San Francisco, remembered one life at a time.
Storied: San Francisco is a brisk oral-history show built from neighborhood memory, personal turning points, and sharp local detail. Guests bring stories of media jobs, small businesses, activism, unusual vehicles, family history, and the complicated feeling of belonging to San Francisco.
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Storied: San Francisco is a long-running interview show about the people who give San Francisco its texture. It listens close. The show is less interested in postcard landmarks than in the routes people took through the city: an office above the Warfield, a Bayview office near Speakeasy Brewing, a Mission restaurant, a South of Market screen-printing shop, a Bay Bridge lined with unsettling AI billboards. The conversations often begin in the everyday and then widen. A guest’s first impressions of the city can lead into punk scenes, vegetarian optimism, family history, work, politics, or grief. The tone stays casual, but the attention is serious. Recent episodes show its range clearly. Todd Lappin explains the delight and confusion produced by Kiri, the Japanese fire truck he imported and operates. Soleil Ho talks about food writing, colonial context, cooperative accountability, and Coyote Media Collective. Rae Alexandra connects her own San Francisco years with Unsung Heroines, her book about women who changed the Bay Area. Sonia Mansfield’s multi-part conversation moves through humor writing, local newspapers, television criticism, heartbreak, breast cancer, family, and the work of building a new reality. The method is warm and direct. Questions make room for tangents, jokes, exact locations, and emotional pivots without forcing a neat thesis too early. The result feels like civic memory gathered at human scale. It can be funny and blunt. It can also turn grave without announcing a change in posture. The show suits listeners who care about San Francisco’s artists, journalists, businesses, activists, oddballs, and working lives as part of one shared record. It is not a polished tourism pitch. It is a living archive of how people arrive, stay, leave marks, and keep trying to make sense of the place.
Made for: For listeners drawn to urban oral history, Bay Area culture, local journalism, neighborhood lore, and intimate interviews with people who have actually lived the city’s changes.
What sets it apart: Storied: San Francisco stands out through its exact local memory: names of places, jobs, bridges, shops, books, and rooms matter as much as biography. The show lets humor, politics, grief, and civic affection sit together without smoothing them into a city-branding exercise.
A weekly podcast about the artists, activists, and small businesses that make San Francisco so special.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Jeff makes San Francisco legible through candid conversations about work, memory, creative careers, and the pressures facing local businesses and media.
Storied: San Francisco lets conversation stretch until the city comes into view through the people doing its work. Jeff builds interviews around childhood memories, career turns, and the practical conditions behind creative or civic life.
San Francisco comes into focus one life story at a time, with you invited to stay for the detours.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A San Francisco conversation that ranges from Welsh edge to Bay Area women and the shifting shape of city life.
Ray Alexandra's conversation with Jeff has the easy sweep of a San Francisco story, but it is anchored in politics, family, and the pull of city life.
Mansfield turns heartbreak, survival, and a deleted dating app into a plainspoken conversation.
Mansfield spends much of the conversation on the long aftermath of a breakup: learning to build a new reality, shifting from thinking in terms of us to thinking about herself, and getting comfortable with alone time.
A plainspoken portrait of Sonya Mansfield's Bay Area career and the San Francisco life around it.
Sonya Mansfield's Bay Area path comes through as steady and specific. The writing moves from Concord family outings to early newspaper work, then through the Fang orbit and into Bayview reporting, and those place names do the real work.
A seventh-grade bus ride and a first run at movie reviews anchor Sonia Mansfield's origin story.
Sonia Mansfield's Part 1 follows a childhood shaped by television, movies, and music to the point where she finally got brave enough to sign up for the newspaper and start writing movie reviews.
A funny, unsettled San Francisco conversation about organizing, media power, and staying with the work.
San Francisco media, organizing, and political stamina come through in this single-episode conversation about a writer's shift from traditional 2,000-word articles into podcasting.
Soleil Ho's path from a paste-in application to Coyote Media Collective folds San Francisco history into a working life.
Soleil Ho's post-college path through Minneapolis and Puerto Vallarta leads to the 2025 launch of Coyote Media Collective, with San Francisco entering first as a place visited once and then as a city whose history stayed with them.
A loose year-end donut shop conversation about stamina, flexibility, and the limits of spreadsheet logic.
A year-end visit to a vegan donut shop turns the second year of a small business into a grounded study of stamina. Vander Hill of Whacked Donuts talks through the kitchen stickers that help him get through low days, the fifth year since he started, and the sleep schedule he has…
This bonus episode features an interview with author Lincoln Mitchell discussing his new book about George Moscone's impact on modern San Francisco.
In this bonus episode, host Jeff Hunt chats with Vander Hill, owner of Whack Donuts, inside his vegan donut shop in Embarcadero 4.
This episode features part two of an interview with Soleil Ho, co-founder of Coyote Media Collective.
This episode concludes an interview with ironworker Lisa Davidson, discussing her career journey in the Bay Area from animation prop work to ironworking on structures like the Golden Gate Bridge.
This episode features artist Hollis Callas discussing her deep involvement in San Francisco's art community, her award-winning design for the city's voting stickers, and her intensive graphic design training.
This bonus episode features an interview with Broke-Ass Stewart about his new book 'The Worst of Broke-Ass Stewart, 20 Years of Love, Death, and Dive Bars', covering his writing on San Francisco bars and details of a launch party.
On Storied: San Francisco, co-hosts Vanessa Hutchinson-Zechli and Raina Mast trace how a 2025 Valkyries preseason game led them to create Valkyrie's Say Less.
This episode features Todd Lappin sharing the story of how he found and imported Kiri, a Japanese fire truck, and the delightful reactions it elicits from people in San Francisco.
This episode introduces Todd Lappin, who imported and operates Kiri, a Japanese fire truck in San Francisco, as part of the Storied San Francisco series.
This episode features an interview with Soleil Ho, co-founder of Coyote Media Collective, discussing their journey and the cooperative's launch in 2025.
This episode introduces Soleil Ho, a food writer and co-founder of the Coyote Media Collective, discussing their perspective on colonialism and personal narratives in the context of events like 9-11.
This episode features Rae Alexandra discussing her book 'Unsung Heroines' and her journey in San Francisco, including her work at KQED.
Jeff talks with KQED journalist and author Ray Alexandra.
Jeff opens Storied San Francisco with Sonia Mansfield of What a Creep.
Jeff Hunt talks with Sonya Mansfield about the path that led her into San Francisco work.
The episode starts with television and movies.
Jeff Hunt's Storied: San Francisco conversation with Toshio Meronek follows 20 years in San Francisco and the origins of Sad Francisco.
This bonus episode features a casual year-end conversation with Vander Hill, owner of Wack Donuts, discussing the challenges and routines of running a small vegan donut shop in San Francisco.