Storied: San Francisco

Remember when cafés had couches? In this podcast,  Pinhole Coffee owner Joellen Depakakibo walks us through her life growing up just outside of Chicago. She ended up going to college at DePaul and moving to Chicago, which lead to her first jobs in coffee shops. Check back Thursday for Part 2, when Joellen will tell us all about her gig at Blue Bottle and then her eventual departure to open Pinhole...

Businesses often have contingency plans, but few if any could've prepared for COVID-19. In this podcast, Ray Bair tells the story of how he came to own Cheese Plus , a beloved Russian Hill specialty food store that is open during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place. Leaving the job at Whole Foods that he had for nearly two decades, the store was a natural if difficult transition. In recent days, Ray, hi...

From Kansas farms to Austin bands, Cheese Plus owner Ray Bair's life experiences span quite a broad spectrum. In this podcast, Ray takes us back to the early '70s, when he'd spend summers on his grandparents' farm in Kansas. He'd return for the school year to his hometown of Dallas, where he spent his high-school days and stuck around a few years after graduating. A job lured him to Austin, where...

Living in San Francisco was never a foregone conclusion for Robin Galante . But growing up on the Peninsula, the city always held a certain allure for her. In this podcast, Robin talks about her life in the city. These days, in addition to doing original art for  Nocturne podcast , she's been making paintings of the  Balboa Theatre  and other Outer Richmond businesses and donating proceeds from th...

Growing up, Robin Galante felt she didn't fit in with kids in her neighborhood, and so she turned to her imagination at an early age. In this podcast, Robin, who grew up on the Peninsula in Los Altos, talks about her life there. Owing partly to her mom's creativity, she engaged in visual arts and never looked back. As a young girl and again as a teenager, she visited San Francisco and formed impre...

Marke Bieschke arrived in San Francisco in the mid-'90s, got a place to live, and got the first of a couple of dotcom jobs. Those were the days ... ​Today, Marke is the publisher and arts editor of  48 Hills  (fundraiser  here ). He's also part of a collective that owns  The Stud , San Francisco's oldest gay nightclub (fundraiser  here ). In this podcast, Marke shares the stories of his two-and-a-...

Marke Bieschke, who today is a member of the 17-person Stud Collective , which owns San Francisco's oldest gay nightclub, and is the publisher/arts editor of 48 Hills  and legacy keeper of the  SF Bay Guardian  archives, was throwing raves back when they were a novel thing. In this podcast, Marke traces his early life, from lower Ontario farms and inner-city Detroit abandoned buildings to early te...

A girly magazine might've drawn Arnold Townsend to San Francisco, but what has kept him here for more than five decades goes much, much deeper than that. In this podcast, Reverend Arnold tells the story of moving to the city in the late-'60s. At SF State (then known as "state college"), he quickly got involved with the Black Student Union (BSU), which led him to the work that's come to define his...

To help elevate the voices and stories of Black San Franciscans, we are rerunning this episode. Born in Phoenix in 1943 and raised in the all-black town of Rentiesville, Oklahoma, Arnold Townsend's family moved to Southern California when he was 6. He lived in Watts in LA on an integrated block. In this podcast, Arnold takes us through the early years of his life, with tales of racism, defiance, a...

In this episode, Josh talks all about what went into making the documentary Chinatown Rising , which he co-directed and produced. From his dad calling him about a bunch of video footage he was cleaning out of the garage to the opening of the CAAM Film Festival in 2019, the journey of making the movie is as remarkable as the documentary itself. If you missed  Part 1 , when Josh talked about his Chi...

​ Chinatown in San Francisco is so much more than ornate streetlamps. In this podcast, Josh Chuck, who co-directed and produced the documentary  Chinatown Rising , traces his family's story back a few generations and explains how they ended up the city. His parents met at Cameron House, where Josh was raised mostly. He has stories of he and his teenage friends finding fun all over town in the nine...

In this episode, Erin picks up where she left off in Part 1 , talking about her final year interning with the Giants. From there, she worked in TV production, where she met friend and Bitch Talk Podcast co-host, Angela Tabora (whom you might remember from Season 2 of this podcast). It was a fortuitous encounter, as the two would go on to travel around the world, make a documentary movie, and do a...

Erin Lim is a huge inspiration for our podcast. In this episode, Erin shares her parents' back stories and how they met. She talks about growing up in San Leandro, ice skating, going to Giants games with her dad and step-great-grandpa, and the various internships she had while in college. Full disclosure: Erin and Jeff are engaged and live together. Erin will talk about her podcast, Bitch Talk , i...

Aireene plays "Only Rock 'n' Roll" and "Bag Woman" for you. Photo by Jeff Hunt

Aireene Espiritu took her calling to become a musician seriously. In this podcast, Aireene takes us back through the story of her music. It started with open mics. Then she bought her first ukulele. From there, it's a winding journey across continents and back to the Bay Area, where Aireene established  Color-Coded Symphony . If you missed  Part 1 , please go back and listen to hear Aireene's orig...

Since she was a little girl, Aireene Espiritu has searched for a place where she felt she belonged. In this podcast, Aireene, who today is a musician, talks about her childhood in the Philippenes and on the East Coast. Her mom had to work three jobs to support her and her brother, and so Aireene came west to live with family in Milpitas. She eventually found her way to San Francisco, when she enro...

In a way, Jan Yanehiro's career has come full circle. In this podcast, Jan traces her work in Bay Area broadcast journalism, from humble beginnings in radio to hosting a nationally syndicated show for more than a decade. After leaving the field, the Academy of Art University asked Jan to establish and run its Multimedia Communications department, where she's been director for 12 years now. If you...

Jan Yanehiro defied familial pressures to follow her dream. In this podcast, Jan traces her story back to Hawaii, where she grew up a third-generation Japanese-American. She braved upsetting her parents to go to college in California, and after a short stint as a flight attendant following graduation, she came to San Francisco and got a job at a local radio station. We recorded this podcast at the...

Sometimes, it's the whackier ideas that stick. In this podcast, Adam picks up where he left off in  Part 1 , telling the story of how he came to own the  Balboa Theater . Along with the theater's general manager, Chloe Ginnever, he tells some of the history of the building and the theater itself. Adam and Chloe talk about some of the programming they do at the Balboa, and Adam ends the episode loo...

Adam Bergeron's parents are awesome. In this podcast, Adam, who today owns and operates the  Balboa Theater , shares the story of a cross-country roadtrip his family took back in 1977, and how they ended up in San Francisco at a particularly important moment in cinematic history. The family moved around quite a bit but ended up back on the East Coast, where Adam went to high school and college. He...

This episode is a little different for us. For starters, it's a little longer than what you're used to. But for good cause. In it, Dayna talks in some detail about the many cycles she's been through in her life of addiction-rehab-repeat. In between one of her cycles, she managed to get a degree in broadcasting, which helped her land jobs DJing at several Bay Area radio stations later. After her la...

Dayna Keyes never knew her real dad. In this podcast,  Dayna  talks about growing up in Mississippi. Her mom soon met the man who ended up helping to raise Dayna, and the family soon moved to Southern California. Dayna's love of make-believe and escape hinted at her young adulthood of acting, voiceover work, and eventually, drugs. ​We recorded this podcast at Caffe Trieste in North Beach in Februa...

Some people's trash is other people's art ... or, in George Rocha's case, their business. In this episode, George tells the story of his cross-country move to San Francisco. He found his own place in the Outer Sunset, a rental where he eventually built a backyard pool to skate in. A few years later, he started taking his old skateboards and making new ones out of them, the inspiration for  Iris Sk...

Skating and building ramps consumed much of George Rocha's childhood. In this podcast, George, who today owns and operates  Iris Skateboards , recounts various tales from his childhood on four wheels. He took a roadtrip to Portland right out of high school, his first taste of the West Coast and a world he had been reading about and seeing pictures of in magazines and videos. He would end up moving...

P. Segal wants San Francisco to be a city full of culture again. In this episode, P. charts her return to the city after college and a trip to Europe. She ran in art and intellectual circles in North Beach until her eviction from a place she lived there. She found an enormous house in the Western Addition and soon joined the Cacophony Society. Later, she opened Cafe Proust down the street. These d...