Storied: San Francisco

In this podcast, Mason picks up where they left off in Part 1 . We continue our conversation about Mason's background as a photographer. In 2010, they were, as they say, dating someone out of their league. They were celebrating New Years at a joint in South of Market and needed to pee. Naturally, they went outside. When it was their partner's turn, she gave Mason her purse. An SFPD cop approached...

Note: Our guest this week raises issues, true stories from their own life, of sexual and gender-based violence. Listener discretion is advised. This story starts in 1978. A young San Francisco punk rock woman with two kids saw that many of her peers were getting hooked on drugs. Suddenly, there was an influx of abandoned children and she decided to do something about it. She established a foster h...

​In this podcast, we continue our visit at Sisterhood Gardens and our series on City Gardens. Today, we meet Sisterhood volunteer Tim Wong . Tim shares his life story with us. He grew up on the Peninsula and moved to The City in 2016. This coincided with the founding of Sisterhood Gardens. Tim grew up in an area replete with butterflies, something he was drawn to from a young age. He was intereste...

Our City Gardens series continues with a visit to Sisterhood Gardens . Located on Brotherhood Way (get it?) in the OMI area of southwest San Francisco, the garden was established in 2016. In this podcast, we meet master gardener and Sisterhood volunteer Jamie Chan . In addition to her work at Sisterhood, Jamie teaches at SF State, where she's also a doctoral student. Jamie shares her story with us...

In our last episode, we met Danielle Fernandez  briefly when she told us all about the 10-year vision she's realizing out at Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary. In this podcast, we get to know Danielle. Danielle's parents were born and raised in San Francisco. They met at Sears and Roebuck on Geary and Masonic in the Sixties. After they were married and started having kids, the young couple mov...

In this podcast, Isaiah Powell  ( Part 1 / Part 2 ) catches us up with what's been going on since his Storied: SF episodes back in the summer of 2020. Between the land he and Danielle stewarded at Florence Fang Community Farm and today, they were at Adam Rogers Park . The philosophy behind Dragonspunk has always been that they go where the help is needed; it's never been about a single location. T...

In this podcast, Connie picks up where she left off in Part 1 . After living in San Francisco for about five years, she decided to go to UC Davis. While at college, she rode a bike for the first time, a story she shares with us. She majored in religious studies and classical Chinese. Both subjects were of interest for Connie; they didn't necessarily constitute a post-graduation or career plan. Aft...

Connie Chan  used to love listening to music at Tower Records. In this podcast, we get to know Connie, who's beginning her second year as supervisor of San Francisco's District 1 (more or less the Inner and Outer Richmond). She and her brother were born in Hong Kong and raised in Taiwan. Connie shares the story of how her parents met: Her dad was a Hong Kong cop who worked with youth; Connie's mom...

Trigger warning: Vincent's story is a difficult, painful, and traumatic one that involves several tales of violence, crime, and drug abuse. Please be warned that these episodes contain potentially triggering content. In this podcast, Vincent picks up where he left off in Part 1 . He describes a week-long crime spree he went on when he was 15. As he fought sentencing and was holed up in Oakland juv...

Trigger warning: We're extremely grateful to Vincent for sharing his life story. But it's a difficult, painful, and traumatic story that involves several tales of violence and abuse against women and children. Please be warned that these episodes with Vincent contain potentially triggering content. Vincent Ray Williams 's ancestors on both sides moved to the Bay Area for a better life. In this pod...

In this podcast, Arabella picks up where she left off in Part 1 . She was in New York working various journalism jobs but still not totally fulfilled. This is when her self-described "Goldilocks Era" began. She shipped herself back out West to live with family again, this time in Santa Clarita. From there, it was down to Orange County. Summoning her experiences writing online, she cold-called the...

Arabella DeLucco was raised by a village. In this podcast, we get to know Arabella, beginning with the story of her Filipino family. Her grandfather fled to the hills outside Manila during World War II, a story Arabella learned shortly before he died. When she was 5, Arabella came to Los Angeles to live with aunts and uncles who were already there. It was a cramped house, but she was a happy kid w...

Alfredo Uribe  and Lucia Ippolito-Gonzalez 's love story revolves around milk. In this special episode of Storied: SF, we get to know Fredo and we reconnect with Lucia, our guest on Season 3, Episode 42 ( Part 1  / Part 2 ). First, we hear from Fredo. He was born in Oakland and grew up in Pinole. His neighbors there had a dairy delivery company and San Francisco was a big part of their route. Youn...

In this podcast, Jim picks up where he left off in Part 1 . He didn't care for grammar school much, but he enjoyed his time at Sacred Heart High School, where he spent a lot of time playing saxophone in band. He says that, being a musician, he was accepted by just about every clique. Jim's house was a serious one. His dad worked to support four kids going to private school while his mom stayed hom...

Jim Argo 's family has deep San Francisco roots. In this podcast, we get to know Jim, a born-and-raised San Francisco mortgage broker. His grandparents on his mom's side met in the Marina, each a member of an immigrant family from Italy. Jim's grandfather played saxophone and met his grandmother at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition . His great-grandfather on his dad's side took his child...

In this podcast, Rachele picks up where she left off in Part 1 . Her heart broke when she moved from San Francisco to Oakland, but it made sense given her new job as a reporter at the Tri-Valley Times . Oakland has changed a lot in Rachele's nearly 40 years there, but she came to love it nonetheless. The paper became the Contra Costa Times and her editors assigned Rachele to the medicine beat. She...

Rachele Kanigel  comes from a long line of readers. In this podcast, Rachele shares her life story with us. Today, she's the chair of the Journalism Department at SF State. She's published The Diversity Style Guide , among other books. She also was one of Jeff's teachers back in 2005 when he went to SF State, so there's that. Rachele was born in Brooklyn and raised in a suburb of New York City on...

In this podcast, Alex picks up where he left off in Part 1 , with his first trip to San Francisco. He was with his dad and much older sister when she was scouting colleges. They ended up staying with family friends in Presidio Heights. He shares the stories of things they did and saw while here in the 1990s. Alex spent a lot of time in New York City, where his sister wound up going to college. Lat...

Both of Alex Maxa 's parents are journalists. In this episode, we hear the life story of the founder of Gillibus , who "specialize in not only Bay Area day trips, nighttime cruises, and mobile performances but also stationary events and overnight camping." Alex's granddad on his dad's side was in the Army, and so his dad moved around a lot, but ended up in Washington, DC, for high school. He was t...

​​This is the final installment in our four-part series with Creativity Explored , whose mission is "to provide developmentally disabled people access to the human right of creative expression." Please listen to Part 1 , Part 2 , and Part 3  if you haven't already. Vincent Jackson  has been making art at Creativity Explored for more than half of his life. In this podcast, Vincent shares his life s...

This is the third in a four-part series we're doing with Creativity Explored . CE's mission is "to provide developmentally disabled people access to the human right of creative expression." Please listen to Part 1  and Part 2 and check back next week for the final episode in this series, with artist Vincent Jackson. You'll hear Vincent a little in the background as he sat in with Jeff and Paul dur...

This episode is the second in a series we're doing with Creativity Explored . CE's mission is "to provide developmentally disabled people access to the human right of creative expression." Check back Thursday for the next episode in this series, where we meet Studio Director Paul Moshammer. ​ Joseph "JD" Green  lives close enough to Creativity Explored on 16th Street that he walks to get there. JD...

This episode is the first in a series we're doing with Creativity Explored . CE's mission is "to provide developmentally disabled people access to the human right of creative expression." Check back next week for the next episode in this series. In her own words, Linda Johnson "always had a passion for city life." In this podcast, the executive director of Creativity Explored shares her life story...

In this episode, Kim picks up where she left off in Part 1 , with her decision in 1985 to stay in town and go to college at SF State. She was, as she says, "deeply" into politics. She attended protests at the DNC in 1984, which took place in San Francisco. She felt pressures from the Red Power Movement, and talks about how tricky it was to be just the right amount of Indian. It was the middle of t...

  Kim Shuck 's parents met on Market Street in the late-1950s when her dad wrestled an ocelot away from its grips on her mom. In this podcast, the San Francisco poet laureate emerita talks about the five generations of San Franciscans on her mom's side. Her dad joined the Navy partly to get out of Oklahoma. He was "career" for a while, but then left that to become an electronics engineer in Silico...