Rightnowish

Dimming one's light in the face of haters is not something Lidia Rodriguez knows how to do. Whenever she gets comments from guys about her size or gender, the baritone player is quick to clap back with a joke and prove them wrong. "When I'm playing my bari sax, I feel huge. I feel powerful. I feel seven feet tall. I feel like no one could tell me s**t. Like I feel so good about myself. " Lidia Rod...

Welcome to the first episode of Liner Notes, the Rightnowish podcast series all about jazz in the Bay Area. We're starting this off with a conversation with someone who has a wealth of knowledge, especially when it comes to jazz, Greg Bridges. As a journalist and longtime radio host at Bay Area radio stations KCSM and KPFA, Greg is steeped in Bay Area jazz history. As a reoccurring host of events...

This episode originally aired on April 22, 2022 . Terisa Siagatonu's poetry navigates climate change and its impact on marginalized communities from the lens of someone who was proudly raised in San Francisco, by a family with deep Samoan roots. In our conversation, Terisa looks back at January 2022's underwater eruption that caused massive tsunamis in Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and other nations in Ocean...

This piece was originally a part of Rightnowish's 2021 series, Roll With Us, all about the Bay Area's community and culture on wheels. Every Sunday San Francisco's Richard Humphrey teaches weekly roller dance classes in San Leandro; his students have the honor of learning from someone who has been on quad skates for five decades. From 1979 to 1988, Richard was a part of the Golden Rollers, a trio...

Anwar Bey grew up in Southern California, but spent his formative, young adult years in San Francisco. He moved to the Bay Area to live out his dream of creating video games. Then in 2021, after spending a decade in Northern California, he moved to Johannesburg, South Africa. That's where he's found the clarity to write about the future. Bey is the author of a series of sci-fi stories titled, The...

Inside of Mohammad Gorjestani's office, there's hella artwork. The filmmaker and co-founder of Even/Odd Studios, has painted collages of wrestlers from Iran mounted near photographed images of Bay Area sideshows. There's stories embroidered on skateboard decks, family heirlooms in the form of pottery and even a tiny replica IranAir airplane. Books written in Farsi line the walls, and Persian carpe...

Imagine opening a letter from yourself as a high school student, addressed to the current version of you. 10, 15, or even 30 years ago, what did you care about? What were you curious about? Did you have fears about the world? goals of being a lawyer or a ball player? boy bands you wanted to see in concert? friendships that you hoped would last forever? Do you even remember the high school version...

Toby Brothers left the U.S. and fell in love with traveling the world. After working as an educator at The Athenian School in Danville, she initially left for Paris before moving to the United Kingdom. Once there, she became the founder and director of the London Literary Salon. The organization, in its simplest form, is a book club with a twist. They meet in-person or virtually, discuss classic w...

When photographer and filmmaker Aïdah Aaliyah Rasheed left her Northern California home in 2019, she knew that she had a job and housing awaiting her in the country of Kuwait. Rasheed and her husband, Stephen Jamal Leeper, took contracts working at a school, and as a part of their employment, the married couple and their children were given complimentary housing. “What’s nice about not having to t...

Richmond-raised photographer Christopher Nechodom retraced his family's roots to a small town in Mexico. In doing so, he left behind the pricey Bay Area -- a place that he loves dearly but was costing him more than money; peace of mind was at stake. After experiencing a series of traumatic events: a victim of armed robbery as a kid, losing a close friend to homicide as a young adult, and then narr...

This week on Rightnowish we've got a special episode from our friends at KQED's The California Report Magazine. They’ve launched a new series called MIXED: Stories of Mixed Race Californians.  Over 7 episodes, the hosts Sasha Khokha and Marisa Lagos have honest conversations with other mixed race Californians about the challenges and joys of being multi racial.  Learn more about your ad choices. V...

Northern California is this beautiful piece of land where high mountains, deep valleys, and cold beaches can bring about a sense of peace. At the same time, the people who live here are constantly debating the land itself. So over the past five weeks we decided to focus on stories broadly about life and land in Northern California, as a part of our From The Soil series. More specifically, we honed...

At the southern edge of the South Bay in Santa Clara County, where the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains meet the town of Gilroy, there is a grassy pasture. Here, a small stream runs through acres of land while cattle graze and birds fly above. This piece of land is a proposed mining site—but it's also traditional ceremonial ground for the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. For over 200 years, the Amah...

In honor of her late mother's efforts, Arieann Harrison is continuing the fight against environmental racism in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. She is the founder of Can We Live, an organization that is working with local residents to screen them for toxins and install devices to monitor airborne pollutants. Can We Live also offers scholarships for students interested in studyi...

On a steep hillside in San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Park, nestled between the Alemany Apartments, the 280 Freeway and the Bernal Heights Neighborhood, there’s a wine vineyard that doubles as a teaching tool. A patch of land adjacent to Alemany Farm is being cultivated by Christopher Renfro and Jannea Tschirch, the co-founders of The 280 Project. Their aim is to use public land to grow crops and intr...

On a crisp afternoon at the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen, a group of twenty one farmworkers suit up in firefighter gear. Woman and men take turns helping each other strap on backpacks and fire helmets in preparation for another intense day of prescribed burn training. These are carefully planned low intensity fires set under specific environmental conditions, intended to reduce the risk of cata...

A few miles northeast of the California state capital, in the city of Folsom, a public recreation area has recently been renamed Black Miners Bar, after years of being called Negro Bar. Historically, the site is where African American miners were relegated to panning during California’s Gold Rush of the mid-1800s. In the summer of 2022, California State Parks unanimously voted to change the name o...

This story is part of That’s My Word, KQED’s year-long exploration of Bay Area hip-hop history, with new content dropping all throughout 2023. Dave “Davey D” Cook is a cornerstone of hip-hop culture. He currently co-hosts KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio and serves as a processor of Africana studies at San Francisco State University, where he teaches popular courses on hip-hop and African American music. D...

This episode was originally part of the four-part series on BIG LOVE from 2021. We're revisiting it as a part of our 2023 kickoff series highlighting some of the best stories from our archives. AB Banks, defines love as "doing the right thing with a passion." That means taking care of themselves and their folks, and they see the potential of self-love to be communal and revolutionary. Day-to-day A...

This episode was originally part of the Roll With Us: Community and Culture on Wheels series from 2021. We're revisiting it as a part of our 2023 kickoff series highlighting some of the best stories from our archives. Dueñas Car Club is a sisterhood that rolls on 100-spoke rims. Angel Romero is president of the club, which was founded in 2019 and is based in Sunnyvale, California. She's been cruis...

This episode was originally part of the "Reel Talk: Filmmaking in the Bay Area… Rightnowish" series from 2021. We're revisiting it as a part of our 2023 kickoff series highlighting some of the best stories from our archives. San Francisco State graduates Alba Roland Mejia and Jon Warfield Harrison are in the early stages of their careers as filmmakers, but their work is already being supported by...

This episode was originally part of the "Rightnowish: Musicians to Know" series from 2021. We're revisiting it as a part of our 2023 kickoff series highlighting some of the best stories from our archives.   Nappy Nina is a lyricist with a smooth-sultry delivery that's almost jazz-like, especially when coupled with some signature boom-bap production. In her songs, she raps about breakups, missing O...

If you're going to use Bay Area slang, use it right. "Slap" is a term used in this region since the early 2000s to describe the sound of music laden with hard-hitting 808 drum machine beats and heavy bass lines. It's not a word to describe a quality sandwich. While language, especially slang, is full of words with multiple meanings, many folks from the soil have been on a mission to set the record...

Chef Avery Zeus is a whiz at combining flavors. They use that same energy when they bring queer people of color together at the monthly "Taco Tuesgay" pop-up event in Oakland. Zeus' company, Concept Kitchen, plans the catering for the event, but their main business is making sure that other QTIBIPOC-led food start-ups have the resources to succeed in the hospitality industry through kitchen access...

It seems like LarrenWong can do a little bit of everything. He's a former linebacker who played football at James Logan High School and Northwestern University, before signing a professional contract with the Seattle Seahawks. He's an avid reader, student of art history and a talented painter. He's a rising R&B star who sings, writes and plays the guitar; earlier this year he dropped a quality alb...