How South San Francisco Became the Birthplace of Biotechnology
The Eccentric Personalities Behind Sunnyside Conservatory, a 120-Year-Old Garden in San Francisco
A South Bay Mystery: What Happened to All the Tree Frogs?
Ciao Bella: Do Italians Still Live in San Francisco’s North Beach?
The Rise and Fall of the Bay Area Streetcar Transit System
Is It Crow-maggedon? Why Crows Are Flocking to Bay Area Cities Each Winter
How a Remarkable 19th-Century Revolutionary Priest From Ukraine Ended Up in Hayward
Inside the San Francisco Church Where John Coltrane is a Saint
How the Bay Area’s Gay Bars Became a Battleground for LGBTQ+ Rights in the 1950s
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"slug": "how-south-san-francisco-became-the-birthplace-of-biotechnology",
"title": "How South San Francisco Became the Birthplace of Biotechnology",
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"headTitle": "How South San Francisco Became the Birthplace of Biotechnology | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long before sleek \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11933882/beyond-vaccines-biotech-is-booming-in-the-bay-area-despite-a-cooling-economy\">biotech campuses\u003c/a> and venture capital arrived, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/south-san-francisco\">South San Francisco\u003c/a> had a very different identity. For much of the 20th century, it absorbed the Bay Area’s mess — industries that were noisy, dirty, politically inconvenient, or simply unwanted elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slaughterhouses. Steel mills. Shipyards. Freight terminals. Businesses that needed elbow room and cheap land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1923, the city declared its role in giant white letters on a hillside above town: “South San Francisco The Industrial City.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“South San Francisco, like Emeryville, were industrial suburbs,” said Richard Walker, a professor emeritus of economic and urban geography at the University of California, Berkeley. “These were set up expressly to shelter industry from taxes, from protest, from labor, and they worked very effectively.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Town councils limited housing, zoned big swaths for heavy industry, and kept taxes and rules light. The idea was to park loud, polluting businesses far from residential neighborhoods — and make them easy to operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12075369\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12075369\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED-1536x1131.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aerial view of South San Francisco’s Sign Hill, circa 1930. \u003ccite>(Courtesy South San Francisco Public Library Local History Collection)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Beyond town borders, the Bay Area as a whole was comfortable with risk and experimentation, a mindset that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You had a lot of young people, a lot of skilled workers, and a lot of capital,” Walker said of the Bay Area. “So this was an intellectual center, an industrial center, a capitalist center because of Bank of America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A risk-tolerant region meets a risky science\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Those conditions mattered when a new science arrived in the 1970s. Biotechnology required not just smart people and money, but a tolerance for uncertainty and perceived risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists were learning how to cut and paste genes — editing code, but for living things. The technique, called recombinant DNA, made it possible to insert genetic instructions into bacteria and harness them to manufacture human hormones and medicines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days, that power was both thrilling and unsettling. Scientists worried that engineered microbes could behave unpredictably — escape the lab, spread through air or water, or create entirely new biological risks they didn’t yet know how to contain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The concerns were serious enough that, in 1975, many molecular biologists took an extraordinary step: they voluntarily halted their own research. About 150 scientists gathered at an oceanside retreat in Pacific Grove called Asilomar. For four days, they debated the dangers, negotiated boundaries, and ultimately agreed on a set of guidelines for conducting recombinant DNA research safely.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Public backlash\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>But then the public learned about what was happening inside labs. To some, tinkering with DNA felt apocalyptic because scientists might create new life they couldn’t control. News headlines leaned into worst-case scenarios: superbugs and lab accidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the era of the Andromeda Strain,” said Robin Wolfe Scheffler, historian of biology and medicine at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[aside postID=news_12074947 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00252_TV-KQED.jpg']Trust in science and government was low. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11861810/no-the-tuskegee-study-is-not-the-top-reason-some-black-americans-question-the-covid-19-vaccine\">Tuskegee syphilis study\u003c/a> had recently been exposed, revealing profound abuses. Americans were reckoning with the health impacts of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11617827/this-vietnam-paratrooper-was-exposed-to-agent-orange-today-he-lives-with-parkinsons\">Agent Orange\u003c/a>. Nuclear anxiety lingered after the meltdown at \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/three/\">Three Mile Island\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Backlash spread quickly. Cities began debating whether they should regulate or ban genetic engineering. In Cambridge, Mass., officials considered outlawing it altogether. In Berkeley and San Francisco, protesters marched, chanting slogans like, “We will not be cloned.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For researchers hoping to commercialize their discoveries, this created a bottleneck. Biotech startups needed large laboratories, sewer hookups, industrial equipment, and stable local rules. They needed places without residential neighbors ready to revolt. A place like South San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Proof of concept\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the mid-1970s, South San Francisco’s leaders were actively searching for a new economic base. The steel mills were mostly gone. Meatpacking was shrinking. Shipping was slowing. When a young venture capitalist named Bob Swanson arrived with an idea that scared much of the country, they didn’t recoil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swanson was newly laid off from a venture capital firm and living in San Francisco, broke and uncertain about his future. Convinced biotechnology was poised to take off, he cold-called a scruffy, long-haired biochemist named Herbert Boyer at the University of California, San Francisco, who agreed to a 20-minute meeting on a Friday afternoon. The casual meeting was so successful that they decided to pool $1,000 and start a new company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074375\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074375\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Genentech headquarters at 1 DNA Way in South San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2026. South San Francisco was historically an industrial area, housing shipyards, slaughterhouses and a steel mill. Now it’s a biotech hub. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Swanson floated the name Herbob — for Herb and Bob. Boyer vetoed it and suggested Genentech, short for Genetic Engineering and Technology. More marketable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They couldn’t afford office space in San Francisco. Plus, keeping a private company inside UCSF’s public labs raised thorny questions about who owned the science. (Those tensions would later surface in a long-running patent dispute between UCSF and Genentech tied to some of the earliest recombinant DNA research, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/1999/11/genentech-pays-off-ucsf/\">a case\u003c/a> the two sides settled in 1999.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They landed in South San Francisco. Genentech’s first office sat off East Grand Avenue, next door to a pornography studio. There were few residents to complain, and plenty of industrial space suitable for fermentation tanks and pipes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the national debate over genetic engineering raged, Genentech’s scientists worked quietly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1977, they produced the first synthetic human insulin using genetically engineered bacteria, a breakthrough that transformed diabetes care and proved biotechnology could work at scale. Until then, people with diabetes relied on insulin extracted from cows and pigs: lifesaving, but imperfect. Genentech’s insulin was identical to the human version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The success triggered a cascade. Former Genentech scientists founded new companies nearby to develop drugs for HIV and cancer. Warehouses filled. A cluster emerged. Today, South San Francisco is one of the most valuable square miles in American science, with more than 250 biotechnology companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Hey everyone. I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and this is Bay Curious.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today we head to South San Francisco. You pass it when you’re driving north from the airport along Highway 101– there are giant white letters carved into a hillside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They read: “The Industrial City.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Faris Alikhan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It used to be meatpacking plants and steel foundries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Faris Alikhan grew up in South San Francisco, went to high school there — and about half his graduating class went on to work in biotech. His mom did too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Faris Alikhan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why did it become this hub of biotechnology? People move here from all around the world to work in that one industry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Biotechnology is a process. Scientists take a living cell, like yeast or bacteria, and program them to make medicine. They grow those cells in massive tanks — like a brewery — and harvest what the cells produce to make vaccines, antibiotics, and cancer treatments. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, there are more than 250 biotech companies in South San Francisco, including Genentech. Faris wondered why \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South San Francisco\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and not closer to an educational hub, like Stanford or Berkeley? How and why did this stretch of waterfront become the birthplace of biotechnology? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Turns out he’s not alone in wondering this. Today’s question won a public voting round on \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED health correspondent Lesley McClurg headed to South San Francisco to find out.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When you drive down DNA way in South San Francisco it’s a little like a science fiction set. Shuttle buses glide between glass towers. Doctoral students sip matcha with CEOs. Researchers slip in workouts between experiments. Every amenity is available inside a self-contained city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Low rumble of a freight train\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But 100 years ago this stretch of land was nicknamed the smokestack capital of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Peninsula\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peninsula\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">… Freight terminals. Shipyards. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Archival clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> By July 1944 nearly 16,000 men and women were employed in the shipyards all playing a role in the country’s victory.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a dirty, loud, industrial area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> South San Francisco, like Emeryville, they were industrial suburbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Richard Walker is a professor emeritus of economic and urban geography at UC Berkeley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> These were these were set up expressly to shelter industry from taxes, from protest, from labor and they worked very effectively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the early and mid-20th century, local governments actively steered factories, warehouses, and refineries into these fringe cities. Town councils zoned big swaths of land for heavy industry. They limited housing, and kept taxes and rules light. The idea was to park the loud, dirty stuff far from residential neighborhoods — and make it easy for companies to operate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beyond the town’s borders, Walker says the Bay Area as a region was also unusually comfortable with risk and experimentation, a mindset that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You had a lot of young people, a lot of skilled workers, and a lot of capital. So this was an intellectual center, an industrial center, a capitalist center because of Bank of America, lots of capital available through San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of that mattered when a new science came along in the 70s. Biotech needed smart people and money — AND it needed places willing to tolerate risk. And that’s where South San Francisco stood apart. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Robin Wolfe Scheffler is a historian of biology and medicine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A community that was very used to dealing with potentially hazardous or unpleasant and industrial neighbors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And those industries were already in flux. The steel mills were mostly gone. Meatpacking was shrinking. Shipping was slowing. South San Francisco had space, infrastructure that was up for grabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For people seeking to work with recombinant DNA in the late 1970s, that was actually perfect. Because many of the cities next to academic centers of molecular biology research were very concerned about its potential health hazards.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Genetic research was controversial. And in some cities, like Berkely or Palo Alto, very unwelcome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NewsHour clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The hottest scientific controversy since man learned to split the atom is now raging over a new branch of biology called genetic engineering. This tampering with the most basic ingredients of life raises moral and ethical problems as grave as nuclear fission did.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists had just learned how to cut and paste genes — kind of like editing code, but for living things. This technique, called recombinant DNA, allows researchers to use special enzymes to slip pieces of genetic material into bacteria. Suddenly it seemed possible to rewrite the instructions inside living things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was both exciting and terrifying. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NewsHour clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It might be a new drug of tremendous value in fighting disease, or it might be a new virus terribly dangerous to man. Some scientists want the research banned, and a large number want it controlled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even molecular biologists were spooked by the possibilities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The scientific community was divided over how hazardous this potential technique was.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were so worried that they called a halt to their own work – and decided to convene a meeting. In 1975, about 150 scientists gathered in California at an oceanside retreat in Pacific Grove called Asilomar. For four days they argued, negotiated, and finally agreed on a set of guidelines for doing recombinant DNA research safely.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then the public learned about what was happening inside labs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is the era of the Andromeda strain, this is the era of Three Mile Island, this is a a moment when overall there’s a huge amount of social concern over the impact of technology and science on the environment. and trust in the institutions of science and technology to regulate themselves is at a low ebb.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Americans had learned that the government had secretly let Black men suffer and die in the Tuskegee syphilis study. They were also just beginning to reckon with the health fallout of Agent Orange from the Vietnam War. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To some, tinkering with DNA felt apocalyptic. People worried engineered bacteria could escape the lab — through the air, water, or sewers — and make people sick. Others feared scientists were crossing an ethical line, creating new life they couldn’t control. Headlines leaned into worst-case scenarios: superbugs and lab accidents.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By 1975, there is a national conversation about what regulations should be placed on the use of recombinant DNA technology, and individual municipalities begin to consider whether or not they can regulate it as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Cambridge, Massachusetts, city officials considered banning the new technology altogether. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The debate over the new experiments has filled over into the streets. “We science for the people are here to try to bring the issues of this controversy to the public. To the people. Because the people are at risk and will benefit from the experiments that are being done with recombinant DNA.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The same was true in San Francisco and Berkeley. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People marching down the street chanting, we will not be cloned. And so this is a concern for anybody seeking to move outside of an academic laboratory to set up a fledgling biotechnology company because these companies need laboratories, they need space to work. They want to connect to sewers, they want to have the assurance that they’re going to be able to sort of operate on a stable basis.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cue South San Francisco. It’s a community that was very used to dealing with potentially hazardous or unpleasant products. Plus, the 1970s were a time of deindustrialization and so…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The city leaders were very concerned to find a new economic base.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when a young venture capitalist came knocking with an idea that could revive South San Francisco – city leaders welcomed him.\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\">Music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When we return – a behemoth is born. Stay with us.\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\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the 1970s, South San Francisco leaders were concerned about the dwindling industries that propped up its tax base. Little did they know the next big thing was waiting at their doorstep. KQED’s Lesley McClurg.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time Bob Swanson was an unemployed MIT graduate living in San Francisco. He’d just been laid off by the venture capital firm Kleiner and Perkins. According to his wife Judy he was living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He had no extra money, and he was really scared that what am I going to do next? I don’t want to be a failure in life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He started reading about biotechnology. And was quickly convinced this was the moment it could take off. So, he called a scruffy long haired biochemist named Herb Boyer at UCSF, who agreed to a 20 minute meeting on a Friday afternoon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bob showed up in his you know three piece vests outfit and and they hit it off. They decided to go get a beer afterwards. So the two of them decided to put what money they had which was five hundred dollars each to create a company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bob wanted to call it Herbob. For Herb and Bob. Herb thought that was a terrible idea. His suggestion was Genentech for Genetic Engineering and Technology. They couldn’t afford office space in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And keeping a private company inside UCSF’s public labs raised thorny questions about who owned the science. Those tensions would later surface in a long-running patent dispute between UCSF and Genentech tied to some of the earliest recombinant DNA research, a case the two sides settled in 1999. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Long before the lawyers got involved, Bob looked south of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He rented the most inexpensive office space that he could rent, which was in South San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The offices were in a nondescript building off East Grand Avenue.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South San Francisco was nothing then really, and they were welcoming, you know, of any idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Genentech’s new office was next door to a pornography studio. Because there were so few residential areas – nobody griped about what was in their backyard. And most importantly — there were plenty of empty warehouses large enough to handle vats, pipes, and fermentation columns that are key to biotechnology.\u003c/span>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, as the nation argued over the risks of genetic engineering. Scientists at Genentech were quietly at work in South San Francisco, on the verge of transforming diabetes care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NBC News clip from 1977: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists around the country today were paying close attention to reports from California that genetic engineering in a laboratory may be able to produce an insulin gene that could have all kinds of effects.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Until then, people with diabetes relied on insulin taken from cow and pig pancreases. It kept them alive, but it wasn’t an exact match for human insulin and could trigger immune reactions. Genentech made the first synthetic human insulin — identical to what our bodies produce, using genetically engineered bacteria. Production began in 1978. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>NBC News, 1977:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Genetic engineering has become big business\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Within a decade, companies founded by former Genentech scientists began filling nearby warehouses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>NBC News, 1977: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd entirely new firms have emerged solely devoted to genetic engineering.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A cluster formed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And over time, South San Francisco became one of the most valuable square miles in American science.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years that followed, work done here led to HIV drugs that changed the course of the AIDS epidemic. And cancer treatments were developed that are now standard care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While much of the country hesitated, South San Francisco made room. What had been noisy, polluted, and overlooked proved well suited for a risky new science — one that grew into a multibillion-dollar industry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was KQED Health Correspondent Lesley McClurg. \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 question was part of a Bay Curious voting round. Did you know we have a new one up on our website every month? This month, here’s what’s up for consideration…\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Question 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why is there truly a taco truck on every corner in San Francisco and San Mateo?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Question 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why are there huge fans over the tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Question 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s the story with the abandoned cop car in front of the airport off of 101? Everyone knows no actual cop is in it, so what’s the scoop with leaving there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Voting takes just a click — no registering or drama, I promise. Do it at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. You can become a member today, and enjoy all sorts of nice benefits — the biggest one though. Those warm fuzzies you get knowing you support shows like ours. Thanks!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey, Katherine Monahan, and everyone on Team KQED.\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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\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>Long before sleek \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11933882/beyond-vaccines-biotech-is-booming-in-the-bay-area-despite-a-cooling-economy\">biotech campuses\u003c/a> and venture capital arrived, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/south-san-francisco\">South San Francisco\u003c/a> had a very different identity. For much of the 20th century, it absorbed the Bay Area’s mess — industries that were noisy, dirty, politically inconvenient, or simply unwanted elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Slaughterhouses. Steel mills. Shipyards. Freight terminals. Businesses that needed elbow room and cheap land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1923, the city declared its role in giant white letters on a hillside above town: “South San Francisco The Industrial City.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“South San Francisco, like Emeryville, were industrial suburbs,” said Richard Walker, a professor emeritus of economic and urban geography at the University of California, Berkeley. “These were set up expressly to shelter industry from taxes, from protest, from labor, and they worked very effectively.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Town councils limited housing, zoned big swaths for heavy industry, and kept taxes and rules light. The idea was to park loud, polluting businesses far from residential neighborhoods — and make them easy to operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12075369\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12075369\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260304-South-San-Francisco-Archival-01-KQED-1536x1131.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aerial view of South San Francisco’s Sign Hill, circa 1930. \u003ccite>(Courtesy South San Francisco Public Library Local History Collection)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Beyond town borders, the Bay Area as a whole was comfortable with risk and experimentation, a mindset that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You had a lot of young people, a lot of skilled workers, and a lot of capital,” Walker said of the Bay Area. “So this was an intellectual center, an industrial center, a capitalist center because of Bank of America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A risk-tolerant region meets a risky science\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Those conditions mattered when a new science arrived in the 1970s. Biotechnology required not just smart people and money, but a tolerance for uncertainty and perceived risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists were learning how to cut and paste genes — editing code, but for living things. The technique, called recombinant DNA, made it possible to insert genetic instructions into bacteria and harness them to manufacture human hormones and medicines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days, that power was both thrilling and unsettling. Scientists worried that engineered microbes could behave unpredictably — escape the lab, spread through air or water, or create entirely new biological risks they didn’t yet know how to contain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The concerns were serious enough that, in 1975, many molecular biologists took an extraordinary step: they voluntarily halted their own research. About 150 scientists gathered at an oceanside retreat in Pacific Grove called Asilomar. For four days, they debated the dangers, negotiated boundaries, and ultimately agreed on a set of guidelines for conducting recombinant DNA research safely.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Public backlash\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>But then the public learned about what was happening inside labs. To some, tinkering with DNA felt apocalyptic because scientists might create new life they couldn’t control. News headlines leaned into worst-case scenarios: superbugs and lab accidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the era of the Andromeda Strain,” said Robin Wolfe Scheffler, historian of biology and medicine at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Trust in science and government was low. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11861810/no-the-tuskegee-study-is-not-the-top-reason-some-black-americans-question-the-covid-19-vaccine\">Tuskegee syphilis study\u003c/a> had recently been exposed, revealing profound abuses. Americans were reckoning with the health impacts of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11617827/this-vietnam-paratrooper-was-exposed-to-agent-orange-today-he-lives-with-parkinsons\">Agent Orange\u003c/a>. Nuclear anxiety lingered after the meltdown at \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/three/\">Three Mile Island\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Backlash spread quickly. Cities began debating whether they should regulate or ban genetic engineering. In Cambridge, Mass., officials considered outlawing it altogether. In Berkeley and San Francisco, protesters marched, chanting slogans like, “We will not be cloned.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For researchers hoping to commercialize their discoveries, this created a bottleneck. Biotech startups needed large laboratories, sewer hookups, industrial equipment, and stable local rules. They needed places without residential neighbors ready to revolt. A place like South San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Proof of concept\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the mid-1970s, South San Francisco’s leaders were actively searching for a new economic base. The steel mills were mostly gone. Meatpacking was shrinking. Shipping was slowing. When a young venture capitalist named Bob Swanson arrived with an idea that scared much of the country, they didn’t recoil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swanson was newly laid off from a venture capital firm and living in San Francisco, broke and uncertain about his future. Convinced biotechnology was poised to take off, he cold-called a scruffy, long-haired biochemist named Herbert Boyer at the University of California, San Francisco, who agreed to a 20-minute meeting on a Friday afternoon. The casual meeting was so successful that they decided to pool $1,000 and start a new company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074375\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074375\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SOUTHSF00325_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Genentech headquarters at 1 DNA Way in South San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2026. South San Francisco was historically an industrial area, housing shipyards, slaughterhouses and a steel mill. Now it’s a biotech hub. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Swanson floated the name Herbob — for Herb and Bob. Boyer vetoed it and suggested Genentech, short for Genetic Engineering and Technology. More marketable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They couldn’t afford office space in San Francisco. Plus, keeping a private company inside UCSF’s public labs raised thorny questions about who owned the science. (Those tensions would later surface in a long-running patent dispute between UCSF and Genentech tied to some of the earliest recombinant DNA research, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/1999/11/genentech-pays-off-ucsf/\">a case\u003c/a> the two sides settled in 1999.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They landed in South San Francisco. Genentech’s first office sat off East Grand Avenue, next door to a pornography studio. There were few residents to complain, and plenty of industrial space suitable for fermentation tanks and pipes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the national debate over genetic engineering raged, Genentech’s scientists worked quietly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1977, they produced the first synthetic human insulin using genetically engineered bacteria, a breakthrough that transformed diabetes care and proved biotechnology could work at scale. Until then, people with diabetes relied on insulin extracted from cows and pigs: lifesaving, but imperfect. Genentech’s insulin was identical to the human version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The success triggered a cascade. Former Genentech scientists founded new companies nearby to develop drugs for HIV and cancer. Warehouses filled. A cluster emerged. Today, South San Francisco is one of the most valuable square miles in American science, with more than 250 biotechnology companies.\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>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Hey everyone. I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and this is Bay Curious.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today we head to South San Francisco. You pass it when you’re driving north from the airport along Highway 101– there are giant white letters carved into a hillside. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They read: “The Industrial City.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Faris Alikhan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It used to be meatpacking plants and steel foundries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Faris Alikhan grew up in South San Francisco, went to high school there — and about half his graduating class went on to work in biotech. His mom did too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Faris Alikhan: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why did it become this hub of biotechnology? People move here from all around the world to work in that one industry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Biotechnology is a process. Scientists take a living cell, like yeast or bacteria, and program them to make medicine. They grow those cells in massive tanks — like a brewery — and harvest what the cells produce to make vaccines, antibiotics, and cancer treatments. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, there are more than 250 biotech companies in South San Francisco, including Genentech. Faris wondered why \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South San Francisco\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and not closer to an educational hub, like Stanford or Berkeley? How and why did this stretch of waterfront become the birthplace of biotechnology? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Turns out he’s not alone in wondering this. Today’s question won a public voting round on \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED health correspondent Lesley McClurg headed to South San Francisco to find out.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When you drive down DNA way in South San Francisco it’s a little like a science fiction set. Shuttle buses glide between glass towers. Doctoral students sip matcha with CEOs. Researchers slip in workouts between experiments. Every amenity is available inside a self-contained city. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Low rumble of a freight train\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But 100 years ago this stretch of land was nicknamed the smokestack capital of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Peninsula\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peninsula\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">… Freight terminals. Shipyards. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Archival clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> By July 1944 nearly 16,000 men and women were employed in the shipyards all playing a role in the country’s victory.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a dirty, loud, industrial area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> South San Francisco, like Emeryville, they were industrial suburbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Richard Walker is a professor emeritus of economic and urban geography at UC Berkeley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> These were these were set up expressly to shelter industry from taxes, from protest, from labor and they worked very effectively. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the early and mid-20th century, local governments actively steered factories, warehouses, and refineries into these fringe cities. Town councils zoned big swaths of land for heavy industry. They limited housing, and kept taxes and rules light. The idea was to park the loud, dirty stuff far from residential neighborhoods — and make it easy for companies to operate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beyond the town’s borders, Walker says the Bay Area as a region was also unusually comfortable with risk and experimentation, a mindset that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Richard Walker: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You had a lot of young people, a lot of skilled workers, and a lot of capital. So this was an intellectual center, an industrial center, a capitalist center because of Bank of America, lots of capital available through San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of that mattered when a new science came along in the 70s. Biotech needed smart people and money — AND it needed places willing to tolerate risk. And that’s where South San Francisco stood apart. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Robin Wolfe Scheffler is a historian of biology and medicine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A community that was very used to dealing with potentially hazardous or unpleasant and industrial neighbors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And those industries were already in flux. The steel mills were mostly gone. Meatpacking was shrinking. Shipping was slowing. South San Francisco had space, infrastructure that was up for grabs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For people seeking to work with recombinant DNA in the late 1970s, that was actually perfect. Because many of the cities next to academic centers of molecular biology research were very concerned about its potential health hazards.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Genetic research was controversial. And in some cities, like Berkely or Palo Alto, very unwelcome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NewsHour clip:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The hottest scientific controversy since man learned to split the atom is now raging over a new branch of biology called genetic engineering. This tampering with the most basic ingredients of life raises moral and ethical problems as grave as nuclear fission did.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists had just learned how to cut and paste genes — kind of like editing code, but for living things. This technique, called recombinant DNA, allows researchers to use special enzymes to slip pieces of genetic material into bacteria. Suddenly it seemed possible to rewrite the instructions inside living things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was both exciting and terrifying. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NewsHour clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It might be a new drug of tremendous value in fighting disease, or it might be a new virus terribly dangerous to man. Some scientists want the research banned, and a large number want it controlled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even molecular biologists were spooked by the possibilities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The scientific community was divided over how hazardous this potential technique was.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were so worried that they called a halt to their own work – and decided to convene a meeting. In 1975, about 150 scientists gathered in California at an oceanside retreat in Pacific Grove called Asilomar. For four days they argued, negotiated, and finally agreed on a set of guidelines for doing recombinant DNA research safely.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then the public learned about what was happening inside labs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is the era of the Andromeda strain, this is the era of Three Mile Island, this is a a moment when overall there’s a huge amount of social concern over the impact of technology and science on the environment. and trust in the institutions of science and technology to regulate themselves is at a low ebb.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Americans had learned that the government had secretly let Black men suffer and die in the Tuskegee syphilis study. They were also just beginning to reckon with the health fallout of Agent Orange from the Vietnam War. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To some, tinkering with DNA felt apocalyptic. People worried engineered bacteria could escape the lab — through the air, water, or sewers — and make people sick. Others feared scientists were crossing an ethical line, creating new life they couldn’t control. Headlines leaned into worst-case scenarios: superbugs and lab accidents.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By 1975, there is a national conversation about what regulations should be placed on the use of recombinant DNA technology, and individual municipalities begin to consider whether or not they can regulate it as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Cambridge, Massachusetts, city officials considered banning the new technology altogether. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News clip: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The debate over the new experiments has filled over into the streets. “We science for the people are here to try to bring the issues of this controversy to the public. To the people. Because the people are at risk and will benefit from the experiments that are being done with recombinant DNA.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The same was true in San Francisco and Berkeley. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People marching down the street chanting, we will not be cloned. And so this is a concern for anybody seeking to move outside of an academic laboratory to set up a fledgling biotechnology company because these companies need laboratories, they need space to work. They want to connect to sewers, they want to have the assurance that they’re going to be able to sort of operate on a stable basis.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cue South San Francisco. It’s a community that was very used to dealing with potentially hazardous or unpleasant products. Plus, the 1970s were a time of deindustrialization and so…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Robin Wolfe Scheffler: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The city leaders were very concerned to find a new economic base.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when a young venture capitalist came knocking with an idea that could revive South San Francisco – city leaders welcomed him.\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\">Music starts\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When we return – a behemoth is born. Stay with us.\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\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the 1970s, South San Francisco leaders were concerned about the dwindling industries that propped up its tax base. Little did they know the next big thing was waiting at their doorstep. KQED’s Lesley McClurg.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time Bob Swanson was an unemployed MIT graduate living in San Francisco. He’d just been laid off by the venture capital firm Kleiner and Perkins. According to his wife Judy he was living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He had no extra money, and he was really scared that what am I going to do next? I don’t want to be a failure in life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He started reading about biotechnology. And was quickly convinced this was the moment it could take off. So, he called a scruffy long haired biochemist named Herb Boyer at UCSF, who agreed to a 20 minute meeting on a Friday afternoon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bob showed up in his you know three piece vests outfit and and they hit it off. They decided to go get a beer afterwards. So the two of them decided to put what money they had which was five hundred dollars each to create a company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bob wanted to call it Herbob. For Herb and Bob. Herb thought that was a terrible idea. His suggestion was Genentech for Genetic Engineering and Technology. They couldn’t afford office space in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And keeping a private company inside UCSF’s public labs raised thorny questions about who owned the science. Those tensions would later surface in a long-running patent dispute between UCSF and Genentech tied to some of the earliest recombinant DNA research, a case the two sides settled in 1999. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Long before the lawyers got involved, Bob looked south of the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He rented the most inexpensive office space that he could rent, which was in South San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The offices were in a nondescript building off East Grand Avenue.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Judy Swanson: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">South San Francisco was nothing then really, and they were welcoming, you know, of any idea. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Genentech’s new office was next door to a pornography studio. Because there were so few residential areas – nobody griped about what was in their backyard. And most importantly — there were plenty of empty warehouses large enough to handle vats, pipes, and fermentation columns that are key to biotechnology.\u003c/span>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, as the nation argued over the risks of genetic engineering. Scientists at Genentech were quietly at work in South San Francisco, on the verge of transforming diabetes care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NBC News clip from 1977: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Scientists around the country today were paying close attention to reports from California that genetic engineering in a laboratory may be able to produce an insulin gene that could have all kinds of effects.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Until then, people with diabetes relied on insulin taken from cow and pig pancreases. It kept them alive, but it wasn’t an exact match for human insulin and could trigger immune reactions. Genentech made the first synthetic human insulin — identical to what our bodies produce, using genetically engineered bacteria. Production began in 1978. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>NBC News, 1977:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Genetic engineering has become big business\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Within a decade, companies founded by former Genentech scientists began filling nearby warehouses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>NBC News, 1977: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd entirely new firms have emerged solely devoted to genetic engineering.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A cluster formed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And over time, South San Francisco became one of the most valuable square miles in American science.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years that followed, work done here led to HIV drugs that changed the course of the AIDS epidemic. And cancer treatments were developed that are now standard care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While much of the country hesitated, South San Francisco made room. What had been noisy, polluted, and overlooked proved well suited for a risky new science — one that grew into a multibillion-dollar industry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was KQED Health Correspondent Lesley McClurg. \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 question was part of a Bay Curious voting round. Did you know we have a new one up on our website every month? This month, here’s what’s up for consideration…\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Question 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why is there truly a taco truck on every corner in San Francisco and San Mateo?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Question 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why are there huge fans over the tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Question 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s the story with the abandoned cop car in front of the airport off of 101? Everyone knows no actual cop is in it, so what’s the scoop with leaving there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Voting takes just a click — no registering or drama, I promise. Do it at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BayCurious.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. You can become a member today, and enjoy all sorts of nice benefits — the biggest one though. Those warm fuzzies you get knowing you support shows like ours. Thanks!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey, Katherine Monahan, and everyone on Team KQED.\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>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "the-eccentric-personalities-behind-sunnyside-conservatory-a-120-year-old-garden-in-san-francisco",
"title": "The Eccentric Personalities Behind Sunnyside Conservatory, a 120-Year-Old Garden in San Francisco",
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"headTitle": "The Eccentric Personalities Behind Sunnyside Conservatory, a 120-Year-Old Garden in San Francisco | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco’s \u003c/a>Sunnyside neighborhood, just west of Glen Park, isn’t actually very sunny. In fact, it’s one of the foggier places in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of its main thoroughfares, Monterey Boulevard, carries drivers west towards tonier places like St. Francis Wood, passing many houses and apartment buildings along the way. But slow down a little, and you might catch a glimpse of a building that feels out of the ordinary in this residential place — Sunnyside Conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set back from the street and tucked behind a wrought iron gate, the octagonal redwood building has two stories of windows surrounded by a lush garden of towering palms, ferns and flowering bushes. It’s beautiful and old-world feeling, a unique Victorian gem on an otherwise busy street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Mary Balmana often uses Monterey Boulevard to get to her home in Mission Terrace. She’s seen the conservatory hundreds of times, but hasn’t noticed anyone going inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve passed it my whole life,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074410\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074410\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside resident and historian Amy O’Hair poses for a portrait at Sunnyside Conservatory in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, she wants answers. What is the conservatory doing here in Sunnyside, who owns it and could she rent it out?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>An inventor’s oasis\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Sunnyside Conservatory was built by William Augustus Merralls, a British inventor and eccentric. He bought a house along what is now Monterey Boulevard in 1897, when the area was mostly rural. Land was cheap, so he also bought up seven lots around his house and then set about making the grounds his own private oasis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He collected exotic plants, and he liked to have a place for them,” said Amy O’Hair, Sunnyside resident,\u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/\"> local historian\u003c/a> and author of the forthcoming book, \u003cem>History Walks in Sunnyside\u003c/em>. She’s currently writing a book about the conservatory’s history.[aside postID=news_12074121 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-06-BL-KQED.jpg']Merralls made his money designing and patenting mining equipment. He had more than 20 different patents, mostly for machines that helped extract ever smaller amounts of gold from rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He did well, but whatever he got he spent on his projects,” O’Hair said. “He had a restless mind, always wanting to invent new things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of his inventions were practical, others less so. He invented an automobile starter, a refrigerator and a “deep breathing developer,” a contraption for his wife, Temperance Laura, who was fascinated by alternative medicine. The details of how it actually worked have been lost to time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1902, he built the conservatory, a building beautifully crafted out of redwood in Victorian style. In addition to collecting exotic plants, Merralls also loved astronomy. He built himself an observatory on the back of his house. And he loved luxury items; his house had two grand pianos and a private bowling alley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He apparently didn’t need to live amongst his peers,” O’Hair said. “He was a very independent-minded man, and he was happy out here in his own enclave with all of his toys in the house and all of those plants out here in the conservatory and a wife he loved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and his wife, Temperance Laura, lived in Sunnyside, enjoying their house and its grounds until 1914, when Merralls tragically died in a train accident while visiting a friend in Alameda. By that point, he had sunk all his money into various pursuits that hadn’t paid off, and when he died, Temperance Laura couldn’t afford to keep living on their estate in Sunnyside. The bank repossessed the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Second act as swindler’s hideout\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The property sat empty and neglected for three years before another odd couple, Ernest and Angele Van Beckh, came along and \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2023/07/18/the-king-of-the-clairvoyants-the-man-who-bought-the-sunnyside-conservatory/\">bought it in 1919\u003c/a>. Ernest Van Beckh was a con man, a member of the \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2023/07/18/the-king-of-the-clairvoyants-the-man-who-bought-the-sunnyside-conservatory/\">“Big Five” \u003c/a>whose exploits selling worthless mining shares to unsuspecting people and stealing their money were splashed across the newspapers in 1916.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the district attorney brought charges against Van Beckh, he got off when witnesses the prosecution had lined up to testify “just kind of went away,” as Amy put it. One went back to Montana. Another decided not to press charges. And Ernest avoided jail time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074414\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074414\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1341\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED-1536x1030.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside Conservatory circa 1975, when it had fallen into disrepair. Here, the east wing still stands, but it was later knocked down. \u003ccite>(Greg Gaar/San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They made millions of dollars in the 1910s,” O’Hair said. “And some of that money went towards buying this property. This was their hideout.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Van Beckhs would live here for decades. Ernest died in 1951, but Angele stayed on through the early ‘60s, although she too started to have money problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She slowly sold off all the property to a neighbor,” O’Hair said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The neighbors were friends who built their own house on the other side of the conservatory — what is now 234 Monterey Boulevard. While Angele was living there, the two families enjoyed the conservatory and its grounds as one shared yard. But when they moved away, the property lines became a problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Saving the conservatory again and again\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1974, Angele’s friends sold their house at 234 Monterey Boulevard and the property with the conservatory on it to a man named Robert Anderson. He started delineating the different lots with an eye to \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2025/04/18/saving-sunnyside-conservatory/\">developing the property\u003c/a> further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, neighbors started getting interested in preserving the conservatory as a historic landmark. The \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysideassociation.org/\">Sunnyside Neighborhood Association\u003c/a> had just formed, and its members started researching the conservatory’s history with a goal to get it landmarked by the city.[aside postID=news_11958380 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/BlueHouse_Flickr.png']“They wanted to save it from demolition,” O’Hair said. After World War II, \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2025/12/07/sunnyside-upzoned/\">Sunnyside was rezoned \u003c/a>to allow for more apartment buildings, which started popping up along Monterey Boulevard throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s. “And they didn’t want to see this property go for apartment buildings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neighbors were successful in getting the \u003ca href=\"https://default.sfplanning.org/Preservation/bulletins/HistPres_Bulletin_09.PDF\">conservatory landmarked in 1975\u003c/a>, which theoretically should have preserved it. However, the owner, Robert Anderson, still managed to get a permit to demolish it. Neighbors had no idea about his plan until they spotted construction equipment at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was riding my bicycle along Monterey Boulevard,” neighbor \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v70K3B-inOg\">Greg Garr said in an interview with Amy O’Hair\u003c/a>. “I think I was going to City College at that time. And I passed by the Sunnyside Conservatory, and I saw heavy equipment in there. And part of the building had been removed. And I said, ‘What the heck? I mean, are they demolishing it?’ I knew it was a registered historic landmark.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He called his representative and City Hall, clamoring to stop the demolition. Those efforts were successful, but the damage had been done. The structure was damaged, and almost all the windows had been knocked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was an emergency now,” O’Hair said. “The city needed to buy the property. What good is a landmark if you don’t own the property under it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074238\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A stock certificate of William Merralls, who built Sunnyside Conservatory, is shown by Amy O’Hair at Sunnyside Conservatory in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1980, the city bought the land from Robert Anderson using the \u003ca href=\"https://generalplan.sfplanning.org/I3_Recreation_and_Open_Space.htm#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20values%20its%20recreation,the%20combination%20of%20the%20two.\">Open Space Fund\u003c/a>. And for many years after, the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association did its best to look after the building, but it fell into disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All those years in the 90s when it had no glass, and you could climb right over [the fence], there was always graffiti and beer bottles,” O’Hair remembered. “And Rec and Park didn’t really take care of the grounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, it was another neighbor, \u003ca href=\"https://calhortsociety.org/2020/01/29/ted-kipping/\">Ted Kipping\u003c/a>, who tended the beautiful trees and plants William Merralls had planted all those years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One time, when I was talking to him, he said, ‘I spent $1,000 a month on water,’” O’Hair said. “I don’t know if it’s true. But he was very important to preserving some of the specialness of the grounds, for which I’m thankful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Renovating the conservatory\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1999, another neighborhood group formed — \u003ca href=\"https://www.sunnysideconservatory.org/about\">Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory\u003c/a>. They set ambitious fundraising goals and worked with San Francisco Rec and Park to execute a multimillion-dollar renovation of the building that would restore it to its original glory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the building was under renovation, yet another neighbor came forward with a piece of history to share. When the building and grounds were sold in 1974, and it looked like the old place might be demolished by Robert Anderson, this neighbor had saved the wooden spire from the top of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074241\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074241\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside Conservatory contains a sign indicating that it is a city landmark in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He kept it in his garage for 30 years, bringing it out and offering it to the builders as they renovated. Unfortunately, by then it was rotting, but the builders made an exact replica and covered it in copper. That spire sits on top of the building to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a community-led effort, top to bottom,” O’Hair said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conservatory has since become a symbol for Sunnyside residents. It was the first campaign that brought neighbors together, fighting for something that makes their corner of San Francisco special and unique.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco Rec and Park now maintains the building and grounds, but \u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/665/Sunnyside-Conservatory\">they do rent it out\u003c/a>. Sunnyside neighborhood groups get a bit of a deal, but there have been plenty of weddings, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> If you’ve been listening to the show for a while you may have intuited by now, but San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is one of my absolute favorite places. I love all its nooks and crannies, the unique playgrounds, those long undulating pathways. But I’d argue the crown jewel of the park is the Conservatory of Flowers, partly because of the incredible and rare plants housed inside…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>News Clip: \u003c/strong>The rare corpse flower at the Conservatory of flowers is now open to view and smell.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Like the corpse flower, which only blooms for 48 hours every 3-5 years! And stands more than 6 feet tall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Conservatory of Flowers is also renowned for its architecture. A Victorian glass building – delicate, intricate – topped with a stately domed roof. It’s like nothing else in the city! Or so I thought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Turns out San Francisco has \u003cem>another\u003c/em> conservatory across town near Glen Park. It’s much smaller, only a quarter the size, but still lovely. I’m talking about Sunnyside Conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mary Balmana: \u003c/strong>My name is Mary Balmana. I live in the Mission Terrace area of San Francisco, and I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve passed it my whole life, basically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Mary drives by Sunnyside Conservatory on Monterey Boulevard often, but never sees anyone going in or out. She wants to know its history – and how such a curious building ended up in what is otherwise a very residential area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious editor and producer Katrina Schwartz is here to tell us all about it. Hi, Katrina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Hi Olivia\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Maybe you could start by just painting a picture of the conservatory as it looks now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Sunnyside Conservatory is set back from the street a little ways and is surrounded by a lush garden with huge palm trees, ferns and beautiful flowering bushes. It kind of feels like a cloud forest right in the middle of a residential neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What about the building itself?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The building is made of redwood and features a two story octagonal center that dominates the senses. Two levels of windows that let in beautiful amounts of light…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What kind of fabulous plants are inside? Anything to rival the corpse flower?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Sadly, this conservatory no longer has plants inside at all. It’s now used as an events space. But when it was first built in 1902, it was the pride of its owner – who was just the first of a line of quirky residents the property has had over its 100 or so years. Let’s meet some of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>It was built by an eccentric and unique man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Amy O’Hair runs the Sunnyside History Project and lives nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>He was an inventor, William Augustus Merralls, he moved here to Sunnyside when there was very little on Monterey Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Even though Sunnyside is part of San Francisco now, back then the area was rural. Picture a smattering of houses and dairy farms. Merralls bought a big house here in 1897 and then several adjoining plots of land over the next few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>He accumulated seven lots, and then built his conservatory in 1902. He collected exotic plants and he liked to have a place for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Merralls made his money engineering mining equipment — but his true heart’s desire was invention. Over the years he invented dozens of things, some useful stuff, and some less so. Amy actually met his great grandson, who had some of Merralls’ old papers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>I thought I’d show you some stuff. Things that belonged to William Merrill’s like his patents. So I have all the patents for things that he made. This is a stamp mill. That’s a thing that crushes rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Look at those seals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Yes, they’re very fancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>This is a letter he wrote while he was in New York City raising money for the automobile starters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Will you read a little bit of it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Darling, you should see the Merralls starter at work on that big engine. You would be tickled to pieces. It is a dandy. And when you come on for Thanksgiving, you shall be the first lady to ride in an automobile that has the only commercial, perfect self-starter in the world, and that one is a Merralls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>He’s like promoting himself to his wife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>To his wife, for God’s sake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The thing is, Merralls probably had his hand in one too many projects. He had a tendency to move on before things were finished and he was sued a number of times. By the time of his death in 1914, he was having money problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Mmm. Unfortunately, you can’t just create the thing, but you have to sell it too…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Yes, and unfortunately that meant that when he died, the bank repossessed the whole property, including the conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What happened to it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The house and its grounds sat empty for three years and then another couple bought it. The next in the line of curious owners…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>The name of this couple was Ernest and Angel Van Beck. They were very strange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Ernest Van Bech was essentially a scam artist. He made a boatload of money selling worthless mining bonds to people…basically swindling them out of their money. The district attorney even brought charges, but when the witnesses didn’t show up to testify, they had to let Ernest go. And he lived out his life on the property with the conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Ernest would not show his face. There were a lot of rumors about him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Kind of the Boo Radley of Sunnyside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> He really was. The neighborhood kids were all afraid of him. But after decades living in the house next to the conservatory he died in 1951. His wife, Angele, kept living there, but she needed money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>She slowly sold off all the property to a neighbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The neighbors were friends of hers. They built a house on the other side of the conservatory — the east wing of the building was actually in their backyard. At the time, that wasn’t a big deal because Angele and her friends basically shared the conservatory and its grounds like one big yard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>But eventually Angele moved away and her friends sold their home – and they leave behind the conservatory, which now straddles two properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Is this foreshadowing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This is foreshadowing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We’ll find out what happened after this quick break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Alright, Katrina, you were telling us what happened to the conservatory after Angele Van Beck and her friends next door moved away and sold the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The bulk of the conservatory and its grounds ended up in the hands of a man named Robert Anderson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>It’s 1975 by now, and there’s a lot of local interest in the conservatory as a historic structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>People who live nearby had grown attached to the conservatory. They view it as a symbol of the neighborhood. A group called the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association forms and they start researching the history of the conservatory in order to get it landmarked as a historic building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>They wanted to save it from demolition because in the 50s and 60s and 70s, along Monterey Boulevard, we’d had so many empty lots, and it was rezoned after the war, that apartment buildings were growing up all the way along it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The neighbors succeeded in getting the building landmarked, but that didn’t keep it safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>But then Robert Anderson decided he actually would build some apartment buildings and he got a permit to demolish the conservatory, which he attempted to do at the end of 1978. And it was only saved because of two people who had their eye on the conservatory. Greg Gaar is one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Greg Garr: \u003c/strong>Well, I was riding my bicycle along Monterey Boulevard. I think I was going to City College at that time. And I passed by the Sunnyside Conservatory and I saw heavy equipment in there. And part of the building had been removed. And I said, what the heck? I mean, are they demolishing it? I knew it was a registered historic landmark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Greg Garr and other neighbors started frantically calling city hall and they got the demolition halted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>When they were done, the glass was knocked out of most of the windows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> This seems like an impasse. Robert Anderson can’t knock the conservatory down and build anything new – but he owns it. So what happens?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Well, the city buys the land from him. But there wasn’t any money to renovate the building then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Sunnyside Neighborhood Association tried to get it renovated and they looked after it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They scraped graffiti off the building and boarded up all the broken windows to keep rain out. But unfortunately the whole thing was falling into disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At some point in the 1980s, the east wing of the conservatory – the part that crossed over onto another property – it gets knocked down, leaving the building looking kind of lopsided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>And it is a loss, because it’s no longer, it’s whole, whole self.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Wait, after saving it from being knocked down by the developer…part of it was still demolished?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Yes, sadly. Amy says the circumstances are a bit mysterious, but that eastern wing is in photos of the conservatory through early 1980 and then it’s just gone. If you go there now, there’s a fence right up against the main part of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Sounds like these neighbors really had to be vigilant to keep this thing from being torn down completely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> You know, they did their best. And there was a man who lived behind the conservatory…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Whose name was Ted Kipping. And he was a professional botanist, arborist, and plant collector, and photographer, speaker. Very ambitious, very dedicated. He took care of the grounds in the 90s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The conservatory becomes something of a pet project for him. A very expensive one…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>One time, when I was talking to him, he said, I spent $1,000 a month on water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> How does it turn into the beautiful building it is today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>A group called the Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory forms in 1999 and spend about 10 years raising money and getting San Francisco Rec and Park on board. They did a big multimillion dollar renovation in the 2000s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reopening video clip: \u003c/strong>We’re here at the Sunnyside’s Conservatory that’s re-opening and this has been a long fought community effort to make this happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>There was a big party at the conservatory to celebrate its reopening in 2009. Then mayor Gavin Newsom was there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Gavin Newsom: \u003c/strong>In a hundred years they’ll be talking about, in 2009…\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Everyone was so excited that this neighborhood gem had been restored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reopening video clip: \u003c/strong>Here’s the original spire. It was somewhere up there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The conservatory has a spire?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Yes — the original 1902 building that William Merralls built had a redwood spire on top. And a neighbor kept that spire in his garage for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>This man volunteered this finial, redwood finial from the original building and said, well, here it is. You know, you can put it back on the new building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And did they?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Well, by then it was fairly rotten. So, instead they made an exact replica, covered it in copper and that’s what’s now on top of the current building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> A bit of a cherry on top, if you will. So now the neighborhood has this pretty special place for everyone to enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Not only that, but working to preserve the conservatory brought the community together\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Thanks for sharing this history with us, Katrina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> My pleasure. And if you haven’t been to the Sunnyside Conservatory, you should really check it out!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> One thing I love about the Bay Area is that most neighborhoods have little gems like this one. They’re usually not things people would go out of their way to visit…but they do make each little corner of this area special. If you’ve got a spot near you that you’ve always wondered about, head on over to bay curious dot org and submit a question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re interested to know more about Sunnyside, Amy O’Hair has a book called \u003cem>History Walks of Sunnyside\u003c/em> coming out very soon. So keep your eyes peeled for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve been enjoying the double dose of Bay Curious we’ve been putting out this month, consider making a donation to KQED to support our work. Every little bit helps, just head over to KQED dot or slash donate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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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"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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco’s \u003c/a>Sunnyside neighborhood, just west of Glen Park, isn’t actually very sunny. In fact, it’s one of the foggier places in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of its main thoroughfares, Monterey Boulevard, carries drivers west towards tonier places like St. Francis Wood, passing many houses and apartment buildings along the way. But slow down a little, and you might catch a glimpse of a building that feels out of the ordinary in this residential place — Sunnyside Conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Set back from the street and tucked behind a wrought iron gate, the octagonal redwood building has two stories of windows surrounded by a lush garden of towering palms, ferns and flowering bushes. It’s beautiful and old-world feeling, a unique Victorian gem on an otherwise busy street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Mary Balmana often uses Monterey Boulevard to get to her home in Mission Terrace. She’s seen the conservatory hundreds of times, but hasn’t noticed anyone going inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve passed it my whole life,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074410\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074410\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-sunnysideconservatory00188_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside resident and historian Amy O’Hair poses for a portrait at Sunnyside Conservatory in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, she wants answers. What is the conservatory doing here in Sunnyside, who owns it and could she rent it out?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>An inventor’s oasis\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Sunnyside Conservatory was built by William Augustus Merralls, a British inventor and eccentric. He bought a house along what is now Monterey Boulevard in 1897, when the area was mostly rural. Land was cheap, so he also bought up seven lots around his house and then set about making the grounds his own private oasis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He collected exotic plants, and he liked to have a place for them,” said Amy O’Hair, Sunnyside resident,\u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/\"> local historian\u003c/a> and author of the forthcoming book, \u003cem>History Walks in Sunnyside\u003c/em>. She’s currently writing a book about the conservatory’s history.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Merralls made his money designing and patenting mining equipment. He had more than 20 different patents, mostly for machines that helped extract ever smaller amounts of gold from rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He did well, but whatever he got he spent on his projects,” O’Hair said. “He had a restless mind, always wanting to invent new things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of his inventions were practical, others less so. He invented an automobile starter, a refrigerator and a “deep breathing developer,” a contraption for his wife, Temperance Laura, who was fascinated by alternative medicine. The details of how it actually worked have been lost to time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1902, he built the conservatory, a building beautifully crafted out of redwood in Victorian style. In addition to collecting exotic plants, Merralls also loved astronomy. He built himself an observatory on the back of his house. And he loved luxury items; his house had two grand pianos and a private bowling alley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He apparently didn’t need to live amongst his peers,” O’Hair said. “He was a very independent-minded man, and he was happy out here in his own enclave with all of his toys in the house and all of those plants out here in the conservatory and a wife he loved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and his wife, Temperance Laura, lived in Sunnyside, enjoying their house and its grounds until 1914, when Merralls tragically died in a train accident while visiting a friend in Alameda. By that point, he had sunk all his money into various pursuits that hadn’t paid off, and when he died, Temperance Laura couldn’t afford to keep living on their estate in Sunnyside. The bank repossessed the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Second act as swindler’s hideout\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The property sat empty and neglected for three years before another odd couple, Ernest and Angele Van Beckh, came along and \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2023/07/18/the-king-of-the-clairvoyants-the-man-who-bought-the-sunnyside-conservatory/\">bought it in 1919\u003c/a>. Ernest Van Beckh was a con man, a member of the \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2023/07/18/the-king-of-the-clairvoyants-the-man-who-bought-the-sunnyside-conservatory/\">“Big Five” \u003c/a>whose exploits selling worthless mining shares to unsuspecting people and stealing their money were splashed across the newspapers in 1916.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the district attorney brought charges against Van Beckh, he got off when witnesses the prosecution had lined up to testify “just kind of went away,” as Amy put it. One went back to Montana. Another decided not to press charges. And Ernest avoided jail time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074414\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074414\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1341\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260224-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY-CIRCA-1975-KQED-1536x1030.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside Conservatory circa 1975, when it had fallen into disrepair. Here, the east wing still stands, but it was later knocked down. \u003ccite>(Greg Gaar/San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They made millions of dollars in the 1910s,” O’Hair said. “And some of that money went towards buying this property. This was their hideout.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Van Beckhs would live here for decades. Ernest died in 1951, but Angele stayed on through the early ‘60s, although she too started to have money problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She slowly sold off all the property to a neighbor,” O’Hair said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The neighbors were friends who built their own house on the other side of the conservatory — what is now 234 Monterey Boulevard. While Angele was living there, the two families enjoyed the conservatory and its grounds as one shared yard. But when they moved away, the property lines became a problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Saving the conservatory again and again\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1974, Angele’s friends sold their house at 234 Monterey Boulevard and the property with the conservatory on it to a man named Robert Anderson. He started delineating the different lots with an eye to \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2025/04/18/saving-sunnyside-conservatory/\">developing the property\u003c/a> further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, neighbors started getting interested in preserving the conservatory as a historic landmark. The \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysideassociation.org/\">Sunnyside Neighborhood Association\u003c/a> had just formed, and its members started researching the conservatory’s history with a goal to get it landmarked by the city.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“They wanted to save it from demolition,” O’Hair said. After World War II, \u003ca href=\"https://sunnysidehistory.org/2025/12/07/sunnyside-upzoned/\">Sunnyside was rezoned \u003c/a>to allow for more apartment buildings, which started popping up along Monterey Boulevard throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s. “And they didn’t want to see this property go for apartment buildings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neighbors were successful in getting the \u003ca href=\"https://default.sfplanning.org/Preservation/bulletins/HistPres_Bulletin_09.PDF\">conservatory landmarked in 1975\u003c/a>, which theoretically should have preserved it. However, the owner, Robert Anderson, still managed to get a permit to demolish it. Neighbors had no idea about his plan until they spotted construction equipment at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was riding my bicycle along Monterey Boulevard,” neighbor \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v70K3B-inOg\">Greg Garr said in an interview with Amy O’Hair\u003c/a>. “I think I was going to City College at that time. And I passed by the Sunnyside Conservatory, and I saw heavy equipment in there. And part of the building had been removed. And I said, ‘What the heck? I mean, are they demolishing it?’ I knew it was a registered historic landmark.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He called his representative and City Hall, clamoring to stop the demolition. Those efforts were successful, but the damage had been done. The structure was damaged, and almost all the windows had been knocked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was an emergency now,” O’Hair said. “The city needed to buy the property. What good is a landmark if you don’t own the property under it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074238\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00222_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A stock certificate of William Merralls, who built Sunnyside Conservatory, is shown by Amy O’Hair at Sunnyside Conservatory in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1980, the city bought the land from Robert Anderson using the \u003ca href=\"https://generalplan.sfplanning.org/I3_Recreation_and_Open_Space.htm#:~:text=San%20Francisco%20values%20its%20recreation,the%20combination%20of%20the%20two.\">Open Space Fund\u003c/a>. And for many years after, the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association did its best to look after the building, but it fell into disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All those years in the 90s when it had no glass, and you could climb right over [the fence], there was always graffiti and beer bottles,” O’Hair remembered. “And Rec and Park didn’t really take care of the grounds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, it was another neighbor, \u003ca href=\"https://calhortsociety.org/2020/01/29/ted-kipping/\">Ted Kipping\u003c/a>, who tended the beautiful trees and plants William Merralls had planted all those years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One time, when I was talking to him, he said, ‘I spent $1,000 a month on water,’” O’Hair said. “I don’t know if it’s true. But he was very important to preserving some of the specialness of the grounds, for which I’m thankful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Renovating the conservatory\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1999, another neighborhood group formed — \u003ca href=\"https://www.sunnysideconservatory.org/about\">Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory\u003c/a>. They set ambitious fundraising goals and worked with San Francisco Rec and Park to execute a multimillion-dollar renovation of the building that would restore it to its original glory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the building was under renovation, yet another neighbor came forward with a piece of history to share. When the building and grounds were sold in 1974, and it looked like the old place might be demolished by Robert Anderson, this neighbor had saved the wooden spire from the top of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074241\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074241\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00362_TV-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunnyside Conservatory contains a sign indicating that it is a city landmark in San Francisco on February 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He kept it in his garage for 30 years, bringing it out and offering it to the builders as they renovated. Unfortunately, by then it was rotting, but the builders made an exact replica and covered it in copper. That spire sits on top of the building to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a community-led effort, top to bottom,” O’Hair said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conservatory has since become a symbol for Sunnyside residents. It was the first campaign that brought neighbors together, fighting for something that makes their corner of San Francisco special and unique.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco Rec and Park now maintains the building and grounds, but \u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/665/Sunnyside-Conservatory\">they do rent it out\u003c/a>. Sunnyside neighborhood groups get a bit of a deal, but there have been plenty of weddings, too.\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> If you’ve been listening to the show for a while you may have intuited by now, but San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is one of my absolute favorite places. I love all its nooks and crannies, the unique playgrounds, those long undulating pathways. But I’d argue the crown jewel of the park is the Conservatory of Flowers, partly because of the incredible and rare plants housed inside…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>News Clip: \u003c/strong>The rare corpse flower at the Conservatory of flowers is now open to view and smell.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Like the corpse flower, which only blooms for 48 hours every 3-5 years! And stands more than 6 feet tall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Conservatory of Flowers is also renowned for its architecture. A Victorian glass building – delicate, intricate – topped with a stately domed roof. It’s like nothing else in the city! Or so I thought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Turns out San Francisco has \u003cem>another\u003c/em> conservatory across town near Glen Park. It’s much smaller, only a quarter the size, but still lovely. I’m talking about Sunnyside Conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mary Balmana: \u003c/strong>My name is Mary Balmana. I live in the Mission Terrace area of San Francisco, and I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve passed it my whole life, basically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Mary drives by Sunnyside Conservatory on Monterey Boulevard often, but never sees anyone going in or out. She wants to know its history – and how such a curious building ended up in what is otherwise a very residential area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious editor and producer Katrina Schwartz is here to tell us all about it. Hi, Katrina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Hi Olivia\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Maybe you could start by just painting a picture of the conservatory as it looks now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Sunnyside Conservatory is set back from the street a little ways and is surrounded by a lush garden with huge palm trees, ferns and beautiful flowering bushes. It kind of feels like a cloud forest right in the middle of a residential neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What about the building itself?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The building is made of redwood and features a two story octagonal center that dominates the senses. Two levels of windows that let in beautiful amounts of light…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What kind of fabulous plants are inside? Anything to rival the corpse flower?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Sadly, this conservatory no longer has plants inside at all. It’s now used as an events space. But when it was first built in 1902, it was the pride of its owner – who was just the first of a line of quirky residents the property has had over its 100 or so years. Let’s meet some of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>It was built by an eccentric and unique man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Amy O’Hair runs the Sunnyside History Project and lives nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>He was an inventor, William Augustus Merralls, he moved here to Sunnyside when there was very little on Monterey Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Even though Sunnyside is part of San Francisco now, back then the area was rural. Picture a smattering of houses and dairy farms. Merralls bought a big house here in 1897 and then several adjoining plots of land over the next few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>He accumulated seven lots, and then built his conservatory in 1902. He collected exotic plants and he liked to have a place for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Merralls made his money engineering mining equipment — but his true heart’s desire was invention. Over the years he invented dozens of things, some useful stuff, and some less so. Amy actually met his great grandson, who had some of Merralls’ old papers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>I thought I’d show you some stuff. Things that belonged to William Merrill’s like his patents. So I have all the patents for things that he made. This is a stamp mill. That’s a thing that crushes rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Look at those seals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Yes, they’re very fancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>This is a letter he wrote while he was in New York City raising money for the automobile starters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Will you read a little bit of it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Darling, you should see the Merralls starter at work on that big engine. You would be tickled to pieces. It is a dandy. And when you come on for Thanksgiving, you shall be the first lady to ride in an automobile that has the only commercial, perfect self-starter in the world, and that one is a Merralls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>He’s like promoting himself to his wife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>To his wife, for God’s sake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The thing is, Merralls probably had his hand in one too many projects. He had a tendency to move on before things were finished and he was sued a number of times. By the time of his death in 1914, he was having money problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Mmm. Unfortunately, you can’t just create the thing, but you have to sell it too…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Yes, and unfortunately that meant that when he died, the bank repossessed the whole property, including the conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> What happened to it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The house and its grounds sat empty for three years and then another couple bought it. The next in the line of curious owners…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>The name of this couple was Ernest and Angel Van Beck. They were very strange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Ernest Van Bech was essentially a scam artist. He made a boatload of money selling worthless mining bonds to people…basically swindling them out of their money. The district attorney even brought charges, but when the witnesses didn’t show up to testify, they had to let Ernest go. And he lived out his life on the property with the conservatory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Ernest would not show his face. There were a lot of rumors about him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Kind of the Boo Radley of Sunnyside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> He really was. The neighborhood kids were all afraid of him. But after decades living in the house next to the conservatory he died in 1951. His wife, Angele, kept living there, but she needed money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>She slowly sold off all the property to a neighbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The neighbors were friends of hers. They built a house on the other side of the conservatory — the east wing of the building was actually in their backyard. At the time, that wasn’t a big deal because Angele and her friends basically shared the conservatory and its grounds like one big yard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>But eventually Angele moved away and her friends sold their home – and they leave behind the conservatory, which now straddles two properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Is this foreshadowing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This is foreshadowing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We’ll find out what happened after this quick break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Alright, Katrina, you were telling us what happened to the conservatory after Angele Van Beck and her friends next door moved away and sold the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The bulk of the conservatory and its grounds ended up in the hands of a man named Robert Anderson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>It’s 1975 by now, and there’s a lot of local interest in the conservatory as a historic structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>People who live nearby had grown attached to the conservatory. They view it as a symbol of the neighborhood. A group called the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association forms and they start researching the history of the conservatory in order to get it landmarked as a historic building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>They wanted to save it from demolition because in the 50s and 60s and 70s, along Monterey Boulevard, we’d had so many empty lots, and it was rezoned after the war, that apartment buildings were growing up all the way along it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The neighbors succeeded in getting the building landmarked, but that didn’t keep it safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>But then Robert Anderson decided he actually would build some apartment buildings and he got a permit to demolish the conservatory, which he attempted to do at the end of 1978. And it was only saved because of two people who had their eye on the conservatory. Greg Gaar is one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Greg Garr: \u003c/strong>Well, I was riding my bicycle along Monterey Boulevard. I think I was going to City College at that time. And I passed by the Sunnyside Conservatory and I saw heavy equipment in there. And part of the building had been removed. And I said, what the heck? I mean, are they demolishing it? I knew it was a registered historic landmark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Greg Garr and other neighbors started frantically calling city hall and they got the demolition halted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>When they were done, the glass was knocked out of most of the windows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> This seems like an impasse. Robert Anderson can’t knock the conservatory down and build anything new – but he owns it. So what happens?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Well, the city buys the land from him. But there wasn’t any money to renovate the building then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Sunnyside Neighborhood Association tried to get it renovated and they looked after it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They scraped graffiti off the building and boarded up all the broken windows to keep rain out. But unfortunately the whole thing was falling into disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At some point in the 1980s, the east wing of the conservatory – the part that crossed over onto another property – it gets knocked down, leaving the building looking kind of lopsided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>And it is a loss, because it’s no longer, it’s whole, whole self.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Wait, after saving it from being knocked down by the developer…part of it was still demolished?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Yes, sadly. Amy says the circumstances are a bit mysterious, but that eastern wing is in photos of the conservatory through early 1980 and then it’s just gone. If you go there now, there’s a fence right up against the main part of the building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Sounds like these neighbors really had to be vigilant to keep this thing from being torn down completely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> You know, they did their best. And there was a man who lived behind the conservatory…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>Whose name was Ted Kipping. And he was a professional botanist, arborist, and plant collector, and photographer, speaker. Very ambitious, very dedicated. He took care of the grounds in the 90s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> The conservatory becomes something of a pet project for him. A very expensive one…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>One time, when I was talking to him, he said, I spent $1,000 a month on water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> How does it turn into the beautiful building it is today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>A group called the Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory forms in 1999 and spend about 10 years raising money and getting San Francisco Rec and Park on board. They did a big multimillion dollar renovation in the 2000s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reopening video clip: \u003c/strong>We’re here at the Sunnyside’s Conservatory that’s re-opening and this has been a long fought community effort to make this happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>There was a big party at the conservatory to celebrate its reopening in 2009. Then mayor Gavin Newsom was there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Gavin Newsom: \u003c/strong>In a hundred years they’ll be talking about, in 2009…\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Everyone was so excited that this neighborhood gem had been restored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reopening video clip: \u003c/strong>Here’s the original spire. It was somewhere up there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The conservatory has a spire?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Yes — the original 1902 building that William Merralls built had a redwood spire on top. And a neighbor kept that spire in his garage for 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy O’Hair: \u003c/strong>This man volunteered this finial, redwood finial from the original building and said, well, here it is. You know, you can put it back on the new building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And did they?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Well, by then it was fairly rotten. So, instead they made an exact replica, covered it in copper and that’s what’s now on top of the current building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> A bit of a cherry on top, if you will. So now the neighborhood has this pretty special place for everyone to enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Not only that, but working to preserve the conservatory brought the community together\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Thanks for sharing this history with us, Katrina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> My pleasure. And if you haven’t been to the Sunnyside Conservatory, you should really check it out!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> One thing I love about the Bay Area is that most neighborhoods have little gems like this one. They’re usually not things people would go out of their way to visit…but they do make each little corner of this area special. If you’ve got a spot near you that you’ve always wondered about, head on over to bay curious dot org and submit a question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re interested to know more about Sunnyside, Amy O’Hair has a book called \u003cem>History Walks of Sunnyside\u003c/em> coming out very soon. So keep your eyes peeled for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve been enjoying the double dose of Bay Curious we’ve been putting out this month, consider making a donation to KQED to support our work. Every little bit helps, just head over to KQED dot or slash donate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Springtime in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\">Bay Area\u003c/a> brings with it lush green landscapes, vibrant wildflowers and buds breaking open on trees. And in some places, the soundtrack to all that visual beauty is the chorusing of tree frogs, which can be incredibly loud in the spring when they mate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our local frog is the Pacific tree frog. They may sound mighty, but they’re not your stereotypical big, bloated bullfrogs. They’re little green frogs, just a couple of inches long, with bulging eyes and giant toe pads that allow them to climb trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to wonder how people that lived next to them could sleep in the springtime because the frogs were so loud,” said Bay Curious listener Dave Ellis, who grew up in the South Bay city of Saratoga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dave grew up a quarter mile from a creek, which runs through West Valley College. He said he used to be able to hear the loud chorus of frogs all the way from his house, and would sometimes venture to the creek in search of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, even though he still lives nearby, he never hears them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074229\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leticia Gallardo, a biology professor at West Valley College, points out fungi growing on bark to student Galen Ventresca during a frog hunt on Feb. 19, 2026, at West Valley College in Saratoga. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s so weird, it used to be so loud this time of year, and it’s just dead silent,” he said. “All of a sudden, the silence was just deafening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, now Dave’s wondering, what happened to the tree frogs?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The decline of amphibians\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There are many possible explanations for the disappearance of the tree frogs in Dave’s neighborhood, making it hard to pinpoint an exact cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One is the use of pesticides on the West Valley College campus, through which the creek runs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12055329 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250811-WILD-BOAR-OSA-03-KQED.jpg']“West Valley College uses limited pesticides in specific locations on campus when necessary,” a spokesperson for the college wrote in an email. “All applications are performed by licensed professionals and in accordance with California state regulations and safety guidelines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pesticides could inflict direct harm on frogs, or they could kill the insects the frogs rely on for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another possible contributor could be changes in habitat over time. For example, perhaps West Valley College has paved over certain parts of the creekbed, or disturbed it in some other way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you bulldoze or cover in concrete a creek bed, then a lot of times you’ll wipe out the water-loving species, including amphibians,” said Emily Taylor, a biology professor at Cal Poly who specializes in reptiles and amphibians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frogs are particularly vulnerable to changes in their environment because they have permeable skin, which makes them susceptible to many toxins and diseases. Some scientists even refer to them as canaries in the coal mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s why both locally here in California, as well as globally, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06578-4\">amphibians are on the decline\u003c/a>, in large part due to habitat destruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We used to, up until literally just a couple hundred years ago, have this vast untouched landscape full of pristine wetlands,” Taylor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074233\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074233\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Pacific tree frog sits inside a sprinkler box on campus after West Valley College student Galen Ventresca discovered it during a frog hunt on Feb. 19, 2026, at West Valley College in Saratoga. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, much of that habitat has been paved over for interstate freeways and housing developments, or cultivated for farmland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that time, the climate has also changed a lot, which has led to more drought. Frogs need wet environments to survive, and drought poses real danger to them over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New diseases have cropped up as well, including one caused by the \u003ca href=\"https://cisr.ucr.edu/invasive-species/chytrid-fungus\">chytrid fungus\u003c/a>, which affects frogs’ skin and prevents them from regulating their water intake. The chytrid fungus is a major factor in amphibian declines around the world, as well as here in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you look at California frogs in general, more than half of them are threatened or endangered,” Taylor said. “It’s really dire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A resilient species\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Interestingly, though, that global trend doesn’t apply to the Pacific tree frog species, the one that Dave grew up hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, statewide, the population is thriving.[aside postID=news_12052988 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250804-BC-BIODIVERSITY-01-KQED.jpg']“They are known for being very resilient,” Taylor said. “So whereas other species of frogs have become locally extinct in certain areas, Pacific chorus frogs are doing very well still.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their propensity for living in urban areas, including under garden hose drips, in backyard water features and small creeks, has made them resilient to all the changes the Bay Area has seen over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which means the fact that Dave isn’t hearing those specific frogs anymore means there’s something going on more locally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s actually something that’s really concerning, because this is probably one of the most resilient amphibian species that we have,” Taylor said. “So if it is being impacted, then that does imply that there’s probably something amiss in that particular neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily, Taylor said, the solution to bringing them back is quite simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the best thing people can do to encourage a thriving tree frog population in their neighborhoods is avoid pesticide use, have a water feature and plant native plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: If you grew up here in the Bay Area … or if you’ve lived here a long time … I bet this sound is familiar to you:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Pacific tree frogs chorusing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Tree frogs. A quintessential soundtrack to the Bay Area. These aren’t your stereotypical big, bloated bullfrogs. They’re little green frogs just a couple inches long, with bulging eyes and giant toe pads that allow them to climb trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re especially noisy during the springtime, which is their mating season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis: \u003c/strong>I used to wonder how people that lived next to them could sleep in the springtime because the frogs were so loud. It was really cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave Ellis grew up in the South Bay city of Saratoga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis: \u003c/strong>We live about a quarter mile from the creek, and you could hear the tree frogs that far away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: When he was a kid, he used to go to the creek, which ran through a community college campus, to try to see the frogs for himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> We used to go to West Valley College and we used to catch them in the creek there um because they had like a little bridge you could climb down it was really easy to get into the creek um and you could hear lots of them there too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave still lives in Saratoga, not too far from that creek. But now, come springtime, it’s silent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> It’s so weird, it used to be so loud this time of year, and it’s just dead silent. All of a sudden, the silence was just deafening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: He says he has hardly heard a single frog sound for years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> So I was wondering what happened. I mean, it could be pesticides. It could be climate change. It could mean, who knows, but it’s such a dramatic change because for years and years and probably before we moved here when I was a kid, even there was tree frogs and now there’s like literally none. There’s not a single one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave’s question won a public voting round at BayCurious.org. Which reminds me, head over to Bay Curious dot org to cast your vote in this month’s contest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious theme music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and today on Bay Curious, we look into the mystery of the disappearing tree frogs. We’ll visit that creek on the West Valley College campus … and enlist the help of some students … all to find out what happened to the tree frogs. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: This week, we’re looking into the odd lack of tree frog choruses that one Bay Curious listener has noticed. We sent Bay Curious reporter Dana Cronin on a hunt to find out what’s going on with the tree frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin:\u003c/strong> I can totally relate to Dave’s nostalgia for the sound of frogs in the springtime. I, too, grew up across the street from some frogs. I’m not sure how many of them there were, but boy, were they loud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I figured the best way to find out what happened to Dave’s frogs was to go straight to the source.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I headed to the West Valley College campus — the one in the neighborhood where Dave grew up, with the creek running through it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> So this is the creek?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>This is the Creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>I met up with West Valley College biology professor Leticia Gallardo … who has agreed to go on this frog hunt with me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I thought we’d walk up a little bit farther up … We have a little, bit of a wetland. I’m hoping we might have some luck looking for some frogs up there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>That sounds great!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>So, we set off. It’s early fall, which isn’t the best time of year to be looking for them since it’s so dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nonetheless, Professor Gallardo tells me we’re looking for the Pacific tree frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> Their characteristic look is this black stripe over their eye. So if you see a little frog, maybe about two inches or so, with a black almost mask. Over their face, you’re probably looking at a tree frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Pacific tree frogs like living in cool, wet environments. In creekbeds … but even underneath a drip from a garden hose, or in a fountain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And we’re keeping our ears — as well as our eyes — peeled. Because even though these frogs are small, their sound is mighty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> In fact, it’s the frog that Hollywood records right in the hills. And so they call it sometimes the Hollywood frog because when you hear frogs in the background of a movie or a TV show, is oftentimes that Pacific tree frog. That’s the one chorusing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We walk along the creek, which winds through campus. We pass by classrooms, walk through a mini golf course, all the while looking for frog habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Gallardo spots a utility box, makes a beeline for it, and turns it over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> They sometimes hang out in the nice little cozy, moist utility box. They like those.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But not today. So, we keep walking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> Do you hear that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We think we hear one. So we start to follow the sound back down to the creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> I was trying to find a spot that doesn’t have as much poison oak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But someone — ahem, me — wasn’t willing to brave the poison oak. So we keep walking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Gallardo has one more spot in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>The next spot where there’s water, we might get lucky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> Sure, let’s do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of running water\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We start walking back downstream, and get to a part of the creek where there’s a slow, steady drip – IDEAL frog habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I thought I heard one. Were you recording?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> I was, I didn’t hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> You didn’t hear it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> No. Now we’re imagining frogs. (laughs)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We wait in silence, hoping for just one croak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Well dang, it might be a strikeout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>No frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>I’m bummed. But Professor Gallardo is more than bummed; she seems disturbed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> It just seems that there should be something in here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>After all, this little creek is perfect habitat for tree frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, where are they all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Dave’s right. What was once a booming tree frog population at West Valley College seems to have been nearly erased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened to this particular population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But still, I tried by asking Emily Taylor, a biology professor at Cal Poly, who specializes in amphibians and reptiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor: \u003c/strong>So my guess would be that they could be declining in some areas due to a combination of increased pesticide use, possibly. Which could be directly harming them, or it could be killing the insects that they rely on for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Indeed, there was a noticeable lack of bugs along the creekbed at West Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And sure enough, when I asked, a West Valley spokesperson said the college quote “uses limited pesticides in specific locations on campus when necessary.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Taylor said the decline could also be due to habitat changes in the creek bed where these frogs used to live. Like, maybe the college has paved over certain parts of it or has disturbed it in some other way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> If you bulldoze or cover in concrete a creek bed to manage the watersheds, then a lot of times you’ll wipe out the water-loving species, including amphibians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Frogs in general are especially vulnerable to changes in their environment because they have permeable skin, which makes them susceptible to certain types of toxins and also disease. Some scientists even refer to them as canaries in the coal mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s why both locally here in California and globally, amphibians are on the decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because think about how much things have changed here for frogs over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> We used to, up until literally just a couple hundred years ago, like pre-Gold Rush era, have just this vast untouched landscape full of pristine wetlands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We’ve destroyed a lot of that habitat over time to make room for interstate freeways, housing developments and farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in that time, our climate has also changed a lot, leading to more drought, which — as we’ve learned — is not good for frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New diseases have cropped up over time as well, including one caused by the chytrid fungus, which affects frogs’ skin and prevents them from regulating their water intake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chytrid fungus is a major factor in amphibian declines around the world and here in California, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> If you look at California frogs in general, more than half of them are threatened or endangered. It’s really dire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But interestingly, Pacific tree frogs — the ones that Dave asked about — are not threatened or endangered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, their population is thriving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> They are known for being very resilient. So, whereas other species of frogs have become locally extinct in certain areas, Pacific chorus frogs are doing very well still.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Professor Taylor says their propensity for living in urban areas … including under garden hose drips, in backyard water features, and small creeks has made them resilient to all the changes the Bay Area has seen over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the fact that Dave’s not hearing his neighborhood frogs anymore means there’s something going on more locally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor: \u003c/strong>I think that’s actually something that’s really concerning, because this is probably one of the most resilient amphibian species that we have. And so if it is being impacted, then that does imply that there’s probably something amiss in that particular neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>The good news is that the solution is also pretty hyperlocal. Dave doesn’t need to solve climate change or cure any diseases to bring his neighborhood frogs back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The solution is actually quite simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> The best thing people can do, really, is to plant native plants in your yard, have a water feature, and really avoid pesticide use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of flowing water\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Which is exactly what Leticia Gallardo has done at West Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> This little plant right in here, this big-leafed, low-growing plant, is called yerba mansa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Professor Gallardo and her students have been working on installing native gardens for the past few years. They want to create habitat for all kinds of native critters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they’re starting to see results! Just this year, a monarch butterfly caterpillar affixed its chrysalis to a big metal pole right outside their classroom. It’s the first time they’ve seen a monarch on campus, and they’re very protective of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Student Melanie Zarza reads me a sign that students pinned up next to the chrysalis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza:\u003c/strong> “This is a monarch butterfly chrysalis. He is cooking. Don’t bug him If you hurt this little creature the entire biology department will have beef with you and you and will release the curse of Ra.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>As Melanie and I are admiring the chrysalis, Professor Gallardo is examining the native milkweed they have planted in the garden nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>There’s more caterpillars!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>Really?!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>There are more of them, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>There’s an itty bitty tiny one right here. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>There’s one right there, under you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>You see another one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza:\u003c/strong> Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>Oh my God, oh my God! There’s more!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We fan out and start peeking under leaves and closely examining stalks — and we keep seeing more and more caterpillars, with vibrant yellow, black and white stripes lining their chunky bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>So, how many do we have now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I think we should count them. Oh, look, there’s another one. Oh my god, that’s so exciting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>It’s amazing when you like, spend so much time planting and like waiting for the critters to come and then they come. It makes it all worth it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Do you think this could be? I mean, not that it has to be all about the frogs, but do you think that this could be an indication that the frog species here on campus could start to really come back?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>Well, I think if you restore the habitat, you make a home for them, you make space for them. Yeah. If we can have less contaminants going into that creek, it’s totally hospitable. They are really adaptable, generalized little critters, And so I think they totally could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Fingers crossed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Sure enough, a couple months after my visit to West Valley College, I got an email from Professor Gallardo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that winter rains brought out some frogs and that they’re now consistently hearing a few frogs in the gardens and the creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a huge chorus yet, she said, not like the one that Dave remembers. But it’s a step in that direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: That was KQED’s Dana Cronin. Thanks to Dave Ellis for asking this week’s question, which won a public voting round on Bay Curious dot org. There’s still time left to vote in February’s contest, so head on over and cast your vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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 wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\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>Springtime in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\">Bay Area\u003c/a> brings with it lush green landscapes, vibrant wildflowers and buds breaking open on trees. And in some places, the soundtrack to all that visual beauty is the chorusing of tree frogs, which can be incredibly loud in the spring when they mate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our local frog is the Pacific tree frog. They may sound mighty, but they’re not your stereotypical big, bloated bullfrogs. They’re little green frogs, just a couple of inches long, with bulging eyes and giant toe pads that allow them to climb trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to wonder how people that lived next to them could sleep in the springtime because the frogs were so loud,” said Bay Curious listener Dave Ellis, who grew up in the South Bay city of Saratoga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dave grew up a quarter mile from a creek, which runs through West Valley College. He said he used to be able to hear the loud chorus of frogs all the way from his house, and would sometimes venture to the creek in search of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, even though he still lives nearby, he never hears them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074229\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_006-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leticia Gallardo, a biology professor at West Valley College, points out fungi growing on bark to student Galen Ventresca during a frog hunt on Feb. 19, 2026, at West Valley College in Saratoga. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s so weird, it used to be so loud this time of year, and it’s just dead silent,” he said. “All of a sudden, the silence was just deafening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, now Dave’s wondering, what happened to the tree frogs?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The decline of amphibians\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There are many possible explanations for the disappearance of the tree frogs in Dave’s neighborhood, making it hard to pinpoint an exact cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One is the use of pesticides on the West Valley College campus, through which the creek runs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“West Valley College uses limited pesticides in specific locations on campus when necessary,” a spokesperson for the college wrote in an email. “All applications are performed by licensed professionals and in accordance with California state regulations and safety guidelines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pesticides could inflict direct harm on frogs, or they could kill the insects the frogs rely on for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another possible contributor could be changes in habitat over time. For example, perhaps West Valley College has paved over certain parts of the creekbed, or disturbed it in some other way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you bulldoze or cover in concrete a creek bed, then a lot of times you’ll wipe out the water-loving species, including amphibians,” said Emily Taylor, a biology professor at Cal Poly who specializes in reptiles and amphibians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frogs are particularly vulnerable to changes in their environment because they have permeable skin, which makes them susceptible to many toxins and diseases. Some scientists even refer to them as canaries in the coal mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s why both locally here in California, as well as globally, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06578-4\">amphibians are on the decline\u003c/a>, in large part due to habitat destruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We used to, up until literally just a couple hundred years ago, have this vast untouched landscape full of pristine wetlands,” Taylor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12074233\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12074233\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/021926_TREEFROG-_GH_014-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Pacific tree frog sits inside a sprinkler box on campus after West Valley College student Galen Ventresca discovered it during a frog hunt on Feb. 19, 2026, at West Valley College in Saratoga. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, much of that habitat has been paved over for interstate freeways and housing developments, or cultivated for farmland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that time, the climate has also changed a lot, which has led to more drought. Frogs need wet environments to survive, and drought poses real danger to them over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New diseases have cropped up as well, including one caused by the \u003ca href=\"https://cisr.ucr.edu/invasive-species/chytrid-fungus\">chytrid fungus\u003c/a>, which affects frogs’ skin and prevents them from regulating their water intake. The chytrid fungus is a major factor in amphibian declines around the world, as well as here in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you look at California frogs in general, more than half of them are threatened or endangered,” Taylor said. “It’s really dire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A resilient species\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Interestingly, though, that global trend doesn’t apply to the Pacific tree frog species, the one that Dave grew up hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, statewide, the population is thriving.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“They are known for being very resilient,” Taylor said. “So whereas other species of frogs have become locally extinct in certain areas, Pacific chorus frogs are doing very well still.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their propensity for living in urban areas, including under garden hose drips, in backyard water features and small creeks, has made them resilient to all the changes the Bay Area has seen over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which means the fact that Dave isn’t hearing those specific frogs anymore means there’s something going on more locally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s actually something that’s really concerning, because this is probably one of the most resilient amphibian species that we have,” Taylor said. “So if it is being impacted, then that does imply that there’s probably something amiss in that particular neighborhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily, Taylor said, the solution to bringing them back is quite simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the best thing people can do to encourage a thriving tree frog population in their neighborhoods is avoid pesticide use, have a water feature and plant native plants.\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>: If you grew up here in the Bay Area … or if you’ve lived here a long time … I bet this sound is familiar to you:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Pacific tree frogs chorusing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Tree frogs. A quintessential soundtrack to the Bay Area. These aren’t your stereotypical big, bloated bullfrogs. They’re little green frogs just a couple inches long, with bulging eyes and giant toe pads that allow them to climb trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re especially noisy during the springtime, which is their mating season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis: \u003c/strong>I used to wonder how people that lived next to them could sleep in the springtime because the frogs were so loud. It was really cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave Ellis grew up in the South Bay city of Saratoga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis: \u003c/strong>We live about a quarter mile from the creek, and you could hear the tree frogs that far away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: When he was a kid, he used to go to the creek, which ran through a community college campus, to try to see the frogs for himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> We used to go to West Valley College and we used to catch them in the creek there um because they had like a little bridge you could climb down it was really easy to get into the creek um and you could hear lots of them there too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave still lives in Saratoga, not too far from that creek. But now, come springtime, it’s silent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> It’s so weird, it used to be so loud this time of year, and it’s just dead silent. All of a sudden, the silence was just deafening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: He says he has hardly heard a single frog sound for years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dave Ellis:\u003c/strong> So I was wondering what happened. I mean, it could be pesticides. It could be climate change. It could mean, who knows, but it’s such a dramatic change because for years and years and probably before we moved here when I was a kid, even there was tree frogs and now there’s like literally none. There’s not a single one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: Dave’s question won a public voting round at BayCurious.org. Which reminds me, head over to Bay Curious dot org to cast your vote in this month’s contest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious theme music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and today on Bay Curious, we look into the mystery of the disappearing tree frogs. We’ll visit that creek on the West Valley College campus … and enlist the help of some students … all to find out what happened to the tree frogs. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: This week, we’re looking into the odd lack of tree frog choruses that one Bay Curious listener has noticed. We sent Bay Curious reporter Dana Cronin on a hunt to find out what’s going on with the tree frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin:\u003c/strong> I can totally relate to Dave’s nostalgia for the sound of frogs in the springtime. I, too, grew up across the street from some frogs. I’m not sure how many of them there were, but boy, were they loud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I figured the best way to find out what happened to Dave’s frogs was to go straight to the source.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I headed to the West Valley College campus — the one in the neighborhood where Dave grew up, with the creek running through it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> So this is the creek?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>This is the Creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>I met up with West Valley College biology professor Leticia Gallardo … who has agreed to go on this frog hunt with me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I thought we’d walk up a little bit farther up … We have a little, bit of a wetland. I’m hoping we might have some luck looking for some frogs up there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>That sounds great!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>So, we set off. It’s early fall, which isn’t the best time of year to be looking for them since it’s so dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nonetheless, Professor Gallardo tells me we’re looking for the Pacific tree frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> Their characteristic look is this black stripe over their eye. So if you see a little frog, maybe about two inches or so, with a black almost mask. Over their face, you’re probably looking at a tree frog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Pacific tree frogs like living in cool, wet environments. In creekbeds … but even underneath a drip from a garden hose, or in a fountain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And we’re keeping our ears — as well as our eyes — peeled. Because even though these frogs are small, their sound is mighty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> In fact, it’s the frog that Hollywood records right in the hills. And so they call it sometimes the Hollywood frog because when you hear frogs in the background of a movie or a TV show, is oftentimes that Pacific tree frog. That’s the one chorusing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We walk along the creek, which winds through campus. We pass by classrooms, walk through a mini golf course, all the while looking for frog habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Gallardo spots a utility box, makes a beeline for it, and turns it over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> They sometimes hang out in the nice little cozy, moist utility box. They like those.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But not today. So, we keep walking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> Do you hear that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We think we hear one. So we start to follow the sound back down to the creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> I was trying to find a spot that doesn’t have as much poison oak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But someone — ahem, me — wasn’t willing to brave the poison oak. So we keep walking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Gallardo has one more spot in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>The next spot where there’s water, we might get lucky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> Sure, let’s do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of running water\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We start walking back downstream, and get to a part of the creek where there’s a slow, steady drip – IDEAL frog habitat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I thought I heard one. Were you recording?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> I was, I didn’t hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> You didn’t hear it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene):\u003c/strong> No. Now we’re imagining frogs. (laughs)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We wait in silence, hoping for just one croak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Well dang, it might be a strikeout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>No frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>I’m bummed. But Professor Gallardo is more than bummed; she seems disturbed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> It just seems that there should be something in here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>After all, this little creek is perfect habitat for tree frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, where are they all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Dave’s right. What was once a booming tree frog population at West Valley College seems to have been nearly erased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened to this particular population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But still, I tried by asking Emily Taylor, a biology professor at Cal Poly, who specializes in amphibians and reptiles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor: \u003c/strong>So my guess would be that they could be declining in some areas due to a combination of increased pesticide use, possibly. Which could be directly harming them, or it could be killing the insects that they rely on for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Indeed, there was a noticeable lack of bugs along the creekbed at West Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And sure enough, when I asked, a West Valley spokesperson said the college quote “uses limited pesticides in specific locations on campus when necessary.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Professor Taylor said the decline could also be due to habitat changes in the creek bed where these frogs used to live. Like, maybe the college has paved over certain parts of it or has disturbed it in some other way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> If you bulldoze or cover in concrete a creek bed to manage the watersheds, then a lot of times you’ll wipe out the water-loving species, including amphibians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Frogs in general are especially vulnerable to changes in their environment because they have permeable skin, which makes them susceptible to certain types of toxins and also disease. Some scientists even refer to them as canaries in the coal mine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s why both locally here in California and globally, amphibians are on the decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because think about how much things have changed here for frogs over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> We used to, up until literally just a couple hundred years ago, like pre-Gold Rush era, have just this vast untouched landscape full of pristine wetlands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We’ve destroyed a lot of that habitat over time to make room for interstate freeways, housing developments and farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in that time, our climate has also changed a lot, leading to more drought, which — as we’ve learned — is not good for frogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New diseases have cropped up over time as well, including one caused by the chytrid fungus, which affects frogs’ skin and prevents them from regulating their water intake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chytrid fungus is a major factor in amphibian declines around the world and here in California, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> If you look at California frogs in general, more than half of them are threatened or endangered. It’s really dire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>But interestingly, Pacific tree frogs — the ones that Dave asked about — are not threatened or endangered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, their population is thriving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> They are known for being very resilient. So, whereas other species of frogs have become locally extinct in certain areas, Pacific chorus frogs are doing very well still.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Professor Taylor says their propensity for living in urban areas … including under garden hose drips, in backyard water features, and small creeks has made them resilient to all the changes the Bay Area has seen over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the fact that Dave’s not hearing his neighborhood frogs anymore means there’s something going on more locally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor: \u003c/strong>I think that’s actually something that’s really concerning, because this is probably one of the most resilient amphibian species that we have. And so if it is being impacted, then that does imply that there’s probably something amiss in that particular neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>The good news is that the solution is also pretty hyperlocal. Dave doesn’t need to solve climate change or cure any diseases to bring his neighborhood frogs back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The solution is actually quite simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emily Taylor:\u003c/strong> The best thing people can do, really, is to plant native plants in your yard, have a water feature, and really avoid pesticide use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of flowing water\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Which is exactly what Leticia Gallardo has done at West Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo:\u003c/strong> This little plant right in here, this big-leafed, low-growing plant, is called yerba mansa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Professor Gallardo and her students have been working on installing native gardens for the past few years. They want to create habitat for all kinds of native critters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they’re starting to see results! Just this year, a monarch butterfly caterpillar affixed its chrysalis to a big metal pole right outside their classroom. It’s the first time they’ve seen a monarch on campus, and they’re very protective of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Student Melanie Zarza reads me a sign that students pinned up next to the chrysalis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza:\u003c/strong> “This is a monarch butterfly chrysalis. He is cooking. Don’t bug him If you hurt this little creature the entire biology department will have beef with you and you and will release the curse of Ra.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>As Melanie and I are admiring the chrysalis, Professor Gallardo is examining the native milkweed they have planted in the garden nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>There’s more caterpillars!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>Really?!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>There are more of them, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>There’s an itty bitty tiny one right here. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>There’s one right there, under you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>You see another one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza:\u003c/strong> Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>Oh my God, oh my God! There’s more!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>We fan out and start peeking under leaves and closely examining stalks — and we keep seeing more and more caterpillars, with vibrant yellow, black and white stripes lining their chunky bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Melanie Zarza: \u003c/strong>So, how many do we have now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>I think we should count them. Oh, look, there’s another one. Oh my god, that’s so exciting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>It’s amazing when you like, spend so much time planting and like waiting for the critters to come and then they come. It makes it all worth it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Do you think this could be? I mean, not that it has to be all about the frogs, but do you think that this could be an indication that the frog species here on campus could start to really come back?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leticia Gallardo: \u003c/strong>Well, I think if you restore the habitat, you make a home for them, you make space for them. Yeah. If we can have less contaminants going into that creek, it’s totally hospitable. They are really adaptable, generalized little critters, And so I think they totally could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin (in scene): \u003c/strong>Fingers crossed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dana Cronin: \u003c/strong>Sure enough, a couple months after my visit to West Valley College, I got an email from Professor Gallardo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said that winter rains brought out some frogs and that they’re now consistently hearing a few frogs in the gardens and the creek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a huge chorus yet, she said, not like the one that Dave remembers. But it’s a step in that direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price\u003c/strong>: That was KQED’s Dana Cronin. Thanks to Dave Ellis for asking this week’s question, which won a public voting round on Bay Curious dot org. There’s still time left to vote in February’s contest, so head on over and cast your vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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 wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "ciao-bella-do-italians-still-live-in-san-franciscos-north-beach",
"title": "Ciao Bella: Do Italians Still Live in San Francisco’s North Beach?",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grant Strother loves a good caprese sandwich from North Beach. On weekdays, he walks to Molinari Delicatessen on Columbus Avenue from his job in San Francisco’sFinancial District during his lunch break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s such an easy walk,” he said. “Not too many hills to climb.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, on a particularly meandering walk, Strother passed by Saints Peter and Paul Church on Washington Square. It still offers bilingual mass in Italian, he noticed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was intrigued. Are there still Italian speakers in the neighborhood?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Immigration patterns have undoubtedly changed,” Strother said. Twenty years ago, he’d hear Italian spoken outside restaurants like Mario’s Bohemian Cafe and Caffe Trieste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nowadays, aside from all the restaurants, he wondered: “How Italian is it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The history of Italians in North Beach\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Since the Gold Rush, Italian immigrants have come to San Francisco in waves. The\u003ca href=\"https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-Italian-American-community-of-San-Francisco-:-a-descriptive-study/oclc/1393057217\"> height\u003c/a> of the Italian population was in 1930, when the ethnic community numbered just under 60,000 and made up nine percent of the overall population of San Francisco\u003ca href=\"https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-Italian-American-community-of-San-Francisco-:-a-descriptive-study/oclc/1393057217\">.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Northern Italians, from Liguria and Tuscany, first arrived in San Francisco, making up more than half of the ethnic enclave. Later, folks from southern regions like Sicily and Calabria started emigrating. Many Italians settled in North Beach, although the Excelsior District was also a cluster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071066\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071066\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Saints Peter and Paul Church, a Catholic church in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, on Nov. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Steve Leveroni, board president of \u003ca href=\"https://www.italiancs.org/\">Italian Community Services\u003c/a> in North Beach, vice president of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and an insurance businessman, has deep roots in North Beach. His great-great-grandfather, Luigi, emigrated from Genoa in Northern Italy in the 1860s. When Steve was growing up in North Beach in the 1960s, descendants of the Genovese lived on Green Street, from Mason Street to Grant Avenue, and Sts. Peter and Paul Church was their centerpoint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We all got baptized there, we all got married there, and unfortunately, our funerals are gonna be there,” Leveroni said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The church still towers above Washington Square Park, where residents bask in the sun, play with dogs and practice tai chi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Remnants of Italian culture are still all around the neighborhood. Liguria Bakery, on one corner of the park, has been going strong since 1911. Bay Area residents still flock there for mushroom or raisin focaccia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After every mass, we were given a few dollars, and our duty was to pick up the focaccia to bring back to the house for lunch,” Leveroni remembered.[aside postID=news_12063643 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251008-GirlintheFishbowl-01-BL.jpg']Now, as Steve walks down Columbus Avenue, the neighborhood is much more multicultural.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>Now I can walk a block or two and not know somebody that I grew up with,” he said. And today, there’s no clear line between Chinatown and North Beach anymore. “At one time, Broadway Street, down here, was kind of the line of demarcation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leveroni moved to the Richmond District on San Francisco’s West Side when he got married. While North Beach may not be where the descendants of Italian immigrants live anymore, he said, it’s where people come to celebrate and be with family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The North Beach area is the gathering place for all the Italians to come back to,” he said. “Where do they go? To the restaurants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A changed neighborhood\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A look at the latest census data shows that only 4% of residents who reported ancestry in North Beach’s main ZIP code have any Italian roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 1950s, Italian Americans joined many other San Franciscans in flight to the suburbs. Since then, North Beach morphed into a hangout for the Beat Generation, new residence for the Chinese community and a thriving tourist destination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071064\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071064\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michele Ferrante (center) sits with friends at Stella Pastry in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood on Nov. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nowadays, you have to look pretty hard to find old-time Italians in North Beach, but it’s not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michele Ferrante and Frank Balistreri are two of a handful of Sicilians who gather at Stella Pastry & Cafe on Columbus Avenue every morning to drink espresso and talk sports and politics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[We] come out here and bullsh–t all day long,” said Balistreri, who used to own Portofino, a North Beach Italian restaurant. He speaks a Sicilian dialect with Ferrante, who also ran an Italian restaurant in North Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferrante came to San Francisco as a young adult in the 1960s. He left Palermo for New York with his parents, but went further west by himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I heard about the Fisherman’s Wharf full of restaurants, full of Italians, mostly Sicilians, the Aliotos and others,” Ferrante said. Having learned how to cook in the Army and being Sicilian, he figured, “I can go there and get a job.”[aside postID=news_12059962 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/Jello-Biafra-of-the-Dead-Kennedys-performing-at-the-Mabuhay-Gardens-.jpg']By the late 1960s, North Beach was already transforming. Beatnik culture was well established.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those were the days of the hippie generation,” Ferrante said. “There were clubs all over Broadway. All kinds of shows, performances. You could not even walk on Broadway.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beat artists and Italians \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/The_Emergence_of_the_North_Beach_Beat_Scene\">got along\u003c/a> perhaps better than expected. Italian property owners reportedly kept rents low and poets liked the cafes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1976, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, took note of waning Italian culture in North Beach in his famous \u003ca href=\"https://www.scalponefamilytree.info/OldItaliansDyingPoem.htm\">poem\u003c/a>\u003cem> Old Italians are Dying\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“For years the old Italians in faded felt hats have been sunning themselves and dying.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You have seen them on the benches in the park in Washington Square \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The old Italians in their high button shoes \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The old men in their felt fedoras with stained hatbands have been dying and dying day by day. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071071\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071071\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Clement Hudson plays the accordion on Columbus Avenue in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>By the early 1980s, Ferrante said, North Beach didn’t feel like an Italian enclave anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They all moved to Burlingame, San Mateo, Napa, St. Helena, Sonoma,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way I was raised here, you knew who was Italian and who wasn’t,” said Balistreri. “Now you don’t know who’s who.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Preserving history is good business\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the 1990s, the North Beach Chamber of Commerce kicked off a\u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/docview/304187079?%20Theses&accountid=13802&parentSessionId=OAtwzKcX6YzQPUr6brPkGvuKr4%2FF9YEmAoAyrh9mrIo%3D&parentSessionId=PVrf0rGU7WE%2BjHgKUIi7mzkDXo%2B5u5jwDXRNQdxuNI0%3D&pq-origsite=primo&searchKeywords=North%20Beach%20San%20Francisco%20ethnic%20neighborhood&sourcetype=Dissertations%20\"> marketing\u003c/a> campaign called “Little Italy of the West.” Light poles were painted with Italian flag colors. People could buy t-shirts that read: “\u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/docview/304187079?accountid=13802&parentSessionId=PVrf0rGU7WE%2BjHgKUIi7mzkDXo%2B5u5jwDXRNQdxuNI0%3D&pq-origsite=primo&searchKeywords=North%20Beach%20San%20Francisco%20ethnic%20neighborhood&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses\">I’m proud to be half- Italian\u003c/a>.” After all,\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4287693/\"> research shows, \u003c/a>preserving a neighborhood’s ethnic identity is good for business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cultural groups, new and old, are coming up with new ways to keep Italian heritage alive in North Beach as well. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.sflittleitaly.us/\">San Francisco Little Italy Honor Walk\u003c/a> has installed five bronze plaques in the sidewalks around Washington Square that commemorate notable Italian immigrants in San Francisco, from Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini to former mayor George Moscone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071072\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071072\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Businesses line Green Street in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It is the first time that we have multigenerational Italian Americans here, part of one group,” said the organization’s president, Gina Von Esmarch, at a ceremony to unveil the plaques. She’s a relative of both former San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto and the owners of Alioto’s Restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Von Esmarch hopes the plaques will teach the next generation about the accomplishments of San Francisco’s early Italians. “Yes, it’s to pay homage or tribute,” she said, but the plaques will also be “a living classroom” to tourists and history buffs alike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, new Italian immigrants are coming to San Francisco to work in\u003ca href=\"https://innovitsf.com/about/\"> tech\u003c/a>, and specifically to North Beach to open \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Italian-Homemade-Co-makes-S-F-s-only-piadine-6101783.php\">new\u003c/a> or take over \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-city/reopened-north-beach-restaurant-thriving-under-new-ownership/article_dd5fdd67-94b5-4f01-86f0-1374ef5a9181.html\">old restaurants\u003c/a>. Von Esmarch said it’s part of a “re-gentrification” of North Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfiac.org/\"> San Francisco Italian Athletic Club\u003c/a> on Washington Square, open only to people with Italian heritage, said it has doubled membership in the past decade. The new crop is younger and is a mix of Italians from first to fourth generation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While North Beach may not be home to as many Italians anymore, it’s still culturally at the heart of the community. Every year, people return for the Italian Heritage Parade on Columbus Avenue. But instead of living down the street, people commute here to enjoy pasta with friends and family — something everyone can enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071067\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Corbelli works at Liguria Bakery in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, on Nov. 18, 2025. The long-standing bakery specializes in traditional focaccia. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Facts in this story were sourced from historian Rose Scherini, author of The Italian American Community of San Francisco: a Descriptive Study \u003c/em>\u003cem>and many other works, as well as historians Dino Cinel and Sebastian Fichera.\u003c/em>\u003cem> Special thanks to the library at San Francisco State University.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Parade sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>San Francisco’s Italian Heritage parade creates a massive public party in North Beach every October. Streets are blocked off from Fisherman’s Wharf to Washington Square Park on Columbus Day weekend. Bystanders wave mini Italian flags and eat gelato as they watch the fancy floats and trolleys go by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Parade music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>At Saints Peter and Paul church, people play a salami toss game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Salami toss sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Word is, this is the longest-running Italian parade in the country – started back in 1869. Our question asker this week, Grant Strother [STRUH-ther]], says, he’s not Italian, but he’s walked these streets since he was a teenager.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grant Strother:\u003c/strong> I do remember in high school in the early 2000s, you would still hear some Italian conversations on the street. I remember like hearing that at Mario’s and Trieste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Now, as an adult, he works in the financial district and sometimes walks to North Beach for lunch, to grab a caprese sandwich at Molinari’s Deli. But during one of those walks, he wondered … Do Italian people still live in North Beach, or is it all just a tourist trap?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grant Strother:\u003c/strong> Obviously, immigration patterns have undoubtedly changed since North Beach was populated. But I was just interested then in how Italian North Beach really is, aside from a lot of the restaurants that are still there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and today on Bay Curious, we’ll look at the Italian roots of North Beach, track how things have changed and learn about some of the efforts to keep this history alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Located on San Francisco’s northeast side, North Beach is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and has been home to immigrants from many backgrounds over the years. It sits right next to Chinatown and where Little Manilatown used to be. Now, it’s teeming with Italian cafes, restaurants and bakeries. KQED’s Pauline Bartolone went to find out whether any Italians still live in this neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of Columbus Avenue\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Remnants of Italian culture are still all around North Beach, but to spot them, it helps to have a guide. Someone like Steve Leveroni, who grew up in North Beach in the 50s and 60s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>Way back when… home of the Genoveses lived on Green street from Green and Mason all the way up to Green and Grant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Steve gives me a tour of the neighborhood, his great-great-grandfather, Luigi, landed back in the 1860s. Like many Italian immigrants in North Beach, he came from Northern Italy, the Genoa region. In the decades that followed, other Italians came from Tuscany, Sicily and Calabria to escape poverty and seek new opportunities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>(Sound of walking up steps)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>They settled around the Italian Cathedral, Sts. Peter and Paul Church…still a center point for later generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>So this is where you come for your baptism, you come for marriage, you also come for your funeral.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The church towers above Washington Square Park, where residents bask in the sun, play with dogs, practice tai chi and blast music. Steve says when he was growing up, Italians used to hang out here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>You’d see groups sitting down of men and women and they would be speaking in Italian. So that is probably one thing that’s not as much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>You don’t hear Italian very much because not many Italians live here anymore. At its height in 1930, the Italian community numbered about 60,000 people, almost a tenth of the population of San Francisco. But as early as the 1950s, the Italians here joined many others in the flight to the suburbs. Now, only four percent of residents in North Beach’s main ZIP code have Italian heritage, that’s according to the latest census data of people who reported ancestry. But Steve says even if younger generations moved out of the city, they still come back to the neighborhood for celebrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>The North Beach area is the gathering place for all the Italians to come back to. But where do they go? They come, you know, to the restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The restaurants of North Beach are now the most visible and lasting legacy of the Italian enclave here. Graffeo’s coffee on Columbus, since 1935. Molinari’s Deli, our question-asker’s spot, Italian-owned since 1896. Liguria Bakery known for its mushroom or raisin focaccia since 1911.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Restaurant sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Steve wraps up our tour by taking me inside one of the city’s best seafood spots: Sotto Mare, owned by his grammar school friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>Their sauces are all, I can see all on the stovetop there, so we’re getting some aromas from that. And then probably one of those pots is their crab chipino, which is, which is excellent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Nowadays, you have to look pretty hard to find Italian old-timers in the neighborhood, but it’s not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>People speaking Sicilian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>After weeks of looking around, I finally heard some chatter at Stella’s pastry shop on Columbus Avenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante:\u003c/strong> We come every morning, seven days a week. Just, you know, we just get a drink espresso and you know we talk Italian, Sicilian actually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri:\u003c/strong> It’s a meeting spot. Come out here and bullshit all day long. That’s it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Michele Ferrante and Frank Balistreri both ran Italian restaurants in the neighborhood and still live here. They’re just two of the Sicilians who talk sports and politics here every morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante:\u003c/strong> We are known as the peccatore. We are all sinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri:\u003c/strong> Give him the Academy Award, please. Make him happy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>In fact, San Francisco’s Italian restaurants are what drew Michele here as a young adult in the 1960s. His parents left Palermo for New York, but Michele wanted to come further west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>I told my father, my mother says, Arrivederci, I’m going to California. I heard about the Fisherman Wharf full of restaurants, full of Italians, mostly Sicilians, the Aliotos and others. And also because I was hearing so much about North Beach, and being Sicilian, and being a cook, so well, I can go there and get a job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>By the late 1960s, North Beach’s reputation was evolving beyond an Italian neighborhood. Beatnik culture was well established by then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>Those were the days of the hippie generation, you know, ‘67 was the summer of love. Everything was going on. One of my favorite hangout was at La Rocca’s Corner, which is still here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The beat culture, artists and Italians got along perhaps better than expected… Italian property owners reportedly kept rents low, and poets liked the cafes. In 1976, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, took note of North Beach’s waning Italian culture in his famous poem “Old Italians are Dying.” Here’s a recording of him reading it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lawrence Ferlinghetti:\u003c/strong> For years the old Italians in faded felt hats have been sunning themselves and dying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You have seen them on the benches in the park in Washington Square\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The old Italians in their black high button shoes\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The old men in their felt fedoras with stained hatbands have been dying and dying day by day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>By the early 1980s, Michele says, North Beach didn’t feel like an Italian enclave anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>They all move, Burlingame, San Mateo, Napa, San Helena, Sonoma. San Francisco, not too many living here anymore, very little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri: \u003c/strong>Sure, we saw it change. There’s still some kind of flavor, but not originally what I grew up with. The way I was raised here, you knew who was Italian and who wasn’t. Now you don’t know who’s who. So, basically, you feel like nobody’s here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>That feeling of “no Italians” – didn’t sit well with the North Beach chamber of commerce. In the 1990s, they kicked off a marketing campaign for the neighborhood, “Little Italy of the West.” Light poles were painted with Italian flag colors. People could buy “I’m proud to be half Italian” t-shirts. Afterall, research shows, preserving a neighborhood’s ethnic identity is good for business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of kids singing in Italian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Now, new initiatives are popping up to keep Italian heritage alive, like the Little Italy Honor Walk, a series of bronze sidewalk squares that memorialize notable Italians in San Francisco history. Five have been installed around Washington Square Park, and there’s more on the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Singing fades out and sounds of Italian being spoken fade in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Back at Stella’s pastry shop, Michele and Frank say remembering North Beach’s Italian history is important, but they don’t need monuments to remind them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri: \u003c/strong>Times change, things change, I don’t worry about it, as long as I’m here where I want to be. Italians are no Italians, I know who I am, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>North Beach’s original Italian enclave may be long gone, but the neighborhood’s history and food will keep bringing tourists…and locals with Italians heritage… back for years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That story was brought to you by KQED reporter Pauline Bartolone. Special thanks to the San Francisco State University library where Pauline researched some of North Beach’s history. Thanks also to Jim McKee of EarWax Productions for the recording of Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading “Old Italians Are Dying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s question came from Grant Strother, and you could be next! Submit your question about the Bay Area at BayCurious.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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 wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood is known for its Italian restaurants, cafes and bakeries. But is it still an enclave for Northern California’s Italian immigrants?",
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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>Grant Strother loves a good caprese sandwich from North Beach. On weekdays, he walks to Molinari Delicatessen on Columbus Avenue from his job in San Francisco’sFinancial District during his lunch break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s such an easy walk,” he said. “Not too many hills to climb.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, on a particularly meandering walk, Strother passed by Saints Peter and Paul Church on Washington Square. It still offers bilingual mass in Italian, he noticed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was intrigued. Are there still Italian speakers in the neighborhood?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Immigration patterns have undoubtedly changed,” Strother said. Twenty years ago, he’d hear Italian spoken outside restaurants like Mario’s Bohemian Cafe and Caffe Trieste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nowadays, aside from all the restaurants, he wondered: “How Italian is it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The history of Italians in North Beach\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Since the Gold Rush, Italian immigrants have come to San Francisco in waves. The\u003ca href=\"https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-Italian-American-community-of-San-Francisco-:-a-descriptive-study/oclc/1393057217\"> height\u003c/a> of the Italian population was in 1930, when the ethnic community numbered just under 60,000 and made up nine percent of the overall population of San Francisco\u003ca href=\"https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-Italian-American-community-of-San-Francisco-:-a-descriptive-study/oclc/1393057217\">.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Northern Italians, from Liguria and Tuscany, first arrived in San Francisco, making up more than half of the ethnic enclave. Later, folks from southern regions like Sicily and Calabria started emigrating. Many Italians settled in North Beach, although the Excelsior District was also a cluster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071066\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071066\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-12-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Saints Peter and Paul Church, a Catholic church in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, on Nov. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Steve Leveroni, board president of \u003ca href=\"https://www.italiancs.org/\">Italian Community Services\u003c/a> in North Beach, vice president of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and an insurance businessman, has deep roots in North Beach. His great-great-grandfather, Luigi, emigrated from Genoa in Northern Italy in the 1860s. When Steve was growing up in North Beach in the 1960s, descendants of the Genovese lived on Green Street, from Mason Street to Grant Avenue, and Sts. Peter and Paul Church was their centerpoint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We all got baptized there, we all got married there, and unfortunately, our funerals are gonna be there,” Leveroni said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The church still towers above Washington Square Park, where residents bask in the sun, play with dogs and practice tai chi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Remnants of Italian culture are still all around the neighborhood. Liguria Bakery, on one corner of the park, has been going strong since 1911. Bay Area residents still flock there for mushroom or raisin focaccia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After every mass, we were given a few dollars, and our duty was to pick up the focaccia to bring back to the house for lunch,” Leveroni remembered.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Now, as Steve walks down Columbus Avenue, the neighborhood is much more multicultural.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>Now I can walk a block or two and not know somebody that I grew up with,” he said. And today, there’s no clear line between Chinatown and North Beach anymore. “At one time, Broadway Street, down here, was kind of the line of demarcation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leveroni moved to the Richmond District on San Francisco’s West Side when he got married. While North Beach may not be where the descendants of Italian immigrants live anymore, he said, it’s where people come to celebrate and be with family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The North Beach area is the gathering place for all the Italians to come back to,” he said. “Where do they go? To the restaurants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A changed neighborhood\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A look at the latest census data shows that only 4% of residents who reported ancestry in North Beach’s main ZIP code have any Italian roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 1950s, Italian Americans joined many other San Franciscans in flight to the suburbs. Since then, North Beach morphed into a hangout for the Beat Generation, new residence for the Chinese community and a thriving tourist destination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071064\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071064\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-08-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michele Ferrante (center) sits with friends at Stella Pastry in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood on Nov. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nowadays, you have to look pretty hard to find old-time Italians in North Beach, but it’s not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michele Ferrante and Frank Balistreri are two of a handful of Sicilians who gather at Stella Pastry & Cafe on Columbus Avenue every morning to drink espresso and talk sports and politics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[We] come out here and bullsh–t all day long,” said Balistreri, who used to own Portofino, a North Beach Italian restaurant. He speaks a Sicilian dialect with Ferrante, who also ran an Italian restaurant in North Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferrante came to San Francisco as a young adult in the 1960s. He left Palermo for New York with his parents, but went further west by himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I heard about the Fisherman’s Wharf full of restaurants, full of Italians, mostly Sicilians, the Aliotos and others,” Ferrante said. Having learned how to cook in the Army and being Sicilian, he figured, “I can go there and get a job.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>By the late 1960s, North Beach was already transforming. Beatnik culture was well established.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those were the days of the hippie generation,” Ferrante said. “There were clubs all over Broadway. All kinds of shows, performances. You could not even walk on Broadway.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beat artists and Italians \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/The_Emergence_of_the_North_Beach_Beat_Scene\">got along\u003c/a> perhaps better than expected. Italian property owners reportedly kept rents low and poets liked the cafes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1976, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, took note of waning Italian culture in North Beach in his famous \u003ca href=\"https://www.scalponefamilytree.info/OldItaliansDyingPoem.htm\">poem\u003c/a>\u003cem> Old Italians are Dying\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“For years the old Italians in faded felt hats have been sunning themselves and dying.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You have seen them on the benches in the park in Washington Square \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The old Italians in their high button shoes \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The old men in their felt fedoras with stained hatbands have been dying and dying day by day. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071071\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071071\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-02-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Clement Hudson plays the accordion on Columbus Avenue in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>By the early 1980s, Ferrante said, North Beach didn’t feel like an Italian enclave anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They all moved to Burlingame, San Mateo, Napa, St. Helena, Sonoma,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way I was raised here, you knew who was Italian and who wasn’t,” said Balistreri. “Now you don’t know who’s who.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Preserving history is good business\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the 1990s, the North Beach Chamber of Commerce kicked off a\u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/docview/304187079?%20Theses&accountid=13802&parentSessionId=OAtwzKcX6YzQPUr6brPkGvuKr4%2FF9YEmAoAyrh9mrIo%3D&parentSessionId=PVrf0rGU7WE%2BjHgKUIi7mzkDXo%2B5u5jwDXRNQdxuNI0%3D&pq-origsite=primo&searchKeywords=North%20Beach%20San%20Francisco%20ethnic%20neighborhood&sourcetype=Dissertations%20\"> marketing\u003c/a> campaign called “Little Italy of the West.” Light poles were painted with Italian flag colors. People could buy t-shirts that read: “\u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/docview/304187079?accountid=13802&parentSessionId=PVrf0rGU7WE%2BjHgKUIi7mzkDXo%2B5u5jwDXRNQdxuNI0%3D&pq-origsite=primo&searchKeywords=North%20Beach%20San%20Francisco%20ethnic%20neighborhood&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses\">I’m proud to be half- Italian\u003c/a>.” After all,\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4287693/\"> research shows, \u003c/a>preserving a neighborhood’s ethnic identity is good for business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cultural groups, new and old, are coming up with new ways to keep Italian heritage alive in North Beach as well. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.sflittleitaly.us/\">San Francisco Little Italy Honor Walk\u003c/a> has installed five bronze plaques in the sidewalks around Washington Square that commemorate notable Italian immigrants in San Francisco, from Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini to former mayor George Moscone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071072\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071072\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-ITALIANNORTHBEACH-05-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Businesses line Green Street in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It is the first time that we have multigenerational Italian Americans here, part of one group,” said the organization’s president, Gina Von Esmarch, at a ceremony to unveil the plaques. She’s a relative of both former San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto and the owners of Alioto’s Restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Von Esmarch hopes the plaques will teach the next generation about the accomplishments of San Francisco’s early Italians. “Yes, it’s to pay homage or tribute,” she said, but the plaques will also be “a living classroom” to tourists and history buffs alike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, new Italian immigrants are coming to San Francisco to work in\u003ca href=\"https://innovitsf.com/about/\"> tech\u003c/a>, and specifically to North Beach to open \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Italian-Homemade-Co-makes-S-F-s-only-piadine-6101783.php\">new\u003c/a> or take over \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-city/reopened-north-beach-restaurant-thriving-under-new-ownership/article_dd5fdd67-94b5-4f01-86f0-1374ef5a9181.html\">old restaurants\u003c/a>. Von Esmarch said it’s part of a “re-gentrification” of North Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfiac.org/\"> San Francisco Italian Athletic Club\u003c/a> on Washington Square, open only to people with Italian heritage, said it has doubled membership in the past decade. The new crop is younger and is a mix of Italians from first to fourth generation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While North Beach may not be home to as many Italians anymore, it’s still culturally at the heart of the community. Every year, people return for the Italian Heritage Parade on Columbus Avenue. But instead of living down the street, people commute here to enjoy pasta with friends and family — something everyone can enjoy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071067\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251118-HOWITALIANISNORTHBEACH-20-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Corbelli works at Liguria Bakery in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, on Nov. 18, 2025. The long-standing bakery specializes in traditional focaccia. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Facts in this story were sourced from historian Rose Scherini, author of The Italian American Community of San Francisco: a Descriptive Study \u003c/em>\u003cem>and many other works, as well as historians Dino Cinel and Sebastian Fichera.\u003c/em>\u003cem> Special thanks to the library at San Francisco State University.\u003c/em>\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>\u003cem>Parade sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>San Francisco’s Italian Heritage parade creates a massive public party in North Beach every October. Streets are blocked off from Fisherman’s Wharf to Washington Square Park on Columbus Day weekend. Bystanders wave mini Italian flags and eat gelato as they watch the fancy floats and trolleys go by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Parade music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>At Saints Peter and Paul church, people play a salami toss game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Salami toss sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Word is, this is the longest-running Italian parade in the country – started back in 1869. Our question asker this week, Grant Strother [STRUH-ther]], says, he’s not Italian, but he’s walked these streets since he was a teenager.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grant Strother:\u003c/strong> I do remember in high school in the early 2000s, you would still hear some Italian conversations on the street. I remember like hearing that at Mario’s and Trieste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Now, as an adult, he works in the financial district and sometimes walks to North Beach for lunch, to grab a caprese sandwich at Molinari’s Deli. But during one of those walks, he wondered … Do Italian people still live in North Beach, or is it all just a tourist trap?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Grant Strother:\u003c/strong> Obviously, immigration patterns have undoubtedly changed since North Beach was populated. But I was just interested then in how Italian North Beach really is, aside from a lot of the restaurants that are still there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>I’m Olivia Allen-Price, and today on Bay Curious, we’ll look at the Italian roots of North Beach, track how things have changed and learn about some of the efforts to keep this history alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Located on San Francisco’s northeast side, North Beach is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and has been home to immigrants from many backgrounds over the years. It sits right next to Chinatown and where Little Manilatown used to be. Now, it’s teeming with Italian cafes, restaurants and bakeries. KQED’s Pauline Bartolone went to find out whether any Italians still live in this neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of Columbus Avenue\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Remnants of Italian culture are still all around North Beach, but to spot them, it helps to have a guide. Someone like Steve Leveroni, who grew up in North Beach in the 50s and 60s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>Way back when… home of the Genoveses lived on Green street from Green and Mason all the way up to Green and Grant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Steve gives me a tour of the neighborhood, his great-great-grandfather, Luigi, landed back in the 1860s. Like many Italian immigrants in North Beach, he came from Northern Italy, the Genoa region. In the decades that followed, other Italians came from Tuscany, Sicily and Calabria to escape poverty and seek new opportunities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>(Sound of walking up steps)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>They settled around the Italian Cathedral, Sts. Peter and Paul Church…still a center point for later generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>So this is where you come for your baptism, you come for marriage, you also come for your funeral.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The church towers above Washington Square Park, where residents bask in the sun, play with dogs, practice tai chi and blast music. Steve says when he was growing up, Italians used to hang out here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>You’d see groups sitting down of men and women and they would be speaking in Italian. So that is probably one thing that’s not as much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>You don’t hear Italian very much because not many Italians live here anymore. At its height in 1930, the Italian community numbered about 60,000 people, almost a tenth of the population of San Francisco. But as early as the 1950s, the Italians here joined many others in the flight to the suburbs. Now, only four percent of residents in North Beach’s main ZIP code have Italian heritage, that’s according to the latest census data of people who reported ancestry. But Steve says even if younger generations moved out of the city, they still come back to the neighborhood for celebrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>The North Beach area is the gathering place for all the Italians to come back to. But where do they go? They come, you know, to the restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The restaurants of North Beach are now the most visible and lasting legacy of the Italian enclave here. Graffeo’s coffee on Columbus, since 1935. Molinari’s Deli, our question-asker’s spot, Italian-owned since 1896. Liguria Bakery known for its mushroom or raisin focaccia since 1911.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Restaurant sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Steve wraps up our tour by taking me inside one of the city’s best seafood spots: Sotto Mare, owned by his grammar school friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Steve Leveroni: \u003c/strong>Their sauces are all, I can see all on the stovetop there, so we’re getting some aromas from that. And then probably one of those pots is their crab chipino, which is, which is excellent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Nowadays, you have to look pretty hard to find Italian old-timers in the neighborhood, but it’s not impossible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>People speaking Sicilian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>After weeks of looking around, I finally heard some chatter at Stella’s pastry shop on Columbus Avenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante:\u003c/strong> We come every morning, seven days a week. Just, you know, we just get a drink espresso and you know we talk Italian, Sicilian actually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri:\u003c/strong> It’s a meeting spot. Come out here and bullshit all day long. That’s it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Michele Ferrante and Frank Balistreri both ran Italian restaurants in the neighborhood and still live here. They’re just two of the Sicilians who talk sports and politics here every morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante:\u003c/strong> We are known as the peccatore. We are all sinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri:\u003c/strong> Give him the Academy Award, please. Make him happy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>In fact, San Francisco’s Italian restaurants are what drew Michele here as a young adult in the 1960s. His parents left Palermo for New York, but Michele wanted to come further west.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>I told my father, my mother says, Arrivederci, I’m going to California. I heard about the Fisherman Wharf full of restaurants, full of Italians, mostly Sicilians, the Aliotos and others. And also because I was hearing so much about North Beach, and being Sicilian, and being a cook, so well, I can go there and get a job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>By the late 1960s, North Beach’s reputation was evolving beyond an Italian neighborhood. Beatnik culture was well established by then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>Those were the days of the hippie generation, you know, ‘67 was the summer of love. Everything was going on. One of my favorite hangout was at La Rocca’s Corner, which is still here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>The beat culture, artists and Italians got along perhaps better than expected… Italian property owners reportedly kept rents low, and poets liked the cafes. In 1976, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, took note of North Beach’s waning Italian culture in his famous poem “Old Italians are Dying.” Here’s a recording of him reading it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lawrence Ferlinghetti:\u003c/strong> For years the old Italians in faded felt hats have been sunning themselves and dying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You have seen them on the benches in the park in Washington Square\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The old Italians in their black high button shoes\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The old men in their felt fedoras with stained hatbands have been dying and dying day by day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>By the early 1980s, Michele says, North Beach didn’t feel like an Italian enclave anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Michele Ferrante: \u003c/strong>They all move, Burlingame, San Mateo, Napa, San Helena, Sonoma. San Francisco, not too many living here anymore, very little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri: \u003c/strong>Sure, we saw it change. There’s still some kind of flavor, but not originally what I grew up with. The way I was raised here, you knew who was Italian and who wasn’t. Now you don’t know who’s who. So, basically, you feel like nobody’s here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>That feeling of “no Italians” – didn’t sit well with the North Beach chamber of commerce. In the 1990s, they kicked off a marketing campaign for the neighborhood, “Little Italy of the West.” Light poles were painted with Italian flag colors. People could buy “I’m proud to be half Italian” t-shirts. Afterall, research shows, preserving a neighborhood’s ethnic identity is good for business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of kids singing in Italian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Now, new initiatives are popping up to keep Italian heritage alive, like the Little Italy Honor Walk, a series of bronze sidewalk squares that memorialize notable Italians in San Francisco history. Five have been installed around Washington Square Park, and there’s more on the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Singing fades out and sounds of Italian being spoken fade in\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>Back at Stella’s pastry shop, Michele and Frank say remembering North Beach’s Italian history is important, but they don’t need monuments to remind them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Frank Balistreri: \u003c/strong>Times change, things change, I don’t worry about it, as long as I’m here where I want to be. Italians are no Italians, I know who I am, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone: \u003c/strong>North Beach’s original Italian enclave may be long gone, but the neighborhood’s history and food will keep bringing tourists…and locals with Italians heritage… back for years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That story was brought to you by KQED reporter Pauline Bartolone. Special thanks to the San Francisco State University library where Pauline researched some of North Beach’s history. Thanks also to Jim McKee of EarWax Productions for the recording of Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading “Old Italians Are Dying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s question came from Grant Strother, and you could be next! Submit your question about the Bay Area at BayCurious.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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 wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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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 the 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 said 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 said 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 that 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 the 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 it 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 also 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 said. “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>[ad fullwidth]\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. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Western Railway Museum)\u003c/cite>\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, streetcars crisscrossed the Bay Area. Nowadays, though, you rarely see them. So you might even be thinking to yourself, what even is a streetcar?\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 streetcar 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 streetcars 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>[ad fullwidth]\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 streetcars 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 streetcars 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 streetcar 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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"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 the 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 said 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 said 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 that 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 the 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 it 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 also 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 said. “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>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\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. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Western Railway Museum)\u003c/cite>\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, streetcars crisscrossed the Bay Area. Nowadays, though, you rarely see them. So you might even be thinking to yourself, what even is a streetcar?\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 streetcar 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 streetcars 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>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\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 streetcars 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 streetcars 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 streetcar 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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"slug": "is-it-crow-maggedon-why-crows-are-flocking-to-bay-area-cities-each-winter",
"title": "Is It Crow-maggedon? Why Crows Are Flocking to Bay Area Cities Each Winter",
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"headTitle": "Is It Crow-maggedon? Why Crows Are Flocking to Bay Area Cities Each Winter | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around sunset on winter evenings, hordes of crows choke the night sky over the Bay Area, often flocking to the same favorite spots night after night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Matteo Clark-Hurley asked: “Is there a crow-maggedon happening in downtown areas of Oakland and San Francisco? Hundreds come out at dusk. Sections of streets with trees are covered in bird poop. Are there more crows now?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Clark-Hurley’s not the only one — many Bay Curious fans have written to ask why there are so many crows, where they’re going and why they’ve chosen to congregate in certain locations in Oakland and San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The short answer is yes, there are more crows now. The crow population in the Bay Area has been on a steady increase since about 1975, but really exploded after 2000 or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every December, \u003ca href=\"https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/birding-resources/birding-information/christmas-bird-counts/\">volunteers \u003c/a>head out on one particular day and count as many birds as they can to get an approximation of the winter population. In 2025, populations in San Francisco and Oakland both doubled. Volunteers counted \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/crow-populations-san-francisco-21316117.php\">more than 3,000 crows in San Francisco alone\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2090px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073969\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047.jpg\" alt=\"Three black birds perch on a concrete wall looking at the ocean.\" width=\"2090\" height=\"1434\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047.jpg 2090w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-2000x1372.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-1536x1054.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-2048x1405.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2090px) 100vw, 2090px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Three crows at perch on a wall at Ocean Beach. Crows used to live more rurally, but have increasingly been flocking to urban areas where food is plentiful. \u003ccite>(Auseklis/iStock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s been basically logarithmic growth, which is sort of what you would expect in an unchecked system,” said Glenn Phillips, executive director of the \u003ca href=\"https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/\">Golden Gate Bird Alliance\u003c/a>, which runs the count.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why so many more crows, you ask? Well, many bird experts think that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11800958/crows-are-crowding-your-bay-area-skies-why-2\">their range has shifted\u003c/a>. Crows used to be found in more rural areas, where they could have a damaging effect on crops. Even though it’s illegal to kill crows — the Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects them — farmers can get a special permit to hunt them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Crows are not only very smart, they have amazing memory,” Phillips said. “So crows learn who is trouble … and they can share that information with their peers and their offspring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crows have learned to stay away from rural areas where they’re being hunted and have instead discovered that cities are \u003cem>great\u003c/em> places to find food. Because crows will eat almost anything — from bugs to roadkill, baby birds and cherries — the backyards and streets of the Bay Area offer abundant food for them. They also don’t have many predators, which is why their numbers have grown so steadily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are susceptible to some diseases, though.[aside postID=news_12072333 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/Milan-Cortina-Olympics-cropped-2000x1125.jpg']“All the crows and their relatives are really susceptible to West Nile,” Phillips said. “The crow populations have some years where they crash and other years when they keep booming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, while we \u003cem>are\u003c/em> seeing more crows in the Bay Area, overall, the crow population is not dramatically increasing in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, onto the dramatic roosting behavior people have noticed in December, January and February.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a seasonal phenomenon that crows gather in large roosts during the winter,” Phillips said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists believe it happens for two reasons. First, there is protection in numbers. Any bigger bird that wants to attack a crow will be overwhelmed by its brethren. Second, crows gather and share information about where to find food, which can be harder to forage in the wintertime. And, after they gather and share information, they sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of us think of birds and nests, assuming the nest is a bird’s home. But Phillips said that’s a common misperception.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11752335\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/06/47607919412_9471ea2cf2_o-e1559676823145.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11752335\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/06/47607919412_9471ea2cf2_o-e1559676823145.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1246\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A power trio of crows hanging out in Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The nest is only used during the breeding season for the vast majority of birds,” he said. “They don’t use it when they’re not raising their young. It’s the nursery, not the home. And so most birds sleep in trees, on cliffs, on buildings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those big gatherings of crows people have seen near Lake Merritt in Oakland or by the East Cut in San Francisco, or even out by San Francisco International Airport, are where the crows roost and sleep for the night in winter. They’re usually looking for a place with good perches, that has vantage points to spot predators and that’s protected from wind and rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could almost set your watch by it,” Phillips said. “They’re really consistent when they come.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Always at sunset, no matter when sunset is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Kevin Branch has another question we hear a lot about crows: “There are so many crows around nowadays. Are they pushing out the old normal birds that I grew up with — the bluejays, the mockingbirds, the redwing blackbird?”[aside postID=news_12071437 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250919-UKRAINIANFARM_01564_TV-KQED.jpg']Crows are opportunistic eaters and there’s no doubt that they will raid nests of other birds and eat their young. But they don’t target other birds intentionally. Phillips said so far, there’s no evidence that the increased number of crows is responsible for declines in other species. Crows also aren’t the only critters that raid nests — squirrels, gulls and cats do a lot of damage too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s part of the cycle,” Phillips said. He often reminds folks worried about songbirds that certain species adapt to being prey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[For example], robins can lay six to eight eggs and they can have two or three clutches a year. So if every robin grew up to be an adult, we would be up to our eyeballs in robins.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crows also behave differently in the spring and summer when it’s time to breed. Rather than large roosts, they’ll split into smaller groups, dividing up territory so that each bird can feed its young. Come springtime, you’ll be far less likely to see a horde of crows darkening the sky at sunset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have more questions about why the crow population has increased and what scientists say we should do about it? Check out this \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11800958/crows-are-crowding-your-bay-area-skies-why-2\">excellent feature from KQED’s Dan Brekke\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious in your feed on a Monday? It’s true. We’re dropping two episodes each week for a while — and experimenting with some new things along the way. Let us know what you think! Our email is \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"mailto:baycurious@kqed.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">baycurious@kqed.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now on to the episode…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of crows\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chances are good, that is a familiar sound.\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;\">Crow sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those would be “Corvus brachyrhynchos” aka crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our often \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">unwanted\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> urban neighbors. Crows are thought to be loud, pesky, aggressive — even sinister. No matter what you think of them, they’re hard not to notice. They really demand our attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. This is Bay Curious and recently several listeners have written to us observing there’s a “crow-maggedon” happening in downtown Oakland and San Francisco. Listeners are seeing huge flocks of crows flying across the sky around sunset, congregating in the same locations night after night after night. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a seasonal phenomenon that crows gather in large roosts during the winter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Glenn Phillips is the executive director of the Golden Gate Bird Alliance. They count the crows every winter. The most recent count happened in December 2025 and in Oakland and San Francisco, the crow population basically doubled from the year before.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One reason for roosting in large numbers is that there’s safety in numbers. Any predator that would be wanting to take out a crow is gonna have to deal with not just one crow but thousands.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But also, crows are social animals. They share information about where to find food when they gather to sleep at night. And they certainly have some favorite places to sleep.\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;\">They’re looking for good places to perch, with views of predators, shelter from wind and rain…\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;\">A place they can let their metaphorical hair down – or, in a crow’s world, let their claws tighten.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you relax your hand, it’s loose. When a bird relaxes its claw, it is firm and tight. So that they actually have to actively open their feet in order to let go of something. So when they’re sleeping, they aren’t gonna fall off because that grip is tight.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pretty wild! \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;\">So that answers some of your questions about crows. But for the rest of today’s episode we’ll focus on this one sent in from San Mateo listener Kevin Branch in 2019. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kevin Branch: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are so many crows around nowadays. Are they pushing out the old normal birds that I grew up with — the bluejays, the mockingbirds, the redwing blackbird — the birds I used to grow up listening to in the morning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Kevin also wanted to know if there\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is a plan to,\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> ahem,\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reduce their populations. We asked KQED’s Dan Brekke, who has a fascination with just about everything including the natural world, to take a stab at answering them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Dan, what have you got for us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Let’s just say Kevin isn’t imagining things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of birds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I visited him at work — a theatrical rigging company down in Redwood City —\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and he says it’s the same thing every day — crows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kevin Branch: I see ‘em in the morning, I see ‘em in the afternoon, I see ‘em up in trees, I see ‘em on top of buildings. They’re everywhere. I kind of feel like the crow has taken over big time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And after hearing all those crows, Kevin has a pretty good crow caw himself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kevin Branch:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> CAW CAW!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kevin’s right — we’re seeing more crows these days. How many more? The numbers are surprising. I spoke with Bob Lewis, who helps run the Golden Gate Audubon Society’s Annual Christmas Bird Count. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I just took a look at the count today, and starting with 2000, year 2000, there were 167 crows in our circle.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That ‘circle’ covers Oakland and a large part of the East Bay shoreline and hills. Around Christmastime, 300 volunteers canvas the area and tally the birds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s the biggest count in the U.S. Actually, it’s the biggest count in the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, we started in 2000 with 167 crows. And since then?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2002, there were 250, it went up significantly. In 2005 there were 400. At 2010, there was over a thousand. 2015 almost fifteen hundred. And in 2018, there were almost twenty-five hundred crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From 167 crows to twenty-five hundred in less than 20 years. That’s fifteen times as many!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not everywhere in the Bay Area has seen that kind of spike. For instance, South Bay crow populations have fallen in the Christmas Bird Count over the last decade, apparently because of a spike in West Nile virus that killed many of the birds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But John Marzluff, a University of Washington wildlife biologist, says the pattern of increasing crow populations is a familiar one.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s a common trend for a lot of corvids across the western U.S., for sure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That word he said is “corvids.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s a family of birds that includes crows and ravens — another species whose Bay Area population has soared in recent decades. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> OK, so we clearly have more crows, at least in most parts of the Bay Area. Kevin also wanted to know why?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The people who watch the birds point to an equation with two major parts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first part has to do with where crows are not very welcome. Here’s Bob Lewis again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One argument, which may be true, is that crows are smart birds, and crows have historically inhabited the countryside. Farmers put up scarecrows and crows eat corn. But in the country, crows get shot, too, and crows have perhaps discovered in the cities and towns that it’s a much safer place to be.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of a hunting video sneak up\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s sound from one of the many, many crow hunt videos you can find online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can’t really blame crows for feeling like they’re not wanted out there in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shotgun sound in the clear\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One hundred years ago this year a company in the ammunition industry launched a “national crow shoot,” ostensibly to get rid of a threat to crops and other birds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And this wasn’t just a “country activity.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park employed a hunter — usually a city cop — to shoot crows and other unwanted animals, like jays and coyotes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Crow shoot with hunter voices: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Take him,” (laughter) “I think you hit him that one.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And here in California, crows are fair game in most rural areas from December 1st to the beginning of April. In 2015, California hunters reported killing about 35,000 crows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hunting video: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nice! There you go!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But unfriendly humans are just one factor that has led to more crows becoming city dwellers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think it’s kind of simple myself. Basically, we’ve provided more food for them. Now, the reasons for that may be more complex, because it includes things like garbage, like fast-food restaurant waste, like road kill, so there are a lot of ways we provide them food. But that’s the bottom line. That’s why they’re more abundant.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But haven’t we city dwellers have always been pretty messy. Look at the giant open garbage dumps that used to be on the edge of every big city. If garbage is attracting crows — where were they before?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You don’t have to have a dump. I mean, I think actually in terms of territoriality and increasing the breeding population, it’s better to have food more uniformly distributed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our urbanized area is much, much larger than it used to be. And we’re providing rich, dependable sources of food — from lawns to leftovers. More food allows crow populations to become more dense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They only defend enough space that’s necessary to get enough food to raise their young and survive. So as more food is available, they can live in tighter and tighter quarters and you can fit more of them into the place.\u003c/span>\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;\">When we return, we get to the bloody truth. Are these crows killing other birds? Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor break\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So now we know that we do have more crows, and we have some ideas about why. The next question is: Are they killing other species of birds? Like those songbirds Kevin remembers?\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;\">Songbird sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One of the “crow people” I talked to is named Kaeli Swift, a wildlife scientist who has done lots of research on crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She said there are limited instances where crows — abetted by humans, typically — can pose an unusual threat to endangered species like snowy plovers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But your standard suburban backyard like L.A. or Seattle or New York or anywhere else in the country — not so much. Most people that contact me feeling like crows wiped away all of the birds in their neighborhood — and just have this perception that if you see a flock of crows it means none of your songbirds aren’t going to reproduce, that everything is doomed — the science just does not back that up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So research does not show that crows are remorseless killers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And if there are in fact fewer songbirds than when Kevin grew up, it could be for many reasons — loss of habitat, those pesky squirrels or even our domestic cats. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swift points to a long list of the birds’ winning qualities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There’s a lot of qualities that I don’t think you can help but find really attractive — like their ability to learn our faces and be pretty excited to see us when you’ve built up a positive relationship with them by feeding them, for example. They play, so you can watch them play games, particularly the young birds. And they’re just kind of charismatic and goofy in the way that a dog with a really strong personality is. For me, crows have the same sort of quality where if you watch them you just see them do all these things that are so interesting that you just kind of can’t help falling in love with them if you just open yourself up to that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They sound like humans.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Kaeli Swift says many of our problems with crows may stem from how much we share in common with them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They’re clever, so they’re able to outsmart some of the ways we try to keep them out of our garbage or out of our property. They are social, so they are really noisy. They are protective parents, so they can be aggressive around their babies when they feel like they’re being a threat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I keep coming back to this thing John Marzluff said, that it’s important to remember crows are “sentient beings,” like us, and that we ought to learn to use our big human brains to discover and address the problems we have with a growing crow population. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I do end every one of my talks about crows with a slide that’s like, ‘OK, these things can get under our skin. Why? And what should we do?’ And my take-home is that we should celebrate them for being successful, and if we need to control them in places, we need to think hard about it. Like they think about how to live with us, we need to think about how to live with them and come up with strategies that will have meaningful effects on their populations — not just kill a bunch of them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Things like better managing our waste and being faster about removing roadkill.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But mostly, it sounds like we need to just learn to co-exist with crows. And see the good in them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Exactly. While I was doing research for this story I came across a poetry collection about crows.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Sounds good. We will listen to one of those poems on the way out. But first, thank you — reporter Dan Brekke — for your reporting this week.\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You’re welcome\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And also a big thanks to our question asker, Kevin Branch. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Kevin Branch: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at KQED. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This episode was produced by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale, Katie McMurran, Katrina Schwartz and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Special thanks this week to Pauline Bartolone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And now the poem we promised you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sasha Khokha reads “Early Morning Crow” by Jim Natal: \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Crows have no shame. They caw at 6 a.m., \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">expect a response from the windows reflecting\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">overcast skies, wait for an echo\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to return across the canyon, for the bottle \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to wash up on shore, the telephone\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to ring, the empty half of the bed to fill.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You cannot throw\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a boot at them like sex-struck cartoon cats\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">yowling backlit by the moon, cannot\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">shoo them like pie-faced pasture cows ruminating\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with the intensity of low-watt bulbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The crows wake you\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">too early. And there you are, an overdue \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">bill, over-ripe melon, alone with your thoughts sluicing\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">back through the gates you had to lower by hand\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the night before, cranking rusty cogs and wheels\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">so you could get some sleep.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bed floods\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and you rise, afloat with black wings spread\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">like oil upon the surface, a near-fatality\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the cold almost got, wet through and hearing \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a solitary crow that croaks: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is anybody there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is anybody there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">then flies away before you can form \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a suitable answer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\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. Have a wonderful week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Have you seen the huge gatherings of crows near Oakland’s Lake Merritt or in downtown San Francisco? There’s an explanation for their behavior.",
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"title": "Is It Crow-maggedon? Why Crows Are Flocking to Bay Area Cities Each Winter | KQED",
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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>Around sunset on winter evenings, hordes of crows choke the night sky over the Bay Area, often flocking to the same favorite spots night after night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Matteo Clark-Hurley asked: “Is there a crow-maggedon happening in downtown areas of Oakland and San Francisco? Hundreds come out at dusk. Sections of streets with trees are covered in bird poop. Are there more crows now?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Clark-Hurley’s not the only one — many Bay Curious fans have written to ask why there are so many crows, where they’re going and why they’ve chosen to congregate in certain locations in Oakland and San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The short answer is yes, there are more crows now. The crow population in the Bay Area has been on a steady increase since about 1975, but really exploded after 2000 or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every December, \u003ca href=\"https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/birding-resources/birding-information/christmas-bird-counts/\">volunteers \u003c/a>head out on one particular day and count as many birds as they can to get an approximation of the winter population. In 2025, populations in San Francisco and Oakland both doubled. Volunteers counted \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/crow-populations-san-francisco-21316117.php\">more than 3,000 crows in San Francisco alone\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12073969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2090px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12073969\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047.jpg\" alt=\"Three black birds perch on a concrete wall looking at the ocean.\" width=\"2090\" height=\"1434\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047.jpg 2090w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-2000x1372.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-1536x1054.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/iStock-1223536047-2048x1405.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2090px) 100vw, 2090px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Three crows at perch on a wall at Ocean Beach. Crows used to live more rurally, but have increasingly been flocking to urban areas where food is plentiful. \u003ccite>(Auseklis/iStock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s been basically logarithmic growth, which is sort of what you would expect in an unchecked system,” said Glenn Phillips, executive director of the \u003ca href=\"https://goldengatebirdalliance.org/\">Golden Gate Bird Alliance\u003c/a>, which runs the count.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Why so many more crows, you ask? Well, many bird experts think that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11800958/crows-are-crowding-your-bay-area-skies-why-2\">their range has shifted\u003c/a>. Crows used to be found in more rural areas, where they could have a damaging effect on crops. Even though it’s illegal to kill crows — the Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects them — farmers can get a special permit to hunt them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Crows are not only very smart, they have amazing memory,” Phillips said. “So crows learn who is trouble … and they can share that information with their peers and their offspring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crows have learned to stay away from rural areas where they’re being hunted and have instead discovered that cities are \u003cem>great\u003c/em> places to find food. Because crows will eat almost anything — from bugs to roadkill, baby birds and cherries — the backyards and streets of the Bay Area offer abundant food for them. They also don’t have many predators, which is why their numbers have grown so steadily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are susceptible to some diseases, though.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“All the crows and their relatives are really susceptible to West Nile,” Phillips said. “The crow populations have some years where they crash and other years when they keep booming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, while we \u003cem>are\u003c/em> seeing more crows in the Bay Area, overall, the crow population is not dramatically increasing in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, onto the dramatic roosting behavior people have noticed in December, January and February.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a seasonal phenomenon that crows gather in large roosts during the winter,” Phillips said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists believe it happens for two reasons. First, there is protection in numbers. Any bigger bird that wants to attack a crow will be overwhelmed by its brethren. Second, crows gather and share information about where to find food, which can be harder to forage in the wintertime. And, after they gather and share information, they sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of us think of birds and nests, assuming the nest is a bird’s home. But Phillips said that’s a common misperception.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11752335\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/06/47607919412_9471ea2cf2_o-e1559676823145.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11752335\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/06/47607919412_9471ea2cf2_o-e1559676823145.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1246\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A power trio of crows hanging out in Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The nest is only used during the breeding season for the vast majority of birds,” he said. “They don’t use it when they’re not raising their young. It’s the nursery, not the home. And so most birds sleep in trees, on cliffs, on buildings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those big gatherings of crows people have seen near Lake Merritt in Oakland or by the East Cut in San Francisco, or even out by San Francisco International Airport, are where the crows roost and sleep for the night in winter. They’re usually looking for a place with good perches, that has vantage points to spot predators and that’s protected from wind and rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could almost set your watch by it,” Phillips said. “They’re really consistent when they come.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Always at sunset, no matter when sunset is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious listener Kevin Branch has another question we hear a lot about crows: “There are so many crows around nowadays. Are they pushing out the old normal birds that I grew up with — the bluejays, the mockingbirds, the redwing blackbird?”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Crows are opportunistic eaters and there’s no doubt that they will raid nests of other birds and eat their young. But they don’t target other birds intentionally. Phillips said so far, there’s no evidence that the increased number of crows is responsible for declines in other species. Crows also aren’t the only critters that raid nests — squirrels, gulls and cats do a lot of damage too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s part of the cycle,” Phillips said. He often reminds folks worried about songbirds that certain species adapt to being prey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[For example], robins can lay six to eight eggs and they can have two or three clutches a year. So if every robin grew up to be an adult, we would be up to our eyeballs in robins.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crows also behave differently in the spring and summer when it’s time to breed. Rather than large roosts, they’ll split into smaller groups, dividing up territory so that each bird can feed its young. Come springtime, you’ll be far less likely to see a horde of crows darkening the sky at sunset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have more questions about why the crow population has increased and what scientists say we should do about it? Check out this \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11800958/crows-are-crowding-your-bay-area-skies-why-2\">excellent feature from KQED’s Dan Brekke\u003c/a>.\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>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious in your feed on a Monday? It’s true. We’re dropping two episodes each week for a while — and experimenting with some new things along the way. Let us know what you think! Our email is \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"mailto:baycurious@kqed.org\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">baycurious@kqed.org\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now on to the episode…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of crows\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chances are good, that is a familiar sound.\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;\">Crow sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those would be “Corvus brachyrhynchos” aka crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our often \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">unwanted\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> urban neighbors. Crows are thought to be loud, pesky, aggressive — even sinister. No matter what you think of them, they’re hard not to notice. They really demand our attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. This is Bay Curious and recently several listeners have written to us observing there’s a “crow-maggedon” happening in downtown Oakland and San Francisco. Listeners are seeing huge flocks of crows flying across the sky around sunset, congregating in the same locations night after night after night. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a seasonal phenomenon that crows gather in large roosts during the winter. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Glenn Phillips is the executive director of the Golden Gate Bird Alliance. They count the crows every winter. The most recent count happened in December 2025 and in Oakland and San Francisco, the crow population basically doubled from the year before.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One reason for roosting in large numbers is that there’s safety in numbers. Any predator that would be wanting to take out a crow is gonna have to deal with not just one crow but thousands.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But also, crows are social animals. They share information about where to find food when they gather to sleep at night. And they certainly have some favorite places to sleep.\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;\">They’re looking for good places to perch, with views of predators, shelter from wind and rain…\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;\">A place they can let their metaphorical hair down – or, in a crow’s world, let their claws tighten.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Glenn Phillips: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you relax your hand, it’s loose. When a bird relaxes its claw, it is firm and tight. So that they actually have to actively open their feet in order to let go of something. So when they’re sleeping, they aren’t gonna fall off because that grip is tight.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pretty wild! \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;\">So that answers some of your questions about crows. But for the rest of today’s episode we’ll focus on this one sent in from San Mateo listener Kevin Branch in 2019. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kevin Branch: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are so many crows around nowadays. Are they pushing out the old normal birds that I grew up with — the bluejays, the mockingbirds, the redwing blackbird — the birds I used to grow up listening to in the morning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Kevin also wanted to know if there\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is a plan to,\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> ahem,\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reduce their populations. We asked KQED’s Dan Brekke, who has a fascination with just about everything including the natural world, to take a stab at answering them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Dan, what have you got for us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Let’s just say Kevin isn’t imagining things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of birds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I visited him at work — a theatrical rigging company down in Redwood City —\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and he says it’s the same thing every day — crows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kevin Branch: I see ‘em in the morning, I see ‘em in the afternoon, I see ‘em up in trees, I see ‘em on top of buildings. They’re everywhere. I kind of feel like the crow has taken over big time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And after hearing all those crows, Kevin has a pretty good crow caw himself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kevin Branch:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> CAW CAW!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kevin’s right — we’re seeing more crows these days. How many more? The numbers are surprising. I spoke with Bob Lewis, who helps run the Golden Gate Audubon Society’s Annual Christmas Bird Count. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I just took a look at the count today, and starting with 2000, year 2000, there were 167 crows in our circle.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That ‘circle’ covers Oakland and a large part of the East Bay shoreline and hills. Around Christmastime, 300 volunteers canvas the area and tally the birds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s the biggest count in the U.S. Actually, it’s the biggest count in the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, we started in 2000 with 167 crows. And since then?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2002, there were 250, it went up significantly. In 2005 there were 400. At 2010, there was over a thousand. 2015 almost fifteen hundred. And in 2018, there were almost twenty-five hundred crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From 167 crows to twenty-five hundred in less than 20 years. That’s fifteen times as many!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not everywhere in the Bay Area has seen that kind of spike. For instance, South Bay crow populations have fallen in the Christmas Bird Count over the last decade, apparently because of a spike in West Nile virus that killed many of the birds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But John Marzluff, a University of Washington wildlife biologist, says the pattern of increasing crow populations is a familiar one.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s a common trend for a lot of corvids across the western U.S., for sure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That word he said is “corvids.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s a family of birds that includes crows and ravens — another species whose Bay Area population has soared in recent decades. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> OK, so we clearly have more crows, at least in most parts of the Bay Area. Kevin also wanted to know why?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The people who watch the birds point to an equation with two major parts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first part has to do with where crows are not very welcome. Here’s Bob Lewis again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bob Lewis:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One argument, which may be true, is that crows are smart birds, and crows have historically inhabited the countryside. Farmers put up scarecrows and crows eat corn. But in the country, crows get shot, too, and crows have perhaps discovered in the cities and towns that it’s a much safer place to be.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds of a hunting video sneak up\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s sound from one of the many, many crow hunt videos you can find online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can’t really blame crows for feeling like they’re not wanted out there in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shotgun sound in the clear\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One hundred years ago this year a company in the ammunition industry launched a “national crow shoot,” ostensibly to get rid of a threat to crops and other birds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And this wasn’t just a “country activity.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park employed a hunter — usually a city cop — to shoot crows and other unwanted animals, like jays and coyotes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Crow shoot with hunter voices: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Take him,” (laughter) “I think you hit him that one.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And here in California, crows are fair game in most rural areas from December 1st to the beginning of April. In 2015, California hunters reported killing about 35,000 crows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Hunting video: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nice! There you go!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But unfriendly humans are just one factor that has led to more crows becoming city dwellers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I think it’s kind of simple myself. Basically, we’ve provided more food for them. Now, the reasons for that may be more complex, because it includes things like garbage, like fast-food restaurant waste, like road kill, so there are a lot of ways we provide them food. But that’s the bottom line. That’s why they’re more abundant.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But haven’t we city dwellers have always been pretty messy. Look at the giant open garbage dumps that used to be on the edge of every big city. If garbage is attracting crows — where were they before?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You don’t have to have a dump. I mean, I think actually in terms of territoriality and increasing the breeding population, it’s better to have food more uniformly distributed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our urbanized area is much, much larger than it used to be. And we’re providing rich, dependable sources of food — from lawns to leftovers. More food allows crow populations to become more dense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They only defend enough space that’s necessary to get enough food to raise their young and survive. So as more food is available, they can live in tighter and tighter quarters and you can fit more of them into the place.\u003c/span>\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;\">When we return, we get to the bloody truth. Are these crows killing other birds? Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor break\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So now we know that we do have more crows, and we have some ideas about why. The next question is: Are they killing other species of birds? Like those songbirds Kevin remembers?\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;\">Songbird sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One of the “crow people” I talked to is named Kaeli Swift, a wildlife scientist who has done lots of research on crows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She said there are limited instances where crows — abetted by humans, typically — can pose an unusual threat to endangered species like snowy plovers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But your standard suburban backyard like L.A. or Seattle or New York or anywhere else in the country — not so much. Most people that contact me feeling like crows wiped away all of the birds in their neighborhood — and just have this perception that if you see a flock of crows it means none of your songbirds aren’t going to reproduce, that everything is doomed — the science just does not back that up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So research does not show that crows are remorseless killers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And if there are in fact fewer songbirds than when Kevin grew up, it could be for many reasons — loss of habitat, those pesky squirrels or even our domestic cats. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swift points to a long list of the birds’ winning qualities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There’s a lot of qualities that I don’t think you can help but find really attractive — like their ability to learn our faces and be pretty excited to see us when you’ve built up a positive relationship with them by feeding them, for example. They play, so you can watch them play games, particularly the young birds. And they’re just kind of charismatic and goofy in the way that a dog with a really strong personality is. For me, crows have the same sort of quality where if you watch them you just see them do all these things that are so interesting that you just kind of can’t help falling in love with them if you just open yourself up to that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They sound like humans.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Kaeli Swift says many of our problems with crows may stem from how much we share in common with them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kaeli Swift: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They’re clever, so they’re able to outsmart some of the ways we try to keep them out of our garbage or out of our property. They are social, so they are really noisy. They are protective parents, so they can be aggressive around their babies when they feel like they’re being a threat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I keep coming back to this thing John Marzluff said, that it’s important to remember crows are “sentient beings,” like us, and that we ought to learn to use our big human brains to discover and address the problems we have with a growing crow population. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>John Marzluff:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I do end every one of my talks about crows with a slide that’s like, ‘OK, these things can get under our skin. Why? And what should we do?’ And my take-home is that we should celebrate them for being successful, and if we need to control them in places, we need to think hard about it. Like they think about how to live with us, we need to think about how to live with them and come up with strategies that will have meaningful effects on their populations — not just kill a bunch of them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Things like better managing our waste and being faster about removing roadkill.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But mostly, it sounds like we need to just learn to co-exist with crows. And see the good in them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dan Brekke:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Exactly. While I was doing research for this story I came across a poetry collection about crows.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Sounds good. We will listen to one of those poems on the way out. But first, thank you — reporter Dan Brekke — for your reporting this week.\u003c/span>\u003cb>Dan Brekke: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You’re welcome\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And also a big thanks to our question asker, Kevin Branch. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Kevin Branch: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at KQED. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This episode was produced by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale, Katie McMurran, Katrina Schwartz and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Special thanks this week to Pauline Bartolone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And now the poem we promised you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sasha Khokha reads “Early Morning Crow” by Jim Natal: \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Crows have no shame. They caw at 6 a.m., \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">expect a response from the windows reflecting\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">overcast skies, wait for an echo\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to return across the canyon, for the bottle \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to wash up on shore, the telephone\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to ring, the empty half of the bed to fill.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You cannot throw\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a boot at them like sex-struck cartoon cats\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">yowling backlit by the moon, cannot\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">shoo them like pie-faced pasture cows ruminating\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with the intensity of low-watt bulbs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The crows wake you\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">too early. And there you are, an overdue \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">bill, over-ripe melon, alone with your thoughts sluicing\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">back through the gates you had to lower by hand\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the night before, cranking rusty cogs and wheels\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">so you could get some sleep.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bed floods\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and you rise, afloat with black wings spread\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">like oil upon the surface, a near-fatality\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the cold almost got, wet through and hearing \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a solitary crow that croaks: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is anybody there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is anybody there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">then flies away before you can form \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a suitable answer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\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. Have a wonderful week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "How a Remarkable 19th-Century Revolutionary Priest From Ukraine Ended Up in Hayward",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard not to feel glum reading the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12070573/a-generation-orphaned-by-war-ukrainian-children-grow-up-amid-loss-and-recovery\">news headlines from Ukraine\u003c/a> these days, even if you’re not Ukrainian or Ukrainian American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But at the same time, the conflict can feel far away. And yet, in the late 19th century, the Bay Area was home to a Ukrainian man who was exactly the type of revolutionary dissident Russia wanted to silence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a historical marker commemorating him in, of all places, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/sites/default/files/garin_honcharenkos_santuary.pdf\">Garin Regional Park\u003c/a>. Tony Divito of San Mateo passed a road sign nearby on his commute, calling attention to that marker and wondered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just wanted to know the backstory,” he told Bay Curious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer leads to a man of many disparate layers; a devout Orthodox priest, a relentless dissident and outlaw, a groundbreaking publisher, and subsistence farmer. The life of Agapius Honcharenko reads like an epic thriller, albeit one that ends improbably on a quiet hilltop farm tucked high in the Hayward Hills. But let’s start at the very beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A keen intellect and empathetic soul\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The man who came to be known in the Bay Area as Agapius Honcharenko was born Andrii Humnytsky in 1832. The son of an Orthodox priest, he displayed a keen intellect at a young age and caught the attention of the highest-ranking church official in Ukraine at the time, becoming his personal assistant. As a consequence, young Humnytsky bore witness to the hardships endured by peasants and serfs, agricultural laborers bound to their lords’ estates. The very word “slave” comes from the word “Slav.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was appalled by the poverty in these villages,” said Jars Balan, a researcher at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057937\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057937\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Father Oleg Kepeshchuk of the Greek Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception video calls a friend to show them the view of the burial site where Ukrainian patriot and exiled orthodox priest Agapius Honcharenko and his wife Albina are buried at Garin Regional Park in Hayward on Sept. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Humnytsky delivered his ordination sermon, Balan said, he called on the church to melt down all the gold and precious jewels, “and use the money to feed, to help the poor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This kind of talk did not go over well in 19th-century Ukraine. Still, Humnytsky would not cool his revolutionary jets. He got acquainted with — and radicalized by — fellow countrymen who, decades before, were involved in a failed attempt to overthrow the czar, the emperor of Russia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humnytsky’s boss saw trouble brewing, so he sent him out of the country. Because Ukraine was part of Russia at the time, he sent Humnytsky to serve in the chapel of the Imperial Russian Consulate in Greece.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there, too, Humnytsky fell in with like-minded revolutionaries. He started writing for a dissident journal called \u003cem>Kolokol\u003c/em>, in English, \u003cem>The Bell\u003c/em>.[aside postID=news_12070415 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-15_qed.jpg']After publishing searing articles calling for the emancipation of serfs and criticizing the Orthodox Church’s support for tsarist autocracy, Humnytsky was arrested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russian authorities imprisoned him in the hold of a warship, which set sail for what is now Istanbul. According to his later recollections, Humnytsky arranged a daring escape with the help of his family back in Moscow. He would recall years later, “I escaped for an eternal glory, to be a Kozak in the free world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This episode marked the start of a life on the run from Russian justice. Repeatedly over the years that followed, Humnytsky would pop up in a new location, work all sorts of odd hustles, make friends with anarchists, dissidents, and revolutionaries, and then the Russians would catch up with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, he returned to Greece for additional professional spiritual training on the remote peninsula of Mount Athos, home to the world’s largest monastic community. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site today. Back then, it was an excellent place to hide from the Russians. He had a facility with languages, so in London, he was a Russian language tutor to Greeks, and a specialist in old coins at the British Museum. In Cairo, he organized sightseeing tours — and survived a knifing paid for by the local Russian consulate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By his early thirties, Humnytsky decided to try his luck on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A new life in America\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1865, he landed in Boston, headed to New York, then New Orleans. Around this time, Andrii Humnytsky changed his name to Agapius, or Ahapi, Honcharenko, to seem more Greek and avoid detection from the Russians. But even in the United States, wherever he went, local Russians eventually figured out Father Agapius was not actually a Greek with remarkably good command of Russian. Balan, who wrote a \u003ca href=\"https://ia800309.us.archive.org/25/items/journalofukraini3334cana/journalofukraini3334cana.pdf\">well-regarded study\u003c/a> of Honcharenko’s life, calls him a “renegade monastic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While in New York, Honcharenko married the daughter of one of the Italian radicals he met, a young school teacher named Albina Citi. The match was not to the liking of her anti-religious family, Balan said, “but they were in love, and they wanted to go to the West Coast.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071447\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1289px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1289\" height=\"2090\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a.jpeg 1289w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a-160x259.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a-947x1536.jpeg 947w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a-1263x2048.jpeg 1263w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1289px) 100vw, 1289px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the photos used to illustrate the book Ahapius Honcharenko “Alaska Man,” by Wasyl Luciw, Ph.D. And Theodore Luciw, M. A., published in Toronto by Slavia Library in 1963. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Jars Balan)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And so it was that Honcharenko arrived in San Francisco in the 1860s, bringing with him typesetting skills he had honed in London. He purchased Cyrillic fonts and launched the \u003ca href=\"https://diasporiana.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/books/13652/file.pdf\">\u003cem>Alaska Herald\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which included a Ukrainian-language supplement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper became a vital resource for Ukrainian and Russian émigrés alike, providing news to people living far from home. But Honcharenko couldn’t resist publishing some biting commentary as well. Here’s an excerpt of an issue celebrating the publication’s second year:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>From the day of its birth it assumed a certain attitude, and it has unflinchingly maintained its position and consistency during these two years. It has struggled hard and bitterly because it was on the side of right and justice, and they who champion the oppressed seldom find their work either cheerful or remunerative.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem for Honcharenko was that he was a critic of imperial malfeasance wherever he saw it. Eventually, he bit the hand that fed him, which in this case was none other than the U.S. government, a primary backer of the \u003cem>Alaska Herald\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because the administration that the Americans set up had problems with corruption,” Balan explained. “[Honcharenko] was critical of the way the American administration treated Native people. He had some environmental concerns. When he became critical of what was going on in Alaska, they pulled the funding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church relocated its U.S. base of operations from Sitka in Alaska to San Francisco in California. It came to their attention that a renegade priest was holding services in the city, and that’s when Honcharenko and his wife decided to decamp for Alameda County.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A quieter life\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Honcharenko sold his printing press, bought a 40-acre farm in the hills above \u003ca href=\"https://www.haywardareahistory.org/agapius-honcharenko\">Hayward\u003c/a>, named the place “Ukraina,” and settled into a relatively calm life for the next 40-odd years. He led weekly Orthodox church services on the farm for local and visiting Slavic immigrants, conducted baptisms and weddings. His homestead became a small but significant hub for Ukrainian-American life on the West Coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last years of his life were hard. The couple’s daughter died when she was just ten years old. The subsistence farm didn’t produce enough food to live on. However, Agapius and Albina Hocharenko had given so much to so many over the decades that when they were in need, a lot of locals returned the favor.[aside postID=news_12068602 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00030_TV-KQED.jpg']Still, Honcharenko continued to write, publish, and mentor émigrés. His farm briefly hosted a utopian colony, a dream of community that ultimately failed, but further cemented his reputation among the diaspora.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The couple also gardened. They sent numerous samples of plants and vegetables to the editors of the \u003cem>California Horticulturalist and Floral Magazine\u003c/em>, who wrote back to praise the “monster squash,” and “some of the finest sugar table corn and nutmeg melons we have ever tasted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“His life was amazing,” Balan said. “He was eccentric, he was quirky. He had strange ideas about some things; there’s no doubt. But when you look at the trajectory of his life, it’s an amazing story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honcharenko died in 1916 at the age of 84, shortly after his wife. Although his passing was noted in the local papers and inspired a couple of \u003ca href=\"https://diasporiana.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/books/17172/file.pdf\">biographies\u003c/a>, it wasn’t until 1997 that the California Historical Resources Commission designated his farm and gravesite as a state historical landmark. A cairn and plaque followed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, there’s a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11906285/ukrainians-in-california-devastated-by-russian-invasion\">sizable\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11942336/despite-a-year-of-suffering-some-silicon-valley-companies-tied-to-ukraine-remain-optimistic\">organized\u003c/a> local Ukrainian-American community in the Bay Area, some of whom gather on a mile-long hike every year to \u003ca href=\"https://ohp.parks.ca.gov/ListedResources/Detail/1025\">\u003cem>Ukraina\u003c/em>\u003c/a> to honor Honcharenko’s memory. They sing in Ukrainian and offer prayers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057938\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057938\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Taras Turiv’s (left) daughter, Victoria (right), wears a Ukrainian flag at the burial site where Ukrainian patriot and exiled orthodox priest Agapius Honcharenko and his wife Albina are buried at Garin Regional Park in Hayward on Sept. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Software engineer Alla Kashaba was among the 20 or so in attendance the last time. She lives in Los Altos now, but comes originally from Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine. “He was [a] very interesting person, and I hope someday, someone will make an interesting movie about him, like, adventure movie,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This whole story was news to Bay Curious question asker Tony Divito.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re incredibly fortunate and lucky to have him as part of Bay Area history,” Divito said. “It goes with our history of allowing refuge, of allowing people from desperate situations to come here and thrive here and contribute to our society, our community,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/gglueck\">\u003cem>Gabriela Glueck\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed reporting to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We start today’s episode in Garin Regional Park – high in the hills overlooking Hayward. If you drive over this way, you might pass by an intriguing sign. That’s what happened to Tony Divito of San Mateo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tony Divito: \u003c/strong>I saw a sign for a Ukrainian farm in Hayward. I just wanted to know the backstory.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Deep in the park is California registered historical landmark #1025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>VOICE: “Ukraina” is the site of the farm and burial place of the Ukrainian patriot and exiled orthodox priest Agapius Honcharenko (1832-1916) and his wife Albina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: It’s a serene setting now, but the life of this guy – Agapius Honcharenko – was anything but. He spent much of his life fleeing Russian forces, traveling the globe and stirring up revolutionary inklings in his wake. Not exactly the image you might expect from an orthodox priest. Today on the show, we’ll delve into what made Honcharenko so notable that more than 100 years after his death, he’s still celebrated by local communities. Buckle up, it’s a wild ride! I’m Olivia Allen-Price. You’re listening to Bay Curious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sponsor Message\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>In the 19th century, all sorts of curious characters washed up on California’s shores, looking for fortune, a fresh start, or in the case of Father Agapius Honcharenko … a safe place to hide. KQED’s Rachael Myrow found a group of people who gather every year to honor him. She went to find out why…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Singing in Ukrainian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The mood was contemplative, even somber, at the 9th annual Park Ukraina Hike and Panahdya — a memorial service for Honcharenko. Representatives from local Ukrainian churches hiked a mile to offer prayers over the grave of a remarkable man who established a farm here on this hilltop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Man reading a prayer in Ukrainian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Software engineer, Alla Kashaba was among the 20 or so in attendance. She lives in Los Altos now, but comes originally from Karghiv, in eastern Ukraine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alla Kashaba: \u003c/strong>He was very interesting person, and I hope someday someone will make an interesting movie about him, like, adventure movie. All about how he hide from Russian forces? I don’t know how to translate this. All across the globe. So he was running from them in London, in Egypt, in Jerusalem, and ended up in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Intriguing, no?? Let’s step back in time to understand what exactly this man was running from. Born Andrii Humnytsky in what is now central Ukraine in 1832, this guy was destined to become an Orthodox priest like his father. He certainly caught the eye of the highest-ranking church leader in Ukraine at the time, a man named Metropolitan Philaret.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>The Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine at that time, Metropolitan Philaret, saw that this guy was smart and capable, and made him his personal assistant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>That’s Jars Balan, a researcher at the Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. He’s written the definitive research paper on our man Humnytsky, and he spoke at the unveiling of that plaque in Hayward. Balan says, from childhood, Humnytsky felt a fierce pride in his Ukrainian ancestry and his Christian spirituality. He took the monastic name Agapius, derived from the Greek word \u003cem>agape\u003c/em>, meaning selfless love, and pretty much from the start, his politics leaned progressive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>Because he got to travel around with the Metropolitan, he visited a lot of communities, and he was appalled by the poverty in these villages. This is still a time of serfdom, and the church even had serfs, and he found that appalling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The word SLAV is where English speakers get the word slave, because Slavs became synonymous with enslavement in the Middle Ages. A serf, for those of you not up on your Eastern European history, is an agricultural laborer bound to work on their lord’s estate. Humnytsky hated the practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>In fact, when he was [in] his first level of ordination, and he gave his ordination sermon, he called on the church to melt down all the gold and precious jewels, all the golden precious metals, and use the money to feed, to help the poor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Sounds Christian in the OG sense, but this talk did not go over well in mid-19th-century Ukraine. Still, Humnytsky would not cool his revolutionary jets. He got acquainted with – and radicalized by – locals who, decades before, were involved in a failed attempt to overthrow the czar, the emperor of Russia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humnytsky’s boss, the Metropolitan, saw trouble brewing, so he sent him out of the country. Because Ukraine was part of Russia at the time, he sent Humnytsky to serve in the chapel of the Imperial Russian Consulate in Greece. But there, too, Humnytsky fell in with like-minded revolutionaries. He started writing for a dissident journal called \u003cem>Kolokol\u003c/em>. In English, \u003cem>The Bell\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After publishing searing articles calling for the emancipation of serfs and criticizing the Orthodox Church’s support for Tsarist autocracy, Humnytsky was arrested and imprisoned in the hold of the Russian warship, which set sail for what is now Istanbul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>He managed to arrange an escape when they were holding him in Istanbul. He had an aunt who was in Moscow. She had some connections, managed to pull a few strings, maybe pay a few bribes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>In his memoirs written decades later, the dissident priest recalled his optimism as a young man:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice actor reading from Humnytsky’s memoirs: \u003c/strong>“I escaped for an eternal glory, to be a Kozak in the free world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Things didn’t quite pan out that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>In point of fact, this episode was just the start of a life on the run from Russian justice. Repeatedly over the years that followed, he’d pop up in a new location, work all sorts of odd hustles, and then the Russians would catch up with him. For instance, he had a facility with languages, so in London, he was a Russian language tutor to Greeks, and a specialist in old coins at the British Museum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>How he picked up the specialty, I’m not sure, but I said he was a very bright guy and interested in history and archeology and theology and all kinds of things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>It’s around this time that Humnytsky began using “Honcharenko” as his nom de plume. And – I mean, you can’t make this stuff up, this guy was extraordinarily bright – he picked up a craft – typesetting – that would come in handy later in his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan:\u003c/strong> …in a printer shop and learned how to print. He translated a rare sort of, I think it was a 15th century book called Stoflau // calling for reforms in the Orthodox Church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Troublemaker, right? And remember, everywhere Humnytsky goes, he makes friends with anarchists, dissidents and revolutionaries. But he never lost his passion for spirituality. In fact, he returned to Greece for additional professional training.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of monks chanting\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>…on a remote peninsula in the northeast. It’s home to the largest monastic community in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage Site today, and an excellent place to hide from the Russians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This meant Humnytsky was now able to lead prayers, conduct marriages and baptisms, and otherwise tend to lay people’s spiritual needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humnytsky bounced around for years. Jerusalem, the mountains of Lebanon, Cairo, where he survived a knifing paid for by the local Russian consulate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not long after, he decided to make a break for the New World, quite likely because he wanted to put as much space as he could between himself and the Russians. In 1865, in his early thirties, he landed in Boston, headed to New York, then New Orleans. But even on this side of the Atlantic, local Russians would eventually figure out Father Agapius was not actually a Greek with remarkably good command of Russian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around this time, Andrii Humnytsky changed his name – not just his nom de plum – to Agapius, or Ahapi, Honcharenko, to avoid detection from the Russians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, while in New York, he married the daughter of one of the Italian radicals he met in the U.S., a young school teacher named Albina Citi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>Not to the liking, particularly of her family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Her deeply anti-religious family was put off by this…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>… bearded orthodox priest in wearing cassocks and things. But they were in love, and they wanted to go to the West Coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>So, in his mid-30s, Honcharenko landed in San Francisco with his wife, Albina. Remember how he learned about printing in London? He bought a set of Cyrillic fonts and launched the \u003cem>Alaska Herald\u003c/em> — with a Ukrainian-language supplement. That was one of the very first Ukrainian publications in North America, and a must-read for Ukrainian expats from New York to Siberia. A must-read for a lot of Russian expats, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>He was successful in getting the paper going. He got funding from the American government initially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Here’s an excerpt of an issue celebrating the publication’s second year:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice reading from newspaper article: \u003c/strong>From the day of its birth it assumed a certain attitude, and it has unflinchingly maintained its position and consistency during these two years. It has struggled hard and bitterly because it was on the side of right and justice, and they who champion the oppressed seldom find their work either cheerful or remunerative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>OK, so Honcharenko could get a little strident and self-aggrandizing…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice reading from newspaper article: \u003c/strong>Of course, it has encountered severe hostility at the hands of those whom it has exposed; of course, it has made enemies for itself by the score.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The problem for Honcharenko was that he was a critic of imperial malfeasance wherever he saw it, and eventually, he bit the hand that fed him, none other than the U.S. government, a primary backer of the Alaska Herald.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>Because the administration that the Americans set up had problems with corruption. He was critical of the way the American administration treated Native people. He had some environmental concerns. When he became critical of what was going on in Alaska, they pulled the funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church relocated its U.S. base of operations from Sitka in Alaska to San Francisco in California. And it came to their attention that a renegade priest was holding services in the city. And that’s when the couple decided to decamp for Alameda County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Honcharenko sold his printing press, bought a 40-acre farm in the hills above Hayward, named the place “Ukraina,” and settled into a relatively calmer life for the next 40-odd years. He led weekly Orthodox church services on the farm for local and visiting Slavic immigrants, conducted baptisms, and weddings. The couple also gardened. They sent numerous samples of plants and vegetables to the editors of the \u003cem>California Horticulturalist and Floral Magazine\u003c/em>, who wrote back to praise the “monster squash,” and “some of the finest sugar table corn and nutmeg melons we have ever tasted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>His life was amazing. He was eccentric, he was quirky. He had strange ideas about some things; there’s no doubt. But when you look at the trajectory of his life, it’s an amazing story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>He continued to publish articles and even a memoir in 1894. His homestead became a stopping place for fellow countrymen passing through. For half a minute, a small group of dreamers tried a utopian colony on his land. The venture failed, but it burnished Honcharenko’s reputation and ensured his lasting memory in the Ukrainian diaspora.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>There are stories that say, no, no, he exaggerated or that he made up stories about his life and everything like that. He might have exaggerated certain things, but there are a lot of things that my research has shown actually were based in fact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The last years were hard. Their daughter died when she was just ten years old. The subsistence farming wasn’t enough to subsist on. But they’d given so much to so many over the decades, a lot of locals returned the favor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>They were very poor at the end, and really dependent on the charity of ranchers in the surrounding community who took an interest in him and helped the two of them out in their last years. So his life wasn’t any easy life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Honcharenko died at the age of 84 in 1916, a little over a year after his wife. His death was front-page news in several papers, and his life inspired a couple of biographies, but it wasn’t until 1997 that the California Historical Resources Commission designated his ranch and gravesite a state historical landmark, and a couple years later, a cairn and plaque honoring Honcharenko were unveiled there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sounds from the celebration: \u003c/strong>Odyn, dva, tray. Slava Ukraini! Slava Ukraini! Hey, I want to hear it again! Slava Ukraini! Slava Ukraini! OK, that’s better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Back at Garin Regional Park, the group of Ukrainian-Americans we met at the start of this story takes a group photo, with the Ukrainian national salute that translates to “Glory to Ukraine!” This bucolic hilltop with its historic marker and park panels tells the broad arc: émigré priest, dissident publisher, gentleman farmer. Ukrainians here and abroad remember, but what about the rest of us? This whole story is certainly news to our question-asker, Tony.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tony Divito: \u003c/strong>I think we’re incredibly fortunate and lucky to have him as part of Bay Area history. It goes with our history of allowing refuge, of allowing people from desperate situations to come here and thrive here and contribute to our community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>His story was just, like, epic. Right? Like it’s, you know…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tony Divito: \u003c/strong>It deserves, you know, a series. Like a television mini-series or an audiobook of some sort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Hit me up for the writers’ room, guys!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was KQED’s Rachael Myrow. Special thanks to Gabriela Glueck, who literally went the extra mile up that hill to help us report this story, and to Dan Brekke, who read Honcharenko’s archival writings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tony Divito sent in today’s question, and I want you to be like Tony! Head to \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a> to submit a question you’ve been wondering about. We are always on the lookout for great questions and yours could be what we tackle on next! Again, head to \u003ca href=\"http://baycuious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a> to ask.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey, Dan Brekke and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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. See ya next time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\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>It’s hard not to feel glum reading the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12070573/a-generation-orphaned-by-war-ukrainian-children-grow-up-amid-loss-and-recovery\">news headlines from Ukraine\u003c/a> these days, even if you’re not Ukrainian or Ukrainian American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But at the same time, the conflict can feel far away. And yet, in the late 19th century, the Bay Area was home to a Ukrainian man who was exactly the type of revolutionary dissident Russia wanted to silence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a historical marker commemorating him in, of all places, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/sites/default/files/garin_honcharenkos_santuary.pdf\">Garin Regional Park\u003c/a>. Tony Divito of San Mateo passed a road sign nearby on his commute, calling attention to that marker and wondered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just wanted to know the backstory,” he told Bay Curious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer leads to a man of many disparate layers; a devout Orthodox priest, a relentless dissident and outlaw, a groundbreaking publisher, and subsistence farmer. The life of Agapius Honcharenko reads like an epic thriller, albeit one that ends improbably on a quiet hilltop farm tucked high in the Hayward Hills. But let’s start at the very beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A keen intellect and empathetic soul\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The man who came to be known in the Bay Area as Agapius Honcharenko was born Andrii Humnytsky in 1832. The son of an Orthodox priest, he displayed a keen intellect at a young age and caught the attention of the highest-ranking church official in Ukraine at the time, becoming his personal assistant. As a consequence, young Humnytsky bore witness to the hardships endured by peasants and serfs, agricultural laborers bound to their lords’ estates. The very word “slave” comes from the word “Slav.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was appalled by the poverty in these villages,” said Jars Balan, a researcher at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057937\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057937\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01005_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Father Oleg Kepeshchuk of the Greek Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception video calls a friend to show them the view of the burial site where Ukrainian patriot and exiled orthodox priest Agapius Honcharenko and his wife Albina are buried at Garin Regional Park in Hayward on Sept. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Humnytsky delivered his ordination sermon, Balan said, he called on the church to melt down all the gold and precious jewels, “and use the money to feed, to help the poor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This kind of talk did not go over well in 19th-century Ukraine. Still, Humnytsky would not cool his revolutionary jets. He got acquainted with — and radicalized by — fellow countrymen who, decades before, were involved in a failed attempt to overthrow the czar, the emperor of Russia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humnytsky’s boss saw trouble brewing, so he sent him out of the country. Because Ukraine was part of Russia at the time, he sent Humnytsky to serve in the chapel of the Imperial Russian Consulate in Greece.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there, too, Humnytsky fell in with like-minded revolutionaries. He started writing for a dissident journal called \u003cem>Kolokol\u003c/em>, in English, \u003cem>The Bell\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>After publishing searing articles calling for the emancipation of serfs and criticizing the Orthodox Church’s support for tsarist autocracy, Humnytsky was arrested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russian authorities imprisoned him in the hold of a warship, which set sail for what is now Istanbul. According to his later recollections, Humnytsky arranged a daring escape with the help of his family back in Moscow. He would recall years later, “I escaped for an eternal glory, to be a Kozak in the free world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This episode marked the start of a life on the run from Russian justice. Repeatedly over the years that followed, Humnytsky would pop up in a new location, work all sorts of odd hustles, make friends with anarchists, dissidents, and revolutionaries, and then the Russians would catch up with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, he returned to Greece for additional professional spiritual training on the remote peninsula of Mount Athos, home to the world’s largest monastic community. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site today. Back then, it was an excellent place to hide from the Russians. He had a facility with languages, so in London, he was a Russian language tutor to Greeks, and a specialist in old coins at the British Museum. In Cairo, he organized sightseeing tours — and survived a knifing paid for by the local Russian consulate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By his early thirties, Humnytsky decided to try his luck on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A new life in America\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 1865, he landed in Boston, headed to New York, then New Orleans. Around this time, Andrii Humnytsky changed his name to Agapius, or Ahapi, Honcharenko, to seem more Greek and avoid detection from the Russians. But even in the United States, wherever he went, local Russians eventually figured out Father Agapius was not actually a Greek with remarkably good command of Russian. Balan, who wrote a \u003ca href=\"https://ia800309.us.archive.org/25/items/journalofukraini3334cana/journalofukraini3334cana.pdf\">well-regarded study\u003c/a> of Honcharenko’s life, calls him a “renegade monastic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While in New York, Honcharenko married the daughter of one of the Italian radicals he met, a young school teacher named Albina Citi. The match was not to the liking of her anti-religious family, Balan said, “but they were in love, and they wanted to go to the West Coast.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071447\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1289px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1289\" height=\"2090\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a.jpeg 1289w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a-160x259.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a-947x1536.jpeg 947w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/E6B7271A-ABCD-48CC-AE56-C2102783C328_1_201_a-1263x2048.jpeg 1263w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1289px) 100vw, 1289px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the photos used to illustrate the book Ahapius Honcharenko “Alaska Man,” by Wasyl Luciw, Ph.D. And Theodore Luciw, M. A., published in Toronto by Slavia Library in 1963. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Jars Balan)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And so it was that Honcharenko arrived in San Francisco in the 1860s, bringing with him typesetting skills he had honed in London. He purchased Cyrillic fonts and launched the \u003ca href=\"https://diasporiana.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/books/13652/file.pdf\">\u003cem>Alaska Herald\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which included a Ukrainian-language supplement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper became a vital resource for Ukrainian and Russian émigrés alike, providing news to people living far from home. But Honcharenko couldn’t resist publishing some biting commentary as well. Here’s an excerpt of an issue celebrating the publication’s second year:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>From the day of its birth it assumed a certain attitude, and it has unflinchingly maintained its position and consistency during these two years. It has struggled hard and bitterly because it was on the side of right and justice, and they who champion the oppressed seldom find their work either cheerful or remunerative.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem for Honcharenko was that he was a critic of imperial malfeasance wherever he saw it. Eventually, he bit the hand that fed him, which in this case was none other than the U.S. government, a primary backer of the \u003cem>Alaska Herald\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because the administration that the Americans set up had problems with corruption,” Balan explained. “[Honcharenko] was critical of the way the American administration treated Native people. He had some environmental concerns. When he became critical of what was going on in Alaska, they pulled the funding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church relocated its U.S. base of operations from Sitka in Alaska to San Francisco in California. It came to their attention that a renegade priest was holding services in the city, and that’s when Honcharenko and his wife decided to decamp for Alameda County.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A quieter life\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Honcharenko sold his printing press, bought a 40-acre farm in the hills above \u003ca href=\"https://www.haywardareahistory.org/agapius-honcharenko\">Hayward\u003c/a>, named the place “Ukraina,” and settled into a relatively calm life for the next 40-odd years. He led weekly Orthodox church services on the farm for local and visiting Slavic immigrants, conducted baptisms and weddings. His homestead became a small but significant hub for Ukrainian-American life on the West Coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last years of his life were hard. The couple’s daughter died when she was just ten years old. The subsistence farm didn’t produce enough food to live on. However, Agapius and Albina Hocharenko had given so much to so many over the decades that when they were in need, a lot of locals returned the favor.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Still, Honcharenko continued to write, publish, and mentor émigrés. His farm briefly hosted a utopian colony, a dream of community that ultimately failed, but further cemented his reputation among the diaspora.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The couple also gardened. They sent numerous samples of plants and vegetables to the editors of the \u003cem>California Horticulturalist and Floral Magazine\u003c/em>, who wrote back to praise the “monster squash,” and “some of the finest sugar table corn and nutmeg melons we have ever tasted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“His life was amazing,” Balan said. “He was eccentric, he was quirky. He had strange ideas about some things; there’s no doubt. But when you look at the trajectory of his life, it’s an amazing story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honcharenko died in 1916 at the age of 84, shortly after his wife. Although his passing was noted in the local papers and inspired a couple of \u003ca href=\"https://diasporiana.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/books/17172/file.pdf\">biographies\u003c/a>, it wasn’t until 1997 that the California Historical Resources Commission designated his farm and gravesite as a state historical landmark. A cairn and plaque followed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, there’s a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11906285/ukrainians-in-california-devastated-by-russian-invasion\">sizable\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11942336/despite-a-year-of-suffering-some-silicon-valley-companies-tied-to-ukraine-remain-optimistic\">organized\u003c/a> local Ukrainian-American community in the Bay Area, some of whom gather on a mile-long hike every year to \u003ca href=\"https://ohp.parks.ca.gov/ListedResources/Detail/1025\">\u003cem>Ukraina\u003c/em>\u003c/a> to honor Honcharenko’s memory. They sing in Ukrainian and offer prayers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12057938\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12057938\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250927-UKRAINIANFARM01016_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Taras Turiv’s (left) daughter, Victoria (right), wears a Ukrainian flag at the burial site where Ukrainian patriot and exiled orthodox priest Agapius Honcharenko and his wife Albina are buried at Garin Regional Park in Hayward on Sept. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Software engineer Alla Kashaba was among the 20 or so in attendance the last time. She lives in Los Altos now, but comes originally from Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine. “He was [a] very interesting person, and I hope someday, someone will make an interesting movie about him, like, adventure movie,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This whole story was news to Bay Curious question asker Tony Divito.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re incredibly fortunate and lucky to have him as part of Bay Area history,” Divito said. “It goes with our history of allowing refuge, of allowing people from desperate situations to come here and thrive here and contribute to our society, our community,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/gglueck\">\u003cem>Gabriela Glueck\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed reporting to this story.\u003c/em>\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>We start today’s episode in Garin Regional Park – high in the hills overlooking Hayward. If you drive over this way, you might pass by an intriguing sign. That’s what happened to Tony Divito of San Mateo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tony Divito: \u003c/strong>I saw a sign for a Ukrainian farm in Hayward. I just wanted to know the backstory.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nOlivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Deep in the park is California registered historical landmark #1025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>VOICE: “Ukraina” is the site of the farm and burial place of the Ukrainian patriot and exiled orthodox priest Agapius Honcharenko (1832-1916) and his wife Albina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: It’s a serene setting now, but the life of this guy – Agapius Honcharenko – was anything but. He spent much of his life fleeing Russian forces, traveling the globe and stirring up revolutionary inklings in his wake. Not exactly the image you might expect from an orthodox priest. Today on the show, we’ll delve into what made Honcharenko so notable that more than 100 years after his death, he’s still celebrated by local communities. Buckle up, it’s a wild ride! I’m Olivia Allen-Price. You’re listening to Bay Curious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sponsor Message\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>In the 19th century, all sorts of curious characters washed up on California’s shores, looking for fortune, a fresh start, or in the case of Father Agapius Honcharenko … a safe place to hide. KQED’s Rachael Myrow found a group of people who gather every year to honor him. She went to find out why…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Singing in Ukrainian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The mood was contemplative, even somber, at the 9th annual Park Ukraina Hike and Panahdya — a memorial service for Honcharenko. Representatives from local Ukrainian churches hiked a mile to offer prayers over the grave of a remarkable man who established a farm here on this hilltop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Man reading a prayer in Ukrainian\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Software engineer, Alla Kashaba was among the 20 or so in attendance. She lives in Los Altos now, but comes originally from Karghiv, in eastern Ukraine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alla Kashaba: \u003c/strong>He was very interesting person, and I hope someday someone will make an interesting movie about him, like, adventure movie. All about how he hide from Russian forces? I don’t know how to translate this. All across the globe. So he was running from them in London, in Egypt, in Jerusalem, and ended up in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Intriguing, no?? Let’s step back in time to understand what exactly this man was running from. Born Andrii Humnytsky in what is now central Ukraine in 1832, this guy was destined to become an Orthodox priest like his father. He certainly caught the eye of the highest-ranking church leader in Ukraine at the time, a man named Metropolitan Philaret.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>The Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine at that time, Metropolitan Philaret, saw that this guy was smart and capable, and made him his personal assistant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>That’s Jars Balan, a researcher at the Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. He’s written the definitive research paper on our man Humnytsky, and he spoke at the unveiling of that plaque in Hayward. Balan says, from childhood, Humnytsky felt a fierce pride in his Ukrainian ancestry and his Christian spirituality. He took the monastic name Agapius, derived from the Greek word \u003cem>agape\u003c/em>, meaning selfless love, and pretty much from the start, his politics leaned progressive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>Because he got to travel around with the Metropolitan, he visited a lot of communities, and he was appalled by the poverty in these villages. This is still a time of serfdom, and the church even had serfs, and he found that appalling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The word SLAV is where English speakers get the word slave, because Slavs became synonymous with enslavement in the Middle Ages. A serf, for those of you not up on your Eastern European history, is an agricultural laborer bound to work on their lord’s estate. Humnytsky hated the practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>In fact, when he was [in] his first level of ordination, and he gave his ordination sermon, he called on the church to melt down all the gold and precious jewels, all the golden precious metals, and use the money to feed, to help the poor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Sounds Christian in the OG sense, but this talk did not go over well in mid-19th-century Ukraine. Still, Humnytsky would not cool his revolutionary jets. He got acquainted with – and radicalized by – locals who, decades before, were involved in a failed attempt to overthrow the czar, the emperor of Russia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humnytsky’s boss, the Metropolitan, saw trouble brewing, so he sent him out of the country. Because Ukraine was part of Russia at the time, he sent Humnytsky to serve in the chapel of the Imperial Russian Consulate in Greece. But there, too, Humnytsky fell in with like-minded revolutionaries. He started writing for a dissident journal called \u003cem>Kolokol\u003c/em>. In English, \u003cem>The Bell\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After publishing searing articles calling for the emancipation of serfs and criticizing the Orthodox Church’s support for Tsarist autocracy, Humnytsky was arrested and imprisoned in the hold of the Russian warship, which set sail for what is now Istanbul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>He managed to arrange an escape when they were holding him in Istanbul. He had an aunt who was in Moscow. She had some connections, managed to pull a few strings, maybe pay a few bribes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>In his memoirs written decades later, the dissident priest recalled his optimism as a young man:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice actor reading from Humnytsky’s memoirs: \u003c/strong>“I escaped for an eternal glory, to be a Kozak in the free world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Things didn’t quite pan out that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>In point of fact, this episode was just the start of a life on the run from Russian justice. Repeatedly over the years that followed, he’d pop up in a new location, work all sorts of odd hustles, and then the Russians would catch up with him. For instance, he had a facility with languages, so in London, he was a Russian language tutor to Greeks, and a specialist in old coins at the British Museum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>How he picked up the specialty, I’m not sure, but I said he was a very bright guy and interested in history and archeology and theology and all kinds of things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>It’s around this time that Humnytsky began using “Honcharenko” as his nom de plume. And – I mean, you can’t make this stuff up, this guy was extraordinarily bright – he picked up a craft – typesetting – that would come in handy later in his life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan:\u003c/strong> …in a printer shop and learned how to print. He translated a rare sort of, I think it was a 15th century book called Stoflau // calling for reforms in the Orthodox Church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Troublemaker, right? And remember, everywhere Humnytsky goes, he makes friends with anarchists, dissidents and revolutionaries. But he never lost his passion for spirituality. In fact, he returned to Greece for additional professional training.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of monks chanting\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>…on a remote peninsula in the northeast. It’s home to the largest monastic community in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage Site today, and an excellent place to hide from the Russians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This meant Humnytsky was now able to lead prayers, conduct marriages and baptisms, and otherwise tend to lay people’s spiritual needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humnytsky bounced around for years. Jerusalem, the mountains of Lebanon, Cairo, where he survived a knifing paid for by the local Russian consulate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not long after, he decided to make a break for the New World, quite likely because he wanted to put as much space as he could between himself and the Russians. In 1865, in his early thirties, he landed in Boston, headed to New York, then New Orleans. But even on this side of the Atlantic, local Russians would eventually figure out Father Agapius was not actually a Greek with remarkably good command of Russian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around this time, Andrii Humnytsky changed his name – not just his nom de plum – to Agapius, or Ahapi, Honcharenko, to avoid detection from the Russians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, while in New York, he married the daughter of one of the Italian radicals he met in the U.S., a young school teacher named Albina Citi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>Not to the liking, particularly of her family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Her deeply anti-religious family was put off by this…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>… bearded orthodox priest in wearing cassocks and things. But they were in love, and they wanted to go to the West Coast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>So, in his mid-30s, Honcharenko landed in San Francisco with his wife, Albina. Remember how he learned about printing in London? He bought a set of Cyrillic fonts and launched the \u003cem>Alaska Herald\u003c/em> — with a Ukrainian-language supplement. That was one of the very first Ukrainian publications in North America, and a must-read for Ukrainian expats from New York to Siberia. A must-read for a lot of Russian expats, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>He was successful in getting the paper going. He got funding from the American government initially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Here’s an excerpt of an issue celebrating the publication’s second year:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice reading from newspaper article: \u003c/strong>From the day of its birth it assumed a certain attitude, and it has unflinchingly maintained its position and consistency during these two years. It has struggled hard and bitterly because it was on the side of right and justice, and they who champion the oppressed seldom find their work either cheerful or remunerative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>OK, so Honcharenko could get a little strident and self-aggrandizing…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice reading from newspaper article: \u003c/strong>Of course, it has encountered severe hostility at the hands of those whom it has exposed; of course, it has made enemies for itself by the score.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The problem for Honcharenko was that he was a critic of imperial malfeasance wherever he saw it, and eventually, he bit the hand that fed him, none other than the U.S. government, a primary backer of the Alaska Herald.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>Because the administration that the Americans set up had problems with corruption. He was critical of the way the American administration treated Native people. He had some environmental concerns. When he became critical of what was going on in Alaska, they pulled the funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church relocated its U.S. base of operations from Sitka in Alaska to San Francisco in California. And it came to their attention that a renegade priest was holding services in the city. And that’s when the couple decided to decamp for Alameda County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Honcharenko sold his printing press, bought a 40-acre farm in the hills above Hayward, named the place “Ukraina,” and settled into a relatively calmer life for the next 40-odd years. He led weekly Orthodox church services on the farm for local and visiting Slavic immigrants, conducted baptisms, and weddings. The couple also gardened. They sent numerous samples of plants and vegetables to the editors of the \u003cem>California Horticulturalist and Floral Magazine\u003c/em>, who wrote back to praise the “monster squash,” and “some of the finest sugar table corn and nutmeg melons we have ever tasted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>His life was amazing. He was eccentric, he was quirky. He had strange ideas about some things; there’s no doubt. But when you look at the trajectory of his life, it’s an amazing story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>He continued to publish articles and even a memoir in 1894. His homestead became a stopping place for fellow countrymen passing through. For half a minute, a small group of dreamers tried a utopian colony on his land. The venture failed, but it burnished Honcharenko’s reputation and ensured his lasting memory in the Ukrainian diaspora.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>There are stories that say, no, no, he exaggerated or that he made up stories about his life and everything like that. He might have exaggerated certain things, but there are a lot of things that my research has shown actually were based in fact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>The last years were hard. Their daughter died when she was just ten years old. The subsistence farming wasn’t enough to subsist on. But they’d given so much to so many over the decades, a lot of locals returned the favor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jars Balan: \u003c/strong>They were very poor at the end, and really dependent on the charity of ranchers in the surrounding community who took an interest in him and helped the two of them out in their last years. So his life wasn’t any easy life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Honcharenko died at the age of 84 in 1916, a little over a year after his wife. His death was front-page news in several papers, and his life inspired a couple of biographies, but it wasn’t until 1997 that the California Historical Resources Commission designated his ranch and gravesite a state historical landmark, and a couple years later, a cairn and plaque honoring Honcharenko were unveiled there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sounds from the celebration: \u003c/strong>Odyn, dva, tray. Slava Ukraini! Slava Ukraini! Hey, I want to hear it again! Slava Ukraini! Slava Ukraini! OK, that’s better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Back at Garin Regional Park, the group of Ukrainian-Americans we met at the start of this story takes a group photo, with the Ukrainian national salute that translates to “Glory to Ukraine!” This bucolic hilltop with its historic marker and park panels tells the broad arc: émigré priest, dissident publisher, gentleman farmer. Ukrainians here and abroad remember, but what about the rest of us? This whole story is certainly news to our question-asker, Tony.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tony Divito: \u003c/strong>I think we’re incredibly fortunate and lucky to have him as part of Bay Area history. It goes with our history of allowing refuge, of allowing people from desperate situations to come here and thrive here and contribute to our community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>His story was just, like, epic. Right? Like it’s, you know…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tony Divito: \u003c/strong>It deserves, you know, a series. Like a television mini-series or an audiobook of some sort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/strong>Hit me up for the writers’ room, guys!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was KQED’s Rachael Myrow. Special thanks to Gabriela Glueck, who literally went the extra mile up that hill to help us report this story, and to Dan Brekke, who read Honcharenko’s archival writings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tony Divito sent in today’s question, and I want you to be like Tony! Head to \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a> to submit a question you’ve been wondering about. We are always on the lookout for great questions and yours could be what we tackle on next! Again, head to \u003ca href=\"http://baycuious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a> to ask.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey, Dan Brekke and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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. See ya next time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13892202/watch-saint-coltrane-a-short-film-about-the-san-francisco-church-built-on-a-love-supreme\">Saint John Coltrane \u003c/a>African Orthodox Church Global Spiritual Community begins \u003ca href=\"https://www.coltranechurch.org/\">Sunday mass\u003c/a> with the blow of a conch shell. Then the saxophone comes in, blaring the opening notes of John Coltrane’s jazz masterpiece, \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Byzantine-style portrait of Coltrane is displayed on the altar. He’s wearing a white robe and clutching his soprano saxophone, a gold halo glittering above his head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the service, the church band alternates between saxophone, bass and drum solos in a kind of makeshift jazz concert. Later, the sermon offered by His Eminence Archbishop Franzo W. King is a mix of traditional Christian teachings and references to Coltrane. It’s a fusion that King and his wife, the Most Reverend Mother Marina King, call “Coltrane Consciousness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Coltrane Consciousness is acknowledging that the music and the sound of John Coltrane is that anointed sound that leaped down from the throne of heaven,” King said. “We want everybody to become aware of the power of this music, of this man, that testimony.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Coltrane Church, as it’s often called, is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/Item%202e.%20LBR-2021-22-019%20St.%20John%20Coltrane%20Church.pdf\">oldest \u003c/a>Black jazz organization in San Francisco now. And it has taken a windy path to achieve that longevity.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A baptism of sound\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Coltrane Church’s origins date back to the 1960s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings had recently moved to San Francisco as a young couple in love. Upon arrival they were met with a vibrant music scene, with jazz venues dotting the city. The Fillmore District became known as “The Harlem of the West” for its abundance of Black-owned nightclubs and restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068339\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068339\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Supreme Mother Rev. Marina King sings during Sunday mass at the St. John Coltrane Church at Fort Mason in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The music was as hip as you could get, and we were trying to be hipsters and being into this music,” King said. “You could leave your house on a Friday night and you wouldn’t have to come home until Sunday afternoon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Sept. 18, 1965, the Kings celebrated their first wedding anniversary by going to see The John Coltrane Quartet at a North Beach club called The Jazz Workshop. King knew the doorman, who seated them in the front row despite them being underage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As soon as Coltrane and his band entered the room, King said he felt the energy around him shift, “like [the band was] walking on a carpet of air.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was immediate,” Mother Marina agreed. “You could feel the presence, that energy. And then [Coltrane] lifted his horn. We were right in front, and he pointed right at our table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings said they were rendered speechless throughout Coltrane’s set, hardly touching their drinks as they were transported to a spiritual realm beyond the jazz club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAgJ-igwuSQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were caught in a windstorm of the spirit of the Holy Ghost. It was a powerful thing,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings call this experience their “sound baptism.” From then on, their calling would be to spread John Coltrane’s gospel.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>From fans to worshippers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>They started out by hosting listening sessions with friends in their home. They’d cook up a pot of beans and some cornbread to share, then pour over music, interviews and liner notes from jazz greats like John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk and Charlie Parker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 17, 1967, Archbishop King was out at a jazz club when he learned that Coltrane had died. The Kings’ daughter, Pastor Wanika King-Stephens, remembers walking into the living room the next morning to find that her dad and uncle had stayed up all night listening to Coltrane’s music.[aside postID=news_11954252 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/062723-Wanda-Salvatto-07-RT-KQED-e1687904264135-1020x680.jpg']“They killed John,” King-Stephens recalled her father saying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coltrane died from liver cancer, most likely fueled by his drug and alcohol addiction in the earlier years of his fame. But Archbishop King believed Coltrane’s death symbolized the systems of racism that targeted Black men in America. This was a time of heightened tension for San Francisco’s Black population. Throughout the 1960s, the city’s so-called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11825401/how-urban-renewal-decimated-the-fillmore-district-and-took-jazz-with-it\">redevelopment for urban renewal\u003c/a>” ” program targeted low-income neighborhoods with minority residents for demolition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The redevelopment came in with the Negro removal and devastated the community,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco’s redevelopment project brought an end to the “Harlem of the West” that had once defined the Fillmore District. Jazz clubs shuttered, minority and elderly residents were forced from their homes, and the city’s Black-owned music scene was decimated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings, though, were passionate that people still needed to hear this music. Motivated by an era of Black consciousness and political activity, they opened “The Yardbird Club,” a jazz club based out of their basement. The name paid homage to the jazz musician Charlie “Yardbird” Parker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This makeshift venue functioned as a space where artists visiting San Francisco could experiment with new sounds, much like the city’s jazz clubs had once done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But around 1969, something shifted for the Kings. It wasn’t just about saving the music or the culture anymore. It was about saving souls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of studying Coltrane, they came to believe that his music, his activism — his whole belief system — was really a declaration of faith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068329\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068329\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">His Eminence Archbishop Franzo W. King greets congregants after Sunday mass at the St. John Coltrane Church at Fort Mason in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We hear John Coltrane saying, ‘My music is the spiritual expression of what I am, my faith, my knowledge, my being,” King-Stephens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings went all in on their devotion. “The Yardbird Club” became “The Yardbird Temple.” They didn’t just revere Coltrane anymore — they worshiped him, believed him to be the second coming of Christ and cited \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em> as his most sacred text.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A higher power\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Coltrane composed \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em> in the aftermath of heroin and alcohol addiction. Though he had risen to fame by the 1950s, Coltrane’s substance abuse made him unreliable. Miles Davis famously fired Coltrane from his band because of it. Coltrane had hit rock bottom and his music career was foundering because of it. So, he got clean — went cold turkey — and heard the voice of God.[aside postID=news_11881696 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/E-40.DeFremery-1020x682.jpg']Coltrane described this experience in the album’s liner notes: \u003cem>“During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly ask to be given the means and the privilege to make others happy through music.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>, which came out in 1965, marked a turning point in Coltrane’s career. The album was his declaration to God and an expression of his commitment to love and the divine. For 32 minutes and 47 seconds, Coltrane’s saxophone pulses and intertwines with piano and drums — a four-note bassline bedded beneath the sound. It’s played in all 12 keys, sending a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2000/10/23/148148986/a-love-supreme\">message\u003c/a> that you can find \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em> everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We hear the Lord speaking to us in this music,” King said. “I’ve had John Coltrane through the music call my name. So we have revelations that come through the music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mother Marina agreed. “Every time I hear it, there’s something new,” she said. “There’s always life there. It’s in the music. The magic is in the music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068328\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068328\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rev. Marlee-I Mystic and His Eminence Archbishop Franzo W. King pause to speak with churchgoers following Sunday mass at the St. John Coltrane Church in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Kings say the album’s four song titles — \u003cem>Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Psalm\u003c/em> — offer a formula for how to reach a higher power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way his notes are moving and the way the sounds are connected, it’s almost like a rumble. It’s like a war. Sometimes he’s pleading your case. It’s many different feelings,” Mother Marina said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The 1970s: A period of transformation\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Now a religious community, the Kings surrendered themselves to Coltrane. They prayed, meditated and fasted for days at a time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everything was falling into place, and the Kings “felt like we were in the right place at the right time, and that the spirit of God was really heavy in this part of the world,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068333\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Music memorabilia adorns the space in preparation for Sunday mass at the St. John Coltrane Church at Fort Mason in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Black Panther Party also became supporters of the church. Its co-founder, Huey P. Newton had become a mentor to Archbishop King and encouraged him to fuse politics, culture and religion. After moving to a storefront on Divisadero Street, the church began hosting programs that mirrored The Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast Program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King-Stephens said the church’s free food program was “one of my [her] favorite things in the whole world.” Seven days a week, church members would prepare free vegetarian meals for hundreds of people. The lines snaked around the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We would go to Safeways and the supermarkets and the stuff that they would throw out, we’d take it out, put it in a tub, clean it, and serve it to the people,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings believed that to be right with God was to be right with the people. Inspired by San Francisco’s hippie movement in the 1970s, they also hosted free yoga classes, practiced vegetarianism, and started borrowing from Eastern spirituality, led by Coltrane’s music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“John Coltrane has an album entitled \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwrV0qCX1LU&list=RDGwrV0qCX1LU&start_radio=1\">\u003cem>Om\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, and we literally took that as John saying, ‘I am Om,’” Mother Marina said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They studied the Sufi mystic, Inayat Khan, who believed music and sound to be the world’s life source, and incorporated Sanskrit chanting in their service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We embrace the unity of religious ideas,” King said. “If you want to say that Buddha is the light, we don’t have a problem with that.”\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070432\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-74258876-scaled-e1768939107671.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070432\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-74258876-scaled-e1768939107671.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1420\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">American jazz musician and composer Alice Coltrane in 1970. \u003ccite>(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1974, the Kings met Alice Coltrane, John’s widow. She had converted to Hinduism after her husband’s death and came to San Francisco to deepen her practice. The Kings joined her spiritual community in San Francisco, the Vedantic Center, and began worshipping her as the wife of God. They adopted Hindu names and sang backup on her early devotional \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=759TXOUIpjQ\">records\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in 1981, Coltrane filed a $7.5 million \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/24/nyregion/notes-on-people-coltrane-s-widow-sues-san-francisco-church.html\">lawsuit\u003c/a> against the Coltrane Church for copyright infringement and using her husband’s name and likeness without permission. She eventually dropped the lawsuit, but it set the Kings on a new path. The incident drew the attention of the African Orthodox Church, which wanted to expand to the West Coast. To join, the Kings had to recharacterize Coltrane from their God incarnate to a patron saint. They agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Culture keepers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The church joined the A.O.C and became the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in 1982. Now part of an organized religious movement, the Coltrane church leaned into its status as public-facing leaders and keepers of San Francisco culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think this is something people need to understand that this church has been an ambassador for this city,” King said.[aside postID=news_12059962 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/Jello-Biafra-of-the-Dead-Kennedys-performing-at-the-Mabuhay-Gardens-.jpg']They have traveled around the world, including to the \u003ca href=\"https://jazzajuan.com/en/\">Antibes Jazz Festival\u003c/a> in France — where Coltrane himself famously \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWuhPVb175Y&list=RDlWuhPVb175Y&start_radio=1\">performed\u003c/a> A Love Supreme in 1965. The Kings were joined onstage by Carlos Santana, an early supporter of the church. Several travel guides even named them a top destination when visiting San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings and their church were vocal advocates on issues including environmental racism and police brutality, continuing the work that had long been part of their ethos. But the year 2000 marked yet another shift for the Coltrane Church. They were forced to leave their Divisadero storefront, the church’s home for nearly 30 years, after their rent more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/coltrane-church-holds-last-service-at-longtime-3239485.php\">doubled\u003c/a>. They also had to end their free food program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was our home,” King-Stephens said. “And then, I watched that whole community change. And I tell you, I couldn’t drive through that neighborhood without crying for a whole year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Looking to the future\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>They’ve relocated a few times since then. First, to the Fillmore, where they were one of just a handful of jazz institutions left. But they were evicted from that space too, before moving to their current location out of Fort Mason’s Magic Theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, King and Mother Marina see the church as a kind of Mecca, where Coltrane disciples from around the world can worship together. At the end of Sunday mass, Archbishop King and Mother Marina asked the community for donations. They’re trying to raise money to buy a building — what they hope will be a permanent home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068330\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068330\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rev. Marlee-I Mystic (center) closes Sunday mass in a burst of joy and laughter at the St. John Coltrane Church in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Kings are in their eighties and looking towards the future of the church. Their daughter plans to usher the church into its next chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the first sound baptism in 1965, the Coltrane Church has had different names, locations and philosophies. In fact, King often said that as the seasons change, so do the needs of the people. Change, he said, is baked into the very essence of the church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And then at the same time, the church never changes,” King said. ”It remains constantly rooted in love and \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> John Coltrane on the saxophone is like nothing else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of Coltrane playing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>He grew up in North Carolina in the 1930s…where the church was a big part of his life. Both of his grandfathers were ministers. But his calling was different. After high school, he moved to Philadelphia with his mother, where his music career started to take off. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music plays\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>By the mid-1950s, Coltrane was gaining recognition among other jazz musicians for the way he played, skipping scales in a style that became known as “sheets of sound.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music plays\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Here’s Coltrane in a 1960 radio interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>John Coltrane: \u003c/strong>There’s some set things I know, some harmonic devices that I know that will take me out of the ordinary path if I use these. But I haven’t played them enough, and I”m not familiar enough, to take the one familiar line, so I play all of them so I can acclimate my ear. So I can hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>He was a famously hard worker, practicing fingering, breath control…even specific notes for hours at a time. He was even said to fall asleep with his horn in his mouth. He caught the attention of some of the most famous jazz artists of his day… playing with folks like Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>John Coltrane: \u003c/strong>When I started it it was a little different because I started through Miles Davis and he was an accepted musician, you see. They got used to me in the States now when they first heard me when I was here they did not like it I remember. It’s a little different. They’re going to reject it at first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>But throughout these years of success, Coltrane struggled with alcohol and heroin addiction. Miles Davis famously fired him from his band for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so, the story goes, Coltrane got clean, cold turkey, an experience he describes in the liner notes of his masterpiece, \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>, which came out in 1965. Here’s Denzel Washington reading them in the documentary \u003cem>Chasing Trane\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Denzel Washington reading Coltrane: \u003c/strong>During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of Gd a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly ask to be given the means and the privilege to make others happy through music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>A Love Supreme marked a turning point in Coltrane’s career. The album was Coltrane’s declaration to God, his commitment to love and the divine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it has become the sacred text of a church in San Francisco — the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, Global Spiritual Community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Opening riff of A Love Supreme plays\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Today on Bay Curious, we’re going to church to learn how a jazz musician came to be revered as a saint and how the Coltrane Church has been a part of many cultural movements over the decades, transforming alongside the city. I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Don’t go away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The Coltrane Church has been worshipping John Coltrane’s music, philosophy, and at times, even the man himself for 60 years. Reporter Asal Ehsanipour takes us to Sunday mass to learn more about what that sounds like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Coltrane Church Mass\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church opens Sunday mass with the blow of a conch shell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of conch shell blowing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Then the saxophone comes in, blaring the opening notes of John Coltrane’s \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Love Supreme plays\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>On the altar is a Byzantine-style portrait of John Coltrane. He’s wearing a white robe and clutching his soprano saxophone. A gold halo glitters above his head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the service, the band alternates between sax, bass, and drum solos in a kind of makeshift jazz concert. Later, the sermon offered by His Eminence the Most Reverend Franzo W. King is a mix of traditional Christian teachings, and references to Coltrane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King during mass: \u003c/strong>Jesus is the Lord of lords and the king of kings. And that one John Will.i.am Coltrane is that anointed sound that leaped down from the throne of heaven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>For Archbishop King and his wife, the Most Reverend Mother Marina, the music and their worship is one and the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>The mission of the church is to paint the globe with Coltrane Consciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Coltrane Consciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>Coltrane Consciousness is acknowledging that the music and the sound of John Coltraine is that anointed sound. So we want everybody to become aware of the power of this music, of this man, that testimony.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The Kings first heard the power of that testimony in 1960s San Francisco — as a young couple in love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>The music was as hip as you could get, and we were trying to be hipsters and being into this music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>One weekend, 1965, Franzo and Marina planned to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. They wanted to see The John Coltrane Quartet at a club in North Beach called The Jazz Workshop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>You had to be 21 and we were both underage, but I knew the doorman. And he took us right up front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>As soon as Coltrane entered the room, the Kings felt the energy around them shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>When they walked out, it was almost like they were walking on a carpet of air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina: \u003c/strong>It was immediate. You could feel the presence, that energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Coltrane music starts here\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>And then he lifted his horn. We were right in front, and he pointed right at our table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>From the first note, we were lifted into another place beyond the confines of that jazz club. And when we finished, our drinks were still on the table, the ice had melted. I don’t remember us even talking to each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>I didn’t know exactly how to react to it. I was just in the moment of experiencing a new experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We were caught in a windstorm of the spirit of the Holy Ghost. It was a powerful thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They call this experience their “sound baptism.” From then on, their calling would be to spread John Coltrane’s gospel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We couldn’t keep it to ourselves. We had to give testimony, we had to tell people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>And tell people they did. Franzo and Marina had actually created a space to share their favorite music with friends — in a way, their first iteration of the Coltrane Church. Pastor Wanika King-Stephens still remembers those evenings her parents used to host.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>Really what that entailed was our listening clinic that took place in my parents’ living room. My mom would put on a pot of beans and make some cornbread and have people come over and they would sit and listen to the music of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Franzo and Marina poured over liner notes and interviews, spent hours absorbed in the music, analyzing it together. Then came July 17, 1967.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>When John Coltrane died I came into the living room to find my dad and my uncle and they had been up all night. Listening to Trane and just talking about him and the music and so when I came in the room, I’m like, “what’s what’s wrong?” You know, they said, you know, “they killed John.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Coltrane died from liver cancer, most likely fueled by his drug and alcohol addiction. But to Franzo, his death symbolized the systems of racism that targeted Black men in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was a time of heightened tension for San Francisco’s Black population. The city’s so-called “urban renewal” project was in full swing and it targeted low-income neighborhoods with minority residents for demolition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>The redevelopment came in with the Negro removal and devastated the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Redevelopment brought an end to the “Harlem of the West” that defined the Fillmore in the 40s and 50s. Jazz clubs shuttered. Minority and elderly residents were forced from their homes. And the city’s Black-owned music scene was decimated. Franzo, though, was passionate that people needed to hear this music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>And it was during that period, too, where so-called black consciousness was coming out. It was just a very high cultural, political things going on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>So he and Marina mobilized. They opened what was essentially an underground jazz club — from their basement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coltrane had been outspoken about the “corporatization” of jazz. It was just \u003cu>one\u003c/u> example of how he’d grown into an icon for the Black Power movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Coltrane’s song Alabama plays \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Here’s Coltrane’s 1963 song, Alabama, about the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham that killed four African American girls. Coltrane composed it to the rhythm of Martin Luther King Jr.’s eulogy following the attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>So we’re living in these times of turmoil, yes it comes out in the music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>But eventually, something shifted. For the Kings, the work stopped being about saving the music or the culture. It was about saving souls. Because after years of studying Coltrane, it had become clear to them that his music, his activism — his whole belief system — was really a declaration of faith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>And we hear John Coltrane saying, my music is the spiritual expression of what I am, my faith, my knowledge, my being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The Kings went all in on their devotion. They converted the jazz club into a temple. Now they didn’t just revere Coltrane. They worshipped him. Believed he was the second coming of Christ.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>That he’s more than just a musician, but he is a prophet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>And that \u003cem>A Love Supreme \u003c/em>was his sacred text — his doctrine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Love Supreme starts playing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>For 32 minutes and 47 seconds, Coltrane’s saxophone pulses and intertwines with piano and drums, a four note bassline bedded beneath the sound. It’s played in all 12 keys, sending a message that you can find A Love Supreme everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We hear the Lord speaking to us in this music. I’ve had John Coltrane through the music call my name. So we have revelations that come through the music. And you find that in the sound of the music, you find it in the name of the compositions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Archbishop King and Mother Marina say the album’s four song titles — \u003cem>Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalm —\u003c/em> offer a formula for how to reach a higher power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>The way his notes are moving and the way the sounds are connected, it’s almost like a rumble. It’s like a war. Sometimes he’s pleading your case. Every time I hear it, there’s something new. There’s always life there. It’s in the music, the magic is in the music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Franzo and Marina surrendered themselves to Coltrane. They prayed, meditated, and fasted for days at a time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>And we just felt like we were in the right place at the right time, and that the Spirit of God was really heavy in this part of the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Around this time, The Black Panther Party was gaining traction. Started in Oakland in 1966 its co-founder Huey P. Newton had become a kind of mentor to Franzo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Huey P. Newton: \u003c/strong>The Black Panther Party for self defense is organized now throughout the nation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Here’s Newton in 1968 describing the mission of the Panthers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Huey P Newton: \u003c/strong>And we advocate that all Black people in America are taught what politics is all about and what our history is all about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Newton encouraged the Coltrane Church to fuse politics and culture with religion. And in 1971, the Kings opened their first permanent location in a storefront on Divisadero St. From there, they started hosting social programs, similar to the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast Program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>The food program was one of my favorite things in the whole world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Pastor Wanika says that seven days a week, they’d give free vegetarian meals to hundreds of people. The lines snaked around the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>We would sing songs, you know, \u003cem>‘Serving the people makes me mighty glad. [fade under] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We would go to Safeways and the supermarkets and the stuff that they would throw out. We’d take it out, put it in a tub, clean it, and serve it to the people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Franzo and Marina believed that to be right with God was to be \u003cem>\u003cu>right\u003c/u>\u003c/em> with the people. So they also hosted free yoga classes and donated clothes to the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We kind of learned that stuff from the hippies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The vibe was Flower Power, psychedelics…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>The Grateful Dead…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Utopian communes based out of old Victorian houses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>The so-called hippie movement was a powerful thing and we were very much a part of that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>And like the hippies, the Kings started borrowing from Eastern spirituality, led by Coltrane’s music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Opening notes of “Om” by John Coltrane – 00:00\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>John Coltrane has an album entitled Om. I thought of that as far as one of the albums that meant so much to us, especially early on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of Coltrane’s “Om” playing \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>And we literally took that as John saying, “I am Om.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>By the mid-70s, the Kings began shifting away from Christianity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We embrace the unity of religious ideas. If you want to say that Buddha is the light, we don’t have a problem with that.\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>They incorporated Sanskrit chanting in their service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King chanting\u003cem>: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>That’s something that we learned from Alice Coltrane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Alice Coltrane, John’s widow, had been immersed in Hindu spirituality for years and had come to San Francisco to deepen her practice. The Kings met her here and eventually joined her \u003cu>new\u003c/u> religious community called the Vedantic Center. Franzo and Marina began worshipping Alice as the wife of God and adopted Hindu names.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pastor Wanika remembers when her parents made that shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>So we go from jazz to Sanskrit and chanting and singing, you know, Hare Krishna and Shiva, Lord Shiva.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The Kings sang backup on Alice’s early devotional records, like this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Singing \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>But in the early 80s, their relationship splintered. Alice filed a 7.5 million dollar lawsuit against the Coltrane Church for copyright infringement and using her husband’s name and likeness without permission. Alice eventually dropped the lawsuit, but the incident drew the attention of the African Orthodox Church, who wanted to expand to the West Coast. For the Kings, it was actually kind of similar to the temple they’d first opened except they had to recharacterize Coltrane from their God incarnate to a patron saint. They agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>For me, John was always just sort of evolving in my consciousness. So for him to go from God to Saint was not a big stretch for me. It’s like, great, okay. I can swing with that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>So in 1982, they became the \u003cem>\u003cu>Saint\u003c/u>\u003c/em> John Coltrane African Orthodox Church. Now part of an organized religious movement, the Coltrane Church leaned into its status as public facing leaders. Keepers, if you will, of San Francisco culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>I think this is something people need to understand that this church has been an ambassador for this city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>They traveled around the world. Like to the Antibes Jazz Festival in France — where Coltrane himself famously performed \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em> in 1965.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>Carlos Santana joined us on the stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>And even on airlines, we would say, hey, I saw your church advertised on United Airlines, and it would, you know, it was like a goal of places you need to see in San Francisco, and it would be the St. John Coltrane Church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>But the year 2000 marked yet another shift for the Coltrane Church when they were forced out of their Divisadero storefront. Their home of nearly 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>It was awful, it was awful. I mean, I know I never saw it coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Their rent more than doubled, and they had to end their free food program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>We had to leave, and that was our home. That was our home. And then I watched that whole community change. And I just, I tell you, I couldn’t drive through that neighborhood without crying for, like, a whole year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>They’ve relocated a few times since then. First to the Fillmore where they were one of just a handful of jazz institutions left. But they were evicted from that space too, before moving to their current location out of Fort Mason’s Magic Theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Coltrane Church mass: Hallelujah! \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King during service: \u003c/strong>This next composition is entitled Tune Gene, and it means “He who comes in the glory of the Lord.” So I want you to clap your hands, pick up your tambourines. Do we have any dancers? You know, King David danced before the Lord with all the power of his might.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Now, Archbishop King and Mother Marina see the church as a kind of Mecca, where Coltrane disciples from just about anywhere can worship together. On the day I visit, they’ve come from New York, Seattle, and closer to home, Redwood City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King in the service: \u003c/strong>This is the St. John Will-i-am Coltrane African Orthodox Church Global Spiritual Community. Amen. So we all are family, amen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>At the end of Sunday mass Archbishop King and Mother Marina asked for donations. They’re trying to raise money to buy a building. What they hope will be a permanent home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>So this church needs your money. Amen. Some of y’all are holding on to God’s money now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Archbishop King and Mother Marina are in their 80s and are looking towards the future of the church, how it can live beyond them. Their daughter, Pastor Wanika, plans to take it over, to continue sharing the church’s message.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>So Coltrane Consciousness is a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme. That’s what this coltrane consciousness is all about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Since Archbishop King and Mother Marina’s sound baptism in 1965, the Coltrane Church has had different names, locations, philosophies. In fact, Archbishop King often says that as the seasons change, so do the needs of the people. Change, he says, is baked into the very essence of the church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>And then at the same time, the church never changes. It remains constantly rooted in love and \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That story was reported by Asal Ehsanipour. You can attend mass at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church every Sunday at the Magic Theater at Fort Mason.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is produced at member-supported KQED in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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>Thanks for listening. Have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\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>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13892202/watch-saint-coltrane-a-short-film-about-the-san-francisco-church-built-on-a-love-supreme\">Saint John Coltrane \u003c/a>African Orthodox Church Global Spiritual Community begins \u003ca href=\"https://www.coltranechurch.org/\">Sunday mass\u003c/a> with the blow of a conch shell. Then the saxophone comes in, blaring the opening notes of John Coltrane’s jazz masterpiece, \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Byzantine-style portrait of Coltrane is displayed on the altar. He’s wearing a white robe and clutching his soprano saxophone, a gold halo glittering above his head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the service, the church band alternates between saxophone, bass and drum solos in a kind of makeshift jazz concert. Later, the sermon offered by His Eminence Archbishop Franzo W. King is a mix of traditional Christian teachings and references to Coltrane. It’s a fusion that King and his wife, the Most Reverend Mother Marina King, call “Coltrane Consciousness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Coltrane Consciousness is acknowledging that the music and the sound of John Coltrane is that anointed sound that leaped down from the throne of heaven,” King said. “We want everybody to become aware of the power of this music, of this man, that testimony.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Coltrane Church, as it’s often called, is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/Item%202e.%20LBR-2021-22-019%20St.%20John%20Coltrane%20Church.pdf\">oldest \u003c/a>Black jazz organization in San Francisco now. And it has taken a windy path to achieve that longevity.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A baptism of sound\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Coltrane Church’s origins date back to the 1960s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings had recently moved to San Francisco as a young couple in love. Upon arrival they were met with a vibrant music scene, with jazz venues dotting the city. The Fillmore District became known as “The Harlem of the West” for its abundance of Black-owned nightclubs and restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068339\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068339\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-1_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Supreme Mother Rev. Marina King sings during Sunday mass at the St. John Coltrane Church at Fort Mason in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The music was as hip as you could get, and we were trying to be hipsters and being into this music,” King said. “You could leave your house on a Friday night and you wouldn’t have to come home until Sunday afternoon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Sept. 18, 1965, the Kings celebrated their first wedding anniversary by going to see The John Coltrane Quartet at a North Beach club called The Jazz Workshop. King knew the doorman, who seated them in the front row despite them being underage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As soon as Coltrane and his band entered the room, King said he felt the energy around him shift, “like [the band was] walking on a carpet of air.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was immediate,” Mother Marina agreed. “You could feel the presence, that energy. And then [Coltrane] lifted his horn. We were right in front, and he pointed right at our table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings said they were rendered speechless throughout Coltrane’s set, hardly touching their drinks as they were transported to a spiritual realm beyond the jazz club.\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/MAgJ-igwuSQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/MAgJ-igwuSQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>“We were caught in a windstorm of the spirit of the Holy Ghost. It was a powerful thing,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings call this experience their “sound baptism.” From then on, their calling would be to spread John Coltrane’s gospel.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>From fans to worshippers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>They started out by hosting listening sessions with friends in their home. They’d cook up a pot of beans and some cornbread to share, then pour over music, interviews and liner notes from jazz greats like John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk and Charlie Parker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 17, 1967, Archbishop King was out at a jazz club when he learned that Coltrane had died. The Kings’ daughter, Pastor Wanika King-Stephens, remembers walking into the living room the next morning to find that her dad and uncle had stayed up all night listening to Coltrane’s music.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“They killed John,” King-Stephens recalled her father saying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coltrane died from liver cancer, most likely fueled by his drug and alcohol addiction in the earlier years of his fame. But Archbishop King believed Coltrane’s death symbolized the systems of racism that targeted Black men in America. This was a time of heightened tension for San Francisco’s Black population. Throughout the 1960s, the city’s so-called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11825401/how-urban-renewal-decimated-the-fillmore-district-and-took-jazz-with-it\">redevelopment for urban renewal\u003c/a>” ” program targeted low-income neighborhoods with minority residents for demolition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The redevelopment came in with the Negro removal and devastated the community,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco’s redevelopment project brought an end to the “Harlem of the West” that had once defined the Fillmore District. Jazz clubs shuttered, minority and elderly residents were forced from their homes, and the city’s Black-owned music scene was decimated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings, though, were passionate that people still needed to hear this music. Motivated by an era of Black consciousness and political activity, they opened “The Yardbird Club,” a jazz club based out of their basement. The name paid homage to the jazz musician Charlie “Yardbird” Parker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This makeshift venue functioned as a space where artists visiting San Francisco could experiment with new sounds, much like the city’s jazz clubs had once done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But around 1969, something shifted for the Kings. It wasn’t just about saving the music or the culture anymore. It was about saving souls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After years of studying Coltrane, they came to believe that his music, his activism — his whole belief system — was really a declaration of faith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068329\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068329\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-6_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">His Eminence Archbishop Franzo W. King greets congregants after Sunday mass at the St. John Coltrane Church at Fort Mason in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We hear John Coltrane saying, ‘My music is the spiritual expression of what I am, my faith, my knowledge, my being,” King-Stephens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings went all in on their devotion. “The Yardbird Club” became “The Yardbird Temple.” They didn’t just revere Coltrane anymore — they worshiped him, believed him to be the second coming of Christ and cited \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em> as his most sacred text.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A higher power\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Coltrane composed \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em> in the aftermath of heroin and alcohol addiction. Though he had risen to fame by the 1950s, Coltrane’s substance abuse made him unreliable. Miles Davis famously fired Coltrane from his band because of it. Coltrane had hit rock bottom and his music career was foundering because of it. So, he got clean — went cold turkey — and heard the voice of God.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Coltrane described this experience in the album’s liner notes: \u003cem>“During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly ask to be given the means and the privilege to make others happy through music.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>, which came out in 1965, marked a turning point in Coltrane’s career. The album was his declaration to God and an expression of his commitment to love and the divine. For 32 minutes and 47 seconds, Coltrane’s saxophone pulses and intertwines with piano and drums — a four-note bassline bedded beneath the sound. It’s played in all 12 keys, sending a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2000/10/23/148148986/a-love-supreme\">message\u003c/a> that you can find \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em> everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We hear the Lord speaking to us in this music,” King said. “I’ve had John Coltrane through the music call my name. So we have revelations that come through the music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mother Marina agreed. “Every time I hear it, there’s something new,” she said. “There’s always life there. It’s in the music. The magic is in the music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068328\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068328\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-5_qed-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rev. Marlee-I Mystic and His Eminence Archbishop Franzo W. King pause to speak with churchgoers following Sunday mass at the St. John Coltrane Church in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Kings say the album’s four song titles — \u003cem>Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Psalm\u003c/em> — offer a formula for how to reach a higher power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way his notes are moving and the way the sounds are connected, it’s almost like a rumble. It’s like a war. Sometimes he’s pleading your case. It’s many different feelings,” Mother Marina said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The 1970s: A period of transformation\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Now a religious community, the Kings surrendered themselves to Coltrane. They prayed, meditated and fasted for days at a time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everything was falling into place, and the Kings “felt like we were in the right place at the right time, and that the spirit of God was really heavy in this part of the world,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068333\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-12_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Music memorabilia adorns the space in preparation for Sunday mass at the St. John Coltrane Church at Fort Mason in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Black Panther Party also became supporters of the church. Its co-founder, Huey P. Newton had become a mentor to Archbishop King and encouraged him to fuse politics, culture and religion. After moving to a storefront on Divisadero Street, the church began hosting programs that mirrored The Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast Program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King-Stephens said the church’s free food program was “one of my [her] favorite things in the whole world.” Seven days a week, church members would prepare free vegetarian meals for hundreds of people. The lines snaked around the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We would go to Safeways and the supermarkets and the stuff that they would throw out, we’d take it out, put it in a tub, clean it, and serve it to the people,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings believed that to be right with God was to be right with the people. Inspired by San Francisco’s hippie movement in the 1970s, they also hosted free yoga classes, practiced vegetarianism, and started borrowing from Eastern spirituality, led by Coltrane’s music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“John Coltrane has an album entitled \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwrV0qCX1LU&list=RDGwrV0qCX1LU&start_radio=1\">\u003cem>Om\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, and we literally took that as John saying, ‘I am Om,’” Mother Marina said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They studied the Sufi mystic, Inayat Khan, who believed music and sound to be the world’s life source, and incorporated Sanskrit chanting in their service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We embrace the unity of religious ideas,” King said. “If you want to say that Buddha is the light, we don’t have a problem with that.”\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070432\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-74258876-scaled-e1768939107671.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070432\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-74258876-scaled-e1768939107671.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1420\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">American jazz musician and composer Alice Coltrane in 1970. \u003ccite>(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1974, the Kings met Alice Coltrane, John’s widow. She had converted to Hinduism after her husband’s death and came to San Francisco to deepen her practice. The Kings joined her spiritual community in San Francisco, the Vedantic Center, and began worshipping her as the wife of God. They adopted Hindu names and sang backup on her early devotional \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=759TXOUIpjQ\">records\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in 1981, Coltrane filed a $7.5 million \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/24/nyregion/notes-on-people-coltrane-s-widow-sues-san-francisco-church.html\">lawsuit\u003c/a> against the Coltrane Church for copyright infringement and using her husband’s name and likeness without permission. She eventually dropped the lawsuit, but it set the Kings on a new path. The incident drew the attention of the African Orthodox Church, which wanted to expand to the West Coast. To join, the Kings had to recharacterize Coltrane from their God incarnate to a patron saint. They agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Culture keepers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The church joined the A.O.C and became the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in 1982. Now part of an organized religious movement, the Coltrane church leaned into its status as public-facing leaders and keepers of San Francisco culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think this is something people need to understand that this church has been an ambassador for this city,” King said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>They have traveled around the world, including to the \u003ca href=\"https://jazzajuan.com/en/\">Antibes Jazz Festival\u003c/a> in France — where Coltrane himself famously \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWuhPVb175Y&list=RDlWuhPVb175Y&start_radio=1\">performed\u003c/a> A Love Supreme in 1965. The Kings were joined onstage by Carlos Santana, an early supporter of the church. Several travel guides even named them a top destination when visiting San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kings and their church were vocal advocates on issues including environmental racism and police brutality, continuing the work that had long been part of their ethos. But the year 2000 marked yet another shift for the Coltrane Church. They were forced to leave their Divisadero storefront, the church’s home for nearly 30 years, after their rent more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/coltrane-church-holds-last-service-at-longtime-3239485.php\">doubled\u003c/a>. They also had to end their free food program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was our home,” King-Stephens said. “And then, I watched that whole community change. And I tell you, I couldn’t drive through that neighborhood without crying for a whole year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Looking to the future\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>They’ve relocated a few times since then. First, to the Fillmore, where they were one of just a handful of jazz institutions left. But they were evicted from that space too, before moving to their current location out of Fort Mason’s Magic Theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, King and Mother Marina see the church as a kind of Mecca, where Coltrane disciples from around the world can worship together. At the end of Sunday mass, Archbishop King and Mother Marina asked the community for donations. They’re trying to raise money to buy a building — what they hope will be a permanent home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068330\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068330\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/20251221_JohnColtraneChurch_December_GH-8_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rev. Marlee-I Mystic (center) closes Sunday mass in a burst of joy and laughter at the St. John Coltrane Church in San Francisco on Dec. 21, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Kings are in their eighties and looking towards the future of the church. Their daughter plans to usher the church into its next chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the first sound baptism in 1965, the Coltrane Church has had different names, locations and philosophies. In fact, King often said that as the seasons change, so do the needs of the people. Change, he said, is baked into the very essence of the church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And then at the same time, the church never changes,” King said. ”It remains constantly rooted in love and \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>.”\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> John Coltrane on the saxophone is like nothing else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of Coltrane playing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>He grew up in North Carolina in the 1930s…where the church was a big part of his life. Both of his grandfathers were ministers. But his calling was different. After high school, he moved to Philadelphia with his mother, where his music career started to take off. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music plays\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>By the mid-1950s, Coltrane was gaining recognition among other jazz musicians for the way he played, skipping scales in a style that became known as “sheets of sound.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music plays\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Here’s Coltrane in a 1960 radio interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>John Coltrane: \u003c/strong>There’s some set things I know, some harmonic devices that I know that will take me out of the ordinary path if I use these. But I haven’t played them enough, and I”m not familiar enough, to take the one familiar line, so I play all of them so I can acclimate my ear. So I can hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>He was a famously hard worker, practicing fingering, breath control…even specific notes for hours at a time. He was even said to fall asleep with his horn in his mouth. He caught the attention of some of the most famous jazz artists of his day… playing with folks like Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>John Coltrane: \u003c/strong>When I started it it was a little different because I started through Miles Davis and he was an accepted musician, you see. They got used to me in the States now when they first heard me when I was here they did not like it I remember. It’s a little different. They’re going to reject it at first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>But throughout these years of success, Coltrane struggled with alcohol and heroin addiction. Miles Davis famously fired him from his band for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so, the story goes, Coltrane got clean, cold turkey, an experience he describes in the liner notes of his masterpiece, \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>, which came out in 1965. Here’s Denzel Washington reading them in the documentary \u003cem>Chasing Trane\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Denzel Washington reading Coltrane: \u003c/strong>During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of Gd a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly ask to be given the means and the privilege to make others happy through music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>A Love Supreme marked a turning point in Coltrane’s career. The album was Coltrane’s declaration to God, his commitment to love and the divine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it has become the sacred text of a church in San Francisco — the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, Global Spiritual Community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Opening riff of A Love Supreme plays\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Today on Bay Curious, we’re going to church to learn how a jazz musician came to be revered as a saint and how the Coltrane Church has been a part of many cultural movements over the decades, transforming alongside the city. I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Don’t go away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>The Coltrane Church has been worshipping John Coltrane’s music, philosophy, and at times, even the man himself for 60 years. Reporter Asal Ehsanipour takes us to Sunday mass to learn more about what that sounds like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Coltrane Church Mass\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church opens Sunday mass with the blow of a conch shell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of conch shell blowing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Then the saxophone comes in, blaring the opening notes of John Coltrane’s \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Love Supreme plays\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>On the altar is a Byzantine-style portrait of John Coltrane. He’s wearing a white robe and clutching his soprano saxophone. A gold halo glitters above his head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the service, the band alternates between sax, bass, and drum solos in a kind of makeshift jazz concert. Later, the sermon offered by His Eminence the Most Reverend Franzo W. King is a mix of traditional Christian teachings, and references to Coltrane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King during mass: \u003c/strong>Jesus is the Lord of lords and the king of kings. And that one John Will.i.am Coltrane is that anointed sound that leaped down from the throne of heaven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>For Archbishop King and his wife, the Most Reverend Mother Marina, the music and their worship is one and the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>The mission of the church is to paint the globe with Coltrane Consciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Coltrane Consciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>Coltrane Consciousness is acknowledging that the music and the sound of John Coltraine is that anointed sound. So we want everybody to become aware of the power of this music, of this man, that testimony.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The Kings first heard the power of that testimony in 1960s San Francisco — as a young couple in love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>The music was as hip as you could get, and we were trying to be hipsters and being into this music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>One weekend, 1965, Franzo and Marina planned to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. They wanted to see The John Coltrane Quartet at a club in North Beach called The Jazz Workshop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>You had to be 21 and we were both underage, but I knew the doorman. And he took us right up front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>As soon as Coltrane entered the room, the Kings felt the energy around them shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>When they walked out, it was almost like they were walking on a carpet of air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina: \u003c/strong>It was immediate. You could feel the presence, that energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Coltrane music starts here\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>And then he lifted his horn. We were right in front, and he pointed right at our table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>From the first note, we were lifted into another place beyond the confines of that jazz club. And when we finished, our drinks were still on the table, the ice had melted. I don’t remember us even talking to each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>I didn’t know exactly how to react to it. I was just in the moment of experiencing a new experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We were caught in a windstorm of the spirit of the Holy Ghost. It was a powerful thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They call this experience their “sound baptism.” From then on, their calling would be to spread John Coltrane’s gospel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We couldn’t keep it to ourselves. We had to give testimony, we had to tell people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>And tell people they did. Franzo and Marina had actually created a space to share their favorite music with friends — in a way, their first iteration of the Coltrane Church. Pastor Wanika King-Stephens still remembers those evenings her parents used to host.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>Really what that entailed was our listening clinic that took place in my parents’ living room. My mom would put on a pot of beans and make some cornbread and have people come over and they would sit and listen to the music of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Franzo and Marina poured over liner notes and interviews, spent hours absorbed in the music, analyzing it together. Then came July 17, 1967.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>When John Coltrane died I came into the living room to find my dad and my uncle and they had been up all night. Listening to Trane and just talking about him and the music and so when I came in the room, I’m like, “what’s what’s wrong?” You know, they said, you know, “they killed John.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Coltrane died from liver cancer, most likely fueled by his drug and alcohol addiction. But to Franzo, his death symbolized the systems of racism that targeted Black men in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was a time of heightened tension for San Francisco’s Black population. The city’s so-called “urban renewal” project was in full swing and it targeted low-income neighborhoods with minority residents for demolition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>The redevelopment came in with the Negro removal and devastated the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Redevelopment brought an end to the “Harlem of the West” that defined the Fillmore in the 40s and 50s. Jazz clubs shuttered. Minority and elderly residents were forced from their homes. And the city’s Black-owned music scene was decimated. Franzo, though, was passionate that people needed to hear this music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>And it was during that period, too, where so-called black consciousness was coming out. It was just a very high cultural, political things going on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>So he and Marina mobilized. They opened what was essentially an underground jazz club — from their basement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coltrane had been outspoken about the “corporatization” of jazz. It was just \u003cu>one\u003c/u> example of how he’d grown into an icon for the Black Power movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Coltrane’s song Alabama plays \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Here’s Coltrane’s 1963 song, Alabama, about the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham that killed four African American girls. Coltrane composed it to the rhythm of Martin Luther King Jr.’s eulogy following the attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>So we’re living in these times of turmoil, yes it comes out in the music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>But eventually, something shifted. For the Kings, the work stopped being about saving the music or the culture. It was about saving souls. Because after years of studying Coltrane, it had become clear to them that his music, his activism — his whole belief system — was really a declaration of faith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>And we hear John Coltrane saying, my music is the spiritual expression of what I am, my faith, my knowledge, my being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The Kings went all in on their devotion. They converted the jazz club into a temple. Now they didn’t just revere Coltrane. They worshipped him. Believed he was the second coming of Christ.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>That he’s more than just a musician, but he is a prophet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>And that \u003cem>A Love Supreme \u003c/em>was his sacred text — his doctrine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A Love Supreme starts playing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>For 32 minutes and 47 seconds, Coltrane’s saxophone pulses and intertwines with piano and drums, a four note bassline bedded beneath the sound. It’s played in all 12 keys, sending a message that you can find A Love Supreme everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We hear the Lord speaking to us in this music. I’ve had John Coltrane through the music call my name. So we have revelations that come through the music. And you find that in the sound of the music, you find it in the name of the compositions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Archbishop King and Mother Marina say the album’s four song titles — \u003cem>Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalm —\u003c/em> offer a formula for how to reach a higher power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>The way his notes are moving and the way the sounds are connected, it’s almost like a rumble. It’s like a war. Sometimes he’s pleading your case. Every time I hear it, there’s something new. There’s always life there. It’s in the music, the magic is in the music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Franzo and Marina surrendered themselves to Coltrane. They prayed, meditated, and fasted for days at a time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>And we just felt like we were in the right place at the right time, and that the Spirit of God was really heavy in this part of the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Around this time, The Black Panther Party was gaining traction. Started in Oakland in 1966 its co-founder Huey P. Newton had become a kind of mentor to Franzo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Huey P. Newton: \u003c/strong>The Black Panther Party for self defense is organized now throughout the nation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Here’s Newton in 1968 describing the mission of the Panthers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Huey P Newton: \u003c/strong>And we advocate that all Black people in America are taught what politics is all about and what our history is all about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Newton encouraged the Coltrane Church to fuse politics and culture with religion. And in 1971, the Kings opened their first permanent location in a storefront on Divisadero St. From there, they started hosting social programs, similar to the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast Program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>The food program was one of my favorite things in the whole world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Pastor Wanika says that seven days a week, they’d give free vegetarian meals to hundreds of people. The lines snaked around the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>We would sing songs, you know, \u003cem>‘Serving the people makes me mighty glad. [fade under] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We would go to Safeways and the supermarkets and the stuff that they would throw out. We’d take it out, put it in a tub, clean it, and serve it to the people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Franzo and Marina believed that to be right with God was to be \u003cem>\u003cu>right\u003c/u>\u003c/em> with the people. So they also hosted free yoga classes and donated clothes to the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We kind of learned that stuff from the hippies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The vibe was Flower Power, psychedelics…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>The Grateful Dead…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Utopian communes based out of old Victorian houses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>The so-called hippie movement was a powerful thing and we were very much a part of that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>And like the hippies, the Kings started borrowing from Eastern spirituality, led by Coltrane’s music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Opening notes of “Om” by John Coltrane – 00:00\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>John Coltrane has an album entitled Om. I thought of that as far as one of the albums that meant so much to us, especially early on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of Coltrane’s “Om” playing \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>And we literally took that as John saying, “I am Om.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>By the mid-70s, the Kings began shifting away from Christianity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>We embrace the unity of religious ideas. If you want to say that Buddha is the light, we don’t have a problem with that.\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>They incorporated Sanskrit chanting in their service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King chanting\u003cem>: \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>That’s something that we learned from Alice Coltrane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Alice Coltrane, John’s widow, had been immersed in Hindu spirituality for years and had come to San Francisco to deepen her practice. The Kings met her here and eventually joined her \u003cu>new\u003c/u> religious community called the Vedantic Center. Franzo and Marina began worshipping Alice as the wife of God and adopted Hindu names.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pastor Wanika remembers when her parents made that shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>So we go from jazz to Sanskrit and chanting and singing, you know, Hare Krishna and Shiva, Lord Shiva.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>The Kings sang backup on Alice’s early devotional records, like this one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Singing \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>But in the early 80s, their relationship splintered. Alice filed a 7.5 million dollar lawsuit against the Coltrane Church for copyright infringement and using her husband’s name and likeness without permission. Alice eventually dropped the lawsuit, but the incident drew the attention of the African Orthodox Church, who wanted to expand to the West Coast. For the Kings, it was actually kind of similar to the temple they’d first opened except they had to recharacterize Coltrane from their God incarnate to a patron saint. They agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>For me, John was always just sort of evolving in my consciousness. So for him to go from God to Saint was not a big stretch for me. It’s like, great, okay. I can swing with that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>So in 1982, they became the \u003cem>\u003cu>Saint\u003c/u>\u003c/em> John Coltrane African Orthodox Church. Now part of an organized religious movement, the Coltrane Church leaned into its status as public facing leaders. Keepers, if you will, of San Francisco culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>I think this is something people need to understand that this church has been an ambassador for this city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>They traveled around the world. Like to the Antibes Jazz Festival in France — where Coltrane himself famously performed \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em> in 1965.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>Carlos Santana joined us on the stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King: \u003c/strong>And even on airlines, we would say, hey, I saw your church advertised on United Airlines, and it would, you know, it was like a goal of places you need to see in San Francisco, and it would be the St. John Coltrane Church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>But the year 2000 marked yet another shift for the Coltrane Church when they were forced out of their Divisadero storefront. Their home of nearly 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>It was awful, it was awful. I mean, I know I never saw it coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Their rent more than doubled, and they had to end their free food program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wanika King-Stephens: \u003c/strong>We had to leave, and that was our home. That was our home. And then I watched that whole community change. And I just, I tell you, I couldn’t drive through that neighborhood without crying for, like, a whole year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>They’ve relocated a few times since then. First to the Fillmore where they were one of just a handful of jazz institutions left. But they were evicted from that space too, before moving to their current location out of Fort Mason’s Magic Theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Coltrane Church mass: Hallelujah! \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mother Marina King during service: \u003c/strong>This next composition is entitled Tune Gene, and it means “He who comes in the glory of the Lord.” So I want you to clap your hands, pick up your tambourines. Do we have any dancers? You know, King David danced before the Lord with all the power of his might.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Now, Archbishop King and Mother Marina see the church as a kind of Mecca, where Coltrane disciples from just about anywhere can worship together. On the day I visit, they’ve come from New York, Seattle, and closer to home, Redwood City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King in the service: \u003c/strong>This is the St. John Will-i-am Coltrane African Orthodox Church Global Spiritual Community. Amen. So we all are family, amen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>At the end of Sunday mass Archbishop King and Mother Marina asked for donations. They’re trying to raise money to buy a building. What they hope will be a permanent home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>So this church needs your money. Amen. Some of y’all are holding on to God’s money now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Archbishop King and Mother Marina are in their 80s and are looking towards the future of the church, how it can live beyond them. Their daughter, Pastor Wanika, plans to take it over, to continue sharing the church’s message.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>So Coltrane Consciousness is a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme. That’s what this coltrane consciousness is all about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Asal Ehsanipour: \u003c/strong>Since Archbishop King and Mother Marina’s sound baptism in 1965, the Coltrane Church has had different names, locations, philosophies. In fact, Archbishop King often says that as the seasons change, so do the needs of the people. Change, he says, is baked into the very essence of the church.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archbishop King: \u003c/strong>And then at the same time, the church never changes. It remains constantly rooted in love and \u003cem>A Love Supreme\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music fades out\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That story was reported by Asal Ehsanipour. You can attend mass at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church every Sunday at the Magic Theater at Fort Mason.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is produced at member-supported KQED in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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>Thanks for listening. Have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "how-the-bay-areas-gay-bars-became-a-battleground-for-lgtbq-rights-in-the-1950s",
"title": "How the Bay Area’s Gay Bars Became a Battleground for LGBTQ+ Rights in the 1950s",
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"headTitle": "How the Bay Area’s Gay Bars Became a Battleground for LGBTQ+ Rights in the 1950s | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> has an international reputation as a haven of freedom and culture for the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/lgbtq\">LGBTQ+\u003c/a> community. And with good reason.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco elected \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11706248/40-years-after-assassinations-assessing-the-legacies-of-harvey-milk-and-george-moscone\">Harvey Milk\u003c/a>, California’s first openly gay public official. It’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11876846/never-take-it-down-the-original-1978-rainbow-flag-returns-to-sf\">the birthplace of the rainbow pride flag\u003c/a>, now a global symbol. The city has also long had an iconic drag queen scene and legendary nightlife with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930323/san-francisco-gay-bars-history-silver-rail-febes-black-cat\">a long history of bustling gay\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13929998/historic-lesbian-bars-san-francisco-mauds-pegs-front-anns-monas-440-tommy-vasu\">lesbian bars\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Bay Area was not always this way. The LGBTQ+ community had to fight for these freedoms and safe spaces. Often, this fight was against oppressive policing from the state and local government. And some important moments in that fight happened in unexpected places, like Pacifica.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was like, whoa, it says this was in Pacifica! Why have I never heard of it?” Bay Curious listener Henry Lie asked. He’d stumbled across mention of a 1956 police raid at a bar called Hazel’s Inn, where nearly a hundred queer folks were arrested. He wanted to know more.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Progress and repression of LGBTQ+ rights\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“The early 1950s, I would say it was the heyday of gay nightlife in San Francisco,” said Nan Alamilla Boyd, an oral historian at the UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. As a longtime researcher of San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ history, Boyd has interviewed dozens of queer individuals who frequented gay bars during this time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her interviews uncover stories of the Bay Area’s history, especially the repression queer people faced in the 1950s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069459\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069459\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1171\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED-160x94.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED-1536x899.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The building once housed Hazel’s Inn. This photo was taken in 1966, when the city condemned the building. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of The Pacifica Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“A lot of these people [I interviewed] witnessed front row seats to [this repressive era], and kept being as out and proud as possible and survived to tell about it,” Boyd said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1951, the California State Board of Equalization revoked the liquor license of the Black Cat Cafe, a popular gay bar, because the establishment was “injurious to public morals.” The Black Cat owner, Sol Stouman, appealed the move to the California Supreme Court. The court ruled in his favor, affirming that the presence of LGBTQ+ people in a bar was allowable, as long as there were no “immoral acts” taking place. The case is known as Stoumen v. Reilly and many historians see it as the first legal victory for the LGBTQ+ community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The argument was that it’s not illegal to be a homosexual, it’s illegal to do homosexual acts,” Boyd explained. “I know it seems really regressive now, but the decision was liberating because the conclusion was that it wasn’t status that was illegal, it was behavior.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first time, LGBTQ+ people had the protected right to gather at bars without facing prosecution for simply being a queer person in public. And so queer nightlife blossomed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There were maybe four or five ‘lesbian bars’ in North Beach within walking distance of each other at any point in time between 1948 and 1955,” Boyd said.[aside postID=news_12029551 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/250205-WildSideWest-21-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg']But just a few years later, the U.S. government started targeting the LGBTQ+ community. Now known as the \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/articles/state-department-gay-employees-outed-fired-lavender-scare\">Lavender Scare\u003c/a>, many of the freedoms enjoyed in the early 50s came under attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order in 1953 banning gay people from federal work for immoral conduct and “sexual perversion.” And in California, a new state agency called the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control was created in 1955. Known as the ABC, its job was to ensure that licensed bars abided by legal and \u003cem>moral \u003c/em>codes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Things really changed in 1955,” Boyd said. The ABC began waging a war against gay bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency found ways to undermine the protections previously won by the LGBTQ+ community in Stouman v. Reilly. Since “homosexual acts” were still illegal, suddenly the state was very concerned about specific actions taking place in bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a question about what exactly [were] the behaviors that [were] illegal,” Boyd said. “Do you have to see someone having sex in the bar? Or is it kissing? What about fondling? What about sitting on a lap? What about dancing close? So, all this stuff then started being hashed out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With each enforcement action against queer bar patrons, the ABC expanded the definition of illegal acts. Soon, even dancing with someone of the same sex was punishable. The ABC even collaborated with local law enforcement agencies to conduct undercover surveillance operations that identified and monitored LGBTQ gathering spots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1955, the gay bars in San Francisco were getting less and less safe. And as harassment and policing increased, the LGBTQ+ community began looking for new places to gather outside of San Francisco, away from well-known gay bars. The community ended up down the coast, where they made Hazel’s Inn their spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Hazel’s Inn raid\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the early hours of Feb. 19, 1956, a group of 35 ABC and San Mateo County Sheriff’s officers stormed into a full and bustling Hazel’s Inn. There were around 200 patrons present in the bar, mostly men, when the sheriff jumped onto the bar and announced, “This is a raid!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ninety people were arrested that night, including the bar’s owner, Hazel Nikola, a straight woman in her 60’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069461\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 2125px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069461\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2125\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-scaled.jpg 2125w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-2000x2409.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-160x193.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-1275x1536.jpg 1275w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-1700x2048.jpg 1700w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2125px) 100vw, 2125px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Coverage of the Hazel’s Inn raid from the San Francisco Chronicle in 1956. It was common, at the time, for newspapers to use derogatory language in reference to the LGBTQ community. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Chronicle via Newsbank)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hazel’s Inn had been under state surveillance for months, and patrons were forced to walk past a line of agents who had been watching them. One by one, agents picked out those they had seen showing queer affection. Most of those arrested faced vagrancy charges. Nikola’s liquor license was quickly revoked for knowingly hosting a hangout for queer people and for serving an underage person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-20-february-1956-smt-hazels-i/10556199/\">\u003cem>The San Mateo Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a> asked Sheriff Earl Whitmore about the raid, he said, “Let it be known that we are not going to tolerate gatherings of homosexuals in the county.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The full extent of the ABC’s operation at Hazel’s Inn became clear as the case was brought before\u003ca href=\"https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AHSI&u=glbths&id=GALE%7CMDRLJF555849529&v=2.1&it=r&sid=bookmark-AHSI&sPage=11&asid=6014d9b9\"> the ABC Board\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-court-of-appeal/1810632.html\">court\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In court documents, Laurence E. Strong, an ABC agent, described the scene at Hazel’s Inn the night of the raid and in the months leading up to it. Strong described how one male patron sat on another man’s lap and how two others were seen holding hands. In the corner of the bar, a couple was seen embracing as one nestled his head into the other’s shoulder. Some men pinched each other’s butts and fondled each other while dancing. Women danced close together with other women. Men were seen powdering their faces and women wore slacks and sports coats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These scenes of queerness would be used in court to justify the revocation of Nikola’s liquor license for being a “resort for sexual perverts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While most of those arrested that night were cleared of charges, the damage had already been done. Newspapers caught wind of the raid, and patrons were publicly outed, with their names, occupations and home addresses published for all to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People were so fearful,” Boyd said. “There were [LGBTQ+ people] who would never go out because they were afraid of getting arrested. And then [their] name would be in the paper and [their] life would be ruined.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Hazel’s Inn raid became a playbook for the state to target the queer community over the following 15 years. Surveillance, raids, and the revocation of liquor licenses were all part of a strategy to push LGBTQ+ people out of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Resistance amidst repression\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Looking back at this history of aggressive policing against queer people and their bars, it’s no surprise that queer nightlife continues to be central to the LGBTQ+ community. For many, gay bars were the only spaces they were afforded the freedom to be openly queer. They were also the battlegrounds where civil rights were won and lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the fight for LGBTQ+ rights continues. As the federal government uses its power to withhold \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049666/nowhere-else-to-go-sf-families-protest-kaisers-new-limits-on-gender-affirming-care\">gender-affirming healthcare\u003c/a> and to target\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12047432/us-sues-california-over-its-refusal-to-ban-transgender-athletes-from-girls-sports\"> transgender youth in sports\u003c/a>, Boyd said it can be hard to keep hope alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068581\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068581\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nan Alamilla Boyd, a historian, poses for a portrait at the GLBT Historical Society Archives in San Francisco on Jan. 2, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The hits [to LGBTQ+ rights] keep coming and in many different ways,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, her work has taught her that in times of repression, powerful political organizing and cultural innovation can emerge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By the early 1960s, [queer] bartenders and the bar owners had pretty elaborate methods to resist the policing agencies,” Boyd said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They created a resistance movement powerful enough to outlast the government’s efforts to eradicate queer nightlife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t really make cultural innovation illegal because it happens,” Boyd said. “It’s everything, everywhere, all at once. It’s the thing that’s our spirit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s because of that indomitable spirit that the Bay Area looks and feels the way it does today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12063643 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251008-GirlintheFishbowl-01-BL.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>San Francisco and its surrounding Bay Area have long been known as a gay capital of the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, it’s here, where the first lesbian civil rights group was formed, the Daughters of Bilitis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And where Harvey Milk became an iconic gay public official! [tape]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Harvey Milk:\u003c/strong> I will fight to represent my constituents. I will fight to represent the city and county of San Francisco. I will fight to give those people who once walked away hope, so that those people will walk back in. Thank you very much. [clapping]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>It was the birthplace of the Gay pride flag. And it’s where city hall is lit up in a rainbow for pride month. This is the Bay Area that our question asker, Henry Lie, knows well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music stops\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>I’m originally from Pacifica…went to high school at Terranova High School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Henry always thought of Pacifica as an extension of San Francisco — it’s just a few miles south, after all. And, there’s not a whole lot that surprises Henry about his hometown. That is until he learned about a moment in Pacifica’s history that left him with a ton of questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> We have this museum.. I think I was there and saw like a footnote or something and it just said like, oh yeah, Hazel’s Inn raid where, you know, there was a large gathering of LGBTQ+ identifying people and a bunch of people were arrested, couple of people charged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Henry had stumbled across a forgotten moment in history — a massive police raid that took place in 1956, part of a crusade to push LGBTQ people out of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Ominous music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local newspapers documented the raid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice Over 1: \u003c/strong>San Francisco Examiner: Ninety persons, mostly men, were booked at the San Mateo County jail yesterday after a vice raid on a tavern suspected of being a gathering place for sex deviates.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice Over 2: \u003c/strong>San Mateo Times: The raid, according to Sheriff Whitmore, “was to let homosexuals know we’re not going to tolerate their congregation in this county.” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice Over 3: \u003c/strong>Redwood City Tribune: Mrs. Nicola, owner of Hazel’s Inn, is charged with operating a resort for sexual deviates. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Big questions began surfacing for Henry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> And I was like, whoa, I’ve never even heard of Hazel’s Inn. This says this was in Pacifica. Why have I never heard of it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> So he came to Bay Curious, hoping to find out more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> Could you dive deeper into the Hazel’s Inn raid in Pacifica and the effects that it had on the LGBTQ plus community in the greater Bay area in the late 1950s?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious theme music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>I’m Olivia Allen-Price and this is Bay Curious. This week, we’re going back to the gay bars of the 1950s to learn about a moment in time when the San Francisco Bay Area was far less welcoming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that coming right up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Theme music ends\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor Break\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>To dig deeper into Bay Area queer history, KQED’s Ana De Almeida Amaral takes us to Pacifica.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral:\u003c/strong> Pacifica is a beautiful place, with sprawling views of the ocean and stunning beaches. It has that small town feel, complete with a\u003cem> tiny\u003c/em> museum showcasing its history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> This is our little museum…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Laura Del Rosso was born and raised in Pacifica, and serves as a docent and board member for the Pacifica Coastside Museum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> This whole area around here was full of speakeasies, taverns, restaurants, and brothels during Prohibition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>It seems hard to imagine now, but this small town was once infamous for its nightlife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso: \u003c/strong>Some people think that San Mateo County coast was actually the wettest place in the whole United States, meaning there was more booze here and in Half Moon Bay area than anywhere else in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>While the historical society has long been aware of the clandestine nightlife during Prohibition, it wasn’t until a few years ago that they started uncovering the history of a hushed queer nightlife scene that took hold right here, in the 1950’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jazzy music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Hazel’s Inn was a tavern in Sharp Park, now a neighborhood in Pacifica. ^The bar is long gone^, but in 1956 the Pacifica Tribune, described it as a large and homey space, with knick-nacks above a mahogany bar, a shuffle board, a dance floor and a jukebox.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hazel’s Inn was owned and run by Hazel Nikola, a straight woman in her 60s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> From what we understand then, after she got a divorce she was running the place by herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And the place was popular! Sometimes there were up to 500 patrons in a weekend. For a long time it catered mostly to locals and tourists on holiday at the beach, but then in 1955 and 56, the LGBT community made it \u003cem>their\u003c/em> spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> When the gay men started coming from San Francisco, she welcomed them. And she was non-judgmental. However, it’s obvious that somebody was not happy and did contact the sheriff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>But before we can get to that night — the night of the Hazel’s Inn raid — we have to ask why here? Miles from San Francisco, hidden in a small town, far from any other gay nightlife, why was Hazel’s Inn the place that attracted hundreds of LGBTQ people?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>To answer this question, I went to the archives at the GLBT historical society — where collections documenting the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans community are housed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There, I met Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd. She’s an oral historian with the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd: \u003c/strong>I was professor of women and gender studies at San Francisco State for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>She’s one of the few people who has researched queer nightlife in the 1950’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> 1956, 90 persons, mostly men were booked at the San Mateo county jail…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>At the archives we read some of the newspaper clippings about Hazel’s Inn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> Suspected of being a gathering place for sex deviates…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>She did a lot of her research back in the 1990s and was able to interview dozens of queer people who lived in the Bay Area in the 1940s and 50s. Most of them have since passed away, so her work and these archives are some of the last links to this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Piano music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Back in the 1940s, San Francisco already had a queer nightlife scene, but at the time it was illegal to be gay. And bars that were caught serving queer people… that was illegal too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> If you were not a legal kind of person, then you couldn’t like buy a drink in a bar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>But the law changed in 1951— when the Black Cat Cafe, in San Francisco, had its liquor license suspended for serving members of the LGBT community. The owner appealed the decision to the California Supreme court. The case is known as Stouman vs. Riley and it’s a big moment in queer civil rights history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> The argument was that it’s not illegal to be a homosexual, it’s illegal to do homosexual acts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>The court agreed. And the ruling became one of the first civil rights protections for LGBTQ people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music ends\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>For the first time, they had the protected right to assemble. Gay men and lesbian women could buy drinks at bars and hang out with other queer friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is as long as there were no homosexual acts taking place that were deemed “illegal or immoral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many legal decisions, it was a vague but powerful protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> I know it seems really regressive now, right? But the decision was liberating because the conclusion was that it wasn’t Status that was illegal, it was behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And so queer nightlife in the Bay Area blossomed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> In the early 1950s, I would say it was the heyday of gay nightlife in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And really iconic gay bars came into the picture. The Black Cat Cafe was running again, Tommy’s Place and Ann’s 440 opened. And these places became sanctuaries for the LGBT community to be \u003cem>together. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> There were maybe four or five quote unquote lesbian bars in North Beach in walking distance of each other at any point in time between like, let’s say, 1948 and 1955. So it’s like a really interesting community that evolved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And this was really important because in the 1950s it was still not super safe to be gay. Many queer folks were closeted by day in order to keep their jobs. But at night…at the bar…there was a freedom that didn’t really exist anywhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> And it was before the state caught wind of what was happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>But then a panic started to take hold in the United States…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Senator McCarthy archival tape:\u003c/strong> Are you a member of the communist conspiracy as of this moment?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>A conservative mindset took hold in American politics and culture — ushering in a time of suspicion and fear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Senator McCarthy archival tape:\u003c/strong> Our nation may very well die, and I ask you caused it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And quickly, LGBT people become \u003cu>targets\u003c/u> at the federal, state and local level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President Eisenhower signed an executive order in 1953 banning gay people from federal work, labeling them as having immoral conduct and “sexual perversion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, in 1955 \u003cem>California\u003c/em> created a new state agency called the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control or the ABC. An agency whose sole job was to ensure that licensed bars abided by legal and \u003cem>moral\u003c/em> codes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And from the moment the department of Alcoholic Beverage control was created a top priority for them was to…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd: \u003c/strong>Shut down the gay bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And they did this by finding ways around those vague protections won in the Stouman v. Riley case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While queer people were granted the right to assemble, “homosexual acts” were still illegal, so authorities started taking an interest in the specifics of what that meant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> There’s a question about like, well then what exactly are the behaviors that are illegal? Like, do you have to like see someone, having sex in the bar? Or is it kissing? What about fondling? What about sitting on a lap? What about holding hands? What about dancing close? So all this stuff was like, then started being hashed out, you know, this is an illegal act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control started collaborating with a bunch of law enforcement agencies throughout the Bay Area to ferret out people engaged in those acts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1955, the gay bars in San Francisco were getting less and less safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as harassment and policing increased, the LGBT community began looking for new places to gather outside of San Francisco, away from well-known gay bars, and they ended up down the coast, at Hazel’s Inn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound design of a raucous bar scene\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only testimonies about what happened on Feb. 19, 1956, the night that Hazel’s Inn was raided, come from court documents and hearings at the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. Laurence E. Strong, an ABC agent, described in detail what was happening at the bar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That night, the dance floor was alive, and the bar was filled with around 200 patrons, mostly men. These men wrapped their arms around each other and embraced one another while dancing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also described how one patron sat on another man’s lap and how two other men held hands. In the corner of the bar, a couple embraced as one nestled his head into the other’s shoulder. Some men pinched each other’s butts and fondled each other while dancing. Women danced close together with other women. Men were seen powdering their faces and women wore slacks and sports coats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It sounds like a scene of queer joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music turns tense\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Suddenly, 35 law enforcement agents stormed the bar — a mix of San Mateo county sheriff’s officers and ABC agents began arresting people. The sheriff jumped on to the bar and announced:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over:\u003c/strong> “This is a raid!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Patrons were forced to walk past a line of agents. And one by one, agents picked out people they had seen showing queer affection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Boyd says that the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board had been watching Hazel’s Inn for months, gathering evidence and building a case that behavior there was “illegal and immoral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd: \u003c/strong>They had undercover agents in the bars. And they would go in twos or threes and they would watch each other. And somebody would get an interested person, and then would sort of lead them on, until there was some kind of physical, sexual, or flirtatious engagement that involved touching. It was entrapment. And that was a common and acceptable practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Ninety people were arrested that night at Hazel’s Inn, including Hazel Nikola — the owner. The bar’s liquor license was quickly revoked for being quote “a resort for sexual perverts” and for serving someone underaged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mass arrest caught the attention of a variety of civil rights groups, including the ACLU who represented 30 defendants. Most of those arrested were cleared of charges, but the damage had already been done. People were outed in the newspapers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> There would be a list of the people and their address and sometimes their occupation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over: \u003c/strong>The San Mateo Times: Local persons arrested were: Iris Ann Glasgow, 24 years old. Clerk. 1515 James Street, Redwood City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Many of these people were publicly named as “sexual perverts”. That often meant being ostracized or losing their job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> People were so fearful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Cello music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>As for the bar, Hazel fought the revocation of her liquor license for\u003cem> two years \u003c/em>but the court ultimately sided with the ABC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> I think she was just really bitter about what happened here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music ends\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Back in the Pacifica Coastside museum, Laura reflected on what the raid did to Hazel Nikola.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> She lost her liquor license and things just kind of went downhill for her. You have that information on the thing. And she ended up, she ended closing. She was very, very bitter at the end. She felt like she was really an important part of the community and that they had kind of betrayed her. She left Sharp Park and went to live somewhere else. And never came back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>For the queer community, the effects were even more devastating. The Hazel’s Inn Raid became a playbook for the state to target the queer community over the next 15 years. (Surveillance, raids, and the revocation of liquor licenses.) It was a strategy to push LGBTQ people out of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it didn’t work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite this aggressive policing and repression, the gay bars never died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Queer patrons, and bartenders, and bar owners found ways to keep going. They found ways to spot surveillance in their bars, they organized and worked to keep the police out of their spaces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historian Dr. Boyd again:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> My takeaway from history as a historian is that during these times of repression. There’s cultural innovation that happens. You can’t really name it yet, right? But it’s taking shape you know, that there’s something coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>During those years of extreme repression, queer activists were making connections, organizing, and laying the groundwork for the next several decades of activism that would see LGBTQ rights expand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area has changed a lot since the raid at Hazel’s Inn. But still, a fearless commitment to community and authenticity — the spirit that kept these gay bars alive — lives on here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was reporter Ana De Almeida Amaral. Featuring the voices of Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, Carly Severn, Christopher Beale and Paul Lancour for archival material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Did you know that Bay Curious listeners help choose which questions we answer on the podcast? Each month we have a new voting round up at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>, with three fascinating questions to choose from. This month…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Question 1: \u003c/strong>Did the Navy airship America crash land into several houses? What happened to the crew?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Question 2:\u003c/strong> Why is San Francisco home to so many federal and statewide courts? Why aren’t they in Sacramento or Los Angeles?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Question 3: \u003c/strong>I want to learn more about San Francisco upzoning and how people feel about it in the Richmond and Sunset districts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Cast your vote with one click at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Become a member today at \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">kqed.org/donate\u003c/a>. Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me Olivia Allen-Price. With extra support from Katie Sprenger, Matt Morales, Tim Olsen, Maha Sanad, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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 wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> has an international reputation as a haven of freedom and culture for the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/lgbtq\">LGBTQ+\u003c/a> community. And with good reason.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco elected \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11706248/40-years-after-assassinations-assessing-the-legacies-of-harvey-milk-and-george-moscone\">Harvey Milk\u003c/a>, California’s first openly gay public official. It’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11876846/never-take-it-down-the-original-1978-rainbow-flag-returns-to-sf\">the birthplace of the rainbow pride flag\u003c/a>, now a global symbol. The city has also long had an iconic drag queen scene and legendary nightlife with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930323/san-francisco-gay-bars-history-silver-rail-febes-black-cat\">a long history of bustling gay\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13929998/historic-lesbian-bars-san-francisco-mauds-pegs-front-anns-monas-440-tommy-vasu\">lesbian bars\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Bay Area was not always this way. The LGBTQ+ community had to fight for these freedoms and safe spaces. Often, this fight was against oppressive policing from the state and local government. And some important moments in that fight happened in unexpected places, like Pacifica.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was like, whoa, it says this was in Pacifica! Why have I never heard of it?” Bay Curious listener Henry Lie asked. He’d stumbled across mention of a 1956 police raid at a bar called Hazel’s Inn, where nearly a hundred queer folks were arrested. He wanted to know more.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Progress and repression of LGBTQ+ rights\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“The early 1950s, I would say it was the heyday of gay nightlife in San Francisco,” said Nan Alamilla Boyd, an oral historian at the UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. As a longtime researcher of San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ history, Boyd has interviewed dozens of queer individuals who frequented gay bars during this time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her interviews uncover stories of the Bay Area’s history, especially the repression queer people faced in the 1950s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069459\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069459\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1171\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED-160x94.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/HAZEL_S-BUILDING_1966-KQED-1536x899.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The building once housed Hazel’s Inn. This photo was taken in 1966, when the city condemned the building. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of The Pacifica Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“A lot of these people [I interviewed] witnessed front row seats to [this repressive era], and kept being as out and proud as possible and survived to tell about it,” Boyd said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1951, the California State Board of Equalization revoked the liquor license of the Black Cat Cafe, a popular gay bar, because the establishment was “injurious to public morals.” The Black Cat owner, Sol Stouman, appealed the move to the California Supreme Court. The court ruled in his favor, affirming that the presence of LGBTQ+ people in a bar was allowable, as long as there were no “immoral acts” taking place. The case is known as Stoumen v. Reilly and many historians see it as the first legal victory for the LGBTQ+ community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The argument was that it’s not illegal to be a homosexual, it’s illegal to do homosexual acts,” Boyd explained. “I know it seems really regressive now, but the decision was liberating because the conclusion was that it wasn’t status that was illegal, it was behavior.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first time, LGBTQ+ people had the protected right to gather at bars without facing prosecution for simply being a queer person in public. And so queer nightlife blossomed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There were maybe four or five ‘lesbian bars’ in North Beach within walking distance of each other at any point in time between 1948 and 1955,” Boyd said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But just a few years later, the U.S. government started targeting the LGBTQ+ community. Now known as the \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/articles/state-department-gay-employees-outed-fired-lavender-scare\">Lavender Scare\u003c/a>, many of the freedoms enjoyed in the early 50s came under attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order in 1953 banning gay people from federal work for immoral conduct and “sexual perversion.” And in California, a new state agency called the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control was created in 1955. Known as the ABC, its job was to ensure that licensed bars abided by legal and \u003cem>moral \u003c/em>codes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Things really changed in 1955,” Boyd said. The ABC began waging a war against gay bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency found ways to undermine the protections previously won by the LGBTQ+ community in Stouman v. Reilly. Since “homosexual acts” were still illegal, suddenly the state was very concerned about specific actions taking place in bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a question about what exactly [were] the behaviors that [were] illegal,” Boyd said. “Do you have to see someone having sex in the bar? Or is it kissing? What about fondling? What about sitting on a lap? What about dancing close? So, all this stuff then started being hashed out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With each enforcement action against queer bar patrons, the ABC expanded the definition of illegal acts. Soon, even dancing with someone of the same sex was punishable. The ABC even collaborated with local law enforcement agencies to conduct undercover surveillance operations that identified and monitored LGBTQ gathering spots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1955, the gay bars in San Francisco were getting less and less safe. And as harassment and policing increased, the LGBTQ+ community began looking for new places to gather outside of San Francisco, away from well-known gay bars. The community ended up down the coast, where they made Hazel’s Inn their spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Hazel’s Inn raid\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the early hours of Feb. 19, 1956, a group of 35 ABC and San Mateo County Sheriff’s officers stormed into a full and bustling Hazel’s Inn. There were around 200 patrons present in the bar, mostly men, when the sheriff jumped onto the bar and announced, “This is a raid!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ninety people were arrested that night, including the bar’s owner, Hazel Nikola, a straight woman in her 60’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069461\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 2125px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069461\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2125\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-scaled.jpg 2125w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-2000x2409.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-160x193.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-1275x1536.jpg 1275w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/San_Francisco_Chronicle__February_20_1956__Hazel_s-Inn-KQED-1-1700x2048.jpg 1700w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2125px) 100vw, 2125px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Coverage of the Hazel’s Inn raid from the San Francisco Chronicle in 1956. It was common, at the time, for newspapers to use derogatory language in reference to the LGBTQ community. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Chronicle via Newsbank)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hazel’s Inn had been under state surveillance for months, and patrons were forced to walk past a line of agents who had been watching them. One by one, agents picked out those they had seen showing queer affection. Most of those arrested faced vagrancy charges. Nikola’s liquor license was quickly revoked for knowingly hosting a hangout for queer people and for serving an underage person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When \u003ca href=\"https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-20-february-1956-smt-hazels-i/10556199/\">\u003cem>The San Mateo Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a> asked Sheriff Earl Whitmore about the raid, he said, “Let it be known that we are not going to tolerate gatherings of homosexuals in the county.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The full extent of the ABC’s operation at Hazel’s Inn became clear as the case was brought before\u003ca href=\"https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AHSI&u=glbths&id=GALE%7CMDRLJF555849529&v=2.1&it=r&sid=bookmark-AHSI&sPage=11&asid=6014d9b9\"> the ABC Board\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-court-of-appeal/1810632.html\">court\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In court documents, Laurence E. Strong, an ABC agent, described the scene at Hazel’s Inn the night of the raid and in the months leading up to it. Strong described how one male patron sat on another man’s lap and how two others were seen holding hands. In the corner of the bar, a couple was seen embracing as one nestled his head into the other’s shoulder. Some men pinched each other’s butts and fondled each other while dancing. Women danced close together with other women. Men were seen powdering their faces and women wore slacks and sports coats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These scenes of queerness would be used in court to justify the revocation of Nikola’s liquor license for being a “resort for sexual perverts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While most of those arrested that night were cleared of charges, the damage had already been done. Newspapers caught wind of the raid, and patrons were publicly outed, with their names, occupations and home addresses published for all to see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People were so fearful,” Boyd said. “There were [LGBTQ+ people] who would never go out because they were afraid of getting arrested. And then [their] name would be in the paper and [their] life would be ruined.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Hazel’s Inn raid became a playbook for the state to target the queer community over the following 15 years. Surveillance, raids, and the revocation of liquor licenses were all part of a strategy to push LGBTQ+ people out of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Resistance amidst repression\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Looking back at this history of aggressive policing against queer people and their bars, it’s no surprise that queer nightlife continues to be central to the LGBTQ+ community. For many, gay bars were the only spaces they were afforded the freedom to be openly queer. They were also the battlegrounds where civil rights were won and lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the fight for LGBTQ+ rights continues. As the federal government uses its power to withhold \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049666/nowhere-else-to-go-sf-families-protest-kaisers-new-limits-on-gender-affirming-care\">gender-affirming healthcare\u003c/a> and to target\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12047432/us-sues-california-over-its-refusal-to-ban-transgender-athletes-from-girls-sports\"> transgender youth in sports\u003c/a>, Boyd said it can be hard to keep hope alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068581\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068581\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260102-hazelsinnraid00178_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nan Alamilla Boyd, a historian, poses for a portrait at the GLBT Historical Society Archives in San Francisco on Jan. 2, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The hits [to LGBTQ+ rights] keep coming and in many different ways,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, her work has taught her that in times of repression, powerful political organizing and cultural innovation can emerge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By the early 1960s, [queer] bartenders and the bar owners had pretty elaborate methods to resist the policing agencies,” Boyd said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They created a resistance movement powerful enough to outlast the government’s efforts to eradicate queer nightlife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t really make cultural innovation illegal because it happens,” Boyd said. “It’s everything, everywhere, all at once. It’s the thing that’s our spirit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s because of that indomitable spirit that the Bay Area looks and feels the way it does today.\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>San Francisco and its surrounding Bay Area have long been known as a gay capital of the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, it’s here, where the first lesbian civil rights group was formed, the Daughters of Bilitis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And where Harvey Milk became an iconic gay public official! [tape]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Harvey Milk:\u003c/strong> I will fight to represent my constituents. I will fight to represent the city and county of San Francisco. I will fight to give those people who once walked away hope, so that those people will walk back in. Thank you very much. [clapping]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>It was the birthplace of the Gay pride flag. And it’s where city hall is lit up in a rainbow for pride month. This is the Bay Area that our question asker, Henry Lie, knows well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music stops\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie: \u003c/strong>I’m originally from Pacifica…went to high school at Terranova High School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Henry always thought of Pacifica as an extension of San Francisco — it’s just a few miles south, after all. And, there’s not a whole lot that surprises Henry about his hometown. That is until he learned about a moment in Pacifica’s history that left him with a ton of questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> We have this museum.. I think I was there and saw like a footnote or something and it just said like, oh yeah, Hazel’s Inn raid where, you know, there was a large gathering of LGBTQ+ identifying people and a bunch of people were arrested, couple of people charged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Henry had stumbled across a forgotten moment in history — a massive police raid that took place in 1956, part of a crusade to push LGBTQ people out of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Ominous music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local newspapers documented the raid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice Over 1: \u003c/strong>San Francisco Examiner: Ninety persons, mostly men, were booked at the San Mateo County jail yesterday after a vice raid on a tavern suspected of being a gathering place for sex deviates.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice Over 2: \u003c/strong>San Mateo Times: The raid, according to Sheriff Whitmore, “was to let homosexuals know we’re not going to tolerate their congregation in this county.” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice Over 3: \u003c/strong>Redwood City Tribune: Mrs. Nicola, owner of Hazel’s Inn, is charged with operating a resort for sexual deviates. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Big questions began surfacing for Henry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> And I was like, whoa, I’ve never even heard of Hazel’s Inn. This says this was in Pacifica. Why have I never heard of it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> So he came to Bay Curious, hoping to find out more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> Could you dive deeper into the Hazel’s Inn raid in Pacifica and the effects that it had on the LGBTQ plus community in the greater Bay area in the late 1950s?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay Curious theme music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>I’m Olivia Allen-Price and this is Bay Curious. This week, we’re going back to the gay bars of the 1950s to learn about a moment in time when the San Francisco Bay Area was far less welcoming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that coming right up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Theme music ends\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor Break\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>To dig deeper into Bay Area queer history, KQED’s Ana De Almeida Amaral takes us to Pacifica.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral:\u003c/strong> Pacifica is a beautiful place, with sprawling views of the ocean and stunning beaches. It has that small town feel, complete with a\u003cem> tiny\u003c/em> museum showcasing its history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> This is our little museum…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Laura Del Rosso was born and raised in Pacifica, and serves as a docent and board member for the Pacifica Coastside Museum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> This whole area around here was full of speakeasies, taverns, restaurants, and brothels during Prohibition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>It seems hard to imagine now, but this small town was once infamous for its nightlife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso: \u003c/strong>Some people think that San Mateo County coast was actually the wettest place in the whole United States, meaning there was more booze here and in Half Moon Bay area than anywhere else in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>While the historical society has long been aware of the clandestine nightlife during Prohibition, it wasn’t until a few years ago that they started uncovering the history of a hushed queer nightlife scene that took hold right here, in the 1950’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jazzy music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Hazel’s Inn was a tavern in Sharp Park, now a neighborhood in Pacifica. ^The bar is long gone^, but in 1956 the Pacifica Tribune, described it as a large and homey space, with knick-nacks above a mahogany bar, a shuffle board, a dance floor and a jukebox.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hazel’s Inn was owned and run by Hazel Nikola, a straight woman in her 60s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> From what we understand then, after she got a divorce she was running the place by herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And the place was popular! Sometimes there were up to 500 patrons in a weekend. For a long time it catered mostly to locals and tourists on holiday at the beach, but then in 1955 and 56, the LGBT community made it \u003cem>their\u003c/em> spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> When the gay men started coming from San Francisco, she welcomed them. And she was non-judgmental. However, it’s obvious that somebody was not happy and did contact the sheriff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>But before we can get to that night — the night of the Hazel’s Inn raid — we have to ask why here? Miles from San Francisco, hidden in a small town, far from any other gay nightlife, why was Hazel’s Inn the place that attracted hundreds of LGBTQ people?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>To answer this question, I went to the archives at the GLBT historical society — where collections documenting the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans community are housed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There, I met Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd. She’s an oral historian with the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd: \u003c/strong>I was professor of women and gender studies at San Francisco State for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>She’s one of the few people who has researched queer nightlife in the 1950’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> 1956, 90 persons, mostly men were booked at the San Mateo county jail…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>At the archives we read some of the newspaper clippings about Hazel’s Inn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> Suspected of being a gathering place for sex deviates…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>She did a lot of her research back in the 1990s and was able to interview dozens of queer people who lived in the Bay Area in the 1940s and 50s. Most of them have since passed away, so her work and these archives are some of the last links to this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Piano music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Back in the 1940s, San Francisco already had a queer nightlife scene, but at the time it was illegal to be gay. And bars that were caught serving queer people… that was illegal too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> If you were not a legal kind of person, then you couldn’t like buy a drink in a bar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>But the law changed in 1951— when the Black Cat Cafe, in San Francisco, had its liquor license suspended for serving members of the LGBT community. The owner appealed the decision to the California Supreme court. The case is known as Stouman vs. Riley and it’s a big moment in queer civil rights history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> The argument was that it’s not illegal to be a homosexual, it’s illegal to do homosexual acts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>The court agreed. And the ruling became one of the first civil rights protections for LGBTQ people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music ends\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>For the first time, they had the protected right to assemble. Gay men and lesbian women could buy drinks at bars and hang out with other queer friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is as long as there were no homosexual acts taking place that were deemed “illegal or immoral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many legal decisions, it was a vague but powerful protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> I know it seems really regressive now, right? But the decision was liberating because the conclusion was that it wasn’t Status that was illegal, it was behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And so queer nightlife in the Bay Area blossomed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> In the early 1950s, I would say it was the heyday of gay nightlife in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And really iconic gay bars came into the picture. The Black Cat Cafe was running again, Tommy’s Place and Ann’s 440 opened. And these places became sanctuaries for the LGBT community to be \u003cem>together. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> There were maybe four or five quote unquote lesbian bars in North Beach in walking distance of each other at any point in time between like, let’s say, 1948 and 1955. So it’s like a really interesting community that evolved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And this was really important because in the 1950s it was still not super safe to be gay. Many queer folks were closeted by day in order to keep their jobs. But at night…at the bar…there was a freedom that didn’t really exist anywhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> And it was before the state caught wind of what was happening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>But then a panic started to take hold in the United States…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Senator McCarthy archival tape:\u003c/strong> Are you a member of the communist conspiracy as of this moment?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>A conservative mindset took hold in American politics and culture — ushering in a time of suspicion and fear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Senator McCarthy archival tape:\u003c/strong> Our nation may very well die, and I ask you caused it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And quickly, LGBT people become \u003cu>targets\u003c/u> at the federal, state and local level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President Eisenhower signed an executive order in 1953 banning gay people from federal work, labeling them as having immoral conduct and “sexual perversion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, in 1955 \u003cem>California\u003c/em> created a new state agency called the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control or the ABC. An agency whose sole job was to ensure that licensed bars abided by legal and \u003cem>moral\u003c/em> codes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And from the moment the department of Alcoholic Beverage control was created a top priority for them was to…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd: \u003c/strong>Shut down the gay bars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And they did this by finding ways around those vague protections won in the Stouman v. Riley case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While queer people were granted the right to assemble, “homosexual acts” were still illegal, so authorities started taking an interest in the specifics of what that meant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> There’s a question about like, well then what exactly are the behaviors that are illegal? Like, do you have to like see someone, having sex in the bar? Or is it kissing? What about fondling? What about sitting on a lap? What about holding hands? What about dancing close? So all this stuff was like, then started being hashed out, you know, this is an illegal act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>And the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control started collaborating with a bunch of law enforcement agencies throughout the Bay Area to ferret out people engaged in those acts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1955, the gay bars in San Francisco were getting less and less safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as harassment and policing increased, the LGBT community began looking for new places to gather outside of San Francisco, away from well-known gay bars, and they ended up down the coast, at Hazel’s Inn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound design of a raucous bar scene\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only testimonies about what happened on Feb. 19, 1956, the night that Hazel’s Inn was raided, come from court documents and hearings at the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. Laurence E. Strong, an ABC agent, described in detail what was happening at the bar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That night, the dance floor was alive, and the bar was filled with around 200 patrons, mostly men. These men wrapped their arms around each other and embraced one another while dancing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also described how one patron sat on another man’s lap and how two other men held hands. In the corner of the bar, a couple embraced as one nestled his head into the other’s shoulder. Some men pinched each other’s butts and fondled each other while dancing. Women danced close together with other women. Men were seen powdering their faces and women wore slacks and sports coats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It sounds like a scene of queer joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music turns tense\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Suddenly, 35 law enforcement agents stormed the bar — a mix of San Mateo county sheriff’s officers and ABC agents began arresting people. The sheriff jumped on to the bar and announced:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over:\u003c/strong> “This is a raid!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Patrons were forced to walk past a line of agents. And one by one, agents picked out people they had seen showing queer affection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Boyd says that the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board had been watching Hazel’s Inn for months, gathering evidence and building a case that behavior there was “illegal and immoral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd: \u003c/strong>They had undercover agents in the bars. And they would go in twos or threes and they would watch each other. And somebody would get an interested person, and then would sort of lead them on, until there was some kind of physical, sexual, or flirtatious engagement that involved touching. It was entrapment. And that was a common and acceptable practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Ninety people were arrested that night at Hazel’s Inn, including Hazel Nikola — the owner. The bar’s liquor license was quickly revoked for being quote “a resort for sexual perverts” and for serving someone underaged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mass arrest caught the attention of a variety of civil rights groups, including the ACLU who represented 30 defendants. Most of those arrested were cleared of charges, but the damage had already been done. People were outed in the newspapers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> There would be a list of the people and their address and sometimes their occupation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over: \u003c/strong>The San Mateo Times: Local persons arrested were: Iris Ann Glasgow, 24 years old. Clerk. 1515 James Street, Redwood City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Many of these people were publicly named as “sexual perverts”. That often meant being ostracized or losing their job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> People were so fearful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Cello music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>As for the bar, Hazel fought the revocation of her liquor license for\u003cem> two years \u003c/em>but the court ultimately sided with the ABC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> I think she was just really bitter about what happened here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music ends\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>Back in the Pacifica Coastside museum, Laura reflected on what the raid did to Hazel Nikola.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura Del Rosso:\u003c/strong> She lost her liquor license and things just kind of went downhill for her. You have that information on the thing. And she ended up, she ended closing. She was very, very bitter at the end. She felt like she was really an important part of the community and that they had kind of betrayed her. She left Sharp Park and went to live somewhere else. And never came back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>For the queer community, the effects were even more devastating. The Hazel’s Inn Raid became a playbook for the state to target the queer community over the next 15 years. (Surveillance, raids, and the revocation of liquor licenses.) It was a strategy to push LGBTQ people out of the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it didn’t work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite this aggressive policing and repression, the gay bars never died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Queer patrons, and bartenders, and bar owners found ways to keep going. They found ways to spot surveillance in their bars, they organized and worked to keep the police out of their spaces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historian Dr. Boyd again:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Nan Alamilla Boyd:\u003c/strong> My takeaway from history as a historian is that during these times of repression. There’s cultural innovation that happens. You can’t really name it yet, right? But it’s taking shape you know, that there’s something coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ana De Almeida Amaral: \u003c/strong>During those years of extreme repression, queer activists were making connections, organizing, and laying the groundwork for the next several decades of activism that would see LGBTQ rights expand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area has changed a lot since the raid at Hazel’s Inn. But still, a fearless commitment to community and authenticity — the spirit that kept these gay bars alive — lives on here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was reporter Ana De Almeida Amaral. Featuring the voices of Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, Carly Severn, Christopher Beale and Paul Lancour for archival material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Did you know that Bay Curious listeners help choose which questions we answer on the podcast? Each month we have a new voting round up at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>, with three fascinating questions to choose from. This month…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Question 1: \u003c/strong>Did the Navy airship America crash land into several houses? What happened to the crew?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Question 2:\u003c/strong> Why is San Francisco home to so many federal and statewide courts? Why aren’t they in Sacramento or Los Angeles?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Question 3: \u003c/strong>I want to learn more about San Francisco upzoning and how people feel about it in the Richmond and Sunset districts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Cast your vote with one click at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Henry Lie:\u003c/strong> Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Become a member today at \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">kqed.org/donate\u003c/a>. Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me Olivia Allen-Price. With extra support from Katie Sprenger, Matt Morales, Tim Olsen, Maha Sanad, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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 wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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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.",
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"possible": {
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"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.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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},
"radiolab": {
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"reveal": {
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"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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},
"science-friday": {
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