Storied: San Francisco

Listen in as I chat with Gaelan McKeown (director of the SF Art Book Fair) and Lisa Ellsworth (director of Development and Strategy at Minnesota Street Project Foundation) as talk all things 2025 San Francisco Art Book Fair . We recorded this podcast at the Minnesota Street Project Foundation in The Dog Patch in June 2025.

Dregs One is a lot of things, including a podcast host. In this episode, meet and get to know this prolific AF graffiti writer, hip-hop artist, and Bay historian. Dregs starts us off with the story of his parents. His paternal grandmother was abandoned as a child. Her mother, a Black woman, was raped by a white doctor. She moved to Chicago, where she met Dregs' grandfather, who was from Jamaica an...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Young Ed was studying at UC Davis and exploring his sexuality. He didn't consider himself bisexual, and instead thought that everyone was fluid. But he thought he had made a choice—that is, to be heterosexual. Part of that decision is that Ed always wanted a family of his own, and therefore, partnering with a woman was the only way to achieve that...

Listen in as Megan Rohrer and I reconnect after nearly four years to talk all about their new book, San Francisco's Transgender District . Look for it on Arcadia Publishing in August at your local bookstore. We recorded this bonus episode outside the front door of the Golden Gate Theater in the Transgender District in June 2025.

Ed Center and I begin this podcast with a toast. I'm proud to call Ed my friend. I met him a couple years at The Social Study , where we recorded this episode and where my wife, Erin Lim , bartends. From the first time I spoke with Ed, I knew I liked him. His energy and humor and intellect and heart are all boundless. I'm hella drawn to people like Ed. His story begins in Cebu in the Philippines,...

In Part 2, we start off talking about the underground nature of trans and drag safe spaces such as Compton's back in the Sixities, and well before that. Because of this, precise records of places and events are often hard to come by. Saoirse also speaks to the human psychology of needing other people to act in order to justify joining an action. Of course, everyone's threshold for this varies. Sha...

I joined Erin and Ange of Bitch Talk Podcast for another sit-down with Frameline Executive Director Allegra Madsen to talk all things Frameline49 . If it weren't obvious from that moniker, this year's is the 49th annual Frameline film festival, the largest and longest-running LGBTQIA fest in the world. After listening to this bonus episode, please browse the Frameline49 program , buy tickets, get...

Saoirse Grace was one of the first successful in vitro pregnancies in Massachusetts. In this episode, Saoirse is joined by her Compton's Cafeteria Riot play costar, Shane Zaldivar . The two share short versions of their respective life stories and how they got to the Bay Area and San Francisco. Then we dig into the history of the Compton's Cafeteria riot, followed by a conversation on the play abo...

Kyle Casey Chu , aka Panda Dulce is a fourth-generation Chinese-American. Her twin brother has autism, and the two went to Jefferson Elementary in the Sunset because the school had a good inclusive special education program. Kyle says that from an early age, she fought for her twin, all the way up to teaching classmates ASL to be able to communicate with her brother. After one year at Lick-Wilmerd...

Part 2 picks up right where we left off in Part 1, with Mike's move to The City. It was 2021, around the brief lull in COVID cases before Omicron hit. Full disclosure: This part of my episode on Mike has way more content about me than most of what I publish here on Storied. I guess you'll just have to deal. Mike knew he could fall back on bartending here while he figured out his next gig in his ne...

Welcome to this bonus episode about Homeless Children's Network (HCN). Malik Parker is the director of the Jabali Substance Use Disorder (SUD) program at HCN. He is originally from Fayetteville, North Carolina, but his mom is from Oakland. He left NC for The Bay the day after he graduated high school in 2011. Cameron Smith is HCN's director of Afrocentric programs. He is from Columbus, Ohio, but h...

Mike Irish is his actual name. Welcome to my episode with the current (it no longer works to say "new") owner of one of my favorite places in San Francisco— Emmy's Spaghetti Shack . I'm not sure where to begin, but I suppose a sprinkle of backstory can't hurt. Back in 2022, I recorded an episode with Emmy Kaplan , then the owner and forever the founder of Emmy's. It was a fun interview, and throug...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1, with Misstencil at a new school half a world away from her home in China. Her time in Switzerland started off in business school, a topic that she admits she's not the best at today. Aside from school, she visited other parts of Europe. She got a job in Switzerland, but called her family back home as much as she could afford to. One call she had w...

Misstencil was born on a mountain in China. In this episode, we meet artist Misstencil and she shares the story of her life. Before we get to that, be sure to RSVP to our Keep It Local show on May 23. Misstencil will be one of the six artists featured that evening, and for a very good reason. But we'll get to that. As the Communist Party came to power in China, her dad and his family found themsel...

Part 2 picks up where we left off in Part 1. Fredo and Laine had worked for the same company for a minute, but both left eventually. That social group they'd formed with a few other artists they worked with kept in touch. Some years went by. Fredo attended a workshop for artists at Hunt and Gather in the Sunset, and let Laine know about it. She says that he asked her to be his "accountability budd...

Alfredo Sainz 's grandfather came to US from Chihuahua, Mexico, in the Bracero Program during World War II. That family then migrated from El Paso, Texas, through New Mexico and Southern California, then as far north as San Francisco. In this episode, get to know Fredo and his 415 Zine co-founder and co-publisher, Laine Wiesemann . We begin Part 1 with Fredo. Fredo and his brother were his family'...

Check out my conversation with previous guest Lincoln Mitchell as we chat about Lincoln's new book, Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco . Look for Lincoln at the following events for his new book: April 29: He will be in conversation with Bill Issel discussing the book and what it can teach us about San Francisco today. Hosted by the Phoenix Project at the...

In Part 2, Kundan tell us about her decision to move to San Diego for college, where she would join her older sister, who'd been there for several years. But before that move south, she joined her sister and her sister's friends on a backpacking adventure in Europe. After some time there, Kundan and her sister went to India to visit family there. Then she came back to go to school. What began as t...

Listen in as SFFILM Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks and I discuss this year's San Francisco International Film Festival . Topics include: SFFILM's THE HORROR! festival spotlight Festival Talk: Filming in San Francisco The film Outerlands A Tribute to Chris Columbus + Rent Please visit SFFILM's website for more info, including where to RSVP for free events and where to get tickets for tick...

It's not often that I feature someone for the first time who's already been on the podcast … not once, but twice. Such is the case for my friend, artist/bartender/nonprofit arts organizer Kundan Baidwan . Before we dig into this one, please go back and check out Kundan's previous appearances on the show: Kundan Baidwan's Oral History of Aub Zam Zam Bar (2018) Rootstock Arts' Color Your Mind Festiv...

The Tenderloin Museum turns 10 years old this summer, and I for one am here to celebrate that. We first visited TLM early last year, when we talked with museum Executive Director Katie Conry . This bonus episode is all about the many, many programs going on as they approach a milestone anniversary. To start us off, we hear from Program Director Alex Spotto . Alex shares many (but not all) of the u...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1, with Woody's brief time at UC Berkeley across The Bay. During that one year of college, he lived at his grandmother's house in the Outer Richmond. His parents had recently split up, and both his parents moved, separately, to Marin.   In fact, Woody says, his parents' moves north forced him to think about and start to consider that San Francisco wa...

Ava Roy grew up in rural Western Massachusetts, in an area rich in literature and theater. Ava met Ann Podlozny back east before Ava came to California to attend Stanford, which is where she created a theater production group. Today, Ava is the founding artistic director of We Players , a 25-year-old theater company based in San Francisco. Ann, who'll play Lady Macbeth in an upcoming, all-woman pr...

On his mom's side, Woody LaBounty 's San Francisco roots go back to 1850. In Part 1, get to know Woody, who, today, is the president and CEO of SF Heritage . But he's so, so much more than that. He begins by tracing his lineage back to the early days of the Gold Rush. His maternal great-great-great-grandfather arrived here mid-Nineteenth Century. Woody even knows what ship he was on and the exact...

In Part 2, we start off talking about the significance of opening a Latinx-owned bookstore in the heart of the Mission, on 24th Street.   The folks who run Medicine for Nightmares call the entire space at 3036 24th Street—the bookstore in front and gallery in back—"The Portal." Josiah talks about the intention to utilize that gallery space to highlight art and artists in the Mission. The gallery i...