Storied: San Francisco

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...

This episode is a sequel podcast nearly five years in the making. We last talked with poet Josiah Luis Alderete back in 2020, over Zoom, in the early COVID days. In this podcast, we pick up, more or less, with where we left off that summer. Back in those days, Josiah Luis still worked at City Lights Bookstore in North Beach. He walks us through that store's process of rearranging around social-dis...

In Part 2, we pick up with Ellen's life after she graduated from Washington University. Next up was a move to New York City.   In the Big City, she consulted for a financial services company. It was 2007, just before the financial crisis of those years. She found the job market tight, so she got a job in Washington, DC, where she lived for four years. Ellen says that during her time in the nation'...

One of Ellen Lo 's main motivations is to beautify the spaces she's in. In this podcast, we meet and get to know Ellen. Today, she runs Ask Me SF , a site and handle she populates with reviews of spots around The City she wants to share with the world. Sounds familiar, but we'll get to that later in the episode. We start with Ellen's childhood, which began in small-town North Carolina. It was a to...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Nato details the three times he's left his hometown of San Francisco.   The first was when he went to college, which was at Reed in Portland, Oregon, in the mid-Nineties. To get us there, Nato rattles off all of the ways that he was a "comedy head" before that was even a thing. At Reed, he met a guy who's dad was the manager of the Comedy Undergro...

Nato Green started hanging out at San Francisco comedy clubs when he was in eighth grade. Nato's parents met when they both still lived in the suburbs of Chicago. They got married in 1968 and moved to San Francisco soon after that. Nato says that they "were in the counter-culture, but bad at it." What he means by that is they didn't take their subversive lifestyles all the way like many of their p...

Part 2 picks up where we left off in Part 1. Barbara had just really become settled in San Francisco and was in what would become a decades-long process of learning the place (I can totally relate, btw). She hung out in the Castro more than the Mission, which in those days was a lesbian mecca. Café Flore (nowadays known as Fisch and Flore ) was a favorite.   Eventually, though, Barbara moved to th...

One set of  Barbara Gratta 's grandparents came to the US from Calabria, the toe of the boot of Italy. The other grandparents came from across the Italian peninsula—Bari. In this episode, meet Barbara. Today, she owns, operates, and makes wine at  Gratta Wines  in the Bayview. But her journey began in White Plains, NY. All four grandparents came to Brooklyn in the 1920s. They all eventually moved...

It's been a damn year, y'all. In this bonus episode, we catch up with friend of the show  Vandor Hill , owner and creator of  Whack Donuts . His brick-and-mortar shop in EMB 4 just marked its one-year anniversary (and last year was a Leap Year!), and I dropped by to chat with Vandor about the time since he opened, where things stand now, and the road ahead. This Saturday, to celebrate Whack Donuts...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. We'd just learned of the call Ashley received from The Fillmore while she was working in Seattle. She'd visited San Francisco once to visit a cousin, but that stay lasted a mere 48 hours. She had one friend here at the time.   Up in Seattle, the shows she helped produce were huge acts like Beyoncé and Rihanna. What especially excited Ashley about...

Ashley Graham  will be the first tell you, "There's no relation (to Bill Graham)." In Part 1 of this episode, meet Ashley. Today, she holds the titles of marketing manager and art director at The Fillmore, a San Francisco institution. But let's learn how she got here. ​Ashley comes to us from Spokane, Washington. Her mom is originally from there, too, but her dad's family moved around the Rocky Mo...

San Francisco has such a rich history of comedy. No one can argue against that. In this bonus episode, meet SF Sketchfest co-founder and co-director Cole Stratton. I chatted with Cole about: his early days in Michigan and his and his mom's move to Davis, CA going to SF State, moving to The City meeting folks (David Owen and Janet Varney) with whom he later helped create Sketchfest how his desire t...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. The siblings use which school they were going to estimate the date of the family's move to Valencia Street to live above Puerto Alegre. Just one example: When Amparo was set to attend Mission High, they moved the school to Poly out near Kezar Stadium while Mission was retrofitted.   Then we turn to noteworthy things that have happened at Puerto Al...

Puerto Alegre  has been one of my favorite places in San Francisco since around the time I moved here in 2000. I'm finally able to share their story here, and I'm humbled and honored to do so. In Part 1, we meet the Vigil siblings— Amparo ,  Lorenzo ,  Willy , and  Pattye . Their parents opened Puerto Alegre around 1970, and these four continue their family's legacy on Valencia to this day. ​To st...

This bonus episode is presented in collaboration with the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund. ​ Season of Sharing Fund  gave some peace of mind to aspiring boxing champ Keoni Washington, who became parent and breadwinner to his brothers after their mother passed  away early in the pandemic. We meet him at the East Bay apartment he shares with three of his brothers.  Keoni received rental assistance...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Allegra was bartending at Second City in Chicago. The day of her graduation ceremony, at Columbia College Chicago, she packed up all her belongings and drove to LA with a friend.   Allegra really wanted to be in California. Not yet totally sure about what she was gonna do, she took the plunge, so to speak. She'd realized that she wasn't going to p...

Allegra Madsen  has a Polaroid photo of her birth. In this episode, meet and get to know Allegra. Today, she's the executive director of  Frameline  film fest, the biggest LGBTQIA+ movie event in the world. She might disagree, but Allegra is a big deal. (Quick side note: As we kicked off our recording, Allegra expertly solved a Rubik's Cube. No bigs.) We begin with the story of how her parents met...

Jacob Rosenberg had a front-row seat to some rad SF/Bay Area history. In this bonus episode, the filmmaker/storyteller shares some of that history, especially as it relates to his upcoming book,  Right Before My Eyes . Jacob was born and raised in Palo Alto. He grew up in the Seventies and Eighties. His parents moved there from the East Coast and Midwest to raise kids in an environment that matche...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1, with Nicole's move to New York. She didn't necessarily have a plan for this cross-country relocation, but she dove in head-first nonetheless.   Nicole of course turned to Craigslist to help her find a roommate. But she also hopped on FB Marketplace, which is where she eventually found someone. She moved in with an old friend from theater to an apa...

​Nicole Salaver  is the kind of person I wish I had met long before that happened. In this episode, meet Nicole. She's the program manager at  Balay Kreative  these days. But her San Francisco roots go way, way back. Her maternal grandfather came to the US in the 1920s. He was one of the first Filipinos to own a restaurant and pool hall in Manilatown (please see our episode on  Manilatown Heritage...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1.   Jackie considers it an honor to have worked for Lateefah Simon, who's running for Congress in the East Bay for the seat currently held by Barbara Lee. Jackie was tasked with writing memos, and she took that job and ran with it, digging deeply into the weeds of policy. What she found in the existing systems of that time piqued her curiosity aroun...

Jackie Fielder is quick to credit her ancestors with her life and where she is now that she's 30. In this episode, meet Jackie, who's running to be the next District 9 supervisor. District 9 includes the Mission, Bernal Heights, and the Portola. She begins by sharing the life story of her maternal grandparents, who are from Monterey in Mexico. Her grandfather worked in orange groves in Southern Ca...

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Aaron talks about volunteering at a nonprofit in The City called the Trust for Public Land, where he learned about land acquisition for parks and open spaces. Through that gig, he got a paid internship and eventually, a job. In fact, he met Nancy, the woman he would later marry, there. He eventually moved into Nancy's apartment in North Beach, his...