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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. In Part 2, Traci tells us that, after six months in Australia, during which she had put her things in storage here in The City, she came back and got those things right back out. She got a place to live and a job, both of which were relative easy back then. But, she says, SF was getting weird and crowded. It was the late-‘90s, so the dotcom boom was well under way. She started working at different restaurants as a server. Then, after some shorter travels abroad and a cross-country road trip, she got an office job. That lasted four-and-a-half years. She wanted a house in San Francisco and was trying to save up for that. Then, another economic bottom fell out and she was out of work. This was followed by a low period in her life, one that involved a lot of drinking and amassing debt. When she became too broke to travel, Traci got a job serving at Cha Cha Cha in the Mission and climbed her way out of debt. At this point in the recording, Traci rattles off a handful SF bars she’s worked or filled in at. Then I briefly share my own story of finding Boozenation, and Traci shares how she found us (how she found Bitch Talk, to be perfectly honest). Her story involved seeing us at The Saloon days before the shutdown in 2020. And it was the pandemic that inspired Traci to start her own podcast about bartenders and service industry workers. Two years later, Boozenation is going strong. When I asked her what’s next, she told me that in 2024, she wants to dive into some of the darker issues around the service industry, things like wage theft, sexual harassment, sexual assaults that anyone who works in the industry is all too familiar with. Traci says that she wants to take her time in the New Year and do it right. We end the podcast with Traci rattling off some of her favorite spots around town. They include, but are not limited to:
Find Boozenation Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and traciramos.com. We recorded this episode at Mission Bar in October 2023.
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