​Welcome to Season 6 of the Storied: San Francisco podcast! We really couldn't dream of a better place to kick things off than Bayview's Old Skool Café. In Part 1, we meet Teresa Goines, the founder and president of Old Skool. Originally from Tucson, Teresa spent a lot of time growing up in the country (which we call desert) outside Tucson.

She left to get a bachelor's degree in psychology at UC Santa Barbara. She had planned to become a therapist, citing her father's severe disability with instilling a caretaker mentality in her from a young age. She had always wanted to alleviate suffering in others. But after college, Teresa had an opportunity to work with youth in the Santa Barbara County prison, as she was also interested in law enforcement. She says she wanted to mitigate trauma at its source. In her time spent time with incarcerated youth, Teresa heard stories of mere survival over hope and promise. Many inmates got few or no visitors and no mail. These were 14- and 15-year-olds. Teresa felt like society had thrown them away, but despite it all, they were hungry for love and opportunity. Teresa started a career exploration program for the youth where she brought in firefighters and computer programmers and took kids to the local city college. Through these efforts, she saw them starting to hope. But as soon as they were released from prison, they'd go right back to the street economies they were familiar with. Many youth would tell Teresa that they wanted to be back in prison, because it was safer there and there's more love. Thinking about how to stop this cycle is what led to Old Skool Café. But how she got there is its own story. She lived in Guadalajara for a stint, and then went to New York City for a job opportunity that ended falling apart before she began. This was 2001, and her original start date was Sept. 10. A college friend who was from San Francisco and moved back here after graduation told her, "Come here." Teresa decided to try it ... "for a year." Upon arrival on New Year's Eve 2001, she worked in a gang prevention program and Head Start. The vision of Old Skool started coming together in 2004, with dinners set in her home at the outset. At the end of  2005, she quit her job to do Old Skool full-time. To inform the nascent operation, Teresa  listened to incarcerated kids talk about what they got out of being in gangs and translated that to its themes: belonging and purpose. She wanted to offer those ideas in different forms and the ideas came in three parts: 1. She wanted to break the cycle of going back to jail, 2. She saw that SF is a foodie city and that we love music here, and 3. The City is a tourist destination with a huge hospitality industry, and hospitality jobs can be taken just about anywhere. It didn't hurt that servers get tips in cash, and cash competes with life on the street. The more introverted youth could be back of house at a restaurant, using their creativity and focus back there and seeing people up front love what they do. Teresa always saw room in the operation for entertainment. She noticed that her youth crew included comedians, poets, dancers, and singers. To secure a space for Old Skool outside her home, Teresa connected with local church leaders, who told her that churches needed to get behind her vision. A group of Bayview pastors had a place in mind and gave Teresa a good deal on rent. Eventually, she had a chance to buy the building that housed Old Skool, and so she learned how to raise money. One donor gave them $300K, which allowed them to get a matching loan for the same amount. Old Skool paid off its loan at the end of 2019, right before the pandemic. In terms of what's next at Old Skool, Teresa points to their growing team of adults and youth, both formerly incarcerated and kids from the foster system. Folks in other cities have reached out asking for an Old Skool of their own, and now the SF team has a chance to explore that. We end Part 1 with Teresa expressing how very important it is to them that Old Skool Café is rooted in San Francisco. Old Skool's hours are as follows: Happy hour every Wednesday from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Dinner Thursdays through Saturdays from 5 to 9 p.m. Visit Old Skool's website for more info and to sign up for their newsletter. Follow them on Instagram. And look for Part 2, when we'll hear more from Old Skool Chef Eddie Blyden, next week wherever you get podcasts. We recorded this podcast at Old Skool Cafe in the Bayview in September 2023.

Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

In Part 3, we meet Mini Bar's Operations Manager, Erin Kehoe. Erin is a sixth-generation San Franciscan. Her uncle researched family history, which was complicated by the fact that her grandma was orphaned. When you consider time in the state of California, her family history goes back here to when it was part of Mexico. Much like John, she was born at Kaiser on Geary. In fact, Erin says, John's mom could've delivered her and her twin sister. She comes from a lineage of twins, actually. Her mom was one of four sets of twins. Erin's dad was a firefighter with the SFFD, though the family lived down in South San Francisco when Erin was young. They did spend lots of time at her grandma's place in the Sunset, the same house her dad and his brothers grew up in and which the family sold only recently. Erin remembers trips into The City when she young to go to places like Ghirardelli Square, the Emporium, and I. Magnin department store. They went to some football games at Candlestick, but not so much Giants games. She says that she grew up somewhat sheltered until, as a teenager, she and her twin sister discovered goth and industrial music. She recalls stories of calling in to Live 105 for ticket giveaways and how her mom would drop her and sister off at places like Slim's. Around the time they turned 18, the sisters started going to clubs and places like the Trocadero. This got her into the SF nightlife scene, and she says she "never looked back." But her job at Mini Bar is her first bartending gig. Erin did work in the service industry for 20+ years, at joints like the Peppermill in Daly City, B44 and Café Bastille on Belden Lane, and then at both the original and the current location of Bar Crudo. That restaurant's 2009 move to Divisadero is how Erin started coming to Mini Bar. She met John quickly and right away, he wanted her to work at Mini Bar. Only problem was—she didn't bartend (yet). Fast-forward to 2021, when her friend Susan was bartending at Mini and asked Erin yet again to consider coming on, which she did. Four months later, they asked her to manage the bar. Erin takes her work seriously, and she thinks that she was someone Mini Bar could count on. She picked up the bartending side quickly, but didn't know where to start with curating art shows. And so, she went through archived Mini Bar emails and found people she recognized. From there, she put together a show, and then things started rolling. Erin soon met Anita Beshirs (curator of the current show at Mini Bar), and the two are good friends now. She says she's honored to be part of art and community. When the conversation shifts to our upcoming show, Hungry Ghosts, Erin mentions that she had wanted to branch out and try something different. Joining forces with a podcast feels for her like the beginning of something new at Mini Bar. We end Part 3 with a chat about the current show at the bar, which Erin says "is very SF."  "Around Town" features Jack Keating, Millie Kwong, Missstencil, Anne-Louise Petersson, and Danielle Bellantonio. "Anita crushed it," Erin says, congratulating her friend. We agree. We hope to see you all at Mini Bar on August 17 at 6 p.m. for the opening of Hungry Ghosts. Thanks for listening throughout our fifth season, and we'll see you soon!

We open Part 2 with a discussion on the nature of neighborhood bars. An opportunity arose for John when he left the corporate world. His then-wife, Sommer Peterson, reminded him of his idea to open a bar when she also left the 9 to 5. Sommer researched spots in the general area of Divisadero and stood in lines at City Hall. After scouting a couple other locations, they found the current spot, which looked like it would work. Sommer and John worked out an agreement with the landlord and they got to work building the space out to become a bar. John's childhood friend, Nerius Mercado, asked to be part of this new adventure, and came on as a co-owner, which he remains to this day. Molly Bradshaw, whom you might remember from our episode this season about Mission Bowling Club, was a good friend of Sommer's growing up. Molly knew bartending and also wanted in. The four formed a partnership and signed the initial lease in early 2008. John and I go on a sidebar on Divisadero neighborhood history at this point in the recording. We also delve a little into John's personal history. He lived at McAllister and Masonic as a kid before his family moved, first to the Inner Richmond and then to Anza Vista. We trace some history of the Mini Bar location. When they signed the lease, there had most recently been an artist who lived there and effectively turned it into a live/work studio. Before that, it was a produce market. And before that, according to one patron, it used to be a Black video store run by her dad. Sommer and John had talked about making it a community space and the importance of art that comes from the neighborhood. They talked with neighborhood groups about their plans to get feedback and share their plans. Shortly after signing the lease and starting the build-out, they ran into issues. A neighbor wanted money to drop his protest of their opening, which put the approval of their liquor license on hold. They were forced to stop the build-out while they waited for an ABC hearing in Sacramento. At the time, Mark Leno was SF's rep in the state legislature, so John reached out to his brother to see whether they had any connections. Leno sat on the SF Nightlife Commission then. The very next day, John got a call from ABC to let him know that they would issue a provisional license and work on the build-out could resume. A week later, on Friday, August 15, 2008, Mini Bar opened its doors to patrons. They hadn't yet established a price list, a little hiccup in the face of the enormous task of building a bar from scratch. John asked his partners to call nearby bars and restaurants to see what the market rate was, which pushed the opening back by a whole hour. No bigs. John ends the podcast talking about the importance he places on having clean bathrooms. That's where patrons spend alone time, after all. "Respect them in their alone time, and they'll respect you back," he says. Not a bad way to run a business. Check back next week for Part 3 with Mini Bar's bar manager and one of its two art curators, Erin Kehoe.

Welcome to the final episode of Season 5! We saved a special one for last for a good reason. Mini Bar is, of course, where we're having our first art show (Hungry Ghosts) in more than three years. But it's also a neighborhood bar, and neighborhood bars are such a great symbol of the beating heart of San Francisco. Our whole dang thing, Storied: SF, was founded in a neighborhood bar, in fact.

In Part 1, we meet Mini Bar co-owner John Ordoña. (Nerius Mercado is Mini's other co-owner.) John was born in the very maternity ward at Kaiser on Geary where his mom, a Filipina immigrant, worked. He was the third of three sons to his mom and dad, both from the Philippines. Born into a Catholic family, John attended school at Star of the Sea and then Sacred Heart, where he was part of the last boys-only class at that school. He grew up in 1970s and 1980s San Francisco. John shares a funny story about being young and seeing TV ads for the Planet of the Apes show and news stories about the SLA's kidnapping of Patty Hearst. He'd hear the SLA described as "urban gorillas [sp]" and his parents would exploit this misunderstanding to get John to behave. Then John goes on a sidebar rattling off many of the notable incidents in San Francisco in the late-'70s. ​ John says he went to the "hat trick" of Catholic education in San Francisco, as he later attended USF for college. In grade school, he played some sports, and especially took to basketball and boxing. He shares stories of his dad taking him to Newman's Gym in the Tenderloin at Leavenworth and Turk. He loved it and eventually needed to get there without parental accompaniment. This meant riding the bus to, not through, the TL. He spent some time at City College before getting into USF, working jobs including one at a fledgling company called Esprit, run by Susie and Doug Tompkins. He answered phones at Esprit's 900 Minnesota Street office in Potrero Hill and loved it. John said he still runs into Susie Tompkins Buell from time to time. From right after high school until the end of college, John partied and went clubbing a lot. Over the years, he also worked at Dryer's and Levi's to help put himself through college. He got offers to move to New York City and thought about it, but never took the leap. For a while, the idea of opening a bar was in the back of his head. John shares a story about his dad showing him and talking about drinking spots around The City when he was a kid. "Bars are a great business to open," the elder Ordoña told his son. ​ Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the story of opening a tiny neighborhood drinking hole and art bar on Divisadero. We recorded this episode at Mini Bar on Divisadero in June 2023.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

In Part 3, we pick up where we left off in Part 2, with Mike's story of arriving at Bluxome Street early in the morning on Dec. 4, 2022. His San Francisco legacy business, Babylon Burning, was on fire. Mike recounts the SFFD firefighters taking care when breaking into the 63 Bluxome art gallery doors that led to Babylon Burning. It was Mike, his wife Judy, and his brother, Clam's, gallery, and it was special. Firefighters also saved finished orders that were just inside the doorway to the screenprinting shop. Some fire had trickled in, on the ceiling and in the back of the shop. But most of the damage came from water, as is the case in most fires. They saved as much as they could and got to work getting that stuff to storage. Rains were on the way. But their friends, Balboa Theater owner Adam Bergeron and his wife, told them it was time to go home and sleep. They took their friends' advice, but Judy was already at work looking for a new spot. They lucked out getting an insurance broker that Mike had an immediate connection with. Judy liked him, too. Meanwhile, the task of salvaging what there was to salvage and getting it into storage began in earnest. The heavy rains didn't stop them. The work was under way. Once they got the main business computer out and back to their coworker, Seth's, apartment, they could really get things going again. Friends with much smaller shops offered their spaces. They now credit their team, their friends, and the community with helping them keep the big ship going. They also got a lot of help from the folks at San Francisco's Legacy Business Program. Judy was working with the realtor and they began looking at spots around SoMA. They brought the broker to the old Babylon site so he could get an idea of who they were and what they were looking for. They ran through a checklist of things they needed—enough power, gas, walls that could be fashioned into a gallery. After only three weeks, they found 939 Howard Street. It seemed too big at first. And the landlord's construction crews stored equipment there, so it was hella cluttered. But they liked the front room and could already envision a gallery there. There was a strange middle area that intrigued them. And the back provided ample space for their new shop. Mike and Judy brought Seth to see the space, and it lifted him out of a funk he'd been in since the fire. They knew that they had to show some big-time love to everyone who got them out of the wilderness and into this new phase. In late-May, they threw a party with music, art, a taco truck, and filled with members of the community who love Babylon Burning. Jeff was there. It was magic. Now that they're operational, they're planning more events, including a July 29 benefit for The Stud collective, as that group continues the search for a new permanent home. Follow Babylon Burning to stay up to date. And please consider them for any screenprinting needs you might have. Also follow Gallery 939 for updates on art shows and other events.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

When COVID hit, in March 2020, Babylon Burning kept working. In Part 2 of our episode on San Francisco's oldest screenprinting ship and their new location on Howard Street, we talk with owners Mike Lynch and Judy Tam-Lynch about the several years of hardship that lead to their new location. It started with the worldwide shutdown back in 2020. They were lucky enough to already have orders from essential businesses around The City. Two that Mike cites are Cheese Plus and Balboa Theater. Then they started to pick up schools around town. And then, the City and County of San Francisco. And so on, and so on. We rewind slightly to establish the COVID timeline for Babylon Burning:

• Love Letters to The City (our show), Jan. 11 thru Feb. 14, 2020
• first citywide shutdown, initially for two weeks, March 17
• stay-at-home orders extended through May, March 31

Around the time that PPP loans started to disburse, they had been coasting in low gear, doing just enough business to pay their employees and their landlord. Those loans saved them, just barely. Winter 2020 brought more shutdowns and hardship, but they weathered the storm. Vaccines started rolling out, and that provided another upswing. Toward the summer of 2021, they started doing outdoor shows and other events on Bluxome Street (Jeff went to one of these and they were awesome). These street parties made it feel like they had turned a corner. The new clients—essential, small SF businesses and schools—came back for more. Thanks to the boom in business, they were able to retain or replace their staff, some of whom have been with Babylon Burning for more than 15 years. And the printing veterans are able to teach the rookies. They were coasting along, recovering from the deepest impacts of the pandemic. And then, on December 4, 2022, a whole new tragedy struck. Early that morning, Bay Alarm called Mike. "You have an active fire at your shop. It's pretty bad." (Coincidentally, there had been a small arson fire outside the shop door about three months earlier, which prompted Mike and his crew to check up on their fire insurance.) Mike raced down 280. As he approached the Sixth Street off-ramp, he could see the fire. It was bad. Really bad. As he turned the corner onto Bluxome, the small street was lit up with flashing SFFD lights. He was brought to tears seeing it all. The fire had run through the upper levels of the building and its roof. The fire department used 500,000 gallons of water to extinguish the flames. Mike ends Part 2 with a vivid description of firefighters' efforts atop ladders to put the fire out while also risking the entire roof's collapse. Check back next week for Part 3 and the conclusion of our episode on the new Babylon Burning. We recorded Part 2 of this episode at Babylon Burning on Howard Street in SOMA in June 2023.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Welcome to the penultimate episode of Season 5! We're revisiting our 2018 podcast with Babylon Burning's Mike Lynch in Part 1. Part 2 next week will be a talk with Mike and his wife, Judy, about their new location on Howard Street. We'll also chat about their new art space: Gallery 939. We recorded Part 1 of this podcast at Babylon Burning in the South of Market in August 2018.

Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Part 2 catalogs Smiley's journey out of high school and into the world of jobs and being a young adult. Then we get to her time at BVOH, which began about four years ago. It started with an entry-level job, which she didn't mind doing because it got her foot in the door. Built in 1888 by the Masons, the then-designated "South San Francisco Opera House" was a spot for them to meet and host performances. Acoustically, that intention shows to this day. The opera house also has dressing rooms with direct access to the stage (which Smiley told me is not a common feature in buildings of this kind). With the Great Migration and its influx of Black shipyard workers here in San Francisco, the building became more of a community center. It also changed demographically, from white folks to members of that Black community. But, in Smiley's words, over the years, the building "wasn't loved on," and fell into some dilapidation. In the 1950s, The City wanted to tear the opera house down and build apartment buildings ... until Ruth Williams said "no." Black Panther free breakfasts happened there. People met each other there. Performances like plays and dance classes happened on the regular. Voters cast ballots there. In 1966, SFPD officers shot and killed a young Black boy named Matthew "Peanut" Johnson, sparking a riot. The opera house was hit with several hundred bullets in the ensuing melee. Things were so bad for Black folks in SF, James Baldwin filmed Take This Hammer just outside the opera house in 1964. As Smiley puts it, Bayview Opera House "has always been a place for history-making and Black culture." In 1989, an organization was formed through the SF Arts Commission to manage programs at the building. The opera house was established as San Francisco Historical Landmark No. 8. Over the years, it changed hands several times, and in 2015, a multimillion dollar grant was secured to do much-needed renovations, including a new outdoor amphitheater that came in handy during the pandemic. 2023 has been all about re-inviting people inside. There are world premieres of operas and films. The calendar is full. See for yourself. We end the podcast hearing from two folks who've been through BVOH's Tools of the Trade program: Joe Kool and Miss White, the First Lady of Frisco.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

In Part 1 of our episode on the Bayview Opera House, we sit down with opera house Programming Manager Ashley Smiley, (who goes by "Smiley"). Smiley shares how her family ended up in San Francisco. Her mom was born and raised in SF, but her mom's mom, a mixed-race woman, came from Texas. Her family was run out of that state by the KKK. That family landed in the Hunter's Point area and ended up in the Fillmore. Her maternal grandfather came here from Haiti via boat. Upon his arrival, he bought property in San Francisco, as that was possible at the time. Smiley's grandparents met each other at Polytechnical High School. Her grandfather was a longshoreman, but also a musician and songwriter. Her mom went to Galileo, then SF State, and now works for The City. Smiley was born at a rather conspicuous time in history — just a week after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. Her mom says that there was a 5.4 aftershock at the time of Smiley's birth. Smiley grew up in Ingleside mostly, and remembers going to the Bayview Opera House a lot early in life. Her family moved around The City, and she rattles off a list of the different schools she went to. It was at Lafayette Elementary that she did her first theater show — Pirates of Penzance. She mentions her "Jewish momma" from this time, an early mentor. After attending her first major theater production, she became something like obsessed with the production aspects of live performance. She'd played instruments and was a cheerleader, but she found her passion in performing arts. She carried that passion into her middle school days, where she started doing spoken word and poetry. Work she'd done at her church gave her a background in writing, and she used that to springboard to performing words on stage for people. In high school, when she went to Lowell, she started doing bigger and bigger productions. It was during this time that she was immersed in Black culture and identity, and she learned that it was something she needed to lean into. She says that it was "super empowering." On the flip side, these experiences contradicted what she had previously believed about the world, namely, that racism had more or less been solved. She had wondered why older Black folks were so upset. And so, at the same time that she was discovering her own confidence and pride of being a Black woman, she was starting to see the complexities of racism in the US and San Francisco. Lowell, she says, had a lot to do with this realization. We end Part 1 with Smiley confessing to how much time she spent away from her high school, the bulk of it at the Brava Theater in the Mission. She did spoken word and hip-hop with the Colored Ink group. Meeting and witnessing performances by so many of her inspirations left her thinking, I gotta be in this world. And now, she is. Please join us for Part 2 next week, when we learn more about the Bayview Opera House and Smiley's time there. We'll also meet two performers involved in opera house programs. We recorded this episode at Bayview Opera House/Ruth Williams Memorial Theatre in June 2023.

Photography by Jeff Hunt

Hi!

This is a short bonus episode to fill you in on some recent stuff. Learn more about what we have planned as we wind down Season 5 and get ready for our first art show in more than three years!

And join us next week for an all-new episode about the Bayview Opera House.