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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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"slug": "san-franciscos-historic-relief-cottages-built-after-the-1906-earthquake-are-hidden-in-plain-sight",
"title": "San Francisco’s Historic ‘Relief Cottages,’ Built After the 1906 Earthquake, Are Hidden in Plain Sight",
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"headTitle": "San Francisco’s Historic ‘Relief Cottages,’ Built After the 1906 Earthquake, Are Hidden in Plain Sight | 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>Jane Cryan walked into a leasing agency on Geary Boulevard in\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\"> San Francisco\u003c/a> just before closing one evening in 1982.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was looking for an apartment that could accommodate her grand piano. The flat she was inquiring about had already been rented, but the agent asked if she’d be interested in a cottage out in the Sunset District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That started everything,” Cryan said. “That, to me, is my golden moment in all my 44 years in San Francisco.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cottage at 1227 24th Ave. felt like her own artist retreat. She moved in and played her grand piano night and day for the first several weeks, happy to have her own space where she could do what she liked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“An elderly gentleman from across the street came over and shook his finger at me, and he said, ‘Young lady, do you know that you’re living in a couple of relief houses pasted together?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066194\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066194\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00174_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00174_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00174_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00174_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An earthquake cottage stands on 211 Mullen Ave. in San Francisco on December 4, 2025. The original shelter was built after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and some still house city residents. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Cryan was confused. What did he mean by “relief houses?” She had moved from Milwaukee in the 1960s because she was enamored with the Beat Movement and had been writing letters to Jack Kerouac. When she got to San Francisco, all of 18 years old, she threw herself into writing and playing jazz piano, although she made her money as an executive assistant. She’d never heard of the history her neighbor was describing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had lived in the city all those years and never heard of the [19]06 quake or ‘the fire,’ as everybody who survived it called it,” Cryan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was curious to know everything she could about the natural disaster that devastated San Francisco at the start of the 20th century, knocking down 80% of the buildings and displacing thousands of people. She spent nights and weekends obsessively going through newspaper archives to learn all she could about these so-called “relief cottages.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The history Cryan discovered\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“After the 1906 Earthquake and fire, more than a quarter of a million people are at least temporarily displaced,” said Woody LaBounty, president and CEO of \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfheritage.org/\">San Francisco Heritage\u003c/a>, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving San Francisco history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those who had the means left the city to stay with relatives or friends elsewhere. But many poor San Franciscans didn’t have that option. The military temporarily set up tent camps to house refugees in the short term. Women cooked meals on stoves set up in the streets, children went to school in makeshift tent classrooms and people tried to figure out what to do next.[aside postID=news_12065901 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251016-NIMITZHOUSE-38-BL-KQED.jpg']After a few months, city leaders became concerned about sanitation in the tent camps and they worried what would happen when winter rains came. They commissioned union carpenters to build small cottages out of redwood, cedar and fir to house the refugees. They painted the cottages the same green as city park benches, which became known as “park bench green.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You basically are talking about the working class,” LaBounty said. “People who don’t have property, don’t have other resources, and need to find work and find shelter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Overseeing this effort was the San Francisco Relief Corporation, which also coordinated distribution of clothes, food and other aid to the refugees — many of whom the city relied upon to help rebuild the city. The 5,610 cottages were mostly set up in the city’s neighborhood parks like Jefferson Square, Precita Park (then known as Bernal Park) and Portsmouth Square. There were also a large number of cottages where Park Presidio Boulevard is now — back then, it was newly acquired parkland with nothing much around it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/places/000/1906-earthquake-cottages.htm\">cottages\u003c/a> came in several sizes. The smallest was 10×14 feet — these “Type A” shacks are the most commonly seen today, in part because they are so modular and people combined them to make larger residences. But there were also 14×18 feet and 18×24-feet-sized shacks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Relief Corporation charged people a few dollars per month in rent for the cottages, but soon it started receiving pressure from Superintendent of Parks John McLaren and other city residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063864\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1950px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063864\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1950\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED.jpg 1950w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED-160x164.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED-1498x1536.jpg 1498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1950px) 100vw, 1950px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Richmond District, on San Francisco’s northwest side, was largely uninhabited sand dunes at the time of the 1906 earthquake and fires. There was a lot of open space to build refugee cottages like these at the Richmond District refugee camp between Lake and Geary streets. Some surviving earthquake cottages can still be found in the Richmond and Sunset districts. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They wanted their parks back,” LaBounty said. “As other San Franciscans were ready to move on from the disaster, they didn’t like the idea that their parks had a community, a village of working-class people living in the middle of their parks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under pressure to move cottages out of the parks as quickly as possible, the Relief Corporation ended up returning all the rent it collected to residents when they moved their cottages out of the parks and onto land somewhere else. And just a year and a half after the earthquake and fire, most cottage camps were gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gave people who never would have dreamed, I think, of owning a home a chance to get into that American dream,” LaBounty said. “So, you get the earthquake cottage, you’re a refugee who has nothing, and now suddenly you buy a lot for 100 bucks in the sand dunes of the Richmond, you have pretty much a free house.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063862\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063862\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1545\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED-1536x1187.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After several months, residents were encouraged to move their cottages out of the parks and onto a plot of land. Here, a horse gets ready to move a shack out of Precita Park. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Many of the cottages ended up in the Richmond and Sunset districts of San Francisco because of that large camp along Park Presidio and the prevalence of unclaimed land on the western side of the city. Another hot spot for cottages is Bernal Heights, where people moved their cottages from Precita Park at the bottom of the hill, up onto vacant plots on the hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was sort of a stigma of having an earthquake cottage for a few years because it sort of signified you were a refugee, you needed help, you were poor,” LaBounty said. “So, people often quickly tried to hide the pedigree of their houses and cover them with shingles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People built fences around their cottages, added additional rooms and generally tried to \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/1906_Earthquake_Shack_Survivors\">personalize\u003c/a> them. Many people painted over that telling park bench green color, hiding the provenance of their homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcXCRZEkzx4\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city moved on, too. Just nine years after the Great Earthquake and Fire, San Francisco \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/goga/learn/historyculture/upload/PPIE-Brochure-FINAL-for-Web.pdf\">hosted\u003c/a> the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition to show the city was back and celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a spectacle that spread over much of what is now the Marina District, the Exposition drew more than 18 million visitors and boasted innovations in science, technology and art. Whole buildings were erected for the Exposition, including the Palace of Fine Arts.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>An era of ‘shacktivism’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When Jane Cryan learned all this history and realized that her little cottage sanctuary was actually three and a half earthquake cottages connected together, she was in awe. She loved that she was living in a piece of San Francisco history, one hidden in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the time of her research, Cryan got word from her landlord that he wanted to sell her cottage — or worse, knock it down and sell the lot.[aside postID=news_12063643 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251008-GirlintheFishbowl-01-BL.jpg']“I had to do something,” Cryan said. So, she called City Hall. “And this is exactly what I said, I said, ‘Can you connect me with somebody at City Hall who can tell me how to save a pair of cottages, very important cottages, that are under threat of demolition.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That call led her to the Landmarks Preservation office. She learned how to apply for a historic landmark designation and brought her research on the importance of the earthquake cottages to the Planning Commission. Along the way, the media caught wind of what she was doing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The media came to me, and they made what I was doing one of the most important things that ever hit San Francisco,” Cryan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cryan started a \u003ca href=\"https://sfpl.org/pdf/libraries/main/sfhistory/archives-and-manuscripts/SPASFRS.pdf\">nonprofit\u003c/a> organization,\u003ca href=\"https://sfpl.org/pdf/libraries/main/sfhistory/archives-and-manuscripts/SPASFRS.pdf\"> The Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of San Francisco Refugee Shacks\u003c/a>, and made it her mission to educate people about the earthquake shacks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, she won historic status for her little 24th Avenue cottage, but it was a bittersweet victory. Because historic status limits what a property owner can do with a building, the planning commission also ruled that Cryan had to move out as compensation. From then on, she moved from apartment to apartment, ultimately finding herself priced out of San Francisco once she was retired. She moved back to Wisconsin, where she is originally from, in 2007 after 44 years in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She continues the fight to save earthquake cottages from afar when developers threaten them.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A very San Francisco treasure hunt\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s still possible to \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/earthquake-shacks-sf-map/\">find\u003c/a> earthquake cottages when walking around San Francisco. Woody LaBounty suggested looking for a shallow roof line, like a Boy Scout tent. That’s often a good indicator that a small house might be an earthquake cottage. Many other small buildings have much sharper rooflines or flat roofs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>LaBounty estimates that there are somewhere between \u003ca href=\"https://www.outsidelands.org/shack-list.php\">30 and 50 cottages\u003c/a> sprinkled throughout the city. But it’s hard to know because so many of them have been incorporated into larger houses or are used as sheds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063861\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063861\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1446\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED-160x116.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED-1536x1111.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An earthquake cottage being moved through the streets of San Francisco circa 1906. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Historical conservationists \u003ca href=\"https://www.outsidelands.org/kirkham_shacks.php\">successfully\u003c/a> saved several earthquake cottages from demolition over the years. Two of them are owned by the Presidio Trust and used to be open to visitors, although they have recently been moved to an out-of-the-way location. Another is in the San Francisco Zoo, part of \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfzoo.org/greenies-conservation-corner/\">Greenie’s Conservation Corner\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As San Francisco continues to change, it is this visual touchstone to our past,” LaBounty said. “And not only our past, but the most significant event that happened in our past, outside of maybe the Gold Rush.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> I want to talk about architecture for a moment – specifically residential architecture. In San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You expect to see stately Victorian homes with their bright colors and fancy decorative trim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s Marina style homes with their big windows and stucco facades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But sprinkled in amidst these grander homes you might spot a few tiny cottages — the original tiny homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Charity Vargas:\u003c/strong> I did see two over in the sunset. There was like two close together and I thought maybe they might be them, but I’m not sure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Charity Vargas, our question asker this week, has seen some of these small dwellings dotted around the Richmond and Sunset districts near her home. And she’s heard that the cottages are holdovers from the Great 1906 earthquake and fire, but wants to know more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Charity Vargas: \u003c/strong>How many earthquake cottages are left and you know, are they still used and where they are?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Today on the show, we’ll dig into the history of San Francisco’s earthquake cottages. We’ll learn how critical they were in sheltering a vulnerable…but vital.. population and learn about modern efforts to save them. I’m Olivia Allen-Price and you’re listening to Bay Curious. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We set out to answer Charity’s question by searching for “earthquake shacks”…tiny homes built out of redwood and cedar after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Bay Curious editor and producer Katrina Schwartz found one high on a hill in Bernal Heights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joan Hunter: \u003c/strong>You want a little tour? Ok, this is our tiny kitchen and I believe this rectangle room is the original earthquake shack and this part is added on, but it’s kind of hard to say exactly. I’m Joan Hunter. I live in Bernal Heights, San Francisco, California in an earthquake cottage or earthquake shack, as some would like to say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>I’m standing with Joan in her light filled living room…all that’s left of the original cottage. It’s a modestly sized room, but has tall ceilings and windows that look out over a sweeping view of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What started out as a one room cottage has been expanded quite a bit…it’s about 620 square feet now, still small by modern standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joan Hunter: \u003c/strong>Okay, so this is a little bedroom we have in the front and all of our rooms, this is a theme for the house, everything is small, very, very small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Joan’s got two kids…so the house can feel like a tight squeeze at times. But she fell in love with the history of the place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joan Hunter: \u003c/strong>what I do know is that the guy who bought it, he was a little kind of like a bachelor. And he met someone who was also single and they moved together and they got married. And it was just a love story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Joan likes thinking that after they survived the worst natural disaster San Francisco has ever experienced…and been homeless for months because of it…that they finally found some tranquility here, a little piece of San Francisco to call their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music to help us transition\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Great 1906 Earthquake and Fire leveled 80 percent of San Francisco. The morning of April 18, 1906 Bay Area residents awoke early in the morning to a temblor they’d never forget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of shaking\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kathleen Norris: \u003c/strong>Every picture on the wall is going tack, tack, tack. Everything movable in the house is keeping up that unearthly clatter. You could hear up and down the roads, earthquake. It’s an earthquake. Oh, God help us, it’s an earthquake. of course, it changed the world for all of us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Kathleen Norris shared her oral history with the Bancroft Library in 1960. There was no audio recorded during the disaster, but anyone who survived it remembered the trauma of it clearly…even fifty years later. Kathleen was in Mill Valley when the earthquake hit…where the damage wasn’t too bad. But she and her brother were curious about how San Francisco had fared…so they found a boat that took them to the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joan Hunter: \u003c/strong>It was something to see. The great, heavy, slow rolls of smoke that were joining hands as they went up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Kathleen describes refugees fleeing homes that had been leveled, toting their belongings in baby carriages and wheel barrows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kathleen Norris: \u003c/strong>We walked over the hot, hot rocks of Market Street. And of course, the cable car lines were twisted hairpins. And the houses were all down. There was nothing saved. Nothing was accepted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And yet, the image that lingered in her mind…even as the smoke lay heavy over the hills… was of people getting to work to repair their city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kathleen Norris: \u003c/strong>And already there were people helping out and organizing, scraping bricks. The bricks were hot. And they were working away. Nobody felt for an instant, oh, let’s go somewhere else. Everyone knew that the city was going to come back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>As indeed it would. Just nine years after the earthquake and fire, San Francisco hosted the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition…the reason the Palace of Fine Arts was built…a spectacle that 18 million people visited by the time it closed.. Headlines trumpeted the achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Voice over reading archival newspaper headline:\u003c/em> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Big Fair is Opened. All eyes on San Francisco. President Flashes Signal\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Fair Draws Myriad; All Records For Crowds Fall\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Marvelous Exhibits From All Parts of the Earth Assembled by 42 Countries for the Hugest Conclave of Nations in History\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It was a signal to the world that San Francisco was still \u003cem>the most important\u003c/em> city in the West…one full of invention and achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice over reading archival newspaper headline: \u003c/strong>Tower of Jewels Wreathed in Flames. But it’s only to thrill visitors\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Art Smith Sets Hearts Leaping: Aviator’s Loop-the-Loops at Night Traced By Trail of Smoke\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>But how did San Francisco go from the absolute devastation of 1906 to showing off the latest advances in science and art on the world stage just nine years later? This is where the earthquake cottages… or shacks as they’re affectionately called…come into the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>So after the 1906 earthquake and fire, more than a quarter of a million people are at least temporarily displaced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Woody LaBounty is President and CEO of San Francisco Heritage, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving San Francisco history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>And now, the powers that be have to decide not only how to take care of all these people, but also who’s gonna rebuild the city?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Immediately after the earthquake and fire, the military stepped in and established tent camps in the city’s parks. But soon a new organization…the San Francisco Relief Corporation…was formed to distribute food, clothes and other aid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>That covered many aspects of what you have to do when people are refugees, but also a specific housing effort, and that was the earthquake relief cottages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Officials were worried about sanitation in the tent camps when winter rains came. So, they decided to build 5,610 relief cottages…built with redwood, fir and cedar… to house people. They were painted “park bench green”…literally the color used on Golden Gate Park benches… and clustered in neighborhood parks like Jefferson Square, Precita Park, and Portsmouth Square. Around 17,000 people lived in them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>If you owned property or you had a property that had been destroyed in the earthquake, you rebuilt or you figured out a way to move on. But there was a vast number of people who didn’t have any other resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>These were San Francisco’s poor, folks who had lived in boarding houses or shared rooms downtown before the fire. City leaders wanted to keep these laborers with the skills to rebuild the city close by. But they didn’t plan to give away the cottages for free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>So for all of wanting to take care of the refugees, there was also a fear at the time of creeping socialism. People in power did not want to give anybody anything for nothing. So they thought it would create indigence. And so you were supposed to pay some sort of rent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Here’s how it worked. Shack residents paid monthly rent of a few dollars while their shacks were in the parks. But the relief corporation returned that money when a resident bought some land and moved the shack out of the park and onto their own property.That generosity was spurred by pressure to move refugees and their cottages out of the parks as soon as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>As other San Franciscans were ready to move on from the disaster, they didn’t like the idea that their parks had a community, a village of working-class people. Living in the middle of their park. They wanted their parks back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>About a year and a half after the earthquake, in the summer of 1907, most of the shacks had been removed from the parks. Newspapers at the time described the surreal image of tiny homes on wagons moving across the city with people still in them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice over reading archival newspaper excerpt:\u003c/strong> It is a strange sight to see a procession of these refugee cottages moving down fashionable Van Ness Avenue or busy Fillmore Street, faces peering from the windows, and men, women and children going about their household tasks as if their little home was securely perched upon a cement foundation and surrounded by a garden and a fence.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Back in 1907, the Richmond District, a northwestern neighborhood, was mostly undeveloped sand dunes, with lots of empty land. So many shack owners moved their cottages to vacant plots there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woody says the earthquake shack program not only got the city working again…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">I\u003c/span>t also gave people who never would have dreamed, I think, of owning a home a chance to get into that American dream. So you get the earthquake cottage, you’re a refugee who has nothing, and now suddenly you buy a lot for 100 bucks in the sand dunes of the Richmond, you have pretty much a free house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Bernal Heights is another place with many earthquake cottages…people just moved their shacks from Precita Park to open land up the hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And some of them are still there…like the house we toured at the beginning of this episode.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>The one sort of key touchstone that you can tell about a cottage is the roof line. It has a very shallow pitched roof, kind of like a pup tent, like a Boy Scout tent. And then that is like your first hint because a lot of small buildings you’ll see have very steep pitched or flat roofs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Woody says many shack owners quickly made improvements to their new homes — painting, building fences, adding additional rooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>There was sort of a stigma of having an earthquake cottage for a few years because it sort of signified you were a refugee, you needed help, you were poor. So people often, they quickly tried to hide sort of the pedigree of their houses and cover them with shingles quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They wanted to hide that telling park bench green color. Most existing earthquake cottages are surrounded by modern additions. Or sometimes they’re a couple shacks placed together. That’s one reason it’s really hard to know how many still exist in San Francisco, they’re hidden. But Woody estimates between 30 and 50 earthquake cottages are dotted across the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>The cottage in the front is made up of three and a half shacks, and then there’s a free-standing mid-size shack in the backyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This is Jane Cryan. She rented one of these preserved earthquake shacks in the outer Sunset in the 1980s. Jane is best known as a “shacktivist”…fighting to preserve earthquake cottages from development. But if it weren’t for the Beat movement in the 1950s, she never would have moved here in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>The only reason I ended up in San Francisco is that Jack Kerouac, with whom I had correspondence from the time I was 16 years old told me that Milwaukee was no place for a poet. You should be in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>By day she was an executive assistant, but writing and jazz piano were her passions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>And I moved in and I played piano for about six weeks, day and night, and an elderly gentleman from across the street came over and shook his finger at me and he said, young lady, do you know that you’re living in a couple of relief houses pasted together?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Her three room cottage was actually three earthquake shacks pasted together. This was 1982 and Jane had lived in San Francisco almost 20 years. But she’d never even heard of the 1906 earthquake and fire. Her neighbor’s passing comment sparked her curiosity. She spent nights and weekends obsessively going through old newspaper archives to learn as much as she could about the disaster and the earthquake cottages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, her landlord made it known that he planned to sell her cottage…or worse demolish it and sell the lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>Take down our history. So I had to do something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Preserving these cottages — tangible pieces of such important history — became her life’s work. She took inspiration from one of the 1906 earthquake refugees she learned about in her research, a woman named Mary Kelly. Mary was an agitator, constantly questioning how the relief corporation dolled out aid and whether it was fair. She was such a pain to them they eventually evicted her from her cottage. But she refused to leave, famously saying:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice over portraying Mary Kelly:\u003c/strong> They can’t bluff me. I’ll stay with the house if they take it to the end of the earth.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>She rode in her cottage as men hauled it onto a wagon and trucked it away. She stayed inside as they dismantled the cottage board by board. Jane finds Mary’s tenacity — and willingness to stand up to power — endearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>She was exactly the way I was. If I saw something, I said something. And if I saw something that was not right, I said something louder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jane started a nonprofit called The Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of San Francisco Refugee Shacks. She fought hard to get the planning commission to designate her little shack a historic landmark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she was successful!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>Landmark number 171.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>But it was a bittersweet victory. The commission also said that Jane had to vacate the cottage in order to compensate the landlord for putting restrictions on his property. Jane bounced around from place to place after that, eventually moving back to Wisconsin, where she’s originally from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina in the tape: \u003c/strong>What do you miss most about San Francisco?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>Oh, everything! Oh my god, San Francisco is the queen of the Golden West, for heaven’s sake!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Historian Woody LaBounty says there are probably more earthquake cottages than we know. They’re hiding in people’s backyards, incorporated into bigger houses or used as sheds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>They’re the last sort of most visible, tangible sign of one of the biggest things that ever happened to the city of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Increasingly these little cottages are being bought and torn down to make room for larger homes. But the ones that remain are a reminder of a refugee relief program that not only got people back on their feet, but made them homeowners. An example of San Franciscans coming together to repair and resurrect a beloved city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That was Bay Curious editor and producer Katrina Schwartz. Special thanks this week to \u003ca href=\"https://californiarevealed.org/\">California Revealed\u003c/a>, an online database of oral histories and other archival materials. They helped us find Kathleen Norris’ oral history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. Right now your membership means more than ever, give at \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Gabriela Glueck, Christopher Beale, Katrina Schwartz and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have a wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "After the 1906 Earthquake and fire, San Francisco leaders built relief cottages to house the homeless. Some of those tiny dwellings can still be found thanks to historic preservation efforts.\r\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jane Cryan walked into a leasing agency on Geary Boulevard in\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\"> San Francisco\u003c/a> just before closing one evening in 1982.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was looking for an apartment that could accommodate her grand piano. The flat she was inquiring about had already been rented, but the agent asked if she’d be interested in a cottage out in the Sunset District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That started everything,” Cryan said. “That, to me, is my golden moment in all my 44 years in 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 cottage at 1227 24th Ave. felt like her own artist retreat. She moved in and played her grand piano night and day for the first several weeks, happy to have her own space where she could do what she liked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“An elderly gentleman from across the street came over and shook his finger at me, and he said, ‘Young lady, do you know that you’re living in a couple of relief houses pasted together?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066194\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066194\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00174_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00174_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00174_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251204-EARTHQUAKECOTTAGES00174_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An earthquake cottage stands on 211 Mullen Ave. in San Francisco on December 4, 2025. The original shelter was built after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and some still house city residents. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Cryan was confused. What did he mean by “relief houses?” She had moved from Milwaukee in the 1960s because she was enamored with the Beat Movement and had been writing letters to Jack Kerouac. When she got to San Francisco, all of 18 years old, she threw herself into writing and playing jazz piano, although she made her money as an executive assistant. She’d never heard of the history her neighbor was describing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had lived in the city all those years and never heard of the [19]06 quake or ‘the fire,’ as everybody who survived it called it,” Cryan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was curious to know everything she could about the natural disaster that devastated San Francisco at the start of the 20th century, knocking down 80% of the buildings and displacing thousands of people. She spent nights and weekends obsessively going through newspaper archives to learn all she could about these so-called “relief cottages.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The history Cryan discovered\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“After the 1906 Earthquake and fire, more than a quarter of a million people are at least temporarily displaced,” said Woody LaBounty, president and CEO of \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfheritage.org/\">San Francisco Heritage\u003c/a>, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving San Francisco history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those who had the means left the city to stay with relatives or friends elsewhere. But many poor San Franciscans didn’t have that option. The military temporarily set up tent camps to house refugees in the short term. Women cooked meals on stoves set up in the streets, children went to school in makeshift tent classrooms and people tried to figure out what to do next.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>After a few months, city leaders became concerned about sanitation in the tent camps and they worried what would happen when winter rains came. They commissioned union carpenters to build small cottages out of redwood, cedar and fir to house the refugees. They painted the cottages the same green as city park benches, which became known as “park bench green.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You basically are talking about the working class,” LaBounty said. “People who don’t have property, don’t have other resources, and need to find work and find shelter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Overseeing this effort was the San Francisco Relief Corporation, which also coordinated distribution of clothes, food and other aid to the refugees — many of whom the city relied upon to help rebuild the city. The 5,610 cottages were mostly set up in the city’s neighborhood parks like Jefferson Square, Precita Park (then known as Bernal Park) and Portsmouth Square. There were also a large number of cottages where Park Presidio Boulevard is now — back then, it was newly acquired parkland with nothing much around it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/places/000/1906-earthquake-cottages.htm\">cottages\u003c/a> came in several sizes. The smallest was 10×14 feet — these “Type A” shacks are the most commonly seen today, in part because they are so modular and people combined them to make larger residences. But there were also 14×18 feet and 18×24-feet-sized shacks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Relief Corporation charged people a few dollars per month in rent for the cottages, but soon it started receiving pressure from Superintendent of Parks John McLaren and other city residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063864\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1950px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063864\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1950\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED.jpg 1950w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED-160x164.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RichmondCamp-SFPL-KQED-1498x1536.jpg 1498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1950px) 100vw, 1950px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Richmond District, on San Francisco’s northwest side, was largely uninhabited sand dunes at the time of the 1906 earthquake and fires. There was a lot of open space to build refugee cottages like these at the Richmond District refugee camp between Lake and Geary streets. Some surviving earthquake cottages can still be found in the Richmond and Sunset districts. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They wanted their parks back,” LaBounty said. “As other San Franciscans were ready to move on from the disaster, they didn’t like the idea that their parks had a community, a village of working-class people living in the middle of their parks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under pressure to move cottages out of the parks as quickly as possible, the Relief Corporation ended up returning all the rent it collected to residents when they moved their cottages out of the parks and onto land somewhere else. And just a year and a half after the earthquake and fire, most cottage camps were gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gave people who never would have dreamed, I think, of owning a home a chance to get into that American dream,” LaBounty said. “So, you get the earthquake cottage, you’re a refugee who has nothing, and now suddenly you buy a lot for 100 bucks in the sand dunes of the Richmond, you have pretty much a free house.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063862\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063862\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1545\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/PrecitaPark-SFPL-KQED-1536x1187.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After several months, residents were encouraged to move their cottages out of the parks and onto a plot of land. Here, a horse gets ready to move a shack out of Precita Park. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Many of the cottages ended up in the Richmond and Sunset districts of San Francisco because of that large camp along Park Presidio and the prevalence of unclaimed land on the western side of the city. Another hot spot for cottages is Bernal Heights, where people moved their cottages from Precita Park at the bottom of the hill, up onto vacant plots on the hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was sort of a stigma of having an earthquake cottage for a few years because it sort of signified you were a refugee, you needed help, you were poor,” LaBounty said. “So, people often quickly tried to hide the pedigree of their houses and cover them with shingles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People built fences around their cottages, added additional rooms and generally tried to \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/1906_Earthquake_Shack_Survivors\">personalize\u003c/a> them. Many people painted over that telling park bench green color, hiding the provenance of their homes.\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/DcXCRZEkzx4'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/DcXCRZEkzx4'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The city moved on, too. Just nine years after the Great Earthquake and Fire, San Francisco \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/goga/learn/historyculture/upload/PPIE-Brochure-FINAL-for-Web.pdf\">hosted\u003c/a> the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition to show the city was back and celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a spectacle that spread over much of what is now the Marina District, the Exposition drew more than 18 million visitors and boasted innovations in science, technology and art. Whole buildings were erected for the Exposition, including the Palace of Fine Arts.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>An era of ‘shacktivism’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When Jane Cryan learned all this history and realized that her little cottage sanctuary was actually three and a half earthquake cottages connected together, she was in awe. She loved that she was living in a piece of San Francisco history, one hidden in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the time of her research, Cryan got word from her landlord that he wanted to sell her cottage — or worse, knock it down and sell the lot.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“I had to do something,” Cryan said. So, she called City Hall. “And this is exactly what I said, I said, ‘Can you connect me with somebody at City Hall who can tell me how to save a pair of cottages, very important cottages, that are under threat of demolition.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That call led her to the Landmarks Preservation office. She learned how to apply for a historic landmark designation and brought her research on the importance of the earthquake cottages to the Planning Commission. Along the way, the media caught wind of what she was doing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The media came to me, and they made what I was doing one of the most important things that ever hit San Francisco,” Cryan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cryan started a \u003ca href=\"https://sfpl.org/pdf/libraries/main/sfhistory/archives-and-manuscripts/SPASFRS.pdf\">nonprofit\u003c/a> organization,\u003ca href=\"https://sfpl.org/pdf/libraries/main/sfhistory/archives-and-manuscripts/SPASFRS.pdf\"> The Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of San Francisco Refugee Shacks\u003c/a>, and made it her mission to educate people about the earthquake shacks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, she won historic status for her little 24th Avenue cottage, but it was a bittersweet victory. Because historic status limits what a property owner can do with a building, the planning commission also ruled that Cryan had to move out as compensation. From then on, she moved from apartment to apartment, ultimately finding herself priced out of San Francisco once she was retired. She moved back to Wisconsin, where she is originally from, in 2007 after 44 years in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She continues the fight to save earthquake cottages from afar when developers threaten them.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A very San Francisco treasure hunt\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s still possible to \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/earthquake-shacks-sf-map/\">find\u003c/a> earthquake cottages when walking around San Francisco. Woody LaBounty suggested looking for a shallow roof line, like a Boy Scout tent. That’s often a good indicator that a small house might be an earthquake cottage. Many other small buildings have much sharper rooflines or flat roofs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>LaBounty estimates that there are somewhere between \u003ca href=\"https://www.outsidelands.org/shack-list.php\">30 and 50 cottages\u003c/a> sprinkled throughout the city. But it’s hard to know because so many of them have been incorporated into larger houses or are used as sheds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063861\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063861\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1446\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED-160x116.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Moving-Cottage-KQED-1536x1111.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An earthquake cottage being moved through the streets of San Francisco circa 1906. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Historical conservationists \u003ca href=\"https://www.outsidelands.org/kirkham_shacks.php\">successfully\u003c/a> saved several earthquake cottages from demolition over the years. Two of them are owned by the Presidio Trust and used to be open to visitors, although they have recently been moved to an out-of-the-way location. Another is in the San Francisco Zoo, part of \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfzoo.org/greenies-conservation-corner/\">Greenie’s Conservation Corner\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As San Francisco continues to change, it is this visual touchstone to our past,” LaBounty said. “And not only our past, but the most significant event that happened in our past, outside of maybe the Gold Rush.”\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> I want to talk about architecture for a moment – specifically residential architecture. In San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You expect to see stately Victorian homes with their bright colors and fancy decorative trim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s Marina style homes with their big windows and stucco facades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But sprinkled in amidst these grander homes you might spot a few tiny cottages — the original tiny homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Charity Vargas:\u003c/strong> I did see two over in the sunset. There was like two close together and I thought maybe they might be them, but I’m not sure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Charity Vargas, our question asker this week, has seen some of these small dwellings dotted around the Richmond and Sunset districts near her home. And she’s heard that the cottages are holdovers from the Great 1906 earthquake and fire, but wants to know more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Charity Vargas: \u003c/strong>How many earthquake cottages are left and you know, are they still used and where they are?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Today on the show, we’ll dig into the history of San Francisco’s earthquake cottages. We’ll learn how critical they were in sheltering a vulnerable…but vital.. population and learn about modern efforts to save them. I’m Olivia Allen-Price and you’re listening to Bay Curious. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>We set out to answer Charity’s question by searching for “earthquake shacks”…tiny homes built out of redwood and cedar after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Bay Curious editor and producer Katrina Schwartz found one high on a hill in Bernal Heights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joan Hunter: \u003c/strong>You want a little tour? Ok, this is our tiny kitchen and I believe this rectangle room is the original earthquake shack and this part is added on, but it’s kind of hard to say exactly. I’m Joan Hunter. I live in Bernal Heights, San Francisco, California in an earthquake cottage or earthquake shack, as some would like to say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>I’m standing with Joan in her light filled living room…all that’s left of the original cottage. It’s a modestly sized room, but has tall ceilings and windows that look out over a sweeping view of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What started out as a one room cottage has been expanded quite a bit…it’s about 620 square feet now, still small by modern standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joan Hunter: \u003c/strong>Okay, so this is a little bedroom we have in the front and all of our rooms, this is a theme for the house, everything is small, very, very small.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Joan’s got two kids…so the house can feel like a tight squeeze at times. But she fell in love with the history of the place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joan Hunter: \u003c/strong>what I do know is that the guy who bought it, he was a little kind of like a bachelor. And he met someone who was also single and they moved together and they got married. And it was just a love story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Joan likes thinking that after they survived the worst natural disaster San Francisco has ever experienced…and been homeless for months because of it…that they finally found some tranquility here, a little piece of San Francisco to call their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music to help us transition\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Great 1906 Earthquake and Fire leveled 80 percent of San Francisco. The morning of April 18, 1906 Bay Area residents awoke early in the morning to a temblor they’d never forget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of shaking\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kathleen Norris: \u003c/strong>Every picture on the wall is going tack, tack, tack. Everything movable in the house is keeping up that unearthly clatter. You could hear up and down the roads, earthquake. It’s an earthquake. Oh, God help us, it’s an earthquake. of course, it changed the world for all of us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Kathleen Norris shared her oral history with the Bancroft Library in 1960. There was no audio recorded during the disaster, but anyone who survived it remembered the trauma of it clearly…even fifty years later. Kathleen was in Mill Valley when the earthquake hit…where the damage wasn’t too bad. But she and her brother were curious about how San Francisco had fared…so they found a boat that took them to the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joan Hunter: \u003c/strong>It was something to see. The great, heavy, slow rolls of smoke that were joining hands as they went up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Kathleen describes refugees fleeing homes that had been leveled, toting their belongings in baby carriages and wheel barrows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kathleen Norris: \u003c/strong>We walked over the hot, hot rocks of Market Street. And of course, the cable car lines were twisted hairpins. And the houses were all down. There was nothing saved. Nothing was accepted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And yet, the image that lingered in her mind…even as the smoke lay heavy over the hills… was of people getting to work to repair their city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kathleen Norris: \u003c/strong>And already there were people helping out and organizing, scraping bricks. The bricks were hot. And they were working away. Nobody felt for an instant, oh, let’s go somewhere else. Everyone knew that the city was going to come back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>As indeed it would. Just nine years after the earthquake and fire, San Francisco hosted the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition…the reason the Palace of Fine Arts was built…a spectacle that 18 million people visited by the time it closed.. Headlines trumpeted the achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Voice over reading archival newspaper headline:\u003c/em> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Big Fair is Opened. All eyes on San Francisco. President Flashes Signal\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Fair Draws Myriad; All Records For Crowds Fall\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Marvelous Exhibits From All Parts of the Earth Assembled by 42 Countries for the Hugest Conclave of Nations in History\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It was a signal to the world that San Francisco was still \u003cem>the most important\u003c/em> city in the West…one full of invention and achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice over reading archival newspaper headline: \u003c/strong>Tower of Jewels Wreathed in Flames. But it’s only to thrill visitors\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Art Smith Sets Hearts Leaping: Aviator’s Loop-the-Loops at Night Traced By Trail of Smoke\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>But how did San Francisco go from the absolute devastation of 1906 to showing off the latest advances in science and art on the world stage just nine years later? This is where the earthquake cottages… or shacks as they’re affectionately called…come into the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>So after the 1906 earthquake and fire, more than a quarter of a million people are at least temporarily displaced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Woody LaBounty is President and CEO of San Francisco Heritage, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving San Francisco history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>And now, the powers that be have to decide not only how to take care of all these people, but also who’s gonna rebuild the city?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Immediately after the earthquake and fire, the military stepped in and established tent camps in the city’s parks. But soon a new organization…the San Francisco Relief Corporation…was formed to distribute food, clothes and other aid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>That covered many aspects of what you have to do when people are refugees, but also a specific housing effort, and that was the earthquake relief cottages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Officials were worried about sanitation in the tent camps when winter rains came. So, they decided to build 5,610 relief cottages…built with redwood, fir and cedar… to house people. They were painted “park bench green”…literally the color used on Golden Gate Park benches… and clustered in neighborhood parks like Jefferson Square, Precita Park, and Portsmouth Square. Around 17,000 people lived in them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>If you owned property or you had a property that had been destroyed in the earthquake, you rebuilt or you figured out a way to move on. But there was a vast number of people who didn’t have any other resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>These were San Francisco’s poor, folks who had lived in boarding houses or shared rooms downtown before the fire. City leaders wanted to keep these laborers with the skills to rebuild the city close by. But they didn’t plan to give away the cottages for free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>So for all of wanting to take care of the refugees, there was also a fear at the time of creeping socialism. People in power did not want to give anybody anything for nothing. So they thought it would create indigence. And so you were supposed to pay some sort of rent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Here’s how it worked. Shack residents paid monthly rent of a few dollars while their shacks were in the parks. But the relief corporation returned that money when a resident bought some land and moved the shack out of the park and onto their own property.That generosity was spurred by pressure to move refugees and their cottages out of the parks as soon as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>As other San Franciscans were ready to move on from the disaster, they didn’t like the idea that their parks had a community, a village of working-class people. Living in the middle of their park. They wanted their parks back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>About a year and a half after the earthquake, in the summer of 1907, most of the shacks had been removed from the parks. Newspapers at the time described the surreal image of tiny homes on wagons moving across the city with people still in them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice over reading archival newspaper excerpt:\u003c/strong> It is a strange sight to see a procession of these refugee cottages moving down fashionable Van Ness Avenue or busy Fillmore Street, faces peering from the windows, and men, women and children going about their household tasks as if their little home was securely perched upon a cement foundation and surrounded by a garden and a fence.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Back in 1907, the Richmond District, a northwestern neighborhood, was mostly undeveloped sand dunes, with lots of empty land. So many shack owners moved their cottages to vacant plots there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woody says the earthquake shack program not only got the city working again…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">I\u003c/span>t also gave people who never would have dreamed, I think, of owning a home a chance to get into that American dream. So you get the earthquake cottage, you’re a refugee who has nothing, and now suddenly you buy a lot for 100 bucks in the sand dunes of the Richmond, you have pretty much a free house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Bernal Heights is another place with many earthquake cottages…people just moved their shacks from Precita Park to open land up the hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And some of them are still there…like the house we toured at the beginning of this episode.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>The one sort of key touchstone that you can tell about a cottage is the roof line. It has a very shallow pitched roof, kind of like a pup tent, like a Boy Scout tent. And then that is like your first hint because a lot of small buildings you’ll see have very steep pitched or flat roofs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Woody says many shack owners quickly made improvements to their new homes — painting, building fences, adding additional rooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>There was sort of a stigma of having an earthquake cottage for a few years because it sort of signified you were a refugee, you needed help, you were poor. So people often, they quickly tried to hide sort of the pedigree of their houses and cover them with shingles quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They wanted to hide that telling park bench green color. Most existing earthquake cottages are surrounded by modern additions. Or sometimes they’re a couple shacks placed together. That’s one reason it’s really hard to know how many still exist in San Francisco, they’re hidden. But Woody estimates between 30 and 50 earthquake cottages are dotted across the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>The cottage in the front is made up of three and a half shacks, and then there’s a free-standing mid-size shack in the backyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This is Jane Cryan. She rented one of these preserved earthquake shacks in the outer Sunset in the 1980s. Jane is best known as a “shacktivist”…fighting to preserve earthquake cottages from development. But if it weren’t for the Beat movement in the 1950s, she never would have moved here in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>The only reason I ended up in San Francisco is that Jack Kerouac, with whom I had correspondence from the time I was 16 years old told me that Milwaukee was no place for a poet. You should be in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>By day she was an executive assistant, but writing and jazz piano were her passions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>And I moved in and I played piano for about six weeks, day and night, and an elderly gentleman from across the street came over and shook his finger at me and he said, young lady, do you know that you’re living in a couple of relief houses pasted together?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Her three room cottage was actually three earthquake shacks pasted together. This was 1982 and Jane had lived in San Francisco almost 20 years. But she’d never even heard of the 1906 earthquake and fire. Her neighbor’s passing comment sparked her curiosity. She spent nights and weekends obsessively going through old newspaper archives to learn as much as she could about the disaster and the earthquake cottages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, her landlord made it known that he planned to sell her cottage…or worse demolish it and sell the lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>Take down our history. So I had to do something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Preserving these cottages — tangible pieces of such important history — became her life’s work. She took inspiration from one of the 1906 earthquake refugees she learned about in her research, a woman named Mary Kelly. Mary was an agitator, constantly questioning how the relief corporation dolled out aid and whether it was fair. She was such a pain to them they eventually evicted her from her cottage. But she refused to leave, famously saying:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Voice over portraying Mary Kelly:\u003c/strong> They can’t bluff me. I’ll stay with the house if they take it to the end of the earth.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>She rode in her cottage as men hauled it onto a wagon and trucked it away. She stayed inside as they dismantled the cottage board by board. Jane finds Mary’s tenacity — and willingness to stand up to power — endearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>She was exactly the way I was. If I saw something, I said something. And if I saw something that was not right, I said something louder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jane started a nonprofit called The Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of San Francisco Refugee Shacks. She fought hard to get the planning commission to designate her little shack a historic landmark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she was successful!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>Landmark number 171.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>But it was a bittersweet victory. The commission also said that Jane had to vacate the cottage in order to compensate the landlord for putting restrictions on his property. Jane bounced around from place to place after that, eventually moving back to Wisconsin, where she’s originally from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina in the tape: \u003c/strong>What do you miss most about San Francisco?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jane Cryan: \u003c/strong>Oh, everything! Oh my god, San Francisco is the queen of the Golden West, for heaven’s sake!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Historian Woody LaBounty says there are probably more earthquake cottages than we know. They’re hiding in people’s backyards, incorporated into bigger houses or used as sheds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Woody LaBounty: \u003c/strong>They’re the last sort of most visible, tangible sign of one of the biggest things that ever happened to the city of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Increasingly these little cottages are being bought and torn down to make room for larger homes. But the ones that remain are a reminder of a refugee relief program that not only got people back on their feet, but made them homeowners. An example of San Franciscans coming together to repair and resurrect a beloved city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That was Bay Curious editor and producer Katrina Schwartz. Special thanks this week to \u003ca href=\"https://californiarevealed.org/\">California Revealed\u003c/a>, an online database of oral histories and other archival materials. They helped us find Kathleen Norris’ oral history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. Right now your membership means more than ever, give at \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is produced by Gabriela Glueck, Christopher Beale, Katrina Schwartz and me, Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have a wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"perspectives": {
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"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": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"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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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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