San Francisco Diaries: How two BFF.FM radio hosts brought Herb Caen to Market Street

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Muni made you late for work, you step in shit on your way home, and your local bodega has just turned into yet another artisanal lip balm boutique? If you’re grumpy about San Francisco’s many changes, today’s story about an art project on Market Street might be just the right antidote.

We met storytellers Luke and Chris a few weeks ago — you might know them as Sequoia and The Early Bird on BFF.FM cheery morning radio show, Rollover Easy. Rollover Easy is a morning radio show that has a “healthy dose of positive news, banter, and interviews with interesting San Francisco locals.” Luke and Chris are up every Thursday morning at 8 a.m. to report on and chat with locals over coffee.

They are realists about San Francisco’s changes, but they remain endlessly positive about things that make this city special. You’d think they’d be busy enough with a weekly morning radio show, but these two took it upon themselves to build an art project to celebrate our city. In today’s San Francisco Diaries episode, Luke and Chris share how their mutual love for Herb Caen led to an installation on Market Street. With little construction experience, these two San Franciscans were determined to make Herb Caen come alive to fellow pedestrians.

Listen to their story:

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Here’s Luke at the Herb Caen typewriter installation:

We will be at the Roll Over Easy studio next Thursday, October 25, with Luke and Chris in real life! Tune in and tweet to @rollovereasy and @munidiaries to tell us about your morning.

Got a San Francisco diary you’d like to share? Email us at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com to submit your own! 

Photo by Luke Spray

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Muni Diaries Live is back on Nov. 3!

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Our favorite night of the year is back on Saturday, Nov. 3, but this time we will have to say goodbye to the Elbo Room, which has been the home of Muni Diaries Live for nearly ten years. The Elbo Room building is on the market, and the beloved bar will be closing in Jan, 2019. Won’t you come and help us give them a proper send-off?

Tickets are on sale now on Eventbrite. Stay tuned for details on our new venue for 2019 and beyond.

A sneak peek of our lineup:

– Alexandria Love is a writer from Oakland and also the current reigning champion of the Dirty Haiku Battle at Oakland’s Tourette’s Without Regrets. You can also follow her writing on her website, hereswhythatsfunny.com.

– Irene McCalphin is a writer, singer, burlesque dancer, model, speaker, kinkster, and geek.

– Joe Kukura is a long-time San Francisco journalist whose work you have seen in Thrillist, SF Weekly, SFist, and more.

– Matt Shapiro is a musician and the co-owner of the Elbo Room. After working at the Elbo Room for years as the manager and booker, Matt and co-owner Erik Cantor purchased the bar in 2010.

– Nuala Sawyer is the news editor at the SF Weekly. She writes about a little bit of everything: City Hall, the courts, homelessness, immigration, housing, crime and transportation.

– Rachel Lark is a San Francisco based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Her music has been featured on The Savage Lovecast and Salon.com and she tours regularly throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Grab a ticket, and we’ll see you at the Elbo Room on Nov. 3!

Muni Diaries Live 

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2018 (tickets)

Doors: 6 p.m.
Show: 7 p.m.

Elbo Room
647 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Take Muni there: J-Church, 12, 14, 22, 33, 49, or BART: 16th or 24th St. Stations

Photo credit: Right Angle Images

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Mom of the year makes Muni birthday cake dreams come true

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This is gonna make you want to be a kid all over again: train-obsessed kid (and pro Muni rider) Calvin just celebrated his birthday with possibly the most best cake ever. Mom Sonia presented him with this adorable mini Muni bus cake, complete with the 23-Monterey line sign and his name on the side. How awesome is this? The look on his face says it all.

Let’s take a close look at the edible version of the 23:

Once more, from the side.

Sonia tells us that the cake is by My Favorite Bite, and it was wholly approved by the birthday boy.

We’re just suckers for Muni-themed stuff, like this birthday party (with BART temporary tattoos!) and even this racing car from a couple of pretty cool Bernal dads.

If you’ve spotted some more Muni or BART-themed goodies in the wild, you know who to call! Email us at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com.

Muni Diaries Live is back on Saturday, Nov. 3 at the Elbo Room. Help us give the Elbo Room a proper send-off! Tickets are on sale now.

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A Muni-themed poetry throwdown because San Francisco

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If you’ve been to our live shows, you know one of the highlights is the Muni Haiku Battle: a Muni-themed poetry throwdown. Suffice it to say we have had some intense 5-7-5 syllable battles onstage, covering the gamut of topics (see: bodily fluids on seats) and stuff you might encounter on Bay Area public transit.

To give you a taste of what it’s all about (and entice you to see it in person at our next show Nov. 3!), this podcast episode features our most recent battle from start to finish. That battle of wills, which took place at our 10th anniversary show in April, pit reigning champion Alexandria Love against challenger Jessica Cohen. Jessica is an illustrator and self-described infrequent performer/fortune teller. She grew up in the East bay and went to college in San Francisco. Alexandria is a writer from Oakland and also the reigning champion of our inspiration: the Dirty Haiku Battle at Oakland’s Tourette’s Without Regrets. 

You can see our next Muni Haiku Battle at our fall show: Muni Diaries Live, Nov. 3, 2018 at the Elbo Room (tickets on sale now!). Alexandria goes up against challenger, local writer/journalist Joe Kukura.

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Photo by Right Angle Images.

Category: Funny: Muni LOLs

San Francisco Diaries: Trapped under Civic Center with an active shooter overhead

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In this episode of San Francisco Diaries, Louis Evans shares a story of one seemingly uneventful day when he was leaving the underground parking lot at Civic Center, only to learn there was an active shooter situation above ground.

In the confusion that ensued, Louis and his partner sat in their car for hours, turning over doomsday scenarios over in their heads—including their plan of attack if the shooter wandered into the garage. The story took an interesting turn after our heroes realized they weren’t the only people stuck in the garage.

Louis is the host of a new literary event, Cliterary Salon: a show featuring rowdy, original stories about female sexual pleasure, feminism, or really anything in that umbrella, bringing a spirit of fun and sexuality to a literary scene that tends to focus on the cis male experience.

Listen to his story here:

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You, too, can add an entry to our collective journal! San Francisco Diaries is our spinoff podcast series, which celebrated its first birthday this month. It’s all about personal stories about why you live here and what makes our city “so San Francisco.” Tag us with your tale on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Our email inbox is always open, too.

Photo by @omiB91

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How we invaded Bernal Heights

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You may remember Molly from a recent episode of the Muni Diaries podcast. She returns with a throwback story that recalls her eviction from the up-and-coming Castro neighborhood to her new home in the budding lesbian enclave of Bernal Heights.

This is part of our newest project, San Francisco Diaries, which features stories about our city at large that run the same gamut of good, bad weird, gross, great, and poignant. Here’s Molly.

We had been powerless tenants, evicted with no recourse, and then we became agents of displacement. There was no in between.

My collective household of four lesbians had found a place on Castro Street, one of those original Victorians with high ceilings and elaborate wood trim, an abandoned coal fireplace, and a parlor whose big sliding doors opened to double the size of the room. It was rumored that the apartment had come up for rent because the previous tenants had been busted for selling weed and were all in jail. We embellished the story to claim that the famous Brownie Mary had lived there. She may not have lived there, but she had certainly been there in spirit. It was the 1970s; the Castro was becoming a gay men’s mecca. During our time there, a housepainter contracted to paint our building ran a brothel, turning tricks in the building’s storage room. He painted that building for months.

We fondly remember political gabfests at shared dinners, Seders in which we sang all the way through, and inventive costumes at Halloween parties: in the year of Anita Bryant, I came as an ironic lesbian “recruiter” for her hateful cause. For a time, our costume du jour at home was simply a vest, a way to show off a billowing bush and legs as thickly furred as animal pelts (we were hairy and proud!). We danced and sang along to Stevie Wonder and Lavender Jane Loves Women. There was much laughing and also much crying. Passionate love affairs abounded. Creating a new culture calls for invention. We tried out non-monogamy and polyamory. We felt we were on the cutting edge of a cultural transformation.
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