Storied: San Francisco

Listen in as I chat with Joanna Lioce all about the new Mabuhay Gardens. Joanna is booking monthly shows in the new legendary North Beach punk venue through the end of the year. Get tickets for the Oct. 3, 2025, Mabuhay Gardens show featuring Kelley Stoltz, White Lightning (PDX), and The Boars at EventBrite . We recorded this podcast at Vesuvio Café in September 2025.

Listen in as I chat with David Gonzales , creator of Homies and this year's San Francisco Lowrider Parade Grand Marshal. We recorded this podcast over Zoom in September 2025. Photo of David by Anthony Gonzales

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Although it made all kinds of sense for Shrey to move halfway around the world to go to art school, he says it was "an uphill battle" convincing his parents of the plan. Still, his mom was and is a champion of her son and his art. It was 2018 and Shrey was 20. We talk about his experience of arriving in San Francisco, a city that was "such a beaco...

Shrey Purohit is the kind of person everyone should know. Not know about (although obviously that's what this podcast aims to do), but know personally . In this podcast, Episode 2 of Season 8 of Storied: San Francisco, meet and get to know Shrey. A few of his art pieces are up at Mini Bar through Oct. 19 in our Every Kinda People show. And at the risk of being hyperbolic, through the experience of...

Part 2 picks up where we left off in Part 1. Marga had just arrived in San Francisco and lived in a collective house with a lesbian and two gay men ("of course, the decorations were fabulous"). It was a bit of a party house, known for throwing spectacular Halloween fests. Marga talks about collective living, chore charts and stuff like that. Eventually, the woman Marga drove across country with sp...

Marga Gomez grew up in Washington Heights, New York City, immersed in a family of Spanish-language entertainers. Welcome to Season 8, Episode 1 of Storied: San Francisco. I first learned of Marga more than a decade ago, through comedy and performance circles I was adjacent to. Because I don't have the world's best memory, I cannot recall exactly where or when I saw her perform, but I do remember f...

Listen in as I talk all things off-season and the upcoming eighth season of Storied. Topics include: The 2025 Listener Survey , which is up until 9/1/25. Take the survey and you could win a Storied: SF zip hoodie! The "Every Kinda People" art show at Mini Bar. Opening night is 9/4/25. What's new about the podcast? New music by Otis McDonald, shorter episodes, an even sharper focus on artists, acti...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Carolyn and I talk about making decisions and intentionality vs. circumstance, need, and necessity. We then go on to talk more about Carolyn's lifelong love of sports. She shares the story of her maternal grandmother coming from The Philippines to live with them and how they'd watch games together. It was the days when, in much of the country, if...

Carolyn Sideco 's story begins in The Philippines. Her dad, Tony Sideco, was born on the island of Cebu in 1938. Her mom, Linda, was born in Paniqui in 1942. By the time Carolyn's mom was born, the Japanese occupied The Philippines. Young Tony worked for the electric company, which sent him to Paniqui. He soon met his wife-to-be there when he boarded at Carolyn's grandmother's house. It wasn't an...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Dregs shares the story of the day he started doing graffiti. It was also when he began experimenting with rapping. Dregs talks about all the "cool shit in The City" back then, the early 2000s. From sports and music to the aforementioned underworld of San Francisco, SF was lit. It was a time when you could simply step outside your home and find som...

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...