Episodes

  • Whack Donuts' First Anniversary (S7 bonus)

    Whack Donuts' First Anniversary (S7 bonus)
    Jan 30 2025

    It's been a damn year, y'all.

    In this bonus episode, we catch up with friend of the show Vandor Hill, owner and creator of Whack Donuts. His brick-and-mortar shop in EMB 4 just marked its one-year anniversary (and last year was a Leap Year!), and I dropped by to chat with Vandor about the time since he opened, where things stand now, and the road ahead.

    This Saturday, to celebrate Whack Donuts' birthday, Vandor is hosting a breakdancing jam event:

    • 5x5 crew
    • breaking battle
    • $1,000
    • donuts
    • line dancing
    • free giveaways

    Follow Whack Donuts on Instagram for more info. And if you're able to, please donate to help offset some of the costs of putting on this event. We'll see you there!

    ​We recorded this podcast at Whack Donuts in January 2025.

    Photography by Jeff Hunt
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    29 mins
  • The Fillmore Art Director Ashley Graham, Part 2 (S7E6)

    The Fillmore Art Director Ashley Graham, Part 2 (S7E6)
    Jan 28 2025
    In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. We'd just learned of the call Ashley received from The Fillmore while she was working in Seattle. She'd visited San Francisco once to visit a cousin, but that stay lasted a mere 48 hours. She had one friend here at the time. Up in Seattle, the shows she helped produce were huge acts like Beyoncé and Rihanna. What especially excited Ashley about this opportunity at The Fillmore was the potential to work on smaller shows with groups and people more on their way up, so to speak. For fans and showgoers, it was more about music discovery, as she puts it. It was June 2012. Ashley's move to San Francisco was more or less sight-unseen. The City immediately felt like a "bigger" place for her, its music ... just a bigger city all-around. It was big, "but not that big." She landed in the Mission, moving in with a friend of that one friend she had in SF. Ashley lived at 24th and Potrero for nine years, until just three years ago. We shift to talk about Ashley's time at The Fillmore. She shares conversations among staff there about the history of the place and placing that at the forefront. The venue partnered with the Bill Graham Memorial Foundation this past fall to reintroduce the public to the place and its long history, as well as really getting Bill Graham's story out there. Ashley then shares that life story of Bill Graham. It was Graham who put The Fillmore on the map. His first show there was in December 1965. He had fled the Holocaust as a kid, went with family to New York, then ended up in San Francisco. He wanted to be an actor and found the San Francisco Mime Troupe. That first show at The Fillmore was a benefit for the Mime Troupe, in fact. The place had been a dance hall and a roller rink previously. Graham might have had a hunch, but when he took over putting on music shows, it was right at an inflection point for rock music in The City. Bands like Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin frequently played there. Bill Graham had a gift for pairing musicians from different genres together in such a way that shows attracted different groups of people. Ashley points out, though, that first and foremost, Bill was a businessman. He followed and created opportunities to make money. A few years after taking over at Fillmore and Geary, he opened The Fillmore West at Van Ness and Market. There's a fun tidbit about Bill Graham appearing on David Letterman back in the Eighties—which just speaks to how big a personality he'd become. Our conversation then shifts to two questions I had for Ashley. I wanted her to talk about the red apples that are always found in a bucket at the top of the stairs when you enter The Fillmore. That, and the posters handed out to showgoers on their way out of sold-out events. No one really knows how the apples got started, she says. There are versions of the story. One holds that Bill Graham gave them out as a simple gesture of hospitality. Another was that putting a little food in your belly after a night out can't hurt anything. A rather elaborate telling is that, as part of an exhibit on Bill Graham at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, someone who'd been in France with him when they were kids shared the story of sneaking out at night to go to an apple orchard. As for the posters, Ashley talks about their origins, when they were simply advertisements for shows at The Fillmore. The posters eventually took on a life of their own, though—for many of the early ones, the style of lettering worked better as a memento than an ad. It almost seems quaint at this point that the posters were anything but keepsakes. I ask Ashley what it's like to now have her name appear on these iconic pieces of art (in her role as art director). "It's strange ... but cool." She speaks to how much work goes into each poster. And then Ashley talks about the logistics of making posters for. "At this point, we have a pretty good idea of which shows are gonna sell out." (Seems obvious, but as someone on the outside, I wondered.) "It's not a perfect science, but we're pretty good at it," Ashley says. She thinks of her job as more art curation than direction. She considers the overall collection of posters a little more than the nitty gritty of what each poster's details are. We end the podcast with Ashley's thoughts on what it means to "keep it local," our theme this season. Follow The Fillmore on Instagram. Photography by Nate Oliveira
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    34 mins
  • The Fillmore Art Director Ashley Graham, Part 1 (S7E6)

    The Fillmore Art Director Ashley Graham, Part 1 (S7E6)
    Jan 21 2025

    Ashley Graham will be the first tell you, "There's no relation (to Bill Graham)."

    In Part 1 of this episode, meet Ashley. Today, she holds the titles of marketing manager and art director at The Fillmore, a San Francisco institution. But let's learn how she got here.

    ​Ashley comes to us from Spokane, Washington. Her mom is originally from there, too, but her dad's family moved around the Rocky Mountain West, from Colorado to Montana, and eventually, eastern Washington State. Her dad was a senior in high school when his family moved to Spokane.

    Her parents met a few years later and got married after knowing each other for a whopping five months (they're still married today). Ashley's mom worked at Bimbo's, a local Spokane burger joint. Her dad frequented the place ... with his first wife. At a certain point, he started to come in solo. And eventually, he asked her mom out. "The rest is history," Ashley says.

    Ashley's sister, Erin, is two years older than her. Growing up, the two had what Ashley calls "a classic older sister/younger sister vibe." They're close today, but it wasn't always that way. Ashley had severe asthma when she was young, and she thinks she was a drag to be around.

    Ashley is an Eighties kid. She was born in 1983 and grew up without cellphones and computers. At this point in the recording, we reminisce about those days and what it was like not having those things.

    She spent a lot of her early years playing Barbie with a cousin. She listened to a lot of music, too. She loved Michael Jackson, but it was his sister Janet who really stole Ashley's heart. Janet Jackson was her first concert, in fact. There's a good story about Ashley refusing to get on the school bus and her mom taking her home. After this incident, when she would take the bus to school, she'd receive a sticker. Once she accumulated enough of those, Ashley bought herself a copy of Rhythm Nation on cassette.

    Her high school years saw Ashley really, really dive into music. The Jacksons gave way to bands like Kiss (thanks to the movie Detroit Rock City), Aerosmith, and Poison. Then, in 1999, Ashley and her sister won tickets to see Sammy Hagar. "It was so good. So good," she says now. Looking back, she says that it was the relationship Hagar had with his fans that drew her in.

    The next day, she went out and bought a Sammy Hagar CD. A week later, she bought more CDs. She got a Hagar shirt on Ebay. Around this time, she also discovered Hedwig and the Angry Inch. She found the show thanks to her love of Stone Temple Pilots. Her, her mom, and her sister went to Seattle to see Stevie Nicks and Ashley seized the opportunity while there to see the Hedwig movie. Some in the theater were clutching their pearls, but the movie had a profound effect on Ashley. It "opened my heart and filled it with ... emotional intelligence," she says.

    ​Hedwig also helped open Ashley up to the wider world and the idea of possibility. This was all right before her senior year in high school. Despite her friends not really getting it, she took that inspiration and turned it into her drive to become a screen writer. And her senior English teacher encouraged those dreams.

    She read scripts while also writing her own. She graduated high school and moved to Los Angeles to attend Loyola Marymount. A year later, she came back to Washington to go to Seattle University and pursue a degree in "something between journalism and communications." But she says that about halfway through college, she decided that the old-school model of journalism school (think: hard news) wasn't a good fit.

    During her time in Seattle, though, music had started to take over her life. Ashley had gotten into The Strokes in her brief time in LA. "They felt like a band you could be friends with," the first time that had happened to her. At shows in Seattle, she started befriending bands. Eventually, she started a music site, and that blew up to the point that she cashed that in for internships at a local venue and a record label.

    One of those internships, the one at the venue, led to a job. And that led to her work with the Sasquatch music fest in Seattle. Rather than covering band quasi-journalistically, she was now working with bands behind the scenes, so to speak.

    Then, five years or so later, someone from The Fillmore called and offered Ashley a job.

    Check back next week for Part 2 with Ashley Graham.

    ​We recorded this podcast at The Fillmore in November 2024.

    Photography by Nate Oliveira
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    35 mins
  • SF Sketchfest 2025 w/Cole Stratton (S7 bonus)

    SF Sketchfest 2025 w/Cole Stratton (S7 bonus)
    Jan 16 2025

    San Francisco has such a rich history of comedy. No one can argue against that.

    In this bonus episode, meet SF Sketchfest co-founder and co-director Cole Stratton. I chatted with Cole about:

    • his early days in Michigan and his and his mom's move to Davis, CA
    • going to SF State, moving to The City
    • meeting folks (David Owen and Janet Varney) with whom he later helped create Sketchfest
    • how his desire to act drove him to Los Angeles, where he lives today
    • the sketch crew he was in, which lead to the festival
    • the 2002 launch of SF Sketchfest
    • this year's 18-day event, which kicks off tonight!

    Go to SFSketchfest.com for tickets and more info.

    We recorded this podcast on Zoom in January 2025.
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    23 mins
  • Amparo, Pattye, Lorenzo, and Willy Vigil/Puerto Alegre, Part 2 (S7E5)

    Amparo, Pattye, Lorenzo, and Willy Vigil/Puerto Alegre, Part 2 (S7E5)
    Jan 14 2025
    In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. The siblings use which school they were going to estimate the date of the family's move to Valencia Street to live above Puerto Alegre. Just one example: When Amparo was set to attend Mission High, they moved the school to Poly out near Kezar Stadium while Mission was retrofitted. Then we turn to noteworthy things that have happened at Puerto Alegre in the 50-plus years that it's been open. Amparo shares how their dad, Ildefonso Vigil, brought pinball machines and a pool table into the restaurant. At one point, because Willy, Lorenzo, and one of their cousins got into fish, a 55-gallon tank went up in the front window. Their dad was also known to rescue dying plants he found around the neighborhood. Amparo got married when she was 16 and had a kid the next year. By 19, she had divorced and moved back in with her family. She got a day job at an insurance company, which gave her access to a typewriter. With that, she was able to create the first typed menu for the restaurant. Prior to that, the menu had been written by hand. The brothers being boys and all, they started to get into cars. They built cars and did some (probably illegal) racing. Other siblings would go watch, but at least one always stayed behind to help out at the restaurant. Over the years, the menu evolved. The neighborhood was changing. The clientele in the restaurant needed to pivot. Their parents introduced fried chicken and milkshakes at one point, a carryover from the Mexico Lindo days. Their mom, Maria Refugio Vigil, also made fresh flour tortillas. Willy and Lorenzo were big, big fans of those. They'd grab them as soon as they were ready, slap some refried beans on them, roll 'em up, and eat away. At this point, Amparo tells the story of El Faro taqueria. Going back to the Mexico Lindo days, El Faro was just down the block. Kitty-corner to that was a place called Johnny's. The owner of El Faro would ask the siblings, "What'd ya get over there?" Johnny's eventually made poboy sandwiches, and the Vigils ate those up, literally. Those poboys inspired the owner of El Faro to create burritos. This story is, quite possibly, the burrito origin story. Getting back to the topic of other immigrants from Ayutla in San Francisco, Amparo tells us about a club in the Mission where folks from that small town in Mexico would get together. The wife of the owner of La Rondalla (RIP) was from Ayutla. The owners of Don Ramon's and Taqueria La Cumbre were from there, as well. Back to Puerto over the years, Amparo talks about how their dad always wanted a liquor license. He'd served beer and wine since they opened, but he wanted to expand. The owner of Vic's next-door (where Blondie's is today) was retiring and selling his license, and Ildefonso bought it. That changed everything. Willy tells us about the learning curve to running a bar. This was around 1982 or so. Their liquor sales rep helped teach them how to set up a bar. Most importantly—he taught them how to make margaritas. Willy says he brought friends in to help "test" his new concoctions. It didn't take him long to get it down ... with ample feedback, of course. One casualty of the liquor license, unfortunately, was the fishtank. Next was the pool table. A familiar site around The City today, but rarer back then, they started to experience folks lining up for a table or a seat at the bar. We spend some time talking about a specific host from Puerto's past—Tirso, who has been beloved by me and my friends for decades now. We all talk about how much we love Debbie Horn (former server at Puerto, current co-owner of Royal Cuckoo Organ Lounge). Amparo tells us about the art on the walls inside Puerto Alegre. It's not just for decoration. Rather, the restaurant serves as a community art gallery. What began as mostly neon beer company signs adorning the space turned into regular art shows and events that add to the magic that is Puerto Alegre. Over the years, Amparo started collecting posters and art of various aspects of Mexican history. Figures like Zapata and Pancho Villa went up as framed posters. That turned into Carnaval-related art. A friend who was a regular patron of the place and a photographer himself helped with that. This was roughly 20 years ago. When Carnaval season was over that first year, they wanted a new show. Another regular customer and artist, Bird Levy, suggested a show to honor Frida Kahlo on her birthday in July. That has become an annual show every July. The Vigils connected with Mission artist Calixto Robles to do a show at Puerto Alegre. They've done shows with Calixto's wife, Alejandra, as well. They've done art shows on women during March (Women's History Month). There've been shows on resistance, climate, and Day of the Dead. And just as a true gallery would, they throw art-opening parties. Willy shares what the restaurant has meant to him and his life. He met ...
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    45 mins
  • Amparo, Pattye, Lorenzo, and Willy Vigil/Puerto Alegre, Part 1 (S7E5)

    Amparo, Pattye, Lorenzo, and Willy Vigil/Puerto Alegre, Part 1 (S7E5)
    Jan 7 2025
    Puerto Alegre has been one of my favorite places in San Francisco since around the time I moved here in 2000. I'm finally able to share their story here, and I'm humbled and honored to do so. In Part 1, we meet the Vigil siblings—Amparo, Lorenzo, Willy, and Pattye. Their parents opened Puerto Alegre around 1970, and these four continue their family's legacy on Valencia to this day. ​To start things off, we travel to Ayutla, Jalisco, Mexico, which is where the Vigil family came from. Their dad was one of five boys and several sisters in his own family. They were working class folks who didn't have a lot of money, and so they decided to leave. Following a couple of his older brothers, their dad came to California when he was 14. He started in the southern part of the state and made his way north, working mostly in fields. The brothers from this older generation all ended up in San Francisco, where they lived together and eventually brought their wives up to join them. The Vigil siblings' dad had known their mom back in Mexico, and brought her to The City around 1957. At this point in the recording, we go on a sidebar about the size of Ayutla and how much it's grown over the years. The Vigil siblings do visit their family back in Mexico from time to time. Before their parents got started in the restaurant business, their dad worked at a laundromat here in SF on 17th Street. They had their first baby, an older sister who isn't affiliated with the restaurant at all, and made ends meet to support her. Their mom stayed home to care for their sister, and it was around this time that she started cooking. The parents lived in a shared space with family around 14th and Folsom before a move south to 24th and Folsom when one of the uncles bought a house there. More and more members of their dad's family moved to San Francisco, and the Puerto Alegre Vigils bounced around the Mission from home to home during this time. Their dad's idea was to save up enough to move back to Mexico (ed. note: The idea of saving money in San Francisco today is a different story). But eventually, the opportunity to buy an entire building, which came with a restaurant on the ground floor, arose, and their dad seized on that. That spot was between 19th and 20th streets on Folsom. And so the family moved again. Several members of their parents' generation worked at that first restaurant, which was known as Mexico Lindo. (The space is still a Mexican restaurant today—Chuy's Fiestas.) Various members of the family, including the Vigil siblings when they were young, took turns working at Mexico Lindo. Eventually, that worked out to different families taking over the restaurant for yearlong stints, while others went and worked other jobs. Two uncles branched out to open Vigil's Club, in the spot that today is Asiento, 21st and Bryant. The siblings' dad and one of his brothers stayed back at Mexico Lindo. In one of those years "off," 1968 or '69, the siblings' dad decided he didn't want to be away from the restaurant business for such a long period of time. He went looking and found the spot on Valencia between 16th and 17th where Puerto Alegre is today. The building's street-level space had been a second-hand store. The Vigils' dad built it out as a restaurant. Back then, Valencia was known as "auto row" and "funeral row." It was much different than it is today. The space next door, where Blondie's is today, was a bar called Vic's. We go on a quick sidebar about how, many years ago, it was common for kids to go into bars in San Francisco. It's something that comes up from time to time on this podcast. ​Then Amparo lets us know how good their dad was, even at his first restaurant, about creating spaces where people would want to hang out. Among other touches, he placed pinball machines and a jukebox in the eatery on Folsom. On the weekends, they served birria and menudo, which didn't hurt the operation at all. Getting back to their dad's venture over to Valencia, the siblings discuss the idea that he and their mom were really branching out on their own after so much time in business with their family members. But the new space, having previously not been set up as a restaurant, needed work done on it. A lot of work. There's a side story about a contractor from Watsonville who stiffed their dad on a deposit he'd handed over. Some of the siblings joined their father to chase the guy down. Wild. The new restaurant would be called Puerto Alegre. Pattye lets us know the meaning of the phrase in English, which is "happy port." The menu was all original, of course. Some items, in fact, came from Mexico Lindo. Many of the recipes were their mom's or their aunts'. Chile verde, enchiladas, chile rellenos, and chile Colorado were mainstays. Back at the old place on Folsom, the siblings all worked when they were kids. Their dad even built a box they could stand on to clean the meat for menudo. When he opened his place on Valencia, ...
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    37 mins
  • Sharing Stories: Keoni Washington (S7 bonus)

    Sharing Stories: Keoni Washington (S7 bonus)
    Dec 17 2024

    This bonus episode is presented in collaboration with the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund.

    ​Season of Sharing Fund gave some peace of mind to aspiring boxing champ Keoni Washington, who became parent and breadwinner to his brothers after their mother passed away early in the pandemic. We meet him at the East Bay apartment he shares with three of his brothers. Keoni received rental assistance from Season of Sharing Fund in 2023, which has allowed him and his brothers to stay in their home. If you want to hear more profiles of help and hope, go to https://podfollow.com/1781750916. And if you want to find out how you can help neighbors in crisis, go to SeasonofSharing.org/podcast
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    23 mins
  • Frameline Film Fest's Allegra Madsen, Part 2 (S7E4)

    Frameline Film Fest's Allegra Madsen, Part 2 (S7E4)
    Dec 10 2024
    In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Allegra was bartending at Second City in Chicago. The day of her graduation ceremony, at Columbia College Chicago, she packed up all her belongings and drove to LA with a friend. Allegra really wanted to be in California. Not yet totally sure about what she was gonna do, she took the plunge, so to speak. She'd realized that she wasn't going to pursue art. But she figured, correctly, that in addition to the warmer climate, there would be opportunities to seize in Los Angeles. But Allegra soon found that the challenges of a pre-smartphone Southern California were overwhelming. But she gave it a go. Allegra managed to get what she refers to today as "the worst job she's ever had in her life"—taking school photos of kids. On September 11, 2001, as planes hit the Twin Towers on the other side of the continent, Allegra was at a school in LA taking photos of schoolchildren. Later that day, she had a job interview that, of course, required driving. The freeways were empty, which is an eerie sight. But she got that job. And that's the story of how Allegra Madsen became an art handler. Following a couple of years hanging art (Warhol's Mao and Brillo Boxes among the art Allegra handled), she dabbled in freelance work, putting art up on walls in the homes of Los Angeles billionaires among them. Several years into that, Allegra started to feel that energy—this time, pushing her away from LA. She packed up her red sports car again (a 1988 Porsche, by the way) and headed to The Bay. Going back to the time in her life when she immersed herself in books, Beat writers caught Allegra's imagination. She recounts her first visit to San Francisco and her eventual move north. Like me, she had no idea that she'd still be here all these decades later. It took Allegra some time to "unpack," so to speak. She moved around The Bay a little, before eventually settling back a block from her first spot in Oakland, where she lives today. She went to school at CCA (then known as CCAC) and studied curatorial practice. It's where she discovered and got really into social art practices, which she goes into in our talk. "Using art to build community," essentially. Her thesis project took place on Third Street, just as the light rail was being built along that corridor. Her thesis exhibition took place at the Bayview Opera House. A few years after getting her Master's degree, Allegra opened a cafe in Temescal in Oakland. The neighborhood was rapidly gentrifying at the time, and she wanted to have a space where folks from many different walks of life could visit and have a good experience. Allegra sold the café after about five years. She pivoted back to art and event planning. Most of her work took the form of events in the Bayview. And part of that event planning involved movie programming. This led to a role at the BVOH, where she did more movie showings. During her time at the opera house, she began to partner with Frameline. In 2021, she joined the film fest org as programming director. It was the first year since the pandemic started, and Allegra believes part of why she was hired is that she had proven that she could program movies in "weird" places. They hosted a movie as part of Pride that summer at Oracle Park and did some drive-ins (remember those?). In late 2023, Allegra became interim executive director of Frameline. She assumed the permanent job this February. Follow Frameline on Instagram and other social media to stay up to date on everything they do. We end the podcast with Allegra's take on our theme this season: Keep it local. We recorded this podcast in the Frameline office in South of Market in November 2024. Photography by Dan Hernandez
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    35 mins