Storied: San Francisco

One of Uncle Damien Posey's favorite things to tell people is that he's "not a role model, he's a real model." We checked in with our Season 2, Episode 38 storyteller last week to see how he's doing and how he's feeling about the current uprising for racial justice. In this special podcast,  Damien  shares some of his own experiences with racism in The City, his thoughts on the current uprising an...

In this special episode, S2E49 storyteller Chloe Jackman shares her perspectives on race and the current uprising for racial justice. The daughter of a Black man and a white woman, she was often made to feel "not Black enough." But over time, she was able to defy those norms and embrace the entirety of her identity. One of Chloe's main hopes coming out of the worldwide and ongoing protests is that...

Thea Matthews is a powerful poet. In this podcast, Thea picks up where she left off in Part 1 , talking about the early days of her writing and performing poetry. She helped established the Black Student Union at City College and later went to UC Berkeley, commuting the whole time from her home in The City. Later in the episode, Thea reflects on the current uprising for racial and social justice....

Poet, activist, and scholar Thea Matthews grew up in the Excelsior, which to this day is still a largely ungentrified, working-class neighborhood in San Francisco. In this podcast, Thea talks about growing up as a Black/Mexican/Indigenous kid with a single mom in San Francisco in the 1990s. Most of her childhood experiences with her Blackness were negative, but they later formed a backdrop to her...

In this special episode, we listen to artist William Rhodes talk about his arrival in San Francisco back in 2008. It wasn't exactly the city he had imagined. Together with other Black artists here, he helped found the Three Point Nine Art Collective , and that helped William feel grounded in community and what he loves to do. But it of course didn't stop the racist micro-aggressions he experienced...

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez dove head-first into a career in journalism in his hometown of San Francisco. In this podcast, the young veteran reporter takes us through the later days of his time in City College's journalism program. After a brief stint at SF State, Joe got hired to write for the SF Bay Guardian, and rode it out until that weekly folded. He soon found work as a reporter and opinion col...

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez grew up in Cow Hollow, and he'd like you to know what that means. In this podcast, the prolific San Francisco journalist tells the story of how his parents met (it involves his mom and uncle hitchhiking from Los Angeles to San Francisco). He talks about the neighborhood where he grew up and all the misconceptions that surround it. An influential neighbor he had back then l...

In this podcast, District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen picks up where she left off in Part 1 , talking about her work at La Raza Centro Legal in the Mission. She goes on a verbal tour of places in the Mission she hung out (hello, margaritas at Latin American Club!). She applied for and got a job as a legislative aide to then-D9 Supervisor David Campos. Fast-forward to 2016, when she was tapped to ru...

In this podcast, District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen tells the story of how her parents, one from Israel, one from Milwaukee, met in Los Angeles, where she grew up. She went to college at UC San Diego and engaged in activism on the state level, fighting props 187 and 209 . After graduation, she wanted to learn Spanish, and she spent a couple of years in Barcelona. She came back to the states to go...

In this podcast, JoEllen goes into detail about her various roles at Blue Bottle, including a brief stint in New York City. When she returned to San Francisco in 2012, she started formulating a business plan. With the support of her bosses at Blue Bottle, that plan ended up being Pinhole Coffee , which opened in Bernal Heights in 2014. Pinhole is open with reduced hours and a smaller menu during s...

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...