Photography by Jeff Hunt
In this, the last new episode of Season 4 of this podcast, Caitlyn picks up where she left off in Part 1. She and a friend she'd been gardening with started selling salad mix and herbs to places like Tartine and other nearby restaurants. They also established a small CSA for folks in the building where their garden was as well as a few neighbors. The success of this project had them thinking on a larger scale—they wanted to establish a commercial farm. Of course, that's not so easy if you intend to stay in a city like San Francisco, which they did. They also decided not to go the non-profit route, preferring rather to keep things manageable and adopting more of a co-op model. Around 2010, they found a plot of land in the Excelsior that had once been a creek and was surrounded on three sides by backyards. They tracked down the landlord, who lived in LA, and convinced him to lease the land to them for one and a half years. Clearing the land and readying it for gardening took some time. But owing to the creek that used to flow through it, the land was fertile and nutrient-rich. But of course, there were challenges. Zoning was among the first. So they worked with The City to address issues around that. Little City Gardens was born. Three years or so into the project, her partner left San Francisco, but Caitlyn stayed on, enlisting more folks to help out. They ran Little City for another nearly four years, growing and selling vegetables, flowers, and herbs. They sold to even more restaurants than before, had an ongoing presence at farmer's markets, and expanded their CSA. When the lease ran out and the owner went to sell the land, they tried to get a trust to help buy it. But it didn't happen. A private school purchased the land in 2014, and LCG worked with them for two more years. Then Little City Gardens was no more. It was 2016 and before Little City closed, Caitlyn found the Friends of 770 Woolsey, a group of Portola neighbors dedicated to gaining the rights and raising the money to purchase a square block in the neighborhood that, until the 1990s, was a working greenhouse. Caitlyn shares a deeper version of the history of the lot than she laid out in Part 1. The greenhouses that today are relics were built in 1922 by the Garibaldi family. At the time, there were a couple dozen such locations in the Portola. The greenhouses shut down in the '90s, as we've mentioned, and the Garibaldis sold the property in 2017. In 2021, the developers who bought the lot made an offer to the community to buy it. The offer is time-sensitive and expires this July. And so, the Friends of 770 Woolsey and the Greenhouse Project are raising money to that end. You can donate to that effort here. You can follow both groups on IG: Friends of 77 Woolsey and Greenhouse Project. We end this episode and this season of Storied: San Francisco with Caitlyn's thoughts about what it means to still be here in The City, fighting not only to stay, but to make this seven-mile-by-seven-mile plot of Earth better for all the humans, plants, and animals who share this space. We thank you for listening, this season and the three that came before. In the coming weeks, we'll be rerunning episodes from our archives, so be on the lookout for those. We'll also pop in from time to time with messages about whatever's on our minds. We encourage you now as we always have to share with us and fellow listeners what's on your mind as we move ahead to whatever's next for this city we all love to hate and hate to love. Peace. We recorded this podcast at the Greenhouse Project in the Portola in April 2022.
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Photography by Jeff Hunt
There's an unused square block in the Portola District that's Ground Zero in the fight over land in San Francisco. In this podcast, we learn all about the Greenhouse Project. Volunteer Caitlyn Galloway shares some of the history of the block bordered by Woolsey, Bowdoin, Wayland, and Hamilton streets as well as the efforts underway to reclaim the area as a green space in The City's southeast side. Then we hear about Caitlyn's life and how she got to this moment. She was born in Union City and raised there and in Livermore, where she went to high school. Her extended family has been in the East Bay for several generations. Once she was old enough to ride BART without an adult, she and her cousin would come into San Francisco to go shopping around the Powell station. When it was time to go to college, she chose Santa Barbara. Despite a lot of what Caitlyn calls "sameness" there, she found pockets of people she could relate to, people who had different ways of living—punks, hippies, folks who worked at co-ops. Caitlyn started working at a food co-op in Santa Barbara around the same time she began to garden there. She was still in school and all of these activities started to shape Caitlyn's worldview, especially around food and land. After graduation, she moved to New York City, partly to get away and partly to ready herself for a move to San Francisco. She found work as a gardener at a landscaping company, where she worked on rich people's gardens around town. Caitlyn also worked on some green roofs in New York, well before the trend that would emerge later. Two years into her time on the East Coast, she decided that it was time to come back to California. She missed a number of things—people, a smaller-city vibe. But perhaps more than anything else, California sagebrush drew Caitlyn back to her home state. There was no question of where in the state she'd be. Upon landing in San Francisco in 2007, Caitlyn apprenticed at New Bohemia Signs, a hand-painted sign shop based in the South of Market neighborhood. Through her work there, she met and befriended someone who was gardening and growing vegetables in a backyard in the Mission. Caitlyn soon joined her new friend in gardening. We end Part 1 with a detour of sorts, when Jeff and Caitlyn discover that they were neighbors 15 years ago or so. Please join us for Part 2 and the final new episode of Season 4 this Thursday. We recorded this podcast at the Greenhouse Project in the Portola in April 2022.
Photography by Jeff Hunt
In this episode, Maggie picks up where she left off in Part 1, with her taking over programming duties at GFE 10 years ago. She dives into the story of how GFE was founded more than 30 years ago amid a historic drought in California. The intent was always to create a teaching space, something that distinguishes GFE from other gardens around The City. We talk about biodiversity and how that's such a motivator for the work they do at GFE. That coupled with things like native vegetation means that the garden itself, for passersby, might not always be what we tend to think of as "beautiful." But, as Maggie points out, the plants are doing exactly what they need to do—living in a symbiotic fashion with other plants, animals, and insects. Maggie goes over how the garden has responded to the pandemic. They had to cancel (postpone?) a live event they had planned to commemorate 30 years and switched their education programs to Zoom. Needless to say, something was missing. The upside was that they were able to reach more people virtually during the pandemic. In 2021, for the first time in three decades, they offered their "Get Up" program online. Maggie expresses her gratitude for the advances in technology that the pandemic forced onto GFE. Garden for the Environment is open to the public every day from dawn until dusk. Follow them on Instagram. We end this episode with Maggie's idea of what it means to still be here through it all. We recorded this podcast at Garden for the Environment in the Inner Sunset in April 2022.
Photography by Jeff Hunt
Maggie Marks has deep roots in San Francisco, and that's not a gardening pun. In this episode, Maggie, who today is the director of Garden for the Environment (GFE) in the Inner Sunset, traces her family's history in The City. Her mom's side goes back at least two generations here; and her dad's side includes the family that owns Guerra Quality Meats. Her parents lived in various spots around town before settling in the Inner Sunset in the '90s. This is where Maggie grew up. She went to Rooftop School, where she indulged in art, theater, and gardening. By eighth grade, Maggie was head of the environmental club at school. Around this time, California was experiencing a major drought. Residents were constantly being made aware of steps to mitigate the water shortages, stuff we're very familiar with today—shorter and fewer showers, less watering of gardens, etc. Around this time and not too far from her childhood home, GFE was founded. Maggie and her friends liked to create make-believe worlds. She also liked to read. She spent a lot of time in the nearby library. Once she was a little older, she rode Muni all over town. One of her (and her family's) favorite spots was the Mission, almost always to get burritos. We talk a little about Maggie's time living away from her hometown. She went to college in Seattle and loved it, but the rain ultimately got to her. In 2008, she spent time in DC working for the Obama campaign in Northern Virginia. Before the financial crisis really took hold that year, Maggie had been thinking of permanently relocating. But with the election over and the economy continuing its decline, she decided to come back home. She worked various jobs while trying to find her calling—farmers' markets, her family's shop, and other non-profit work. She got a great spot up in Bernal Heights, met the man she'd later marry, and sealed the deal on staying in her hometown. Growing up in the Inner Sunset, Maggie remembered GFE being built. Through one of her non-profit jobs, she got reconnected with the garden after sharing an office with them. With GFE's director going on maternity leave, Maggie applied and got the job. That was 10 years ago. Check back Thursday for Part 2 and more about Maggie Marks and Garden for the Environment. We recorded this podcast at Garden for the Environment in the Inner Sunset in April 2022.
Photography by Jeff Hunt
In this podcast, we continue our visit at Sisterhood Gardens and our series on City Gardens. Today, we meet Sisterhood volunteer Tim Wong. Tim shares his life story with us. He grew up on the Peninsula and moved to The City in 2016. This coincided with the founding of Sisterhood Gardens. Tim grew up in an area replete with butterflies, something he was drawn to from a young age. He was interested in the insects and their relationship with plants. His earliest memories of coming to San Francisco involve his grandparents, who lived in the Sunset. His school took the kids to the California Academy of Sciences, which we'll get back to in a moment. Tim was in The City almost every weekend. He never necessarily envisioned himself living in San Francisco. After high school, he moved to San Diego to go to UCSD, where he studied environmental systems, ecology, and evolution as well as marine science. He was aiming toward marine biology. Through school, he worked in an aquarium, which later led to his volunteering at Cal Academy of Sciences. Today, Tim works at the academy in its rainforest exhibit. As we're discussing his various rolls at work, we take a detour to hear some of the places Tim has dived, including off the shore here in Northern California. Tim says he's drawn to his work at the academy and the garden because of the sense of community and giving back. We end this podcast with Tim's thoughts on what it means to still be here. If you'd like to volunteer at Sisterhood or get involved somehow, please visit their website. We recorded this podcast at Sisterhood Gardens in Oceanview in March 2022.
Photography by Jeff Hunt
Our City Gardens series continues with a visit to Sisterhood Gardens. Located on Brotherhood Way (get it?) in the OMI area of southwest San Francisco, the garden was established in 2016. In this podcast, we meet master gardener and Sisterhood volunteer Jamie Chan. In addition to her work at Sisterhood, Jamie teaches at SF State, where she's also a doctoral student. Jamie shares her story with us. A fourth-generation San Franciscan, she traces her family's history in The City back to the Gold Rush era. Over the years, her ancestors lived mostly in Chinatown, but eventually, they all moved to the Sunset and Richmond. Jamie grew up near Stern Grove and went to SFUSD schools. Her parents grew up in Chinatown, where they knew each other growing up. The two reconnected while at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and got married after graduation. Today, Jamie trains public school teachers (her husband happens to be a teacher, too). As a teenager, she went to School of the Arts and was interested in telling people's stories. She studied documentary film and made movies about ABC (American-born Chinese) identity. She went to art school at CalArts in SoCal but didn't like it. So she came back and went to SF State, where she studied biology. After graduation, Jamie worked at California Academy of Sciences and became interested in education. She and her husband got their home through a city program—an acquisition that came with a yard bigger than the house. She started gardening there after having kids and found herself wanting to connect with food and food systems as a mom. That led to a master gardener program at UC. Jamie helped found Sisterhood Gardens in 2016, The land is owned by SF Department of Public Works, who landscaped the space and got water running before turning it over to neighborhood volunteers. We end this episode with Jamie's thoughts about still being here in San Francisco. For more information on Sisterhood Gardens, including how to get involved, please visit their website: https://sisterhoodgardens.org/. We recorded this podcast at Sisterhood Gardens in Oceanview in March 2022. 
Danielle Fernandez (L) with her partner, Isaiah Powell. Photo by Michelle Kilfeather
In our last episode, we met Danielle Fernandez briefly when she told us all about the 10-year vision she's realizing out at Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary. In this podcast, we get to know Danielle. Danielle's parents were born and raised in San Francisco. They met at Sears and Roebuck on Geary and Masonic in the Sixties. After they were married and started having kids, the young couple moved down the Peninsula, but didn't stop coming to The City regularly for big family dinners. The Fernandez family would hit up spots like Bruno's, Caesar's, Green Valley, Spenger's (across the Bay). Danielle describes what these dinners were like for a young kid like her. Her mom had a successful food-demonstration business in the Eighties. They made the stuff people would hand out as samples at grocery stores back in the day. And sometimes, Danielle would go with her mom on runs to the stores. In her teens, Danielle and her friends came to San Francisco a lot, mostly to go to raves held all over town. Getting out of the house involved some creative trickery that many of you might relate to. She says other kids at school might've thought she was a druggie, but in fact, she was just having a good time sober. She describes some of the goofy stuff she and her friends did. In high school, Danielle worked at a pet store, where she learned to work with animals. After graduation, she took a stab at vet tech school, but didn't stick with it. From there, she worked in bio-tech for a while, but she didn't like that much either. Then a friend was looking through an old book of Danielle's drawings. They knew nothing about her artistic past, and asked why she wasn't still pursuing that. For Danielle, it was an awakening. But it was Project Runway that really kicked things into gear. She ended up going to Parsons in New York and lived there for many years after graduating. She did well with fashion, but shifted her focus to "fast fashion," with the idea that she wanted to create practical clothes for the masses. It wasn't long, though, before she discovered inadequacies and injustices of that industry. All this coupled with homesickness was drawing Danielle back to the Bay. And so, after nearly 10 years in New York, in 2018, she decided to pack up and head out west. Her aunt's house in the Bayview suddenly was available to her and her partner, and she was able to get a job here. We rewind a little to hear Danielle's version of the story of her and Isaiah's meeting. Isaiah recounts the story from his perspective. For a refresher, check out Isaiah's podcasts with us from 2020: Part 1/Part 2. Dani sent care packages to Isaiah while he worked in a dangerous situation in Santa Cruz county. We hear all about their whirlwind first day together all over the Bay Area. We end the episode with Danielle and Isaiah's thoughts on what it means to still be here in San Francisco. We recorded this podcast at the Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary in the Bayview in March 2022.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
In this podcast, Isaiah Powell (Part 1/Part 2) catches us up with what's been going since his Storied: SF episodes back in the summer of 2020. Between the land he and Danielle Fernandez stewarded at Florence Fang Community Farm and today, they were at Adam Rogers Park. The philosophy behind Dragonspunk has always been that they go where the help is needed; it's never been about a single location. That brings us today and the place we recorded—Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary on Palou in the Bayview. The spot lies above a Caltrain tunnel in the southeast side of San Francisco. Looking north from this beautiful space, with The City's skyline as backdrop, multiple smokestacks, construction cranes, and the Bay Bridge pepper one's view. Isaiah talks a little about what he's been up to and their gaining access to the land where we talked. Then he hands the mic over to Danielle. She describes her vision of the space, which spawned from an idea she had 10 years ago when she lived in New York and would regularly visit gardens and green spaces around the city. She says her decade-long dream was to have a botanical garden of her own, one that begins the process of healing the damage humans have done to the natural environment. Danielle takes us all on a tour of the sanctuary, listing off the mostly native plants, trees, bushes, and shrubs that live there. And we end this episode with Danielle's vision for the future of the space, which includes community gathering and events. Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the story of Danielle's life. We recorded this podcast at the Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary in the Bayview in March 2022. |