Episodes

  • Frameline's Allegra Madsen (S6 bonus)

    Frameline's Allegra Madsen (S6 bonus)
    Jun 14 2024
    In this bonus episode, meet and get to know Frameline Film Festival's Executive Director Allegra Madsen. Allegra was born and grew up in southern Virginia. As she says, "It was hot, it was humid, it was Southern." From a young age, she fell in love with movies because it was so hot outside. She'd escape to theaters, where she could bask in the AC and watch movies all day long. She left that area as soon as she could. That meant Chicago for college. She wanted to be a writer. Columbia College in Chicago was known as more of a film school, which meant she was on the periphery of movies in her time there. After college, it was on to Los Angeles, "as everybody does." Allegra worked in some art galleries and museums, with the goal of trying to get to San Francisco always in the back of her mind. As a kid growing up, she read a lot of Beat Generation writers (where were the women of the Beat era?). CCA was the draw that got Allegra up to The Bay. She studied contemporary art curation, focusing on how you can use art to build community. That was 20 years ago, and she's been here ever since. Then our conversation shifts to Frameline and its nearly half-century of history. It is the largest and longest-running queer film festival in the world. It's also the largest film event in California (hear that, LA?). It all began in 1977 on a bedsheet in the Castro. It was a time when there were no prominent images of queer people in media. Frameline 48 will take place all over the Bay Area. Check their website for a complete lineup. Allegra goes through a few of the events that she's excited about. The one I'm perhaps most hyped up for is next week's Juneteenth Frameline kick-off block party. In addition to many other aspects of the evening, the Castro Theatre's blade will be re-lit for the first time since that building underwent renovations. See you all at Frameline 48!

    We recorded this podcast over Zoom in May 2024.

    Image courtesy Frameline
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    26 mins
  • Brett Cline/The Lost Church San Francisco, Part 2 (S6E17)

    Brett Cline/The Lost Church San Francisco, Part 2 (S6E17)
    Jun 11 2024
    Part 2 begins with a chat about how, when we were both younger and just arriving in San Francisco, neither Brett nor I had any idea that we'd be here so long. After living on Market, Brett moved back to the Mission, where he's lived ever since. His great aunt passed away and left him some money. It proved to be enough for a down payment on a space on Capp Street just off 16th. 65 Capp Street is the address of the original location of The Lost Church, and happens to be where Brett and his family live today. Then Brett shares the story of meeting his wife, Lost Church co-owner Lizzy. In 1997, he went to Burning Man for his first time, an experience he relates in detail. He went back in 1999 and that's when he met his future wife. Despite her being eight years younger than him, Brett noticed that Lizzy was much more mature than he was. Days after Burning Man, she visited Brett in San Francisco from her home in Sacramento. They eloped in Tahoe two months later and have been together ever since. Lizzy went through quite an adjustment in her new home on Capp Street. Brett then goes on a sidebar about his many musical adventures. He started a band with people he had met in his time at SF State in the Music program. They played out, most regularly at The Rite Spot. But they broke up and Brett got sick. He joined the stagehands' union to get health insurance. It was around this time that he and Lizzy decided to start their own band, this time with the explicit intention to tour. They cut up the Capp Street spot into multiple studio spaces to rent out to others. Lizzy and Brett lived and played music in one of the small spaces they had created. Juanita and the Rabbit was born. And they toured ... for most of the next two years. When they got back, Lizzy and Brett decided to try to have a kid. Around that same time, Brett had been having a not-so-good time with the stagehands' union. Lizzy was working as a stylist for photo shoots, making good money. This all allowed Brett to build out his own theater at the Capp Street space. The plan was to do "ridiculous" rock 'n' roll musicals. Then we get into how they came up with the name "Lost Church," which Brett says isn't as good a story as many people want to hear. Brett had his own record label, was doing sound design for video games, and wanted to get into sound for movies. His website was split into the two halves: half record label, half his sound design work. For that site and to encompass all that he was doing at the time, he had a few names he was kicking around—The Last School, The Lost School, The Last Church, and The Lost Church. He liked them all because of their community vibes. He's never been a religious person, but for him, the idea of church meant more. He settled on "The Lost Church." At first, though, it was just for his own creative endeavors. Visiting his website, you were directed to either "The Lost Church of Light and Sound" or "The Lost Church of Rock 'n' Roll." When he and Lizzy decided to turn their space into a theater, the name was already there. Brett talks about their intentionality of creating a theater-like environment for musicians, one with seats for the audience and the bar in a separate room. Then he shares stories of some of the first performances of the newly minted Lost Church. He says he's not sure how people found him, but shortly after those early shows, musicians started emailing him wanting to play there. (Brian Belknap came in early and Brett hired him to host shows). Then Brett dives into the story of why The Lost Church had to uproot from its original location. They survived for years without permits, mostly because they never envisioned it lasting long. Once the Entertainment Commission visited and pointed out all the shortcomings, they started to realize how much it would take to get the space up to code. By the time COVID hit, Brett and Lizzy had already started thinking about a new spot. They had opened their second location up in Santa Rosa when they were forced to shut both down. Relief money started piling in and they hired their Santa Rosa point person. They also used that money to get the new SF location secured, running, and up to code. It took Brett around nine months to find the new spot. So many criteria went into it that the task became difficult. It took a last-chance, random look at Craigslist to find what became The Lost Church San Francisco on Columbus on the northern edge of North Beach. The doors opened in September 2022 and they've never looked back. We end the podcast with Brett responding to this season's theme—We're all in it. Visit The Lost Church online at their website, thelostchurch.org. Follow them on Instagram @thelostchurchsf Photography by Jeff Hunt
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    38 mins
  • Brett Cline/The Lost Church San Francisco, Part 1 (S6E17)

    Brett Cline/The Lost Church San Francisco, Part 1 (S6E17)
    Jun 4 2024
    Brett Cline is, as he puts it, from the "Deep South." But he's such a California kid that by that he means Southern California. In Part 1, get to know Brett, who for the past decade or so has run The Lost Church performing arts theater. His life began in Orange County, where his parents ended up after meeting at UCLA and traveling around the world when his dad was a pilot in the Navy. Brett was heavily into the punk rock scene in SoCal in the Eighties (think bands like Social Distortion and Suicidal Tendencies, among others). But his love of music started in fourth grade when he snuck into the bedroom of an older neighbor kid and found the first record from Oingo Boingo, a band that changed his life. They were his first brush with alternative art, and soon became a defining point of his early personality. He dabbled in the four pillars of life in SoCal: He skateboarded, surfed, listened to punk rock, and ate at Taco Bell. Brett started playing drums in sixth grade and his first band was called High Voltage. He would write lyrics and draw album covers, while his friend Mark made beats on snare drums only. His mom was always a community person. She is a christian, but not a book-burner, as he says. She started a community organization centered around school issues: Citizens Action to Save Education (CASE). She was later school board president and continued to be involved in local politics around school issues. When his Navy service ended, Brett's dad got into the corporate world. He started several aviation companies. Today, Brett sees aspects of both of his parents in the foundation of The Lost Church. As a kid, he often went with his parents to community theaters. Brett's dad plays organ, his mom plays piano, one of his two brothers played clarinet, and his sister went to NYU and became an actor and singer. In high school, Brett started playing more music and always wanted to tour, though that never really worked out. He started playing bass and singing more. In 1989, he graduated high school and went to UC Santa Barbara. His college band, St. Rusticus, had the local record for getting shut down by cops the fastest. "Three songs in, and the cops were there." Going to UCSB introduced Brett to Northern California, partly because the school paired kids from SoCal with kids from NorCal in the dorms. He'd visited SF with his family when he was a kid. It was different from where he's from, but he didn't immediately like it. In college, though, he took trips up here and fell in love. He'd come up, do mushrooms and acid, and listen to older, more-mainstream rock. He got heavily into the Grateful Dead, even touring with them, as many fans do. After college, the plan was to move to SF with his friend Davey Lyle. (Lyle did many of the paintings seen today all around The Lost Church). But in his senior year, Brett got a D in art and learned that the Spanish he took at junior college didn't transfer to the UC. And so he dropped out, got a loan from his parents, bought a computer, scanner, and Photoshop, and started making album covers for local bands. Then his dad got him an internship in London with a graphic arts company and he took it. He saw many shows there but came back after only nine months. And when he came back, he moved immediately to San Francisco. With no job and no prospects, Brett moved in with his friend Davey, who'd already made the move up. They lived in a warehouse in the Mission on 20th near Harrison, then moved to Sixth and Market. It was December 1993. Check back next week for Part 2 and the origin story of The Lost Church. We recorded this podcast at The Lost Church San Francisco in May 2024.
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    41 mins
  • Peaboo and the Catz (S6 bonus)

    Peaboo and the Catz (S6 bonus)
    May 30 2024

    Hear the conversation I had in January with my favorite young Bay Area band, Peaboo and the Catz.

    Follow them on Instagram @Peabooandthecatz

    Subscribe to their YouTube channel: Peabooandthecatz

    Photography by Paolo Asuncion
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    27 mins
  • Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa/TNT Traysikel, Part 2 (S6E16)

    Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa/TNT Traysikel, Part 2 (S6E16)
    May 28 2024
    In Part 2, Mike, Paolo, and Rachel share the story of how TNT Traysikel came to be. We begin with Paolo, who describes the Mission art opening where he and Mike met. Besides having similar "falling in love with San Francisco" moments, they soon learned that back in the Philippines, their brothers had been friends. They hit it off pretty much right away. Mike learned that Paolo worked on films, including his Handsome Asians Motorcycle Club series on YouTube. In 2017, the year after SOMA Pilipinas came into existence, Mike was invited to join the nonprofits' arts and cultural group. They were looking to do a placemaking project and wanted to connect with artists to do so. At that time, Mike was already a professor at SF State. He ran the sculpture and expanded practice program there. He had done public art on his own before, and remembered Paolo and his motorcycle riding. Mike started thinking about jeepneys and the Philippines, which were relics left on the islands after years of war. These thoughts sparked the idea for a tricycle jeepney. And so Mike and Paolo applied for a grant. Originally, they planned to build it from scratch. Before Paolo's web series, he had made some documentaries. His first thought about TNT was that it, too, would make a cool web series. He didn't think of it as political in the beginning. But these were the years of the previous presidential administration (just before COVID), and in hindsight, he now sees a clearer picture of what it meant from Day One.
    They got the grant on the idea that that the traysikel signaled the presence of Filipinos. They wanted to take older Filipinos (manongs and manangs) to buy groceries in SOMA. And they somehow wanted to make the vehicle a roving sculpture. A friend of Mike's told them about a traysikel for sale in Modesto. They bought it, picked it up, and right away, realized that it needed a lot of work. Mike and Paolo took the whole thing apart, rewelded it, and added support. By the time the 2019 Parol Lantern Festival came around, it was ready to roll. They showed up, just Paolo and Mike, and started playing Tagalog music from Paolo's iPhone around the traysikel. People came over and sang along, which gave them the idea for karaoke. Michelle Nguyen, a vintage scooterist friend of Paolo's, designed the look of and painted the TNT Traysikel for them. Also at Parol 2019, Rachel learned about the project. As the karaoke was coming into being, Paolo and Michael thought, Rachel's an amazing singer—maybe she could be the karaoke host? She was in. And so they applied for a second grant, this time through the SF Arts Commission, to make a movie about the traysikel with a musical component. The three of them would become equal collaborators. Mobile karaoke came to be in the early days of COVID, when people really wanted to release, to be out and free and with other people. They say that to them, TNT encapsulates joy, grief (the grief of what you leave behind when you emigrate), and storytelling. Their Sidenotes project focuses on one or two people sitting in the sidecar telling stories. The TNT crew collects and archives those stories. Through this work and everything else, they recently were rewarded with a Rainin Arts Fellowship to do another film. In summer 2025, they're taking TNT Traysikel on the road. We end the podcast going around the room to hear Paolo, Mike, and Rachel's responses to this year's theme on the podcast—We're all in it. Follow TNT Traysikel on Instagram @TNT_traysikel and on YouTube: TNT_Traysikel. Photography by Jeff Hunt
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    48 mins
  • Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa/TNT Traysikel, Part 1 (S6E16)

    Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa/TNT Traysikel, Part 1 (S6E16)
    May 21 2024
    In this episode, we meet the humans behind the artistic and cultural project that is the TNT Traysikel. We start, in random order, with Mike Arceaga. Mike was born in the Philippines and moved to LA with his family when he was 10. He says that the transition from his homeland to LA was difficult. The family first landed in Highland Park, which Mike points out wasn't hip then. That's where he got started doing graffiti art. In the mid-to-late-Eighties, they moved, first to the Eagle Rock neighborhood in LA, then Pomona, where, by the time he moved there, he'd become a full-fledged graffiti artist. He says it's what got him into art In high school, Mike learned technical drawing. He went to junior college, had art school on his mind. He was in a hip-hop crew, tagged ramps, and was friends with skaters, but never skated himself. He also breakdanced, but says it never took. After high school, he just wanted to get out of his parents house, and so he signed up to join the Army. But when Mike's dad found out about that, he cried and urged him to go to school instead. And so he visited San Francisco to attend a summer program at the Academy of Art University. And he fell in love with The City almost immediately. He shares the moment of coming up the escalator at Powell BART and seeing the scene on the street as the moment SF got his heart. He loved walking around the hills before art class, where he was starting to meet artists from all over. And slowly, he discovered the rest of The City by hopping on Academy shuttles. Soon after this summer program, Mike came back to visit the Art Institute. When he and a friend saw the view from the roof at SFAI, he decided to try to get into school there. Next, we meet TNT Traysikel's Paolo Asuncion. Paolo came to the US from the Philippines when he was 14. Before that migration, he had found his first girlfriend as well as a friend group that wasn't bullying him. The move abroad disrupted that progress. Paolo's family first came to Ontario, California, just outside of LA and not far from where Mike and his family were. His mom had met a family in church and she and her three kids lived with them. A family of four crammed into a single bedroom. He went to high school all over LA, first in Echo Park (before it was hip), then in the Rampart District, and at Torrance High (think Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Then Paolo's mom put him in Marshall High in Las Feliz (think Grease). Paolo's dad was a fairly famous actor back in the Philippines. But when he moved to the US to be with family, he ended up managing the apartment building where they lived and did door-to-door sales. His parents soon got divorced and his dad went back to his home country. Paolo went to Diamond Bar High School his senior year (which he says was very Breakfast Club-ish). He started playing guitar, which he says got him in with the cool kids. He even formed a band, but after high school, he went back to the Philippines, where he got his girlfriend pregnant. Then Paolo moved back to Glendale in Southern California. He was still on a tourist visa and tried to get jobs that would sponsor his work visa, which was difficult. One day, his uncle in LA asked to help him move to SF and they left Glendale at 10 at night, drove up I-5 to 580, then crossed Bay Bridge at sunrise. Looking out the windshield at the scene in front of him, Paolo thought, WHAT IS THIS PLACE? He spent a week here on that trip, during which time he had the same Powell escalator experience as Mike. Heloved it so much that he decided to move here. A friend of his uncle's got him a graphic design job and in 1996, he moved here. Last but not least, we meet Rachel Lastimosa. Rachel was born and raised in San Diego, the kid of a Navy person, which is how her dad got his U.S. citizenship. Members of Rachel's family have been in SF since the Forties, and when she was a kid, they visited here a lot from San Diego. Rachel's first memories of San Francisco involve mostly touristy things. From a young age, 12 or so, she knew she wanted to live here. Rachel says she loved the culture here and felt a friendliness from strangers unlike what she experienced back home in San Diego. She grew up in a strict house and, because of that, was into extracurricular activities. Her parents expected her to cook and do laundry, but she escaped into music—playing, writing, and performing. Rachel wrote her first song when she was in first grade. Today, she plays piano, keyboards, and bass, and does vocals. And she produces and writes music. Rachel says she always wanted to build community. She helped put together the first culture night at her high school. But as soon as she could, after graduation, she came to San Francisco. In fact, SF State was the only school she applied to. Once here, she joined a band and majored in electronic music. This was the early 2000s and she's been here ever since. She writes ...
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    39 mins
  • Danny Montoya/Butterfly Joint and Café, Part 2 (S6E15)

    Danny Montoya/Butterfly Joint and Café, Part 2 (S6E15)
    May 14 2024

    In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. After getting his credentials, Danny bounced around, teaching at a couple of San Francisco public schools before landing at Live Oak (a K–8 school in Potrero Hill). He stayed teaching kindergarten and first grade there for a total of 11 years.

    We shift gears in the recording to talk about how Danny met his wife. Full disclosure: I've known Erin Feher since around 2004 when we were both in the Journalism program at SF State. Back in 2020, Erin reached out to me on behalf of her new orgranization—REPCO, or Represent Collaborative. Periodically, our podcasts run on REPCO and it's been an honor to collaborate with them. Check them out and donate if you're able.

    Danny and Erin met around the time I lost touch with Erin (2005, when I graduated from State). He was DJing and the night Erin and some friends walked in, Danny broke one of his own rules by talking to a woman at a bar he was deejaying. Their first date involved riding bikes around SF.

    Years later, they had their first kid. Erin had to go back to work before Danny did, so he was able to stay home and take care of their infant. But after a year, he was both itching to do something and needed to when his wife got laid off. And this is how Butterfly Joint was founded. It married his two passions—woodworking and teaching.

    The first location was on Mission Street and lasted there for years. But when Danny and his wife moved their little family to the Outer Richmond and found a new-to-them community there, he decided to bring the shop with him.

    Danny shares the story of opening the café and learning to make vegan donuts. These days, the café is open every day. Donuts are now his No. 1 seller. They focus on hyper-local goods and like to do pop-up events once a month.

    Follow Butterfly Joint and Café on Instagram. Visit them at 4411 Cabrillo. For those with kids who are interested, go to their website.

    Photography by Jeff Hunt
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    38 mins
  • CAAMFest w/Thuy Tran (S6 Bonus)

    CAAMFest w/Thuy Tran (S6 Bonus)
    May 8 2024
    The 42nd annual CAAMFest kicks off tomorrow, May 9, in The City. In this bonus episode, meet CAAM's Festival and Exhibitions Director, Thuy Tran. Hear about how Thuy ended up in San Francisco and working at CAAM, the history of this Asian-American media organization, and this year's film, food, and music festival, which runs through May 19. Visit the CAAMFest website for more details.
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    18 mins