Storied: San Francisco

Taler Nicols wanted to paint. In this podcast, Taler begins by rattling off bars and restaurants in San Francisco that she used to frequent. She then talks of leaving a job she'd been at for a decade to help open  Let It Bleed Tattoo  in the Tenderloin in 2009. She ends the episode reflecting on the changes in the city over the last decade, as well as some signs of hope she's seeing now. If you mi...

Taler Nicols  is a fifth-generation San Franciscan. Her family here dates back to Potrero Hill when it was called Goat Hill. In this podcast, Taler, who is a tattooer now, talks about growing up in bars and restaurants in North Beach, thanks to her man-about-town dad. She ends the episode talking about neighborhoods and the changes in San Francisco this decade, ending on a positive, hopeful note....

Sherri Franklin loves animals. This episode, she starts off talking about Heidi—an eight-year-old Bassett hound who inspired Sherri to do something about senior dog care. And so, she founded Muttvile Senior Dog Rescue in 2007. Today, Muttville has found forever homes for more than 7,000 senior dogs, and they place 1,110 dogs in homes every year. If you're interested in fostering or adopting a seni...

How do you go from being a successful hair stylist who uprooted herself to move to the Bay Area to founding a senior dog rescue non-profit? That's the story of  Muttville  Founder and CEO Sherri Franklin. In this podcast, Sherri takes us on a journey from LA to the Bay Area. She shares her experiences in the 1989 earthquake. She ends this episode with her early volunteer work with the  SFSPCA . Ch...

This podcast picks up right where  Part 1  left off: With Danny Mac telling us about Emperor Norton's dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, as well as Norton's currency system. Danny goes on to talk about growing up in the Excelsior in the 1950s and '60s, the Vietnam War, his evolution as an artist and his dad's influence on it, and explorations of art theory. We recorded this podcast at  Macchiarini Creative...

Macchiarini Creative Designs  has been in North Beach since 1948. Today, it enjoys legacy business status. ​In this podcast, the studio's owner, Danny Mac as he's known to his friends and loved ones, talks about his father's involvement in the Bohemians (one of our city's early counter-culture groups) of the 1930s in San Francisco. He goes into detail about the group's plans to erect a giant statu...

What if, in the early days of your new job, you were tasked with these two things: 1. Moving a fabled city's collection of thousands of historical records (official papers, photos, ephemera, etc.) to a new building, and 2. Essentially establishing and adding to that city's archives. That's what life was like for San Francisco city archivist Susan Goldstein back when the public library moved into i...

San Francisco city archivist Susan Goldstein was drawn to history from a young age. She left her childhood home in Southern California to go to college out east. After a stint in Phoenix, she went to Austin where she worked in photo archiving at the University of Texas. In 1984, she came to the Bay Area to work on union archives at SF State. In this podcast, she talks about her evolution as an arc...

Uncle Damien is doing his part to make a positive difference in the world. In this podcast,  Uncle Damien  (Damien Posey) talks about Uncle Damien Speaks, his motivational speaking work. He found inspiration through a stint in federal prison,  Rudy Corpuz  and  United Playaz , and fellow motivational speaker  Eric Thomas . Damien ends the podcast talking about his love of San Francisco and doing w...

Motivational speaker  Uncle Damien  went through a lot to get here. In this podcast, Damien Posey, who was born and raised in San Francisco, talks about the journey that got him to where he is today. It's a story of a young man who had no positive male role models, who got shot at a young age, and who ended up in federal prison. But without those bad circumstances and decisions, he might never hav...

Patrick played some songs for us when we recorded. Three of those songs are featured here (the fourth appears at the end of  Part 2 ). Patrick's album  Welcome to the  End of the Empire , is available from Bottom Feeder Records.  Enjoy! Film photography by Michelle Kilfeather

For Patrick O'Malley, music and politics evolved side-by-side. In this podcast, Patrick talks about how he came to understand housing policy, both in San Francisco and statewide in California, through his day job. He goes on to tell us about some public-transit advocacy work he's done in light of Google busses and ride share companies in the city. He ends the episode talking about the various musi...

Patrick O'Malley started playing guitar at an early age. But it wasn't until his time in Santa Barbara that his music took on a new meaning for him—one of political activism. In this podcast, Patrick talks about growing up in Southern California and his arrival in San Francisco in the late-1990s. Among other things, he points to the write-in mayoral candidacy of Tom Ammiano in 1999 that really spa...

In this podcast,  Avengers  vocalist Penelope Houston talks about the legendary Sex Pistols show at Winterland that the Avengers opened. It's a story that includes Sid Vicious ODing (but surviving) at the afterparty. She goes on to talk about her solo musical career and resurrecting the Avengers. She ends with her work at the SF Public Library putting together its punk rock collection. If you miss...

Penelope Houston's family moved around the country quite a bit when she was a kid, eventually settling up in Washington state long enough for her to go to high school. She came to San Francisco to go to the Art Institute for visual arts, but quickly started going to shows and became friends with other kids who wanted to be up on stage. In this podcast, Penelope talks about the nascent San Francisc...

Ken Walton grew up in Sacramento always considering San Francisco a special place. He got inspired to do street photography after watching a documentary about Vivian Maier. In 2016, he founded ​ StreetFoto San Francisco , an annual international street photography festival. We caught up with Ken at this year's festival and chatted with him about San Francisco in 1990s and what street photography m...

Specs is special. In a city with a history of providing safe harbor (literally and figuratively) to so many over the years, the bar encompasses the spirit of San Francisco perfectly. In this podcast, Elly Simmons, whose parents Specs and Sonia opened the bar in 1968, talks about the documentary movie she's making about the place, its history, and her folks. If you love Specs and want its history d...

North Beach is still alive. And one of its best and longest-lasting watering holes, Specs, is still a San Francisco treasure. In this podcast, the current co-owner of the bar, Elly Simmons, tells the story of how her parents got together. Elly's dad, Richard "Specs" Simmons, and her mom, Sonia, met at Vesuvio across Columbus Street in 1952. It's a wild ride that takes us all over the neighborhood...

In this podcast, artist William Rhodes talks about the 3.9 Art Collective and how it influenced his latest show, Threaded Memories. The exhibition, up at the  African-American Art and Culture Complex  now through Aug. 2, celebrates the community that lived in the Fillmore during that neighborhood's "Harlem of the West" days. To kick off the show, William held a party called Juke City in which he i...

In this podcast, artist  William Rhodes  talks about growing up in Baltimore, some similarities between there and San Francisco, moving to the city, the art of the Mission, and establishing his own art experience here. Williams's show, Threaded Memories, is up at the  African American Art and Culture Complex  now through Aug. 2. He'll be giving an artist's talk there next  Thursday, July 25 , at 6...

At SF State, Joy Ng's senior thesis covered the history of hip-hop as resistance and using the art form to make something out of nothing. Since graduating, she has run a website of critical essays with the tagline, " Hip Hop x Asian America ." In this podcast, Joy discusses the cultural context that gave rise to hip-hop, the history of the genre, local artist  Ruby Ibarra , and her deep dives into...

Joy Ng  is a born-and-raised San Franciscan. In this episode, Joy talks about her childhood, in Chinatown, North Beach, and a couple other neighborhoods. She ends with her time at SF State, where she changed her major and got involved in community organizing. A large influence in that shift was Curtis Choy's documentary,  The Fall of the I-Hotel . FoundSF has more info on the story of the  Interna...

We're not quite sure how Joe Bagale keeps up with all the music he's created or been part of performing or recording. In this podcast, he takes us through his journey after arriving in San Francisco back in 2003. It involves several living situations with in-house studios, his first visit to the Boom Boom Room, a serendipitous date, playing and touring with Mickey Hart, joining Jazz Mafia, and eve...

It's kinda fitting that this is the 80th episode overall for this podcast (49 in Season 1; 31 and counting in this current season, Season 2). Through all but two episodes so far, the intro and outro music has been by the subject of this episode. Joe Bagale moved to San Francisco from New York State in 2003. In this episode, Joe talks about his life back east, which centered heavily around music. H...

In Part 1 of this podcast,  Project Open Hand volunteer Dana Dawson took us through the history of the non-profit and told us all about what it does for the sick and dying of San Francisco and the Bay Area today. In this episode, Dana is joined by four of her fellow volunteers who've become like a second family for one another. They talk about meeting through their volunteer work and what it means...