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, they all had kitchen experience and transferred that over to the new restaurant. We get into a detailed discussion of the various salsas that their mom used to make. They're the foundation for today's salsa at Puerto. Amparo says their mom used to carry peppers around in her pockets. To wrap up Part 1, Amparo shares the story of her dad eventually clearing out what had been SRO-type rooms for rent above Puerto Alegre for his family to move in. That move was from a one-bedroom to a four-bedroom. Movin' on up, as they say. Check back next week for Part 2 with the Vigil siblings of Puerto Alegre. We recorded this podcast at Puerto Alegre restaurant in the Mission in November 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

Allegra Madsen has a Polaroid photo of her birth. In this episode, meet and get to know Allegra. Today, she's the executive director of Frameline film fest, the biggest LGBTQIA+ movie event in the world. She might disagree, but Allegra is a big deal. (Quick side note: As we kicked off our recording, Allegra expertly solved a Rubik's Cube. No bigs.)

We begin with the story of how her parents met. Allegra's dad is from Chicago originally. He taught transcendental meditation (TM) and moved all over the world. Eventually, he landed in Virginia, where he met Allegra's mom, who is from there and was just beginning to practice TM. The two met and settled down, and soon enough, they had a baby—Allegra. She was born in Virginia Beach, VA, to, as she puts it, "two hippies who were trying to change the world by sitting quietly." A lot of Allegra's family is still in Virginia, from which, as she points out, the Supreme Court's Loving case originated. That was when the high court ruled unanimously that interracial marriages are, in fact, protected under the Constitution. Her parents are of different races, and not everyone in the family looked on approvingly. Her parents never did get married. But they raised their biracial kid together. She was a fairly typical latch-key kid growing up in the Eighties, though she split her time between her parents' families. Schools were mostly segregated, too. By the time Allegra got to high school, though, local governments and school boards did what they could to integrate, at that level at least. But, she says, that meant that the students themselves segregated within the schools. Going between the worlds of her mom's family and her dad's, Allegra says she felt at home in both, however differently. She was the only mixed-race kid though, and so, as much as she strived to fit in with any one group, it was difficult. Allegra has been tall for a while, and she was urged to play basketball, which she did. She says she liked it, but her passion for the game outweighed her skill. As a teenager, she read a lot. She says that it was probably the main way that she discovered a broader world beyond her hometown. Books gave way to movies, and they all helped form in Allegra a curiosity about how people relate to one another and share space in the world. This was around the time that VCRs really took off. In addition to local video rental shops, the expansion of Blockbuster stores nationwide made it easier to rent movies. Her mom had a job at a cable company, and when young Allegra would visit her at work, she had access to cable movies that many of her friends went without. At this point in the recording, Allegra and I go on a sidebar about movies we used to love that don't hold up well nowadays. But at the time, movies and books were ways for her to escape The South. Soon enough, something started calling Allegra to leave where she's from. She graduated high school after only three years and got a job in the office of the construction company her dad worked for, helping her earn a little money. She saved and funded a fledgeling scuba career. Yes, scuba diving. Her dream was to move to the Florida Keys to work as a dive instructor. But that dream never came true. Instead, she spent the year that would've been her senior year in high school working at a music store. Her work provided Allegra with easy access to so much music. There was also a Ticketmaster counter inside the store. Being an employee, she and her coworkers were able to pull tickets for themselves before they went on sale to the public. I go on a tangent here about what a pain it used to be to buy concert tickets over landline phones. Allegra rattles off an impressive list of bands she saw back then—one that includes Missy Elliott and Bob Dylan. When she figured out that the diving dream was dead, Allegra moved to Chicago to go to college. She had family there—aunts, uncles, grandparents. But they weren't especially close. It's not that her extended family wasn't accepting of her parents' interracial relationship, but more that they weren't prepared for it. ​And so Allegra turned to her peers. She found two people in her first week of college who turned out to be lifelong friends. She says her college experience was mostly a good one, but that, in hindsight, she still hadn't come into her own, per se. She studied film photography and design. Although she wasn't enrolled in the motion pictures program, Columbia College Chicago was and is known as a film school. And Allegra says that those friends she made early on helped her dive more deeply into the world of movies—it made her more of an active moviegoer. Allegra says she always knew she was queer. She dated girls in high school, but never really talked with her parents about her budding sexuality. She never really talked with anyone about it, in fact. Instead, she simply dated women and that was that. Check back next week for Part 2 and Allegra's eventual move to the Bay Area. ​We recorded this podcast at Frameline Film Fest's offices in South of Market in November 2024.

Photography by Dan Hernandez

Jacob Rosenberg had a front-row seat to some rad SF/Bay Area history. In this bonus episode, the filmmaker/storyteller shares some of that history, especially as it relates to his upcoming book, Right Before My Eyes. Jacob was born and raised in Palo Alto. He grew up in the Seventies and Eighties. His parents moved there from the East Coast and Midwest to raise kids in an environment that matched their liberal values more. He started skating in the Eighties and would visit Justin Herman Plaza/EMB in The City with his skateboard but also his camera. He was one of the first to capture the skateboarding going on at EMB who was a peer of the skaters he was documenting. He soon found enough success with photography that he dropped out of high school and moved to San Diego to do that work full-time. Two years or so later, he went to film school at Emerson College in Boston, where he met his mentor. That mentor passed away while Jacob was still in school, but he finished a movie that guy had been working on at the time of his death. After college, Jacob moved to Los Angeles, where he's lived ever since. At this point in the episode, I share with Jacob the draw that SF had on me from about age 12, thanks to skateboarding, Bones Brigade, and especially, Tommy Guerrero. I never got to visit The City when I skated, but it was always fresh in my imagination. Jacob then goes on a sidebar about Tommy. Jacob goes on to talk about the time frame covered in his book—1988 to 1998. His life changed at skate camp in the summer of 1988 (if my math is correct, this would be Jacob's last summer before high school). He met pro skateboarders that summer. Suddenly, unrelatedly, he was in Hawaii making a video for Hieroglypics. He cites 1988 as a pinnacle year for hip-hop. And he says that '91–'93 were the same for street skating. 1993 was also important for hip-hop. The conversation then shifts to what the two cultures—hip-hop and skateboarding—had in common. He cites his childhood hero, Chuck D. (who wrote the afterword for his book) who noted that members of both subcultures were disenfranchised youth who found a way to express themselves. Well-put. In the early Nineties, the dominance of ramp skating waned and gave way to street skating. With easier and more affordable access to video cameras, the scene got documented and documented well. Similarly, sampling and other recording equipment was getting cheaper and cheaper, and DIY hip-hop songs and videos flourished. And in a very specific way, a video that Jacob created and put Hieroglyphics' music in helped to unite the two groups in the Bay Area. Jacob says that his self-published book, Right Before My Eyes, is meant to be a coffee table book. He intends for people to see the world he was documenting all those years ago through his eyes. There are photos, of course, but the book also contains screengrabs from videos he made as well as ephemera from that time—stuff like photos of photos, the cameras he used to shoot, and more. Follow Jacob Rosenberg on Instagram to see his work. And visit Jacob's website to buy Right Before My Eyes, available now.

Photo by Stephen Vanaso

We recorded this episode over Zoom in November 2024.

​Nicole Salaver is the kind of person I wish I had met long before that happened. In this episode, meet Nicole. She's the program manager at Balay Kreative these days. But her San Francisco roots go way, way back. Her maternal grandfather came to the US in the 1920s. He was one of the first Filipinos to own a restaurant and pool hall in Manilatown (please see our episode on Manilatown Heritage Foundation). He was a manong who lived at the International Hotel. Stories that Nicole's mom has told her were that he was more or less a mobster, paying off cops to keep his place safe.

Nicole's maternal grandmother came to the states in the Fifties with her first husband. But he was an abusive alcoholic, and so her grandmother divorced him. She turned to the government for help for her and her four kids. They sent the single mother and her family to live at what turned out to be a brothel. But she wasn't aware of that at the time. The two met at the I-Hotel, where Nicole's grandmother helped the manongs with anything involving English—paperwork for green cards, lawyers, visas, etc. It was just a side hustle to her job at the US Postal Service. She knew all the manongs, but fell in love with Nicole's grandfather. They married and had three kids, including Nicole's mom. Her mom was born in the Sixities and grew up in the Seventies in San Francisco. Her dad's parents arrived in the US in the Fifties, after World War II. Her paternal grandfather was a merchant marine who cooked on a Navy ship. He met Nicole's grandmother on one of his voyages back to the Philippines and brought her back to the US. They had two boys—Nicole's dad and her uncle. Nicole says that her dad grew up a hippie in Sixties San Francisco, and retained that sensibility throughout his life. He worked for SF Recreation and Parks, smoked weed, and made art. He met Nicole's mother at a collage party while playing guitar in his brother's band. More on Patrick Salaver, Nicole's uncle, later. Nicole, an only child, was born at St. Luke's hospital in 1980. Her mom and dad lived in the Excelsior, where Nicole grew up. She went to Guadalupe Elementary. Her parents were agnostic, but her Catholic grandmother enrolled her in a Catholic school without telling them. Nicole's mom pulled her out on Day 1 and got her into public schools. She was supposed to go to Balboa High School, but it was the Nineties and that school was going through a rough time (see our episode with Rudy Corpuz from United Playas for more on that story). And so the family moved down to South San Francisco. From here, we sidebar to talk about The City of Nicole's youth, in the late-Eighties and early Nineties. She laments the massive loss of art and community that tech money wiped out. And she reminisces about taking Muni all over town. They went to film festivals, galleries, museums, restaurants. In her high school years, Nicole and her friends came to the Haight a lot. She'd also attend as many Filipino events as she could—Pistahan, Barrio Fiesta, and more. Her mom was a dancer and her dad a musician. They pushed her to do one of those two things or visual art. Of them, she gravitated toward art, but as she got to her teen years, she decided that acting and writing were more her jam. That all started when her uncle, Patrick Salaver, gave her a video camera when Nicole was 12. Nicole was and is a fan of "Weird" Al Yankovic. She says she digs quirky humor. She watched lots of SNL, In Living Color, Golden Girls. Using the camera her uncle gave her, she and her cousin created soap operas, commercials, talk shows, SNL-type sketches, and more. But despite loving creating that stuff, she saw that her parents' art was just a hobby. It didn't seem possible that it could be a career. It wasn't until her dad passed away suddenly that Nicole decided to pursue her art. She shares that story with us. She'd been performing a one-woman show about her grandmother, who had Alzheimer's, at Bindlestiff. She was taking classes from W. Kamau Bell and doing stand-up comedy, opening for big names like Jo Koy, Ali Wong, and Hassan Minaj. Then she got a call: "Your dad is in the ER. You should go." During a botched tracheotomy, his heart stopped. By the time doctors got his heart beating again, he was brain dead. Prior to that, not knowing that it would be the last time she saw her dad, she recorded him. He told her that she should move to New York, follow her dreams, and never work for "the man." One of the last things Nicole's dad said to her was, "If you stop doing art, you will die." Three months after her dad's funeral, Nicole quit her job and moved to NYC. Check back next for Part 2 with Nicole Salaver.

Photography by Mason J.

We recorded this episode at Balay Kreative in October 2024.

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1.

Jackie considers it an honor to have worked for Lateefah Simon, who's running for Congress in the East Bay for the seat currently held by Barbara Lee. Jackie was tasked with writing memos, and she took that job and ran with it, digging deeply into the weeds of policy. What she found in the existing systems of that time piqued her curiosity around what it might mean if she herself were to enter the fray. Her life up to that point formed her world views, as these things tend to do. But the policies, she says, ticked her off.

Jackie Fielder is quick to credit her ancestors with her life and where she is now that she's 30. In this episode, meet Jackie, who's running to be the next District 9 supervisor. District 9 includes the Mission, Bernal Heights, and the Portola. She begins by sharing the life story of her maternal grandparents, who are from Monterey in Mexico. Her grandfather worked in orange groves in Southern California, while her grandmother was a home care worker. She also did stints at See's Candies seasonally. Sadly, both grandparents passed away when Jackie was young. But she learned more about them as she grew up.

On her dad's side, Jackie is Native American. Her paternal grandparents grew up on reservations in North and South Dakota. Her dad was born in Los Angeles and raised in Phoenix and went to Arizona State. He got a job as an engineer in SoCal, where he met Jackie's mom. The two met at a club in the Eighties. Her mom's first job was at Jack in the Box, where she got minimum wage. She dreamed of becoming an EMT, but that was before she met Jackie's dad. She ended up working as a secretary for a school district. Jackie is her parents' only child. She was born in 1984. Her dad joined the US Navy. When she was six, the Navy deployed him to Seattle for six months, and the strain on his marriage during that time away never really subsided. It was hard on Jackie, too, of course. When he returned home, her parents separated. Her mom took her to live across the freeway from where they'd been, in a low-income apartment community. Jackie's life changed, dramatically, she says. She was in the same schools, but stopped hanging out with her friends after school or on weekends. Her mom didn't want her playing outside much, in fact. She felt that the new area she moved her kid to was too dangerous. In her new living situation, Jackie and her mom found community. Neighbors helped one another out in myriad ways. Jackie looks back on that time as formative to who she's become as an adult. She also spent time with her mom's extended family in South Central LA. Many family members were in the LA low rider culture. Jackie was immersed in that Latino community from a young age. This also informed her world view today. ​At this point, we pivot to talk about music—how it came into her life and what it means to Jackie. She grew up around disco and Motown, Spice Girls and the Men in Black soundtrack, CCR, TLC, Backstreet Boys. In middle school, Jackie found alt rock. She saw Foo Fighters with her mom. Jackie attended public schools the entire time. She was a good student, got good grades, liked her teachers and they liked her. In hindsight, she wishes she had engaged with sports besides soccer, which she played from age 4 or 5. She says that in Southern California, sports were as important as academics. There were something like 4,000 students at her high school, 900-something in her graduating class. But despite this, Jackie didn't simply receive her education passively. She was on an AP track and did community service work with other students. ​In high school, Jackie worked to establish gardens in elementary schools in her area. She paints the picture of having been such a quote-unquote "good kid" that I ask if she ever had a bad streak or a time when she got anything out of her system. She says not really, but then I half-jokingly suggest that maybe her life in electoral politics is just that. College was expected, though she wasn't sure where she'd end up going to school. She didn't think Stanford was a possibility. Berkeley was her goal, but she didn't get in. Friends and community, though, convinced her to apply to Stanford. She did, and she got it. Thus was Jackie Fielder's move north. ​Originally, she planned to do pre-med in her undergrad years. The motivation behind that plan was wanting to help people. But being interested in education thanks to her mom's work, she attended a talk on public policy and college admissions that opened her eyes, both to the larger societal issue and to her own experience getting admitted to Stanford. She really started thinking about how race and class factor into policy, both public and private. This led to an imposter syndrome-type feeling in her place at college. Still, despite that, she made friends at Stanford, some she's close with today. I note that it's my belief that Jackie is really, really smart (I've listened to and read many things she's said and written, and seriously ...), and suggest that she's driven to knowing things by virtue of a deep curiosity about how systems work. Jackie agrees about that motivating factor, and points to 9/11 and watching a lot of Travel Channel. Both experiences teleported her to different parts of the world, and left her with a deep desire to learn and know about how people organize themselves into societies. Her father was redeployed after 9/11, and that, too, had an effect on young Jackie. But back to her move upstate to Palo Alto. She spent four years there before earning her bachelor's degree. She was in a sorority for a spell, but got disillusioned by that. She describes rubbing shoulders with the kids of billionaires. That initial idea of doing pre-med gave way to working toward a degree in public policy, something she dove into head-first. She says that meant mostly studying economics. And economics at Stanford means the Hoover Institute. And the Hoover Institute means conservative theories. She got through it despite disagreeing with the theory. She told herself it was worthwhile to understand how the proverbial other side thinks to better understand it and be better equipped to debate folks who think that way. She also set her sights on getting a master's degree, and decided to major in sociology for that. During this time, she spent a semester in Istanbul, Turkey, an experience she relishes. She learned a lot about Middle Eastern history in her stay. Much of what she discovered about the struggles of the oppressed halfway around the world rang true for Jackie with the experiences of her father's people in the US. It took Jackie four years to concurrently earn both a bachelor's and a master's degree. I mean, I told you that she's smart. We end Part 1 with Jackie's story of deciding that San Francisco is where she needed to be. It's a story that involves working for Lateefah Simon. We recorded this episode at Evil Eye in the Mission in September 2024.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Aaron talks about volunteering at a nonprofit in The City called the Trust for Public Land, where he learned about land acquisition for parks and open spaces. Through that gig, he got a paid internship and eventually, a job. In fact, he met Nancy, the woman he would later marry, there.