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by Storied: San Francisco
A weekly podcast about the artists, activists, and small businesses that make San Francisco so special.
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- 2 days ago23 min
Top Chefs, Part 2 (S8E23)
In Part 2, Aft joins us to chat about the band—Top Chefs. We start with the story of how TJ met Aft. A mutual friend of his and Loveberry's, Lucas Hanson, put on a show at DNA Lounge called "Liam Berry and Friends." TJ was just getting out of high school at the time. They asked him to join them on stage, something he'd never really done before. TJ had been playing smaller sets in restaurants, but joining a band at a bona fide venue was new for him. Loveberry (Liam) had met Aft at something called a "sound gig" for a set they would play as part of the effort to keep People's Park in Berkeley from being closed. They called Loveberry because he had a PA and they needed someone to run sound. Loveberry didn't really know what that meant at the time, and he might've been mistaken for a guy named Jeff whom they'd been expecting. Nevertheless, Aft was one of the few people who was nice to Loveberry that day in Berkeley. The band ended up needing a guitar player, and so a mutual friend told Aft that he should have this guy, Loveberry, play guitar with him. They agreed and ending up borrowing a guitar from a member of the crowd. Aft later invited Loveberry to a rehearsal back in SF. Afterthough, aka Aft, joins the conversation at this point. He recounts his version of that day in Berkeley. It was still early pandemic enough that folks were wearing masks. He liked Loveberry's playing that day enough to ask him over. They played a couple of shows as "Aft and His Band" or "Aft … backed up by (various musicians.)" Aft was also asked to play with "Liam Berry and Friends." At that DNA Lounge show, Aft met TJ and the trombone player Will, who's also in Top Chefs now. Aft had played in bands for years, including with a set of twins who played piano and bass. But those guys moved to New York around the time he connected with Loveberry. And soon after that, TJ and other members of today's Top Chefs. There's some collective fuzziness around when this all went down, but that doesn't matter. It was the beginning of coming out of a worldwide pandemic when time began to get totally skewed for everyone. But also, they were just busy playing music and making friends. I ask the three of them who came up with the idea to play shows on the stoop of Aft's childhood home on Scott Street. Loveberry and TJ credit Aft with the idea. Liam talks about arrangements that Aft was putting together with complex horn sections. And in those sessions, one of the musicians started a habit of saying, "Yes, chef" to Aft when he was asked to do something. That came from watching cooking competition shows. The dude was messing with Aft, so at the end of a show one night, when Aft was introducing band members, he called this guy "the top chef" to get him back. The name stuck for the entire band after that. There's a story about TJ's Filipina grandma, who lives near DNA Lounge, making Filipino BBQ on a stick and madeleine cookies for the band. TJ wasn't sure what to do with the food, so he set it out in the crowd while they played a song called, "Everybody Eats." It was a whole thing, and something Aft says he wants to bring back. I ask the fellas whether anyone has ever compared their Stoop Sessions to NPR's Tiny Desk music series. There's a resounding "yes" from all three. Then Aft shares that Top Chefs actually shot a Tiny Desk audition video on the stoop. It was early 2024, and despite not making it onto the hit public media show, they realized that they had something in shows on the stoop. In 2025, thanks to a fundraiser show, the band went to South by Southwest in Austin. After that, they played in the Haight, Hunters Point, Bernal Heights, downtown. Then Top Chefs started ramping up the quality of the videos. In late 2025, just before they planned to take a break from the band, Aft called a media day. The video of that performance went viral. Top Chefs' Stoop Sessions had arrived. It must've been around that time that my wife and I discovered them and immediately knew we'd found somethin
- 4 days ago31 min
TJ, Loveberry and The Top Chefs Band, Part 1 (S8E23)
There's a band in San Francisco comprising musicians from The City and whom I discovered on social media playing shows on a stoop here in SF. I can't quite be sure when I discovered them, or whether it was me or my wife, but either way, right from the start, we knew we'd stumbled upon something special. Something truly unique. Something joyful, beautiful, free … something for the people. People could gather around with neighbors, some they know, some they might be meeting for the first time. Community is something of a buzz word lately, especially in light of things like gentrification, neo-tech fascism, and just plain ol' fascism. But for good reason—it's one of the most powerful tools we have not only to resist all the nonsense being forced on us, but also to overcome that crap and move on toward creating a world of inclusion, equity, diversity … and good tunes. The band's name is Top Chefs. This last episode of Season 8 of Storied: San Francisco is, not by accident, all about them and the magic they create. We start things off with TJ Milan, lead arranger for Top Chefs and co-editor of what they call "Stoop Sessions." TJ was born and raised in San Francisco. His dad came out here from Connecticut, and his mom is from The Philippines. His parents lived in South of Market, and TJ lives in that neighborhood today. TJ's mom came to The City with her parents when she was young. She later joined the Army, serving with a support group for the Green Berets. His dad had moved to New York first for work. Then he got offered a job in San Francisco in the late Eighties and took it. In the mid-Nineties, the two met at a law firm where they both worked. In 2002, they had TJ, the youngest of their three kids—he has an older sister and an older brother. His dad is an amateur saxophone player. More on that in a bit. The family lore goes that his sax stylings played a part in his parents' union, because duh. I give TJ the opportunity to rattle off his SF schools, something he's proud to do—Clarendon Elementary, Hoover Middle School, and School of the Arts (SOTA). He describes his time at SOTA as "very chaotic." There was beef between the SOTA kids and the Academy kids in his days. Academy is sort of a school-within-a-school for SOTA, a majority/minority arrangement. Despite that situation, though, TJ met the person who's still his significant other to this day. The only time TJ left San Francisco for any significant time was to go to college at The New School in New York City, where he studied jazz. But he credits most of his education with Community Music Center in The Mission. The entire time TJ spent in NYC, he felt in his heart that he would return to his hometown. He played out a lot while he lived in New York, but the market for saxophonists was saturated. He came back to SF around September 2024. It started off rough, as he puts it. He started busking to make ends meet. Then we turn to Liam Berry, aka Loveberry, the head of audio production and guitar player in Top Chefs and co-editor of Stoop Sessions. His mom came here from San Diego. Her mom came to the US from Ecuador, where she was raised. His mom's dad is from Illinois. Loveberry's grandfather was on a work trip in South America when he met his grandmother. That couple went to Philadelphia before landing in San Diego. Their daughter, Loveberry's mom, moved to The Bay to go to UC Berkeley to study biology. <
- 2 weeks ago28 min
Todd Kurnat, aka Ink Letterman, aka DJ Circuit 73, Part 2 (S8E22)
In Part 2, we begin with Todd and me rapping about how much digital technology has changed just in our lifetimes. Even when he was in school in Colorado, San Francisco had been a goal for Todd, a destination. He got his impression of The City from skateboarding magazines and TV shows. But before moving here, Todd went to Europe, as he puts it, "chasing a girl." He even tried living overseas. When that didn't work out, he moved back to Grand Rapids to save money. In 2001, he made the big move west. When Todd arrived, he had a job already lined up for him. He just needed to find a place to live. He'd respond to Craigslist ads for apartments, but when he showed up to look at one of them, a roommate situation, it had turned into a party. He got the place, his first San Francisco apartment, at Waller and Masonic. Todd takes a moment to reminisce about living in that area, which he's continued to do in the many years since he moved to San Francisco. His walk down memory lane leads us to the Lower Haight. Todd met a lot of cool people at that first SF job, a dotcom, naturally. One of those coworkers had a separate office space in the Lower Haight that served as an auxiliary pressing plant for a record-pressing company based in the Czech Republic. That coworker was bailing on their job and handed the space and the gig over to Todd. It put him face-to-face with musicians in need of vinyl to be pressed. He handled album art as well. His worlds of art and music were colliding in meaningful ways. He quit his dotcom job to do this new gig full-time under the name Circuit 73. More on that later. In addition to the record-pressing gig, Todd was doing flyer art for a friend's monthly zine as well as other various flyer work. He also did album artwork. Two friends who were new at the time were looking for a space to open a music gear store. They ended up in the same space in the Lower Haight where Todd based himself. Todd's graphic design work really started to take off around this time, the early 2000s. He'd only been in San Francisco a couple of years, but Todd felt like he was where he needed to be. I ask Todd whether, all those years ago, he had a plan for how long he would try his new city out. He says he didn't, but back then, he felt like he wouldn't be here the rest of his life. And yet, more than 20 years later, here we are. Then we turn to one of Todd's alter egos/pseudonyms/whatever you wanna call its—Ink Letterman. That persona was born when Todd got his first Instagram account, around 2014 or so. He wanted an alias, and landed on that. It took off around 2020, when he started doing mural work in the early days of the pandemic. Rewinding a bit, Todd started DJing under the name Circuit 73 (another alias) around 2005 or so. He eventually took a lot of time off from music, though. His growing collection of physical media started to make him anxious, so he stopped buying records. He also started a family in this time. Eventually, digital music platforms more or less solidified, so that helped. He also started listening to KUSF/90.3 FM. Being in an office, sitting in front of a computer, it all led to burnout as well. His son was born in 2015 and he semi-retired from graphic design to focus on being a parent and leaning in more to his art (and away from design). Todd's art is part of a group show curated by Known SF and 415 Zine that's up now through August 24 at Mini Bar. Eventually, DJing came back into Todd's life. He's quick to give credit to KEXP/92.7 FM for roping him
- 2 weeks ago26 min
Todd Kurnat, aka Ink Letterman, aka DJ Circuit 73, Part 1 (S8E22)
Todd Kurnat is everywhere. In this episode, meet and get to know Todd. These days, he's also known as Ink Letterman for his art and DJ Circuit 73 for his musical stylings. We begin in Michigan. Both sets of Todd's grandparents grew up in Greenville, Michigan, about an hour outside Grand Rapids. His parents met in high school in that small town. They eventually moved to Grand Rapids, the big city in that part of the world. His dad worked at a transportation company and his mom was a nurse at St. Mary's Hospital. It was the early Seventies—around 1972 or so. Todd was born in 1973. His mom had done some college, and his dad had joined the US military to teach about weapons-grade rockets. He was never deployed to Vietnam. Todd says that engineering DNA in his dad runs through him, although Todd uses it for less destructive ends. Sometime after Todd came around, the family moved to Johnston Street, still in the inner-city part of Grand Rapids. The neighborhood had access to downtown. Todd spent a lot of time riding his BMX bike around the area with friends. Eventually, bikes gave way to skateboards, which he took all over his city. But we'll get to that. His earliest memories on Johnston Street involve playing in the front yard—baseball and football with kids from the hood. In the backyard, they had a basketball hoop. Eventually, Todd was joined by two younger sisters and a younger brother. He remembers spending a lot of time with his sisters before his brother was born when Todd was 13. Another of Todd 's earliest memories involve listening to music. His dad had an 8-track player that Todd used a lot. Those tapes made him so happy that he'd run around the house doing laps. The radio was also on a lot in Todd's house. Todd went to Catholic school until his early high school years. One day, his mom showed up at his private school, got him out, and said, "we're leaving." Both his parents worked to support themselves and their (at the time) three kids. But changes had to happen, and so they put their oldest kid in public high school. It proved to be a life-changing move for Todd. Right away, he made new friends, a few of which have proved to be life-long buddies. The common thread for them was music and movies. Bikes and skateboards, too. Speaking of bikes … Around age 12, Todd had a newspaper route. Because he already had a bike when the BMX craze really took off, around the mid-Eighties, he followed that. He and his friends eventually started riding their bikes on street ramps. They also built and rode on dirt tracks. BMX gave way to skateboarding when Todd was 13 or 14. For a minute, he did both, but then someone stole his bike. Like me, skate videos got him hooked—videos from Powell Peralta featuring pro skaters like San Francisco's own Tommy Guerrero. And it wasn't just the skating in the videos that impressed Todd—he also dug the music enough to record it from VHS to cassette tape. Toward the end of his high school days, Todd taught himself to play guitar. He bought a four-track Tascam recorder and started experimenting with it. He did stuff on his own, but also joined with some friends to form a band called Landis. They played for most of the rest of the Nineties. Relevant to who Todd would become years later, a lot of the existence of Landis involved him screwing around with different configurations and recording locations. Think: experimental, but not necessarily falling into the so-called experimental genre.<
- 3 weeks ago23 min
The Golden Gate Park Band (S8 Bonus)
Listen in as I chat with German Gonzalez, musical conductor and principal director of the Golden Gate Park Band, now in its 144th year. We recorded this podcast in Golden Gate Park in June 2026.
- Jul 2, 202635 min
The San Francisco Mime Troupe, Part 3 (S8E21)
In Part 3, we hear from Keiko and Michael about the history of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. In the late-1950s, a San Franciscan named R.G. Davis taught a class in movement—mime, dance, physical interpretation of stories … that sort of thing. A performing troupe sprang out of that class, and it was known as the R.G. Davis Mime Troupe. It was the era of the early Civil Rights and Anti-War movements, and the troupe became more and more political, basing much of their work around social issues of the day. The group started off doing silent mime work, but shifted later. Michael offers us the definition of mime at this point—"the exaggeration of everyday life in story and song." Not all mime is silent. As the audiences kept getting bigger and bigger, Davis's troupe realized that they needed to abandon the silent style. They dived into doing commedia dell'arte with more and more masks and colorful decorations. Classic commedia almost always involved stories around class—think servants vs. rich assholes. The Davis troupe started writing mimes about civil rights, women's rights, workers' struggles. And they realized that changing their name to "San Francisco Mime Troupe" was a wise move. The newly named SF Mime Troupe played around California. They went to the Midwest and East Coast. They were getting bigger and bigger and getting more and more attention. In the early 1970s, they decided to become a collective. R.G. Davis left at this point. But the troupe wanted to practice what it was "preaching" on stage. I ask Michael to tell us the difference between a collective and a co-op—basically, a co-op is shared ownership of an entity. A collective is simply the way of running the thing. It doesn't necessarily speak to ownership. Keiko joined the collective as an actor. Soon after that, she helped to build props and design costumes and sets. I ask Keiko and Michael to explain the "why" part of getting involved and staying with SF Mime Troupe. Keiko takes us back to her childhood, when her parents took her to anti-war protests regularly. She cites that as a foundation for why she was attracted to the work that the SF Mime Troupe had been engaged in already for so long. She believes in the power of the people to come together and overcome whatever is thrown at us. And the fact that there's a theater company, where she could combine all her passions, didn't hurt at all. For Michael, it goes back to the first SFMT show he saw. It was Factwino vs. the Moral Majority. It's a show about free speech and manipulation. He was hooked. He'd be a fan forever. Then, he got that audition. He agrees with Keiko about the mime troupe community, but Michael goes a step further—he points to that camaraderie he finds with audiences. He appreciates being able to express his passion for politics regularly. The Mime Troupe aims to be topical and newsworthy with whatever is going on at the time. But some things just keep repeating themselves. War, capitalism, the continued deterioration of a livable climate. Michael talks about taking pride in the collective's diversity—race, age, economic levels. And this sets the SF Mime Troupe apart from other theater companies. Then we start talking about what going to a Mime Troupe show can do for audiences. It can inspire and empower showgoers. It can also help them feel less alone in dark times like the present. Michael talks about how, as a performer, they need to leave the audience wanting to take action, that the revolution can't only happen on stage. Because Storied is my show, I assert that San Francisco isn't the
- Jul 1, 202635 min
Michael Gene Sullivan of the San Francisco Mime Troupe (8E21)
Both sides of Michael Gene Sullivan's family are from Detroit. In Part 2, we get to know Keiko's fellow SFMT collective member. Michael was born in Livonia, Michigan, a small town outside of Detroit. His parents met at a summer camp, but we need to rewind a bit before we get to that. When his dad was a boy, he was kidnapped. Yes, really. He and his brothers, all Black boys, were taken from Detroit to work on a plantation in Louisiana. One day, three years later, a car pulled up to the plantation. Some people got out of the car, grabbed Michael's dad and uncles, and threw them into the car (not minding the trauma these boys had already been through or might be experiencing in the moment). Much to the boys' relief, their mom was in that car. She'd been looking for her sons the entire time. They made it back to Michigan, but the effect of having been kidnapped and missing key years with his family stayed with Michael's dad. Michael characterizes his dad's side of the family as old-school gangsters. His mom's family were upper-working-class, many of them with jobs at Ford. The aforementioned camp was in Detroit and it was designed to bring kids from all different economic levels together. The camp held a dance, and his dad found himself with all the boys on one side of the room—on the other side, the girls, of course. No one had started dancing when one of the girls suddenly got up (on a dare from a friend), walked over to the boys, and sat in Michael's dad's lap. That girl was his mom, of course. They danced, talked a little, then had to separate. The next summer, at the next camp, the two met again. Then it happened again the following year. Eventually, they started dating and fell in love. Michael's mom's family wasn't too pleased, given the criminal aspect of his dad's family. But his mom was a bit of a rebel and went with love. The new couple settled in Detroit. They had three children—two girls and a boy, Michael, their youngest. His dad did radio work in the Army and his mom studied art. When dad got out of the service, he parlayed the tech work he'd learned into the infant industry. He got a job with National Cash Register, who relocated the family to Los Angeles. Michael was three when his family moved to California, so he doesn't have distinct memories of that. With the move to LA, his mom started doing more and more art, sculpting and painting. His dad worked a lot, but the couple also started getting involved in politics. They went to protests, rallies, Black Panther meetings. Michael shares his family's story of being at a protest against LBJ's visit to Los Angeles. It involves a family of five plus their pet rabbit climbing a tree. The next year, 1968, was a presidential election year, and Michael's mom worked for the Bobby Kennedy campaign. She was there on primary night, June 5, when RFK was assassinated. She was in the same room, even. Soon after that, the FBI showed up at their house looking for witnesses. To make up for known failings around the JFK assassination, the agency moved to protect witnesses around this tragedy. They sent his mom back to Detroit. The rest of Michael's family stayed behind. The FBI gave Michael rides to school in that time period. Two weeks later, when his mom returned, his parents decided to move the family to San Francisco. It was originally planned as a temporary visit, but they never left. The first place his family landed was The Sunset District. He was seven, and started school in San Francisco. From there, the family moved to Bayview, Western Addition, back to The Sunset, over to The Richmond District,
- Jun 30, 202630 min
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro of the San Francisco Mime Troupe (S8E21)
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro was born in the Bay Area … the Boston Bay Area. In Part 1 of this episode, meet Keiko. Today, she's a longtime member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe collective. But her story goes back to her parents' migration to the US from Japan after World War II. Keiko's dad got a Fulbright scholarship to come to this country. He studied medicine. Her mom came to visit the US for one year, but in that time, met Keiko's dad at a Japan Society picnic in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two weeks after they met, her dad proposed, and roughly a year later, they had their first child—Keiko, named thusly because she was conceived on Cape Cod. Because her dad was doing his residency in Boston, Keiko was born in Cambridge, just across the Charles River. She spent the first 15 years of her life in the Boston area, frequently going to protests of the war in Vietnam with her parents. Keiko also attended "Burn Your Bra" rallies in Harvard Square. Her family comprised the only Asians in Lexington, where they lived. Keiko and her sister were the only Japanese school kids in the district. Perhaps because of that dubious distinction, reporters approached Keiko when she was very young to ask her what she thought of the US war in Vietnam. On the other hand, there were white Americans who welcomed Keiko and her family. Her mom had a sponsor, an American woman who had been a journalist in Japan during WWII. And her dad came here on a Fulbright scholarship, after all. Both had plans to return to their home country, but meeting and considering that Japan was still something of a war-torn country, they decided to settle in Massachusetts. Before they knew it, they had three daughters. We shift the conversation to talk about Keiko and her sisters and their sibling relationships. Keiko sees the demands from her parents on her, as the oldest child, being the highest. Going younger in age among her sisters, the demands lessen. I know this all too well, being the youngest of three boys myself. Keiko and her youngest sister didn't get along when they were young. Maybe it was the seven-year gap in age. But through the experience of Keiko caring for her aging and dying parents, and then losing their middle sister after their parents' passing, the two became and remain close as adults. Midway through her time in high school, Keiko's dad moved his family from the Boston area to Iowa. There was a job opportunity there, but the main reason to leave went back to racism. Her dad didn't feel that he was appreciated at the Boston area hospital where he worked. Going from afternoons in Harvard Square to her parents' new house amid corn fields and barns was a shock, to put it mildly. Keiko also had to say goodbye to her boyfriend back home, which, at 15, was of course devastating. In her new city, the only place Keiko felt comfortable and welcomed was in high school band. She'd been playing flute for some time and wanted to go on to study music in college. There were no Asian grocery stores in Iowa City at the time. Keiko's parents helped to open the first of those. Later, folks from Vietnam, Korea, and some Southeast Asian countries arrived. And when they got there, there were food shopping options available to them. Keiko graduated high school a year early and went to the University of Iowa. Fueled by a desire to escape a cru
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