Author: KQED

San Francisco beat out Los Angeles, New York and Portland as the top vegan city in America. But with COVID-19 wreaking havoc on the food industry — will that title endure? In today's episode we explore what's made vegan eating so popular in the Bay Area, and then learn how businesses are coping during these challenging times.

Additional Resources:

• Read: Vegan Food is Big in the Bay Area — But Will the Scene Survive COVID-19?
• Get the Bay Curious Activity Book
• Sign up for our newsletter!

Reported by Chloe Veltman. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz and Rob Speight. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Bianca Hernandez, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Michelle Wiley.

This week we learn how one enamored entrepreneur on a shoe-string budget gave birth to the Murphy bed in San Francisco. Then, we revisit one of our most-popular Bay Curious episodes of all time, about the Flintstone House in Hillsborough. The home's architect, who wasn't available for our original story, shares the backstory to his unique design.

Additional Resources:

• Read - How A San Francisco Love Story Inspired the Invention of the Murphy Bed
• Read - What's That Thing Off 280? The Flintstone House
• Listen to our original Flintstone House story on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe to the Bay Curious newsletter!

Reported by Katrina Schwartz and Rachael Myrow. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz and Rob Speight. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Bianca Hernandez, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Michelle Wiley.

Bay Curious listener Scott has lived in the Bay Area his whole life. He's always wondered why the weather can be so different just a few miles apart. This week, we dig into Bay Area microclimates -- what are they, why do they exist, and do heat islands affect our weather.

*This episode has been updated to fix an error in Andrew Oliphant's title.

Additional Reading:

•  Why Does The Bay Area Have So Many Microclimates?
• Why San Francisco Gets So Windy and Foggy In The Summer
• Sign up for the Bay Curious newsletter!

Reported by Daniel Potter. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, and Rob Speight. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Bianca Hernandez, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Don Clyde.

Bay Curious listeners Alex Kornblum, 8, and his dad, Heath Kornblum, were talking about their drinking water when they landed on this question: How long does it take for water to get from Hetch Hetchy to San Francisco? And how far does it travel?

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• How Hetch Hetchy Valley’s natural beauty was sacrificed to quench SF’s thirst (SF Chronicle)
• Video: Hetch Hetchy: To Restore or Not (KQED)
• Hetch Hetchy the cat's Instagram page
• Sign up for the Bay Curious monthly newsletter

Reported by Sarah Craig. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz and Rob Speight. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Bianca Hernandez, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Michelle Wiley.

Last year, this question won a public voting round on BayCurious.org: "The Fillmore district used to be known as the Harlem of the West. What's the story behind what happened to the city's once vibrant Black community and culture?" In this episode we explore the rise of the Fillmore as a cultural center for jazz, and the "urban renewal" that ultimately changed the identity of the neighborhood, and forced out many of its residents.

Additional Reading and Listening:

• Why San Francisco's Fillmore District Is No Longer the "Harlem of the West"
• Playlist: We made a Spotify playlist featuring artists who played at venues in the Fillmore

Reported by Bianca Taylor. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Asal Ehsanipour and Rob Speight. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Bianca Hernandez, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Michelle Wiley.

Juneteenth celebrations in the Bay Area are some of the largest, and longest-running in California. We offer a quick primer on the history of Juneteenth locally, and explore the legacy of Rachel Townsend, an activist and organizer who kept the Juneteenth spirit alive in San Francisco for years. This episode features an excerpt from KQED's The Bay.

Reporting by Asal Ehsanipour and Devin Katayama. Production by Katrina Schwartz, Olivia Allen-Price, Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Engineering by Rob Speight. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Bianca Hernandez, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Don Clyde.

We look back at protests from the civil rights era — both nonviolent and violent — to understand how these actions lead to changes in public policy. This history gives us ideas about how the media coverage and public opinion polls of today could be early signs that public policy change will follow. Featuring longtime San Francisco resident Darrell Rogers and Omar Wasow, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University.

Additional Reading:

• What it Takes for Protests to Bring Change — Clues From History
• “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting.” (PDF)

Reported and produced by Katrina Schwartz, Asal Ehsanipour and Olivia Allen-Price. Engineering by Rob Speight and Katie McMurran. Additional support from Nicole Barton, Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Bianca Hernandez, Ethan Lindsey and Vinnee Tong.

This week we’re sharing an episode from Truth Be Told, made by our colleagues: Tonya Mosley, Isabeth Mendoza and Suzie Racho. They speak with Dr. Eddie Glaude, chair of Princeton's African American Studies Department, to parse out what's happening in America right now, and how to recenter on black joy and resilience.  

Truth Be Told helps to correct the age-old diversity problem in the field of advice columns, which leaves many people of color out of the conversation entirely. Each week, host Tonya Mosley chats with an expert “Wise One” to unpack a listener question, dilemma or experience about race and culture in America. Subscribe to Truth Be Told wherever you get your podcasts and share it with a friend.

• Apple Podcasts
• NPR One
• Overcast
• Spotify

Visitors to Angel Island often learn about how the island was once an immigration processing and detention center where Chinese immigrants were made to wait for weeks or months in sordid conditions. Recently, a Bay Curious listener mused about another dark part of the island’s past: “I wonder about Angel Island and the history of Japanese internment camps.” Turns out the island served a specific role during World War II.

Additional Resources:

• Bay Curious web story, featuring images of Kakuro and Angel Island
• More on Kakuro Shigenaga’s internment history, and profiles of other Japanese internees
• Department of Justice case files of “enemy aliens” during WWII

Reported by Cecilia Lei. Special thanks to Mina Kim, Yo Ann Martinez and Carly Severn. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Asal Ehsanipour and Rob Speight. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Bianca Hernandez, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Don Clyde.

Bay Curious listener Columbia Shafer was walking along Grand Ave in Oakland one day, when she noticed a new Zachary's pizza shop opening. "They were putting new paint on the doors and it said 100% employee owned," she says. "It seems like a really high percentage of pizza places [in the East Bay] were cooperatives and employee owned." She wants to know ... why pizza? In this episode we dive into local pizza co-op history. We'll also learn how these businesses work.

Additional Resources

• Why Are So Many East Bay Pizza Shops Cooperatively Owned?

Reported by Kyana Moghadam. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Asal Ehsanipour and Rob Speight. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Bianca Hernandez, Ethan Lindsey and Vinnee Tong.