Photography by Jeff Hunt
Melan Allen is a third-generation San Franciscan. In this episode, we get to know this born-and-raised food artist whom I met last summer at Fillmore Jazz Festival. Melan's grandparents moved here in the Sixties and lived in San Francisco until the 2000s. Her mom's mom came to SF from Texas and was part of a mass migration west, when her mom was very young. In our conversation, Melan says that she sometimes wonders what it would have been like if she had grown up in Texas instead of The City. Her dad was born here and raised in Western Addition/Hayes Valley. Her mom also grew up in that part of town. Perhaps naturally, when the two met and started to raise a family, they stayed in the area. Her family was there until Melan was 16, in fact. Even though she no longer lives there, Melan says that this hood is home, even though it has changed. "It's like your first love," Melan says of her hometown. "It feels like growing up in Oz." She left The City when she found herself complaining about changes.
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Photography by Jeff Hunt
In Part 1, we get to know Tenderloin Museum's executive director, Katie Conry. She's originally from Oceanside, California, just outside of LA, where her parents are from. They were both teachers but were priced out of the big city, a situation all too familiar around here. Katie left home as soon as she could—when she was 18 and it was time to go to college. She had felt lonely and alienated in her hometown. But almost from the moment she arrived in Berkeley, she loved it and felt connected. In the 20-plus years since, she hasn't left the Bay Area. She moved across the Bay to San Francisco after graduation in the mid-2000s, settling in the Mission, the neighborhood she's lived in ever since. Katie and Jeff reminisce about several Mission spots they both frequented around that time.
Photography by Jeff Hunt
Discovering Meredith Edgar is one of my best memories of 2023. In Part 1 of this episode, get to know this singer/songwriter who was born in San Francisco. Her parents had been here a while, but soon after giving birth to Meredith, the family moved around a bit, first to the South, then to the Northeast, and finally, back to the South Bay. "Silicon Valley" was vastly different than the other places Meredith spent her early life in. When her family moved there, she was in third grade and happy to be in a more diverse place. She ended up spending her middle and high school years in the South Bay, eventually spending more and more time in The City. Music was always an integral part of Meredith's life. As she puts it, her parents have "eclectic taste in music." She says that there was always music playing—at home, in the car. Her dad also played guitar.
Photography by Jeff Hunt and Erin Lim
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Photography by Jeff Hunt
Susi Damilano was born in Germany and raised in the South Bay. Many of her German aunts married US servicemen, but Susi's mom married a German man and the family soon moved to Silicon Valley. Susi shares a history of that area, noting that not too long ago, it was primarily orchards. Growing up, Susi would cut through those orchards to get to school. Now that area is housing. She grew up in the 1970s and graduated high school then. As a young adult in the '70s and '80s, Susi visited SF often and says she always dreamed of living in "the big city." She would listen to her parents’ stories of racing down hills and being escorted home by cops, and got excited. Susi and her friend who had a car would drive up to The City and up and down Polk Street, cruising and people-watching. Despite the allure of San Francisco, she ended up going to college in San Diego at SD State. She liked it there enough—the weather, the people. An accounting major, she says that the job market wasn't great in that area, and so she returned home to the South Bay and got a job at CPA firm in San Jose, where she worked a handful of years with clients like the fledgling Apple Computer. Still, she couldn't shake wanting to live in SF. She found a job at another CPA firm, this time in The City. She lived in the Marina on Chestnut and was there during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Susi loved being here and got her taste for theater from reading Herb Caen columns. She started going to live theater and loved it. Around this same time, she was getting burnt out on her accounting job. A friend dared her to dream what else she could do. She decided that she wanted an Oscar, even though she didn’t act (yet). To get started, Susi took an acting class in Sunnyvale. Then we meet Bill English, Susi's husband and cofounder of SF Playhouse. Originally from Evanston, Illinois, Bill spent his high school and college years in Tempe, Arizona. Then it was back to Illinois for grad school at Northwestern in Evanston. Bill says that he was an instrumentalist earlier in his life and never thought much about theater. He played in orchestra his freshman year at ASU for a theater production, and it was here that he was “hit by lightning.” From the orchestra pit, he looked up and decided that he wanted to be on stage. He tried out for and got some roles, first backing and then eventually, lead parts. He had always been a singer. Bill says that both his parents are musicians—his dad was a band director, in fact. He decided right away that he preferred the stage to playing music. As a kid, Bill came to San Francisco from time to time with his family and loved it. He says that he always associated SF with theater. He didn’t end up pursuing theater after college, but instead played piano in rock and country bands. He moved around a bit, from Chicago and Phoenix to LA and eventually The City. This was the early 1980s and he had just had a daughter, which meant he couldn’t do music anymore. In his limited spare time, Bill tried out for some plays. And he's been in it ever since.
Photography by Jeff Hunt
In Part 1, we meet Rudy Corpuz, a born-and-raised San Franciscan who grew up in the South of Market. Rudy's parents came to the US from the Philippines before he was born. His dad was in the army, which was his ticket to this country. And he brought his wife and some of Rudy's older siblings with him. They went first to Boston, then to Seattle, folllowed by San Pedro, California, and finally, to San Francisco. The family's first landing spot in The City was Hunters-Point. The family then moved a little north to the South of Market. Rudy is the youngest of nine siblings. His early days in SOMA took place in the 1970s and ‘80s. He recalls many other ethnicities and lots and lots of families living in SOMA back in those days, and says that he learned a lot from his neighborhood. He ran with a crew of kids that spent a lot of time on Market Street going to shops, arcades, and theaters. He fondly recalls a South of Market community center called Canon Kip, where he'd go as a kid to play basketball, attend study halls, engage in other forms of recreation, and go on field trips. Rudy cites his time at Canon Kip as playing a role in his current work with United Playaz. At this point in the recording, I asked Rudy to rattle off San Francisco schools he's attended. The list includes: Buena Vista and Patrick Henry elementary schools, Potrero Middle School, and Mission High School. In addition to his native SOMA neighborhood, Rudy spent a lot of time in Potrero Hill, getting around mostly on Muni busses. This was the mid-'80s/early '90s, i.e., the crack era. Rudy shares that he both sold and used the drug. His usage got bad, to the point that he crashed. He points to the death of his dad in 1987 as a major contributor to his behavior. He didn’t know what to do with the pain of losing his dad, and so he turned to drugs. Rudy got busted in 1988 and was sent to adult jail. For the next several years, he was In and out of trouble (and jail). It took him a while, but eventually, he figured out that he was broken. Around this time, an adult at the Canon Kip community center offered to get Rudy into City College. He was still in a low period, but when he got to CCSF, he was blown away by the abundance of "pretty women" he saw there. He and I had a hearty laugh about that. He got a part-time job convincing other teenagers to go to CCSF, and discovered that he liked helping people. In 1994, while waiting for a job assignment, he spotted a posting on a job board. "Gang Prevention Counselor (Filipino)." A light bulb when off. He got the job, which was based in Bernal Heights. In his new gig, Rudy was tasked with finding Filipino gangs in Bernal/District 11. This brought him to Balboa High School, where h saw plenty of fights and sideshows. The school's principal told him that she needed his help. After a big riot between Filipinos and Blacks on Oct. 8, 1994, Rudy got the kids who had been involved to sit down together at a table. And they were the ones who came up with their own solutions. They called it United Playaz.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
In Part 1, we meet and get to know a bit about Traci's past. She grew up in Modesto. Her dad’s family is Puerto Rican and they arrived in the Central Valley from the East Bay. Traci's mom’s mom came to California via Mexico and Spain, while her mom’s dad is Native American, Cherokee to be exact. That man, Traci's grandpa, his mom had three sets of kids from three men, but grandpa didn’t talk about that. Traci is an only child. She and her family visited the East Bay when she was a kid, but they didn’t really come to San Francisco. Traci says her impression of the East Bay is that it was like Modesto, but more crowded and noisier. Sometime after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Traci came to The City to go to SF State, where she graduated from the school's BECA program around 4.5 years later. She says that the decision where to go to college ultimately came down to SF State or Sac State. But in the end, she wanted to be in SF. She and friends had been coming to The City to see shows and concerts. Here, she rattles off quite an impressive list of bands she saw back then, including Duran Duran at The Fillmore. At State, Traci lived in the dorms, which, after the quake, were showing obvious signs of damage. To her young mind, it didn't matter. She was where she wanted to be. She had always loved the fog, most likely owing to the intense summer heat in Modesto. While in school, she worked around town in cafes and restaurants. After graduation, she had saved up enough money to buy a one-way ticket to Madrid. She travelled around Europe a bit for a year, then came back to SF and worked various jobs. Then, a year later, Traci picked up again and went to Australia, this time on a round-trip ticket. We end Part 1 with some of Traci's fondest memories of New Zealand and the ways that that island nation compare to California.
Photography by Jeff Hunt and Michelle Kilfeather
This episode is six years overdue. That's because Storied: SF got started in a booth upstairs at one of our favorite spots in all The City: Vesuvio Café. In Part 1, we sit down in that same booth where it all began in 2017 to chat with Vesuvio co-owner Janet Clyde. We begin with a talk about what a great place for bars San Francisco is. Janet brings up touristic spots we love, as I had joined my wife for Irish coffees at the Buena Vista just before our recording in North Beach. Then Janet begins to lay out the history of Vesuvio. The location was originally an Italian bookstore called Cavalli Books, which moved first to the current City Lights spot, and then over to Stockton Street. Then, probably in the 1930s or early '40s, a woman known as Mrs. Mannetti opened Vesuvio as a restaurant. In 1948, Henry Lenoir bought the place from her and turned it into a bar. Lenoir was a Swiss/French bon vivant. He ran it as Vesuvio through the end of the 40s and into the 50s. But by the early '60s, with the Korean War, the place changed as society changed, and Henri wasn’t feeling this generational shift at all. He sold the place to Ron Fein, who brought on Leo Riegler to run the bar. Riegler had run Coffee Gallery on Grant, which served beer and wine only. He was an Austrian bon vivant, and he came to Vesuvio and overhauled the bar. Ron Fein hired Shawn O’Shaughnessy to give the place the look and feel we're all familiar with to this day. O'Shaughnessy was inspired by Japanese art, aliens, and other worlds. Janet talks about the “I’m itching to get away from Portland, Oregon” sign, which hangs over the entrance to Vesuvio and which O'Shaughnessy derived from a postcard. We then shift the conversation a little to talk about Vesuvio and the Beat Movement. The bookstore across the alley became City Lights in 1954 when Lawrence Ferlinghetti took over. And that brought writers into the bar. Before that, according to Janet, Vesuvio was a Bohemian hang, really a cross-section of San Francisco. People who worked at the nearby Pacific Exchange (later known as the Pacific Stock Exchange), insurance salespeople, advertisers ... Janet describes the place as “suits and ties having a really good time …” When she arrived, in the late 1970s, the area was home to punk clubs, strip joints, bars, restaurants. Janet had hitchhiked from LA with the intention of landing in Seattle. She was born in Missouri but raised near Cape Canaveral, Florida. She left her family there and moved to LA but never really dug it much. A trip north in 1978 changed her life forever. Earlier this year, I got to see a couple movies as part of the 66th annual San Francisco International Film Festival. It was awesome, and that's putting it mildly. SFFILM, the non-profit that puts the festival on each April, is kicking off its documentary mini-fest tonight. This bonus episode is a quick chat with Jessie Fairbanks, SFFILM's director of programming. Enjoy our talk and go see some killer documentaries this weekend! This episode was recorded over Zoom in October 2023.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
Welcome to Season 6 of the Storied: San Francisco podcast! We really couldn't dream of a better place to kick things off than Bayview's Old Skool Café. In Part 1, we meet Teresa Goines, the founder and president of Old Skool. Originally from Tucson, Teresa spent a lot of time growing up in the country (which we call desert) outside Tucson.
Photography by Jeff Hunt and Michelle Kilfeather
Welcome to the final episode of Season 5! We saved a special one for last for a good reason. Mini Bar is, of course, where we're having our first art show (Hungry Ghosts) in more than three years. But it's also a neighborhood bar, and neighborhood bars are such a great symbol of the beating heart of San Francisco. Our whole dang thing, Storied: SF, was founded in a neighborhood bar, in fact. In Part 1, we meet Mini Bar co-owner John Ordoña. (Nerius Mercado is Mini's other co-owner.) John was born in the very maternity ward at Kaiser on Geary where his mom, a Filipina immigrant, worked. He was the third of three sons to his mom and dad, both from the Philippines. Born into a Catholic family, John attended school at Star of the Sea and then Sacred Heart, where he was part of the last boys-only class at that school.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
Welcome to the penultimate episode of Season 5! We're revisiting our 2018 podcast with Babylon Burning's Mike Lynch in Part 1. In Part 1 of our episode on the Bayview Opera House, we sit down with opera house Programming Manager Ashley Smiley, (who goes by "Smiley"). Smiley shares how her family ended up in San Francisco. Her mom was born and raised in SF, but her mom's mom, a mixed-race woman, came from Texas. Her family was run out of that state by the KKK. That family landed in the Hunter's Point area and ended up in the Fillmore. Her maternal grandfather came here from Haiti via boat. Upon his arrival, he bought property in San Francisco, as that was possible at the time. Smiley's grandparents met each other at Polytechnical High School. Her grandfather was a longshoreman, but also a musician and songwriter. Her mom went to Galileo, then SF State, and now works for The City. Smiley was born at a rather conspicuous time in history — just a week after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. Her mom says that there was a 5.4 aftershock at the time of Smiley's birth. Smiley grew up in Ingleside mostly, and remembers going to the Bayview Opera House a lot early in life. Her family moved around The City, and she rattles off a list of the different schools she went to. It was at Lafayette Elementary that she did her first theater show — Pirates of Penzance. She mentions her "Jewish momma" from this time, an early mentor. After attending her first major theater production, she became something like obsessed with the production aspects of live performance. She'd played instruments and was a cheerleader, but she found her passion in performing arts. She carried that passion into her middle school days, where she started doing spoken word and poetry. Work she'd done at her church gave her a background in writing, and she used that to springboard to performing words on stage for people. In high school, when she went to Lowell, she started doing bigger and bigger productions. It was during this time that she was immersed in Black culture and identity, and she learned that it was something she needed to lean into. She says that it was "super empowering." On the flip side, these experiences contradicted what she had previously believed about the world, namely, that racism had more or less been solved. She had wondered why older Black folks were so upset. And so, at the same time that she was discovering her own confidence and pride of being a Black woman, she was starting to see the complexities of racism in the US and San Francisco. Lowell, she says, had a lot to do with this realization. We end Part 1 with Smiley confessing to how much time she spent away from her high school, the bulk of it at the Brava Theater in the Mission. She did spoken word and hip-hop with the Colored Ink group. Meeting and witnessing performances by so many of her inspirations left her thinking, I gotta be in this world. And now, she is. Hi! This is a short bonus episode to fill you in on some recent stuff. Learn more about what we have planned as we wind down Season 5 and get ready for our first art show in more than three years! And join us next week for an all-new episode about the Bayview Opera House.
Photography by Jeff Hunt
Friends of the Urban Forest exists on the premise that there are "no trees in San Francisco." That of course isn't the literal truth. But we'll get to that. In Part 1 of our episode on FUF, we sit down with Tree Planting Program Manager Zeima Kassahun and Executive Director Brian Wiedenmeier to chat about the non-profit's 42-year history of making San Francisco greener. We learn a little about Zeima and Brian's lives, where they're from, how they ended up moving to The City, and what brought them to FUF. Then Brian and Zeima talk about the history of Friends of the Urban Forest. This conversation includes the fact that, upon colonization of San Francisco, there were very few trees, most of which were located in and around the no-longer-existent Mission Bay. We work our way up through industrialization, urbanization, and the advent of car culture to set the stage for what a group of neighbors and friends were up against when they founded FUF in 1981.
Photography by Jeff Hunt
This episode is all about the Women's Building, a structure on 18th Street in the Mission that has served so many purposes for more than 50 years. In Part 1, we talk with two members of the Women's Building staff: Maria Arteaga, Women's Building content specialist/social media manager, and Kristen Acosta, their community engagement coordinator. Maria starts us off by sharing her life story. She was raised in Puebla, Mexico, and was there until she was 28. That's when she went for PhD in Barcelona for four years, followed by a stint in Zurich, Switzerland. After Maria's partner moved to San Francisco for work, she visited and loved it here. She arrived in March 2019, soon discovered the Women's Building, and the rest is history. Then we hear from Kristen. She's from El Paso, Texas, originally. She went to college in San Antonio, worked there a little after graduating, then made her way out west with her partner. Kristen volunteered at Glide and St. Anthony's before her arrival at the Women's Building. She first volunteered, became the receptionist after that, and then moved into her current role. Both guests share the history of the Women's Building, which goes back more than 50 years, when a group of activists formed the San Francisco Women's Centers. Soon in need of their own venue to hold events and generally be able to do more, they found their current home on 18th Street. Fun fact—back in the day, Valencia Street's Dovre Club lived in the corner of the building. We go through some of the intentions and accomplishments of the building. From the outset, the aim was to be collective and inclusive. Maria says that the founders were the "original intersectional feminists." The first Black lesbian conference in the US was held there in the 1980s. Over the years, there have been many programs at the Women's Building for the LGBTQ and Latinx community, in addition to poetry readings and other art events.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
When SF natives Gypsy Snider and Shana Carroll hatched their idea for a show in the space once occupied by Beach Blanket Babylon, they set out to pay homage to their hometown. The result was Dear San Francisco, a high-flying, loop-jumping, juggling, acrobatic love letter to The City. In Part 1 of our episode on Club Fugazi, where Dear San Francisco takes place seven times every week, we sit down with Co-producer and Executive Director David Dower. David shares the history of the space, going all the way back to its founding in 1914, up through its time as a dance hall and lecture hall, to its setting for Thelonious Monk's Alone in San Francisco (recorded there), and in 1974, its service as a home for Beach Blanket Babylon. Then David shares Gypsy and Shana's background in circus arts, which traces back to San Francisco's very own Pickle Family Circus. From there, we go to Montreal and Cirque du Soleil, out of which the 7 Fingers Creative Collective was born. Just before the pandemic, Beach Blanket Babylon wrapped up their 45-year run at Club Fugazi. When Gypsy and Shana heard about the now quiet and dark hall loved by so many all around the world, the idea for Dear San Francisco was born. Forget what you might think when you hear the word "circus." There are no rings or unicycling bears here. Instead, acrobats and trapeze artists literally hurl themselves through the air while also sharing personal stories and their deep, deep love for San Francisco. Go. See. This. Show.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
There's an awesome little six-lane bowling alley tucked into the heart of the Mission. In this episode, we get to know Molly Bradshaw, owner of Mission Bowling Club. Molly traces her steps from coastal Mendocino to Citrus Heights when she was in second grade. She spent the rest of her youth in the Sacramento area, eventually going to punk shows in Sacto and at Gilman in Berkeley. Molly's grandparents came to California in the Great Migration to work in Richmond. Some of her ancestors lived in Berkeley, some in East Oakland, and Molly would spend summers in the East Bay. After high school, she wanted to go to college and be independent. She lived in what was then known as Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe) for a summer, went to grad school from 1997 to 1999 in Seattle, then moved back to the Bay and started bartending. Around 2007/2008, Molly opened Mini Bar with some friends. In Part 1, she speaks fondly of Divisadero and its history. She and her fellow owners of Mini Bar did lots of community outreach before opening, and we think the fact that the bar continues to be a popular meeting spot 15 years later speaks to those efforts.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather and Jeff Hunt
We've been wanting to do this episode for years. 826 Valencia is a non-profit whose aim is to help young people write creatively. They’ve operated out of the space at the address in their name since the early 2000s. For Part 1, we sat down with 826’s Director of Volunteer Engagement Kavitha Lotun and Pirate Supply Store Manager Byron Weiss to discuss their respective stories of moving to San Francisco and the origins and mission of 826 Valencia.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
Nearly 100 years ago, the stretch of Kearny Street from Jackson south all the way down to Market was filled with Filipino shops, restaurants, and SRO hotels. Perhaps most notably, the International Hotel (I-Hotel) was located at the intersection of Kearny and Jackson. Today, that space is occupied by a residence for older folks, some of whom have connections to the last of the mostly immigrant population who were evicted in the middle of the night from their homes at the I-Hotel in 1977. It's also home to the Manilatown Heritage Foundation. In Part 1 of our podcast, our guest, foundation Executive Director Caroline Julia Cabading, guides us through her own fourth-generation Filipina history in San Francisco. Caroline lays out the history of U.S. imperialism and capitalism that sought cheap Asian labor and therefore brought Filipinos, mostly men, to this country for migrant work in Northern California. As they aged, those young men later settled in the I-Hotel, forming a community and chosen families until they were unjustly thrust from their homes by a real estate developer (sound familiar?).
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
Happy Valentine's Day! This episode is all about San Francisco’s Good Vibrations because, well, duh. It’s also about Good Vibes’ Antique Vibrator Museum. To guide us, we meet Carol Queen. Carol is the staff sexologist, a title she earned with her PhD in the subject. Carol grew up in small-town Oregon, just south of Eugene. She says she was interested in sex as long as she can remember, despite what those in her community might have thought about that. Childhood and early adult visits she made to the “big city” of Eugene helped her find community and solidify her outsider, activist status. Eventually, she went to college there, although she had graduated high school early and arrived in Eugene at 16 years, far too young to go to bars. Despite that prohibition, Carol found her people, though it wasn’t always easy. She considered herself queer, but folks in LGBTQ circles cast her out, claiming her bisexuality meant she didn’t belong. It was another hurdle to work hard to overcome. Eventually, she met likeminded folks who slowly branched out into different areas of study. But they all had one thing in common—a desire, through whatever avenues, to change minds and laws and bring about more acceptance and equality for their fellow LGBTQ folks. She credits the backlash to Anita Bryant as well as eventual mainstream acceptance of AIDS as a real threat to everyone with helping her and her friends win some early victories. Carol and I do a short sidebar on some of the more recent efforts by the right in this country to ban books and legislate language, including so-called “don’t say gay” laws in places like Florida. We return to the conversation to hear that enrolling at Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality is what brought Carol to San Francisco. And we end Part 1 with Carol's impressions of San Francisco, first upon visiting, and then later, when she went to IASHS, moving here.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
Dontaye Ball has brought gumbo to San Francisco. Now, he's doing everything he can to make it this country's national dish. In this episode, we meet Dontaye. Born and raised in The City, Dontaye has lived with gumbo just about his entire life. Often served at big family meals, he remembers fondly that while gumbo might've been the center of the culinary realm, it was always more about being with family, friends, and those he loved. Started as a pop-up a few years back, in late-2022, Dontaye was able to secure a brick-and-mortar spot on Third Street near the neighborhood where he grew up. Gumbo Social is set to open this spring, and we can't wait. In Part 1, Dontaye talks about the importance of gumbo and what it means to him. He tells us all about the crew he's assembled to assist him on this mission, including his two sons. Until the spot on Third opens its doors, find Gumbo Social at the Sunset Mercantile market every Sunday. Tell 'em we sent ya!
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather and Jeff Hunt
San Francisco is about to get its first new LGBTQ bar in a long, long time, y'all. In Part 1, we'll meet Malia Spanyol. Currently, Malia owns Thee Parkside. She was born in Honolulu and went to ASU in Tempe, Arizona. But she hated it and came to San Francisco in 1989 just before the big earthquake that year. Malia was already out and was here looking for her people. She worked, went to school at SF State, made friends, and explored the town on her motorcycle. It was a "great time to be gay in SF," the early 1990s. She was always going to music shows, art shows, poetry readings, and parties, mostly in the Mission. "Valencia Street was dirty" then, Malia says. She worked in a dildo factory and lived in Hayes Valley. On her way to work, she and friends would drive down Valencia in a t-top, out and proud as fuck. At her job, Malia learned bookkeeping and helped friends and small businesses do taxes. She seized an opportunity to become a business owner herself when she bought Pop's Bar with friends in 2003. Lil Tuffy, who some of you might know from this podcast and his show posters, came in and became the manager at the bar. Malia ran Pop's for 10 years, from 2003 to 2013. In 2007, she found out about an opportunity at Thee Parkside, a spot with more to offer—food, a stage, an outside area. And so she capitalized. As Malia notes, the area around Thee Parkside was very different then—more blue collar. She learned Muay Thai around 2007 and fell in love with the sport. Her coach asked her to open a new gym and she did.
Photography by Jeff Hunt and Michelle Kilfeather
In this episode, we kick off the new year by resuming our series on San Francisco co-ops. This one is all about Rainbow Grocery Cooperative. To guide us, we'll meet Cody Frost, a marketing and creative strategist at Rainbow for the last three-and-a-half years. Cody has been a worker/owner at Rainbow for almost 16 years. He grew up in Carmichael, California, just outside of Sacramento, in the 1980s and '90s. He pursued art in his early twenties and had friends in Sacto, where he moved around 2004/2005. Then he heard about an effort to make a new art space in The City in 2005 and moved here in 2006. That space turned out to be the Secret Alley, a place near and dear to our hearts. Cody first got a job at Bi-Rite, where he worked for a year before landing the gig at Rainbow. At this point in the recording, we dive more deeply into Rainbow history. It starts with a faith-based group that used food for community support and political activism in 1970s, the People's Warehouse. Many co-ops, including some that are still around today, were created out of that group. Rainbow's original location, which first opened its doors in 1975, was on 16th Street between Guerrero and Valencia in the Mission. Back then, groceries and a general store were at separate addresses. They moved in the '80s to 15th and Mission and combined stores. Then, outgrowing that space, Rainbow found its current location in 1995 and opened the next year following renovations. We end Part 1 talking about the co-op's incredible bulk-food section.
Photography by Jeff Hunt and Michelle Kilfeather
Several of the worker/owners at Arizmendi Bakery on Ninth Avenue have been there since the place opened 22 years ago. Around half of them have worked there for two decades. Continuing our series on San Francisco co-ops, this time we travel to the Inner Sunset and this special place that serves up so many delicious treats. Whether it's a morning pastry, an evening vegetarian pizza, or an delicious cookie for dessert, Arizmendi has got you covered. In Part 1, Sue Lopez speaks to her own history as well as how the original spot in the East Bay, Berkeley's Cheese Board Collective, spawned what today is a Bay Area group of cooperative bakeries. The conversation covers such topics as: what it meant for a co-op to expand to more than one location; the differences among Arizmendi/Cheese Board locations; how the Ninth Avenue location brings about new menu items; the cooperative movement of the late-1960s/early 1970s; the meaning of the name "Arizmendi"; opening the spot on Ninth Avenue, which was the third in the collective group; and the Inner Sunset community. |