Storied: San Francisco

Nearly 100 years ago, the stretch of Kearny Street from Jackson south all the way down to Market was filled with Filipino shops, restaurants, and SRO hotels. Perhaps most notably, the International Hotel (I-Hotel) was located at the intersection of Kearny and Jackson. Today, that space is occupied by a residence for older folks, some of whom have connections to the last of the mostly immigrant pop...

Welcome to this bonus episode! There was just way, way too much good stuff we cut for time out of Parts 1 and 2 to just let lie on the cutting room floor. We begin with Jeff's suggestion about what Good Vibrations ' mission is and Carol Queen's expounding on that. Carol discusses what Good Vibes stands for and against in this world. We chat about how the stores welcome folks of all sexual and gend...

"San Francisco is miraculous," according to Good Vibrations staff sexologist Carol Queen . We couldn't have said it better ourselves. This episode picks up where Part 1 left off, with our chat with Carol. We cover topics like the founding of Good Vibes and its creator, Joani Blank. Blank, who appeared on several enemies lists for her feminism and activism (hello, good trouble), and started the tin...

Happy Valentine's Day! This episode is all about San Francisco's  Good Vibrations because, well, duh. It's also about Good Vibes' Antique Vibrator Museum . To guide us, we meet Carol Queen . Carol is the staff sexologist, a title she earned with her PhD in the subject. Carol grew up in small-town Oregon, just south of Eugene. She says she was interested in sex as long as she can remember, despite...

In Part 2, we continue our talk with Dontaye. He dives into his own history of cooking and working in restaurants. It starts with a program he got into in high school that had him serving meals to non-English speakers in Burlingame and goes up through his time doing an externship at Delfina . Delfina happened while Dontaye went to City College, but the story of how he got connected is more direct...

Dontaye Ball  has brought gumbo to San Francisco. Now, he's doing everything he can to make it this country's national dish. In this episode, we meet Dontaye. Born and raised in The City, Dontaye has lived with gumbo just about his entire life. Often served at big family meals, he remembers fondly that while gumbo might've been the center of the culinary realm, it was always more about being with...

We start Part 2 talking, briefly, about the 2016 election. Then we move on to COVID and how the pandemic affected  Thee Parkside . In a word, it was devastating, but Malia and her crew rose to the challenge. They had opened La Lucha coffee from the front window of the joint in 2015, and were able to keep that going. Because of Parkside's kitchen, they were considered essential and so were able to...

​San Francisco is about to get its first new LGBTQ bar in a long, long time, y'all. In this episode, we'll meet Malia Spanyol . Currently, Malia owns Thee Parkside. She was born in Honolulu and went to ASU in Tempe, Arizona. But she hated it and came to San Francisco in 1989 just before the big earthquake that year. Malia was already out and was here looking for her people. She worked, went to sch...

In Part 2, we pick up our conversation with Cody about Rainbow's bulk section. There's even talk of " The Bulk Section at Rainbow " as a spinoff podcast. Then we move on to the cheese department. Gordon Edgar  is a name you should know if you even remotely tolerate cheese. With Gordon at the helm, Rainbow has won many, many awards for its cheese department. If you're anything like me, you know exa...

In this episode, we kick off the new year by resuming our series on San Francisco co-ops . This one is all about Rainbow Grocery Cooperative . To guide us, we'll meet Cody Frost , a marketing and creative strategist at Rainbow for the last three-and-a-half years. Cody has been a worker/owner at Rainbow for almost 16 years. He grew up in Carmichael, California, just outside of Sacramento, in the 19...

In Part 2 of our episode with Arizmendi Bakery , we hear from baker/owners Lizzy Harvey  and  Aeri Swendson . Lizzy shares her story of being born and raised in San Francisco, leaving for college and coming back, and what, besides baking, she's up to these days (namely, circus and aerial arts). After her return to The City, she was teaching here and got a grant to teach English for one year in Cór...

Several of the worker/owners at Arizmendi Bakery  on Ninth Avenue have been there since the place opened 22 years ago. Around half of them have worked there for two decades. Continuing our series on  San Francisco co-ops , this time we travel to the Inner Sunset and this special place that serves up so many delicious treats. Whether it's a morning pastry, an evening vegetarian pizza, or an delicio...

In this special episode, Jeff and Erin ( Bitch Talk Podcast )  talk about what it means (and costs) to run our respective shows, with a special shout-out to BFF . Then we plug all the wonderful non-profits we're supporting this year. We want YOU to support us and all of them because none of us can do any of this without each other. Anything you can give is deeply appreciated. Photography by Michel...

In Part 2 of our episode on Other Avenues Grocery Cooperative , the conversation starts with food, food systems, and how humans can better steward the land and sea in our daily and collective lives. Celia talks about how, with co-ops, money generally stays in the community. After a quick aside for Jeff's lasagna story, we discuss food preservation and distribution, the myth of food scarcity, and t...

Celia LoBuono Gonzalez joins us on the show this episode to share her story and that of Other Avenues Grocery Cooperative . Part 1 starts off with Celia sharing the story of her life up to the point of getting a job at Other Avenues. From there, we pivot to the colorful and, we think, important story of food in San Francisco and the Bay Area starting in the 1960s. From a collection of neighborhood...

There's wine grapes being grown in San Francisco. In Part 2, Christopher tells us all about the  280 Project , a viticulture apprenticeship and wine school. He partnered with a winemaker from Napa, a professor at UC Davis, and others back at home to bring BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and people who feel marginalized and want to learn anything at all about wine together to do just that. The 280 Project is a ver...

Christopher Renfro moved to San Francisco 16 years ago and ran into a lot of what some might call luck. In this episode, we talk about Christopher's work with Alemany Farm . The largest agricultural site in The City, volunteers grow, harvest, and distribute vegetables and fruit from the 3.5-acre plot just below Bernal Hill. He also tells us about the work he and Haley Garabato began with the  Feed...

In Part 4, we meet Rob Thompson , federal preservation officer at the Presidio Trust. Rob shares the history of San Francisco's pet cemetery, which dates back to 1952. The pet cemetery sits in a part of the Presidio known as Cavalry Bowl, which for a century was dedicated to animal management when the Presidio was home to the U.S. Army. The cemetery was established by Army families during that tim...

In Part 3, Courtney tells us all about Alma deBretteville Spreckels, the San Francisco sugar baroness who built the Legion of Honor at Lincoln Park, the cemetery-turned-golf course in the northwest corner of The City. From there, we recount the history of the "Big Four" cemeteries, which were located in and around the intersection of Geary and Masonic. Then we hand things over to Kathy McCall, dir...

In Part 2 of our four-part series, we first hear from Courtney Minick of Here Lies a Story about the parking lot just outside of Mission Dolores. Then we meet Andy Galvan, the Mission's curator. He tells us all about his work and his Ohlone/Bay Miwok ancestral connection to the place, including the graveyard. We end this episode with a walking tour of the graveyard, which Andy guided us on. Among...

San Francisco's cemetery history is rich, to say the least. It goes something like this: Mission Dolores cemetery Yerba Buena cemetery San Francisco National Cemetery (in the Presidio) City Cemetery/Golden Gate Cemetery The Big 4—Calvary, Odd Fellows (including the Columbarium), Masonic, Laurel Hill In Part 1 of the four-part series we're doing on San Francisco Cemeteries , we'll meet Courtney Min...

Funny thing: Do a podcast like ours long enough, and the most random and randomly awesome tidbits will pop in and make the cut. Last episode, it was the Doc Ellis "LSD" perfect game that MLB doesn't like to talk about. In Part 2 of this episode, it's New Orleans and P.T. Barnum. Musée Mécanique owner Dan Zelinsky shares the story of how his dad, Ed, bought the collection of the original San Franci...

It can get really loud inside Musée Méchanique. Walk in the place and you're immediately transformed, in both time and space, to another world, another era. The magic almost slaps you in the face, hitting all five senses at the same time. And you can't help but feel the nostalgia coursing through your veins. In Part 1 of this episode, meet the arcade's roller-skating owner, Dan Zelinsky. Dan trace...

Bear with us a moment. We're gonna go stats nerd on you. As of the publication of this episode, the  San Francisco Giants  have played a total of 1,892 games at the stadium known these days as Oracle Park. Each of those games sees a minimum of 27 at-bats for Giants players. That leaves us with at least 51,057 chances for a hitter to send a home run ball into the waters of  McCovey Cove . And it's...

Here we go. Our first episode of Season 5 was recorded out on the water.  McCovey Cove  is familiar to Giants fans, whether you've been in the water or not. It's that tiny waterway nestled between the ballpark (PacBell Park, SBC Park, AT&T Park, Oracle Park ...) and the strip of human-engineered land across the way. Baseball players sometimes hit baseballs out of the ballpark and into the water. B...