Storied: San Francisco

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City Gardens Series: Maggie Marks of Garden for the Environment (S4E45P2) Apr 14, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Maggie picks up where she left off in Part 1, with her taking over programming duties at GFE 10 years ago. She dives into the story of how GFE was founded more than 30 years ago amid a historic drought in California. The intent was always to create a teaching space, something that distinguishes GFE from other gardens around The City.

We talk about biodiversity and how that's such a motivator for the work they do at GFE. That coupled with things like native vegetation means that the garden itself, for passersby, might not always be what we tend to think of as "beautiful." But, as Maggie points out, the plants are doing exactly what they need to do—living in a symbiotic fashion with other plants, animals, and insects.

Maggie goes over how the garden has responded to the pandemic. They had to cancel (postpone?) a live event they had planned to commemorate 30 years and switched their education programs to Zoom. Needless to say, something was missing.

The upside was that they were able to reach more people virtually during the pandemic. In 2021, for the first time in three decades, they offered their "Get Up" program online. Maggie expresses her gratitude for the advances in technology that the pandemic forced onto GFE.

Garden for the Environment is open to the public every day from dawn until dusk. Follow them on Instagram.

We end this episode with Maggie's idea of what it means to still be here through it all.

We recorded this podcast at Garden for the Environment in the Inner Sunset in April 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

City Gardens Series: Maggie Marks of Garden for the Environment (S4E45P1) Apr 12, 2022

Show notes

Maggie Marks has deep roots in San Francisco, and that's not a gardening pun. In this episode, Maggie, who today is the director of Garden for the Environment (GFE) in the Inner Sunset, traces her family's history in The City. Her mom's side goes back at least two generations here; and her dad's side includes the family that owns Guerra Quality Meats. Her parents lived in various spots around town before settling in the Inner Sunset in the '90s. This is where Maggie grew up.

She went to Rooftop School, where she indulged in art, theater, and gardening. By eighth grade, Maggie was head of the environmental club at school. Around this time, California was experiencing a major drought. Residents were constantly being made aware of steps to mitigate the water shortages, stuff we're very familiar with today—shorter and fewer showers, less watering of gardens, etc. Around this time and not too far from her childhood home, GFE was founded.

Maggie and her friends liked to create make-believe worlds. She also liked to read. She spent a lot of time in the nearby library. Once she was a little older, she rode Muni all over town. One of her (and her family's) favorite spots was the Mission, almost always to get burritos.

We talk a little about Maggie's time living away from her hometown. She went to college in Seattle and loved it, but the rain ultimately got to her. In 2008, she spent time in DC working for the Obama campaign in Northern Virginia.

Before the financial crisis really took hold that year, Maggie had been thinking of permanently relocating. But with the election over and the economy continuing its decline, she decided to come back home. She worked various jobs while trying to find her calling—farmers' markets, her family's shop, and other non-profit work. She got a great spot up in Bernal Heights, met the man she'd later marry, and sealed the deal on staying in her hometown.

Growing up in the Inner Sunset, Maggie remembered GFE being built. Through one of her non-profit jobs, she got reconnected with the garden after sharing an office with them. With GFE's director going on maternity leave, Maggie applied and got the job. That was 10 years ago.

Check back Thursday for Part 2 and more about Maggie Marks and Garden for the Environment.

We recorded this podcast at Garden for the Environment in the Inner Sunset in April 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Vandor Hill of Whack Donuts (S4E44P2) Apr 07, 2022

Show notes

In this podcast, Vandor picks up where he left off in Part 1. He traces his family history back to his grandfather, who moved from Mobile, Alabama, to San Francisco around the time of the Second Migration and met his wife (Vandor's grandma) here in The City. She was born and raised here; he was a quiet, strong man who learned how to dress from his new wife. When he was two, Vandor's dad left the family. But he was surrounded by relatives and loved ones, most of them living in the same Victorian in Lower Pac Heights, on the lip of the Fillmore. Because his mom was young when she had Vandor, her own parents took over raising the boy.

Family gatherings in the house were common, and there was always a lot to eat. Vandor talks about those meals as well as some of the neighborhood spots they'd get their produce and meat from. They're places that aren't around anymore, but the owners were often friends of the family.

We turn to Vandor's teen years. He got into art, graffiti, and break-dancing in those days. He describes the contrast once he transferred from a private high school to Galileo, for him both socially and academically.

In his junior year, his sister was born, his parents were fighting, and he relocated to the East Bay because his mom and his grandma were on bad terms. He began to struggle in his schoolwork. He was working at the Exploratorium. The next year, his senior year in high school, he was told he was one credit short of what was needed to graduate.

He had befriended a photographer who also worked at the Exploratorium. They were set to attend and work at an event together, but Vandor got lost and missed it. It didn't matter, though. His friend had committed suicide.

Shortly after that, the family found out they were losing their house in Pac Heights over a family quarrel.

Despite all this, Vandor graduated high school.

We end this episode with Vandor's thoughts on what it means to still be here in San Francisco.

Follow Whack Donuts on Instagram. Order Whack Donuts online.

We recorded this podcast at Abanico Coffee Roasters in the Mission in April 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Vandor Hill of Whack Donuts (S4E44P1) Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

There's a dude in the Mission who makes vegan donuts and break-dances.

In this episode, we meet Vandor Hill. Vandor was born and raised in The City. He recently turned 40. He shares the story of how he came to love baking. It starts in the predominantly female house he grew up in.

Surrounded by his grandma and aunt, Vandor says a lot of his baking went uncredited. No one believed that he was the one who made whatever delicious treat they were eating. Peach cobbler soon became his signature bake.

Vandor shares the story of why his company is called Whack Donuts. It involves a group of young kids getting jumped in the Mission and the quiet one (Vandor) basically fending off the attackers. His buddies called him "Whacko" from that point on.

As part of the story of starting his donut business, Vandor takes us back to a tough period in his life. Between 2017 and 2019, he lost his grandmother, his mom, his aunt, a mentor, and a friend. His dancing suffered. His work wasn't willing to adjust or allow him space to grieve. His living situation deteriorated. And then, the pandemic hit.

We get into the early days of Whack Donuts and talk about why Vandor decided to make his product without any dairy. The story goes back to an internship he had in high school at a local donut shop. Eventually, enough people asked if the donuts were vegan, which inspired Vandor to bake his treats rather than fry them.

Check back Thursday for Part 2, when Vandor shares stories about his family and his early days.

We recorded this podcast at Abanico Coffee Roasters in the Mission in April 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Poet/Historian Mason J. (S4E43P2) Mar 31, 2022

Show notes

In this podcast, Mason picks up where they left off in Part 1. We continue our conversation about Mason's background as a photographer.

In 2010, they were, as they say, dating someone out of their league. They were celebrating New Years at a joint in South of Market and needed to pee. Naturally, they went outside. When it was their partner's turn, she gave Mason her purse. An SFPD cop approached and questioned what Mason was doing with her. After the cops' condescending questions, they grabbed Mason and ended up dislocated their arm.

Meanwhile, one of their friends had been roofied inside (they didn't know this at the time) and was very ill. The cops left at the sight of the sick friend. But there happened to be an ambulance within eyesight, so they set off to catch it. But the EMTs were drunk (remember: it was NYE).

Everyone went home in the East Bay and Mason was left to walk to their SF home with their dislocated shoulder. This effectively ended their photography career. In 2011, the PTSD from the episode and the depression it caused inspired Mason to leave The City for Portland.

The anonymity they experienced in a new town allowed Mason to present however they felt comfortable doing so. When the question of renaming themselves comes up, Mason takes a sidetrack to talk about their Okinawan grandmother. It was her story of being exiled, first to Hawaii and then to San Francisco, that inspired Mason to delve into history while in Portland.

Alarmed at the prospect of not being able to move back to their hometown, Mason returned to San Francisco in 2013. Later that year, the residents at MidTown Park Apartments, where Mason had grown up and where their mom still lived, were served with rent-increase notices. (For more info on the ensuing rent strikes, which eventually fought back the increases, at this city-owned property, check out this Examiner article.)

The history of the place goes back to "redevelopment" in the 1960s. Its residents had been displaced and promised new city housing. Several of the older tenants buckled under the subsequent stress caused by proposed hikes and relocation (yet again). One of these was Mason's grandmother, who suffered a stroke around this time.

All of this gave Mason a new purpose, a new direction. They would devote their life to exposing wrongs and doing everything they could to right them. And they're uniquely positioned to effect change because they grew up immersed in tech.

We talk about Mason's being a member of Still Here SF, an intergenerational cultural preservation project amplifying the voices and creativity of LGBTQ2S+ Black, Indigenous, and people of color raised in San Francisco. Mason joined to help them heal from the trauma of growing up going to so many funerals of friends and relatives who died of AIDS. Their involvement with Still Here lead to their work with the Hormel Center, the SF Public Library's LGBTQIA archives.

Among other passions, Mason spends time finding and telling the stories of the queer people who were at Jonestown. We breeze through the last four years since we met Mason, and end this podcast with their thoughts on what it means to still be here in San Francisco.

You can buy Mason's book, Crossbones on My Life, over on the Nomadic Press website.

We recorded this podcast at Jefferson Square Park in March 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Artist Mason J. (S4E43P1) Mar 29, 2022

Show notes

Note: Our guest this week raises issues, true stories from their own life, of sexual and gender-based violence. Listener discretion is advised.

This story starts in 1978. A young San Francisco punk rock woman with two kids saw that many of her peers were getting hooked on drugs. Suddenly, there was an influx of abandoned children and she decided to do something about it. She established a foster home.

Fast-forward 10 years and newborn Mason (not known by that name at the time) comes around and ends up at said foster home. Born to drug addicts, Mason entered this world addicted themselves.

Mason ended up being raised in that one home, and only that one home. They've never been in a shelter system or homeless.

From a very early age (four or so), Mason was acting, doing voiceover work, and modeling. Around age eight, they noticed that things were starting to get gendered and that they didn't fit either mold—male or female. Producers also told Mason that they sounded "too white" (they're Black, indigenous, and Mexican) and that they should try sounding "more Black." But at home, Mason's mom supported their being gender non-conforming at that time.

Around 12, they were waiting for puberty and playing lots and lots of soccer. Other coaches were suspicious enough to investigate whether Mason's coach was disguising a boy as a girl on the girl's soccer team. That fizzled, but Mason kept playing. They were competitive and good enough to be scouted by some colleges while in eighth grade. But a torn ACL when they were 13 dashed those dreams.

They spent that summer recovering, lying in bed waiting to get their period so they could get surgery for the torn ACL. They went back to art and started writing and building up a portfolio, which helped them get into Ruth Asawa School of the Arts.

Mason thrived in high school. They talk about all the guest speakers and various programs and internships students at SOTA were involved in. They also mention, laughingly, some of the more savory elements of arts high school in San Francisco in the early 2000s. Inspired by teachers and an intentional immersion in The City's various art worlds, Mason left high school aimed toward an artist's life. But there were issues along the way, which they delve into in the podcast. Eventually, through that struggle, they landed on photography, opening their own photo company in 2007.

We end Part 1 with Mason struggling to find identity and purpose as they entered adulthood and their hometown was changing rapidly. Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the conclusion of Mason's life story.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

City Gardens Series: Tim Wong of Sisterhood Gardens (S4E42P2) Mar 24, 2022

Show notes

In this podcast, we continue our visit at Sisterhood Gardens and our series on City Gardens. Today, we meet Sisterhood volunteer Tim Wong. Tim shares his life story with us. He grew up on the Peninsula and moved to The City in 2016. This coincided with the founding of Sisterhood Gardens. Tim grew up in an area replete with butterflies, something he was drawn to from a young age. He was interested in the insects and their relationship with plants. His earliest memories of coming to San Francisco involve his grandparents, who lived in the Sunset. His school took the kids to the California Academy of Sciences, which we'll get back to in a moment. Tim was in The City almost every weekend. He never necessarily envisioned himself living in San Francisco. After high school, he moved to San Diego to go to UCSD, where he studied environmental systems, ecology, and evolution as well as marine science. He was aiming toward marine biology. Through school, he worked in an aquarium, which later led to his volunteering at Cal Academy of Sciences. Today, Tim works at the academy in its rainforest exhibit. As we're discussing his various rolls at work, we take a detour to hear some of the places Tim has dived, including off the shore here in Northern California. Tim says he's drawn to his work at the academy and the garden because of the sense of community and giving back. We end this podcast with Tim's thoughts on what it means to still be here. If you'd like to volunteer at Sisterhood or get involved somehow, please visit their website. We recorded this podcast at Sisterhood Gardens in Oceanview in March 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

City Gardens Series: Jamie Chan of Sisterhood Gardens (S4E42P1) Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

Our City Gardens series continues with a visit to Sisterhood Gardens. Located on Brotherhood Way (get it?) in the OMI area of southwest San Francisco, the garden was established in 2016.

In this podcast, we meet master gardener and Sisterhood volunteer Jamie Chan. In addition to her work at Sisterhood, Jamie teaches at SF State, where she's also a doctoral student.

Jamie shares her story with us. A fourth-generation San Franciscan, she traces her family's history in The City back to the Gold Rush era. Over the years, her ancestors lived mostly in Chinatown, but eventually, they all moved to the Sunset and Richmond. Jamie grew up near Stern Grove and went to SFUSD schools.

Her parents grew up in Chinatown, where they knew each other growing up. The two reconnected while at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and got married after graduation.

Today, Jamie trains public school teachers (her husband happens to be a teacher, too). As a teenager, she went to School of the Arts and was interested in telling people's stories. She studied documentary film and made movies about ABC (American-born Chinese) identity. She went to art school at CalArts in SoCal but didn't like it. So she came back and went to SF State, where she studied biology.

After graduation, Jamie worked at California Academy of Sciences and became interested in education. She and her husband got their home through a city program—an acquisition that came with a yard bigger than the house. She started gardening there after having kids and found herself wanting to connect with food and food systems as a mom. That led to a master gardener program at UC.

Jamie helped found Sisterhood Gardens in 2016, The land is owned by SF Department of Public Works, who landscaped the space and got water running before turning it over to neighborhood volunteers.

We end this episode with Jamie's thoughts about still being here in San Francisco.

For more information on Sisterhood Gardens, including how to get involved, please visit their website: https://sisterhoodgardens.org/.

We recorded this podcast at Sisterhood Gardens in Oceanview in March 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

City Gardens Series: Danielle "Calibird" Fernandez (S4E41P2) Mar 17, 2022

Show notes

In our last episode, we met Danielle Fernandez briefly when she told us all about the 10-year vision she's realizing out at Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary. In this podcast, we get to know Danielle. Danielle's parents were born and raised in San Francisco. They met at Sears and Roebuck on Geary and Masonic in the Sixties. After they were married and started having kids, the young couple moved down the Peninsula, but didn't stop coming to The City regularly for big family dinners. The Fernandez family would hit up spots like Bruno's, Caesar's, Green Valley, Spenger's (across the Bay). Danielle describes what these dinners were like for a young kid like her. Her mom had a successful food-demonstration business in the Eighties. They made the stuff people would hand out as samples at grocery stores back in the day. And sometimes, Danielle would go with her mom on runs to the stores. In her teens, Danielle and her friends came to San Francisco a lot, mostly to go to raves held all over town. Getting out of the house involved some creative trickery that many of you might relate to. She says other kids at school might've thought she was a druggie, but in fact, she was just having a good time sober. She describes some of the goofy stuff she and her friends did. In high school, Danielle worked at a pet store, where she learned to work with animals. After graduation, she took a stab at vet tech school, but didn't stick with it. From there, she worked in bio-tech for a while, but she didn't like that much either. Then a friend was looking through an old book of Danielle's drawings. They knew nothing about her artistic past, and asked why she wasn't still pursuing that. For Danielle, it was an awakening. But it was Project Runway that really kicked things into gear. She ended up going to Parsons in New York and lived there for many years after graduating. She did well with fashion, but shifted her focus to "fast fashion," with the idea that she wanted to create practical clothes for the masses. It wasn't long, though, before she discovered inadequacies and injustices of that industry. All this coupled with homesickness was drawing Danielle back to the Bay. And so, after nearly 10 years in New York, in 2018, she decided to pack up and head out west. Her aunt's house in the Bayview suddenly was available to her and her partner, and she was able to get a job here. We rewind a little to hear Danielle's version of the story of her and Isaiah's meeting. Isaiah recounts the story from his perspective. For a refresher, check out Isaiah's podcasts with us from 2020: Part 1/Part 2. Dani sent care packages to Isaiah while he worked in a dangerous situation in Santa Cruz county. We hear all about their whirlwind first day together all over the Bay Area. We end the episode with Danielle and Isaiah's thoughts on what it means to still be here in San Francisco. We recorded this podcast at the Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary in the Bayview in March 2022. Photo by Michelle Kilfeather

City Gardens Series: Danielle Fernandez and Isaiah Powell (S4E41P1) Mar 15, 2022

Show notes

In this podcast, Isaiah Powell (Part 1/Part 2) catches us up with what's been going on since his Storied: SF episodes back in the summer of 2020. Between the land he and Danielle stewarded at Florence Fang Community Farm and today, they were at Adam Rogers Park. The philosophy behind Dragonspunk has always been that they go where the help is needed; it's never been about a single location. That brings us today and the place we recorded—Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary on Palou in the Bayview. The spot lies above a Caltrain tunnel in the southeast side of San Francisco. Looking north from this beautiful space, with The City's skyline as backdrop, multiple smokestacks, construction cranes, and the Bay Bridge pepper one's view. Isaiah talks a little about what he's been up to and their gaining access to the land where we talked. Then he hands the mic over to Danielle. She describes her vision of the space, which spawned from an idea she had 10 years ago when she lived in New York and would regularly visit gardens and green spaces around the city. She says her decade-long dream was to have a botanical garden of her own, one that begins the process of healing the damage humans have done to the natural environment.

Danielle takes us all on a tour of the sanctuary, listing off the mostly native plants, trees, bushes, and shrubs that live there. And we end this episode with Danielle's vision for the future of the space, which includes community gathering and events.

Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the story of Danielle's life.

We recorded this podcast at the Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary in the Bayview in March 2022.

Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

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