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Theo Ellington, Part 2 (S8E20)
Jun 18, 2026
Unknown duration
Theo Ellington, Part 1 (S8E20)
Jun 16, 2026
Unknown duration
Frameline50 with Kate Bove (S8 Bonus)
Jun 12, 2026
Unknown duration
Painter George (S8E19)
Jun 3, 2026
Unknown duration
Abigail Munn and Circus Bella (S8 Bonus)
May 29, 2026
Unknown duration
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| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
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| 6/18/26 | ![]() Theo Ellington, Part 2 (S8E20) | In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. While in college at Marymount, Theo ran the Boys and Girls Club program with Phillip Redd. He liked the connections and impact he had made in SoCal, and wondered whether he could do the same at home. This was back when Barack Obama was first running for president, and there was a prevailing sense of hope and possibility pervading life for a lot of folks. And so Theo moved back home. He transferred to Notre Dame de Namur in Belmont after his sophomore year, and got a degree there three years later. Upon his arrival in The City and concurrent with his time in college in The Bay, he got involved in SF politics serving on commissions and boards. It helped him really dig in to living here. Then-mayor Newsom appointed Theo to the Youth Commission. He had done yet another documentary in high school, this time on homelessness in The City. That got the mayor's attention. "The Homeless Orchestra" compared the crisis of the unhoused population to the inner workings of an orchestra. The mayor took that doc to Davos, Switzerland, and showed it at the World Economic Forum there. Young Theo talked with folks like Tom Ammiano and Matt Gonzalez for his movie. He lived near his transfer college, Notre Dame de Namur, in Belmont on the Peninsula. After class, he'd hurry back to San Francisco for Youth Commission meetings. He also sat on the Southeast Community Facility (SCF) Commission. Theo and I go on a sidebar here about how we use the tools at our disposal—tech, government—for better and for worse. From his place on the SCF Commission, Theo joined the commission on community investment and infrastructure. They oversaw the development of Hunter's Point Shipyard, Mission Bay, the Transbay Terminal, as well as a few other spots around The City. They worked on housing in those areas and approved 3,000 units, one-third of which were affordable and 250 that were set aside for formerly houseless families. Theo, his mom, and his brother had moved to Third and Newcomb, near the opera house where we recorded. With that move, Theo saw BVOH as a community fixture. The opera house has been there since 1888 (which we learned in our episode with them). Theo took classes there when he was a kid. Around 2010, he walked in and asked how he could get involved. He joined the board and took over years later as interim executive director after a shakeup. In his tenure as interim ED, he helped get a $250K grant for lighting and sound. They were able to give grants to artists and they launched their SF Sounds series: an artist is actually on the floor with eventgoers for those events. I ask Theo about friend of this show Allegra Madsen and her time at BVOH. After stating the obvious, that Allegra is awesome, Theo says that the opera house wants to bring back Frameline and other film fests. "You shouldn't have to leave your neighborhood to catch a film," he says. We also talk about the Hey, Auntie! gumbo contest, which I helped judge, back in 2025 and which took place at the Bayview Opera house. Then we talk about Theo's run for D10 supervisor. The campaign's premise: We can do better in the Southeast. He ran back in 2018, but he's running again because of the potential he sees for the area to dictate the kind of community it wants to become. San Francisco obviously has equitable differences among different parts of our city. Theo cites better transit, housing, and support for small businesses among the most important issues he wants to tackle. Visit his website for more info: https://www.theoellington.com/. Photography by Jeff Hunt | — | ||||||
| 6/16/26 | ![]() Theo Ellington, Part 1 (S8E20) | Today, Theo Ellington is the secretary at the Ruth Williams Opera House. This born-and-raised San Franciscan is also running to be the next D10 supervisor. In Part 1 of this episode, meet Theo. His maternal grandfather, Clifton Weeks, came to SF because his sister, Marie Weeks (Theo's great-aunt), had come here. Clifton and his sister had grown up in rural Natchez, Mississippi, but they came out West during the Great Migration. Their first landing spot was The Fillmore. Clifton found work as a laborer, where he helped build roads and bridges. He also did a little work at the shipyard back when it was still in The City. He had three daughters and made enough money to be able to buy a house in Bayview. Theo grew up in that house with his aunts and cousins. Theo's dad, Grant Ellington, a veteran, came here from Cleveland as an adult. While Theo isn't 100 percent sure what the story is, his parents say that they met at a party … in the Eighties, no less. Grant was a big dude, 6'5", and he commanded a presence. Grant would come by the house, Theo says, and seemed overly concerned with whether his son had a girlfriend. Theo would get that question as young as 6. His dad passed away when Theo was in high school. Theo has two brothers—one older and one younger. He was the third-youngest among the 10 cousins living in his house at Third and Palou. They grew up pre-internet, and so, like a lot of us, went out and made up their own games. He and his cousins and their friends would stay out until the streetlights came on. Theo goes an aside about one of the games they invented—"baserunner." They rode bikes and skateboards, as well. He was born in 1988 and went to a lot of school all in The Bayview. Because he's born-and-raised, I ask Theo to rattle off the schools he attended: Charles Drew Elementary, afterschool at Leola Havard, and Gloria R. Davis Middle School, where he helped make a documentary on a grant from Salesforce about the 24-Divisadero called Bus 24 "The Diversity Bus." It's very much worth watching. That experience really helped to shape Theo's perspective. He started to see his neighborhood, The Bayview, in a different light. And he saw the rest of The City. It sparked a curiosity in him—why was his own hood living in such poverty while other parts of SF thrived? Theo was in the top of his class at Davis Middle School. He began high school at Sacred Heart, and suddenly found himself at the bottom of his class. Drawing from his experience making the Muni documentary, for his junior year, he transferred to School of the Arts (SOTA), where he could focus less on academics and more on filmmaking and documentaries. When he was a kid, Theo had done some acting with American Conservatory Theater (ACT) and WB TV, back when they had a studio in The Bayview. He spent two years in SoCal at Marymount College. One aspect he appreciated as a young freshman was the townhouse dorms, which felt less like typical college dorms and more like adult homes. The move served two goals—go to college, but also, pursue his dream of working in the film industry. While at Marymount, Theo worked at the local Boys and Girls Club, where he and others helped young boys who lacked role models. The experience allowed him to see how life in Southern California was different than life in his hometown. Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the conclusion of Theo Ellington's story. We recorded this podcast at the Bayview Opera House in Bayview in November 2025. Photography by Jeff Hunt | — | ||||||
| 6/12/26 | ![]() Frameline50 with Kate Bove (S8 Bonus) | Listen in as I chat with Frameline50 Associate Director of Programs Kate Bove about this year's historic 50th annual LGBTQIA+ film festival, which runs June 17–27. For more information, including this year's program and to buy tickets, please visit frameline.org. Follow Frameline on Instagram @framelinefest. We recorded this podcast at the Frameline office in South of Market in June 2026. | — | ||||||
| 6/3/26 | ![]() Painter George (S8E19) | Painter George, aka George Harry Crampton-Glassanos, is fine if you wanna call him just "George." In this episode, meet and get to know George. Both of his parents came to San Francisco early in their lives. His mom hails from the East Coast and her family were all working-class folks. His grandpa was a business agent for a machinist's union in Massachusetts. That grandfather shaped George's later involvement in organized labor. (Today, he's a member of the ILWU). George never knew this grandparent who had an outsize impression on him. He died shortly after George was born. But in Massachusetts, in addition to his union involvement, he owned a store that sold records on one half and hats on the other. His dad moved to San Francisco from the Midwest to attend school at the Art Institute (RIP). He got into that school and often slept overnight on a ledge on campus. Both of George's parents were punk rockers in SF in the late-Seventies. Amazing. His dad even lived with the guitarist from The Avengers (Penelope Houston's punk band). Though they would meet later, both spent time at the famed Mabuhay Gardens back in the day. George's dad was a painter as well, and that turned out to have a huge influence on George. His parents met when his mom got a job with his dad's construction working crew. This was around the mid-Eighties. George came along in 1989. After that, his parents had two more boys, making George the oldest of three. His earliest memories are from around the mid-Nineties in The Mission. George spent time when he was a kid running around The Mission and pre-gentrification Dogpatch with his dad. They lived on 18th between San Carlos and Lexington (or, zooming out a bit, between Mission and Valencia). That's two blocks from where I lived from 2003 to 2017, incidentally. But George's family got evicted from that apartment on 18th. The building sold and the new owners evicted tenants one by one, including families like George's. Both of his brothers were born in that apartment. His dad had made modifications there, handyman that he was. And George was old enough to remember all the awesome neighbors they had. I ask George about his favorite restaurants when he was a kid. "I fuckin' ate burritos every night of the week," he answers. He'd hit up nearby La Cumbre or El Buen Sabor around 300 times a year. Whiz Burger also figured big in George's childhood diet. There was a diner across 16th from The Roxie called Aunt Mary's (George shows me a coin purse from the place while we're recording) that he loved as well. Art was always encouraged at home. George's dad would bring home boxes of fax paper for him to draw on with ballpoint pens. He'd draw and draw and draw, often of things he saw. He remembers staring out the window of their place on 18th and watching cars go by, and he'd draw those. But it wasn't until high school at School of the Arts that George really started cranking it out. At SOTA, teachers encouraged George to draw whatever the hell he wanted to. He remembers drawing a skeleton pushing a paleta cart. When George tells me he attended SOTA 2004–2008, I mention that a number of past guests of this show went there around that time. "[The school] churned out a lot of us," he says. Joe Talbot, who co-wrote, produced, and directed The Last Black Man in San Francisco, went to SOTA in that era. George goes on a sidebar to share a story of getting caught smoking pot by a SOTA vice principal. I ask him to rattle off the SF schools he went to, and George obliges. Waldorf in The Mission for Kindergarten, then a Waldorf school in Pac Heights through eighth grade. They wanted him to attend their high school, but he chose SOTA instead. The Waldorf schools also encouraged art, which George appreciated. The social dynamics could be strange, though. You'd have kids like him who got into that school thanks to financial aid being classmates with kids who lived in mansions. After eighth grade, he needed a change. After he graduated from School of the Arts, George took some classes at City College. He'd been working summers painting houses for his dad, and eventually, college tailed off so he could work more. It also gave George more time for his artistic painting. This was about 20 years ago, and since then, he's been painting murals, hanging out with graffiti painters, doing work on Clarion Alley, and working with Precita Eyes to paint various houses and walls in The Mission. I ask whether George's art has evolved over the years. After thinking it over, he talks about the influence of cars and his mom and dad's comic book collections. He loved his mom's underground comics collections, and talks about going down to 23rd Street with them to Scott's Comics and Cards and SF Comic Book Co. next door. George points to artists like Spain Rodriguez, R. Crumb, and the Hernandez Brothers as having shaped his art from a young age. He'd go to Avalon on Mission for iron-on old English letters to have put on hats. The cholo influence of his neighborhood was seeping in, and George ran with it. The gumball machines on Mission with their foil stickers also played a part. He'd take those stickers home, many with images of cars on them, and draw from them. And of course the cars cruising Mission Street caught his artistic eye. George also touches on some of the violence he witnessed in The Mission in the Nineties, when he was a kid. George and his friends got around on skateboards, beater bikes, and Muni. He's quick to point out how, back in the day, you could take the 26-Valencia if you wanted to avoid potential trouble on the 14-Mission. I ask whether George got into any trouble himself. He says mostly harmless stuff like shoplifting. That was before his aforementioned time at School of the Arts. George has mixed feelings about the art scene, and I get it. He's had his art in shows, but prefers bookstores or community-oriented spaces vs. white-walled galleries. He doesn't feel like the audience that goes to those spaces is his. When he talks about painting at home after a long day at work, I ask George to talk about that work. He's currently part of a crew painting the new container cranes in the Port of Oakland. The ILWU is assembling the cranes and George and others use marine enamels to make the cranes look good. We end the podcast with how you can find George and his art. "You can find me on 24th Street," he says. No website. He's on Instagram at @paintergeorge415. We recorded this podcast at George's home in South San Francisco in April 2026. Photography by Nate Oliveira | — | ||||||
| 5/29/26 | ![]() Abigail Munn and Circus Bella (S8 Bonus) | Listen in as I chat with Circus Bella founder and performer Abigail Munn. If you enjoy this podcast, you might also like the episode we did on Club Fugazi and Dear San Francisco. We recorded this podcast at Abigail's home in the Mission in May 2026. Photography by Jeff Hunt | — | ||||||
| 5/26/26 | ![]() Connie Chan's 2026 Run for Congress (S8 Bonus) | Listen in as I chat with past guest Connie Chan about her run for US Congress. To learn more about Connie and her vision of representing San Francisco in DC, head to her website, ConnieChanSF.com. Please consider this episode an endorsement of Connie's campaign. And please vote, by May 26 (today) if you're mailing in your ballot, or on June 2 if you're voting in person. One of the most important ways to both advance our goals of a more just and inclusive society and to beat back billionaire/tech fascism is to vote. It's a privilege, and it matters. We recorded this podcast at Connie Chan for Congress HQ on Cathedral Hill in April 2026. | — | ||||||
| 5/21/26 | ![]() Jenny Chan/Pacific Atrocities Education, Part 2 (S8E18) | Ed. note: Please be advised that there's some very heavy subject matter discussed in this episode. In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Jenny left San Francisco for college, heading east to go to school at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Part of it was wanting a change of scenery. As she says, she "wanted to see snow." But all it took was a few winters before she realized how good the weather in SF is. She also wanted to return to help take care of her mom, who was getting older. This was around the time that Jenny went to China and came back determined to spread the untold histories of what happened in her homeland during WWII. The nonprofit learning curve was steep, and it was almost certainly going to mean shifting gears lifestyle-wise, due to not having as much income. During the first year of Pacific Atrocities Education's life, it was fiscally sponsored by Intersection for the Arts, an SF-based arts nonprofit. Jenny enrolled in and went to as many workshops as she could. She felt generally well-respected and taken care of. With her nascent nonprofit off and running, Jenny traveled to a part of China she had never been to before—Shanxi—to visit and talk with women who survived the war as so-called comfort women (think "sex slaves"). Jenny goes on a sidebar here to talk about some of the things the Japanese did to women during their occupation of China. It involved the Japanese not wanting their soldiers to pick up STDs while in a foreign country. If they could control the situation, i.e., enslave Chinese women to have sex with their soldiers, they could solve that "problem." So disgusting. Hearing these women's stories wasn't easy for Jenny. One story involved one of the women being pregnant after the war ended. She went back to live with her mother, who helped her along. When the baby was born, they abandoned it. Just horrible all around. We sidebar, a little, to talk about the ripple effect of wars and how it's not just tanks and bombs and guns and soldiers fighting other soldiers. There are untold numbers of innocent folks caught up in the destruction, folks whose lives are forever upended, if they even survive. Jenny says that the experience on that trip to China gave her perspective on her own childhood in the Tenderloin. She thought maybe it wasn't so bad after all. It wasn't only women in China. She went and spoke with women in California's Central Coast area about their own experiences as "comfort women." These were Filipinas who relocated to the US after the war. Most of their families didn't know their stories. And it wasn't until the Obama era that light started to be shone on them and what they'd been through. Obama's administration was the first to recognize them, but it was complicated, to say the least. Jenny talks about the delicacy of what she set out to do. Specifically, the difficulty of balancing the need to share these stories, but also to be respectful of the lives impacted by them. In addition to the research she was undertaking for Pacific Atrocities Education, Jenny was also writing a book on the topic. She was able to scan documents from the National Archives, documents the US has due to its occupation of Japan following World War II. One of the more alarming things she found in digging through archives was that the United States traded immunity with Japan's Unit 731 scientists, whose work involved developing biological weapons. Yikes. She goes on to describe other atrocious acts the Japanese undertook in China, stuff so horrible and inhumane I have trouble enumerating it here. I ask Jenny how she handles learning about such terrible stuff. She chalks it up to its being mission-driven work. We chat a little about how the people doing bad things never get held accountable, something true to this day. That immunity mentioned above was given to the Japanese scientists in exchange for the information contained in their research of biological weapons, naturally. You read that right: The US looked the other way while essentially poaching incredibly deadly weapons from its vanquished enemy. Please visit pacificatrocities.org to learn more and get involved. Their YouTube channel is called Pacific Front Untold. Follow them on Instagram @pacificatrocitiesedu. We recorded this episode at Fort Mason in April 2026. Photography by Jeff Hunt | — | ||||||
| 5/19/26 | ![]() Jenny Chan/Pacific Atrocities Education, Part 1 (S8E18) | Ed. note: We recorded this episode outside on a windy day near The Bay. Apologies for the wind gusts you'll hear throughout. Jenny Chan found Storied: San Francisco thanks to Toshio from Sad Francisco. Jenny and I kick off her episode talking about Toshio, in fact. Jenny was born in Hong Kong. Growing up, her dad's mom babysat her a lot. Young Jenny really loved anime and would turn it on at grandma's house. When she did this, her Chinese grandmother would get upset, and Jenny didn't know why. She thought maybe her grandma was senile. Later in Jenny's life, when her grandmother passed away and she helped clean and organize her home in China, she discovered items her grandma kept that pointed to a life spent under Japanese occupation before and during World War II. We mentioned anime, but when Jenny was a kid, she just loved Japanese culture all around. She indulged in manga whenever she could save up enough money. As with the anime, her grandma didn't take kindly to these Japanese things in her home. When she was 10, Jenny's parents split up. She and her older brother then joined their mom and moved to the US. When Jenny remarks that she's not sure how her mom did it, we go on a sidebar. Jenny shares that her mom grew up during the time of the US war in Vietnam, so she's a survivor. I add that, simply, women are amazing. In US schools, Jenny learned about the Holocaust. She also learned about Pearl Harbor, but like most school-age kids in this country, it was in the context of what got the US into WWII. Japanese colonialism and dominance in east Asia never really came up. Her family came straight from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 2000. Members of her mom's family had already been here, dating back to the Seventies and Eighties. Jenny and her mom and brother lived in the Tenderloin when they arrived. She saw the dirty streets in that hood and wondered why they traded Hong Kong skyscraper living for this. Her mom told her that for many reasons, including not having to buy school uniforms, life in SF was more affordable. Jenny's run of schools in The City—Lafayette, Presidio, Washington High. I ask her if she experienced culture shock moving halfway around the world. She says yes and points to knowing only people from Hong Kong when she lived there. Here, she quickly learned that there are folks from all over China and differences abound. She says also that Chinese people she met in San Francisco or The Bay were stuck in whatever era they moved here during, and that was sometimes startling. We go on a sidebar here after Jenny asks me about my own move here from Texas in 2000. Jenny spent a lot of time in the school library, including during lunches. She dedicated herself to learning from an early age. She recognized the hardships her family was going through and saw education as a way to climb out of that. She used her 45-minute Muni commutes from the Tenderloin to school in the Richmond to read and do homework. Her mom worked in restaurants here in The City. Jenny would go with her mom to places like the bank to do the translation. Jenny was learning about life in the US in real time and for practical reasons. At my prompting, Jenny and I rap about all the awesome food in the Little Saigon area of the Tenderloin. I share the story of coming home from my trip to Vietnam and eating at Turtle Tower right away because I missed the food of that incredible country. Jenny lived in the Tenderloin through all her public school days in San Francisco. When her paternal grandmother passed away, she went back to China to clean out her home, as we've mentioned. And that's when Jenny and other members of her family started finding items—military yen, rice-rationing coupons—that pointed to life spent under occupation. Back home, Jenny had found a decent job after college, but was feeling stuck. The revelation of her grandmother's lived experience was a light bulb. It was around this time that Jenny realized a massive hole in her US education. Why didn't she learn about the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, for example? Most of the emphasis was on the war in Europe, with Pearl Harbor and later the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being the main subjects of the history of war in the Asian theater. In her own words, Jenny went "into a deep rabbit hole" to learn those untold stories. Her first stop was the library, where she discovered books like The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang and The Rising Sun by John Toland. The more she learned, the more she sought existing nonprofits she could join forces with to amplify the stories of the Japanese occupation of China. To her dismay, there weren't any. It was around 2012 or 2013, and Jenny figured that she already knew how to live without much income. And so, she decided to start her own company—a nonprofit dedicated to getting those stories out to the world. Pacific Atrocities Education was born. Check back Thursday for Part 2 with Jenny Chan. We recorded this episode at Fort Mason in April 2026. Photography by Jeff Hunt | — | ||||||
| 5/7/26 | ![]() Gina Mariko Rosales, Part 2 (S8E17) | In Part 2, we pick up right where we left off in Part 1, with Gina's first official address in San Francisco. In talking about finding a place to live in The City, Gina mentions that all her friends either live in rent-control apartments they've been in forever, or they're able to live in a place that someone in their family bought and has kept in the family. When she tells me where that first apartment in SF was, I let her know that my first place here, back in 2000, was less than a block away. As we're name-dropping hotspots on the block, I have a brain fart and can't remember the name of Cordon Bleu, the rad greasy-spoon Vietnamese joint still there on California near Polk. From that first apartment, Gina would take Muni to her job over in Potrero Hill. Back then, in the days before smartphones, she'd read on her long, chill Muni rides. She'd come home, make dinner with her roommate, and maybe head out to Polk Street or for karaoke in the hood. That AmeriCorp VISTA gig lead to a job doing literacy work. At that part-time job, Gina also started doing events. She also ran a non-profit dance company, and was trying her best to make both things work out for her. We step back to talk about Funkanometry SF, Gina's dance company. It started in LA, moved north, and the founders handed Gina the keys, so to speak. That happened in Gina's senior year at Berkeley. Because the dancers she was directing were older and more experienced, and because she had literally no experience running a non-profit or a business, she went to Barnes and Noble to buy a copy of a book from the "For Dummies" series. In Gina's time running it, Funkanometry took off. They received invitations to perform internationally, to places like the Philippines, the UK, and Colombia. On the back end, Gina figured out a way to pay herself $600 a month. She felt like she'd made it. Despite all those successes, though, the company didn't make money. The low-paying, part-time job and non-profit dance company was fun, but it wasn't meant to last. She got hit up on LinkedIn by a recruiter for Google and got an interview. Gina had reservations and talked with her mom about them. Lillian told her to daughter to go and listen to what they have to say, and so that's what Gina did. After the interview, she still didn't know if it was a good fit, but she accepted the offer regardless. She was now a software engineering recruiting coordinator at Google. To get to work, Gina took the infamous Google bus. As someone from The Bay who already had immense pride in her city, she felt ashamed. The money was good, but standing in line to wait for the hated busses felt bad. When cars or pedestrians passed by while she waited, she wanted to let them know that she wasn't "one of those people," that she's from here and runs a non-profit dance company. It didn't matter. Her internalized shame remained, but she says the job was fun enough to make up for it. That Google contract job turned into full-time work, and Gina stayed at the company for seven years. During this time, Gina met and started dating a San Franciscan who grew up in the Inner Richmond. They got engaged and Gina moved to that hood. She still worked at Google and now waited for their corporate bus in a chiller area with fewer protests. Then Gina's family suffered a tragic loss. One of her first cousins died by suicide. She says the experience "broke [her] family open," meaning it obviously hurt them all, but it also brought them closer. It made waiting for the Google bus that much more impossible for Gina, too. She'd moved into a new role at the company and was doing events for them. She decided it was time to branch out on her own and do what she loves. She was able to go part-time while launching her own events company. She'd tried to quit, but Google asked her to stay on. It ended up serving her well, as it provided some needed income while she undertook all the stuff it takes to start a company from scratch. The first event she produced under her new moniker, Make It Mariko, was Undiscovered SF, which began in 2017 as the first Filipino night market in SOMA. The first Undiscovered SF was such a success that it inspired Gina to transition Make It Mariko to her full-time work. The stories goes like this: A friend let her know about the nonprofit SOMA Pilipinas. She met with those folks and pitched a launch event. They applied for and received a $5K grant to do the event. A friend was able to wrangle $150K on top of that. That one launch event turned into six events, spaced out one per month. In 2020, Undiscovered SF went virtual. Gina had her tech background, and they had plenty of time to transition. This allowed them to connect Filipinos across the diaspora, sitting on panels and interacting with one another. And of course, there were DJs from all over. Prior to the pandemic, in addition to many other kinds of events, Make It Mariko had quite a lot of corporate event-planning business. Since COVID, though, a lot of that went away. Gina decided she wasn't gonna sit around and wait for big events to hire her company. She wanted to build on the success of self-produced events like Undiscovered. The seeds of what became POC Food and Wine were planted. Gina loves wine. During the pandemic, she got a scholarship to join a wine program where she was able to dive into that world. One of the topics was pairing, and so she was able to take that knowledge and apply it to the POC Food and Wine Festival, pairing POC chefs with specific wines and other beverages. Attendees were encouraged, but not required, to navigate the space and its makers along the lines laid out for them by Gina and her staff. I'll just say: It was one of the best, most unique experiences I've had in my 26 years here in the Bay Area. We end the episode with me letting Gina know how much I also enjoyed this year's Love Thy City event, which took place in February. It was to celebrate Make It Mariko's 10th anniversary and to establish a relationship with The Foundary space in South of Market. The love (right there in the name) that night was palpable—love of San Francisco, of community, of one another. All of these events—Undiscovered, POC Food and Wine Festival, Love Thy City—for me show how dedicated Gina and her people are to uplifting real people doing extraordinary things. Find Gina all over the place, really: Brave New Spaces, whose goal is to help creatives eventually own their spaces Make It Mariko, her events company Photography Mason J. | — | ||||||
| 5/5/26 | ![]() Gina Mariko Rosales, Part 1 (S8E17) | Chances are, you've been to one of Gina Mariko Rosales' events, even if you weren't aware. In this episode, which kicks off our Asian-American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month programming, meet Gina. Born in Daly City, she's lived most of her life on the Peninsula and in San Francisco. But let's talk about how she got to where she is today. Gina was born at Seton hospital in Daly City and her parents raised her in Pacifica. In her words, Gina "grew up with a bunch of skaters and surfers." Sounds fun. But she was one of only a few Filipinas in her hometown. She was also shaped from an early age by her time in Catholic school, which she went to beginning with her preschool days. She also a performer, dancing specifically, but we'll get to that. Gina is part of the first generation in her family to be born in the US. Her parents, Armando and Lillian, both came to this country from the Philippines for college in Ohio, where they met. Lillian's family moved around the Philippines because her dad was an engineer. Gina's dad is half-Filipino and half-Japanese—his Japanese lineage is from Okinawa. Lillian came to The States to pursue international law. But life had other plans. She ended up getting married and having kids, and instead did consulting work. In starting to talk more about her dad, Gina goes on a tangent about how, in 2025, she was able to visit both her mom's homeland in the Philippines and her dad's in Okinawa. Gina's mom was the first in her family to come to the US. Then one of Gina's aunts came. Then slowly, the family starting working on getting more and more members to relocate. Eventually, her grandparents and all her mom's siblings arrived in The Bay. Suddenly, Gina had hella cousins around. Her mom's family has done quite a job tracing their own lineage. Gina says they've been able to trace the line back six or seven generations. And many living members of that clan get together every couple of years for massive family reunions. Think 250–300 folks. I love that. Though she's not 100-percent certain, Gina believes that it was jobs that brought her parents the The Bay after they met at college in Ohio. Lillian worked at Levi's and Armando at Charles Schwab. They had their first child, Gina's older brother, out here. That was the early Eighties. Around mid-decade, Gina was born. Her early memories are of her time in Catholic preschool. Her school was pre-K through eighth grade, so Gina says that once you're labeled by your peers, it sticks. And those students are with you for a minute. Ninth grade provided a chance for Gina to get out of that situation. She "busted out" and attended Sacred Heart here in The City. She remembers being pretty little and visiting her mom at Levi's in San Francisco. She climbed on and ran around the now-defunct Vaillancourt Fountain. They'd go to Fisherman's Wharf. And they'd visit her grandfather's grave at the San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio, followed by trips to Japantown for sushi. We sidetrack here after Gina talks about how St. Mary's was their church and I mention that it's the "washing machine" and "city titty" church. Gina wasn't familiar with either term and I'll characterize her reaction as, simply, mind blown. Because her school, Sacred Heart, was nearby, Gina describes the scarce parking available for students and a lottery system they all had to operate under. We go on another sidetrack here to talk about ways to get around DPT's trickery—chalk marks and all that. At her school, Gina was in the choir and she was a member of the step team. She'd often stay around after a day of school to participate in both groups. She and her friends would frequent 1000 Van Ness movie theater and Venture Frogs, where they'd drink boba and eat popcorn chicken. I remember both spots from my early days in The City, around the year 2000. Gina says starting at Sacred Heart after doing K–8th in Pacifica was refreshing. She made friends with people who looked like her, finally. She was part of an Asian girl crew, in fact. Most of those girls were also on the step team and so much bonding was happening. So was "parking lot pimpin'," whether it was in San Francisco or Daly City, after school or on the weekends. She talks about the prevalence of unhoused folks around her school. Sacred Heart would have outreach days where students would make sandwiches to take to those people. Gina looks back fondly on that time. She and her friends would also hang out in Japantown, taking the bus up Geary or just walking the few blocks down. They also went to hella under-18 parties that had names and themes. There were rave rooms and hip-hop rooms. Gina calls them "the early party days." These were the days before "face the DJ" parties. For college, Gina went across The Bay to UC Berkeley. That meant moving out of her house in Pacifica for the first time. She lived in a dorm her first year, then moved into a co-op house and eventually into an apartment with friends. Philosophy and education were Gina's majors. She intended to graduate and become an English teacher. We go on another sidetrack about studying philosophy (something we have in common) before Gina explains how grad school ended up not working out for her. And we end Part 1 with Gina's story of graduating college in 2008 when the Great Recession hit. Her dreams were dashed and she moved back to Pacifica to live with her parents. She applied for countless jobs and ended up getting into AmeriCorps VISTA, a branch of the larger organization that focuses on alleviating poverty. The program wants its members to experience a level of poverty themselves. It paid just enough for Gina to move to San Francisco. Check back Thursday to hear Part 2 and the rest of Gina's story. We recorded this episode in the Brave New Spaces at Make It Mariko in South of Market/SOMA Pilipinas Cultural Heritage District in March 2026. Photography Mason J. | — | ||||||
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| 4/21/26 | ![]() 415 Day 2026 (S8 bonus)✨ | zine culturecelebration+3 | Mackenzie C KirkCarrie Cotini+6 | 415 Zine | Madrone Art Bar | 415 DayMadrone Art Bar+5 | — | 29m 56s | |
| 4/16/26 | ![]() Kiri the Japanese Fire Truck, Part 2 (S8E16)✨ | importing carsJapanese fire trucks+4 | — | KiriJapanese fire truck+1 | Japantiny mountain village | importingJapanese fire truck+5 | — | 24m 05s | |
| 4/14/26 | ![]() Kiri the Japanese Fire Truck, Part 1 (S8E16)✨ | personal storycultural exploration+3 | Todd Lappin | Kiri the Japanese Fire Truck | New JerseyBernal Heights+4 | Todd LappinJapanese Fire Truck+5 | — | 31m 06s | |
| 4/2/26 | ![]() Soleil Ho, Part 2 (S8E15)✨ | food writingrestaurant work+3 | Soleil Ho | Heavy Table | MinneapolisPortland+3 | Soleil Hofood writing+5 | — | 27m 17s | |
| 3/31/26 | ![]() Soleil Ho, Part 1 (S8E15)✨ | family historyVietnamese refugees+3 | Soleil Ho | — | VietnamFreeport, Illinois+2 | Soleil HoVietnam+4 | — | 30m 36s | |
| 3/19/26 | ![]() Rae Alexandra and "Unsung Heroines," Part 2 (S8E14)✨ | music industrymisogyny+3 | Rae Alexandra | Kerrang!Delirium+1 | — | music journalismmisogyny+3 | — | 34m 59s | |
| 3/17/26 | ![]() Rae Alexandra and "Unsung Heroines," Part 1 (S8E14)✨ | women's historybiography+3 | Rae Alexandra | City Lights Publishing | Bay AreaWales+1 | Rae AlexandraUnsung Heroines+6 | — | 32m 57s | |
| 3/5/26 | ![]() What a Creep's Sonia Mansfield, Part 3 (S8E13)✨ | datingparenthood+3 | Sonia Mansfield | — | San FranciscoDogpatch+1 | dating sitescoffee dates+3 | — | 32m 36s | |
| 3/4/26 | ![]() What a Creep's Sonia Mansfield, Part 2 (S8E13)✨ | college lifejournalism+3 | Sonia Mansfield | Chico StateMartinez News-Gazette | Bay AreaConcord+1 | Sonia MansfieldChico State+3 | — | 31m 12s | |
| 3/3/26 | ![]() What a Creep's Sonia Mansfield, Part 1 (S8E13)✨ | personal storiesfriendship+3 | Sonia Mansfield | — | Richmond, CaliforniaConcord+3 | Sonia MansfieldConcord+6 | — | 35m 23s | |
| 2/19/26 | ![]() Sad Francisco's Toshio Meronek, Part 2 (S8E12) | In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Toshio talks about those chess players at Powell and Market and other early impressions of The City before they moved here. Having grown up in Orange County, with its underfunded public transit system, Toshio always wanted to live somewhere that had a subway. Being able to walk was important, too, in contrast with SoCal, where you pretty much need a vehicle to get anywhere. SF and The Bay checked those boxes. Like Part 1, this episode is rife with sidebars. I guess that's just what happens when you get two people together who both like to talk. The first one in Part 2 is about running any sort of independent media within the larger framework of late-stage capitalism, especially when the content you create is inherently anti-capitalist. You know, light stuff. I try to get us back to Toshio's story of moving to San Francisco, then I can't help myself—another sidebar, this time about Craigslist, which of course Toshio used to help find a place to live in San Francisco. They were able to get work, as we've mentioned, but finding housing was much harder. Their first two places were in the Mission. They left the first one after only one month, thanks to a fire. Their next spot was at 24th and Bartlett, close to BART. Toshio splinters off to talk about some of the other spots they looked at and open houses they went to. "Oof," they say. In 2013, they were able to move into a below-market-rate apartment near Civic Center (the very home where we recorded this episode, in fact). Toshio is their own landlord, something I congratulate them on. Sometime after they moved in, they met their boyfriend. They also got exposed to more and more leftist politics in SF during this time. They talk about coming to terms with the fact that the world they want to see will probably not come about in their lifetime. That's a hard pill to swallow, but it's probably best to accept that and then fight like hell to overcome it. Toshio's light-green living magazine job afforded them the opportunity to write for further left-leaning publications like Truthout. When Al Jazeera opened its US office in The City, they got work there. They've also written for Them and Vice. It all served as background for Toshio to launch their own outlet—Sad Francisco. We go on a sidebar about the corporate takeover of the news, and how local outlets and indie operations like our own have stepped in to try to fill that void. Toshio mentions some newer publications that they're excited about, including Bay Area Current, The Phoenix Project, and Coyote Media. (Ed. note: Look for an upcoming episode with Coyote Collective founding member Soleil Ho.) Sad Francisco started (and continues) as an effort to fill the massive gaps left by said corporate media in the Bay Area. Toshio was curious about the podcast medium, and kicked things off reading and riffing on versions of 2,000-word pieces they had already written for traditional media. They mention that we're at a point now where every journalist, no matter the medium or the employer, should probably be diversifying the distribution of their work. I couldn't agree more. Sidenote: I've been witnessing Toshio's move to self-facing camera reels, with them laying out whatever issue is on their mind, then expounding on it. It's a delivery mechanism I see more and more of, in my limited social media consumption. My wife, Erin (of Bitch Talk Podcast), has begun doing more of these as well, and they seem to resonate with folks. I haven't yet decided whether or when to do them myself for Storied. But I digress … Toshio feels that in 2026, people are looking for authenticity. They don't care so much if your media product is polished. They're more interested in substance, which would be a gain for society, if true. When I ask them how folks can find, follow, and support Sad Francisco, Toshio mentions the podcast's Patreon page. Follow them on Instagram @sadfrancis.co. And check out their website, sadfrancis.co. They're also available on most podcast apps and YouTube. Another sidebar here about how much I used to love Twitter (RIP). We end the episode with my asking Toshio how they do it, how they report so well and so relentlessly on the vast amounts of sketchy shit going down in San Francisco and The Bay. Their answer involves their various journalistic jobs and gigs over the years, and how that work trained them to package up complex ideas and explain incredibly complicated scenarios in a simple, easy-to-understand way. Then Toshio and I indulge in a lovefest for 48Hills.org before wrapping. | — | ||||||
| 2/17/26 | ![]() Sad Francisco's Toshio Meronek, Part 1 (S8E12) | Toshio Meronek's parents met at a bar. In this episode, meet and get to know Toshio. Today, they do Sad Francisco, a really fucking amazing project that reports on and holds truth to power around here. I first became aware of Sad Francisco a few years ago and right away, I was struck by the deep reporting on and understanding of the many complex relationships and goings on in San Francisco and The Bay. And so I sat down with my fellow podcaster to get to know the human behind those efforts. Toshio's story starts with their parents. That bar where they met was in Los Angeles. Shortly after meeting, the couple moved to Germany, where Toshio's dad had found work at a major German tech company. But after getting pregnant with Toshio, the young couple came back to Southern California—Orange County to be exact, where Toshio was born. Some of Toshio's earliest memories involve not really digging that infamous SoCal heat. We'll get into this more later in Part 1, but Toshio picked Portland for college in part because of its more temperate, albeit wetter, climate. Born in 1982, Toshio did most of their growing up in the Nineties. When I ask them what kinds of things they were into as a kid, they immediately say, "zines." Making zines, collecting zines, living and breathing zines. We hop on a short sidebar about Riot Grrrl, a Nineties feminist punk-adjacent movement that seeped into both our lives at different points—mine early in the decade, and Toshio's toward the end of the Nineties. Riot Grrrl arrived in the typically and generally conservative Orange County later than a lot of other parts of the country and the world. But arrive it did, and it had an outsize impact on Toshio's young life. Zines were huge in that subculture, too. To expound on their interests as a kid, Toshio was generally into media, curious about how others live, and also sci-fi and fantasy (think D&D). Toshio was around 13 or 14 when they started writing their own zines. Here we go on a sidebar about one of my favorite pet topics—Kinko's (RIP). IYKYK. Eventually, Toshio eschewed the ubiquitous copy+print shop and had their zines printed on newsprint paper. It was part of a deliberate attempt to appear legitimate, more like "the establishment," something I find fascinating. They wanted people to take them seriously, and that just makes a lot of damn sense. Music was very much a part of the Riot Grrrl movement Punk rock music to be specific. And Toshio's early publications covered that. In fact, topics ran the gamut from music and politics to culture and community. We turn to the topic of Toshio's surroundings when they were a teenager. Record stores, zine shops, cafes that also had live music. They dabbled in the SoCal rave scene as well. They settled into the Candy Kids rave subculture and talk a little about that. There's another short sidebar where we talk about how amazing youth activism is, and how much we always need it. As much as young Toshio was part of these communities and subcultures, they also describe this time in terms of being a loner. They also experienced a lack of self-confidence, lots of acne, therapy to work through their being Japanese and white, or hafu (another term for "hapa"), being gay. Though Toshio has grown past those struggles, they consider them powerfully formative. Then came time to relocate and go to college. Besides Portland having more desirable weather, Toshio chose it in part because of the Northwest's grunge legacy. College life started right around 9/11, and they started going to protests. Lots of protests. College lasted four years, and after that, Toshio stayed behind in Portland. They got work at a magazine covering ecology for K–12 kids. They were also in bands (they play guitar, ish, sing, and play tambourine). "It felt like everybody was in an alt-country band," they say. And then, in 2006, they left Portland for … San Francisco. An editing job brought Toshio here. The publication was a so-called "light-green living" outfit, targeted, as it said, to yoga moms who drive their hybrid SUVs to Whole Foods. I ask Toshio if the job was editing words, and then mention that it's been my profession for a long-ass time. And we go on a sidebar about how important the work is. I'll add that everyone (including editors!) needs an editor. Sorry (not sorry), AI. That leads to yet another sidebar (can you tell we're both podcasters?)—this one from Toshio about the nature of the "yoga mom" publication. They grew disillusioned with their work there, suffice to say. We end Part 1 with Toshio's early memories of visiting San Francisco, before they moved here. They involve the older men who used to be found daily playing chess off Powell and Market. Check back Thursday for Part 2 with Toshio Meronek. We recorded this episode at Toshio's home at the confluence of The Transgender District, Tenderloin, UN Plaza, and Civic Center in January 2026. Photography by Jeff Hunt | — | ||||||
| 2/5/26 | ![]() Danielle Thoe, Sara Yergovich, and Rikki's, Part 2 (S8E11) | In Part 2, we hear the story of how Danielle and Sara met and eventually acted on the totally bananas (but shouldn't be) idea of opening a women's sports bar. Sara and her partner had just landed in San Francisco and fell right into a supportive community. Not that they didn't have that back in the UK. But their friends there were starting to settle down and have kids, and that life wasn't for them. Then we turn to the story of how Danielle and Sara met, on a soccer field, of course. An SF Spikes soccer field to be exact. Danielle was a leader in the queer nonprofit organization at the time, a role she fell into somewhat by accident, but she did manage to make some needed updates. One of those was to bring in more women and non-binary folks. And she considers her time in leadership successful in part because she was able to hand it off and step away. Shortly after their first meeting came the idea to open a women's sports bar. Danielle had been putting together watch parties for women's sports championship games for a few years. It involved calling around to see what bars would air the game in question. Not easy. Eventually, she mentioned to a friend the idea of opening her own place. Sara overheard this and chimed in, "I wanna do that!" Neither of the two had any experience opening and operating a place like Rikki's. They did both work service jobs when they were younger. But what they did have under their respective belts was important—building community. Danielle's time with the Spikes also served her well as far as things like budgets and taxes are concerned. The watch parties Danielle had organized became more and more of a thing, and started happening regularly at SF spots like Standard Deviant. In addition to offering space, folks from the brewery helped them with financial stuff. Getting wildly differing advice from various sources helped Sara and Danielle learn more about themselves and the two as a team. Opening Rikki's around the time that the Golden State Valkyries' inaugural season was starting didn't hurt matters. Danielle describes Rikki's early days, being at capacity. She'd walk the line of folks outside and let them know the situation. She even offered neighboring bars that might have Valkyries games on. She talks about being struck by the amount of people who stayed there anyway, watched the game on their phones, and eventually made their way into San Francisco's women's sports bar. We rewind a little to talk about Sara and Danielle's decision to name the bar Rikki's, after Rikki Streicher. Back in the day, Streicher owned lesbian bars such as Maude's and Amelia's. We sidebar to hear some of Sara and Danielle's name ideas that didn't make it. Diva Dribble Dive might be my favorite. But back to Rikki … They wanted a name that resounded with and was relevant to San Francisco. They went through lists of historic lesbian and women's bars, and kept seeing Rikki's name listed as an owner. They dug deeper on this mysterious character to find that Rikki had a very strong connection to local sports in addition to the bars she ran. She was one of the first sponsors of the Gay Games. The woman part was there. The sports part was there. And the queer part was there. Check, check, check. Then we go back to opening the bar. They announced the location on New Year's Day 2025 and opening day was … sometime in mid-June. Because they're still in their first year as a business, every holiday or event either is or feels brand-new. And because they got started amid the Valkyries' rise, they're finding new ways to utilize the space. That includes trivia nights, live music and DJs (eventually; it's all being applied for), other theme and game nights, and soon, the Olympics. We end the episode hearing what surprised Danielle and Sara about opening San Francisco's women's sports bar. Photography by Marcella Sanchez | — | ||||||
| 2/3/26 | ![]() Danielle Thoe, Sara Yergovich, and Rikki's, Part 1 (S8E11) | San Francisco has a women's sports bar! In this episode, meet Danielle Thoe and Sara Yergovich. Together, they own and operate Rikki's, a women's sports bar on Market in the Castro. We'll hear from Danielle and Sara about their early lives and how they made their way to San Francisco and became friends. We'll also hear the story of why and how they opened The City's first women's sports bar, as well as the incredible woman they named it for. Most importantly, both Sara and Danielle (and me, Jeff) are Libras 😉. We start with Danielle. She grew up in Plymouth, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Born in 1990, her earliest memories are mid-Nineties, and she was around 10 when Y2K happened. Soccer was huge in Danielle's life, starting around age 6. She sites the US Women's Team winning the World Cup in 1999 as a profound influence in her life. It was the first time she'd seen women's sports generate that level of excitement, and she was hooked. She continued playing into her high school years, and says that it was around this time that she started noticing how good some of the other players in her soccer club had gotten. Because Danielle's high school was so large (6,000 or so students), she set her sights on a "big" university. It was between Michigan and Indiana universities, and she choose Indiana, whose state college is in Bloomington. In her college years, Danielle didn't really play soccer. Instead, dorm life because a central focus. She landed in the Collins Living-Learning Center, which she describes as "a weird, niche, hippie place," and she loved it. There was space for many different kinds of people and activities, including pottery and bicycle racing, something Danielle took up in her time at college. I've never lived in a college dorm, and probably never will. But this place sounds rad. The dorm also allowed young Danielle a certain freedom she hadn't yet experienced. I'd call it freedom of expression today. Back then, it was the ability to be as weird as she wanted. There would always be someone nearby a little more "out there," no matter what. After Indiana, Danielle returned to her home state and went to grad school at the University of Michigan. While Ann Arbor, and through friends, she met and started dating someone from San Francisco. After Danielle got laid off from a job in Michigan, she decided to join her long-distance partner and move to The Bay. It was 2015. June 25 to be exact. We know this because the very next day was when the United States Supreme Court issued its Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the country. We turn to Danielle's business partner, Sara, to hear her life story and how she got to San Francisco. Sara grew up in Benicia, across The Bay. Her parents met at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. After college, her dad joined the Navy and got stationed in Vallejo, where the young couple moved. Some years later, they settled in nearby Benicia and had five kids. Sara is their youngest. She's also her parents' only daughter. All her older siblings are boys. She owes getting into "all of the sports" to that fact. Her mom signed Sara up for soccer when she was three. Through some kind of odd accident, her mom also inadvertently became the coach. Sara also played volleyball, basketball, baseball, tennis, golf … she was a jack of all trades, master of none," as she puts it. But Sara's mom always put her on boys' teams to make her more competitive, or so the thinking went. When her mom tried to put young Sara on a football team, though, she drew a line. In her high school years, being the only girl on a team came with specific sexist challenges. But for all the jerks who gave her shit, she was able to find boys who were cool, who had her back. She also eventually got a taste of revenge. The coach's son was particularly nasty, but his dad was cool and paired Sara up with the kid for catch before a game. Sara wound up and threw the baseball so hard, the kid cried. We Libras strive for balance. Sara came to San Francisco regularly as a kid, especially when out of town family visited. Eventually, her oldest brother (16 years older) moved to The City and she came to see him a lot. Another brother moved in with him and they lived in several apartments all over town. Sara shares her earliest memory of visiting SF. She remembers a high-rise penthouse and going to Chinatown. We end Part 1 with the time Sara left The Bay—to go to college, first in Santa Barbara, then for her last semester in Kent in England. Check back Thursday for Part 2 with Sara and Danielle. We recorded this episode at Rikki's in The Castro in January 2026. Photography by Marcella Sanchez | — | ||||||
| 1/22/26 | ![]() Kathy Fang, Part 2 (S8E10) | In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Kathy left her hometown of San Francisco for the first time to go to college at USC. Originally, she wanted to major in science. There was and perhaps still is a prevailing expectation in her culture to go into some sort of lucrative career. Surely, no one would want to go into the food business intentionally, so the trope goes. So Kathy set out to make her parents proud. Soon enough, though, she realized she doesn't like science, and switched to becoming a business major. She earned a bachelor's in entrepreneurship and operations and soon got a job in the corporate world at the stock brokerage Merrill Lynch. A short time later, not too happy, she moved to Johnson and Johnson, another job that ended up boring her. Despite this, she was getting more and more used to LA and wasn't thinking necessarily of coming back. Still in her Twenties, the idea of joining her parents at their restaurant started to grow on her, and she took the plunge. She moved back to San Francisco and lived with Lily and Peter for a time. She'd been bringing college friends to her hometown for a while, parading them around to ride cable cars or eat at places like Taddich Grill. They'd explore San Francisco neighborhoods and restaurants with Kathy as their guide. Her friends loved it here. Duh. Returning home felt good for Kathy. Her husband had lived in Hawaii and Georgia and would sometimes urge to go other places. But Kathy is a city girl, an SF girl. "It's always good to be back." Her first year back, she worked with Peter and Lily at House of Nanking every day. She aimed to prove to her dad that she was serious about restaurant work. After that year, Kathy went to culinary school. When she graduated, Peter lovingly let her know that three is a crowd at his eatery and asked his daughter what she wanted to do. "I kinda wanna open another restaurant," she told him. He'd resisted opening a second location for House of Nanking. The idea of Kathy branching out, however, offered an opportunity to do a second restaurant, but have it be unique and distinct from his own place. Because the new joint would be father/daughter (vs. the husband/wife structure at House of Nanking), it provided space for Kathy's dishes, Peter's dishes, and menu items featuring collaborations between the two. The scaffolding was there, and it was solid. But right away, Kathy found herself the victim of outdated stereotypes of what it means to be a chef. Some even felt that the operation was nepotistic, that Kathy was just riding her dad's coattails. They couldn't imagine that she'd because a great chef in her own right. People, amirite? I ask Kathy whether it's an apt metaphor to say that House of Nanking gave birth to Fang. She agrees. She uses this topic as a springboard to describe physical differences between the two restaurants. House of Nanking feels older, more disheveled, with dim lighting. Fang is newer, cleaner-feeling, brighter. I was sitting there that day at House of Nanking, talking with Kathy, and I couldn't help wonder whether Anthony Bourdain had eaten there. She wasn't sure on the spot that day, but I looked it up. I'm almost certain he did not, but I can't help but believe he eventually would've made it. House of Nanking is just "like that." Kathy seizes on the opportunity to share celebrities who have been to her parents' restaurant, and tells the story of a recent mention by comedian and writer John Mulaney. She was in London when Mulaney performed in SF. On stage in The City, he mentioned loving House of Nanking and wishing it was open after his show. Kathy made a few phone calls from across the Atlantic and had food delivered to him. The next night, Kathy Griffin basically said the same thing. And Kathy Fang once again came through, having food brought to the comic actor. Griffin let it be known that House of Nanking is on an unofficial "comedy circuit," meaning a group of comedians who share tips about various cities and what to do and eat there. We start to wind down the conversation by talking about the book that Kathy wrote. Along with her dad, Kathy's new book, The House of Nanking Cookbook, is something that's been in the works for a while. Folks kept asking them to share their recipes, and Peter resisted. But then the show Chef Dynasty: House of Fang came out on Food Network. After her dad saw the show (and he's in it, mind you), he changed his tune. He wanted there to be a record of everything they'd accomplished. Kathy convinced Peter that a book was the best way to do just that. The book is written in both Peter's and Kathy's voices. So it's got the story of opening and carrying on all those years. But it also has Kathy's perspective, growing up in the restaurant and eventually becoming a chef in her own right. After doing research and seeing a dearth of Chinese-American cookbooks, getting her family's recipes out there became even more important for Kathy. The House of Nanking Cookbook is available at local bookstores. House of Nanking, 919 Kearny Street, @houseofnankingsf Fang restaurant, 660 Howard Street, @fangrestaurantsf Find more about Kathy on her website, kathyfang.com. | — | ||||||
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