Storied: San Francisco

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SF State Journalism Chair Rachele Kanigel (S4E35P1) Feb 01, 2022

Show notes

Rachele Kanigel comes from a long line of readers. In this podcast, Rachele shares her life story with us. Today, she's the chair of the Journalism Department at SF State. She's published The Diversity Style Guide, among other books. She also was one of Jeff's teachers back in 2005 when he went to SF State, so there's that.

Rachele was born in Brooklyn and raised in a suburb of New York City on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. Her mom did some substitute teaching, and at home, loved to read books and poetry. She also liked to play Scrabble. She passed that on in one way or another to Rachele and her two older brothers.

Her oldest brother was 15 when Rachele was born, so she didn't grow up with him around much. Fairlawn, NJ, a middle-class suburb, never resonated much with young Rachele. Nearby NYC provided the contrast and escape she needed. She'd visit museums, Broadway shows, off-Broadway shows, cafes, jazz clubs ... but what she loved most was simply walking the streets of the big city.

She was so anxious to get out of suburbia that she found a college that would accept high school juniors, and she bailed. After a year at school on Long Island, she got into McGill University in Montreal. Rachele loved it there—the cafes, the Québecois. But there was something pulling her west toward California.

One of her brothers was in San Francisco and somewhat estranged from the family. But Rachele wanted to reconnect by visiting him here. It was May 1980 and she was 19. The plan was to visit for two weeks. But that turned into three months.

It was a summer of meeting people, finding a boyfriend, going to the Gorilla Grotto ... John Law's (Part 1/Part 2) name comes up as someone in that scene whom Rachele met back in the day. That fall, she took a journalism class at SF State and was hooked. She worked on the student newspaper and graduated a few years later with a bachelor's in journalism. Now, it was time to work. She found a copy-editing job at a shopping paper called The San Francisco Progress. The paper eventually gave Rachele a reporting beat. She took it and ran and never looked back.

Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the conclusion of Rachele's story.

We recorded this podcast at Rachele's home in Oakland in January 2021.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Gillibus Founder Alex Maxa (S4E34P2) Jan 27, 2022

Show notes

In this podcast, Alex picks up where he left off in Part 1, with his first trip to San Francisco. He was with his dad and much older sister when she was scouting colleges. They ended up staying with family friends in Presidio Heights. He shares the stories of things they did and saw while here in the 1990s. Alex spent a lot of time in New York City, where his sister wound up going to college. Later, he went into hospitality school at Cornell in upstate New York. After that, he dabbled in hotels in Detroit and Orlando before making the move West, where'd been drawn so many years prior. He arrived in San Francisco in 2008, right as the bottom was coming out of the economy. But that wasn't what brought Alex here. His route to The City went, oddly, through Tokyo. The large Japanese metropolis told him that he could be anywhere he truly wanted to be. To reconcile that with Alex's belief that he needed to be around the right people, San Francisco was only logical. He got work up in Napa in the wine industry pretty much right away, but only after a quick detour at Burning Man. He already had a place to live here, too. He shares his arrival story before we pivot to talking about Gillibus. A friend was leaving SF to go back to New York and wanted to buy a vintage school bus for his journey. Alex went with him and was blown away by the beauty of the classic vehicle. Before his buddy's move, he and some other friends took the bus on epic road trips. His friend ended up leaving the bus in The City and bailing for NYC. Alex kept that bus and learned to drive it. Soon, he was giving people rides and then it dawned on him: rent the bus out to folks. We end the podcast with Alex's thoughts on what it means for him and for his bus company to still be here. If you missed Part 1, please go back and listen. We recorded this podcast on Zoom in January 2022. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Gillibus Founder Alex Maxa (S4E34P1) Jan 25, 2022

Show notes

Both of Alex Maxa's parents are journalists.

In this episode, we hear the life story of the founder of Gillibus, who "specialize in not only Bay Area day trips, nighttime cruises, and mobile performances but also stationary events and overnight camping." Alex's granddad on his dad's side was in the Army, and so his dad moved around a lot, but ended up in Washington, DC, for high school. He was the editor of his school paper in those days and ended up in journalism school at Ohio University.

His mom grew up in Toledo and also went to OU, where she met Alex's dad. The young couple skipped graduation, got married, and went to DC. His dad got a job at The Washington Post pretty quickly. Political gossip and scandal was his beat. It was the early 1970s. Nothing to see here, folks.

There was an opening on a DC radio station and they asked Alex's dad to step in and fill it. This was well before the internet, and so, when celebrities rolled into town, they'd call into programs like this to promote whatever it was they were doing in the nation's capital.

Alex's mom wanted to write feature stories. She was assigned and reluctantly ended up covering sports, something she knew little to nothing about. His parents split up earlier in his life, and his step-dad came into the picture around the time Alex was 6.

But his dad remained close. Alex split time between his parents' houses. He credits his sister, seven years older than him, with being the "glue that kept things together" between and among the two families.

Along with many friends, he played soccer from a young age. He shares the story of going to a rather unusual preschool in DC. But when he was out on the field, he could forget everything and just have fun.

We end Part 1 with stories of Alex hanging out with his dad in the early 1990s, when his dad had shifted out of political journalism and into travel writing and the adventures they had together. Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the conclusion of Alex Maxa's story. We recorded this podcast on Zoom in January 2022.

Creativity Explored: Artist Vincent Jackson (S4E33P4) Jan 18, 2022

Show notes

This is the final installment in our four-part series with Creativity Explored, whose mission is "to provide developmentally disabled people access to the human right of creative expression." Please listen to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 if you haven't already.

Vincent Jackson has been making art at Creativity Explored for more than half of his life.

In this podcast, Vincent shares his life story with us. He was born and raised in the Bayview. He had drawn some here and there before a social worker told him about the non-profit in the Mission. He used to spend a lot of time at the Bayview Opera House. That was 37 years ago.

He says that CE became family to him after his mom died.

Vincent has sold a lot of his art over the years. He's done commissioned pieces for folks and fashion where he gives another artist pieces to be quilted. He was once on a speaking panel with Paul Moshammer (featured in Part 3 of this series). His favorite thing about doing art at Creativity Explored, as he puts it, is: "It's no limit here."

Late last year, Vincent went to New York City to show his art. It was his first trip there and he enjoyed it. In fact, he wanted to stay longer, although he did miss home.

Vincent loves his hometown, but isn't happy with the changes in San Francisco. He feels like people used to be nicer to one another.

He plans to keep doing art and maintains an open mind about the future.

We recorded this podcast at Creativity Explored in the Mission in January 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Creativity Explored's Director of Programs Paul Moshammer (S4E33P3) Jan 13, 2022

Show notes

This is the third in a four-part series we're doing with Creativity Explored. CE's mission is "to provide developmentally disabled people access to the human right of creative expression." Please listen to Part 1 and Part 2 and check back next week for the final episode in this series, with artist Vincent Jackson. You'll hear Vincent a little in the background as he sat in with Jeff and Paul during the recording.

Paul Moshammer is the offspring of artists.

In this episode, we get to know the director of programs at Creativity Explored. Paul was born and raised in Vienna. His dad was an architect and his mom was a gold- and silversmith. They encouraged Paul's creative energy from a young age by sending him to various art schools. Around 19, he felt he already had a strong artistic voice, something schools weren't so much looking for.

He started to travel around this time, and ended up living and working on a kibbutz in Israel. He met his wife, a Cuban-American, there during this time. After three months on the kibbutz, the young couple started to travel together. Eventually, Maria went back to her home in the US while Paul stayed on in Kenya for five weeks.

Paul arrived in San Francisco in October 1989—two days before the Loma Prieta earthquake. Maria was already here and had discovered Creativity Explored before Paul's arrival. An art teacher from earlier in his life had talked about the art of children and folks who were institutionalized and it had left a strong impression on him.

He stuck around for four hours on his first visit and ended up volunteering in early 1990. He was soon hired as a substitute teacher, and when there was an opening, Paul got the job. Vincent Jackson was at the table Paul took over, and they've been working together ever since.

We chat a bit about Florence and Elias Katz, the cofounders of Creativity Explored. Paul never met Florence, but he knew Elias well. Vincent steps in to share stories of Florence with us.

Paul skims over some of the highlights of his 30-plus years with the organization. They were in crisis, as he puts it, when the original director left. The second director rescued them, so to speak, and one of her innovations was to open the front of the 16th Street space to the public in the form of a gallery for CE artists to show and sell their work. It was an instant success.

We wrap up this episode talking about what it means for Creativity Explored to still be here, especially in its role as an art space for folks with developmental disabilities.

We recorded this podcast at Creativity Explored in the Mission in January 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Creativity Explored Artist JD Green (S4E33P2) Jan 11, 2022

Show notes

This episode is the second in a series we're doing with Creativity Explored. CE's mission is "to provide developmentally disabled people access to the human right of creative expression." Check back Thursday for the next episode in this series, where we meet Studio Director Paul Moshammer.

Joseph "JD" Green lives close enough to Creativity Explored on 16th Street that he walks to get there.

JD has been with Creativity Explored since just after he graduated from high school 10 years ago. He was doing art in the building where he lives, in Hayes Valley, when someone let him know about the organization serving people with developmental disabilities.

He's been making art nearly his whole life, inspired by TV shows, animation, and cartoons. Nickelodeon and Disney characters made up the bulk of figures he drew, but his favorite to this day is Spider-Man.

JD also does social and political art. He tells us all about a collaboration he did with other Creativity Explored artists looking at Black identity through the lens of "blackface" and flipping the script on white supremacy. In 2019, he was part of a show with other Black CE artists called "Blackiful" that looked at police violence against people of color.

JD recounts his first visit to CE for us. He was in awe of the large space filled with so many people "just doing art." He immediately loved it and started meeting other artists.

Today, he still draws cartoons, but his main jam is portraits. He's drawn Michael Jackson, Prince, and David Bowie, among other singers and celebrities. He also does ceramics in addition to painting and drawing.

We end this episode with what JD loves about San Francisco and who his favorite artists are, including fellow Creativity Explored artist and JD's friend, Gerald Wiggins.

If you missed it, Part 1 with CE's Executive Director, Linda Johnson, can be found here.

We recorded this podcast at Creativity Explored in the Mission in December 2021.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Creativity Explored Executive Director Linda Johnson (S4E33P1) Jan 04, 2022

Show notes

This episode is the first in a series we're doing with Creativity Explored. CE's mission is "to provide developmentally disabled people access to the human right of creative expression." Check back next week for the next episode in this series.

In her own words, Linda Johnson "always had a passion for city life."

In this podcast, the executive director of Creativity Explored shares her life story with us. She grew up in Ohio, graduated college with degrees in English and creative writing, got her master's in Iowa in social work and poetry, and moved to San Francisco in the early Nineties on a hunch.

After working at a number of different places, Linda combined her loves of social work and the visual arts with a job at Creativity Explored. Before that, she had worked at Streetside Stories, a program that helps young people tell their life stories. From there, she worked for the city of Walnut Creek, what Linda describes as "an incredibly arts-focussed city." She managed arts programs there.

She shares the story of first falling in love with Creativity Explored, many years before working there. It was back in the day when you had to be somewhere, in person, to see and buy art. She remembers the big sales that CE would host and what enriching experiences they were. While at the City of Walnut Creek, Linda told herself, 'My dream job would be executive director of [Creativity Explored].'

When its then-ED was retiring, the person doing the outreach to find a replacement just happened to live in Walnut Creek and found Linda through her work there. It was like a dream come true.

Linda tells us in her own words what Creativity Explored is and what the non-profits vision and outlook are. A big part of CE's future is moving more deeply into a "community with" type of organization and away from an "in service to" operation.

She goes on to talk about how proud she is of CE's artists. Some have been collected or gone on to show in museums and galleries around the world.

Please visit Creativity Explored's website here, where you can sign up for their newsletter and never miss any of the things they're doing. You can also donate to the non-profit there.

Check back next week for another episode in our series with Creativity Explored.

We recorded this podcast at Creativity Explored in the Mission in December 2021.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Poet Kim Shuck (S4E32P2) Dec 23, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Kim picks up where she left off in Part 1, with her decision in 1985 to stay in town and go to college at SF State.

She was, as she says, "deeply" into politics. She attended protests at the DNC in 1984, which took place in San Francisco. She felt pressures from the Red Power Movement, and talks about how tricky it was to be just the right amount of Indian. It was the middle of the Reagan era and Kim lived in the Castro, where AIDS was ravaging the gay community and the president infamously refused to even say the name of the disease.

As far as she and anyone in her life knows, Kim has always written. After college, a friend surprised her by asking Kim to read poetry live in front of people. She's been doing that on and off since then. Kim talks about Murdered Missing, her book of poems on the large number of Indian women who disappear, even here in The City.

She spent many years teaching Native American arts, both at SF State and CCA. She taught origami arts at elementary schools all over The City. She has also written curriculum for The Exploratorium.

Kim shares the story of becoming San Francisco's seventh poet laureate, including how and where she was when she learned the news. She says she's incredibly honored to have been bestowed with the honor. (Tongo Eisen-Martin is the current poet laureate: Part 1 / Part 2).

We end this episode with Kim talking about what it means to still be here and her outlook for her hometown: San Francisco. If you're still listening at this point, keep going to hear Kim reading a couple of poems for us.

We recorded this podcast at Kim's partner's house in The Sunnyside in December 2021.

Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Poet Kim Shuck (S4E32P1) Dec 21, 2021

Show notes

Kim Shuck's parents met on Market Street in the late-1950s when her dad wrestled an ocelot away from its grips on her mom. In this podcast, the San Francisco poet laureate emerita talks about the five generations of San Franciscans on her mom's side. Her dad joined the Navy partly to get out of Oklahoma. He was "career" for a while, but then left that to become an electronics engineer in Silicon Valley. Her San Francisco grandparents (maternal) met at the Polish Hall in the Mission. Kim spent significant time with both sets of grandparents—both her in The City and in Oklahoma. When she was young, Kim's mom started working as a special needs para at a school near their home. She was also a founder of Noe Valley Nursery School, one of the first such co-ops in The City and also where Kim went to nursery school. Kim tells stories of the no longer extant Noe Valley Street Fair, which was a fundraiser for the school. Kim spent most of her years growing up in the Mission, Noe Valley, and the Castro. She lists the different public schools she went to. She reminisces about growing up in the Sixties and Seventies in San Francisco, with an emphasis on the way people used to paint houses in The City in vibrant color and with many hand-painted details (see our episode with Bob "Dr. Color" Buckter--Part 1 / Part 2) We eventually get around to stories about outdoor music shows and her memories of seeing the San Francisco Mime Troupe when she was young. We also spend a good amount of time talking about her love of roller skating (see our podcasts last week with David Miles, Jr., of the Church of 8 Wheels—Part 1 / Part 2). Ruth Asawa was a neighbor and (probably) Kim's first art teacher at Alvarado Elementary School. Later in her life, Kim did origami and became friends with Ruth again. Like so many guests of this show, Kim went to college at SF State. She recounts all the academic and social movements that have origins at the school, including ethnic students, free speech, and the American Indian takeover of Alcatraz. One theme Kim keeps coming back to is the cyclical nature of things, especially pertaining to creativity and art in San Francisco. "One step forward, one step back. We're cha-cha-ing." We end Part 1 with Kim going into her Cherokee heritage and then more of the story of her decision to stay in town and go to college at SF State. Check back Thursday for Part 2 and our last podcast of 2021. We recorded this podcast at Kim's house in the Sunnyside in December 2021.

Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

David Miles, Jr., of the Church of 8 Wheels (S4E31P2) Dec 16, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, David picks up where he left off in Part 1. He had just met Rose, whom he would eventually successfully woo. It was the heyday of roller skating, with thousands of skaters flooding Golden Gate Park on the regular. But there was a large and growing number of naysayers.

Early in his San Francisco skating days, David joined Skate Patrol at the park. It's a colorful story that he tells in this episode.

David and Rose got married in 1984. They were both managers at different Kentucky Fried Chicken locations around town. The company pressured managers intensely to raise profits and lower costs, which caused David to think of another way to make a living. In 1989, Rose told him to go for it with teaching skate lessons in the park.

They had three kids during this time. David tells the story of how his daughter Melanie won the Red Bull national skating championship in 1998. The next year, his other daughter, Tiffany, overtook her sister ... by one point. His son, David, came to roller skating by accident, winning a spot in a contest in down in Venice and coming in seventh overall.

David also shares the story of how the Church of 8 Wheels went from an ad-hoc location in Golden Gate Park to a brick-and-mortar actual former church on Fillmore Street. It started out as a one-off. Then it moved to weekly. That was eight years ago. Now, it's the Church's home and HQ.

According to David, there's no Church of 8 Wheels without Burning Man. David has been going to the party in the Nevada desert for 20 years. He's got his own group there called the Long Riders. The Critical Tits contingent had asked them to essentially run security for them.

We end the podcast with David reflecting on what it means to still be here in San Francisco.

If you missed Part 1, please go back and listen. David is a treasure.

We recorded this podcast at the Church of 8 Wheels in November 2021.

Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

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