Discovering Meredith Edgar is one of my best memories of 2023.   In Part 1 of this episode, get to know this singer/songwriter who was born in San Francisco. Her parents had been here a while, but soon after giving birth to Meredith, the family moved around a bit, first to the South, then to the Northeast, and finally, back to the South Bay.   "Silicon Valley" was vastly different than the other places Meredith spent her early life in. When her family moved there, she was in third grade and happy to be in a more diverse place. She ended up spending her middle and high school years in the South Bay, eventually spending more and more time in The City.   Music was always an integral part of Meredith's life. As she puts it, her parents have "eclectic taste in music." She says that there was always music playing—at home, in the car. Her dad also played guitar.   Meredith started playing violin at 4. Later, she joined her junior high choir. And by the time high school rolled around, she had started playing guitar, writing songs, and playing out. "Out" at that time meant open mics at Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View, and Meredith shares the story of her first time doing that. She says that she's deeply grateful to have found music, fast-forwarding to tell the story of her dog's passing away in late September of this year and how playing helped her grieve.   Then we go back again to her late-teen years. Meredith was ready to not be in the suburbs anymore. She and her friends came to SF to go to shows or go dancing at spots like Pop Scene (330 Ritch) and 1984 (Cat Club). When she made the leap north to live in The City, she didn't play out right away. But the South Bay band she was still a part of fizzled out.   When she first got here, she was in a bad relationship that also eventually ended. After that, Meredith's music picked back up. She worked at Macy's in cosmetics and shares a fun sidebar about kittens and puppies up for adoption over the holidays at the department store. Around 2007 or so, she picked up music yet again, writing, playing out, doing solo shows, playing originals and covers. She preferred to be solo because of her desire to be self-sufficient.   We end Part 1 with a chat about her siblings. Meredith's brother is six years younger than she is and is an artist here in The City. Her sister is a year older than her, but didn't grow up with the family. In fact, they didn't know about her until Meredith was 18. She says that they're good friends now.   Check back next week for Part 2 and a bonus episode of Meredith playing a few songs just for you.   Meredith's website Follow Meredith Edgar on Instagram   We recorded this episode at Royal Cuckoo Organ Lounge in November 2023.

Storied: San Francisco

Singer/Songwriter Meredith Edgar, Part 1 (S6E6)

Join in as Jeff talks about ... Our brand-new-ass Storied: SF hoodies! For a limited time, grab a hoodie at pre-sale prices (a $40 donation'll do it). Let us know your size (we have XS through XXL unisex) and address, and we'll send back our fleece-lined love and appreciation! Venmo/PayPal Updates on Michelle and her involvement in the project A look back at some of the more memorable, impactful episodes of the year (not to take anything away from those I didn't mention) A quick rundown of some of the exciting things coming up in the first few months of 2024! Happy New Year, y'all!

Wrapping Up 2023

We begin Part 2 with talk of how Bill and Susi’s love of the work needed to get SF Playhouse started really helped them overcome any fear that might’ve hindered them. Their first brick-and-mortar spot on Sutter Street was meant to be retrofitted. The landlords wouldn’t lease it to the new acting company, but they’d rent it cheaply one month at a time. To get themselves up and running, they staged a play they’d done before, one that was good for the holidays that were coming up.   The play was It Had to Be You by Joe Bologna and Renée Taylor. To drum up ticket sales, Bill and Susi would walk down to Union Square, where there used to be a spot folks could line up for discount theater tickets. They handed out SF Playhouse flyers and it taught them that they had sales acumen and hustle.   That original space had a hole in the ceiling, which made it cold. But Bill’s day job in these days was carpentry, which he learned doing set building. Susi came in with her business background, which we learned a little about in Part 1. She set up the books, but also acted in plays. Both of them directed and acted, in fact.   Susi still worked her day job as a CPA, but became an indie contractor, and then an HR professional. She did all this to support her theater work at night. Fast-forward four years and Bill had phased out of carpentry. Susi had so many ideas of what they could do with their space—she wanted real seats, not fold-ups. They painted, hung Christmas lights for ambience, and handed out blankets to theater-goers.   Their first “season,” which they now admit wasn’t a true season at all, ended with a staging of The Glory of Living by Rebecca Gilman, a popular play at the time. Bill describes it as a dark, difficult play, which he liked. He felt it challenged the audience. He says that the nature of the play required critics to come because no one in the Bay Area was staging it. Artistic directors came, probably wondering why SF Playhouse dared to do it.   As luck would have it, this all helped to put them on the map. The Chronicle called it an intriguing play and young theater company.   Susi had wanted to do Thrill of the Kill, a play about a group of suburban housewives whose husbands had locked themselves into a meat locker in the basement. The dilemma: To let the men out or not? This time, the Chronicle said: It’s good, better in fact than the New York production of the same play. Bill had wanted to play El Gallo in The Fantasticks, so they got another director and did it. They got some bigger Bay Area names to act in it, and it ran all summer.   They remained in that first location for three years, until the retrofit work finally happened. They were bummed to leave and were told they could come back once the work was completed. But when that day came, the landlords informed them that to move back in, they’d need to pay five times their previous rent and fork over $1 million up-front. They balked at such a ridiculous sum.   But as luck would have it, a spot became available across Sutter, and they moved in in 2006. They stayed on Sutter from then until 2012, when the space inside the Elks Lodge building on Post opened. They pounced and have been there ever since.   SF Playhouse was established as a non-profit theater from Day 1. Susi thought it was the way to go. Doing so meant that could get donors and subscribers and at least aim to break even.   The spot on Post opened as they were doing Fair Lady at their old location on Sutter. It was so popular that they were turning folks away. Time for a bigger theater, they decided. The space on Post had been empty for years. It was originally an Elk’s Lodge meeting hall, but had been converted to a 700-seat theater toward the end of the 20th century. Bill had always imagined 200-250 seats as the ideal capacity. He’d learned about non-profit theaters from various trips to New York.   Susi shares the story of what they encountered when they took over. The Elks had created it, but it had a bad energy when SF Playhouse came in. An Elks bartender told Susi that the place had ghosts … and they gave off bad juju. Susi connected with a friend of a friend who could look at the space. This person wanted to left alone there for two hours. She came back from that and told them some of the spirits were angry and others excited. And so this person invited those who weren’t happy to leave, while those creative ghosts who were happy could stay and help. Susi says that when she came back after this, the place felt great and has ever since.   Then we talk about the current run of Guys and Dolls at SF Playhouse (which my wife, Erin, and I saw and absolutely loved). Bill, who’s directing the show, describes it as a satire on black-and-white thinking and the polarization so prevalent in our world today. This leads us to discuss Bill’s idea of the theater as an “Empathy Gym.” Visitors come to see another point of view. Everything that SF Playhouse does comes out of that idea.   In addition to visiting their website for tickets and info, you can call 415-677-9596 or email info@sfplayhouse.org. They’re on Instagram and TikTok @sfplayhouse.

Bill English, Susi Damilano, and San Francisco Playhouse, Part 2 (S6E5)

Susi Damilano was born in Germany and raised in the South Bay. Many of her German aunts married US servicemen, but Susi's mom married a German man and the family soon moved to Silicon Valley.   Susi shares a history of that area, noting thatnot too long ago, it was primarily orchards. Growing up, Susi would cut through those orchards to get to school. Now that area is housing.   She grew up in the 1970s and graduated high school then. As a young adult in the '70s and '80s, Susi visited SF often and says she always dreamed of living in "the big city." She would listen to her parents’ stories of racing down hills and being escorted home by cops, and got excited. Susi and her friend who had a car would drive up to The City and up and down Polk Street, cruising and people-watching.   Despite the allure of San Francisco, she ended up going to college in San Diego at SD State. She liked it there enough—the weather, the people. An accounting major, she says that the job market wasn't great in that area, and so she returned home to the South Bay and got a job at CPA firm in San Jose, where she worked a handful of years with clients like the fledgling Apple Computer.   Still, she couldn't shake wanting to live in SF. She found a job at another CPA firm, this time in The City. She lived in the Marina on Chestnut and was there during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.   Susi loved being here and got her taste for theater from reading Herb Caen columns. She started going to live theater and loved it. Around this same time, she was getting burnt out on her accounting job. A friend dared her to dream what else she could do. She decided that she wanted an Oscar, even though she didn’t act (yet). To get started, Susi took an acting class in Sunnyvale.   Then we meet Bill English, Susi's husband and cofounder of SF Playhouse. Originally from Evanston, Illinois, Bill spent his high school and college years in Tempe, Arizona. Then it was back to Illinois for grad school at Northwestern in Evanston.   Bill says that he was an instrumentalist earlier in his life and never thought much about theater. He played in orchestra his freshman year at ASU for a theater production, and it was here that he was “hit by lightning.” From the orchestra pit, he looked up and decided that he wanted to be on stage.   He tried out for and got some roles, first backing and then eventually, lead parts. He had always been a singer. Bill says that both his parents are musicians—his dad was a band director, in fact. He decided right away that he preferred the stage to playing music.   As a kid, Bill came to San Francisco from time to time with his family and loved it. He says that he always associated SF with theater. He didn’t end up pursuing theater after college, but instead played piano in rock and country bands. He moved around a bit, from Chicago and Phoenix to LA and eventually The City.   This was the early 1980s and he had just had a daughter, which meant he couldn’t do music anymore. In his limited spare time, Bill tried out for some plays. And he's been in it ever since.   At this point in Part 1, Bill and Susi share the story of their meeting. It was the late '90s, and Susi was taking an acting class at the Jean Shelton school here. Bill had studied there, too, and they had some friends in common. Their first meeting was on a street outside a theater. She was starstruck but figured he had no idea who she was. Susi volunteered to work concessions to get a theater ticket, which is where she first crossed paths with the young performer. She thought: That guy’s cute!   Over the next couple of years, she started seeing him at parties. Bill came to a show, and Susi was there with one of his friends. The friend asked if Susi wanted to join them (after the show) for a drink at a spot across the street from the Clift Hotel. At the bar, Bill was bemoaning the lack of new scripts, but a friend of Susi’s had one that needed producing. And so Susi told him as much. She recalls his reaction being something along the lines of: “Sure. I've heard this before.”   But Susi followed through and sent him the script in the mail. She got an answering machine message from him soon after this saying that the script she'd sent him was good. He also complimented her for following through. He asked her to dinner, and it turned out to be their first date ... sorta.   This was 1997, the same night that Princess Diana died (August 31, to be exact). They and a couple of friends were soon involved in a play that doubled as their courtship. They were married in 1999. After the run of the play, they were all still friends and decided to start a little theater company. They called it DreamStackers. And that company evolved into San Francisco Playhouse in 2003.   Check back this Thursday for Part 2 on SF Playhouse and Bill and Susi.   We recorded this podcast at SF Playhouse in November 2023.   Photography by Jeff Hunt

Susi Damilano, Bill English, and San Francisco Playhouse, Part 1 (S6E5)

In Part 2, Rudy picks up where he left off in Part 1, talking about the origin of United Playaz and a race riot at Balboa High School back in 1994.   Rudy gathered those students who'd been involved in the violence to talk and determine their own solutions. And that's exactly what they did. They told Rudy and other adults that there was nothing to do at the school, and out of that discovery, the school implemented many programs to better engage kids.   In 2005, Mauricio Vela gave Rudy the blessing to bring United Playaz to Rudy's home hood of South of Market. Rudy shares that story of first getting funding, then getting their building on Howard Street. They moved in around 2008/2009. And in 2015, UP bought the building.   We talk about the origin of UP's motto: “It takes the hood to save the hood …” That story starts in New Orleans post-Katrina, where Rudy saw what the people were doing for themselves to recover when officials at every level failed them. The phrase was inspired by what he saw there, including drug dealers, drug users, and "thugs" helping out in the community against unimaginable tragedy and stiff odds.   Today, UP has chapters all over the country, but their scope has evolved over time. Rudy shares a story of having talked with Stanley "Tookie" Williams, who was in San Quentin at the time. Tookie told Rudy to "work with the little kids," not just those at the high school level. Nowadays, as Rudy puts it, they work with every age group, “from the elementary to the penitentiary (their prison re-entry program).” Some in UP programs had been locked up for 30, 40, and 50 years. Some of them work with young kids today. We end this podcast with talk of changes in the South of Market, the massive gentrification in that neighborhood that's occurred over the last several decades, and the relationships Rudy has built to counteract that.   We recorded this episode at the United Playaz Clubhouse in South of Market in November 2023.   Photography by Jeff Hunt

Rudy Corpuz and United Playaz, Part 2 (S6E4)

In Part 1, we meet Rudy Corpuz, a born-and-raised San Franciscan who grew up in the South of Market. Rudy's parents came to the US from the Philippines before he was born.   His dad was in the army, which was his ticket to this country. And he brought his wife and some of Rudy's older siblings with him. They went first to Boston, then to Seattle, folllowed by San Pedro, California, and finally, to San Francisco.   The family's first landing spot in The City was Hunters-Point. The family then moved a little north to the South of Market. Rudy is the youngest of nine siblings.   His early days in SOMA took place in the 1970s and ‘80s. He recalls many other ethnicities and lots and lots of families living in SOMA back in those days, and says that he learned a lot from his neighborhood. He ran with a crew of kids that spent a lot of time on Market Street going to shops, arcades, and theaters.   He fondly recalls a South of Market community center called Canon Kip, where he'd go as a kid to play basketball, attend study halls, engage in other forms of recreation, and go on field trips. Rudy cites his time at Canon Kip as playing a role in his current work with United Playaz.   At this point in the recording, I asked Rudy to rattle off San Francisco schools he's attended. The list includes: Buena Vista and Patrick Henry elementary schools, Potrero Middle School, and Mission High School.   In addition to his native SOMA neighborhood, Rudy spent a lot of time in Potrero Hill, getting around mostly on Muni busses. This was the mid-'80s/early '90s, i.e., the crack era. Rudy shares that he both sold and used the drug. His usage got bad, to the point that he crashed. He points to the death of his dad in 1987 as a major contributor to his behavior. He didn’t know what to do with the pain of losing his dad, and so he turned to drugs.   Rudy got busted in 1988 and was sent to adult jail. For the next several years, he was In and out of trouble (and jail). It took him a while, but eventually, he figured out that he was broken. Around this time, an adult at the Canon Kip community center offered to get Rudy into City College. He was still in a low period, but when he got to CCSF, he was blown away by the abundance of "pretty women" he saw there. He and I had a hearty laugh about that.   He got a part-time job convincing other teenagers to go to CCSF, and discovered that he liked helping people. In 1994, while waiting for a job assignment, he spotted a posting on a job board. "Gang Prevention Counselor (Filipino)." A light bulb when off. He got the job, which was based in Bernal Heights.   In his new gig, Rudy was tasked with finding Filipino gangs in Bernal/District 11. This brought him to Balboa High School, where h saw plenty of fights and sideshows. The school's principal told him that she needed his help.   After a big riot between Filipinos and Blacks on Oct. 8, 1994, Rudy got the kids who had been involved to sit down together at a table. And they were the ones who came up with their own solutions.   They called it United Playaz.   Check back next week for Part 2 and the history of the non-profit.   Photography by Jeff Hunt   We recorded this episode at the United Playaz Clubhouse in the South of Market in November 2023.

Rudy Corpuz and United Playaz, Part 1 (S6E4)

In Part 2, Traci tells us that, after six months in Australia, during which she had put her things in storage here in The City, she came back and got those things right back out. She got a place to live and a job, both of which were relative easy back then.   But, she says, SF was getting weird and crowded. It was the late-‘90s, so the dotcom boom was well under way. She started working at different restaurants as a server. Then, after some shorter travels abroad and a cross-country road trip, she got an office job. That lasted four-and-a-half years. She wanted a house in San Francisco and was trying to save up for that. Then, another economic bottom fell out and she was out of work.   This was followed by a low period in her life, one that involved a lot of drinking and amassing debt. When she became too broke to travel, Traci got a job serving at Cha Cha Cha in the Mission and climbed her way out of debt.   At this point in the recording, Traci rattles off a handful SF bars she’s worked or filled in at.    Then I briefly share my own story of finding Boozenation, and Traci shares how she found us (how she found Bitch Talk, to be perfectly honest). Her story involved seeing us at The Saloon days before the shutdown in 2020. And it was the pandemic that inspired Traci to start her own podcast about bartenders and service industry workers.   Two years later, Boozenation is going strong. When I asked her what’s next, she told me that in 2024, she wants to dive into some of the darker issues around the service industry, things like wage theft, sexual harassment, sexual assaults that anyone who works in the industry is all too familiar with. Traci says that she wants to take her time in the New Year and do it right.   We end the podcast with Traci rattling off some of her favorite spots around town. They include, but are not limited to:   Mission Bar Spec’s Riptide Little Shamrock Trad’r Sam’s (which has reopened since we recorded) Thee Parkside   Find Boozenation Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and traciramos.com.   Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Traci Ramos and Boozenation Podcast, Part 2 (S6E3)

In Part 1, we meet and get to know a bit about Traci's past. She grew up in Modesto. Her dad’s family is Puerto Rican and they arrived in the Central Valley from the East Bay. Traci's mom’s mom came to California via Mexico and Spain, while her mom’s dad is Native American, Cherokee to be exact. That man, Traci's grandpa, his mom had three sets of kids from three men, but grandpa didn’t talk about that. Traci is an only child. She and her family visited the East Bay when she was a kid, but they didn’t really come to San Francisco. Traci says her impression of the East Bay is that it was like Modesto, but more crowded and noisier. Sometime after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Traci came to The City to go to SF State, where she graduated from the school's BECA program around 4.5 years later. She says that the decision where to go to college ultimately came down to SF State or Sac State. But in the end, she wanted to be in SF. She and friends had been coming to The City to see shows and concerts. Here, she rattles off quite an impressive list of bands she saw back then, including Duran Duran at The Fillmore. At State, Traci lived in the dorms, which, after the quake, were showing  obvious signs of damage. To her young mind, it didn't matter. She was where she wanted to be. She had always loved the fog, most likely owing to the intense summer heat in Modesto.  While in school, she worked around town in cafes and restaurants. After graduation, she had saved up enough money to buy a one-way ticket to Madrid. She travelled around Europe a bit for a year, then came back to SF and worked various jobs. Then, a year later, Traci picked up again and went to Australia, this time on a round-trip ticket. We end Part 1 with some of Traci's fondest memories of New Zealand and the ways that that island nation compare to California. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Traci Ramos of Boozenation Podcast, Part 1 (S6E3)

Part 4 starts off with me and Joanna doing the math trying to figure out how long she's worked at Vesuvio. Turns out it's right around 20 years. She started out as a waitress. The woman who was supposed to train her ended up not showing up that day, and Joanna really didn’t know what she was doing. But she winged it. A customer saw her inexperience and helped her out with some sage advice. The conversation moves on to cover many of the ins and outs of serving vs. bartending. She says that, back in the day, yelling matches happened at Vesuvio sometimes, but that it's much mellower these days. Then we get to the pandemic and their eventual closure. Vesuvio was Joanna’s only job at the time, one that had her working five days a week. She says that many regulars, folks who live alone, weren’t sure what to do when the bar had to shut down. Like many of us, they thought it would be only a week. So Joanna borrowed her parents’ car and drove up to Cloverdale to spend what she figured would be a short time with friends. She ended up staying there for four months. Vesuvio reopened in late 2020, but closed again in December after a positive case from one of its staff. In January 2021, they opened for good. And when they did, Joanna says it was like starting over. Now we get around to chatting about Wacky Wednesdays, the music shows in Kerouac Alley which effectively (and finally) prompted us to do an episode on one of our favorite spots in The City. Joanna gives context to the situation that inspired her to create the music events. Bars weren’t busy. Things were weird. Everyone felt anxious. “Let’s do something fun,” she thought. She had run an art fair in the alley pre-pandemic, for which she scheduled bands and vendors. She used that idea as a base for what became Wacky Wednesdays. She asked friends's bands to play. They said yes. She approached the bar about paying bands. They said yes. (These days, Vesuvio has sponsors for the events.) In 2023, there were 13 shows and 29 bands. They're currently on hiatus for the winter, but will start up again next June. It turns out that Chad, a bartender at Vesuvio, as well as some others she knows, knew how to do sound. The shows would be free—no tickets—and bands are OK to cancel if need be. The shows were a hit right away. In fact, someone is making a zine about them and they've gotten good press. Joanna assures us that Wacky Wednesdays are coming back in the summer of 2024 and says she already has a wishlist of bands she'll try to book for the alley. For more info, follow Joanna or Vesuvio on Instagram. Or just do yourself a favor and go meet a buddy for drink at the coolest bar in The City. Once they start again, calendars will appear at Vesuvio. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Joanna Lioce and Vesuvio Café, Part 4 (S6E2)

In Part 3, we meet Vesuvio bartender Joanna Lioce. Originally from Newport, RI, where her dad was a rock critic, the family moved to LA when he got a job with the Times down there. They landed in Orange County, in fact, a place Joanna left as soon as she could. In fact, the day after she graduated high school, Joanna went to Europe. While she was away, her dad got a job at the San Jose Mercury News and her mom, a pediatric nurse, worked as a public-health official in Berkeley. Joanna was in Europe shortly before Sept. 11, and though she had planned to stay overseas longer, the event made her wonder … but mom said “don’t come home.” On a family trip to Ireland when Joanna was 8, she had decided that she wanted to be a bartender. Now it was 2002, and she dropped her bag at a hostel and got a bartending job at O’Shay’s Merchant, a pub across the street from the Brazen Head in Dublin. She stayed in Dublin until Christmas, then returned to SoCal, where she had fronted a Riot Grrrrl band called Julia Warhola. But by now, several band members had started doing heroin, so she quit the band and moved to the Bay Area where her family was. Joanna first went to school in the Peralta System in the East Bay, then she got into SF State, where she eventually got her degree. She also finished college at Cambridge in England to study Shakespeare. While going to SF State, she moved to the Mission, specifically 18th and Linda near the Women’s Building. She found the place through a Craigslist ad and ending up with six roommates, none of whom she knew previously. Her room set her back only $400, but she wasn’t feeling it. From the Mission, Joanna moved to Lower Haight. And 13 years ago, she settled in to her place on Nob Hill, where she lives today. She had a job, hosting then bartending, at Stinking Rose in North Beach. She liked it all right, but when her boss gave credit for a makeover of the bar that she had done to a male co-worker, she knew she had to leave. She gave her two weeks’ notice and went for a drink at Vesuvio. While there, a bartender she had befriended offered her the job. She was 21. It was 2003. She’s been working at Vesuvio ever since. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Joanna Lioce and Vesuvio Café, Part 3 (S6E2)

In Part 2, we hear how Janet got a job cocktail waitressing at The Mab, that infamous old punk club on Broadway near Vesuvio. Mab owner Ness Aquino hired her for that and she dug it. She had been to many shows in LA when she lived there and loved the scene. She lived in the Basque Hotel at 15 Romolo, made good money, and stuff was cheap back in the late '70s. Janet describes herself as a lightweight, which meant she couldn’t really hang out as late as most people around her. Eventually, she wanted to do more than cocktail, so she got a job bartending at Coffee Gallery on Grant … on the 6 a.m. shift, no less. The manager of Vesuvio saw her opening Coffee Gallery one day and asked her to open for them instead. This was 1979. In addition to her 6 a.m. shift at Vesuvio, Janet worked a few other jobs. Then she started working more at Vesuvio and liking it more and more. Early morning patrons, many of them merchant seamen, often comprised the “Dawn Patrol,” guys coming in from nearby SROs that didn’t have heat. Cocktailing was hard, and it got old fast, so she switched back to bartending. As we learned in Part 1, the Feins had taken over at Vesuvio around 1967 or 1968, and they brought in Shawn O’Shaughnessy around that time to establish the aesthetic of the place. Janet tells us that the place feels mostly the same today, though they’ve added stuff here and there over the years. At this point in the conversation, we take a sidebar to talk about Ron Fein’s aesthetic and discipline. His intention was always to keep the joint looking and feeling more or less consistent, employing a discipline not to chase trends to that end. Ron’s son and daughter eventually became more involved. But seeing an opportunity and acting on it, Janet and her family have co-owned Vesuvio with Fein family since 1997. She invokes the saying, “Sweep the floor to own the store.” Janet has also been Vesuvio’s principal manager since ’97. The conversation shifts to talk of the pandemic, which she says was “almost an extinction event” for the bar. But Janet believes that Vesuvio was small enough to get control over the situation. She’s quick to point to federal, state, and even local help, describing it as “invaluable.” It was The City’s government that came through in letting them operate outside in the alley. And that leads us to Whacky Wednesdays (a bit of a tease of next week’s episodes … stay tuned). Janet says the shows have been so much fun, but she of course wishes they had more space in Jack Kerouac Alley. They really helped to raise spirits during early days of the pandemic. In 2021, not much else was going on by way of live events. But more of that in Part 3 next week. We end Part 2 with my asking Janet what it means to her to be part of a San Francisco institution like Vesuvio. Listen in for her answer, which I loved. And check back Tuesday for Part 3, when we’ll meet longtime Vesuvio bartender and Whacky Wednesdays creator Joanna Lioce. Photography by Jeff Hunt

Janet Clyde and Vesuvio Café, Part 2 (S6E2)

This episode is six years overdue. That's because Storied: SF got started in a booth upstairs at one of our favorite spots in all The City: Vesuvio Café. In Part 1, we sit down in that same booth where it all began in 2017 to chat with Vesuvio co-owner Janet Clyde. We begin with a talk about what a great place for bars San Francisco is. Janet brings up touristic spots we love, as I had joined my wife for Irish coffees at the Buena Vista just before our recording in North Beach. Then Janet begins to lay out the history of Vesuvio. The location was originally an Italian bookstore called Cavalli Books, which moved first to the current City Lights spot, and then over to Stockton Street. Then, probably in the 1930s or early '40s, a woman known as Mrs. Mannetti opened Vesuvio as a restaurant. In 1948, Henry Lenoir bought the place from her and turned it into a bar. Lenoir was a Swiss/French bon vivant. He ran it as Vesuvio through the end of the 40s and into the 50s. But by the early '60s, with the Korean War, the place changed as society changed, and Henri wasn’t feeling this generational shift at all. He sold the place to Ron Fein, who brought on Leo Riegler to run the bar. Riegler had run Coffee Gallery on Grant, which served beer and wine only. He was an Austrian bon vivant, and he came to Vesuvio and overhauled the bar. Ron Fein hired Shawn O’Shaughnessy to give the place the look and feel we're all familiar with to this day. O'Shaughnessy was inspired by Japanese art, aliens, and other worlds. Janet talks about the “I’m itching to get away from Portland, Oregon” sign, which hangs over the entrance to Vesuvio and which O'Shaughnessy derived from a postcard. We then shift the conversation a little to talk about Vesuvio and the Beat Movement. The bookstore across the alley became City Lights in 1954 when Lawrence Ferlinghetti took over. And that brought writers into the bar. Before that, according to Janet, Vesuvio was a Bohemian hang, really a cross-section of San Francisco. People who worked at the nearby Pacific Exchange (later known as the Pacific Stock Exchange), insurance salespeople, advertisers ... Janet describes the place as “suits and ties having a really good time …” When she arrived, in the late 1970s, the area was home to punk clubs, strip joints, bars, restaurants. Janet had hitchhiked from LA with the intention of landing in Seattle. She was born in Missouri but raised near Cape Canaveral, Florida. She left her family there and moved to LA but never really dug it much. A trip north in 1978 changed her life forever. Check back Thursday for Part 2 with Janet Clyde. For more on the history of Vesuvio, read this article on Found SF. This podcast was recorded at Vesuvio Café in North Beach in October 2023. Photography by Jeff Hunt

Janet Clyde and Vesuvio Café, Part 1 (S6E2)

Earlier this year, I got to see a couple movies as part of the 66th annual San Francisco International Film Festival. It was awesome. SFFILM, the non-profit that puts the festival on each April, is kicking off its documentary mini-fest tonight. This bonus episode is a quick chat with Jessie Fairbanks, SFFILM's director of programming. Enjoy our talk and go see some killer documentaries this weekend! This episode was recorded over Zoom in October 2023.

SFFILM's Doc Stories (S6 Bonus)

In Part 4, we meet Rob Thompson, federal preservation officer at the Presidio Trust. Rob shares the history of San Francisco's pet cemetery, which dates back to 1952. The pet cemetery sits in a part of the Presidio known as Cavalry Bowl, which for a century was dedicated to animal management when the Presidio was home to the U.S. Army. The cemetery was established by Army families during that time, until they left in the 1990s. Since then, the only burials there are what we decided to call "illicit" burials. We end the episode with a walk-through, where we encounter the colorful names and epitaphs of a wide variety of around 420 animals. This episode concludes our series on San Francisco cemeteries. Thank you for listening. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

San Francisco Cemeteries, Part 4 (S5E3)

In Part 3, Courtney tells us all about Alma deBretteville Spreckels, the San Francisco sugar baroness who built the Legion of Honor at Lincoln Park, the cemetery-turned-golf course in the northwest corner of The City. From there, we recount the history of the "Big Four" cemeteries, which were located in and around the intersection of Geary and Masonic. Then we hand things over to Kathy McCall, director at the Presidio's San Francisco National Cemetery, one of two graveyards that remain in San Francisco today. Among notable burials there: 38 Medal of Honor recipients 450 Buffalo Soldiers Maj. Dana Crissy Lieut. John David Miley Pauline Cushman Fryer Phillip Burton Maj. Gen. Robert Tryon Frederick Maj. Gen. Frederick Funston Check back next week for Part 4, the final podcast in this series. It will be all about the rich history of the pet cemetery, also located in the Presidio. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

San Francisco Cemeteries, Part 3 (S5E3)

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