Block Talk: Recent Episodes
Mission Local
Listen Local welcomes two great columnists to talk about the elections by Mission Local
A dismemberment murder and a renegade jiu-jitsu artist: a talk with Charlotte Silver by Mission Local
One of the artists crucial to bringing the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead to San Francisco joins us to talk about the upcoming exhibition at SOMArts.
Learn the story behind how this group is producing intimate portraits of people experiencing homelessness.
Mission Local chats with staff of the Mission Community Market, a farmers market (and then some!) in the neighborhood.
Some call him the "Mayor of the Mission" and you've seen him active on countless issues, but today's guest Roberto Hernandez has also long been the artistic director of, and generally the force behind, Carnaval in San Francisco.
Mission Local talks with an advocate for the homeless and a resident of a local encampment about the city's Navigation Center model and plans to open a temporary one in the neighborhood.
Mission Local talks with Chris Cassidy of the SF Bicycle Coalition about bike infrastructure, behaviors on the road, and resources for cyclists on the annual Bike to Work Day – a.k.a. Bike Christmas.
The number of eviction notices issued in San Francisco has dropped from its peak, but evictions take their toll long after the notice is sent. When artist and writer Paul Madonna was evicted from the Mission District, he used his art to explore that experience. His series in the San Francisco Chronicle, All Over Coffee, ended after the eviction, and the pieces from that time were turned in to a book.
Paul joins Mission Local to talk about the book, evictions, and leaving airplanes.
San Francisco is a "sanctuary city" and the new federal administration wants to discourage this. Saira Hussain from Asian Americans Advancing Justice (also known as the Asian Law Caucus) joins us to sift through the specifics of what this means.
Women's Building Board member Laura Pereyra joins us to talk about why we need feminism, women in tech, and upcoming events.
Interview with Sam Moss, the executive director of the non-profit affordable housing developer Mission Housing Development Corporation, conducted in January 2017.
Students have been among the most active members of our local society after the election of Donald Trump, staging walkouts and protests around the state. We sat down with three young, immigrant women students at a local high school to talk about political engagement without the ability to vote, the fears that come with threats of deportation, and how to move forward.
When our contributor saw cars with strange equipment bolted to their roofs cruising around the neighborhood, she set out to explain what was going on and discovered that the makers of autonomous vehicle technology are none too chatty. Today we'll discuss self driving cars and how we feel about them when they are being tested on our block.
There are several proposals on the ballot this November that will shape housing policy in the city for years to come. We thought we’d chat this week about what these measures would do and what their local effects would be.
After that, we’ll look at crime and safety in the neighborhood – the city might be getting a new Police Chief within the day, but in the meantime, officers are trying to deal with an uptick in violence on local streets.
With two more fires in the past week (though these ones thankfully didn't displace anybody) and police reform activists starting to get fed up with their city officials, we'll dive into a little bit of what's going on in both those departments.
Fires:
After a building burns and is rendered uninhabitable, it often burns again. Why?
Police:
Activists pushing for charges against officers who shot civilians are getting frustrated. Meanwhile, the Interim Chief has reversed his position and decided he would like to have the job permanently.
We sit down with Father Richard Smith, one of the lead advocates pushing for criminal charges to be filed against the officers who shot and killed Amilcar Perez Lopez in a confrontation on Folsom Street in February 2015.
Since the shooting, no criminal charges have been filed, but the narrative of what happened that night has morphed and shifted as new evidence – autopsies, witness testimonies – emerged.
Interview between Hillary Ronen and Joe Rivano Barros on November 29, 2016, after her election as supervisor of District 9.
Today we talk about the candidates running for supervisor in District 9 and a new start-up that seeks to "optimize" buyouts between tenants and landlords.
What happened, and what it means, at and after the wrongful death trial over the police shooting of Alex Nieto.
Last week a city supervisor caused quite a stir when he penned a letter to local administrations asking for data on and work toward removing the tent cities that appear to be a fixture of certain parts of town. This week, we're still seeing a lot of frustration with how homeless people are being treated in San Francisco. We discuss the timeline of how we got to this point, and some of the responses people have had to the situation – from the benevolent to the bizarre.
Roughly a year after we made crazy and not so crazy predictions for 2015 we review them and see how well we did, possibly with some chagrin.
Two Mission reports are brought to you this week by reporter Jenny Manrique Cortés.
In her first piece she explores the plight of immigrants who have little or insufficient health insurance and struggle to get treatment, sometimes turning minor afflictions into major problems.
In her second piece, Jenny visits the Freedom Archives, an audio collection showcasing voices and events of various San Francisco activist movements.
In today's pre-recorded session, we talk about two key issues that are being discussed at public meetings today (which is why we're pre-recording, because we'll be at those meetings covering these issues!) and some of the concerns that shape the discussion.
The first is the city's Affordable Housing Density Bonus Project, an city program that may be approved on Jan. 28 that would allow developers or builders to construct taller buildings than the city's current zoning law for that spot allows – in exchange for building a good chunk of it as affordable housing.
Today's second topic is the use of force, sometimes deadly force, by police officers. Shootings of local young men in the last year and a half have caused uproar among communities around San Francisco, and the city's Rules Committee will discuss how to improve on the SFPD's track record and make sure this happens less often.
Taylor Peck is the owner of the former Fizzary, a soda and candy shop that used to be open on Mission street. After it closed, Peck, though he doesn't own the building, was left as master tenant of a commercial space. His subtenant turned out to be operating an illegal gambling den out of the space. Listen to his story here.
Supervisor David Campos, who authored Proposition J, talks about how it would protect legacy businesses in San Francisco.
Listen Local: Government Shutdown and Getting to Know Musicians with Sam Ruiz and Noah Arroyo by Mission Local
Artists and filmmakers Rene Yanez and Lou Dematteis join us to discuss their film The Other Barrio, a critical look at corruption, fires, development, gentrification, and neighborhood culture wrapped in to a noir film mystery.
Today's music comes from the score for The Other Barrio.
We talk about local immigration policy and how immigrant lives are affected by a gentrifying San Francisco with scholar Susanne Jonas.
Key quote: "When there’s a decreasing number of immigrants who benefit, then you can have the best policies in the world and still not benefit as many people."
Susanne is an internationally-recognized scholar of Latin America, particularly Guatemala and Central America, for over 45 years.
Michael Nolan, longtime resident and neighborhood organizer, and Matt Rupert, cofounder of a new community music center, discuss what it takes to recognize, build and sustain a community.
It’s all about housing on the show this week. First we bring you an interview with a member of the Planning Commission. We follow that up with a story that broke today about the Department of Building Inspections taking some landlords to court for fire safety violations.
In this week's episode of Listen Local, we welcome guest Alan Beatts, owner of Borderlands Books, to discuss his contentious opinions about the minimum wage increase. Also, we return to the scene of the Mission Fire for our investigative report on its landlord.
In this week's Mission Local, we discuss the fire that destroyed a building at 22nd and Mission Street.
In this episode of Listen Local, we talk about the mayor's state of the city address last week. We chat about funds for affordable housing, the Ellis Act, and more!
We also talk about the local phenomenon of smash-and-grabs -- having a car window smashed and anything remotely valuable taken is practically a rite of passage for any city car owner, and in the Mission, there's almost a competition over which block is the worst.
When a man was shot by local police in what turned out to be a suicide attempt, we were lucky enough to come across a witness who in fact had been a reporter and editor with us for some time. But her testimony didn't align with what evidence the police later issued. How do we work with witness accounts as journalists?
In our second segment, we introduce you to photographer Daniel Mondragón, who has recently returned to the Mission from a few years in Los Angeles.
Today's discussion takes off with the memory of the latest Google bus protest, which turned into a bizarre parade led by a fleeing Google lawyer pursued by the tenants he is evicting from his house. Google's name has been getting a lot of attention, and its response has largely been to stay out of it. Does the company care about its increasingly tarnished image in the Mission? Should it?
Since this is our last 2014 show, we Mission Local staffers are allowing ourselves the opportunity to make some predictions about the coming year -- about housing and homelessness, restaurants and rallies, and other mainstays of Mission news. You can call us out on it this time next year if we turn out to be dead wrong.
Happy Holidays!
In this week's show, we talk about the mayhem after the Giants World Series win and why people don't vote.
In this week's show recorded live at BFF.fm on October 16, 2014, we talk about the fracas over Mission Playground's soccer fields and the unfortunate loss of San Francisco Tenants Union director Ted Gullicksen and the demise of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
The news hounds from Mission Local chat about the latest happenings from San Francisco's sunny Mission District. On today's show, we discuss the current state of the housing crisis and the role podcasts themselves play in journalism today.
Recorded Thursday October live at BFF.fm's Secret Alley studio. Intro music by La Plebe. Outro music by Kevid McLeod.