In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. The "bootcamp" post-college and early career experience Hollis had at Creative Circus was interesting—she found herself seemingly taking it more seriously than many who'd come right out of a four-year program. She also balanced getting engaged and married in this time.

Every year, Hollis's grad school organized portfolio reviews with advertising agencies in either New York or San Francisco. Luckily for all of us, the year it was her turn, Creative Circus took students to The City. Once here, they met folks from big firms, including one that offered her an internship. It was Hollis's first visit to San Francisco.

And on that first time, I have to give her credit here—she went to North Beach, had drinks at Gino and Carlo's and pizza next door at Golden Boy. I may or may not have spent New Year's Day in a similar way last week. Just sayin'. Hollis's takeaway from that first impression? "This is a really beautiful town."

We go on another sidebar at this point about the very San Francisco phenomenon of the sun blinding us (I call it "lasers"), probably because of the hills here, right?

It was 2016. Her husband was working back in Georgia, but she called him up and told about the internship offer, which would last three months. He was in a meeting back East where he learned that his company's West Coast salesperson was about to quit, and he was tapped to take over. The Universe, again, spoke.

The newlywed couple packed up their four-runner and headed west with their stuff and their dog.

Ahead of the drive, which would end in her husband's first visit to SF, Greg's grandma told him he had an aunt in The Bay, in Walnut Creek. Aunt Suzy's house was their landing spot, from which they'd take BART into The City to look for a place of their own. Hollis had a friend from college who keyed her in on the Inner Richmond as a potential place to live. We go on yet another sidebar, this one about how Hollis grows actual vegetables at her Inner Richmond home.

They found a studio on Seventh Avenue and Lake Street and moved in with their dog, Mamut. A couple years later, they moved on up to a one bedroom, where they live to this day.

Hollis's internship got extended six months, which was fortunate. Her husband's job paid a Georgia salary. IYKYK. That internship became a job, and so they were able to stay, something the couple wanted to do. Her husband got a job based here, and it all worked out.

I try my hardest to forget what chronology is and jump ahead, but Hollis brings us back to pre-pandemic times. Her design job was corporate-y, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. She got an animation put up in Times Square in this era. Still, owing to the buttoned-up, corporate nature of the job, she was burning out. The Creative Circus invited her back to talk to students. But yet again, Hollis ended up one-on-one with a recruiter from REI. She respected the company and gave in.

A trip to Seattle, to REI HQ, later, the company offered Hollis a job on their brand team. She wasn't thrilled to be leaving her adopted home in San Francisco, but it was a good opportunity. It was January 2020.

Fast-forward to March that year, and the movers were ready. Jobs were quit. Hollis and Greg had just returned to SF from a backpacking trip when REI told them that the movers were not coming, and that her job would start remotely a couple weeks out. Do y'all remember March 2020? How the lockdown was supposed to last "only" until April 1 (dude)? Yeah, so REI told Hollis that her job would be a little different than what they hired her to do. And then they told her, "Psych! JK. No job for you." (I'm paraphrasing.)

Hollis did what any sane San Franciscan would do. She drove to Baker Beach, screamed at the Pacific Ocean, and came home and made a plan.

She'd had a going-away party already, for fuck's sake. It was brutal. The world was upside-down. And it all turned out to be the kick in the pants she needed. Hollis started her own company.

We then go into the story of the open call for art to adorn San Francisco's "I voted" stickers. The contest had come across her radar, and she filed it away for later. Then a relative sent it to her along with the suggestion that she give it a try. It turns out there were more than 600 applicants (in her estimation). The SF Department of Elections had a panel that narrowed that down to 10. And then it went to The People to decide. I remember all of this vividly. Needless to say, Hollis's design won.

Hollis is also integral to the Clement Street Art Walk, which she runs with Fleetwood's Nico. The next one will be on March 19. Fall this year will see the next Clement Street Art Fair. As of our recording, she didn't have any art shows, but please browse Hollis's website of beautiful work and buy some (and sign up for her newsletter). Follow Hollis on Instagram. Or just walk down Clement Street on any given day and chances are high you'll see her. (I learned as we shot photos after our recording that Hollis designed the newly painted intersection crosswalk lines at Sixth and Clement.)

We end the episode rather uniquely, for this show anyway. Hollis asks me if I have a favorite flower. You'll have to listen to find out. (#dahliatalk)

Photography by Jeff Hunt

We're baaaaaaack! Happy New Year, y'all!

In this first episode of 2026, meet and get to know San Francisco artist Hollis Callas. Hollis first came across my radar a few years ago when she won a contest to design our city's new "I voted" stickers. I soon learned that she's something of an artistic fixture in one of my adopted neighborhoods—The Inner Richmond. So I sat down with her one afternoon in November to learn more about her life.

In Part 1, Hollis, an artist, illustrator, and designer, begins sharing her life story, which started in Atlanta. She grew up in the same Georgia house where her dad was also raised. Her grandpa lived there when Hollis was young, and her parents still live in the house today.

Both of Hollis's parents are creatives. Her mom studied fabric design and textiles and weaves quilts these days. Her dad is a carpenter and "builds everything." Along with her crafty dad, Hollis often found herself making big changes in her house when she was little.

Her parents met when they were both at the University of Georgia, in Athens. When the two moved in together, Hollis's mom was friends with members of the B-52s. That now well-known band played one of its early shows at her parents house, in fact. Hollis met the band when she was a kid, but doesn't really remember it.

After they each graduated college, Hollis's parents moved back to Atlanta to that ancestral home we talked about earlier to take care of her dad's dad, who had fallen ill. First, her older sister was born. And then, in 1987, along came baby Hollis.

Life in Atlanta in the Nineties for Hollis meant lots of time outdoors. There's an acre of land with the house she grew up in, space for lots of trees and a bird sanctuary. It was still a time of latch-key kids, and she was definitely one. Hollis roamed her parents' land, wading in creeks and running through the forest. Her parents eventually got a second home up in the Blue Ridge Mountains where she also spent a lot of time.

Hollis went to public school the whole way. Her mom went back to school to become an elementary school librarian, and her dad taught at her high school what we used to call woodshop and coached the boys cross-country team (Hollis was part of the girls team). Kids at her high school loved Coach Griffith, she says.

Art didn't necessarily "enter" Hollis' life. It was always just there. She answered that dreaded question some adults ask kids of "what do you wanna be when you grow up?" with "an artist or a vet." But then she stared getting good grades in art and didn't do so well in math. The Universe spoke, and Hollis listened.

Sports remained a big part of Hollis's life up to and through college, where she played intramural soccer. There was an art school in a small North Carolina town she'd had her eye on, but she ended up getting a scholarship to stay in-state, and landed at UGA in Athens, where she studied art.

UGA is one of those intense Greek life schools (I relate, having gone to UT Austin), and Hollis found out quickly that it wasn't for her. She found her art school homies right away.

At this point in the recording, Hollis and I go on a sidebar about recurring end-of-semester nightmares.

Hollis graduated from UGA with two degrees—ceramics and art education. She student taught one year and got out in five total. After that, she and her boyfriend (now husband) applied for teaching jobs in Spain. They heard back almost a year later, and found themselves living in Zamora and staying for two years.

We chat about her time in Spain. They had such a good time the first year and got really embedded, making friends, working, learning Spanish, and joining a bicycling group that they decided to double-up and stay one more year. At the end of that run, though, pressures started to mount for them to return to the US.

They came back to Atlanta and Hollis got a job teaching ceramics at a high school. Not even 30 yet herself, she found it difficult to lead a group of kids who weren't that much younger than she was. And they were going through their own hard times.

After one year teaching, when colleges came to recruit the teenagers, The Creative Circus ended up picking Hollis. It was a two-year "bootcamp" type of learning environment, geared toward careers in advertising. But before her two years were up, Hollis got a job in San Francisco.

Check back Thursday for Part 2 with artist Hollis Callas.

We recorded this podcast at Hollis's studio inside of Chloe Jackman Photography in The Inner Richmond in November 2025.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Listen in as my friend Vandor Hill and I wrap up his second year of Whack Donuts' brick-and-mortar location. This is Vandor's third appearance on Storied: SF. Here are the other two episode's we've done with him:

• Vandor Hill of Whack Donuts

• Whack Donuts' First Anniversary

We recorded this podcast at Whack Donuts in Embarcadero 4 in December 2025.

Photo by Jeff Hunt

In Part 2, we pick up right where we left off in Part 1. Continuing her history of 3117 16th Street, Lex notes that "The Roxie has lived many lifetimes." She describes the Eighties and Nineties as busy times for the theater. They ran a series of Werner Hertzog films in that era. Akira Kurisawa visited for some of his movies. Many local films and film festivals took place at The Roxie. Frameline was set there. San Francisco and the greater Bay Area were becoming something of a cinema mecca.

The aforementioned Roxie Releasing ended up helping the business in times when ticket sales weren't so hot. Even then, the theater went through some really rough patches financially. That persisted into the early 2000s. And then, The New College came along. The Roxie became the school's film center, in fact. Hope emerged … until The New College lost its accreditation and had to shutter.

In 2009, with a still-uncertain future ahead of it, The Roxie officially became a nonprofit, one of the first of its kind. It was a huge turning point for the theater—but it didn't solve all their problems. There were numerous "Save The Roxie" campaigns, and about 10 years ago or so, the Board contemplated closing down for good.

Obviously, that didn't happen. But in 2020, like every person and business on the planet, The Roxie fell victim to the pandemic. Lex walks us through how COVID and the ensuing shutdown impacted the theater. In the years leading up to 2020, the theater was finally thriving again. But they were the first movie theater in San Francisco to shut down, which they did so voluntarily before the mandate. The Roxie stayed shuttered for 434 consecutive days during COVID. In that time, employees sent postcards to Roxie members; they did pop-up drive-in cinemas; they did "Virtual Roxie," in which the theater curated movies folks could watch from home; and they held online panel discussions with filmmakers.

Once they felt it was safe and they reopened The Roxie, it all felt worth the sacrifices. Instantly, the theater was full of people and life and joy. Despite all that, though, financial struggles resumed once again. Eventually, as many businesses were able to do, they got back to full capacity movie screenings.

The conversation shifts to The Roxie's ongoing efforts to buy the building it's situated in. Henry describes the process, which began with a feasibility study. The study came back in the affirmative—they had a real shot at raising the money needed for such a huge endeavor. He describes the current board members as a cohesive bunch. No factions exist and they all are aligned with laser-sharp focus.

The next step was convincing the landlords to sell to them, to prove that the non-profit was capable of raising the kind of money it would take to get the deal done. That took about a year of back-and-forth. But after that process of negotiating with the building's previous owner, they had an asking price. They could then raise money.

The first donations came from Roxie Board members. In fact, within two weeks of launching the capital campaign, every member of the Board had donated. Then many of those Board members began pitching … and pitching … and pitching. This April, the efforts went public, and to great success. The lovefest began.

The goal from the outset was to raise $7 million in three years. As The Roxie approaches the end of the second year of its fundraising (meaning nowadays), it's within striking distance. Because the total amount that they're raising includes money for way overdue maintenance and upgrades, they already have enough for the basic purchase. In fact, the building is already under the ownership of The Roxie Theater nonprofit organization.

Now that the goal is in sight, they're aiming to close 2025 with a final push to make it to $7 million in two years instead of three. And that's where you and I come in. If you or anyone you know would like to help a San Francisco landmark further cement its legacy in our city by buying its building, find more info and make a donation, please visit the Forever Roxie page. For donations of $30 and above, you will receive a Forever Roxie enamel pin. Donations of $60 and above receive the pin and a specially-designed pair of Roxie socks. For a donation of $120 and above, you receive all of the above along with a long-sleeve Roxie tee shirt. Also, from now through December 31, the Walter and Elise Haas fund will match every gift to the campaign.

We end this episode with Lex reminding folks about The Roxie's weekly newsletter, which goes out every Wednesday and is always a delight. Go to roxie.com and click the "newsletter" button at the top-right to sign up.

When you tell friends you're going to see a movie at The Roxie, there's an almost palpable envy that sets in for them.

In this episode, meet Lex Sloan and Henry S. Rosenthal. Lex is The Roxie's executive director and Henry is on its Board of Directors and the chair of the theater's capital campaign, which we'll get to. In the meantime, if you'd like to help keep a bona fide San Francisco landmark in its rightful home until the end of time (they'd sure love you to, and so would I), donate to the Forever Roxie fund here.

We start with Henry, who lets us know that the "S" in his name stands for Sigmund. Henry was born in Cincinnati and had what he describes as an "idyllic childhood" there. He started going to music shows when he was 13, seeing bands like Iggy and the Stooges and MC5. After graduating from high school, he moved to San Francisco in 1973 to attend school at The New College of California.

He was an early subscriber to Rolling Stone magazine, where he had seen a New College ad. That ad captivated young Henry's imagination. He visited the campus, which was in Sausalito at the time, after a road trip from Ohio to the West Coast. The school tried to get him to enroll right then, but Henry decided to go back home and finish high school first.

Henry produced cable TV shows while in college. In a sense, it's what he's been doing ever since.

When Henry moved to San Francisco, there were still operating movie palaces on Market. Before really making friends here, he'd spend a lot of time inside those theaters. It was the era of movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Enter the Dragon. He says it's difficult to put into words (it is), but San Francisco just grabbed him and never let go.

Then we turn to Lex Sloan. Lex went to college in Bellingham, Washington, at the type of school that allows you to design your own degree, which she did. Lex got a bachelor's in "social change media," which is so on the nose, it tickles. Post-graduation, she went to what she calls "the middle of nowhere, Arizona," but that lasted all of seven or eight months.

Looking for where to land next and being a spreadsheet nerd (like me), Lex made a list. And lo and behold, San Francisco checked the most boxes. She got a job in Redwood City, not knowing that that Peninsula town wasn't exactly The City. No matter—she landed.

The job involved teaching video production at a community center. At first, she stayed in a hostel on Mission Street before finding a place all her own on Craigslist. That was 2005, and Lex hasn't looked back.

We go back to Henry to hear the story of how The Roxie drew him in. Perhaps jokingly, he says he laments not visiting when The Roxie was a porn theater. Henry doesn't recall his actual first visit, but says he's been a regular since first learning about the place.

He knew Bill Banning, who created Roxie Releases, the organization's distribution operation. (Rivers and Tides, the documentary about artist Andy Goldsworthy, is among their releases.) Banning and he were friends for a while. Their kids went to school together. Their lives kept intertwining, including at film festivals. When The Roxie transitioned to a nonprofit and created a board, folks like Bill invited Henry to join it. He politely refused … until the theater was on firmer ground financially. And once it was, he was in.

Henry's goal in joining The Roxie board was singular, he says: To help the organization buy the building where the theater sits.

Lex does remember her first time at The Roxie. After she landed in The City, she sought work on local film crews. She found a crew and their film (Getting Off) premiered at The Roxie during Frameline. Because she was "only" a production assistant, she wasn't comped a ticket. Lex remembers showing up and seeing a rather long and daunting line to get in. But! That line was filled with her people. She calls that screening "magical" and "electrifying."

Over the years, she came back time and again, for one-off movies as well as for film festivals. When Lex worked for Frameline, one of her jobs was carrying film prints into the projection booth at The Roxie and other theaters. Fast-forward to 10 years or so ago, when Lex became operations director at The Roxie.

We then turn to the history of The Roxie, with Lex as our tour guide. The space where the theater sits today was built to be just that—a movie theater. It wasn't converted at any point from something else to become a place where folks watch movies. The folks who run the theater today have discovered and held onto the original blueprints from 1913. Its first name was The Poppy Theater. Then it was The 16th Street. Then The New 16th Street, The Gaiety, The Rex, and finally, in the early 1930s, The Roxie. That oh-so-recognizable marquee came to The Mission from an auto dealership in Oakland aboard a barge that traveled across The Bay.

A lot of the history of The Roxie before the Seventies is not well-known. But, after becoming The Roxie, it was first a German-language cinema (concessions at the time were German candies). Thanks to some projectionist's notes they've found, they know that in the Fifties, it became a variety space of sorts. In the late Sixties/early Seventies, it was an XXX theater, as mentioned in Henry's story earlier. In those days, a turnstile out front kept underage folks and those who didn't pay out (or did it?).

In 1976 or '77, a group of local artists took over. That group changed a lot of things. It became more of an arthouse cinema, as it remains to this day. The folks who ran the place put people before profits. Midnight movies became a thing The Roxie was known for.

Check back Thursday for Part 2 with Lex and Henry.

We recorded this podcast at The Roxie in The Mission in October 2025.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Listen in as I join Erin and Ange of Bitch Talk to chat with H.P. Mendoza about all things Mission District. We wax poetic about H.P.'s home hood, spinning yarns about the infamous neighborhoo'd's past, present, and future.

We recorded this podcast at Zeitgeist in (duh) The Mission in November 2025.

Photo by Wally Gobetz

In Part 2, we pick up more or less where we left off in Part 1, hearing the story of how Randall and Al came to love all things neon. Their enthusiasm kicked into high gear when they started noticing neon signs coming down, and they decided to try to do something about it. That something started with documenting the signs. And with that came a bit of a learning curve, especially around photographing artificial lights at night.

Over the next five years, they captured and captured and captured, getting as many extant signs as they could find. Randall had some book design experience under her belt, especially aspects like packaging and getting it to a printer. She also knew how to put a book proposal together, and so they did. But friends and people in the publishing industry warned them that it would difficult to find a publisher. Randall suggested to her partner that they publish the 200-page book themselves, and that's exactly what they did.

They had the photos and the design down. All they needed was money. Kickstarter was still pretty new, and they chose that platform. Within two weeks, they had met and exceeded their goal. It was on. Donations came in from all over The City, the country, and the world. In addition to money to fund publication, Randall and Al were gifted a community of fellow neon enthusiasts. These days, many folks in that community attend symposiums that Al and Randall put on.

I ask the couple to name other towns, besides San Francisco, that have what I'm calling "good neon." They rattle off a few—Denver; Portland, OR; Livingston, MT; Reno; Los Angeles. Randall plugged a site by Debra Jane Seltzer called RoadsideArchitecture.com that documents neon and other signage in all US states except Hawaii and Alaska.

To help design the cover of their book, Randall and Al asked their Instagram followers. A photo of the Verdi Club and its neon won, easily. That venue quickly emerged as the obvious choice for where to host the book's launch party. Around 300 guests showed up that night in 2014.

After launch, they realized they needed ideas to keep the book and The City's neon signage in people's minds. Tours were among the first of those ideas. But that started as a one-off in Chinatown. A few of the guests on that first tour were tube benders—folks who, among other things, bend the glass that goes into making a neon sign. In the end, the students taught the teachers that day. Those tube benders introduced Randall and Al to a guy in Oakland named Jim Rizzo who does neon restoration work at Neon Works. They've been working with Jim ever since.

When I ask if that Chinatown tour in support of their book was what got them started doing tours in general, Randall turns back to The Society for Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD). The group was holding its convention in San Francisco and asked Randall and Al to take visitors on a tour of The City. They learned a lot from that, including how long to hold your tour before folks get tired or hungry. Fast-forward to after their book was published, when folks who bought the book reached out asking if Randall and Al could show them around San Francisco's various noteworthy neon signs. They didn't think they had it in them to do that on a regular basis. But then other San Francisco tour guides signed up wanting to be shown our city's neon. Little by little, those guides taught Randall and Al tools of the trade.

In the beginning, they second-guessed themselves. "We're a photographer and a graphic designer. What are we doing giving tours?" But they soon learned the real value of neon walking tours—the chance to walk around San Francisco at twilight with people from all walks of life. The side hustle was its own reward (something very familiar to me, in my role hosting this podcast).

If you'd like to take one (or all) of Randall and Al's tours, sign up on their website—SFneon.org. You'll also find other books about neon that they've published.

One of those books is all about saving neon. They got in touch with folks they were meeting from all over the country who were doing that work in their own cities. The book is a good resource for anyone who, like Randall and Al in the Mission all those years ago, wants to preserve signs in their area.

So, they published the book, started doing tours, launched an annual conference … but still, they wanted to do more. They talked with folks at SF Heritage, picking their brains for things like how to get grant money for neon sign preservation. They told them to talk with people at The Tenderloin Museum (TLM), and mentioned Katie Conry specifically. When Randall and Al talked with her, Katie just got it, immediately. TLM has been SF Neon's fiscal sponsor ever since. (Ed. note: This podcast was arranged with help with Katie at Tenderloin Museum. Thanks, Katie!)

As you learned on this show back in April of this year, TLM is expanding. Part of that expansion will free up the museum's current space. Once they move all of their exhibits and artifacts into the new space, the current Tenderloin Museum will become a San Francisco neon gallery. Randall and Al are of course a huge part of that work. The first sign donated to the new gallery is from Tony's Cable Car, a spot near and dear to my heart and just blocks from my home.

We end the podcast with Randall reminding folks that this time of year is best for the kinds of tours they do. It gets dark earlier, so there are more hours in the day to see neon signs in their glory, and the hours start around 4:30/5 p.m.

The story of how Randall Ann Homan got her name is a unique one.

In this episode, meet and get to know Randall and her partner, in life and in neon, Al Barna. Today, the couple are all about all things San Francisco neon. But we'll get to that.

When Randall's dad was a teenager, he saved a young girl named Randall from drowning. After saving the little girl, he taught her to swim. Years later, when he had his own daughter, he carried the name forward.

Randall Homan grew up in Goodyear, Arizona, just outside of Phoenix. The town was named for the tire company, and it was where, back in the day, the eponymous blimp lived when not in use. Randall has a fun story about being brushed by the Goodyear blimp's ropes when she was a kid.

She considered her hometown "Nowheresville" and left as soon as she could—at 17, after graduating from high school early. Randall came straight to San Francisco to attend Lone Mountain College (the University of San Francisco today). "It was wild," she says about her time in the Seventies in The City.

Art school is what brought both Randall and Al to San Francisco. At her school, there was a dorm where all the art students, including Randall, lived. Views out the window of that dorm were always completely foggy except for one thing—the neon sign at the Bridge Theater on Geary pierced that blanket of gray. It left a strong impression on them both.

Rewinding a bit, Randall says that there was a little neon in her hometown of Goodyear, and she was fascinated by it. She was interested in how it worked, but also was drawn to the beauty of the colored light.

When I ask Randall whether she ever left San Francisco after her initial move here, she rewinds a little bit to talk about how young they both were when she and Al met. "Cupid hit us both square in the heart," she says. But they wanted to see the rest of the country. They both wanted to visit where the other is from (Al came here from Pennsylvania), but they compromised on New Orleans.

They were drawn to NOLA by the music, and they sure did see a lot of that. But getting jobs was a different story. That didn't come easy in "the Big Easy," and so they came back. They've been in their San Francisco apartment for 30-plus years, and they're not going anywhere.

As mentioned, Al comes from Pennsylvania, specifically the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre northeast area of the state. It was coal country, but young Al wanted to pursue art. And so he came to The City to go to the San Francisco Art Institute (RIP). It was 1976, and even though he was in college, Al never intended to stay longer than a year or two. The Beats influenced Al, and though San Francisco figures largely in their history, so does travel.

But he and Randall were here during the so-called Season of the Witch—1978. Randall is quick to point out how much easier it was to move within The City back then, something they did every six months or so for a stretch. I ask them to rattle off the different neighborhoods, and they oblige me: Lower Nob Hill, North Beach, and The Mission figure prominently, among others.

Al goes into a little more detail about how the two met. It was at a going-away party for a mutual friend. For him, that first meeting settled it. Randall was about to go to school in Los Angeles, and Al decided to join her down south.

After a couple years at SFAI, Al left school to work for a film company, where he did a lot more learning. He was taking lots of photos, and it wasn't until Randall pointed out the abundance of neon signs in the backgrounds of his pictures that Al picked up on it.

In addition to LA, they also spent some time in Flagstaff, Arizona, where they both got jobs at a silk screen company. Randall also got a job working for a sign painter whose hands were too shaky for his craft. The work she did painting signs left a big impression on Randall, and you can see it in her love of old neon signs today.

Between the Eighties and early 2000s, they each worked in their respective crafts—photography for Al, and graphic design for Randall. Al worked for several decades for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the parent org for the de Young and Legion of Honor museums). He shares a story of helping prevent a bomb from exploding at the old de Young museum building, just before it was scheduled to be demolished anyway.

Randall's graphic design work had her, among other jobs, designing album covers for bands. She did show posters, logos, and branding—work she still engages in to this day. In the Nineties, she designed the cover page for one of the Bay Guardian Best of The Bay issues.

Eventually, the two decided to create a book all about neon. Putting together that first book—San Francisco Neon: Survivors and Lost Icons—took five years. We'll talk in more depth about that and their other, more recent projects in Part 2.

We end Part 1 with the story of how neon became the central focus of both Al's and Randall's lives. It involved a sign in the Mission that was there one day and gone the next.

Check back Thursday for Part 2 with Randall and Al.

We recorded this podcast at Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store in North Beach in November 2025.

Photography by Nate Oliveira

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1, with that fateful visit Saikat took to The Mission. He and friends worked a lot, but didn't have a lot of money (sound familiar?). To learn The City and have some fun, they signed up for as many walking tours as they could find. After a few months living in Park Merced, Saikat relocated to The Mission—16th and Hoff, specifically. Esta Noche was nearby, and it's where he saw his first drag show.

A buddy worked with Saikat to build a web wireframing tool (think the basics of web design, the skeleton of sites, so to speak). They knew some other folks in tech, naturally, and met the people who were launching Stripe, an e-payments then in startup mode. Stripe eventually hired Saikat and his friend. Saikat was the fledgling company's second engineer. He started to see tech as a force for social good, but that didn't really jell well with the work he did for Stripe. And so he quit a couple years in.

The woman he was dating at the time (whom he later married) still lived in New York, and Saikat visited as often as he could. He didn't yet consider himself political, but he was thinking about issues, specifically income inequality, poverty, and climate change. In early 2015, Bernie Sanders announced his run for president in the 2016 election. Saikat hadn't heard of Sanders at that point, but he was addressing those very issues that had become important to Saikat. He signed up to be a Bernie volunteer and started on a sub-Reddit called "Coders for Sanders." But Saikat wanted "in" in. And so he got in touch with someone working on the campaign.

That someone was Zack Exley, whose political biography runs deep. Exley's job with the Sanders campaign at the time Saikat got in touch was to organize all the volunteers wanting to work for Bernie but who didn't live in the first four primary states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina). That effort needed tech solutions, which Saikat brought. But they weren't hiring technologists at the time. Still, Exley "snuck" him on as an organizer.

He expected the experience not to be a big deal. He'd work for about a year, maybe learn a thing or two. But the Bernie 2016 campaign had other ideas. "We were on the brink of actually doing these big, structural changes," he says of his time on the campaign.

Coming out of that experience, he and other organizers decided to take what they had learned and start applying it to folks running for Congress, starting with the 2018 midterms. Initially, they called their effort "Brand-New Congress," and the goal was to recruit 400 people nationwide to run for office. They fell far short of that ambition, managing to get around a dozen folks to run. They wanted people from all walks of life, not just lawyers, which Congress was and is made up of primarily. And they got that, just not on the scale they had hoped.

The group became Justice Democrats, which is still in existence today. They didn't have the money to spend heavily on most of their candidates, so they went all-in on someone named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of The Bronx. Her brother had nominated her as part of Brand-New Congress, and Saikat had gotten to know her through the process. He saw early on what a powerful candidate she was. He moved to NYC to help run AOC's first bid for Congress as a co-campaign manager. She won, of course, and Saikat had a front-row seat for AOC's ascendancy to the national stage. He says she was her authentic self through it all.

Saikat helped start a think tank coming out of the Sanders campaign as well, developing many policy positions and ideas, among them what came to be known as the Green New Deal. It was a policy platform as much as anything else. It called for a renewed and very much intensified effort to combat climate change while also creating and upgrading infrastructure. They approached every candidate running for president in 2020 asking them to sign on to a Green New Deal pledge. They all eventually did. (Biden's "Build Back Better" platform was essentially a version of the Green New Deal.)

Around this same time, Saikat had signed on to be AOC's chief of staff. But Ocasio-Cortez wanted him to be her insider-type guy (I bring up Veep because, well, duh), and Saikat politely refused. He offered to help her staff up and get good people in place instead. By April 2019, having got the Green New Deal launched, so to speak, he let her know that he'd be leaving that summer, around the time his daughter was expected. That September, Saikat moved back to San Francisco.

One of the first things he did was rejoin think tanks and work on filling out gaps in the Green New Deal. The pandemic hit and he dug his heels in on policy. By the time the 2024 election approached, they were ready to hand something to Kamala Harris if she were to win. Obviously, that didn't happen. He believed those who warned that a Trump victory had bad implications for democracy. But then he watched his own rep in DC, Nancy Pelosi, shrug the 2024 loss off in a "You win some, you lose some" way. He launched his campaign for that seat in Congress "by tweet" in February 2025.

Turning from the national to the local, I ask Saikat what San Francisco issues are top of mind for him. He starts with the idea of meeting with and listening to San Franciscans, his would-be constituents: town halls, office hours, mass Zoom meetings … he's already doing a lot of that work. Saikat believes that to begin to effectively address issues at the local level—ICE kidnappings, healthcare, housing, transit—big changes are needed nationally.

The California primary election takes place on June 2, 2026. The candidates who come in first and second place in that election will go on to compete in the Midterm election next November.

To learn more and get involved, head to Saikat's website—saikat.us. Follow the campaign on Instagram and Threads.

The story of Saikat Chakrabarti begins in a time when his parents' and ancestors' country was being torn apart, almost literally.

In this episode, meet and get to know Saikat. These days, he's busy knocking on doors and otherwise hitting the ground in a bid to represent San Francisco in the US Congress. As I write this, just last week, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi announced that she would not run for a 20th term. Timing!

Let's go back to mid-Nineteenth Century India. Because his dad's family is Hindu, they were forced to relocate after Indian/Pakistani partition, fleeing their home country of Bangladesh for Kolkata (Calcutta) in India. Folks had warned Saikat's grandfather, a school teacher, to leave, and they did.

Once in Kolkata, his grandfather opened a school largely for the kids of other refugees living in the area. Owing to the school's success, he was able to secure a one-bedroom apartment for his family of 12—he, his wife (Saikat's grandmother), and 10 kids, including Saikat's father. Saikat has been back to that apartment. He says that, walking around that neighborhood all these years later, folks still recognize his dad, Samir, thanks to what his grandfather did for them and their family.

His mom, Sima, had it better than his dad. But still, she went to a school with dirt floors. Saikat looks to his ancestors' struggles—the communities they were part of, and how those communities came together to address issues the government neglected—for inspiration today.

When his dad was young, a friend took him to an office where he was pitched to come to the United States. There was a whole set-up. The sell was simply the so-called American Dream.

Saikat's parents met in India through an arrangement. Their respective parents knew someone who set it all up. They met and got married about a week later in a field. The visa his dad had applied for at that office came through after he'd been married, making it a bigger decision than it would've been if he were still single. He was also the primary earner in his own family, and they didn't want him to leave. He decided to take that leap regardless.

His dad showed up in the US with $8 in his pocket and no job yet secured. He slept on a friends' couch in Manhattan and hit the pavement, résumé in hand. And it worked. He got a job.

Saikat's dad had studied civil engineering in college. His first job in his new country was with a company that built skyscrapers … NYC skyscrapers. It was 1979. Saikat's mom came to join her husband soon after, and they had their first kid, Saikat's older sister, Urmi, while living in Queens. His dad and his mom also experienced their first cold-weather winter that year.

After a stint in New York, Samir moved his family to Pittsburgh. He had visited there in the summer, liked it, got a job offer, but relocated in the winter. Once again, the weather got the better of the young family.

Seeking a warmer climate, they moved to Texas, first to Houston, and then to Fort Worth.

At this point in the podcast, I decided to do something I've never done in the eight years since Storied: San Francisco began. And that's because I've never had any guests on the show who are from where I'm from. I chose to dork out with Saikat about my hometown. Thank you for indulging us (me, really).

The first question I had for Saikat is: What hospital were you born in? Harris Methodist. Holy shit, same! He asked me my age (52), what schools I went to (Bruce Shulkey Elementary, Wedgwood Middle School [Saikat went there for one year], and Southwest High School). What a fun turn on this podcast, me rattling off the schools I went to like born-and-raised San Franciscans do. Heh.

I digress into a sidebar about the race riot that happened at my high school during my junior year. You'll have to listen, or you can read a little more about it here.

Then we get to hear about Saikat's experience growing up in the same city. His family lived in a suburb (apparently not far from where my parents still live), and he describes his early life as fairly standard—hanging out with friends, going to the mall (the same mall I was a regular at a decade or so before). But, being an Indian-American, Saikat experienced racism I was privileged enough to avoid.

Saikat makes a distinction, though, between intentional, malicious racism and what I'd call accidental or unintentional racism. It's an important distinction, and he says most of what he experienced in Fort Worth was the less-harmful variety.

He summarizes his childhood thusly—family, school, the Bengali-American community in Fort Worth. One member of that community, Saikat's best friend from childhood, lives downstairs from him in San Francisco today.

His whole world in high school was, as Saikat puts it: hip-hop, basketball, and math. He got into Harvard, which he says he didn't expect. Many of his friends went to UT Austin (my alma mater), and he figured he'd go there, too. But he wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to attend one of the most highly regarded universities in the country.

But Harvard was a culture shock for Saikat. The Fort Worth community he'd known all his life was working- and middle-class. The student body at Harvard was largely kids who came from money and had wildly different interests than he did. Saikat went into his shell his freshman year. As he emerged from that shell, he found his people at Harvard.

In 2007, Saikat graduated from Harvard with a degree in computer science. He'd spent a summer in San Francisco between his junior and senior years, and loved it. All his life, The City had been presented as this place where "cool shit happened." Movies, music, TV shows, skateboarding, the LGBTQIA and civil rights movements … and of course, the fledgling internet. Tech and social justice—both existed in a cutting-edge environment here.

He lived in New York City for one year immediately after he graduated. We riff on life in NYC vs. life here, agreeing on most aspects. When it was time for Saikat to find a new place to live, San Francisco was the obvious choice. The woman he was dating (his wife and mother of his child today) went to school at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, where he visited often. But even her friends told Saikat that he was much more a NorCal-type.

Unable to find housing anywhere else in SF, Saikat first landed in Park Merced. He was happy to have a San Francisco address, but didn't feel like he was living in The City. A trip to The Mission changed that quickly.

Check back Thursday for Part 2 with Saikat.

We recorded this podcast at Duboce Park Cafe in October 2025.

Photography by Jeff Hunt