Storied: San Francisco

BFF.fm founder Amanda Guest first visited San Francisco as a kid with her family from Massachusetts. Her first trip here as adult was in 2007, when she came as part of the Game Developers Conference. For Part 1 of Amanda's podcast, she'll talk about some of those times spent in the city before she had the experience that ultimately inspired her to move here. We recorded this episode in BFF's studi...

Ryan Akerberg had been in San Francisco for only a couple of weeks when his friend from Boulder, Colorado, tapped him on the shoulder in a cafe. That random meeting eventually resulted in Ryan's owning a company. He has now been washing windows with Intelligent Window Cleaning for nearly 11 years. In this episode of Storied: San Francisco, Ryan talks about what it's like to be a small-business own...

Ryan Akerberg  moved to San Francisco 12 years ago from Colorado, and Iowa before that. Like many of us, he arrived without a job or a plan to make the gobs of money that are required for city living. With his background in bartending, he decided to try for a job in fine dining. This episode of Storied: San Francisco is all about Ryan's first job in the city. Check back Thursday for Part 2. Ryan a...

Broke-Ass Stuart does and has done a lot of things. He moved to San Francisco in 2003 and started his website,  Broke-Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website , in 2004. He's had a national TV show, hosted a talk show, and in 2015, he ran for mayor of SF. In this podcast, Stuart will tell a few different stories from around the time that he came to San Francisco from Santa Cruz. In addition to other things, s...

H.P. Mendoza makes music and movies. He's quite good at doing both. But video games are another love of his. Several years ago, he started an arcade. That's right, a video game arcade. In this podcast, H.P. will share the story of how Mission Arcade was born. We recorded at H.P.'s house in the Mission in December 2017. Film photography by Michelle Kilfeather

H.P. Mendoza, director of  Colma: The Musical ,  I Am a Ghost , and the upcoming  Bitter Melon , loves video games. In addition to music and movies, they are a prominent fixture in his life. In this episode of Storied: San Francisco, H.P. will talk about the origins of that love of video games. He and I also talked about a couple of the long-gone video game arcades in SF. We recorded this podcast...

It's fair to say that homelessness is Kevin Fagan's favorite beat. The veteran SF Chronicle reporter was the only beat reporter in the U.S. covering homelessness full-time from 2003 to 2006. It was during that time that he met Jill May. Episode 13, Part 3 is all about Jill. Film photography by Michelle Kilfeather

In 2003, San Francisco Chronicle editors put Kevin Fagan and a photographer on the streets, literally, to live among the homeless population in order to really capture what that life was like. In this episode, Part 2 of a three-part podcast, Kevin will talk about life on the streets of San Francisco, specifically right around the time of Super Bowl 50, in early 2016. Around 350 homeless people mov...

In October 2017, a series of wild fires swept through parts of Napa, Sonoma, Solano, and Mendocino counties, claiming the lives of many residents, leveling houses and business structures, displacing families, and killing livestock and other animals. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan, who had already covered many disasters in addition to writing prize-winning stories about the homeless p...

Shortly after the 2016 election, Morgan Shidler got together with friend and former coworker Harmony Fraga, who owns The Social Study. Out of their conversation that night, That's What She Said, an all-women's monthly speaking event, was born. In Part 2 of her Storied: San Francisco podcast, Morgan will talk about starting That's What She Said and the importance of having a space where women feel...

Morgan Shidler grew up in Rohnert Park and moved to San Francisco in 2003, right around the time of the Iraq War. For Part 1 of her episode of Storied: San Francisco, Morgan will talk about going to a protest of that war, and how it changed her life. After that, Morgan will tell a ghost story she shared with me that was just too good to leave out. Check back Thursday for Part 2 of Morgan's podcast...

For Part 2 of Lavay and Chris's episode, they'll talk about an unusual business meeting they had, the time they played for Bill Clinton's Saxophone Club , and the time in 1992 when they went to see Solomon Burke at Slim's. Lavay will share the story of the Swing for Choice benefit show she did with Ledisi, and she'll lament further on how San Francisco nightclubs used to be run. If you haven't lis...

Lavay Smith and Chris Siebert have been making music in San Francisco for more than 20 years. Their band, Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers , plays all around the Bay Area all the time. Chris and Lavay also do regular gigs at the Royal Cuckoo Lounge every Sunday. For this podcast, part one of two, Chris and Lavay discuss how the band got started, the SF music scene of the late-1980s, and...

For the majority of his professional career, Graham Cowley was a medical examiner. After a brief stint in his native England, he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, then to San Francisco in the 1980s. He retired in 2011. In this episode of the podcast, Graham talks about a particular call he got for a man who died on the BART tracks. Later in the episode, he shares one of his last calls, and the...

Holly DeVille has been a fixture in the drag queen scene in San Francisco since the early 2000s. She got her start on Billy Priest's birthday at Aunt Charlie's. After becoming a regular performer there, she moved over in the Tenderloin to Deco Lounge, the spot that is now Emperor Norton's Boozeland. In this episode of Storied: San Francisco, Billy Priest describes what it was like getting started...

San Francisco street artist fnnch first caught my eye when I started seeing his honey bears on buildings and mailboxes around the Mission. I've always appreciated street art, but these bears were something special, with their precision and cheeky playfulness. For this episode of Storied: San Francisco, fnnch describes what it was like to get started doing street art in Duboce Park. After gaining m...

For Part 2 of Jim Murphy's Storied: San Francisco podcast, he talks about his brush with little-known acts such as Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company, how he just missed getting a deferment from the Vietnam War, and what it was like to come back home from the war. He ended up going to school at California College of the Arts and Crafts in Oakland, where he was brought face-to-fa...

Jim Murphy is a fourth-generation San Franciscan whose family originally arrived in the city in the 1850s in covered wagons. For this episode of Storied: San Francisco, hear Jim talk about the early days of Muni's "Man of the Month" program, life in and around Upper Noe Valley Playground, a.k.a., Day Street Park, and other San Francisco stories from the 1950s and '60s. Jim is part of the Chance to...

For many of us in San Francisco and the Bay Area, the presidential election of 2016 was a deeply disturbing and even traumatic event. It wasn't any different for Cynthia and Jeremy Pollock, longtime members of the  San Francisco League of Pissed-Off Voters . On this episode of Storied: San Francisco, Cynthia and Jeremy recount that dark day. This episode was recorded at Virgil's Sea Room in Septem...

Pizzaiola Laura Meyer loves to bake and she loves to compete. The winner of several domestic and international (think Italy) pizza contests, she has squared off against and prevailed over men many years her elder, and she has the trophies to prove it. But she's also a very chill and humble champ. On this episode of Storied: San Francisco, Laura, who's moved out of the kitchen to be the regional co...

When the pager went off inviting him to visit one more death scene, a warning from Medical Examiner's Office investigators came with it. Peter decided he was up for it. It was a short walk from his home, after all. But what he ended up seeing changed the course of his career in journalism. This episode of Storied: San Francisco is the third and final part of SF Chronicle Pop Culture Critic Peter H...

On the last episode of Storied: San Francisco, Chronicle Pop Culture Critic  Peter Hartlaub  told us how he ended up doing ride-alongs with the SF Medical Examiner's Office. On this podcast, Part 2 of a three-part episode, Peter describes the first time medical examiner's office investigators paged him to come to a "scene." It turned out to be not quite what Peter expected. If you haven't yet, lis...

We all pay our dues somehow. In 1999, budding reporter  Peter Hartlaub  needed to prove his mettle. He pitched and was assigned a feature story about the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office, which had been the subject of some bad press in recent months. The experience turned out to be enough for Peter to realize just what type of journalist he needed to be. This is Part 1 of Peter's Storied: S...

It's easy to overlook or forget, but for centuries now, San Francisco has been a military town. All around the Bay Area, in fact, from Forts Funston, Baker, Point, and Miley to the Presidio itself, the remnants of that era are very much with us today. For Part 2 of Bhautik's story, he tells the story of the time he visited the Nike Missile Site , aka, SF 88, in the Marin Headlands to take pictures...

Photographer Bhautik Joshi has seen a lot. He's originally from Sydney, Australia, moved to England as a young kid, and ended up in San Francisco with his wife about 10 years ago. He's always been interested in visual storytelling, and his  Flickr page  and  Instagram  account attest to that. Here he is in his own words: "Bhautik is a photo dork who lives in San Francisco. He focuses on capturing...