Tales of North Beach is motivated by our desire to document the stories of aging, forgotten, and hidden institutions of North Beach — both people and places. Through interviews and podcasts, we hope to revive the neighborhood’s history, and the characters and subcultures that occupy that history, for younger generations. We also want to preserve on tape older pillars of the community who have been around long enough to serve as windows into the pivotal eras and people of the neighborhood’s past. Of course, they are also old enough that we can’t take for granted how much time they might have left to reminisce, so we feel a sense of urgency to record them as soon as possible.
With the landscape of San Francisco constantly shifting with the tides of gentrification, neighborhood character, and characters, are an endangered species in the city. North Beach has yet to experience the onslaught of development that areas like the Mission have, and we would like to take advantage of this opportunity to capture this atmosphere while it’s still intact.