her parents' art was just a hobby. It didn't seem possible that it could be a career. It wasn't until her dad passed away suddenly that Nicole decided to pursue her art. She shares that story with us. She'd been performing a one-woman show about her grandmother, who had Alzheimer's, at . She was taking classes from W. Kamau Bell and doing stand-up comedy, opening for big names like Jo Koy, Ali Wong, and Hassan Minaj. Then she got a call: "Your dad is in the ER. You should go." During a botched tracheotomy, his heart stopped. By the time doctors got his heart beating again, he was brain dead. Prior to that, not knowing that it would be the last time she saw her dad, she recorded him. He told her that she should move to New York, follow her dreams, and never work for "the man." One of the last things Nicole's dad said to her was, "If you stop doing art, you will die." Three months after her dad's funeral, Nicole quit her job and moved to NYC. Check back next for Part 2 with Nicole Salaver. Photography by We recorded this episode at in October 2024. /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/33893287

D9 Supervisor Candidate Jackie Fielder, Part 2 (S7E2) 10/29/2024

D9 Supervisor Candidate Jackie Fielder, Part 2 (S7E2) In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Jackie considers it an honor to have worked for Lateefah Simon, who's running for Congress in the East Bay for the seat currently held by Barbara Lee. Jackie was tasked with writing memos, and she took that job and ran with it, digging deeply into the weeds of policy. What she found in the existing systems of that time piqued her curiosity around what it might mean if she herself were to enter the fray. Her life up to that point formed her world views, as these things tend to do. But the policies, she says, ticked her off. She had been studying to take the LSAT, with the idea that she would go to law school ... all while volunteering for the campaign to get Lateefah Simon elected to the BART Board. But that November, in 2016, the 45th president was elected, and everything changed ... for a lot of us, but especially for Jackie. It all threw Jackie for a loop. and protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAP) were also happening, which further disillusioned her. She traveled east to join the resistance. She met folks and had deep conversations with her Native American brothers and sisters. She spent time in Minnesota doing more work with indigenous folks. It all created a sense of hope despite the doom seemingly all around. She also noticed the protests in Seattle demanding Wall Street disinvestment. In February 2017, Jackie was back home, full of "let's do it" energy, ready to tackle issues in The Bay. She had moved to The City and started digging further into the weeds of policy in San Francisco. In 2018, she decided that she wanted to make a difference here at home. She helped found the . She was tapped to lead the campaign against the Police Officers Association's use of force measure. For that, she worked with Democratic Socialists of America San Francisco and the ACLU of Northern California. She also worked on the campaign, which succeeded. Alicia Garza, cofounder of Black Lives Matter, asked Jackie to teach her class at SF State, and Jackie seized that opportunity. At State, she taught Race, Women, and Class, where she talked with students about DAP and indigenous rights, among other topics. While teaching, she also worked restaurant jobs, mostly on the Peninsula. When 2019 came around, Jackie wasn't sure what to do. Looking back, she was experiencing undiagnosed ADHD. She had a nagging feeling that year, though, that she should run for office. Someone pointed out to her that State Sen. Scott Wiener was running for election unopposed. She thought of the successful ballot measure campaigns she'd been part of. She had spent time living in her van. She'd bounced around between apartments. She decided to go for it. The Jackie Fielder for State Senate campaign was off to a good start. Then lockdown happened in March 2020. Everything about the campaign turned virutal—Zoom speeches and meetings, phone banking on another level, social media like never before. She centered issues like affordable housing, climate change, renters' rights, homelessness, education. She got the backing of teachers, iron workers, electricians, tenants' rights groups, affordable housing groups, and various progressive cultural affinity groups in SF. Jackie didn't win that race, though. She took a step back and got into therapy, where she learned about self-care and self-compassion. She got to a point where she could take better care of herself so that she could then take care of others. Jackie also started a PAC in the time between the 2020 election and now. The Daybreak PAC's main purpose is to support candidates and ballot measures that reject corporate money. Also, hired her to be its communications manager in 2021. Through that work, she was able to reconnect with many folks she met years earlier in her Dakota stays. By early 2023, Jackie was co-director of the organization. This summer, in 2024, she took an official leave to come home and campaign for supervisor. Then the conversation shifts to District 9. Of all the places Jackie has lived in San Francisco, she's spent the most time in the district. She's queer and loves the embrace of her community in D9. She also notes that the American Indian Cultural District and Latino Cultural District, two groups that are a big part of her identity, are located in D9. After our mutual love fest of the Mission, we shift to issues that Jackie hopes to address as the next D9 supervisor—public safety, how best to engage law enforcement, drug use, houselessness, housing, jobs, and more. Please visit for more info, especially if you live in D9 (if you're not sure, look up your supervisorial district ). We recorded this episode at in the Mission in September 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/33652762

D9 Supervisor Candidate Jackie Fielder, Part 1 (S7E2) 10/22/2024

D9 Supervisor Candidate Jackie Fielder, Part 1 (S7E2) is quick to credit her ancestors with her life and where she is now that she's 30. In this episode, meet Jackie, who's running to be the next District 9 supervisor. District 9 includes the Mission, Bernal Heights, and the Portola. She begins by sharing the life story of her maternal grandparents, who are from Monterey in Mexico. Her grandfather worked in orange groves in Southern California, while her grandmother was a home care worker. She also did stints at See's Candies seasonally. Sadly, both grandparents passed away when Jackie was young. But she learned more about them as she grew up. On her dad's side, Jackie is Native American. Her paternal grandparents grew up on reservations in North and South Dakota. Her dad was born in Los Angeles and raised in Phoenix and went to Arizona State. He got a job as an engineer in SoCal, where he met Jackie's mom. The two met at a club in the Eighties. Her mom's first job was at Jack in the Box, where she got minimum wage. She dreamed of becoming an EMT, but that was before she met Jackie's dad. She ended up working as a secretary for a school district. Jackie is her parents' only child. She was born in 1984. Her dad joined the US Navy. When she was six, the Navy deployed him to Seattle for six months, and the strain on his marriage during that time away never really subsided. It was hard on Jackie, too, of course. When he returned home, her parents separated. Her mom took her to live across the freeway from where they'd been, in a low-income apartment community. Jackie's life changed, dramatically, she says. She was in the same schools, but stopped hanging out with her friends after school or on weekends. Her mom didn't want her playing outside much, in fact. She felt that the new area she moved her kid to was too dangerous. In her new living situation, Jackie and her mom found community. Neighbors helped one another out in myriad ways. Jackie looks back on that time as formative to who she's become as an adult. She also spent time with her mom's extended family in South Central LA. Many family members were in the LA low rider culture. Jackie was immersed in that Latino community from a young age. This also informed her world view today. At this point, we pivot to talk about music—how it came into her life and what it means to Jackie. She grew up around disco and Motown, Spice Girls and the Men in Black soundtrack, CCR, TLC, Backstreet Boys. In middle school, Jackie found alt rock. She saw Foo Fighters with her mom. Jackie attended public schools the entire time. She was a good student, got good grades, liked her teachers and they liked her. In hindsight, she wishes she had engaged with sports besides soccer, which she played from age 4 or 5. She says that in Southern California, sports were as important as academics. There were something like 4,000 students at her high school, 900-something in her graduating class. But despite this, Jackie didn't simply receive her education passively. She was on an AP track and did community service work with other students. In high school, Jackie worked to establish gardens in elementary schools in her area. She paints the picture of having been such a quote-unquote "good kid" that I ask if she ever had a bad streak or a time when she got anything out of her system. She says not really, but then I half-jokingly suggest that maybe her life in electoral politics is just that. College was expected, though she wasn't sure where she'd end up going to school. She didn't think Stanford was a possibility. Berkeley was her goal, but she didn't get in. Friends and community, though, convinced her to apply to Stanford. She did, and she got it. Thus was Jackie Fielder's move north. Originally, she planned to do pre-med in her undergrad years. The motivation behind that plan was wanting to help people. But being interested in education thanks to her mom's work, she attended a talk on public policy and college admissions that opened her eyes, both to the larger societal issue and to her own experience getting admitted to Stanford. She really started thinking about how race and class factor into policy, both public and private. This led to an imposter syndrome-type feeling in her place at college. Still, despite that, she made friends at Stanford, some she's close with today. I note that it's my belief that Jackie is really, really smart (I've listened to and read many things she's said and written, and seriously ...), and suggest that she's driven to knowing things by virtue of a deep curiosity about how systems work. Jackie agrees about that motivating factor, and points to 9/11 and watching a lot of Travel Channel. Both experiences teleported her to different parts of the world, and left her with a deep desire to learn and know about how people organize themselves into societies. Her father was redeployed after 9/11, and that, too, had an effect on young Jackie. But back to her move upstate to Palo Alto. She spent four years there before earning her bachelor's degree. She was in a sorority for a spell, but got disillusioned by that. She describes rubbing shoulders with the kids of billionaires. That initial idea of doing pre-med gave way to working toward a degree in public policy, something she dove into head-first. She says that meant mostly studying economics. And economics at Stanford means the Hoover Institute. And the Hoover Institute means conservative theories. She got through it despite disagreeing with the theory. She told herself it was worthwhile to understand how the proverbial other side thinks to better understand it and be better equipped to debate folks who think that way. She also set her sights on getting a master's degree, and decided to major in sociology for that. During this time, she spent a semester in Istanbul, Turkey, an experience she relishes. She learned a lot about Middle Eastern history in her stay. Much of what she discovered about the struggles of the oppressed halfway around the world rang true for Jackie with the experiences of her father's people in the US. It took Jackie four years to concurrently earn both a bachelor's and a master's degree. I mean, I told you that she's smart. We end Part 1 with Jackie's story of deciding that San Francisco is where she needed to be. It's a story that involves working for Lateefah Simon. We recorded this episode at in the Mission in September 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/33555562

SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Part 2 (S7E1) 10/15/2024

SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Part 2 (S7E1) In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Aaron talks about volunteering at a nonprofit in The City called the Trust for Public Land, where he learned about land acquisition for parks and open spaces. Through that gig, he got a paid internship and eventually, a job. In fact, he met Nancy, the woman he would later marry, there. He eventually moved into Nancy's apartment in North Beach, his first apartment in SF. The move came shortly after the couple visited Nepal to climb in the Himalayas. It was October 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake happened. We fast-forward to 2000, the year I moved to San Francisco. I set the stage for my first brush with Aaron at this point in the recording. My first apartment was on California Street near Larkin. The cable car runs on that block. One day, still very new in The City, I spotted a politician on a cable car campaigning. Back then, I had no idea what the Board of Supervisors was. But lo and behold, it was Aaron Peskin, campaigning for his first term on the Board. Aaron then tells the story from his point of view, backing up just a few years. In his time at the Trust for Public Land, he worked with elected officials often. He learned his way around Sacramento and DC. But more pertinent to this story, Aaron also worked with a North Beach tree-planting organization—, in fact—and the Telegraph Hill Dwellers to be specific. The work involved getting volunteers together, convincing folks who'd lived in the neighborhood for decades to plant trees on the sidewalks in front of their houses. It was the late-Nineties. The first dotcom boom was still happening. Willie Brown was at the height of his mayoral power. Chain stores were trying their hardest to move into North Beach. Aaron remembered that he knew the mayor from his work with the trust, and got a meeting with Brown. He brought several disparate groups together with the mayor. Brown told Peskin, "If you don't like the way I run this town, why don't you run for office?" From that dismissive comment, Aaron got involved in the upstart mayor campaign, in 1999, of Supervisor Tom Ammiano. Through this, he met many folks from many grassroots and neighborhood organizations. Ammiano, a write-in candidate, forced a December runoff, which he lost to Willie Brown. But the experience transformed Aaron Peskin. Ammiano urged Aaron to run for the DCCC shortly after the election. Looking over what he'd already accomplished, he ran and got a seat on the committee. It was March 2000. That fall would see the resumption of supervisor district elections, vs. at-large contests where the top-11 vote-getters won seats on the Board that had been in place since 1980. Again, Ammiano nudged Aaron to run for the newly created District 3 supervisor seat. He thought, Why not try once? He won the seat. Aaron credits campaign volunteers with earning that victory. He ended up serving two four-year terms as the D3 supervisor. We fast-forward a bit through those eight years. Highlights include 's run for mayor in 2003, Aaron's dive into areas of public policy he had been uneducated on prior to his time in office, and bringing people together to get stuff done. I ask Aaron if it's all ever overwhelming. He says yes, and rattles off the various ways—hiking, canoeing, yoga— he deals with that. We talk about his addiction to alcohol as well, something he's kicked for the last three years. Aaron was termed out in 2008, and says he saw it as the end of a chapter of his life. He ran for the DCCC again, where he won a seat and was the chair of that group from 2008–2012. He helped get out the vote for Barack Obama in 2008, working to send volunteers to Nevada. After 2012, he figured he was totally finished with politics. He went back to the Trust for Public Land. But then a funny thing happened. Aaron's chosen successor for D3 supervisor, David Chiu, won the seat and took over after Aaron was termed out in 2008. Then, in 2014, Chiu ran for an California Assembly seat and won. Then-Mayor Ed Lee appointed Julie Christensen. A special election in late-2015 saw Peskin run against Christensen, mostly at the urging of Rose Pak. He won that election, as well as the "normal" district election the following year. By the end of this year, he'll be termed out again. Highlights of Aaron's second stint on the Board of Supervisors, for him, include: He's become the senior member of the Board, having served with 42 different other members. He's also come to relish the role of mentor for new supervisors. He goes over a litany of other legislation he's either written or helped to get passed Moving forward to the issues of today and Aaron's run for mayor, he starts by praising the Board and the Mayor's Office for coming together to deal with COVID. Then he talks about ways that he and Mayor London Breed have worked together in their times in office. And then we get into Aaron's decision, which he announced this April, to run for mayor. It was a love for The City and the people who live here. It was a lack of what he deems "real choices" in the race. But it was also what Aaron and many others, including myself, see as a billionaire-funded, ultra-conservative attempt to take over politics in San Francisco. It all added up to something he felt he had to do. Aaron says that, unlike his first run for supervisor, when it comes to his candidacy for mayor, he's "in it to win it." We recorded this podcast at HQ in July 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/33457857

SFFILM's Doc Stories 2024 w/Jessie Fairbanks (S7 Bonus) 10/11/2024

SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Part 1 (S7E1) 10/08/2024

SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Part 1 (S7E1) Aaron Peskin is incredibly easy to talk with. And his life story is one you have to hear to believe. In this podcast, Episode 1 of Season 7 of Storied: San Francisco, the multi-term D3 supervisor-slash-president of the Board of Supervisors-slash-current candidate for mayor of San Francisco shares his story, beginning with the tales of his parents and their families' migration to the United States. On Aaron's mom's side, the story goes back to Russia. His maternal grandfather was one of five boys born to a Jewish family in Saint Petersburg. Two of the boys stayed in Russia, one came to San Francisco, and the other two migrated across Russia amid revolutionary upheaval there to the Mediterranean and later, to Haifa in Palestine. Aaron's grandfather ended up in Tel Aviv. His mom was born there in 1940, when it was still Palestine. She migrated to the US in 1963 to visit her sister, who taught at a temple in Oakland. Aaron's mom ended up meeting his dad on that fateful trip, and the two were married five weeks later. On his dad's side, his grandparents came to the US from Poland before the Nazi invasion in 1939, arriving in New York City where they ran a candy store. Aaron's dad went to City College of New York, where he graduated and got into UC Berkeley grad school for psychology. On his bus ride west, though, the elder Peskin got drafted to serve the US Army in its war in Korea. After service, he finished his doctorate at Berkeley and got a job teaching at SF State, where he stayed for 40 years until he retired. Aaron goes on a sidebar about running into many of his dad's students from over the years, something that happens to him up to this day. His parents settled in Berkeley shortly after they got married, in 1963. They had Aaron in 1964. As a kid, in the 1970s, he remembers some of the goings on at SF State, when student-led protests and sit-ins were happening and the Ethnic Studies was founded. Back in the East Bay, Aaron attended the first fully integrated public school class in Berkeley. One of his classmates, from kindergarten through third, was none other than Kamala Harris. (See photos in the episode post on our website!) Aaron's younger brother is a professor at Arizona State University. Both his parents ended up in higher education. He calls himself the "black sheep" of his family in this regard, as he "only" ended up with a bachelor's degree. Both parents were also therapists, something they carried on amid their academic careers. Growing up in the 1970s, the family spent significant time in The City, coming over as often as possible from their home in Berkeley. Aaron rattles off a litany of activities his parents engaged him and his brother in when they were young. He says that his time in high school in the East Bay was idyllic. He went to Berkeley High, still the only high school in that city. He fell in with a group of four other boys who took weekend hiking and backpacking trips as much as possible. Also around this time, in his later teen/high school years, Aaron popped over to San Francisco to do things like see kung-fu movies in Chinatown or go to The Keystone to see The Cure and punk bands. He saw The Greg Kihn Band, Talking Heads, and other legendary groups at places like the Greek Theater and Mabuhay Gardens. He graduated Berkeley High in 1982, though he and a handful of friends got out a semester earlier than everyone else. They packed up a van, the five of them, and drove around the Western United States and Canada for 100 days. They ended their trip spending the night in the van in the Berkeley High parking lot. The friend group then scattered, predictably, with Aaron and a couple others heading down to UC Santa Cruz. In his freshman year, he and a friend took the spring semester off and rode their bikes from California to North Carolina and up to Washington, DC, as you do. Santa Cruz was different enough from home, but not too far away. The school provided a challenging academic environment for him, also. He ended up studying animal behavior, specifically the northern elephant seal. Through that program, he lived with a team in experimental housing on Año Nuevo Island off the San Mateo coast doing research. But physical chemistry precluded Aaron from going for a marine biology degree. He instead got into a liberal arts program called "Modern Society and Social Thought." While he was going to school in Santa Cruz, he experienced his first political awakening. Aaron was involved in the effort to make the banana slug become the school's official mascot. The student government wanted the slug, but the chancellor wanted the elephant seal. Aaron had the idea of putting the decision to a vote of the student body. They put ballot boxes all over campus, and the slug won overwhelmingly. But the chancellor rejected the results. News articles helped the students' cause, and they won in the end. During his college years, he travelled to Asia on money he'd saved from a job at a photo store. Neighbors in Berkeley had climbed the Himalayas several times, and it had an effect on Aaron. He and some friends went and travelled over parts of South Asia to do some climbing themselves. He was gone for a year and four months. Upon his return to the US, still working toward getting his bachelor's, Aaron ran into trouble getting student housing. And so he set up a tent in the woods above campus, slept there, went to class during the day, and then did it all again the next day. Check back next week for Part 2 and Aaron's life after college. Photography by Jeff Hunt We recorded this podcast at HQ on Market Street in July 2024. /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/33369582

Jeff Talks About Season 7 of Storied: San Francisco 10/01/2024

Michael "Spike" Krouse/Madrone Art Bar, Part 2 (S6E21) 08/20/2024

Michael "Spike" Krouse/Madrone Art Bar, Part 2 (S6E21) Part 2 picks up where we left off in Part 1. Spike shares details of his West Coast road trip, the one where he shopped for a city to move to and possibly lay down roots. It was 1993 and, of all those West Coast cities, San Francisco won. "The energy, the feeling that you belonged, the creative draw," they all contributed to Spike's decision to move to The City. "This is where I wanted to be," he says. He had $600 to his name, which was possible back then. He rented a basement room and got a job at SF Golf Club as a caddie. Spike saw an ad for a creative assistant at an advertising agency in the newspaper, and he got the interview. The other candidates came prepared with portfolios. They were all design-school grads. Not Spike. He brought in painted golf balls and comics. John McDaniels (famous for the well-known "" ads) ran the agency and hired Spike. They bonded over comics, of all things. They became friends in the two years Spike worked for John, and enjoyed (I mean, really enjoyed) lunch together every Friday. Then, in 1995, a New York agency bought the firm and hoped to force John into retirement. They took Spike to lunch and offered him more money and a promotion. But Spike saw how they thought of his mentor, and decided to bail. He took a buyout and went to Paris for a year, where he drew comics and took language classes. He tried to get his comic, Man vs. Woman, syndicated in newspapers. That didn't work out, but it was a learning experience. And so Spike came back to his 4,000-square-foot loft in South of Market, kept the comics going, and got a job bartending at many places all over SF. One of the places he sent his single-panel comics to was The New Yorker. He'd included a bottle of wine in one of his shipments, and that helped him stand out. Spike got an invitation to the magazine's office the next time he was in NYC. Folks at the table that day told him to go experience life, but keep doing comics. One of the things they told him to do was paint. And so, upon his return to The City, Spike picked up a paint brush. Eventually, he started to earn a master's degree in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute (RIP), but never graduated. He made important connections at the school, though, and picked up skills along the way. He kept bartending while going to SFAI. When he stopped going to grad school, he realized that his life had two streams—bars on the one hand, and art on the other. In 1997, his buddy Alex had the idea to take over what was called Jack's, a bar/venue at the corner of Fillmore and Geary. Alex asked Spike to help open the new spot—newly dubbed The Boom Boom Room—and Spike agreed. They started with the gutted shell of a space. They aimed to create a classic Fillmore-style juke joint, a throwback to the incredible legacy of the neighborhood. Folks from the hood brought in photos of old spots, and Alex and Spike did their best to simulate that look and feel. Through his time with Alex opening The Boom Boom Room, Spike started to get to know so many musicians, some of whom play at Madrone to this day. After Boom Boom opened, though, Spike went on to bartend at other spots around town, places like Tunnel Top, Tony Nik's, and Paragon. A new baby, his first kid, was on the way, and he tried to figure out a way to make more money. Managing a place could mean more money, but he also didn't want to manage for anyone else. He wanted to be his own boss. For the next five years, Spike developed a vision of what it could mean to have his own place. Along the way, he'd sometimes stop in at The Owl Tree and chat with the owner. He thought, "I could do a place like this." He mentioned buying the place from Bobby, who owned it. But Bobby wasn't ready. Then Bobby told Spike, "OK, when I'm ready, I'll sell it to you. But I'm not done!" Bobby died a month after that, and so it never happened. Then the spot that would become Madrone became available. Starting in 2004, the Madrone Lounge opened. Spike would come to the hood a lot and liked the place. He knew the original owner, Layla, from their time at SFAI. Spike and I sidetrack just a bit to talk about the history of the building and the space. Built in 1886, it was formerly a pharmacy. That shut down after the 1989 earthquake, and Burger King, who wanted a 30-year lease, wanted to take over. But folks in the immediate area opposed that plan. It was then that Layla got a liquor license and opened Madrone Lounge. Layla ran the place for the first four years, until the day-in, day-out took its toll. And so she began to think about selling the place, but not to just anybody. She wanted the new owner to share a similar vision of what the place could be. Needless to say, that person was none other than Spike Krouse. But it didn't happen overnight. Spike wasn't able to get the money together, but they had talked about the place enough that Layla came to realize how right it would be for him to take over. Shortly after Spike's dad passed away, he got the call on his first cellphone. Layla told him that she was about to list the place, but would sell to him if he was interested. He didn't have enough for a name change or a closure, so Spike just took the reins and went with it. He started reaching out for mentors and investors, one of whom ended up being the then-owner of Tunnel Tops, who came through in a big way. Spike wasn't going to change the place itself, but he wanted to run things a little differently, and he knew there would be folks who wouldn't stick around. To get things going, Spike put himself in the role of every employee, and he also got an idea of what it was like to visit the place. He would make the changes he felt needed to be made, and he'd do so in the time it took. It was 2008, and when Obama was elected in November, the street party was off the hook. At this point, Spike knew he was in the right place for him. Some employees from back then are still with Madrone today. Some kids of those employees are around, even. That says so much. At this point in the recording, I go off to Spike, gushing about how much I love Madrone and how I'm sorry that I only really discovered it about five or six years ago. About the New Orleans vibe of Madrone, Spike said he had never been there when he started putting that aesthetic together. That's amazing, but you'll have to just see for yourself. Speaking of seeing for yourself, I hereby invite you all to the Storied: SF Season 6 Wrap Party Happy Hour, happening tomorrow night (Wednesday, Aug. 21) from 6 to 9 p.m. There'll be free Brenda's Meat and Three (while supplies last), free music, drinks, and just good vibes all around. I really hope you can make it! We end this podcast and Season 6 with Spike's take on our theme this season—we're all in it. See you tomorrow or in October, when we come back with the first episode of Season 7! We recorded this podcast at in May 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/32647887

Michael "Spike" Krouse/Madrone Art Bar, Part 1 (S6E21) 08/13/2024

Michael "Spike" Krouse/Madrone Art Bar, Part 1 (S6E21) Michael "Spike" Krouse's arrival on this planet was something of a miracle for his parents. In this episode, get to know the founder of (currently one of my favorite places in San Francisco). Spike's dad, a fighter pilot who flew missions in World War II, was much older than his mom. He flew for the Navy when the U.S. went to war with Korea as well. He ended up stationed in Alameda. When he retired from the Navy, in 1967, he took a job in Las Vegas, where the pay was good and the housing was affordable. His dad was director of operations for a nuclear test site in Nevada. Over the years, he dealt with his share of PTSD, and to cope, started gambling. Spike's mom was born in Paris during the German occupation of that city. Her father was "on a train," meaning he was headed to a concentration camp. He ended up being liberated from Dachau years later, but the experience took a toll on him—mentally, physically, and spiritually. He passed away and his family was devastated. Spike's mom, then an infant, was sent to live in the basements of different churches. Her earliest memory is of Allied troops liberating Paris in 1944. US troops handed out chocolate bars to French kids along the Champs-Elysees. When she was 13, she followed her older brother to Israel. After that, she migrated to Italy, where she was recruited to do TV commercials. With that success, Spike's mom moved back to Paris, where she danced for a living. She got into some movies, also. With that, travel picked up—New York, LA, and eventually, Las Vegas. In Vegas, she ended up doing a one-woman burlesque dancing show. Maybe you can see where this story is headed, but Spike's dad was in the audience at one of these shows. Soon after this, the two headed up to San Francisco and got married. Spike was born about a year later. By his dad, Spike has a half-brother and a half-sister, who was close to his mom in age (his sister has since passed away). But it was his mom's first marriage and Spike was her first, and only, kid. Spike says that the Vegas where he grew up was more like a small town where everyone knew each other. It was nothing like it is today, in other words. Among other activities, Spike and his friends would lock up their bikes and go pool hopping at the various casino resorts back in the 1980s. His family traveled around a bit when Spike was a kid. They visited his aunt and uncle (his mom's siblings) in Paris several times. Because his mom was born in France during German occupation, she hadn't been given citizenship at birth. But in the early 1990s, thanks to a reparations trial, that happened. And it extended down to her offspring and their offspring. Today, Spike's kids enjoy French citizenship, as does he. The family also visited San Francisco, when Spike was around nine or 10. He remembers riding cable cars and going to Fisherman's Wharf. They'd travel places in their pop-top van that was equipped with an RV hookup. They also went to San Diego, where his dad received cancer treatments around the time Spike was 13. In his high school years, he and his friends threw lots of parties, and Spike was the one who made flyers for these shindigs. There'd be illicit boxing matching between rival schools. There'd be kegs, there'd be gambling. He was into New Wave and metal, but his taste was really all over the board. Thanks to his parents, there was jazz at home, Serge Gainsbourg, Edith Piaf. And he'd go to all-ages clubs in Vegas. Spike never really played instruments, though. His talents around music were mostly visually artistic. He played sports—football, baseball, golf. As a kid, he and his friends stole golf balls from a nearby course. His punishment was to hit balls at a driving range for two months. Thanks to this, he got pretty good at the sport. But, especially by the time he went off to college, sports took a backseat to throwing parties. College meant Marquette University in Milwaukee. Spike talks about the art scene in Milwaukee and how much he liked it. His school didn't offer any art degrees, otherwise he would have majored in that. But someone at Milwaukee's art museum had amassed quite a collection of German Expressionist art, and Spike liked to check that out. He says he chose the school partly because it was so far from Las Vegas. He shares the story of a ballroom in Milwaukee that he rolled into looking for work. It was his first foray into the business side of parties. He was only 18, but that was OK back then. He got a job barbacking, and three months in, got promoted to bartender when someone called in sick. There was a Vegas connection to the place—it was part of a money-laundering ring that involved cash from casinos in Nevada. So, in a sense, Spike was right back where he started. Sort of. The place had big-name acts at its upstairs, 2,500-seat venue. Acts like Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the up-and-coming Smashing Pumpkins. Spike worked those events, and ended up making enough money from this job to pay for everything other than his tuition. He'd fully caught the nightlife bug. After he graduated, Spike went back to Vegas and got a job with Mirage Resorts in their executive casino training program. Within six months of this, though, he realized it wasn't for him. He was 21. He had a college degree. He was trying to figure out what his path would be. He wanted to travel. He wanted to foster his creative side, but also wanted to find a way to make money doing that. So he hopped in his car and drove up the West Coast, starting in San Diego, then LA, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, shopping for a city to put down roots. Check back next week for Part 2, and the last episode of Season 6 of this podcast. We recorded this podcast at Madrone Art Bar on Divisadero in May 2024. /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/32551872

The Anchor Brewing Union (S6 bonus) 08/06/2024

The Anchor Brewing Union (S6 bonus) Patrick Costello used to work at Anchor Brewing, where he was the production lead for the bottling and keg lines. He was also a member of the Anchor Brewing Union, where he served as a shop steward—essentially the union rep on the floor. Anchor's union was part of Local 6 of the ILWU. But Patrick wasn't exactly born into all of this. His mom and dad met at a house party in the Mission in the 1980s. Patrick's dad was stationed in the Presidio and his mom came here from Nicaragua. His dad wouldn't leave his mom alone at this party, or so the story goes. They were married at a church in the Presidio soon after that. (Patrick and his wife recently got married nearby, at Tunnel Tops park.) The family moved to Germany shortly after his mom and dad got married. This is where Patrick was born, in fact. They moved back in time for his younger brother to be born in The City. Then they went to Sacramento, where he went to school. After graduation, Patrick made his way back to The Bay, around 2010. He worked for a while at Farley's on Potrero Hill, where he met Jerry, a maintenance worker from the nearby brewery. Farley's gave Anchor employees free coffee, and they paid it back with a keg now and then. Patrick loved chatting with the guy. One day, Jerry mentioned that the brewery was opening a bar and that Patrick should apply. When he visited, the place was packed, with a line out the door. But the manager told Patrick that they didn't need help. He came back a week later—same thing. Same response. It went on three or four more times before the tap room figured out that they weren't going to get rid of this guy. They'd be better off hiring him. He came on as a barback at first and hit the ground running. This was around the time that the Warriors were starting to win, and the place was always packed. Patrick learned fast. When COVID hit, all the service jobs disappeared. But folks who ran the brewery brought a lot of the tap room workers over, to help keep them employed and also to keep up with demand. This is how Patrick got into the brewery. A production lead left, and he took over. At this point in the recording, we take a step back as Patrick tells the story of how the Anchor Union came about. He says there'd been talk of forming a union for some time before Sapporo took over, because workers felt that management wasn't listening to their demands. When the Japan-based company bought Anchor, they felt it was a good time to try, with a large corporation now in charge. At first, the efforts centered around educating employees on what a union means, countering popular misconceptions along the way. The campaign was tough and it took a minute, but they organized and got it done in 2019. We do a sidebar on the rebranding of Anchor that happened, something most area beer lovers (including me) were not happy about. Not at all. Union members knew it was coming, but they didn't get into a room during the development stage, and it was too late. Many union members agreed, but they wanted to give it time for the beer-drinking public to decide. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative, but ownership doubled down. The union made a statement. But it didn't matter. What was done was done. Patrick says that workers felt the closing coming on. Orders had slowed down. There was a brooding feeling in the air. Supply chain issues affecting markets worldwide hit them. Then, in 2023, came the news that Anchor wouldn't be making its famed and beloved annual Christmas Ale. Shortly after that announcement, Anchor would be shut down totally. Leading up to that, Patrick says employees found a way to get as much beer made and distributed as humanly possible. Even though he was a brewery guy, Patrick joined bar staff and worked for free the last night that the tap room was open. He says lines were out the door and that the whole thing was bittersweet. In May 2024, Chobani yogurt founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya bought Anchor. My initial reaction was wondering whether Ulukaya would bring brewery employees, and therefore, the union, back to work. Not only is it the right thing to do, but also, no one knows the product or the equipment better. Ulukaya has said publicly that he wants to do this, but nothing is certain even as of this writing. We recorded this podcast at Lucky 13 in Alameda in July 2024. /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/32459822

Azikiwee Anderson/Rize Up Bakery, Part 2 (S6E20) 07/30/2024

Azikiwee Anderson/Rize Up Bakery, Part 2 (S6E20) Z had started a family whom he had to leave when he toured for rollerblading. It didn't take long for him to feel that he should be home—both to be there for his newborn son and to assist his partner in raising him. Being back in San Francisco, Z started searching for the new him, the next phase. Adding to his new role as father, he enrolled in culinary classes at San Francisco Cooking School. Compared with other things he'd gotten into, this was much more intense. Z was learning from others, rather than making it up "on the fly." But he took to the kitchen right away. He ended up doing mostly knife-for-hire work around The City and the Bay Area. Z shies away from dropping names in the restaurant industry, pointing to the fact that he feels like the people who get credit take all the shine, while those who do most of the work are in the shadows, so to speak. He says that even back then, he decided that if he branched out on his own, he'd do things differently. Following his stint as a knife-for-hire, Z became a private chef. Then the pandemic hit. In addition to making sure his kids were doing their at-home schoolwork, he'd joined a chef's thread online. It was a space for those in his community to share how they were coping with shutdown and the loss of doing what they love. Like approximately half of us who aren't chefs, many of the people in these forums were making bread. At first, Z was apprehensive about making bread. But his friends in the industry kept nudging him. Reluctantly, he gave in ... and at first, the results weren't good. He went at it over and over and just wasn't getting it right. Slowly, over time, he started having some success. And then cops murdered George Floyd. Z talks at length about the effect that Floyd's murder had on him. He stayed out of protests in public for fear that he wouldn't be able to contain all the anger and frustration he felt at that moment. Instead, he turned inward. And in that solitude, he worked and worked on his bread. It was the only thing, he says, that gave him solace. The bread got better and better and Z got to a point where he wanted to share his creation, first with his community, then with the world. A friend out in Brooklyn asked Z to ship a sourdough. The day after he did that, orders exploded. It didn't take long for Z to scale his operation up. A bigger mixer, a second rack ... it all allowed him to keep up with demand. Then he began adding flavors to the bread, at first just for himself. One of the first of these was called The Ninth Ward, a loaf with Louisiana hot sausage inside it (yum ...). Next, he added blackberries to a loaf, which are tricky because of how wet they are and how much they stain. People started to notice ... people like food writers. One such writer from the Chronicle asked if she could buy a loaf and hang out and talk with Z. He didn't know she was a writer, and they sat down and chatted. By this time, Z already had the name . He had taken his kids to see Hamilton, which has a song about rising up. It was the summer of 2020, and people were actually out in the streets protesting racial injustice. And of course, bread rises as it bakes. The name was perfect. Once vaccines came around and it got safer to leave the house, Z moved into a bigger kitchen facility, one that allowed him to hire and be able to deliver bread to stores and other customers. was the first grocery store to carry Rize Up. Z developed the ube loaf for . Z talks about those ingredients and flavors he puts into many of his loaves. In the bread world, they're called "inclusions." "Our inclusions are inclusive," he says. They are intentional and reflect his love and appreciation for his community and his neighbors. We end the episode with Z's take on this season's podcast theme: "We're All In It." Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/32341822

Rootstock Arts' Color Your Mind Festival (S6 bonus) 07/24/2024

Rootstock Arts' Color Your Mind Festival (S6 bonus) Welcome to this bonus episode with Kundan Baidwan and Sameer Gupta. Kundan and Sameer talk all about the Rootstock Arts' event Color Your Mind Festival, which is happening at the this Saturday, July 27, 2024 from noon to 5 p.m. (This episode was created in collaboration with Erin and Ange from .) We start with Kundan. Long-time listeners will recognize or remember Kundan from ... , , and . She's been a friend of the show since that fateful day in 2018 when I waltzed into Zam Zam with Bitch Talk on their Bourdain Crawl. But, podcast-wise, it's never been about Kundan. We learn that she was born in San Jose and raised in Fremont. She went to college in San Diego, and after she graduated, was off to Paris and then New York. She returned to The Bay around 2004. She says that SF was always close to her Bay Area roots. She's an artist (an amazing artist, I must say) who pays the bills by bartending at Zam Zam. Sameer Gupta was also born in San Jose. When he was around one year old, his family began moving roughly every couple of years. His dad was in tech and took jobs all over the world. While his family was in Japan, Sameer picked up playing music. He says he "caught the bug" there and started playing drums. When his family came back to the US, he stuck with drumming. It wasn't what his parents expected of him, but they encouraged him nonetheless. He went to college for music, where he was immersed in Western and Classical styles. He was gravitating more toward jazz, though. He played jazz through his time in and after college, and then he found Indian Classical music. Sameer moved to New York City and stayed for about 15 years, long enough to form a music collective. A little more than a year ago, he returned to the Bay Area. Then we hear how Kundan and Sameer met. It's a story that goes back to their respective childhoods. Their dads worked together before either of them was born. Their families lived in the same neighborhood and knew each other well. The two ended up in high school together. Beyond their families' histories, Sameer and Kundan both ran in creative circles around this time, and naturally gravitated toward each other. Both Kundan and Sameer are the only creative people in their families, and we get to hear how that informs the art that each of them creates. They recognize the abundance of creativity in their culture, but distinguish themselves as individuals who set out to make art their life's mission. And Sameer speaks to the example that folks like him and Kundan can set for the next generations, who see more possibilities than they might otherwise. Having grown up the entire time in the Bay Area, Kundan says she more or less always felt the influence of Indian culture. And Sameer talks more about what it can mean for their families to see them making a life out of art. Then the conversation shifts to this weekend's inaugural Color Your Mind Festival. Sameer and Kundan intentionally invited young artists to be part of the event. There will be art, music, crafts, books, and more. Sameer says their intention is for the festival to be "adventurous," not what people might think of as a traditional Indian event. They want it to be approachable for as many folks as possible. The festival's music will include North Indian Classical (think Ravi Shankar), South Indian Classical, and Sameer's group, the Jupiter Project. There will also be dancing between music sets. Follow . We recorded this episode in collaboration with at in the Mission in June 2024. /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/32268937

Azikiwee Anderson/Rize Up Bakery, Part 1 (S6E20) 07/23/2024

Azikiwee Anderson/Rize Up Bakery, Part 1 (S6E20) From a young age, Azikiwee Anderson left his heart in San Francisco. In this episode, Azikiwee (everyone calls him "Z"), the founder of , shares the story of how he got here. His dad was a famous drummer who got hooked on heroin while touring. When he returned home from the tour, the problems at home began. He started physically assaulting Z's mom. And so she packed up her three kids, all five and younger, and her things and split. The battered wives' shelter helped get them out of New Orleans and to San Francisco. Z has some memories of New Orleans, but they're coupled with trauma. When they landed here, they didn't really have people. His mom and her kids stayed at the bus station for weeks, and Z remembers a man giving them his lunch more than once. There's a poignant story of the brown paper bags that those meals came in and how Z has used similar bags for Rize Up breads as an homage. The family ended up at a shelter and his mom started to imagine what her new life could be. Z's mom got jobs and took classes. They lived in The City for six years and then moved to Chico. Z spent the rest of junior high and high school in that northern Valley town. The day after he graduated, he left for Santa Rosa to go to junior college. It was close enough to San Francisco that he could come here easily and often, which he did. In addition to school, he taught gymnastics, something he'd begun in high school. But because of his height (he's 6' 3") and relative inexperience, he decided that teaching was a better route for him than competing. He also rollerbladed. Like, a lot. He says kids would come into his gymnastics classes asking Z to teach them how to do flips on rollerblades. Never mind that he didn't know how to do that ... yet. One of these kids brought in a video of what he had in mind, and it was the first time Z saw people doing all these incredible things on rollerblades. Eventually, this led to Z getting sponsored to skate. It took him on a journey he never could've imagined. He started traveling, around the US, around the world. It became his life. He built skate parks, for roller blades, bikes, skateboards, whatever. Looking back on his time as a pro rollerblader, Z says that he owes the hardship of his young years to the fact that it doesn't take a lot to make him happy. When he started seeing the world, he didn't take it for granted. He was grateful for the opportunities it afforded him. Time spent traveling gave way to more time running businesses. And with a little more income came the opportunity to cash in on a life's dream—Z moved to San Francisco. He found a place on Bush between Van Ness and Polk. And he brought a small distribution company for rollerblading products with him. But when the 2008 recession hit, the business started to feel some serious pains. Check back next week for Part 2 with Azikiwee Anderson. We recorded this podcast at in the South of Market in June 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/32254942

Reem Assil/Reem's California, Part 2 (S6E19) 07/16/2024

Reem Assil/Reem's California, Part 2 (S6E19) Part 2 picks up right where we left off in Part 1, with Reem describing finding the anti-imperialist women's soccer team. Through that, she met her partner, who's now her co-parent. Reem worked in the nonprofit sector until around 2010, when she burned out. She'd moved to Oakland upon her return to the Bay Area, though she was still connected to The City through her work with AROC. She found herself wanting to take care of her community in other ways than what nonprofits were offering. She and her father had been estranged, but after leaving work, she joined him on a trip to the Middle East. The two were joined by Reem's youngest sister on a visit she calls "transformative." Besides gaining insight into who her dad was as a person, she truly discovered and fell in love with the food of her people. She knew right away that she wanted to create that feeling for others. Her Syrian family took note of her interest, and took her to bakeries in that country to get a glimpse of the kitchens after-hours. She returned to the Bay Area wanting to do two things: To combat tropes and negative stereotypes about Arab culture and people, and to do that by creating a sense of hospitality. Those two ideas would eventually form the foundation of what Reem's California does today. But she had to begin somewhere, and so she enrolled in a baking class at Laney College. Out of that class, she got a job with in Emeryville, where she got experience in a co-op and a kitchen. She started forming the idea of what her place would be, and while that came together, she settled on basing it around man’oushe, the street food of her people. Over a number of years and various kitchen and bartending jobs, Reem took as many entrepreneur classes as she could. The last of these was with . The program helped steer her toward more practical, lower-cost methods of doing business. And that's where the comes into play. It's what Reem uses to make her man'oushe. "It's like an inverted tandoor," she says. An uncle in Lebanon was able to have two custom-made sajes for Reem. They arrived and that's what set it all in motion. They were approved for the and the farmer's market at the Ferry Building around the same time. At both locations, they served Arabic tea and played Arabic music, creating that vibe Reem had been seeking. Within 16 months, they had grown from one market to five. Then La Cocina told Reem that it was time to take the operation brick-and-mortar. The first location was in Fruitvale in Oakland in 2017 and lasted a couple of years. Then, after a brief foray into fine-dining, the women owners of Mission Pie asked Reem if she wanted to take over their spot at Mission and 25th. She said yes and started doing the work to get open. And then the pandemic hit. Once the Mission location was able to open, Reem's California did better than a lot of nearby restaurants, partly because the food lends itself to take-out so easily. But for Reem, not being able to share space and that hospitality that was at least as important as the food itself was hard. Still, they found ways to connect with the community. In 2023, they opened a second location in the Ferry Building. They started appearing at Outside Lands a few years ago (and will be there again this year). Reem decided to start transitioning the business to a worker-owned model. Visit Reem's Mission location, 2901 Mission Street, Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and again for dinner from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. The Ferry Building location is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Follow them on social media at @ReemsCalifornia and follow Reem herself @reem.assil. Her cookbook, Arabiyya, is available on her . We end the podcast with Reem's interpretation of this year's theme on Storied: San Francisco—We're all in it. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/32155347

Tosha Stimage and Favianna Rodriguez of Superblooms and Ancestral Futurism (S6 bonus) 07/12/2024

Tosha Stimage and Favianna Rodriguez of Superblooms and Ancestral Futurism (S6 bonus) In 2022, the Presidio Trust asked Favianna Rodriguez to be an activator, as the trust was preparing to open its Tunnel Tops park. Favianna recommended that the folks building the park employ color and visual art to transform the space. They were supportive of her ideas. And with that, Ancestral Futurism was born. Favianna grew up in Oakland next to the 880 freeway, where she still lives today. The area around that major thoroughfare is one of the most polluted corridors in the state. Because she comes from an area subject to what she refers to as "environmental racism," she sought to make a statement in the northwest corner of The City. "Ancestral Futurism" was a phrase that perfectly summed up her goal: "We cannot repair the present until we acknowledge the harm of the past." The land where Spanish colonizers established the Presidio was already inhabited by Native people, of course. Those people lost their land to the Europeans. They were murdered, pushed out, disenfranchised. For Favianna, the space is now one where we can talk about that. Tosha Stimage was born in rural Mississippi. College got her out of The South and to Ohio, where she studied art and design. After graduation, she spent a bit of time in Colorado, where she worked with kids doing art therapy. Then grad school brought her to the Bay Area: She started at CCA in 2012. She's been an artist since she was a kid, and that didn't change after grad school. One of the ways that art manifests for Tosha is in flower arranging. She had a shop in Oakland, but was forced out by gentrification. Now, she's got her shop, , back open for business in The City as part of SF's Vacant to Vibrant program. After the unveiling of Ancestral Futurism, Favianna and others realized that they needed to make it an annual event and bring in other artists. They also decided that it was important to honor native plants and animals along with the native humans of the area. For this year's iteration, Favianna invited Tosha to add her own interpretation to the ongoing project. After she was selected, Tosha started visiting the park, meeting people, and doing her homework. She began to notice the intention and care that went into plant programs already going in the Presidio. Right away, she felt it was something she wanted to be part of. Tosha gave her contribution the name "Superblooms" in part to honor that natural phenomenon. It also speaks to the resilience of the plants she chose to include in her art—checker bloom, Chilean strawberry, and California poppy. All are beautiful, of course, but they all have histories in the Bay Area. This Sunday, July 14, from 12 to 3 p.m., Tunnel Tops will host a launch party for Tosha's Superblooms. Activities that day include: an art unveiling with Tosha, hands-on art activities for all ages, a living floral Installation, free plant starters, DJ sets, and a show and tell with the Presidio Nursery. Attendance is free. For more info, visit the . We recorded this podcast at Tunnel Tops park in June 2024. Photography by Felipe Romero /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/32107262

Reem Assil/Reem's California, Part 1 (S6E19) 07/09/2024

Reem Assil/Reem's California, Part 1 (S6E19) Reem Assil has created a restaurant in the Mission that serves some of the most beautiful, delicious, and activist food of any new spot in San Francisco in a long, long time. Reem was born and raised in her early years in a Boston suburb. Her dad is from Damascus, Syria, and her mom is from Gaza, Palestine. Both were refugees in 1967. They met in Beirut and emigrated to the East Coast of the US. The suburb where they moved was predominantly white, but Reem's household was vibrant in Arab culture. Her parents didn't want the family to forget their roots. They were in Massachusetts because that's where the jobs were. But Reem's mom's family all came to California, which ended up having quite an effect on her. Her grandparents went to Northridge just before the 1994 earthquake that devastated that area. Reem says that, every summer, relatives from all over the world, including her and her family from out east, converged on her grandparents' home in the San Fernando Valley. She talks about the strength of that Arab culture in her home and among her relatives in California, but also, of reconciling that with the fact that she was a latch-key kid, especially when her mom went back to work. Reem was immersed in US culture, but felt those strong roots of her ancestors. In the late-Eighties and early Nineties, Reem was into Ska and "alternative" music, but also hip-hop. "Growing up Palestinian, you're aware of the world in a different way," she says. She's always had an affinity for justice. She talks about a history teacher she had in high school who had a big influence on her. In that class, she learned much more about the Civil Rights movement than anyone can get from a textbook. She went on several trips with that class, including to the Deep South. Being embedded like that, talking with people who lived the movement, had an enormous effect on Reem. In 1994, she joined her family on a trip to Gaza. She was 11 and the experience "wrecked" her. The stories she heard in the South resonated and reminded her of what she knew about her mom's homeland. Reem is the oldest of three sisters and says that hers was a very feminine household. As a kid and teenager, she had an affinity for cooking and baking. But as she navigated her more formative later teen years, she rejected the idea of women in the kitchen. Food would come back much later in her journey. She had just begun college at Tufts University in 2001 when her parents got divorced and 9/11 happened. She and other Arab folks had always dealt with Islamophobia, but that ramped way, way up after Sept. 11. That and her being the first to leave her house put a strain on her parents' relationship as well as her own life. She rejected the US-centric foreign policy ideas she was hearing and being taught at Tufts. She visited Lebanon and Syria in 2002, and when she returned to the US, she developed what she thought was a parasite. She couldn't eat. That affected her studies and her social life. It all coalesced and devolved into depression, and this further negatively affected her relationship with food. Reem quit college and made her way to California. At first, she considered her grandparents' place in Southern California. But she figured that LA would depress her further. An aunt, a white hippie from Humboldt, and an uncle who was an activist lived in Daly City, though, and felt more her speed. She didn't know much about the Bay Area other than an impression she got earlier in life when she came out for their wedding. They were the main attraction. She arrived in 2002, just as organizing around the then-proposed invasion of Iraq was taking place. Her aunt and uncle worked during the days and went to anti-war meetings at night. Reem went with them, and she cites these experiences as helping raise her out of that funk she'd been in—it lit a fire in the activist part of her life. While all this was going on, she'd also visit farmer's markets with her aunt and uncle. Fresh produce was somewhat foreign to Reem when she was growing up out East. Her relatives cooked a lot, and Reem would join them. It slowly brought the joy of cooking and eating back into her life. She spent a lot of time in the Mission in those days, and even helped found the AROC () on Valencia. When she wasn't organizing, Reem was heading north to Mendocino and Humboldt, discovering the natural beauty that surrounds the Bay Area. She went back to Tufts to finish getting her degree, then headed back to Northern California as soon as she could. In 2005, Reem got a job here with an activist group. After doing community organizing, she got into union organizing, eventually working with SFO workers. From there, she got into policy work. She also started playing soccer—with an anti-imperialist team, no less. It was more than just exercise for Reem—the people she played with were her "church." Check back next week for Part 2 and hear how Reem decided to make and sell and celebrate the food of her heritage. We recorded this episode at in May 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/32054117

Rachel Ryan, Honey Mahogany, and Marke B./The Stud Collective, Part 2 (S6E18) 06/25/2024

Rachel Ryan, Honey Mahogany, and Marke B./The Stud Collective, Part 2 (S6E18) In Part 2, we dive into the story of how The Stud Collective pulled out the seemingly impossible—they found a new home in South of Market. After a quick history of the space at 1123 Folsom (a leather bar in the Seventies called The Stables, Julie's Supper Club, a sports bar, a restaurant called Radius, and a vegetarian restaurant called Wellspring Commune that was a front for a cult called The Tribal Thumb, who were affiliated with the ... and that space is rumored to have been one of the places that the SLA kept Patty Hearst—oh, San Francisco), Rachel guides us on a tour of the original location of , which was opened by Alexis Muir (a trans woman) in 1966. Muir ran the OG Stud, also on Folsom west of the current location, for several years. Originally, it was a kinky/leather/cowboy/Western bar. It was the same year, just months before, that the took place. Just a few years after it opened, The Stud shifted themes to more of a queer hippie bar. But one thing that helped it stand out from the get-go was its inclusivity. The Stud remained in that original spot on Folsom until 1987. After Muir, a group of Milwaukee hippies who were also affiliated with took over ownership. After this group, toward the end of the Seventies, another group took over. In 1987, following a dispute with the landlord, The Stud had to move. They found a spot on Harrison at Ninth that had previously been a nightclub. We fast-forward a bit to revisit Marke, Rachel, and Honey's introductions to The Stud, which all took place at the Harrison location. Keeping with that spirit of inclusivity that had been a hallmark of the place since its opening, they all feel that it was the one place at the time where any segment of the queer population could feel at home. In 2016, over Fourth of July weekend, The Stud's then-owner, Michael McElheney (who'd owned the place since the late-Nineties), announced that he was selling the business. The building it was in had been sold, the new landlords tripled the rent, and McElheney was ready to retire. But, as mentioned in Part 1, Nate Albee already had a plan in place. Within the first week of McElheney's announcement, the fledgling collective presented the plan and it was accepted immediately. The group was already around 20 members strong. Honey and Rachel talk about other SF collectives and worker-owned businesses that they turned to for guidance and inspiration—, , and the now-closed . Marke says that, from its origin, the collective also wanted to serve as a beacon for how to do this elsewhere in the queer nightlife space. On New Year's Eve 2016, The Stud Collective threw its Grand Opening party. The place never shut down between the previous owner and the collective taking over, but it felt right to celebrate the takeover. Then, a little more than three years later, COVID hit. The rent was already exorbitant and they had decided to try to find another place. Once it became obvious that the shutdown was going to last longer than we all thought, they got out of the lease at the spot on Harrison, and even threw a funeral online. It wasn't an easy decision, but it turned out to be a unanimous one for the collective. The Grand Opening Night at the new location took place this year on April 20 (haha?) and was themed "Stud Timeline." The first hour, which began at 6 p.m., was Sixties, the second hour was the Seventies, and so on. The Cockettes were there. Queer elders showed up. There were also first-timers. It was a big deal, and the night was emotional for them all. I asked them to plug events at The Stud during Pride, and Rachel obliged on behalf of the group: Friday, June 28, "Forever" with (co-op member) Vivian Forevermore Saturday, June 29, "Les Femmes," a celebration of dolls, twinks, and bimbos Sunday, June 30, a "marathon party" with a drag show hosted by Princess Poppy We end Part 2 with Marke, Honey, and Rachel responding to this season's theme on the podcast: We're all in it. We recorded this episode at in South of Market in June 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/31874972

Marke B., Rachel Ryan, and Honey Mahogany/The Stud Collective, Part 1 (S6E18) 06/18/2024

Marke B., Rachel Ryan, and Honey Mahogany/The Stud Collective, Part 1 (S6E18) I'm super-stoked to do a podcast all about The Stud and folks from the collective who run the place! In Part 1, we start with . Many longtime listeners will remember Marke from his Season 3 Storied episode. In this go-round, we get a condensed version of his life story and how he made his way to San Francisco. In his hometown of Detroit, Marke threw raves and made enough money on that to put himself through college. Sometime in those four years of school, he realized that his dream of writing for a local newspaper or weekly was damn near impossible. Also, it was the height of AIDS and Detroit didn't have much of an infrastructure around that. His best friend bought two train tickets and told Marke, "Pack your bags, we're leaving for San Francisco tomorrow." That didn't sit well with Marke at the time. He wasn't crazy about SF back then—he hated hippies, hated the Beats. He had visited with his family at 14, when he tried to run away from his parents and take a cable car to the Castro. That, of course, didn't work out so well (try the F-Market trains, kid). Despite his dislike of The City, his desire to get out of Detroit got him on that train. Two-and-a-half days and a couple bags of potato chips later, Marke arrived. It was the day after Pride 1994, and he's been here ever since. He saw a gay scene that was too white and mainstreamy. But he found his people—other people of color, into alternative music—at The End Up. His first time at was on a Monday hip-hop night. Immediately, he felt he had truly arrived. Years later, in 2016, Rachel Ryan and another co-op member asked Marke and his husband, David, to join their collective. They've both been members since then. Then we turn to Rachel Ryan. Rachel grew up in The City, Noe Valley specifically. Her parents put her in Live Oak School, back when it was located in the Castro. That experience helped to shape Rachel—her kindergarten teacher was young and gay and had bleach-blonde hair. He was an early role model for her. Her liberal family moved to Marin for that oh-so familiar reason: San Francisco became too expensive for them. But her dad's work was headquartered near The Eagle in South of Market, and Rachel spent some time with him in that area when she was young. She thinks back on her time in Marin fondly, from the access to nature to the freedoms her parents were able to grant her. But at the same time, her parents were protective of their daughter—she was free as long as she was with her older brother. Rachel got into swing dancing at a young age. She'd come to The City to go to swing clubs in the Nineties. But once her older brother and his friend graduated high school and went to college, that ended. College for her meant UC Santa Cruz. And after graduating there, she moved back to San Francisco right away. Today, she lives really close to where she grew up. Growing up, Rachel carried bisexual shame. She felt at times that she wasn't gay enough, but also found herself immersed in queer culture through friends. Then, in 2009, a trip to The Stud changed everything. "These are my people," she thought. Years later, Rachel and her people started noticing the closure of more and more queer bars and spaces around The City. Their friends were getting priced out of San Francisco more and more frequently, and they were fed up. The previous owner of The Stud, Michael McElheney, announced that he wanted to retire and sell the bar, and Rachel, Nate Albee, and some other of those friends seized the opportunity. The newly formed Stud Collective took over in 2016. Next up is . Honey's parents fled Ethiopia for San Francisco as refugees. She grew up in the Outer Sunset just off Taraval in the Eighties and Nineties. Her parents put her through Catholic school for K–12. It was a rather sheltered, quiet childhood, one where she could walk to aunts' and uncles' houses in the same neighborhood. For college, Honey moved to Los Angeles to attend USC. She came out down there around this time, and became, in her words, "super queer." She started doing drag in LA, in fact. She found her true self in those experiences and being away from home, where she was able to establish her identity apart from her family. But her family still didn't know about her queerness. One of her cousins outed her to her fairly conservative, Catholic parents, who reacted negatively. After she graduated college, they sent her to Ethiopia to "get away from negative influences." While in Africa, she interned for the UN. "I've always been involved in social justice," she says, and the UN was a natural fit ... or so she imagined. And so Honey came back to The Bay to study social work at UC Berkeley. Her dad became ill around this time, and so the move back doubled as a chance to help take care of him. She found social justice work in Contra Costa County, got a spot on Ru Paul's Drag Race, and joined the newly formed Stud Collective. The Stud was near where Honey worked in the late 2000s. A friendly bartender endeared her and a drag queen named Virginia Suicide hypnotized her. She was hooked. Please check back next week for Part 2 of my episode on The Stud. We recorded this episode at in South of Market in June 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/31781792

Frameline's Allegra Madsen (S6 bonus) 06/14/2024

Frameline's Allegra Madsen (S6 bonus) In this bonus episode, meet and get to know 's Executive Director Allegra Madsen. Allegra was born and grew up in southern Virginia. As she says, "It was hot, it was humid, it was Southern." From a young age, she fell in love with movies because it was so hot outside. She'd escape to theaters, where she could bask in the AC and watch movies all day long. She left that area as soon as she could. That meant Chicago for college. She wanted to be a writer. Columbia College in Chicago was known as more of a film school, which meant she was on the periphery of movies in her time there. After college, it was on to Los Angeles, "as everybody does." Allegra worked in some art galleries and museums, with the goal of trying to get to San Francisco always in the back of her mind. As a kid growing up, she read a lot of Beat Generation writers (where were the women of the Beat era?). CCA was the draw that got Allegra up to The Bay. She studied contemporary art curation, focusing on how you can use art to build community. That was 20 years ago, and she's been here ever since. Then our conversation shifts to Frameline and its nearly half-century of history. It is the largest and longest-running queer film festival in the world. It's also the largest film event in California (hear that, LA?). It all began in 1977 on a bedsheet in the Castro. It was a time when there were no prominent images of queer people in media. will take place all over the Bay Area. Check their for a complete lineup. Allegra goes through a few of the events that she's excited about. The one I'm perhaps most hyped up for is next week's Juneteenth Frameline kick-off block party. In addition to many other aspects of the evening, the Castro Theatre's blade will be re-lit for the first time since that building underwent renovations. See you all at Frameline 48! We recorded this podcast over Zoom in May 2024. Image courtesy Frameline /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/31738777

Brett Cline/The Lost Church San Francisco, Part 2 (S6E17) 06/11/2024

Brett Cline/The Lost Church San Francisco, Part 2 (S6E17) Part 2 begins with a chat about how, when we were both younger and just arriving in San Francisco, neither Brett nor I had any idea that we'd be here so long. After living on Market, Brett moved back to the Mission, where he's lived ever since. His great aunt passed away and left him some money. It proved to be enough for a down payment on a space on Capp Street just off 16th. 65 Capp Street is the address of the original location of The Lost Church, and happens to be where Brett and his family live today. Then Brett shares the story of meeting his wife, Lost Church co-owner Lizzy. In 1997, he went to Burning Man for his first time, an experience he relates in detail. He went back in 1999 and that's when he met his future wife. Despite her being eight years younger than him, Brett noticed that Lizzy was much more mature than he was. Days after Burning Man, she visited Brett in San Francisco from her home in Sacramento. They eloped in Tahoe two months later and have been together ever since. Lizzy went through quite an adjustment in her new home on Capp Street. Brett then goes on a sidebar about his many musical adventures. He started a band with people he had met in his time at SF State in the Music program. They played out, most regularly at The Rite Spot. But they broke up and Brett got sick. He joined the stagehands' union to get health insurance. It was around this time that he and Lizzy decided to start their own band, this time with the explicit intention to tour. They cut up the Capp Street spot into multiple studio spaces to rent out to others. Lizzy and Brett lived and played music in one of the small spaces they had created. Juanita and the Rabbit was born. And they toured ... for most of the next two years. When they got back, Lizzy and Brett decided to try to have a kid. Around that same time, Brett had been having a not-so-good time with the stagehands' union. Lizzy was working as a stylist for photo shoots, making good money. This all allowed Brett to build out his own theater at the Capp Street space. The plan was to do "ridiculous" rock 'n' roll musicals. Then we get into how they came up with the name "Lost Church," which Brett says isn't as good a story as many people want to hear. Brett had his own record label, was doing sound design for video games, and wanted to get into sound for movies. His website was split into the two halves: half record label, half his sound design work. For that site and to encompass all that he was doing at the time, he had a few names he was kicking around—The Last School, The Lost School, The Last Church, and The Lost Church. He liked them all because of their community vibes. He's never been a religious person, but for him, the idea of church meant more. He settled on "The Lost Church." At first, though, it was just for his own creative endeavors. Visiting his website, you were directed to either "The Lost Church of Light and Sound" or "The Lost Church of Rock 'n' Roll." When he and Lizzy decided to turn their space into a theater, the name was already there. Brett talks about their intentionality of creating a theater-like environment for musicians, one with seats for the audience and the bar in a separate room. Then he shares stories of some of the first performances of the newly minted Lost Church. He says he's not sure how people found him, but shortly after those early shows, musicians started emailing him wanting to play there. ( came in early and Brett hired him to host shows). Then Brett dives into the story of why The Lost Church had to uproot from its original location. They survived for years without permits, mostly because they never envisioned it lasting long. Once the Entertainment Commission visited and pointed out all the shortcomings, they started to realize how much it would take to get the space up to code. By the time COVID hit, Brett and Lizzy had already started thinking about a new spot. They had opened their second location up in Santa Rosa when they were forced to shut both down. Relief money started piling in and they hired their Santa Rosa point person. They also used that money to get the new SF location secured, running, and up to code. It took Brett around nine months to find the new spot. So many criteria went into it that the task became difficult. It took a last-chance, random look at Craigslist to find what became The Lost Church San Francisco on Columbus on the northern edge of North Beach. The doors opened in September 2022 and they've never looked back. We end the podcast with Brett responding to this season's theme—We're all in it. Visit The Lost Church online at their website, . Follow them on Instagram Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/31691842

Brett Cline/The Lost Church San Francisco, Part 1 (S6E17) 06/04/2024

Brett Cline/The Lost Church San Francisco, Part 1 (S6E17) Brett Cline is, as he puts it, from the "Deep South." But he's such a California kid that by that he means Southern California. In Part 1, get to know Brett, who for the past decade or so has run The Lost Church performing arts theater. His life began in Orange County, where his parents ended up after meeting at UCLA and traveling around the world when his dad was a pilot in the Navy. Brett was heavily into the punk rock scene in SoCal in the Eighties (think bands like Social Distortion and Suicidal Tendencies, among others). But his love of music started in fourth grade when he snuck into the bedroom of an older neighbor kid and found the first record from Oingo Boingo, a band that changed his life. They were his first brush with alternative art, and soon became a defining point of his early personality. He dabbled in the four pillars of life in SoCal: He skateboarded, surfed, listened to punk rock, and ate at Taco Bell. Brett started playing drums in sixth grade and his first band was called High Voltage. He would write lyrics and draw album covers, while his friend Mark made beats on snare drums only. His mom was always a community person. She is a christian, but not a book-burner, as he says. She started a community organization centered around school issues: Citizens Action to Save Education (CASE). She was later school board president and continued to be involved in local politics around school issues. When his Navy service ended, Brett's dad got into the corporate world. He started several aviation companies. Today, Brett sees aspects of both of his parents in the foundation of The Lost Church. As a kid, he often went with his parents to community theaters. Brett's dad plays organ, his mom plays piano, one of his two brothers played clarinet, and his sister went to NYU and became an actor and singer. In high school, Brett started playing more music and always wanted to tour, though that never really worked out. He started playing bass and singing more. In 1989, he graduated high school and went to UC Santa Barbara. His college band, St. Rusticus, had the local record for getting shut down by cops the fastest. "Three songs in, and the cops were there." Going to UCSB introduced Brett to Northern California, partly because the school paired kids from SoCal with kids from NorCal in the dorms. He'd visited SF with his family when he was a kid. It was different from where he's from, but he didn't immediately like it. In college, though, he took trips up here and fell in love. He'd come up, do mushrooms and acid, and listen to older, more-mainstream rock. He got heavily into the Grateful Dead, even touring with them, as many fans do. After college, the plan was to move to SF with his friend Davey Lyle. (Lyle did many of the paintings seen today all around The Lost Church). But in his senior year, Brett got a D in art and learned that the Spanish he took at junior college didn't transfer to the UC. And so he dropped out, got a loan from his parents, bought a computer, scanner, and Photoshop, and started making album covers for local bands. Then his dad got him an internship in London with a graphic arts company and he took it. He saw many shows there but came back after only nine months. And when he came back, he moved immediately to San Francisco. With no job and no prospects, Brett moved in with his friend Davey, who'd already made the move up. They lived in a warehouse in the Mission on 20th near Harrison, then moved to Sixth and Market. It was December 1993. Check back next week for Part 2 and the origin story of The Lost Church. We recorded this podcast at in May 2024. /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/31591757

Peaboo and the Catz (S6 bonus) 05/30/2024

Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa/TNT Traysikel, Part 2 (S6E16) 05/28/2024

Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa/TNT Traysikel, Part 2 (S6E16) In Part 2, Mike, Paolo, and Rachel share the story of how TNT Traysikel came to be. We begin with Paolo, who describes the Mission art opening where he and Mike met. Besides having similar "falling in love with San Francisco" moments, they soon learned that back in the Philippines, their brothers had been friends. They hit it off pretty much right away. Mike learned that Paolo worked on films, including his series on YouTube. In 2017, the year after came into existence, Mike was invited to join the nonprofits' arts and cultural group. They were looking to do a placemaking project and wanted to connect with artists to do so. At that time, Mike was already a professor at SF State. He ran the sculpture and expanded practice program there. He had done public art on his own before, and remembered Paolo and his motorcycle riding. Mike started thinking about jeepneys and the Philippines, which were relics left on the islands after years of war. These thoughts sparked the idea for a tricycle jeepney. And so Mike and Paolo applied for a grant. Originally, they planned to build it from scratch. Before Paolo's web series, he had made some documentaries. His first thought about TNT was that it, too, would make a cool web series. He didn't think of it as political in the beginning. But these were the years of the previous presidential administration (just before COVID), and in hindsight, he now sees a clearer picture of what it meant from Day One. They got the grant on the idea that that the traysikel signaled the presence of Filipinos. They wanted to take older Filipinos (manongs and manangs) to buy groceries in SOMA. And they somehow wanted to make the vehicle a roving sculpture. A friend of Mike's told them about a traysikel for sale in Modesto. They bought it, picked it up, and right away, realized that it needed a lot of work. Mike and Paolo took the whole thing apart, rewelded it, and added support. By the time the 2019 came around, it was ready to roll. They showed up, just Paolo and Mike, and started playing Tagalog music from Paolo's iPhone around the traysikel. People came over and sang along, which gave them the idea for karaoke. Michelle Nguyen, a vintage scooterist friend of Paolo's, designed the look of and painted the TNT Traysikel for them. Also at Parol 2019, Rachel learned about the project. As the karaoke was coming into being, Paolo and Michael thought, Rachel's an amazing singer—maybe she could be the karaoke host? She was in. And so they applied for a second grant, this time through the SF Arts Commission, to make a movie about the traysikel with a musical component. The three of them would become equal collaborators. Mobile karaoke came to be in the early days of COVID, when people really wanted to release, to be out and free and with other people. They say that to them, TNT encapsulates joy, grief (the grief of what you leave behind when you emigrate), and storytelling. Their Sidenotes project focuses on one or two people sitting in the sidecar telling stories. The TNT crew collects and archives those stories. Through this work and everything else, they recently were rewarded with a Rainin Arts Fellowship to do another film. In summer 2025, they're taking TNT Traysikel on the road. We end the podcast going around the room to hear Paolo, Mike, and Rachel's responses to this year's theme on the podcast—We're all in it. Follow TNT Traysikel on Instagram and on YouTube: . Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/31489962

Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa/TNT Traysikel, Part 1 (S6E16) 05/21/2024

Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa/TNT Traysikel, Part 1 (S6E16) In this episode, we meet the humans behind the artistic and cultural project that is the . We start, in random order, with Mike Arceaga. Mike was born in the Philippines and moved to LA with his family when he was 10. He says that the transition from his homeland to LA was difficult. The family first landed in Highland Park, which Mike points out wasn't hip then. That's where he got started doing graffiti art. In the mid-to-late-Eighties, they moved, first to the Eagle Rock neighborhood in LA, then Pomona, where, by the time he moved there, he'd become a full-fledged graffiti artist. He says it's what got him into art In high school, Mike learned technical drawing. He went to junior college, had art school on his mind. He was in a hip-hop crew, tagged ramps, and was friends with skaters, but never skated himself. He also breakdanced, but says it never took. After high school, he just wanted to get out of his parents house, and so he signed up to join the Army. But when Mike's dad found out about that, he cried and urged him to go to school instead. And so he visited San Francisco to attend a summer program at the Academy of Art University. And he fell in love with The City almost immediately. He shares the moment of coming up the escalator at Powell BART and seeing the scene on the street as the moment SF got his heart. He loved walking around the hills before art class, where he was starting to meet artists from all over. And slowly, he discovered the rest of The City by hopping on Academy shuttles. Soon after this summer program, Mike came back to visit the Art Institute. When he and a friend saw the view from the roof at SFAI, he decided to try to get into school there. Next, we meet TNT Traysikel's Paolo Asuncion. Paolo came to the US from the Philippines when he was 14. Before that migration, he had found his first girlfriend as well as a friend group that wasn't bullying him. The move abroad disrupted that progress. Paolo's family first came to Ontario, California, just outside of LA and not far from where Mike and his family were. His mom had met a family in church and she and her three kids lived with them. A family of four crammed into a single bedroom. He went to high school all over LA, first in Echo Park (before it was hip), then in the Rampart District, and at Torrance High (think Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Then Paolo's mom put him in Marshall High in Las Feliz (think Grease). Paolo's dad was a fairly famous actor back in the Philippines. But when he moved to the US to be with family, he ended up managing the apartment building where they lived and did door-to-door sales. His parents soon got divorced and his dad went back to his home country. Paolo went to Diamond Bar High School his senior year (which he says was very Breakfast Club-ish). He started playing guitar, which he says got him in with the cool kids. He even formed a band, but after high school, he went back to the Philippines, where he got his girlfriend pregnant. Then Paolo moved back to Glendale in Southern California. He was still on a tourist visa and tried to get jobs that would sponsor his work visa, which was difficult. One day, his uncle in LA asked to help him move to SF and they left Glendale at 10 at night, drove up I-5 to 580, then crossed Bay Bridge at sunrise. Looking out the windshield at the scene in front of him, Paolo thought, WHAT IS THIS PLACE? He spent a week here on that trip, during which time he had the same Powell escalator experience as Mike. Heloved it so much that he decided to move here. A friend of his uncle's got him a graphic design job and in 1996, he moved here. Last but not least, we meet Rachel Lastimosa. Rachel was born and raised in San Diego, the kid of a Navy person, which is how her dad got his U.S. citizenship. Members of Rachel's family have been in SF since the Forties, and when she was a kid, they visited here a lot from San Diego. Rachel's first memories of San Francisco involve mostly touristy things. From a young age, 12 or so, she knew she wanted to live here. Rachel says she loved the culture here and felt a friendliness from strangers unlike what she experienced back home in San Diego. She grew up in a strict house and, because of that, was into extracurricular activities. Her parents expected her to cook and do laundry, but she escaped into music—playing, writing, and performing. Rachel wrote her first song when she was in first grade. Today, she plays piano, keyboards, and bass, and does vocals. And she produces and writes music. Rachel says she always wanted to build community. She helped put together the first culture night at her high school. But as soon as she could, after graduation, she came to San Francisco. In fact, SF State was the only school she applied to. Once here, she joined a band and majored in electronic music. This was the early 2000s and she's been here ever since. She writes scores for theater and films and has been in a few bands. A collaboration she did with the Filipino Center made her realize how art can bring communities together. Check back next week for Part 2 with Rachel, Paolo, and Mike. In it, they'll share the origin story for —the part motorcyle/sidecar, part karaoke machine, part mobile Filipino cultural pride project. We recorded this podcast at TNT HQ in South San Francisco in March 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/31394897

Danny Montoya/Butterfly Joint and Café, Part 2 (S6E15) 05/14/2024

Danny Montoya/Butterfly Joint and Café, Part 2 (S6E15) In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. After getting his credentials, Danny bounced around, teaching at a couple of San Francisco public schools before landing at Live Oak (a K–8 school in Potrero Hill). He stayed teaching kindergarten and first grade there for a total of 11 years. We shift gears in the recording to talk about how Danny met his wife. Full disclosure: I've known Erin Feher since around 2004 when we were both in the Journalism program at SF State. Back in 2020, Erin reached out to me on behalf of her new orgranization—, or Represent Collaborative. Periodically, our podcasts run on REPCO and it's been an honor to collaborate with them. Check them out and donate if you're able. Danny and Erin met around the time I lost touch with Erin (2005, when I graduated from State). He was DJing and the night Erin and some friends walked in, Danny broke one of his own rules by talking to a woman at a bar he was deejaying. Their first date involved riding bikes around SF. Years later, they had their first kid. Erin had to go back to work before Danny did, so he was able to stay home and take care of their infant. But after a year, he was both itching to do something and needed to when his wife got laid off. And this is how Butterfly Joint was founded. It married his two passions—woodworking and teaching. The first location was on Mission Street and lasted there for years. But when Danny and his wife moved their little family to the Outer Richmond and found a new-to-them community there, he decided to bring the shop with him. Danny shares the story of opening the café and learning to make vegan donuts. These days, the café is open every day. Donuts are now his No. 1 seller. They focus on hyper-local goods and like to do pop-up events once a month. Follow . Visit them at 4411 Cabrillo. For those with kids who are interested, go to their . Photography by Jeff Hunt /episode/index/show/storiedsf/id/31282897

Storied: San Francisco

TOPICS