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Storied: San Francisco: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Storied: San Francisco
A weekly podcast about the artists, activists, and small businesses that make San Francisco so special.
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- 3 days ago36 min
SF Lowrider Council Founder Roberto Hernandez (S9 Bonus)
Listen in as I talk with Roberto Hernandez, founder of the SF Lowrider Council. The council is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. And their Lowrider Parade and car-hopping contest will take place in the Mission this Saturday, Sept. 19. We recorded this podcast at Roberto's home in the Mission in August 2026. Photography by Tyrone Malow Diaz
- 4 days ago38 min
Photographer Dave Glass, Part 2 (S9S1)
In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1, with Dave's time in Europe to get away from being drafted to fight in Vietnam. By that time, with a couple years at City College taking photo classes under his belt, Dave had built a portfolio. He took all his gear with him because he didn't know whether he was ever coming back. His French cousin had a friend whose mom worked at the US Embassy in Paris. Dave got about a dozen photos into a group show at the American Culture Center there, his first public showing. Through another connection, he was able to print photos for the show at the Sorbonne. The National Library of Paris ended up acquiring all of Dave's photos from that show, and they're still there today. Lodgings with his French family were barely adequate, and definitely crowded. He had a friend, also a draft dodger, living in Scotland. And so Dave decided to move to the UK. He and his cousin had bought a car together, and he ended up taking that car to Leeds in northern England. Locals there took Dave in, and so he stayed there, rather than Scotland, for another half-year. We go on a sidebar thanks to my out-of-left-field question about Dave smoking cigarettes when he lived in Europe. We also talk about partying as a young person over there. At the end of 1971, Dave returned to The Bay. It was safe by then, he says, because there were so many other draft dodgers. He shares a tidbit about how, before he left, if you had gone to the intersection of 19th Avenue and Lincoln, you would see at least half a dozen young men holding hitchhiking signs that said, "Canada." A few years down the road after Dave's return, Jimmy Carter granted amnesty to all the draft dodgers. At our live event, he next showed a photo from Mission and 18th Street that shows, among other things, Lakeside Liquors, Dave's family's business back then. His dad and a partner owned and ran the place, and Dave worked there. His dad also owned a laundromat on the block. His dad claimed that his was the first full-service, coin-op laundromat in The City. It was 1957, and we'll just go ahead and take his dad's word for it. As a young man, Dave learned to fix those washing machines and dryers, which he says "were always breaking down." And that's how he got his first taste of appliance repair, a career he spent 25 years in. When his dad retired in the Eighties, Dave opened his own joint—Little Hollywood Launderette on Market near Laguna. But by the time he opened Little Hollywood, unattended laundromats were fading in popularity, for various reasons. So Dave included attendants and wash-and-fold service at his place, as well as a dry cleaner next door. He ran Little Hollywood from 1989 until 2007. Dave shares the story of a music video that was shot mostly inside Little Hollywood. A then somewhat up-and-coming artist called Del the Funky Homosapien shot the video for his song "Made in America," directed by Michael Lucero, in a funky laundry spot on Market. Read all about that in this story from Hieroglyphics. Dave's behind-the-scenes story of that video shoot is fun. Back in his repairman days, Dave would travel from the Mission to the Western Addition regularly, as well as trips out to the Sunset and Richmond districts. He got to know his city even better. He knew all the laundromats, including the spot that would eventually be his own. In 2007, Dave decided to retire. That gave him more time with his cameras. Three years later, his parents really started aging and needed more and more care. To help out, Dave took over running his dad's businesses when he was no longer able to. He did continue taking photos during this time, though. In fact, he'd been taking photos since his return from Europe back in the early Seventies. Photographers from
- 5 days ago30 min
Photographer Dave Glass, Part 1 (S9E1)
Dave Glass's Polish parents met at a displaced persons camp in Europe after World War II. In this Season 9 inaugural episode, meet and get to know Dave. A born-and-raised San Francisco, Dave joined me back in August in the SF Public Press office/studio at Warfield Commons to record the first-ever Storied: San Francisco live episode. Our talk that night comprises this episode. Dave's mom and dad got married at that camp in Germany and had their first kid, Dave's sister, there. The young couple wanted to come to the US, but had to wait another five years in Europe for that to materialize. Finally, they made it, via the port of New Orleans. Their American sponsor lived in Stockton, which they made their way to by trains and buses. Dave's dad later told him that when they arrived in California, Stockton looked to him like all cowboys and Mexicans. The family's sponsor owned a ranch, and the arrangement was that Dave's mom and dad would work there. One day, his dad's boss sent him to San Francisco, an hour or so away, for supplies. One taste of The City, and his dad knew he had to move his family here. It was early 1951 and Dave's mom was already pregnant with him. The family made the move to the big city regardless. They settled in the Western Addition on the corner of Webster and Fulton. This was before redevelopment, mind you. In addition to its sizable Black population, there were also a significant number of European refugees in the neighborhood, too. Dave fondly remembers being a little boy and going to the Ukrainian bakery at the corner of Webster and McAllister. Other memories from Dave's early days include vague visions of the Acme beer brewery across from his house. Dave lets us know that today, there are remnants of that building still standing. Around the time Dave started school, his family moved to the Sunset District. This is when his memories really get going. He went to Parkside Elementary, which is today known as Dianne Feinstein. Dave rewinds a little to share the story of when Eisenhower visited SF as president. Dave's mom got him, his sister, and herself dressed up. They walked down to Van Ness, where the presidential motorcade was set to pass by. He recalls the president sitting, not in the car's seat, but above it, in open air, riding down the avenue waving at folks. So much about this would never happen today. When he was 10, Dave got his first camera. At our live event, he shared a photo he took with that camera at his sister's birthday party, seen in a gallery on this page. It's one of the oldest photos he has that he took himself. At that time, Dave was just a "kid with a camera," not serious about the art whatsoever. But his dad had a Leica camera and did take photography more seriously, at least when it came to family photos. He had bartered for the camera when he lived in the displaced persons camp in Europe, and had photos from that time. Dave still has some of those pictures. We go on a bit of a sidebar here, thanks to my question about how folks got their camera film developed back in the day. We also chat about the nature of film vs. digital. When he was in high school, Dave joined the photo club and developed in a darkroom for his first time. He says it was around this time that he started to have an affection for photography. <p class="" style="white-space: pre-wrap;" d
- 1 weeks ago13 min
Intersections SF Episode 1 — Mani Niall's love story at Uncle John's Tree (Fell & Stanyan)
Mani Niall is a chef, baker, author of Sweet! and other cookbooks, a food business advisor—and he was Michael Jackson's first private chef! Mani's very SF love story takes place at Uncle John's Tree near Fell and Stanyan in 2002. He writes on Substack at mjchefmani.substack.com—here's the oatmeal sour cherry chocolate chip cookie recipe he mentions in his episode.
- 2 weeks ago32 min
Season 9 Intro: Intersections SF + "This Is the Place"
Listen in as Jeff talks about the coming Season 9: This Is the Place. Then Jeff is joined by Intersections SF host Bowen Dwelle to talk Bowen's new show. Intersections will be part of the Storied universe beginning Sept. 9.
- Jul 30, 202623 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
- Jul 28, 202631 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. <
- Jul 16, 202628 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
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