Photography by Jeff Hunt
From a young age, Azikiwee Anderson left his heart in San Francisco. In this episode, Azikiwee (everyone calls him "Z"), the founder of Rize Up Sourdough, shares the story of how he got here. His dad was a famous drummer who got hooked on heroin while touring. When he returned home from the tour, the problems at home began. He started physically assaulting Z's mom. And so she packed up her three kids, all five and younger, and her things and split. The battered wives' shelter helped get them out of New Orleans and to San Francisco. Z has some memories of New Orleans, but they're coupled with trauma. When they landed here, they didn't really have people. His mom and her kids stayed at the bus station for weeks, and Z remembers a man giving them his lunch more than once. There's a poignant story of the brown paper bags that those meals came in and how Z has used similar bags for Rize Up breads as an homage.
The family ended up at a shelter and his mom started to imagine what her new life could be. Z's mom got jobs and took classes. They lived in The City for six years and then moved to Chico.
Z spent the rest of junior high and high school in that northern Valley town. The day after he graduated, he left for Santa Rosa to go to junior college. It was close enough to San Francisco that he could come here easily and often, which he did. In addition to school, he taught gymnastics, something he'd begun in high school. But because of his height (he's 6' 3") and relative inexperience, he decided that teaching was a better route for him than competing. He also rollerbladed. Like, a lot. He says kids would come into his gymnastics classes asking Z to teach them how to do flips on rollerblades. Never mind that he didn't know how to do that ... yet. One of these kids brought in a video of what he had in mind, and it was the first time Z saw people doing all these incredible things on rollerblades. Eventually, this led to Z getting sponsored to skate. It took him on a journey he never could've imagined. He started traveling, around the US, around the world. It became his life. He built skate parks, for roller blades, bikes, skateboards, whatever. Looking back on his time as a pro rollerblader, Z says that he owes the hardship of his young years to the fact that it doesn't take a lot to make him happy. When he started seeing the world, he didn't take it for granted. He was grateful for the opportunities it afforded him. Time spent traveling gave way to more time running businesses. And with a little more income came the opportunity to cash in on a life's dream—Z moved to San Francisco. He found a place on Bush between Van Ness and Polk. And he brought a small distribution company for rollerblading products with him. But when the 2008 recession hit, the business started to feel some serious pains. Z had started a family whom he had to leave when he toured for rollerblading. It didn't take long for him to feel that he should be home—both to be there for his newborn son and to assist his partner in raising him. Being back in San Francisco, Z started searching for the new him, the next phase. Adding to his new role as father, he enrolled in culinary classes at San Francisco Cooking School. Compared with other things he'd gotten into, this was much more intense. Z was learning from others, rather than making it up "on the fly." But he took to the kitchen right away. He ended up doing mostly knife-for-hire work around The City and the Bay Area. Z shies away from dropping names in the restaurant industry, pointing to the fact that he feels like the people who get credit take all the shine, while those who do most of the work are in the shadows, so to speak. He says that even back then, he decided that if he branched out on his own, he'd do things differently. Following his stint as a knife-for-hire, Z became a private chef. Then the pandemic hit. In addition to making sure his kids were doing their at-home schoolwork, he'd joined a chef's thread online. It was a space for those in his community to share how they were coping with shutdown and the loss of doing what they love. Like approximately half of us who aren't chefs, many of the people in these forums were making bread. At first, Z was apprehensive about making bread. But his friends in the industry kept nudging him. Reluctantly, he gave in ... and at first, the results weren't good. He went at it over and over and just wasn't getting it right. Slowly, over time, he started having some success. And then cops murdered George Floyd. Z talks at length about the effect that Floyd's murder had on him. He stayed out of protests in public for fear that he wouldn't be able to contain all the anger and frustration he felt at that moment. Instead, he turned inward. And in that solitude, he worked and worked on his bread. It was the only thing, he says, that gave him solace. The bread got better and better and Z got to a point where he wanted to share his creation, first with his community, then with the world. A friend out in Brooklyn asked Z to ship a sourdough. The day after he did that, orders exploded. It didn't take long for Z to scale his operation up. A bigger mixer, a second rack ... it all allowed him to keep up with demand. Then he began adding flavors to the bread, at first just for himself. One of the first of these was called The Ninth Ward, a loaf with Louisiana hot sausage inside it (yum ...). Next, he added blackberries to a loaf, which are tricky because of how wet they are and how much they stain. People started to notice ... people like food writers. One such writer from the Chronicle asked if she could buy a loaf and hang out and talk with Z. He didn't know she was a writer, and they sat down and chatted. By this time, Z already had the name Rize Up. He had taken his kids to see Hamilton, which has a song about rising up. It was the summer of 2020, and people were actually out in the streets protesting racial injustice. And of course, bread rises as it bakes. The name was perfect. Once vaccines came around and it got safer to leave the house, Z moved into a bigger kitchen facility, one that allowed him to hire and be able to deliver bread to stores and other customers. Rainbow was the first grocery store to carry Rize Up. Z developed the ube loaf for Excelsior Coffee. Z talks about those ingredients and flavors he puts into many of his loaves. In the bread world, they're called "inclusions." "Our inclusions are inclusive," he says. They are intentional and reflect his love and appreciation for his community and his neighbors. We end the episode with Z's take on this season's podcast theme: "We're All In It." We recorded this podcast at Rize Up Bakery in the South of Market in June 2024.
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