Storied: San Francisco

Project Open Hand , which today feeds more than 2,500 sick and dying people, started in 1985 when Ruth Brinker made meals for her friends and neighbors who were "wasting" from AIDS. In this podcast, POH volunteer Dana Dawson takes us through that history, talking about how the operation that started in a residential home today serves healthy meals and groceries with the help of more than 125 volun...

Since deciding to stay in San Francisco (see  Part 1 ), Margaret Casey has done a lot—been a poet, worked for various event spaces and event production companies, and moved into a houseboat on Mission Creek. In this podcast, Margaret fills us in on her life since she heard that saxophone in the Panhandle (also in Part 1). We recorded this episode on Margaret's houseboat, the Battlestar Gloriana, i...

​The theft of a Picasso in Australia. Getting framed by an old teacher. Cocaine shipments from South America. San Francisco cults in the 1970s. And someone playing the saxophone in the Panhandle on a random night in the early 1990s ... All of these things are involved in the story of why Mission Creek houseboat resident Margaret Casey came to San Francisco—and why she stayed. In this podcast, Marg...

Originally known as "Last Gasp Eco-Funnies," the publishing company that Ron Turner and others founded celebrates 50 years next April. In this podcast, Ron talks about starting  Last Gasp  with  Slow Death , an underground comic that featured art by Greg Irons, among others. Over the years, he's worked other artists, including R. Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, Trina Robbins, and more. Ron also shares sto...

Before he moved to the Bay Area in the late-1960s, Ron Turner spent his life in the San Joaquin Valley of California. In this podcast, he talks about various experiences he had around the valley, including time at Fresno State working on an underground newspaper where he exposed corruption at the Peace Corps and at the DA's Office in Fresno. He moved to San Francisco to go to SF State, hung out at...

La Cocina  serves as a resource for women of color and lower-income women who want to start a food business. Rosie Ortiz sure could cook, but she needed to learn business and other kitchen skills she didn't already have in order to get  Mission Boricua  off the ground. In this podcast, Rosie talks about her experience in the La Cocina program, which she began three years ago. She hopes to launch h...

Born and raised in the Mission District, Rosie Ortiz learned to cook by watching her mother. In this podcast, Rosie, the owner of  Mission Boricua , talks about San Francisco back in the day. She says that, over the years, her love of cooking evolved to the point where she found herself making more and more Puerto Rican dishes (Rosie is half-Puerto Rican herself). Join us Thursday, when Rosie will...

No living situation is permanent, especially in San Francisco. The residents of the houseboats on Mission Creek, which are nestled amid one of the hottest areas of development in the city, are always are aware of this. In this podcast, Ginny Stearns and Bob Isaacson talk about their efforts to secure their homes on the water, the only such dwellings in San Francisco. Bob talks about a couple of bo...

Before there was the ballpark where the Giants play ... before the elevated I-280 freeway ... before most of the northeastern half of what we call the Mission District ... before the Gold Rush, there was Mission Bay. It was fed by many sources, the biggest of which was Mission Creek, which flowed over waterfalls down from Twin Peaks, by Mission Dolores, and down into the bay. Today, all that's lef...

​Bernadine Sewell (aka, Pinky Winchester) opened her restaurant,  Pinky and Red's , last summer in the UC Berkeley Student Union building. It was the culmination of a long journey—she and her daughter (Red) took courses with  La Cocina , the San Francisco non-profit that cultivates "low-income food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses." In this podcast, Pinky talks about that...

To help elevate the voices and stories of Black San Franciscans, we'll be rerunning those episodes the rest of this week. Bernadine Sewell has an alter ego: Pinky Winchester. When you meet this incredibly colorful woman, you know why. She and her daughter went through the La Cocina program and opened their restaurant,  Pinky and Red's , in the Berkeley Student Union building last summer. This podc...

To help elevate the voices and stories of Black San Franciscans, we'll be rerunning those episodes over the next few weeks. We'll be back with new stories from your neighbors down the road a bit. Darnay McPherson likes to stress that, when he was a kid growing up in San Francisco's Fillmore neighborhood in the 1960s, "no one locked their doors and police officers walked the beat." It was even more...

Stephanie Smith is a tattoo artist. It's an industry that, even in the Bay Area, is fairly male-dominated. In this podcast, Stephanie talks about a life and a career with its share of misogynistic experiences. Through them, she says, her sense of feminism was formed. She prides herself today on the quality of her art and her group of clients in and around San Francisco. Film photography by  Michel...

Stephanie Smith grew up on the East Coast, but never felt like she fit in with the general mindset out there. When it came time for her to (reluctantly) go to college, she picked the University of San Francisco in large part because of where it is. In this episode, Stephanie talks about moving to San Francisco, getting a degree in fine arts at USF, and then pursuing both getting her body covered i...

When we sat down to record with this week's podcast guest, John Law, he launched right into the research he did to get to know us better before meeting us. For the next seven minutes, we were delighted to hear John's telling of Ep. 15 storyteller and Mission Creek houseboat resident Sarah Davis's first LSD trip. Hold on tightly for this doozie of a meta-Storied podcast!

John Law  grew up quite the mischievous kid. That naturally led him to the Suicide Club , which he talked about in  Part 1 . In this podcast, John catches us up on what he's doing these days, which includes a lot of "urban exploration." The mindset he adopted with the Suicide Club informs a lot of his exploring these days, including to leave no trace at the sites you explore. He ends the podcast r...

John Law  hitchhiked his way to San Francisco. His dad was a college professor, and so the family moved around quite a bit in John's youth. He started hanging out with the "fun kids," which meant breaking into houses and stealing cars. He ran away back to one of his previous hometowns, in Michigan, and then set out for the Bay Area with a friend. In this episode, John (who, really, has done far to...

As we learned in  Part 1 , Liz Beeson-Evans grew up around horses. After splitting her childhood between Northern California and Jalisco, Mexico, Liz moved around a bit before returning to San Francisco with her now-husband. Spending time with her cousin in LA who's a  farrier  inspired her to get back to horses. In this episode, Liz talks about what being around horses can do for people. She foun...

There are many ways to get to San Francisco. For Caring Cowgirl owner Liz Beeson-Evans, it went something like this: She grew up between Northern California and Jalisco, Mexico, moving to the city in the late-2000s. After being far away from family a few years while living first in Brooklyn and then in Los Angeles, her fiancé-now-husband got a good job and they came back five years ago to a very d...

Forty years is a long time. That the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will celebrate that milestone this weekend speaks to the charity, creativity, and sense of community that the group brings to San Francisco. In this podcast,  Sister Anni Coque l'Doo  will continue the story of her work with the Sisters. When she moved to Oakland, she joined the  Ducal Council of Alameda , essentially establishin...

Born and raised in San Mateo, the young man who is  Sister Anni Coque l'Doo  went to the March on Washington in 1993 and came back inspired to become an activist. In this podcast, the third and final in our Sisters at 40 series (go back and listen to Sister Roma and Sister Mary Media if you missed them), Anni talks about her evolution as an activist. It culminated with her joining the  Sisters of...

​When Dino Medardo Rosso was approached to help restaurant workers better communicate with, and thus better understand, one another, he was onto something. In this podcast, Dino talks about expanding the work he does with  Lingo , his language-instruction business. It's all about bringing groups of people closer together through language. If you missed  Part 1 , when Dino talked about moving to Sa...

Dino Medardo Rosso studied 16 languages and he speaks five or six, depending on the day. He moved to San Francisco about a decade ago, and got work as a bicycle tour guide and then, a high school teacher. In this podcast, Dino tells the story of how a restaurant owner approached him seeking to solve the problem of her kitchen staff not being able to communicate effectively with the front-of-house...

Michael McConnell  owns a café and video store, but he's also an artist—one of a seemingly dying breed in San Francisco. In this podcast, he laments the loss of artists in the city over the last decade or so, adding that with their leaving, San Francisco is losing its character and its diversity. ​Michael will be having open studio this weekend at 1980 Bryant, Suite 414. And the Social Sketch we t...

It's one thing to be an artist and work in a café as a barista. It's another to be part owner of that café, and for it to double as one of the last video stores in San Francisco. In this podcast, Fayes Coffee owner Michael McConnell talks about moving to San Francisco in the late '90s and landing a job at Fayes within a year or so. Fast-forward to today, and the little coffee shop serves an import...