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"slug": "the-rise-and-fall-of-bay-area-streetcar-transit-system",
"title": "The Rise and Fall of Bay Area Streetcar Transit System",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the turn of the 20th century, streetcars crisscrossed the\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\"> Bay Area\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many people, they were the primary way to get around town —and to San Francisco for work. People would walk out their doors in Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland, hop on a streetcar that would take them to a ferry and be in downtown San Francisco in about 40 minutes. Remnants of these lines can be seen in many Bay Area streetscapes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Vanessa Boehm grew up in Germany with efficient public transportation, and as she looked around her neighborhood near the UC Berkeley campus, she wondered: “What happened to the streetcars that used to be around Oakland and the East Bay?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s not the first or the last to ask questions along those lines. The history and disappearance of the Key System, which once served East Bay residents has captured the imagination of many transit aficionados. And among the many similar questions we’ve gotten are some from people who want to know whether it would be possible to recreate the streetcar networks that have long since vanished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without knowing it, perhaps, Vanessa and other listeners have touched on a disputed piece of both East Bay and national transportation history, a conspiracy theory that involves some of the nation’s most powerful corporations and the role they played — or didn’t play — in the disappearance of streetcars in the East Bay. The story also encompasses a real-estate development scheme that shaped Oakland and Berkeley, the rise of suburban sprawl, and the dawn of the motor vehicle age.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Streetcars fundamentally shaped urban development\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Streetcars were essential to the growth of cities in the Bay Area and across the United States in the final years of the 19th century and opening years of the 20th. Electric railroads — either streetcar networks connecting neighborhoods or interurban lines connecting towns and cities — served all nine Bay Area counties in the early 20th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The place where that electric streetcar legacy is most obvious is San Francisco, where several electric lines that operated in the 1920s — Muni’s J, K, L, M and N routes — are still essential parts of the city’s transportation system. Two other lines, the E and the F, feature tourist-oriented service using historic streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073776\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 990px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073776\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An electric train crossing the lower deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.\" width=\"990\" height=\"796\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg 990w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED-160x129.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 990px) 100vw, 990px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Key System “A” line train on a test run across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland in 1939. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/Key_System_and_March_of_Progress\">FoundSF.org\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the first four decades of the 20th century, the East Bay was served by two major electric streetcar systems: one run by Southern Pacific and a competitor known popularly as the Key System. Southern Pacific’s system, initially called the Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley Lines, ran transbay service using ferries that left from long causeways, or moles, in West Oakland and Alameda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Key System was a collection of East Bay streetcar and transbay lines built or purchased and consolidated by Francis Marion Smith, known as “Borax” Smith because of his success mining and marketing the all-purpose mineral in the deserts of Nevada and southeastern California. Starting in the 1890s, Smith created a network of lines that eventually stretched from Richmond to San Leandro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But creating a transit system wasn’t Smith’s main objective. He and partner Frank Havens had purchased about 13,000 acres, more than 20 square miles, under the aegis of a separate enterprise known as The Realty Syndicate. The streetcar and transbay train system Smith created was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11925112/idora-park-and-playland-at-the-beach-bay-area-amusement-parks-of-a-bygone-era\">designed to serve the new neighborhoods\u003c/a> that would be developed on the syndicate’s properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland historian Mitchell Schwarzer says the streetcar network fundamentally changed the shape of the city. In his 2021 study of Oakland’s development, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucpress.edu/books/hella-town/paper\">\u003cem>Hella Town,\u003c/em>\u003c/a> he says that by 1912, property subdividers had created more than 50,000 new residential lots close to streetcar routes.[aside postID=news_12068602 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00030_TV-KQED.jpg']The effect on what had been a compact East Bay community focused on downtown was dramatic, with streetcar lines triggering a sprawl of new neighborhoods in every direction and the creation of commercial districts like Grand Lake, Rockridge, Piedmont Avenue and along stretches of San Pablo Avenue and East 14th Street, now International Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The streetcar “affected everything — it affected where the residential areas developed, it affected where the commercial areas developed, it affected where industry moved pretty much,” Schwarzer said. Alongside the automobile, streetcars shaped the form Oakland took to this day, “both where things are located, how they’re distributed, how they’re built, what’s built, where they’re built,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He adds that this early episode of sprawl also helped shape Oakland’s future demographic and class profile. The city’s vast residential expansion “allowed for the wealthier people to live on larger lots and to live separately and to erect barriers to minorities moving into their communities. Without the streetcar, they couldn’t have done that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Financial failures\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Although the Key System and other streetcar operations were useful in driving real estate development and despite the fact they carried more than 100 million passengers a year at their peak in the 1920s, they were for the most part failures as money-making enterprises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Key System was in deep financial trouble by 1913. According to the late transportation reporter and historian Harre W. Demoro, the Key’s early money troubles could be traced directly to Borax Smith’s risky and chaotic business practices. With the company deeply in debt, Smith was forced out in 1913. A series of crises ensued, with the company teetering on the edge of failure and being foreclosed on and reorganized in 1923 and 1930.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By this time, private automobiles had become a major presence in cities across the country, including those in the Bay Area. The growing popularity of car ownership is reflected in a steep decline in ridership for both the Southern Pacific and Key System after a peak recorded in the mid-1920s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drivers weren’t the only ones who were drawn to new motorized modes of transport. Starting before 1920, transit systems began to convert some of their train service to bus lines. By the mid-1920s, the Key System had joined in that trend, which accelerated through the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demoro found in \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/bulletinnational446nati\">a 1979 study\u003c/a> of the Key System published in the National Railway Bulletin that by 1937 its buses accounted for more than half of the company’s business in terms of miles of service delivered. “From then on, the bus dominated” Key’s operation, Demoro wrote in \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/embed/keyroutetransbay0000demo\">his two-volume history\u003c/a> of the transbay service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073773\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073773\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A two-car, orange-and-silver electric train shown in a car barn at the Western Railway Museum in Solano County.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Key System Bridge Unit 187, part of thje fleet that provided service across the Bay Bridge from the East Bay to San Francisco between 1939 and 1958, at the Western Railway Museum in Solano County. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The decline accelerated after the Bay Bridge opened to drivers in November 1936. The planned railroad service on the bridge wasn’t ready when the bridge opened, creating an opportunity for East Bay residents to enjoy the ease of car travel. When train service on the bridge’s lower deck finally began in January 1939, it did little to reverse the ridership slump.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s right here that the conspiracy theory mentioned earlier becomes part of the Key System story. Because as the car was becoming king, companies related to the automobile industry bought up dozens of streetcar lines and replaced them with buses. That effort was intended, the story goes, to undermine mass transit to such an extent that riders would desert them in preference for automobiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A kernel of truth to the myth\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>General Motors, Standard Oil of California (now known as Chevron), Firestone Rubber and Phillips Petroleum really did invest in a company called National City Lines and a pair of subsidiaries that were in the business of buying mostly financially troubled streetcar systems and immediately converting them to bus systems. That happened in 46 cities across the country, including a few big ones, like Los Angeles, St. Louis, and yes, Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The government really did take National City Lines, GM, its partners and their executives to court. In 1949, a jury in Chicago really did convict them of one count of violating federal antitrust law by conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses, fuel, tires and other supplies to the transit systems that National City Lines and its subsidiaries had taken over. The companies were acquitted on a second count alleging they had conspired to block competitors from doing business with the National City companies. In other words, the defendants were found guilty of trying to control the purchase of supplies that newly “motorized” transit agencies would need, not of any broader conspiracy to wreck mass transit.[aside postID=news_12065901 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251016-NIMITZHOUSE-38-BL-KQED.jpg']The penalties the judge imposed were trivial: $5,000 for each corporate defendant — about $68,000 in 2026 dollars — and $1 for each of the executives who had played a part in the conspiracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the story is more complex than the National City Lines case, said Ethan Elkind, who directs the climate program at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “It’s really a story of technology change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The electric streetcar systems that started appearing everywhere in the 1890s were a big leap in speed and performance compared to the horse-drawn omnibuses and cable cars they replaced. But then the next big innovation in transportation arrived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the early 20th century, the big, disruptive technology was the automobile, and people adopted it en masse very rapidly, and it made these streetcars for a vast majority of the population essentially obsolete,” Elkind said. Cars not only competed for riders, they competed for space on the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you throw the automobile into that and everybody’s driving now, these streetcars are getting stuck in traffic,” Elkind says. “They’re not really enjoyable for people to ride. And people are frustrated by the poor service, high fares, and they wanted the freedom and mobility that automobiles, private automobiles, represented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The argument that GM’s National Cities gambit was chiefly responsible for the collapse of electric railways across the county has been widely criticized as little more than a myth, one that ignores other factors that made many streetcar systems vulnerable by the 1930s, including their often poor physical and financial condition and the fact that, as shown by the Key System, bus transportation was becoming steadily more popular and economical well before National City Lines appeared on the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Key System’s slow demise\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After struggling through most of the 1930s, a surge in wartime ridership had made the company profitable and by 1945, it was sitting on a sizable surplus. Although it had struggled to upgrade its cars and tracks before the war, it had begun making plans to revamp service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company began to follow through on all of these initiatives, contracting for new streetcars and moving ahead with the purchase of trolley buses to run on College Avenue and on the Arlington Avenue-Euclid Avenue service in the Berkeley Hills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073797\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1020px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073797\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white image of people lined up to board commuter bus about 1960 in San Francisco's Transbay Terminal.\" width=\"1020\" height=\"734\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2-160x115.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1020px) 100vw, 1020px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Berkeley-bound commuter line up to board a Key System “F” bus after San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal was reconfigured for bus service in 1959. AC Transit would take over the service the following year.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then suddenly, all that work stopped. In May 1946, Key System management sold the company to National City Lines for $3 million ($52 million in 2026 dollars). By the end of the year, the company’s new owners decided to scrap all the remaining streetcar lines and replace trains with motor buses. The only trains the Key System still operated were the half-dozen transbay lines operating across the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1955, the company applied to the state Public Utilities Commission to abandon transbay service. The last trains ran over the bridge to San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal in April 1958. The Key System, now an all-bus operation, was purchased by a new public transit agency — AC Transit — in 1960.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The evolution of the Bay Area’s transit system\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Looking back on those events in 1979, Demoro speculated that without the National City Lines takeover, the East Bay’s transit system would likely have evolved into a hybrid featuring streetcars, trolley buses along with motor buses. Whether the transbay service would have survived was less clear, he said, because of the state’s interest in reconfiguring the bridge to accommodate more motor vehicles — a goal realized when the Key System tracks were removed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he also marveled that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11986396/when-bart-was-built-people-and-houses-had-to-go\">the region managed to build BART\u003c/a>, an agency created in the 1950s as the Key System trains were in their twilight years and both California and the rest of the United States went all in on highway spending. “That accomplishment … seems astounding today, he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073772\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073772\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white image of 1940s streetcars and automobiles in a traffic jam in Oakland, California.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED-160x84.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED-1536x805.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As automobile traffic grew, streetcars — and streetcar riders — often found themselves tangled in traffic jams like this 1940s faceoff between Key System trains and cars at 47th Avenue and East 14th Street (now International Boulevard) in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Western Railway Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But in one sense, the Key System hasn’t gone away. When AC Transit took control of the Key’s bankrupt all-bus operation in 1960, it continued an East Bay transit legacy that stretched back nearly a century. AC Transit continues to be a vital transportation link for hundreds of thousands of East Bay residents, much the way the Key System was in its peak years. And for those who travel between the East Bay and San Francisco, BART now serves the riders the way the Key System’s trains and ferries once did, although maybe a lot less romantically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s still possible to ride some of the few surviving Key System trains at Solano County’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.wrm.org/\">Western Railway Museum\u003c/a>, on Highway 12 between Fairfield and Rio Vista. Muni offers \u003ca href=\"https://www.streetcar.org/rider-information-map-2/\">a daily vintage streetcar experience\u003c/a> on its F trolley car line, running along Market Street between the Castro and Steuart Street downtown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>At the turn of the 20th century, street cars crisscrossed the Bay Area. Nowadays though, you rarely see them. So you might even be thinking to yourself, what even is a street car?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Think of those old trolleys like the F line on Market Street in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trolley dinging\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>It’s not a cable car, it’s not modern light rail. It’s an old fashioned train, usually one or two cars, that runs above ground on a track, often with electric wires overhead to provide power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Electric streetcars were big in the East Bay before the automobile took off. For many people, they were the primary way to get around town – and to San Francisco for work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>Geared to the needs and dedicated to the service of the East Bay, Key System became one of the largest single businesses in the area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>People would walk out their doors in Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland, hop on a slick orange and silver Key System streetcar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>Transportation to San Francisco was by ferry, a convivial mode of travel that, particularly in the evening, had elements of fantasy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was the daily commute of many for decades. Our question asker this week, Vanessa Bohm, grew up in Germany and has seen some remnants of the Key system all around the East bay. She’s wondered…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Bohm: \u003c/strong>What happened to the streetcars that used to be around Oakland and the East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Vanessa is not alone. We get questions about what happened to the key system a lot. Some people even wonder if those old streetcar lines could be put to use again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here to help us understand the rise and fall of Bay Area streetcarts is the man, the myth, the legend, recently retired, but back, because he just can’t quit, KQED’s transportation editor emeritus, Dan Brekke. Hi Dan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Hi, Olivia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Can you start by painting a picture for us at its height? What would the East Bay have looked like during the streetcar era?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well, you would have had dozens of streetcar lines, either running from neighborhood to neighborhood or from neighborhoods to downtowns, and you would’ve had a collection of trains that were starting at various nodes in the East Bay, like North Berkeley or Downtown Berkeley, University of California, Downtown Oakland, East Oakland, running to a little rail line that ran out into the middle of the bay where people would climb off their trains and catch ferries into the city. And those trains would get you from point A to point B in 35 or 40 minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We know electric streetcars became common across the country and in all nine counties of the Bay Area starting in the 1890s, but tell us more about how the key system in particular got started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Early in the 20th century, in the very first years, real estate investors, led by somebody named Francis Marion Smith, whose nickname was Borax Smith, because he’d made a fortune in borax mining in the southwest. He was part of what was called the Realty Syndicate. And they owned something like 20 square miles of East Bay real estate. And it would make this property so much more valuable if there was an easy way for people to get to and from these areas that would then be ripe for development. And pretty much that’s what happened. These street car lines got built, and if you see a route map, there are tendrils stretching throughout what we think of as East Oakland today and north into Berkeley, with many lines that were both neighborhood lines where people could ride, say, from their neighborhood to downtown Oakland, and many lines that were traveling from the East Bay to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So sort of a situation where if you build it, they will come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>They built it and they did come and much of the streetscape and the way neighborhoods are put together in Berkeley and Oakland really comes from that early streetcar development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>One thing I find interesting is that these were not public works projects in the sense that the public owned them or they were, you know, done with tax dollars. These were private companies running these these streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Yeah, that’s right. Those streetcar lines we’re talking about and wherever we’re talking about them, you know, it would be hard to go to a town of any size in the early 20th century and find no street railroad, right? And, of course, Los Angeles was one of the places where they were most prevalent. But all of this was done through private capital that had some kind of investment goal in mind. And often it had to do with developing real estate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>They didn’t own the street, so logistically, how did that even work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Yeah, they would get a license from the cities where they wanted to operate and part of the license would be access to the street and also some agreement about who would take care of the tracks in the street because as you know, if you’ve been anywhere where there’s a railroad track in a street, there are usually some kind of pavement problems and so that would be part of the deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Tell me about the experience of actually riding one of these cars. What would it have been like as a commuter to step foot on one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>If you want to experience what these trains were like, you don’t have to rely on imagination. If you go out to the Western Railway Museum, which is near Rio Vista, there’s an amazing collection of street cars from all different eras.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke in scene: \u003c/strong>This is so cool. This one used to run in Oakland, going to the ballpark. And this is a Key System one too, this one that says E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>When they heard what I was up to, what I was interested in finding out about, they said, well, we can take one of those bridge units out and run it for you. Unbelievable. They roll out this retro, streamlined, two-car, orange and silver train, which is instantly a throwback to what people would have experienced their first day riding on the Bay Bridge in 1939. So then you know we’re on the platform waiting for this train to start up, we climb aboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor:\u003c/strong> Welcome aboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>First thing I notice is the windows don’t open, but that’s okay. There’s ventilation through a front door and we roll out down this, kind of beautifully recreated streetcar line, electrified streetcar line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trolley bell\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>In the middle of nowhere, but here’s this train going through this kind of pristine-looking ranch environment, and you come to a little crossroad, you have to slow to a stop, sound the horn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Horn blares\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor: \u003c/strong>Hey, we’ve got a car for once!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Because you don’t want to interfere with any crossing ranch traffic, and then you proceed to a little stop really out in the middle of nowhere. And get off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor: \u003c/strong>Okay, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The motorman changes ends of the car and then you head back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That sounds pretty fun. We’re going to take a quick break here, but we’ll get into why this system started to fall apart when we come back. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So, Dan, the scene that you’ve painted so far, it’s very idyllic with all these street cars whisking people from Berkeley and Oakland to Ferries and maybe taking them into the city. And that goes on for what, 40 odd years? When does it all start to change and what factors were behind the changes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well, the 1930s were a very rough decade for streetcar companies in general. You had the Great Depression, of course, that started in 1929 and deepened throughout the first half of the decade. The transit industry itself either recovered very slowly or not at all. A lot of that was because they were private companies that were locked into pretty disadvantageous contracts with the cities they served. Right? They could only raise fares so much. And they didn’t receive public subsidies. There was a big shift going on toward private automobiles that was also taking away some of their customers. In the Bay Area itself, you know, the relationship between the East Bay and the city of San Francisco changed dramatically in 1936 with the opening of the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>A six-lane double deck bridge, eight miles long, connecting San Francisco with the Oakland-Berkeley area, spanning the largest major navigable body of water ever bridged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>I mean, there was an incredible influx of traffic across the bridge into San Francisco, basically as soon as the bridge opened, and it just didn’t slow down. And one of the unfortunate things that happened at the same time was that while part of developing the Bay Bridge was to build railroad tracks across it so that these interurban trains could come in from the East Bay, but it wasn’t ready to use until early 1939. One of the factors that people point to in the demise of the key system, is that delay of more than two years where people got to experience that it was much easier to drive into the city and faster, perhaps, than it had been to take the train. Their habits changed, and the key systems never really recovered. And we also had this phenomenon of the slow transition in the key-system itself away from streetcars for their local service to buses. And by the late 1930s, buses were carrying most of the ridership. So all of those things together really started to dim the outlook for the streetcar companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>One narrative that I’ve heard over and over is that a big reason that streetcars failed was that essentially car companies bought the key system and then would intentionally run the company into the ground so people would be forced to buy more cars. Is there any truth to that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>There’s a kernel of truth to it. You know, when I talked to Ethan Elkind from UC Berkeley, you know, he talked about the effect of one particular movie in the 1980s on this view of history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Well, in L.A., the conspiracy was really put on steroids by the movie who framed Roger Rabbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Judge Doom from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”: \u003c/strong>I see a place where people get off and off the freeway. On and off, off and on, all day, all night! Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, it’s so great to hear Christopher Lloyd in that. He was so good! And the character he was playing was Judge Doom and his masterplan was to destroy Toon Town, where Roger Rabbit lived, and a key part of the plot is to kill the streetcar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Who Framed Roger Rabbit clip: \u003c/strong>C’mon, Nobody’s gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the red car for a nickel. Well, they’ll drive. They’ll have to. You see, I bought the red car so I could dismantle it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Not an exaggeration that, you know, this 1989 semi-cartoon really fed this idea that it was highway interests that gobbled up the streetcar lines. And the story is much more complex than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The complexity people are talking about and the grain of truth to Roger Rabbit is because of a lawsuit that was filed against a company that was called National City Lines and some of its investors in the 1940s. And National City Lines was a company that went around the country buying up streetcar systems and they would convert those to bus systems, basically. That’s the long and the short of it. And by doing that, they were really helping out their investors who were General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Rubber, Phillips 66, companies like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>National City Lines showed up in Oakland in 1946 and took control of the Key System. And while the Key system had laid plans to sort of keep street cars going and also keep them running into San Francisco. Across the Bay Bridge, the national city lines scrapped most of these development plans, let’s call them, right away. So within a very short amount of time, the streetcar lines in the East Bay turned into bus lines. The streetcar lines were abandoned. The exception was the inter-urban line into San Francisco. That continued running until the late 1950s, but it ran at a loss. It ran with fewer and fewer passengers every year, and the last key system cars ran across the Bay Bridge in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>When we start talking about public transportation, I’ve noticed that people are often very nostalgic for the past, and it can, you know, sort of become a little idealized, you know, oh, dreaming about riding across the Bay Bridge and the train, but there were some realities to the Key System that people forget about. Can you tell us about some of the drawbacks of the Key System, even when it was sort of at its height?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>So there’s very definitely a paradise lost tone to the way people discuss the Key system. If we only hadn’t abandoned this beautiful street car system, just think how much better our world would be. I think that ignores the reality that they had huge power plants to supply the electricity for their systems. In the case of the Key System, they had a huge powerhouse in Emeryville. Kind of close to where Ikea is today. There was a gigantic smokestack there and they were burning coal. Sure, electric trains were much cleaner in terms of the environment around the lines themselves, but they still had an environmental footprint as all of our transportation choices do. And I talked to Mitchell Schwarzer, who’s a professor of architectural and urban history at the California College of the Arts about the social effects of the streetcar system. He wrote a book a few years ago called \u003cem>Hella Oakland\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mitchell Schwartzer: \u003c/strong>What the technology allowed for was a vast residential expansion outside of the inner areas of Oakland. And that allowed for the wealthier people to live on larger lots and to live separately and to erect barriers to minorities moving into their communities. Without the streetcar, they couldn’t have done that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>I will say also that there was some outrage about the lack of safety for streetcars. The years I’ve looked at were between 1906 and 1910. It’s absolutely hair-raising to see how many people were getting killed in streetcar accidents. The newspapers relished these stories. I mean, they were told in sometimes excruciating detail what happened to the victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Definitely not insignificant safety and environmental concerns that you’ve brought up. But I do wanna say times are different now, right? We know how to run trains on green energy. We know to put safety protocols in place that will keep people more safe. One of our question askers wanted to know, could the old Key System sort of be a model for public transportation of the future?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well I talked to Ethan Elkind from UC Berkeley Law School about this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Well, I think you run into the same problems that the streetcars were running into in the old days, which is that a lot of them ran down highway medians. They would get stuck in traffic. They would hit red lights. They would have to wait for cars to pass. And they weren’t necessarily that fast. You need to have a dedicated separate right of way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>You have to deal with all the other street traffic. That’s a real problem in imagining streetcar lines flourishing again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>And then to really make transit make sense, you have to be able to serve dense concentrations of jobs and housing where people can easily walk or bike to the rail station. And unfortunately, what we’ve seen too often, especially in the higher income areas in the Bay area, they don’t allow new development. They don’t wanna see new apartment buildings come into their neighborhoods. And that’s what you would need to have to have the ridership really make sense. And so that these streetcar lines could actually have enough ridership where they wouldn’t require as much public subsidy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The other thing is they’re really damn expensive to build. Lots of transportation experts say that the workaround is right in front of us if we only had the political will to do it. And that is to dedicate more street space as bus only space, right? Mostly we’re talking about bus rapid transit where you have dedicated lanes for buses. You have signals that are set so they prioritize the bus traffic. Those are much, much less expensive to build, but they take a lot of planning, and there is an upfront investment that sometimes is difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Dan Brekke, thank you so much, as always, for reporting on this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>You’re very welcome. And as I conclude here, I want to make a couple of acknowledgements. One is, there’s kind of an amazing community of transit historians in the Bay Area, including some who are very painstakingly documenting some of this history of the key system. So that’s one acknowledgement. The other one is, thanks to you and Katrina. You guys are wonderful to work with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Listeners should know that Dan was one of my first editors here at KQED when I started out as a wee baby reporter. And, he’s reported some of my favorite Bay Curious episodes over the years. Like those mysterious East Bay walls, why there are so many crows in the bay area and he’s answered dozens of your transportation questions over the years. We’ll link to a few of his stories in our show notes, so go check those out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dan, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are the best. I hope you have a happy retirement, but also, I have a feeling you’ll be back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you value what you hear on our show, consider becoming a KQED member. You can choose the level of support that works for your budget by going to \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">kqed.org/donate\u003c/a>. Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale, and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and the whole KQED team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "All nine counties of the Bay Area had robust streetcar systems at the start of the 20th century. In the East Bay, rumors swirl about how and why the Key System failed.\r\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the turn of the 20th century, streetcars crisscrossed the\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\"> Bay Area\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many people, they were the primary way to get around town —and to San Francisco for work. People would walk out their doors in Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland, hop on a streetcar that would take them to a ferry and be in downtown San Francisco in about 40 minutes. Remnants of these lines can be seen in many Bay Area streetscapes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Vanessa Boehm grew up in Germany with efficient public transportation, and as she looked around her neighborhood near the UC Berkeley campus, she wondered: “What happened to the streetcars that used to be around Oakland and the East Bay?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s not the first or the last to ask questions along those lines. The history and disappearance of the Key System, which once served East Bay residents has captured the imagination of many transit aficionados. And among the many similar questions we’ve gotten are some from people who want to know whether it would be possible to recreate the streetcar networks that have long since vanished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without knowing it, perhaps, Vanessa and other listeners have touched on a disputed piece of both East Bay and national transportation history, a conspiracy theory that involves some of the nation’s most powerful corporations and the role they played — or didn’t play — in the disappearance of streetcars in the East Bay. The story also encompasses a real-estate development scheme that shaped Oakland and Berkeley, the rise of suburban sprawl, and the dawn of the motor vehicle age.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Streetcars fundamentally shaped urban development\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Streetcars were essential to the growth of cities in the Bay Area and across the United States in the final years of the 19th century and opening years of the 20th. Electric railroads — either streetcar networks connecting neighborhoods or interurban lines connecting towns and cities — served all nine Bay Area counties in the early 20th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The place where that electric streetcar legacy is most obvious is San Francisco, where several electric lines that operated in the 1920s — Muni’s J, K, L, M and N routes — are still essential parts of the city’s transportation system. Two other lines, the E and the F, feature tourist-oriented service using historic streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073776\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 990px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073776\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An electric train crossing the lower deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.\" width=\"990\" height=\"796\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED.jpg 990w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-05-KQED-160x129.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 990px) 100vw, 990px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Key System “A” line train on a test run across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland in 1939. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/Key_System_and_March_of_Progress\">FoundSF.org\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the first four decades of the 20th century, the East Bay was served by two major electric streetcar systems: one run by Southern Pacific and a competitor known popularly as the Key System. Southern Pacific’s system, initially called the Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley Lines, ran transbay service using ferries that left from long causeways, or moles, in West Oakland and Alameda.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Key System was a collection of East Bay streetcar and transbay lines built or purchased and consolidated by Francis Marion Smith, known as “Borax” Smith because of his success mining and marketing the all-purpose mineral in the deserts of Nevada and southeastern California. Starting in the 1890s, Smith created a network of lines that eventually stretched from Richmond to San Leandro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But creating a transit system wasn’t Smith’s main objective. He and partner Frank Havens had purchased about 13,000 acres, more than 20 square miles, under the aegis of a separate enterprise known as The Realty Syndicate. The streetcar and transbay train system Smith created was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11925112/idora-park-and-playland-at-the-beach-bay-area-amusement-parks-of-a-bygone-era\">designed to serve the new neighborhoods\u003c/a> that would be developed on the syndicate’s properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland historian Mitchell Schwarzer says the streetcar network fundamentally changed the shape of the city. In his 2021 study of Oakland’s development, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucpress.edu/books/hella-town/paper\">\u003cem>Hella Town,\u003c/em>\u003c/a> he says that by 1912, property subdividers had created more than 50,000 new residential lots close to streetcar routes.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The effect on what had been a compact East Bay community focused on downtown was dramatic, with streetcar lines triggering a sprawl of new neighborhoods in every direction and the creation of commercial districts like Grand Lake, Rockridge, Piedmont Avenue and along stretches of San Pablo Avenue and East 14th Street, now International Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The streetcar “affected everything — it affected where the residential areas developed, it affected where the commercial areas developed, it affected where industry moved pretty much,” Schwarzer said. Alongside the automobile, streetcars shaped the form Oakland took to this day, “both where things are located, how they’re distributed, how they’re built, what’s built, where they’re built,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He adds that this early episode of sprawl also helped shape Oakland’s future demographic and class profile. The city’s vast residential expansion “allowed for the wealthier people to live on larger lots and to live separately and to erect barriers to minorities moving into their communities. Without the streetcar, they couldn’t have done that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Financial failures\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Although the Key System and other streetcar operations were useful in driving real estate development and despite the fact they carried more than 100 million passengers a year at their peak in the 1920s, they were for the most part failures as money-making enterprises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Key System was in deep financial trouble by 1913. According to the late transportation reporter and historian Harre W. Demoro, the Key’s early money troubles could be traced directly to Borax Smith’s risky and chaotic business practices. With the company deeply in debt, Smith was forced out in 1913. A series of crises ensued, with the company teetering on the edge of failure and being foreclosed on and reorganized in 1923 and 1930.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By this time, private automobiles had become a major presence in cities across the country, including those in the Bay Area. The growing popularity of car ownership is reflected in a steep decline in ridership for both the Southern Pacific and Key System after a peak recorded in the mid-1920s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drivers weren’t the only ones who were drawn to new motorized modes of transport. Starting before 1920, transit systems began to convert some of their train service to bus lines. By the mid-1920s, the Key System had joined in that trend, which accelerated through the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demoro found in \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/bulletinnational446nati\">a 1979 study\u003c/a> of the Key System published in the National Railway Bulletin that by 1937 its buses accounted for more than half of the company’s business in terms of miles of service delivered. “From then on, the bus dominated” Key’s operation, Demoro wrote in \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/embed/keyroutetransbay0000demo\">his two-volume history\u003c/a> of the transbay service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073773\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073773\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A two-car, orange-and-silver electric train shown in a car barn at the Western Railway Museum in Solano County.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-02-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Key System Bridge Unit 187, part of thje fleet that provided service across the Bay Bridge from the East Bay to San Francisco between 1939 and 1958, at the Western Railway Museum in Solano County. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The decline accelerated after the Bay Bridge opened to drivers in November 1936. The planned railroad service on the bridge wasn’t ready when the bridge opened, creating an opportunity for East Bay residents to enjoy the ease of car travel. When train service on the bridge’s lower deck finally began in January 1939, it did little to reverse the ridership slump.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s right here that the conspiracy theory mentioned earlier becomes part of the Key System story. Because as the car was becoming king, companies related to the automobile industry bought up dozens of streetcar lines and replaced them with buses. That effort was intended, the story goes, to undermine mass transit to such an extent that riders would desert them in preference for automobiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A kernel of truth to the myth\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>General Motors, Standard Oil of California (now known as Chevron), Firestone Rubber and Phillips Petroleum really did invest in a company called National City Lines and a pair of subsidiaries that were in the business of buying mostly financially troubled streetcar systems and immediately converting them to bus systems. That happened in 46 cities across the country, including a few big ones, like Los Angeles, St. Louis, and yes, Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The government really did take National City Lines, GM, its partners and their executives to court. In 1949, a jury in Chicago really did convict them of one count of violating federal antitrust law by conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses, fuel, tires and other supplies to the transit systems that National City Lines and its subsidiaries had taken over. The companies were acquitted on a second count alleging they had conspired to block competitors from doing business with the National City companies. In other words, the defendants were found guilty of trying to control the purchase of supplies that newly “motorized” transit agencies would need, not of any broader conspiracy to wreck mass transit.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The penalties the judge imposed were trivial: $5,000 for each corporate defendant — about $68,000 in 2026 dollars — and $1 for each of the executives who had played a part in the conspiracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the story is more complex than the National City Lines case, said Ethan Elkind, who directs the climate program at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “It’s really a story of technology change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The electric streetcar systems that started appearing everywhere in the 1890s were a big leap in speed and performance compared to the horse-drawn omnibuses and cable cars they replaced. But then the next big innovation in transportation arrived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the early 20th century, the big, disruptive technology was the automobile, and people adopted it en masse very rapidly, and it made these streetcars for a vast majority of the population essentially obsolete,” Elkind said. Cars not only competed for riders, they competed for space on the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you throw the automobile into that and everybody’s driving now, these streetcars are getting stuck in traffic,” Elkind says. “They’re not really enjoyable for people to ride. And people are frustrated by the poor service, high fares, and they wanted the freedom and mobility that automobiles, private automobiles, represented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The argument that GM’s National Cities gambit was chiefly responsible for the collapse of electric railways across the county has been widely criticized as little more than a myth, one that ignores other factors that made many streetcar systems vulnerable by the 1930s, including their often poor physical and financial condition and the fact that, as shown by the Key System, bus transportation was becoming steadily more popular and economical well before National City Lines appeared on the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Key System’s slow demise\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>After struggling through most of the 1930s, a surge in wartime ridership had made the company profitable and by 1945, it was sitting on a sizable surplus. Although it had struggled to upgrade its cars and tracks before the war, it had begun making plans to revamp service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company began to follow through on all of these initiatives, contracting for new streetcars and moving ahead with the purchase of trolley buses to run on College Avenue and on the Arlington Avenue-Euclid Avenue service in the Berkeley Hills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073797\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1020px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073797\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white image of people lined up to board commuter bus about 1960 in San Francisco's Transbay Terminal.\" width=\"1020\" height=\"734\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/494425878_1249028317224906_1645347311867449341_n-2-160x115.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1020px) 100vw, 1020px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Berkeley-bound commuter line up to board a Key System “F” bus after San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal was reconfigured for bus service in 1959. AC Transit would take over the service the following year.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then suddenly, all that work stopped. In May 1946, Key System management sold the company to National City Lines for $3 million ($52 million in 2026 dollars). By the end of the year, the company’s new owners decided to scrap all the remaining streetcar lines and replace trains with motor buses. The only trains the Key System still operated were the half-dozen transbay lines operating across the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1955, the company applied to the state Public Utilities Commission to abandon transbay service. The last trains ran over the bridge to San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal in April 1958. The Key System, now an all-bus operation, was purchased by a new public transit agency — AC Transit — in 1960.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The evolution of the Bay Area’s transit system\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Looking back on those events in 1979, Demoro speculated that without the National City Lines takeover, the East Bay’s transit system would likely have evolved into a hybrid featuring streetcars, trolley buses along with motor buses. Whether the transbay service would have survived was less clear, he said, because of the state’s interest in reconfiguring the bridge to accommodate more motor vehicles — a goal realized when the Key System tracks were removed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he also marveled that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11986396/when-bart-was-built-people-and-houses-had-to-go\">the region managed to build BART\u003c/a>, an agency created in the 1950s as the Key System trains were in their twilight years and both California and the rest of the United States went all in on highway spending. “That accomplishment … seems astounding today, he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073772\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073772\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Black-and-white image of 1940s streetcars and automobiles in a traffic jam in Oakland, California.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED-160x84.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260218-KEY-SYSTEM-01-KQED-1536x805.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As automobile traffic grew, streetcars — and streetcar riders — often found themselves tangled in traffic jams like this 1940s faceoff between Key System trains and cars at 47th Avenue and East 14th Street (now International Boulevard) in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Western Railway Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But in one sense, the Key System hasn’t gone away. When AC Transit took control of the Key’s bankrupt all-bus operation in 1960, it continued an East Bay transit legacy that stretched back nearly a century. AC Transit continues to be a vital transportation link for hundreds of thousands of East Bay residents, much the way the Key System was in its peak years. And for those who travel between the East Bay and San Francisco, BART now serves the riders the way the Key System’s trains and ferries once did, although maybe a lot less romantically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s still possible to ride some of the few surviving Key System trains at Solano County’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.wrm.org/\">Western Railway Museum\u003c/a>, on Highway 12 between Fairfield and Rio Vista. Muni offers \u003ca href=\"https://www.streetcar.org/rider-information-map-2/\">a daily vintage streetcar experience\u003c/a> on its F trolley car line, running along Market Street between the Castro and Steuart Street downtown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>At the turn of the 20th century, street cars crisscrossed the Bay Area. Nowadays though, you rarely see them. So you might even be thinking to yourself, what even is a street car?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Think of those old trolleys like the F line on Market Street in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trolley dinging\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>It’s not a cable car, it’s not modern light rail. It’s an old fashioned train, usually one or two cars, that runs above ground on a track, often with electric wires overhead to provide power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Electric streetcars were big in the East Bay before the automobile took off. For many people, they were the primary way to get around town – and to San Francisco for work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>Geared to the needs and dedicated to the service of the East Bay, Key System became one of the largest single businesses in the area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>People would walk out their doors in Berkeley, Alameda, Oakland, hop on a slick orange and silver Key System streetcar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>Transportation to San Francisco was by ferry, a convivial mode of travel that, particularly in the evening, had elements of fantasy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was the daily commute of many for decades. Our question asker this week, Vanessa Bohm, grew up in Germany and has seen some remnants of the Key system all around the East bay. She’s wondered…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Bohm: \u003c/strong>What happened to the streetcars that used to be around Oakland and the East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Vanessa is not alone. We get questions about what happened to the key system a lot. Some people even wonder if those old streetcar lines could be put to use again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here to help us understand the rise and fall of Bay Area streetcarts is the man, the myth, the legend, recently retired, but back, because he just can’t quit, KQED’s transportation editor emeritus, Dan Brekke. Hi Dan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Hi, Olivia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Can you start by painting a picture for us at its height? What would the East Bay have looked like during the streetcar era?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well, you would have had dozens of streetcar lines, either running from neighborhood to neighborhood or from neighborhoods to downtowns, and you would’ve had a collection of trains that were starting at various nodes in the East Bay, like North Berkeley or Downtown Berkeley, University of California, Downtown Oakland, East Oakland, running to a little rail line that ran out into the middle of the bay where people would climb off their trains and catch ferries into the city. And those trains would get you from point A to point B in 35 or 40 minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We know electric streetcars became common across the country and in all nine counties of the Bay Area starting in the 1890s, but tell us more about how the key system in particular got started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Early in the 20th century, in the very first years, real estate investors, led by somebody named Francis Marion Smith, whose nickname was Borax Smith, because he’d made a fortune in borax mining in the southwest. He was part of what was called the Realty Syndicate. And they owned something like 20 square miles of East Bay real estate. And it would make this property so much more valuable if there was an easy way for people to get to and from these areas that would then be ripe for development. And pretty much that’s what happened. These street car lines got built, and if you see a route map, there are tendrils stretching throughout what we think of as East Oakland today and north into Berkeley, with many lines that were both neighborhood lines where people could ride, say, from their neighborhood to downtown Oakland, and many lines that were traveling from the East Bay to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So sort of a situation where if you build it, they will come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>They built it and they did come and much of the streetscape and the way neighborhoods are put together in Berkeley and Oakland really comes from that early streetcar development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>One thing I find interesting is that these were not public works projects in the sense that the public owned them or they were, you know, done with tax dollars. These were private companies running these these streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Yeah, that’s right. Those streetcar lines we’re talking about and wherever we’re talking about them, you know, it would be hard to go to a town of any size in the early 20th century and find no street railroad, right? And, of course, Los Angeles was one of the places where they were most prevalent. But all of this was done through private capital that had some kind of investment goal in mind. And often it had to do with developing real estate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>They didn’t own the street, so logistically, how did that even work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Yeah, they would get a license from the cities where they wanted to operate and part of the license would be access to the street and also some agreement about who would take care of the tracks in the street because as you know, if you’ve been anywhere where there’s a railroad track in a street, there are usually some kind of pavement problems and so that would be part of the deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Tell me about the experience of actually riding one of these cars. What would it have been like as a commuter to step foot on one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>If you want to experience what these trains were like, you don’t have to rely on imagination. If you go out to the Western Railway Museum, which is near Rio Vista, there’s an amazing collection of street cars from all different eras.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke in scene: \u003c/strong>This is so cool. This one used to run in Oakland, going to the ballpark. And this is a Key System one too, this one that says E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>When they heard what I was up to, what I was interested in finding out about, they said, well, we can take one of those bridge units out and run it for you. Unbelievable. They roll out this retro, streamlined, two-car, orange and silver train, which is instantly a throwback to what people would have experienced their first day riding on the Bay Bridge in 1939. So then you know we’re on the platform waiting for this train to start up, we climb aboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor:\u003c/strong> Welcome aboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>First thing I notice is the windows don’t open, but that’s okay. There’s ventilation through a front door and we roll out down this, kind of beautifully recreated streetcar line, electrified streetcar line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trolley bell\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>In the middle of nowhere, but here’s this train going through this kind of pristine-looking ranch environment, and you come to a little crossroad, you have to slow to a stop, sound the horn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Horn blares\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor: \u003c/strong>Hey, we’ve got a car for once!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Because you don’t want to interfere with any crossing ranch traffic, and then you proceed to a little stop really out in the middle of nowhere. And get off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Conductor: \u003c/strong>Okay, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The motorman changes ends of the car and then you head back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That sounds pretty fun. We’re going to take a quick break here, but we’ll get into why this system started to fall apart when we come back. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>So, Dan, the scene that you’ve painted so far, it’s very idyllic with all these street cars whisking people from Berkeley and Oakland to Ferries and maybe taking them into the city. And that goes on for what, 40 odd years? When does it all start to change and what factors were behind the changes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well, the 1930s were a very rough decade for streetcar companies in general. You had the Great Depression, of course, that started in 1929 and deepened throughout the first half of the decade. The transit industry itself either recovered very slowly or not at all. A lot of that was because they were private companies that were locked into pretty disadvantageous contracts with the cities they served. Right? They could only raise fares so much. And they didn’t receive public subsidies. There was a big shift going on toward private automobiles that was also taking away some of their customers. In the Bay Area itself, you know, the relationship between the East Bay and the city of San Francisco changed dramatically in 1936 with the opening of the Bay Bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video clip: \u003c/strong>A six-lane double deck bridge, eight miles long, connecting San Francisco with the Oakland-Berkeley area, spanning the largest major navigable body of water ever bridged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>I mean, there was an incredible influx of traffic across the bridge into San Francisco, basically as soon as the bridge opened, and it just didn’t slow down. And one of the unfortunate things that happened at the same time was that while part of developing the Bay Bridge was to build railroad tracks across it so that these interurban trains could come in from the East Bay, but it wasn’t ready to use until early 1939. One of the factors that people point to in the demise of the key system, is that delay of more than two years where people got to experience that it was much easier to drive into the city and faster, perhaps, than it had been to take the train. Their habits changed, and the key systems never really recovered. And we also had this phenomenon of the slow transition in the key-system itself away from streetcars for their local service to buses. And by the late 1930s, buses were carrying most of the ridership. So all of those things together really started to dim the outlook for the streetcar companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>One narrative that I’ve heard over and over is that a big reason that streetcars failed was that essentially car companies bought the key system and then would intentionally run the company into the ground so people would be forced to buy more cars. Is there any truth to that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>There’s a kernel of truth to it. You know, when I talked to Ethan Elkind from UC Berkeley, you know, he talked about the effect of one particular movie in the 1980s on this view of history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Well, in L.A., the conspiracy was really put on steroids by the movie who framed Roger Rabbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Judge Doom from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”: \u003c/strong>I see a place where people get off and off the freeway. On and off, off and on, all day, all night! Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, it’s so great to hear Christopher Lloyd in that. He was so good! And the character he was playing was Judge Doom and his masterplan was to destroy Toon Town, where Roger Rabbit lived, and a key part of the plot is to kill the streetcar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Who Framed Roger Rabbit clip: \u003c/strong>C’mon, Nobody’s gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the red car for a nickel. Well, they’ll drive. They’ll have to. You see, I bought the red car so I could dismantle it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Not an exaggeration that, you know, this 1989 semi-cartoon really fed this idea that it was highway interests that gobbled up the streetcar lines. And the story is much more complex than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The complexity people are talking about and the grain of truth to Roger Rabbit is because of a lawsuit that was filed against a company that was called National City Lines and some of its investors in the 1940s. And National City Lines was a company that went around the country buying up streetcar systems and they would convert those to bus systems, basically. That’s the long and the short of it. And by doing that, they were really helping out their investors who were General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Rubber, Phillips 66, companies like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>National City Lines showed up in Oakland in 1946 and took control of the Key System. And while the Key system had laid plans to sort of keep street cars going and also keep them running into San Francisco. Across the Bay Bridge, the national city lines scrapped most of these development plans, let’s call them, right away. So within a very short amount of time, the streetcar lines in the East Bay turned into bus lines. The streetcar lines were abandoned. The exception was the inter-urban line into San Francisco. That continued running until the late 1950s, but it ran at a loss. It ran with fewer and fewer passengers every year, and the last key system cars ran across the Bay Bridge in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>When we start talking about public transportation, I’ve noticed that people are often very nostalgic for the past, and it can, you know, sort of become a little idealized, you know, oh, dreaming about riding across the Bay Bridge and the train, but there were some realities to the Key System that people forget about. Can you tell us about some of the drawbacks of the Key System, even when it was sort of at its height?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>So there’s very definitely a paradise lost tone to the way people discuss the Key system. If we only hadn’t abandoned this beautiful street car system, just think how much better our world would be. I think that ignores the reality that they had huge power plants to supply the electricity for their systems. In the case of the Key System, they had a huge powerhouse in Emeryville. Kind of close to where Ikea is today. There was a gigantic smokestack there and they were burning coal. Sure, electric trains were much cleaner in terms of the environment around the lines themselves, but they still had an environmental footprint as all of our transportation choices do. And I talked to Mitchell Schwarzer, who’s a professor of architectural and urban history at the California College of the Arts about the social effects of the streetcar system. He wrote a book a few years ago called \u003cem>Hella Oakland\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mitchell Schwartzer: \u003c/strong>What the technology allowed for was a vast residential expansion outside of the inner areas of Oakland. And that allowed for the wealthier people to live on larger lots and to live separately and to erect barriers to minorities moving into their communities. Without the streetcar, they couldn’t have done that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>I will say also that there was some outrage about the lack of safety for streetcars. The years I’ve looked at were between 1906 and 1910. It’s absolutely hair-raising to see how many people were getting killed in streetcar accidents. The newspapers relished these stories. I mean, they were told in sometimes excruciating detail what happened to the victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Definitely not insignificant safety and environmental concerns that you’ve brought up. But I do wanna say times are different now, right? We know how to run trains on green energy. We know to put safety protocols in place that will keep people more safe. One of our question askers wanted to know, could the old Key System sort of be a model for public transportation of the future?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>Well I talked to Ethan Elkind from UC Berkeley Law School about this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>Well, I think you run into the same problems that the streetcars were running into in the old days, which is that a lot of them ran down highway medians. They would get stuck in traffic. They would hit red lights. They would have to wait for cars to pass. And they weren’t necessarily that fast. You need to have a dedicated separate right of way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>You have to deal with all the other street traffic. That’s a real problem in imagining streetcar lines flourishing again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ethan Elkind: \u003c/strong>And then to really make transit make sense, you have to be able to serve dense concentrations of jobs and housing where people can easily walk or bike to the rail station. And unfortunately, what we’ve seen too often, especially in the higher income areas in the Bay area, they don’t allow new development. They don’t wanna see new apartment buildings come into their neighborhoods. And that’s what you would need to have to have the ridership really make sense. And so that these streetcar lines could actually have enough ridership where they wouldn’t require as much public subsidy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>The other thing is they’re really damn expensive to build. Lots of transportation experts say that the workaround is right in front of us if we only had the political will to do it. And that is to dedicate more street space as bus only space, right? Mostly we’re talking about bus rapid transit where you have dedicated lanes for buses. You have signals that are set so they prioritize the bus traffic. Those are much, much less expensive to build, but they take a lot of planning, and there is an upfront investment that sometimes is difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Dan Brekke, thank you so much, as always, for reporting on this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dan Brekke: \u003c/strong>You’re very welcome. And as I conclude here, I want to make a couple of acknowledgements. One is, there’s kind of an amazing community of transit historians in the Bay Area, including some who are very painstakingly documenting some of this history of the key system. So that’s one acknowledgement. The other one is, thanks to you and Katrina. You guys are wonderful to work with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Listeners should know that Dan was one of my first editors here at KQED when I started out as a wee baby reporter. And, he’s reported some of my favorite Bay Curious episodes over the years. Like those mysterious East Bay walls, why there are so many crows in the bay area and he’s answered dozens of your transportation questions over the years. We’ll link to a few of his stories in our show notes, so go check those out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dan, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are the best. I hope you have a happy retirement, but also, I have a feeling you’ll be back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you value what you hear on our show, consider becoming a KQED member. You can choose the level of support that works for your budget by going to \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">kqed.org/donate\u003c/a>. Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale, and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and the whole KQED team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "From Armenia to San Francisco: The Duduk Whisperer Plays with Soul",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While you might not recognize the name, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the haunting, almost otherworldly sound the duduk makes. This humble shepherd’s flute wandered out of the Armenian countryside and into Hollywood, making cameos on the scores of movies and shows like \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nxEDN3909M&list=RD_nxEDN3909M&start_radio=1\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Gladiator\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrpVgVOYEgc&list=RDJrpVgVOYEgc&start_radio=1\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The Last Temptation of Christ.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The duduk was even recently synthesized on both \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOVzpJQTNhk&list=RDwOVzpJQTNhk&start_radio=1\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dune \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">soundtracks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">duduk\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, an ancient Armenian double reed woodwind carved from apricot wood, has a melancholy sound and is an enduring \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://archive.org/details/roughguidetoworl00simo/page/334/mode/2up\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">symbol\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of Armenia. Its plaintive tone is said to express the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/roughguidetoworl00simo/page/334/mode/2up\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">soul\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and tragedy of the country’s history.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Audiences in the Bay Area don’t get many chances to hear the instrument live — unless they’re able to catch Khatchadour Khatchadourian. Those who follow him know him by his Instagram handle: “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/dudukwhisperer/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Duduk Whisperer.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Read all about the Duduk Whisperer in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12060906/meet-the-duduk-whisperer-a-bay-area-armenian-folk-musician-revives-centuries-of-soul\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Elize Manoukian’s feature\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for The California Report Magazine.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7375698456&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It’s a Saturday night in San Francisco and a tiny performance space called Red Poppy Art House is packed with people. They’re here to listen to a unique wooden reed instrument called the duduk that has cultural ties to Armenia.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ethereal music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And even if you don’t recognize the name duduk there’s a good chance you’ve heard it before — in the soundtracks to some major Hollywood movies – like The Last Temptation of Chris, Dune and Gladiator. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ethereal music plays\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s now a staple for Hollywood composers\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The duduk’s sound is haunting, and almost otherworldly…it transports you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When it hits you, it hits you. It takes you to the place it wants to go\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Khatchadour Khatchadourian, the duduk musician and vocalist who performed at the Red Poppy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of Khatchadourian playing duduk music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He’s one of the few in the Bay Area who plays the instrument. His followers call him “the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/dudukwhisperer/?hl=en\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Duduk Whisperer\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He uses it to push the boundaries of traditional Armenian music. And, as our producer Elize Manoukian learned along the way, he’s preserving cultural identity through sound. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The duduk is said to be the world’s oldest double reed instrument. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But that doesn’t make it easy to play.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Squeaking sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I play it, I sound like a dying goose. But in Khatchadour Khatchadourian’s hands, the instrument comes to life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Expert duduk music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">when you know that something effortlessly flows through you, that’s meant for you. With the double-reed nature, the physical nature of this fantastically torturous instrument, yet utterly beautiful instrument, there is a lot of grappling. It’s a very physical instrument. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatchadour, who I call Khatch, and I are sitting in his home studio in Santa Rosa, and he’s explaining the origins of his beloved duduk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Traditionally, the duduk is the pairing of an apricot wood, the more aged the better, the tone of the instrument, paired with a double reed bamboo, which is pliant and soft. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No longer than your forearm, and with only one single octave, the duduk gives off a powerfully tragic, almost melodramatic sound\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The aged nature of the wood adds a little dark tone that I haven’t found elsewhere. The soul of the instrument is full of longing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many Armenians understand this longing. especially those with family members who survived the 1915 Armenian genocide. Khatch’s family fled eastern Turkey along with more than a million others. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Armenians, the duduk’s mournful melodies are stories told by multiple generations about the warmth, the joy, and the tragedy of their homeland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Armenians as people have been around for several thousand years, we’ve kept our traditions and cultures and language and expressions for a long time. I would say that the duduk speaks to that longevity, to that survival.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The music Khatch plays with the duduk draws from a lot of new age, folk and world music influences. But some of his inspiration comes from a more unusual source: \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the music of the region’s troubadours, known as \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ashugh\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in Armenian. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ashugh people have traveled the region, the villages kind of carrying the wisdom traditions, the metaphor, And embedding that in the song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like this song Khatch is playing by an 18th century troubadour. These musicians were like the hippies of the Persian empire. They sang about love and yearning, and crossed cultures and borders to spread their poetry— borders which are strictly enforced now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He wrote an Armenian, Azeri, Persian, Farsi, and Georgian. that is borderless state of artistry it contains all these worlds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a sense, Khatch is the latest in a long line of these troubadours. This style is freeing to him as an artist he says — both as a musician and singer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You’re no longer classical, you don’t care about what others think, how the voice soars. You just let the voice soar, you really become your being in that sense that you’re meant to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatchadour was born to an Armenian family in Beirut, which for years was known as the Paris of the Middle East. Before 1975, Beirut had around 200,000 Armenians, who had built new lives there after the Genocide. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But by the time Khatch was born, the city had exploded into civil war. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I have pretty dark memories, running to underground refuges, bunkers, or what have you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a familiar story for the people of Lebanon, who were caught up in senseless violence for 15 years. The war separated his family, with his father heading to the U.S., while Khatch, his mother and sister fled across the border to Aleppo, in Syria. Khatch didn’t see his dad again for another 12 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For much of his time in Aleppo, Khatch sang with his middle school’s choir. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of child singing\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Khatch singing his first solo in 1997. The choir sang Armenian, Arabic and some English songs too. He said it was an important outlet for him as a kid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was really the funnest thing ever, because we were so restricted between school and just the way life was.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The choir was led by a man who Khatch called Maestro Abadjian.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I always remember torturing the maestro like he was such a kind, kind guy but I remember him having very little hair and his hair would just move on his hair a little bit and we would all be children and kind of like giggle.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Performing with this choir and learning from Maestro Abajian became the foundation of his love for music. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I remember his green eyes. Such a beautiful person. Like he would carry an artistic torch in a place that probably needed it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Khatch was 15, his family moved to Los Angeles, where his dad had been living for over a decade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The transition was rough. It was hard being a teenager in a new country, especially after living through so much turmoil. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I did not do any music for about ten years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He went to UC Berkeley, hoping to find himself on his own, away from the nest. He almost became a political scientist, researching the Armenian community of Lebanon. But studying his own experience only brought him more darkness, and he was desperate for a creative outlet to channel it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s when he found the duduk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was suffering, and I was tremendously isolated, um, and to find kind of a meaning within myself, I was in a lot of pain, psychological pain, and the duduk spoke to that. It worked beautifully, I wouldn’t say it’s cheaper than therapy [[laughs]].\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we return, Khatch’s duduk career takes off – and takes him around the world. Stay with us…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When Khatch discovered the duduk in college, he had finally found an instrument that could express what he was feeling inside. His initial interest grew into a full fledged career.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of duduk music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the past ten years, Khatch has sung and performed the duduk all over the world. He’s recorded five studio albums, all featuring the duduk and voice — including an album of Armenian lullabies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lullabies across cultures have been traditionally performed by women, and passed down through their voices. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not that Armenian males don’t sing to their sons and daughters, but I wanted to make kind of a public statement around it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Khatch decided to record an album of Armenian lullabies and songs for children, which he released in 2019. He was the first person to do this in a male voice\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">lullaby plays\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Underneath all of that, I was also dealing with being raised without a father, saying, “How did that shape the masculine and the male that I am?” And in what sense can I invite others, in this case, the masculine to be vulnerable, to be open, to be tender.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because the pandemic hit right after the album release he didn’t get many chances to perform it. As fate would have it, he performed that album for the first time at a children’s festival in Turkey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Flying Carpet Festival brings music and arts to kids displaced by conflicts like the Syrian civil war and others in the region\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Singing Armenian to Kurdish, to Arab, to Turkish children was profound because I was a singing about childhood, about innocence, about those energies that in a sense, I hope, we all protect. And in the light of actually what’s happened in Gaza, we failed to do. Just saying it as I see it, we failed to protect children. The most vulnerable, yet, most open of our humanity.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A simple song for a child can be a sanctuary. Take this lullaby from Khatch’s album: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I perform it, I actually tear up as well, it moves a lot in me. It says, the sun is your father, the moon is your mother, the trees rock you. And, you know, it’s elemental.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatch was moved by the story the lullaby told about the relationship between the singer and the land. But what he \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">didn’t\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> know when he recorded this album, was that the meaning of that song would soon change for him.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The song comes from a village in Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in the former Soviet Union and with a history dating back thousands of years. But just two years ago, conflict escalated between Armenia and Azerbaijan, neighboring countries who both claimed the region. In 2023, more than 120,000 Armenians fled their homes, carrying their belongings and their songs with them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatch now holds onto this music, as a way to hold onto a piece of his people’s history. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fact that you’re singing it, you’re carrying part of a tradition that has endured. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music and culture are not fixed in stone, he says, nor can they be easily erased. These troubadour love songs and lullabies come back to life whenever they’re heard or played.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And hopefully they remain with us as, as more people, more artists see the value of keeping alive these precious jewels.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatch is now working on his 6th album, and has spent hundreds of hours composing and arranging original pieces out of these cultural relics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the duduk’s power doesn’t just come from what it keeps alive from the past. For Khatch, it’s a doorway to something greater than himself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The duduk allows him to say what words often fail to capture. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Studio recording of duduk \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I find myself in my own studio. It’s a lot of darkness I’m going through in a sad moment, that I just put my headphones, I start the practice of playing the instrument. And I feel my soul exalted, something is lifted. And then aww, like just as if I’m among fields of stars or something transformative deep down happened. Yet I am in my studio. So I didn’t go to another edge of the universe, so this instrument does that to you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Khatchadour Khatchadourian, the Duduk Whisperer. His story came to us from producer Elize Manoukian. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This story first aired on \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The California Report Magazine. Be sure to check out their podcast for more stories from around the Golden State. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This episode was produced by Victoria Mauleon, Suzie Racho, Brendan Willard, Katherine Monahan, Srishti Prabha and Sasha Khokha. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bay Curious team is Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Both Bay Curious and The California Report Magazine are made in San Francisco at KQED – your local public media station. Join thousands of your neighbors in supported us today at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. I’ll see ya next time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While you might not recognize the name, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the haunting, almost otherworldly sound the duduk makes. This humble shepherd’s flute wandered out of the Armenian countryside and into Hollywood, making cameos on the scores of movies and shows like \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nxEDN3909M&list=RD_nxEDN3909M&start_radio=1\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Gladiator\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrpVgVOYEgc&list=RDJrpVgVOYEgc&start_radio=1\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The Last Temptation of Christ.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The duduk was even recently synthesized on both \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOVzpJQTNhk&list=RDwOVzpJQTNhk&start_radio=1\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dune \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">soundtracks.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">duduk\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, an ancient Armenian double reed woodwind carved from apricot wood, has a melancholy sound and is an enduring \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://archive.org/details/roughguidetoworl00simo/page/334/mode/2up\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">symbol\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of Armenia. Its plaintive tone is said to express the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/roughguidetoworl00simo/page/334/mode/2up\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">soul\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and tragedy of the country’s history.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Audiences in the Bay Area don’t get many chances to hear the instrument live — unless they’re able to catch Khatchadour Khatchadourian. Those who follow him know him by his Instagram handle: “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/dudukwhisperer/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Duduk Whisperer.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Read all about the Duduk Whisperer in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12060906/meet-the-duduk-whisperer-a-bay-area-armenian-folk-musician-revives-centuries-of-soul\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Elize Manoukian’s feature\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for The California Report Magazine.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7375698456&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It’s a Saturday night in San Francisco and a tiny performance space called Red Poppy Art House is packed with people. They’re here to listen to a unique wooden reed instrument called the duduk that has cultural ties to Armenia.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ethereal music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And even if you don’t recognize the name duduk there’s a good chance you’ve heard it before — in the soundtracks to some major Hollywood movies – like The Last Temptation of Chris, Dune and Gladiator. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ethereal music plays\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s now a staple for Hollywood composers\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The duduk’s sound is haunting, and almost otherworldly…it transports you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When it hits you, it hits you. It takes you to the place it wants to go\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Khatchadour Khatchadourian, the duduk musician and vocalist who performed at the Red Poppy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of Khatchadourian playing duduk music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He’s one of the few in the Bay Area who plays the instrument. His followers call him “the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/dudukwhisperer/?hl=en\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Duduk Whisperer\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He uses it to push the boundaries of traditional Armenian music. And, as our producer Elize Manoukian learned along the way, he’s preserving cultural identity through sound. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The duduk is said to be the world’s oldest double reed instrument. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But that doesn’t make it easy to play.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Squeaking sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I play it, I sound like a dying goose. But in Khatchadour Khatchadourian’s hands, the instrument comes to life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Expert duduk music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">when you know that something effortlessly flows through you, that’s meant for you. With the double-reed nature, the physical nature of this fantastically torturous instrument, yet utterly beautiful instrument, there is a lot of grappling. It’s a very physical instrument. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatchadour, who I call Khatch, and I are sitting in his home studio in Santa Rosa, and he’s explaining the origins of his beloved duduk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Traditionally, the duduk is the pairing of an apricot wood, the more aged the better, the tone of the instrument, paired with a double reed bamboo, which is pliant and soft. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No longer than your forearm, and with only one single octave, the duduk gives off a powerfully tragic, almost melodramatic sound\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The aged nature of the wood adds a little dark tone that I haven’t found elsewhere. The soul of the instrument is full of longing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many Armenians understand this longing. especially those with family members who survived the 1915 Armenian genocide. Khatch’s family fled eastern Turkey along with more than a million others. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Armenians, the duduk’s mournful melodies are stories told by multiple generations about the warmth, the joy, and the tragedy of their homeland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Armenians as people have been around for several thousand years, we’ve kept our traditions and cultures and language and expressions for a long time. I would say that the duduk speaks to that longevity, to that survival.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The music Khatch plays with the duduk draws from a lot of new age, folk and world music influences. But some of his inspiration comes from a more unusual source: \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the music of the region’s troubadours, known as \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ashugh\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in Armenian. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ashugh people have traveled the region, the villages kind of carrying the wisdom traditions, the metaphor, And embedding that in the song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like this song Khatch is playing by an 18th century troubadour. These musicians were like the hippies of the Persian empire. They sang about love and yearning, and crossed cultures and borders to spread their poetry— borders which are strictly enforced now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He wrote an Armenian, Azeri, Persian, Farsi, and Georgian. that is borderless state of artistry it contains all these worlds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a sense, Khatch is the latest in a long line of these troubadours. This style is freeing to him as an artist he says — both as a musician and singer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You’re no longer classical, you don’t care about what others think, how the voice soars. You just let the voice soar, you really become your being in that sense that you’re meant to. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatchadour was born to an Armenian family in Beirut, which for years was known as the Paris of the Middle East. Before 1975, Beirut had around 200,000 Armenians, who had built new lives there after the Genocide. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But by the time Khatch was born, the city had exploded into civil war. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I have pretty dark memories, running to underground refuges, bunkers, or what have you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a familiar story for the people of Lebanon, who were caught up in senseless violence for 15 years. The war separated his family, with his father heading to the U.S., while Khatch, his mother and sister fled across the border to Aleppo, in Syria. Khatch didn’t see his dad again for another 12 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For much of his time in Aleppo, Khatch sang with his middle school’s choir. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of child singing\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Khatch singing his first solo in 1997. The choir sang Armenian, Arabic and some English songs too. He said it was an important outlet for him as a kid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was really the funnest thing ever, because we were so restricted between school and just the way life was.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The choir was led by a man who Khatch called Maestro Abadjian.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I always remember torturing the maestro like he was such a kind, kind guy but I remember him having very little hair and his hair would just move on his hair a little bit and we would all be children and kind of like giggle.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Performing with this choir and learning from Maestro Abajian became the foundation of his love for music. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I remember his green eyes. Such a beautiful person. Like he would carry an artistic torch in a place that probably needed it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Khatch was 15, his family moved to Los Angeles, where his dad had been living for over a decade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The transition was rough. It was hard being a teenager in a new country, especially after living through so much turmoil. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I did not do any music for about ten years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He went to UC Berkeley, hoping to find himself on his own, away from the nest. He almost became a political scientist, researching the Armenian community of Lebanon. But studying his own experience only brought him more darkness, and he was desperate for a creative outlet to channel it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s when he found the duduk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was suffering, and I was tremendously isolated, um, and to find kind of a meaning within myself, I was in a lot of pain, psychological pain, and the duduk spoke to that. It worked beautifully, I wouldn’t say it’s cheaper than therapy [[laughs]].\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we return, Khatch’s duduk career takes off – and takes him around the world. Stay with us…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When Khatch discovered the duduk in college, he had finally found an instrument that could express what he was feeling inside. His initial interest grew into a full fledged career.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of duduk music\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the past ten years, Khatch has sung and performed the duduk all over the world. He’s recorded five studio albums, all featuring the duduk and voice — including an album of Armenian lullabies. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lullabies across cultures have been traditionally performed by women, and passed down through their voices. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not that Armenian males don’t sing to their sons and daughters, but I wanted to make kind of a public statement around it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Khatch decided to record an album of Armenian lullabies and songs for children, which he released in 2019. He was the first person to do this in a male voice\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">lullaby plays\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Underneath all of that, I was also dealing with being raised without a father, saying, “How did that shape the masculine and the male that I am?” And in what sense can I invite others, in this case, the masculine to be vulnerable, to be open, to be tender.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because the pandemic hit right after the album release he didn’t get many chances to perform it. As fate would have it, he performed that album for the first time at a children’s festival in Turkey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Flying Carpet Festival brings music and arts to kids displaced by conflicts like the Syrian civil war and others in the region\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Singing Armenian to Kurdish, to Arab, to Turkish children was profound because I was a singing about childhood, about innocence, about those energies that in a sense, I hope, we all protect. And in the light of actually what’s happened in Gaza, we failed to do. Just saying it as I see it, we failed to protect children. The most vulnerable, yet, most open of our humanity.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A simple song for a child can be a sanctuary. Take this lullaby from Khatch’s album: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I perform it, I actually tear up as well, it moves a lot in me. It says, the sun is your father, the moon is your mother, the trees rock you. And, you know, it’s elemental.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatch was moved by the story the lullaby told about the relationship between the singer and the land. But what he \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">didn’t\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> know when he recorded this album, was that the meaning of that song would soon change for him.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The song comes from a village in Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in the former Soviet Union and with a history dating back thousands of years. But just two years ago, conflict escalated between Armenia and Azerbaijan, neighboring countries who both claimed the region. In 2023, more than 120,000 Armenians fled their homes, carrying their belongings and their songs with them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatch now holds onto this music, as a way to hold onto a piece of his people’s history. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fact that you’re singing it, you’re carrying part of a tradition that has endured. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Music and culture are not fixed in stone, he says, nor can they be easily erased. These troubadour love songs and lullabies come back to life whenever they’re heard or played.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And hopefully they remain with us as, as more people, more artists see the value of keeping alive these precious jewels.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elize Manoukian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khatch is now working on his 6th album, and has spent hundreds of hours composing and arranging original pieces out of these cultural relics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the duduk’s power doesn’t just come from what it keeps alive from the past. For Khatch, it’s a doorway to something greater than himself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The duduk allows him to say what words often fail to capture. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Studio recording of duduk \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Khatchadour Khatchadourian: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I find myself in my own studio. It’s a lot of darkness I’m going through in a sad moment, that I just put my headphones, I start the practice of playing the instrument. And I feel my soul exalted, something is lifted. And then aww, like just as if I’m among fields of stars or something transformative deep down happened. Yet I am in my studio. So I didn’t go to another edge of the universe, so this instrument does that to you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Khatchadour Khatchadourian, the Duduk Whisperer. His story came to us from producer Elize Manoukian. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This story first aired on \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The California Report Magazine. Be sure to check out their podcast for more stories from around the Golden State. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This episode was produced by Victoria Mauleon, Suzie Racho, Brendan Willard, Katherine Monahan, Srishti Prabha and Sasha Khokha. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bay Curious team is Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Both Bay Curious and The California Report Magazine are made in San Francisco at KQED – your local public media station. Join thousands of your neighbors in supported us today at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. I’ll see ya next time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "the-san-francisco-landmark-youve-never-heard-of-unless-youre-french",
"title": "The San Francisco Landmark You’ve Never Heard Of … Unless You’re French",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story first published on August 17, 2023.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Helen Walker has lived in the Bay Area for decades. A few years ago, her daughter’s friend came to visit from Grenoble, France.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘Before I leave, I have to go see The Blue House.’ And I’m like, ‘The Blue House? What are you talking about?’” Walker said. She’s no stranger to French language and culture — “I took twelve years of French and it was my major in college. And I love going to France!” — but she had never heard of The Blue House. Turns out it’s a famous site of French pilgrimage hidden in plain sight in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The song that made a landmark\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Blue House sits at 3841 18th Street in the Castro, and on any given day you’re likely to bump into a throng of French tourists snapping photos out front. That’s because the home is the subject of a beloved song by French singer-songwriter Maxime Le Forestier called “San Francisco.” It was featured on his 1972 debut album, \u003cem>Mon Frère\u003c/em>, and quickly became a smash hit in France. The album sold more than a million copies, and “San Francisco” was its most famous song. The song has lived on as a French classic, and is still widely known.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a beautiful song, even if you don’t speak French. Give it a listen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-XkBwoiAog\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The lyrics and story behind the song\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the first verse, the singer describes a blue house that backs onto a hill. You walk up and don’t bother knocking because the people who live there threw out the key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>C’est une maison bleue\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Adossée à la colline\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>On y vient à pied\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>On ne frappe pas\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Ceux qui vivent là\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Ont jeté la clé\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the perfect introduction to daily life at the real Blue House, as it was in 1971, when Maxime Le Forestier stayed for a visit. It was a hippie commune called Hunga Dunga, mostly inhabited by a bunch of young LGBTQ artists and activists. Le Forestier next describes the happy-go-lucky, communal atmosphere at the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>On se retrouve ensemble\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Après des années de route\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Et on vient s’asseoir\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Autour du repas\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Tout le monde est là\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>À cinq heures du soir\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He sings about a daily ritual at The Blue House — where everyone sits down to eat a meal together at 5 p.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had no rules whatsoever,” said Phil Polizatto, a resident of The Blue House during Le Forestier’s visit, who \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Hunga-Dunga-Phil-Polizatto/dp/1598587374\">wrote a book about the Hunga Dunga.\u003c/a> “The only rule we had was that at 5 p.m. everybody had to be sitting on the floor for dinner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Food was a central focus of the Hunga Dunga, and they operated on a barter system, often delivering food to other communes in the area, like the Golden Aura Commune and the Friends of Perfection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We delivered food to around 14 communes for free,” Polizatto said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11958389\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11958389 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-800x618.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"618\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-800x618.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-1020x788.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-1536x1187.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maxime Le Forestier and his sister, Catherine, came to stay with the Hunga Dungas in 1971. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Phil Polizatto)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When they weren’t busy pushing back against capitalism, Phil says the Hunga Dungas did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex. People came and went. It was a bit of a free for all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just were a bunch of freaks who wound up living together in this big house,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Phil says one of the roommates, a Belgian guy named Luc, invited Maxime Le Forestier and his sister, Catherine, to stay at the house while they were traveling around the U.S. No one in the house had much of an idea that the Le Forestier siblings were starting to make a name for themselves as musicians in their native France. During the 1971 visit, Phil says the Hunga Dungas didn’t think much of the young Frenchman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was like a lamp. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do the dishes. He didn’t vacuum the floor,” Polizatto said. “He just sat in that chair with his guitar, strumming a little bit. And of course, my immediate impression was, ‘Wow, what a slouch.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a few weeks, the Le Forestiers moved on. Then, about a year later, the Hunga Dungas received a record in the mail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We opened it up and it was Maxim’s first album. And you know what? We put it in the bookcase and no one ever played it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11958393\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11958393 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478.jpg\" alt=\"A black and white portrait of a man sitting on a couch. He is looking slighly to the left. he has a soft expression on his face, dark heard a beard and mustache. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A 1973 photograph of Maxime Le Forestier whose album Mon Frère achieved great success. \u003ccite>(Daniel SIMON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until months later that roommate Luc suggested they give the album a listen. No one who lived in the house realized that that record was such a smash in France, and that its most famous song, “San Francisco,” was about them and their house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we heard the song ‘San Francisco,’ we were just simply blown away. I mean, what nicer thank you note could one be given than that song?” said Polizatto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[emailsignup newslettername=\"baycurious\" align=\"right\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Hunga Dunga community dissolved in the mid-1970s. Many of its members, including Phil, moved out of town. For decades, barely anyone in San Francisco knew the significance of The Blue House. At some point, it was even painted green.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2010 \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/parisian-finds-s-f-s-much-sung-of-blue-house-3173452.php\">journalist Alexis Venifleis rediscovered the house\u003c/a> and its story. The French Consulate in San Francisco petitioned the owners to repaint the facade blue. They did! And today there’s also a commemorative plaque outside with the singer’s face on it. Le Forestier returned to San Francisco in 2011 to celebrate the updates and meet with fans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11958396\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11958396 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143.jpg\" alt=\"A man stands centered in front of a blue Victorian home. He is framed by the house. He has white hair and is wearing a blue shirt with a black blazer over top. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1131\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143-800x471.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143-1020x601.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143-160x94.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143-1536x905.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">French singer Maxime Le Forestier returned to Maison Bleue on June 22, 2011 for a ceremony that commemorated the house, which was newly repainted in blue. \u003ccite>(Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price, host of Bay Curious. One thing I love about living in the San Francisco Bay Area is getting to meet people from all over the world who travel here for vacation. They give me perspective. I may have seen the Golden Gate Bridge a thousand times by now, but knowing other people pay good money to hop on a plane and come see it? I don’t know, it helps me maintain some reverence. Stoke my sense of wonder…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[A pop of street sound]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But sometimes the tourists know something that I don’t. They’ve come to see something I never knew was there. Which brings me to one Castro landmark that few people know anything about…Unless you’re French, that is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sylvie Walters: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">La fameuse Maison Bleue.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The famous Blue House. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sylvie Walters: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tous les Français connaissent la Maison Bleue et tous les Français veulent voir la Maison Bleue. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s San Francisco-based French tour guide Sylvie Walters. She says “All the French know the Blue House and all the French want to see the Blue House.” Take a stroll by 3841 18th Street in San Francisco and you’ll spot it … a pastel-blue Victorian that, while lovely, looks like many others that line the street—Except there’s a throng of French tourists outside.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today on the show: What makes the privately-owned Blue House in The Castro such a magnet for people from France? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Theme Music plays]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Listener Helen Walker, who’s based in Berkeley, asked us if we could share the story of the Blue House. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Helen Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I took twelve years of French and it was my major in college. And I love going to France. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Helen has lived in the Bay Area for decades. But she says the first she’d ever heard of this famous site of French pilgrimage was a few years ago, when her daughter’s twenty-something friend came to visit from Grenoble, France.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Helen Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And he said, “Before I leave, I have to go see the Blue House.” And I’m like, “The Blue House? What are you talking about?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The answer to this question seemed like something NPR Culture Correspondent Chloe Veltman might know. She’s half French. And she’s been living in San Francisco for more than twenty years. Hey Chloe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>B\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">onjour Olivia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What I didn’t know when I approached you about doing this story was your personal connection to it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s right, Olivia. So, my connection to the Blue House…stems from a song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>[Guitar intro to “San Francisco” by Maxime le Forestier]\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The song is called “San Francisco.” And it’s by French singer-songwriter Maxime Le Forestier. He wrote the track in 1971 after staying at the Blue House, in San Francisco’s Castro District, that summer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Opening verse of “San Francisco” up and in the clear: “\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">C’est une maison bleue, Adossée à la colline. On y vient à pied, on ne frappe pas. Ceux qui vivent là, ont jeté la clé…”]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maxime Le Forestier’s “San Francisco” was a big part of my childhood. The track was in my mom’s record collection. She’s from Paris. I couldn’t stop listening to this song as a kid. I kept putting it on mixtapes and playlists long after I moved out of my parents’ house. I was, and still am, entranced by the dusky, modal harmonies and the plaintiff guitar riff that sounds almost like a cowboy tune.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Chorus from the song up and in the clear: “…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Quand San Francisco s’embrume, Quand San Francisco s’allume, San Francisco, où êtes vous ? Liza et Luc, Sylvia, attendez-moi…” \u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I see what you mean…It has a Wild-West high-lonesome quality to it. \u003c/span> \u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, and this song made San Francisco seem like a magical place to me—a place I couldn’t even imagine visiting as I was growing up in stodgy, straight-laced England, let alone calling home now for almost a quarter of a century. It’s fair to say “San Francisco” inspired me to move to San Francisco. \u003c/span> \u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It’s a really pretty song. I can see why it lured you here. Tell us more about it. \u003c/span> \u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Sure! Well, “San Francisco” appeared on le Forestier’s first solo studio album, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mon Frère\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and quickly became the singer-songwriter’s first hit. He went on to become a major star in France. \u003c/span> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Maxime le Forestier singing the opening lines of “San Francisco”, up and in the clear: “…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">C’est une maison bleue / Adossée à la colline / On y vient à pied / On ne frappe pas/ Ceux qui vivent là / Ont jeté la clé…”]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In the first verse, the singer describes a blue house that backs onto a hill. You walk up, don’t bother knocking because the people who live there threw out the key. This is the perfect introduction to daily life at the Blue House: It was a hippie commune at the time, mostly inhabited by a bunch of young and idealistic LGBTQ artists and activists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Le Forestier goes on to describe the happy-go-lucky, communal atmosphere at the house. People are reunited there after years on the road. He also sings about a daily ritual at the blue house — where everyone sits down to eat a meal together at five o’clock in the evening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We had no rules whatsoever.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Phil Polizatto.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The only rule we had was that at 5:00 p.m. everybody had to be sitting on the floor for dinner.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Phil lived in the Blue House in the 1970s and is the author of a book about it that’s also been translated into French.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Phil actually gets namechecked in Le Forestier’s song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Verse from “San Francisco” mentioning Phil up and in the clear: “…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nageant dans le brouillard, Enlacés, roulant dans l’herbe, On écoutera Tom à la guitare, Phil à la quena, jusqu’à la nuit noire…” then duck under and out.]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> He’s singing: “Swimming in the fog, rolling in the grass entwined, we’ll listen to Tom on the guitar, Phil on the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">quena\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, long into the night.” Just in case you’re wondering, the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">quena\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is an ancient flute from the Central Andes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Burst of quena music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Anyway, Phil says the commune that lived at 3841 18th Street back then went by the name Hunga Dunga. It was part of a network of hippie houses around the city, like the Golden Aura Commune and the Friends of Perfection. Phil says they all operated on a barter system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> We delivered food to around fourteen communes for free.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And when they weren’t busy pushing back against capitalism, Phil says the Hunga Dungas basically did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex. People came and went. It was a bit of a free for all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We just were a bunch of freaks who wound up living together in this big house. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Phil says one of the roommates, a Belgian guy named Luc, invited Maxime le Forestier and his sister Catherine to stay at the house while they were traveling around the U.S. No one in the house…besides Luc…had much of an idea that the Le Forestier siblings were starting to make a name for themselves as musicians in their native France when they came to San Francisco in 1971. Phil says the Hunga Dungas didn’t think much of the young Frenchman.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> He was like a lamp. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do the dishes. He didn’t vacuum the floor. He just sat in that chair with his guitar, strumming a little bit. And of course, my immediate impression was, “Wow, what a slouch.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> After a few weeks, the Le Forestiers moved on. Then, about a year later, Phil says the Hunga Dungas received a record in the mail.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And we opened it up and it was Maxim’s first album. And you know what? We put it in the bookcase and no one ever played it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It wasn’t until months later that roommate Luc suggested they give the album a listen. The thing is, no one who lived in the house realized that that record was such a smash in France…it sold over one million copies…and that “San Francisco” was its most famous song. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[“San Francisco” plays again]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And when we heard the song “San Francisco,” we were just simply blown away. I mean, what nicer thank you note could one be given than that song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Song fades out]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The community dissolved in the mid-1970s. Many of its members, including Phil, moved out of town. For decades, barely anyone in San Francisco knew the significance of the Blue House. At some point, it was painted green. It wasn’t until just over a decade ago that an enterprising journalist rediscovered the house and its story. The French consulate here in San Francisco petitioned the owners to repaint the façade blue. They did, and today there’s also a commemorative plaque outside with the singer’s face on it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Sounds of people on a street]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Cathy Colonges:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Tout le monde a un souvenir autour de cette chanson, de l’endroit où on l’a appris. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s Cathy Colonges. She’s a visitor from the South of France I meet on a group tour of the neighborhood. As we stand outside the Blue House, Cathy says the song is so well known in her home country, many people can remember how they first came across it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Cathy Colonges:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> J’ai appris cette chanson avec une de mes cousines qui était un peu plus âgé que nous, qui nous la chanter et qui nous a fait aussi connaître Maxime Le Forestier. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In Cathy’s case, she learned to sing it as a kid from an older cousin, who also introduced her to more songs by Maxime Le Forestier. At that point, other random French people start to appear in front of the house. Our tour guide, Sylvie Walters, invites them to join us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Greetings exchanged “…Vous venez voir la maison bleue?” “Voilà, je savais même pas qu’elle était par là…”] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> People exchange stories about how they know the song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Person 1:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> On a tous chanté quand on avait quinze ans autour d’un feu, le soir, pendant les vacances, en été…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One person says she sang it when she was fifteen years old at night around the fire on vacation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Person 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mes parents la mettaient de temps en temps dans la voiture, mais…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Another says her parents put “San Francisco” on in the car from time to time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> [“ Un, deux, trois…”] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Before going our separate ways, we sing the song right there on 18th Street, in front of the house that inspired it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[People singing: “… C’est une maison bleue adossée à la colline. On y vient à pied, on ne frappe pas ceux qui vivent là etc…” Transitions into Maxime Le Forestier singing “San Francisco”…]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That was reporter Chloe Veltman…etc \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We shot a TikTok and Instagram video for this story, so if you want to see the house for yourself, check KQED’s accounts… We’re @KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are new to Bay Curious – Bonjour! WELCOME! We are so glad you’re here. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen so you don’t miss a future episode. If you dig our show, we’d also love if you left us a rating or review wherever you listen. Subscription numbers and ratings really help us out – so thanks for chippin in!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The show is produced by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldana and Holly Kernan.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I hope you have a wonderful week! Au revoir!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "What makes this particular Blue House so special? A song called 'San Francisco' by Maxime Le Forestier holds the answer. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>Read a transcript of this episode.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story first published on August 17, 2023.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Helen Walker has lived in the Bay Area for decades. A few years ago, her daughter’s friend came to visit from Grenoble, France.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘Before I leave, I have to go see The Blue House.’ And I’m like, ‘The Blue House? What are you talking about?’” Walker said. She’s no stranger to French language and culture — “I took twelve years of French and it was my major in college. And I love going to France!” — but she had never heard of The Blue House. Turns out it’s a famous site of French pilgrimage hidden in plain sight in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The song that made a landmark\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Blue House sits at 3841 18th Street in the Castro, and on any given day you’re likely to bump into a throng of French tourists snapping photos out front. That’s because the home is the subject of a beloved song by French singer-songwriter Maxime Le Forestier called “San Francisco.” It was featured on his 1972 debut album, \u003cem>Mon Frère\u003c/em>, and quickly became a smash hit in France. The album sold more than a million copies, and “San Francisco” was its most famous song. The song has lived on as a French classic, and is still widely known.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a beautiful song, even if you don’t speak French. Give it a listen.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/9-XkBwoiAog'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/9-XkBwoiAog'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003ch2>The lyrics and story behind the song\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the first verse, the singer describes a blue house that backs onto a hill. You walk up and don’t bother knocking because the people who live there threw out the key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>C’est une maison bleue\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Adossée à la colline\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>On y vient à pied\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>On ne frappe pas\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Ceux qui vivent là\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Ont jeté la clé\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the perfect introduction to daily life at the real Blue House, as it was in 1971, when Maxime Le Forestier stayed for a visit. It was a hippie commune called Hunga Dunga, mostly inhabited by a bunch of young LGBTQ artists and activists. Le Forestier next describes the happy-go-lucky, communal atmosphere at the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>On se retrouve ensemble\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Après des années de route\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Et on vient s’asseoir\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Autour du repas\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Tout le monde est là\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>À cinq heures du soir\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He sings about a daily ritual at The Blue House — where everyone sits down to eat a meal together at 5 p.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had no rules whatsoever,” said Phil Polizatto, a resident of The Blue House during Le Forestier’s visit, who \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Hunga-Dunga-Phil-Polizatto/dp/1598587374\">wrote a book about the Hunga Dunga.\u003c/a> “The only rule we had was that at 5 p.m. everybody had to be sitting on the floor for dinner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Food was a central focus of the Hunga Dunga, and they operated on a barter system, often delivering food to other communes in the area, like the Golden Aura Commune and the Friends of Perfection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We delivered food to around 14 communes for free,” Polizatto said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11958389\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11958389 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-800x618.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"618\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-800x618.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-1020x788.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house-1536x1187.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/hungadungas-3-in-backyard-at-the-blue-house.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maxime Le Forestier and his sister, Catherine, came to stay with the Hunga Dungas in 1971. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Phil Polizatto)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When they weren’t busy pushing back against capitalism, Phil says the Hunga Dungas did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex. People came and went. It was a bit of a free for all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just were a bunch of freaks who wound up living together in this big house,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Phil says one of the roommates, a Belgian guy named Luc, invited Maxime Le Forestier and his sister, Catherine, to stay at the house while they were traveling around the U.S. No one in the house had much of an idea that the Le Forestier siblings were starting to make a name for themselves as musicians in their native France. During the 1971 visit, Phil says the Hunga Dungas didn’t think much of the young Frenchman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was like a lamp. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do the dishes. He didn’t vacuum the floor,” Polizatto said. “He just sat in that chair with his guitar, strumming a little bit. And of course, my immediate impression was, ‘Wow, what a slouch.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a few weeks, the Le Forestiers moved on. Then, about a year later, the Hunga Dungas received a record in the mail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We opened it up and it was Maxim’s first album. And you know what? We put it in the bookcase and no one ever played it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11958393\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11958393 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478.jpg\" alt=\"A black and white portrait of a man sitting on a couch. He is looking slighly to the left. he has a soft expression on his face, dark heard a beard and mustache. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1451807478-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A 1973 photograph of Maxime Le Forestier whose album Mon Frère achieved great success. \u003ccite>(Daniel SIMON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until months later that roommate Luc suggested they give the album a listen. No one who lived in the house realized that that record was such a smash in France, and that its most famous song, “San Francisco,” was about them and their house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we heard the song ‘San Francisco,’ we were just simply blown away. I mean, what nicer thank you note could one be given than that song?” said Polizatto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Hunga Dunga community dissolved in the mid-1970s. Many of its members, including Phil, moved out of town. For decades, barely anyone in San Francisco knew the significance of The Blue House. At some point, it was even painted green.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2010 \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/parisian-finds-s-f-s-much-sung-of-blue-house-3173452.php\">journalist Alexis Venifleis rediscovered the house\u003c/a> and its story. The French Consulate in San Francisco petitioned the owners to repaint the facade blue. They did! And today there’s also a commemorative plaque outside with the singer’s face on it. Le Forestier returned to San Francisco in 2011 to celebrate the updates and meet with fans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11958396\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11958396 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143.jpg\" alt=\"A man stands centered in front of a blue Victorian home. He is framed by the house. He has white hair and is wearing a blue shirt with a black blazer over top. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1131\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143-800x471.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143-1020x601.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143-160x94.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/GettyImages-1559346143-1536x905.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">French singer Maxime Le Forestier returned to Maison Bleue on June 22, 2011 for a ceremony that commemorated the house, which was newly repainted in blue. \u003ccite>(Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price, host of Bay Curious. One thing I love about living in the San Francisco Bay Area is getting to meet people from all over the world who travel here for vacation. They give me perspective. I may have seen the Golden Gate Bridge a thousand times by now, but knowing other people pay good money to hop on a plane and come see it? I don’t know, it helps me maintain some reverence. Stoke my sense of wonder…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[A pop of street sound]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But sometimes the tourists know something that I don’t. They’ve come to see something I never knew was there. Which brings me to one Castro landmark that few people know anything about…Unless you’re French, that is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sylvie Walters: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">La fameuse Maison Bleue.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The famous Blue House. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sylvie Walters: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tous les Français connaissent la Maison Bleue et tous les Français veulent voir la Maison Bleue. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s San Francisco-based French tour guide Sylvie Walters. She says “All the French know the Blue House and all the French want to see the Blue House.” Take a stroll by 3841 18th Street in San Francisco and you’ll spot it … a pastel-blue Victorian that, while lovely, looks like many others that line the street—Except there’s a throng of French tourists outside.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today on the show: What makes the privately-owned Blue House in The Castro such a magnet for people from France? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Theme Music plays]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003ci>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Listener Helen Walker, who’s based in Berkeley, asked us if we could share the story of the Blue House. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Helen Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I took twelve years of French and it was my major in college. And I love going to France. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Helen has lived in the Bay Area for decades. But she says the first she’d ever heard of this famous site of French pilgrimage was a few years ago, when her daughter’s twenty-something friend came to visit from Grenoble, France.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Helen Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And he said, “Before I leave, I have to go see the Blue House.” And I’m like, “The Blue House? What are you talking about?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The answer to this question seemed like something NPR Culture Correspondent Chloe Veltman might know. She’s half French. And she’s been living in San Francisco for more than twenty years. Hey Chloe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>B\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">onjour Olivia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What I didn’t know when I approached you about doing this story was your personal connection to it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s right, Olivia. So, my connection to the Blue House…stems from a song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>[Guitar intro to “San Francisco” by Maxime le Forestier]\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The song is called “San Francisco.” And it’s by French singer-songwriter Maxime Le Forestier. He wrote the track in 1971 after staying at the Blue House, in San Francisco’s Castro District, that summer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Opening verse of “San Francisco” up and in the clear: “\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">C’est une maison bleue, Adossée à la colline. On y vient à pied, on ne frappe pas. Ceux qui vivent là, ont jeté la clé…”]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maxime Le Forestier’s “San Francisco” was a big part of my childhood. The track was in my mom’s record collection. She’s from Paris. I couldn’t stop listening to this song as a kid. I kept putting it on mixtapes and playlists long after I moved out of my parents’ house. I was, and still am, entranced by the dusky, modal harmonies and the plaintiff guitar riff that sounds almost like a cowboy tune.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Chorus from the song up and in the clear: “…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Quand San Francisco s’embrume, Quand San Francisco s’allume, San Francisco, où êtes vous ? Liza et Luc, Sylvia, attendez-moi…” \u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I see what you mean…It has a Wild-West high-lonesome quality to it. \u003c/span> \u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, and this song made San Francisco seem like a magical place to me—a place I couldn’t even imagine visiting as I was growing up in stodgy, straight-laced England, let alone calling home now for almost a quarter of a century. It’s fair to say “San Francisco” inspired me to move to San Francisco. \u003c/span> \u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It’s a really pretty song. I can see why it lured you here. Tell us more about it. \u003c/span> \u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Sure! Well, “San Francisco” appeared on le Forestier’s first solo studio album, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mon Frère\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and quickly became the singer-songwriter’s first hit. He went on to become a major star in France. \u003c/span> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Maxime le Forestier singing the opening lines of “San Francisco”, up and in the clear: “…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">C’est une maison bleue / Adossée à la colline / On y vient à pied / On ne frappe pas/ Ceux qui vivent là / Ont jeté la clé…”]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In the first verse, the singer describes a blue house that backs onto a hill. You walk up, don’t bother knocking because the people who live there threw out the key. This is the perfect introduction to daily life at the Blue House: It was a hippie commune at the time, mostly inhabited by a bunch of young and idealistic LGBTQ artists and activists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Le Forestier goes on to describe the happy-go-lucky, communal atmosphere at the house. People are reunited there after years on the road. He also sings about a daily ritual at the blue house — where everyone sits down to eat a meal together at five o’clock in the evening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We had no rules whatsoever.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Phil Polizatto.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The only rule we had was that at 5:00 p.m. everybody had to be sitting on the floor for dinner.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Phil lived in the Blue House in the 1970s and is the author of a book about it that’s also been translated into French.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Phil actually gets namechecked in Le Forestier’s song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Verse from “San Francisco” mentioning Phil up and in the clear: “…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nageant dans le brouillard, Enlacés, roulant dans l’herbe, On écoutera Tom à la guitare, Phil à la quena, jusqu’à la nuit noire…” then duck under and out.]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> He’s singing: “Swimming in the fog, rolling in the grass entwined, we’ll listen to Tom on the guitar, Phil on the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">quena\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, long into the night.” Just in case you’re wondering, the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">quena\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is an ancient flute from the Central Andes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Burst of quena music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Anyway, Phil says the commune that lived at 3841 18th Street back then went by the name Hunga Dunga. It was part of a network of hippie houses around the city, like the Golden Aura Commune and the Friends of Perfection. Phil says they all operated on a barter system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> We delivered food to around fourteen communes for free.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And when they weren’t busy pushing back against capitalism, Phil says the Hunga Dungas basically did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex. People came and went. It was a bit of a free for all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We just were a bunch of freaks who wound up living together in this big house. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Phil says one of the roommates, a Belgian guy named Luc, invited Maxime le Forestier and his sister Catherine to stay at the house while they were traveling around the U.S. No one in the house…besides Luc…had much of an idea that the Le Forestier siblings were starting to make a name for themselves as musicians in their native France when they came to San Francisco in 1971. Phil says the Hunga Dungas didn’t think much of the young Frenchman.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> He was like a lamp. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do the dishes. He didn’t vacuum the floor. He just sat in that chair with his guitar, strumming a little bit. And of course, my immediate impression was, “Wow, what a slouch.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> After a few weeks, the Le Forestiers moved on. Then, about a year later, Phil says the Hunga Dungas received a record in the mail.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And we opened it up and it was Maxim’s first album. And you know what? We put it in the bookcase and no one ever played it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It wasn’t until months later that roommate Luc suggested they give the album a listen. The thing is, no one who lived in the house realized that that record was such a smash in France…it sold over one million copies…and that “San Francisco” was its most famous song. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[“San Francisco” plays again]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003cb>Phil Polizatto:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And when we heard the song “San Francisco,” we were just simply blown away. I mean, what nicer thank you note could one be given than that song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Song fades out]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The community dissolved in the mid-1970s. Many of its members, including Phil, moved out of town. For decades, barely anyone in San Francisco knew the significance of the Blue House. At some point, it was painted green. It wasn’t until just over a decade ago that an enterprising journalist rediscovered the house and its story. The French consulate here in San Francisco petitioned the owners to repaint the façade blue. They did, and today there’s also a commemorative plaque outside with the singer’s face on it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Sounds of people on a street]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Cathy Colonges:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Tout le monde a un souvenir autour de cette chanson, de l’endroit où on l’a appris. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s Cathy Colonges. She’s a visitor from the South of France I meet on a group tour of the neighborhood. As we stand outside the Blue House, Cathy says the song is so well known in her home country, many people can remember how they first came across it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Cathy Colonges:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> J’ai appris cette chanson avec une de mes cousines qui était un peu plus âgé que nous, qui nous la chanter et qui nous a fait aussi connaître Maxime Le Forestier. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In Cathy’s case, she learned to sing it as a kid from an older cousin, who also introduced her to more songs by Maxime Le Forestier. At that point, other random French people start to appear in front of the house. Our tour guide, Sylvie Walters, invites them to join us. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Greetings exchanged “…Vous venez voir la maison bleue?” “Voilà, je savais même pas qu’elle était par là…”] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> People exchange stories about how they know the song.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Person 1:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> On a tous chanté quand on avait quinze ans autour d’un feu, le soir, pendant les vacances, en été…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One person says she sang it when she was fifteen years old at night around the fire on vacation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Person 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mes parents la mettaient de temps en temps dans la voiture, mais…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Another says her parents put “San Francisco” on in the car from time to time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> [“ Un, deux, trois…”] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Chloe Veltman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Before going our separate ways, we sing the song right there on 18th Street, in front of the house that inspired it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[People singing: “… C’est une maison bleue adossée à la colline. On y vient à pied, on ne frappe pas ceux qui vivent là etc…” Transitions into Maxime Le Forestier singing “San Francisco”…]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That was reporter Chloe Veltman…etc \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We shot a TikTok and Instagram video for this story, so if you want to see the house for yourself, check KQED’s accounts… We’re @KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are new to Bay Curious – Bonjour! WELCOME! We are so glad you’re here. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen so you don’t miss a future episode. If you dig our show, we’d also love if you left us a rating or review wherever you listen. Subscription numbers and ratings really help us out – so thanks for chippin in!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The show is produced by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldana and Holly Kernan.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I hope you have a wonderful week! Au revoir!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"mindshift": {
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"order": 12
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
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