We wrap up our North Beach series with an interview with Graziano Cerchiai, the patriarch of the city's legendary Bimbo's 365 Club, on his 91st birthday. 

Porchlight Storytelling Series

Porchlight Presents: North Beach Episode 8: Graziano Cerchiai

Our guest this week is theater director and current Chief Producer at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Jonathan Moscone. Jon talks about his North Beach memories, including memorable nights at Tosca, and how the pandemic has unveiled inequities in our society that we cannot ignore. 

Porchlight Presents: North Beach Episode 7: Jonathan Moscone

Author, journalist, and fifth generation San Franciscan Pia Hinckle joins us to talk about growing up and raising her own kids in the city. Topics include her legendary father, journalist Warren Hinckle, and nearly every single bar in North Beach.

Porchlight Presents: North Beach Episode 6: Pia Hinckle

Arline and Beth catch up with poet Jack Hirschman.  He looks back on his friendship with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and shares a poem he wrote for Lawrence on the night of his passing.  

Porchlight Presents: North Beach Episode 5: Jack Hirschman

Arline and Beth catch up with City Lights Books' linchpin Stacey Lewis. She looks back on 25 years at the iconic bookstore and remembers her mentor and friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Porchlight Presents: North Beach Episode 4: Stacey Lewis

A year after Tuttle's death, Arline and Beth remember the tattoo icon with his friend and archivist Danielle Boiardi.   

Porchlight Presents: North Beach episode 3: Lyle Tuttle and Danielle Boiardi

Arline and Beth talk to San Francisco legend Peggy Knickerbocker. The cookbook author and gal about town talks about The Dolphin Club, her new memoir, and childhood friends helping get her through the pandemic. Her story about running around North Beach was recorded at Bimbo's in 2018. 

Porchlight Presents North Beach: Episode 2: Peggy Knickerbocker

Beth and Arline remember a great show back in 2019 in the perfectly lit, crowded lounge at Bimbo's. Porchlight favorite Jesse DeNatale was there. He spent the pandemic creating a beautiful album "The Wilderness." Hear all about it and the roads that lead us wherever the hell we wind up.

Porchlight Presents: Jesse DeNatale

We were so excited to join forces with both the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the California Institute for Integral Studies for a night of stories exploring our understanding of self and the fluidity of identity. An amazing group shared personal stories inspired by the CJM exhibition Show Me as I Want to be Seen. The lineup: Kelly Beardsley has been telling wacky stories around SF for the last 15 years.  His stories have been heard on This American Life, The California Report, KQED and a bunch of Porchlight events. He works as a BART train operator and lives in Oakland. India Marie Chakraverty was raised in a small town in the Central Valley before enrolling at San Francisco State University. They are getting a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing and loving every minute of their starving artist life. They live with their boyfriend and cat (one for now) in this wonderful and expensive city and work as the General Books supervisor at the SFSU Bookstore. They are working on three novels and two short stories and aspire to be a rich author, but will settle to be an editor, because reading is wonderful and who wouldn’t love to get paid to read all day. They love cats, books, Star Wars, and so many other things, but love to smile even more. Eddie Jen is a writer and drag queen in San Francisco. He writes about life, beauty, and food, and recently won his first case as an attorney when he obtained asylum for a Guatemalan minor. Juliana Delgado Lopera is an award-winning Colombian writer, historian, speaker and performance artist based in San Francisco. The recipient of the 2014 Jackson Literary award  she’s the author of Quiéreme (Nomadic Press 2017) and ¡Cuéntamelo! an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories by LGBT Latinx immigrants which won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award and a 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award. She's received fellowships from Brush Creek Foundation of the Arts, Lambda Literary Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and The SF Grotto, and an individual artist grant from the SF Arts Commission. She's the recipient of the 2016 Jeanne Córdova Words Scholarship. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Eleven Eleven, Foglifter, Four Way Review, Broadly, TimeOut Mag to name a few. She’s the creative director of RADAR Productions  a queer literary non-profit in San Francisco.    Donna Persona is a 71 year old San Francisco transgender/ gay community activist and drag queen performer. She began her career and activism at the age of 59. At age 20, she was associated with SF drag legends. Around 2005 i reunited with then and began a public life. She has been of the boards of Trans March, Trans Visibility, and Trans Day of Remembrance. She has worked to name SF streets after a trans woman and an historical event in The SF Tenderloin,  Compton's Cafeteria Riot.  She went on to co- write a play about the riot which had a successful run in San Francisco last year and will be remounted this year. She is currently working with a filmmaker on a documentary on her experiences. She also continues to perform on stages, stay involved with activism, and entertain gay seniors and patients in hospitals and several retirement homes. Donna helped fly the transgender flag with Mayor London Breed and has been nominated as Grand marshall for 2019 Pride. Nic Sommerfeld is an Oakland based actor and playwright, originally from Montana.  They wrote for Best of Playgound 2018 and have written for UCSF, Killing My Lobster, and The Olympians Festival. As an actor they have performed with Berkeley Playhouse, SF Playhouse, Fuse Theatre, Landmark Musicals, and others.  They are also a drag king known as Chester Vanderbox.  Hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick.  Music by Marc Capelle.  Podcast produced by Brandi Howell.

Porchlight: Show Me As I Want To Be Seen

A not-to-miss variety show celebrating the wonderment and weirdness of SF's landmark indie bookstore with author Mary Roach, illustrator Wendy McNaughton, Thao of the Get Down Stay Down, Vetiver's Andy Cabic, Forum's Michael Krasny, author Robin Sloan, author and musician Willy Vlautin and more!   Hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick on September 6, 2017 at the Great American Music Hall.  Recorded and Mixed by Brandi Howell

Porchlight Presents Green Apple Books' 50th Anniversary Jubilee

It's our 15th birthday and we're putting on a killer storytelling show to celebrate! BACK IN THE DAY will feature true tales from a stellar assortment of humans including: Muni Diaries founder Eugenia Chien Lawyer, activist, and artist Matt Gonzalez Bartender and writer Ginger Murray Master bookbinder Dominic Riley Writer and contributor to The New Yorker, Vice, and The Guardian, Carvell Wallace Writer, performer Cintra Wilson Musical Guest Sonny Smith with your emcees Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick

Porchlight's 15-Year Anniversary Show-tacular!

Porchlight and Sketchfest present: BOMBS AWAY! Stories of Implosions and Explosions With Dana Merwin, Eddie Pepitone. Erin Foley, Karla Martin and Mike Phirman 

Porchlight + Sketchfest! Bombs Away! Night 1

Every year, we join forces with the amazing Litquake Literary Festival to bring you a night of stories told by authors and writers. Our theme for this show is ripped from the Talking Heads song “Life During Wartime,” and involves tales of explosive scenarios, epic struggles, and living each day like it could be your last. With Greg Milner, Laurie Notaro, D. Watkins, Jack Boulware, Eric Spitznagel, Bucky SInister, and Pamela Alma Weymouth. Hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick, with music by Marc Capelle. 

Annual Litquake Show! Life During Wartime

Who am I? It's a queston that never fails to amuse, confuse, bewilder, and humble us as we plunk along our journey on this earth. To what end, no one knows. To paraphrase Oliver Sacks, it is an enormous privilege and adventure to be a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet. And you are free to have canned fish for lunch every day, if you wish.  As Porchlight celebrates fourteen years of personal storytelling onstage, we look to a theme where storytellers can choose to reflect or freak out on the whats, whys, and hows of who they think they are.  Cousins author Mary Roach and bookbinder Dominic Riley Mythbusters legend Adam Savage writer and actor Moon Zappa Executive strategist Karla Martin Writer/performer/psychic hotline operator Ben McCoy Bawdy Storytelling dynamo Dixie De La Tour

14-Year Anniversary Romp: Identity Crisis!

Porchlight partners with Greenhouse, a software company that optimizes hiring practices, for a show of stories about JOBS. Our storytelling superstars for this special edition include writer/musician Eric Shea, HIV educator Ed Wolf, and producer/comedian Dana Merwin.    Hosted by Arline Klatte at the Hilton Union Square on May 26, 2016. Recorded by PSAV and mixed by Patty Fung.

Porchlight + Greenhouse: JOBS

Selected stories from Porchlight, San Francisco's longest-running storytelling series, hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick. Co-founders Beth Lisick and Arline Klatte invite six people from different backgrounds to tell ten-minute true stories without using notes or memorization.

hubhopper

Porchlight Storytelling Series

hubhopper