Last month, StoryCorps San Francisco opened up the booth for some very special participants: The security staff at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. We have worked for over a year at the museum with these guards and became intrigued by their varied origins, diverse backgrounds, and unique stories.

This event not only gave these co-workers a chance to find out what we do as StoryCorps Facilitators, but also gave us the chance to get to know some of the amazing stories behind these familiar faces. In addition to English, interviews were recorded in Swahili and Tagalog.

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Earlier this month, the San Francisco StoryBooth marked its one year anniversary with a small gathering at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. It was a chance for staff, former participants, and newcomers to come together to celebrate a great first year and look forward to the new one.

We listened to a variety of conversations that have taken place inside the StoryBooth: George DiVincenzi’s account of his first day as a guard at Alcatraz and Ken Hopper’s description of what it’s like to work at the top of the Golden Gate Bridge – just to name two. Spanning a wide spectrum of emotion, from fall-on-floor-hilarity to contemplative sadness, the conversations showcased the most basic pillar of StoryCorps’ mission: everybody matters.

Listen to the amazing excerpts from San Francisco interviews that were played at the event here.

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It was a great opportunity to hear how the participants themselves felt about their own stories, and for them to tell the stories that didn’t make it to the final tape. Most of all, it was a chance for people to come together and share a few memories and a few laughs with one another.

(Eloise Melzer and George DiVincenzi)

As you may know, our San Francisco StoryBooth will be open until November of next year.  Make your reservations now.

Here’s to an amazing 2010!

Visitors to San Francisco who come to Chinatown see a colorful, picture-postcard view of this densely populated area. San Francisco’s Chinatown has one of the largest population of Chinese people outside of Asia. Chinatown is familiar as a center of restaurants, shops and other businesses owned and operated by Chinese Americans, but in addition to being a major tourist attraction, it is the epicenter for Chinese Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area and the West Coast.

On October 20th, StoryCorps paid a visit to On Lok Powell Street Center to record the stories of this amazing community. Since 1971, On Lok has been providing services for San Francisco seniors in centers throughout the city. The Powell Street Center offers a comprehensive package of services: clinics, doctors, nurses, physical and occupational therapies as well as recreational activities. On Lok’s focus is on supportive and preventative measures to keep it’s members within their communities and families for as long as possible. Beyond that, On Lok provides a place for seniors to meet and participate in group outings, companionship, and ethnic and cultural activities. For 38 years On Lok has helped people maintain their independence and dignity. StoryCorps came to honor and celebrate a few of these elders by recording their words in conversation with sons, daughters and social workers in the language that is native to them, Cantonese.

Since I do not speak Cantonese, I was unable to understand exactly what was said during the recordings, but afterwards I asked the interviewers about the content of their conversations. Storytellers were asked about their years growing up and the memories of their parents and grandparents. Some told the saga of their immigration to the United States. At one point, Ting Foon Lee, while recalling a memory, began what sounded to me like the recitation of a poem. When I asked her daughter, Yvonne Lee, about this she said her mother loves poetry and had committed many poems to memory as a student and recited one for her daughter during their recording. As well as receiving the respectful care provided at the Powell Street Center, six Chinese-American elders were honored by their conversation partners and San Francisco StoryCorps facilitators.

Here in San Francisco, California we have some really great news:

Due to popular demand—and the generosity of our host, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, our StoryBooth has been extended through October, 2010!

To celebrate, we’re having a party.

Please join us at the Contemporary Jewish Museum on Sunday, November 8th from 2-4pm to listen to never-before-heard highlights from year one of our San Francisco StoryBooth—and toast to year two!

More information can be found here, on the Museum’s website. We would love to see you there.

In addition, reservations at the San Francisco StoryBooth are now open through February, 2010. We still have some open slots on the calendar, so now is the perfect time to make a reservation to record a conversation with a family member over the holiday season or schedule a Valentine’s Day surprise. Reservations can be made through our website or by calling 1-800-850-4406. Interview times go quickly, so make sure to sign up now.

It has been a true honor to listen to Bay Area stories for the past year, and we are beyond thrilled to have the chance to preserve even more stories from this incredibly diverse community.

Come visit us at the booth one of these days, okay?

Ever since I started working with Frank Kingman at the San Francisco StoryBooth, I couldn’t wait to hear some of his stories. He claims he has none, then whips out a tale about working on the railroad and earning the nickname ‘iron man’ because he would do the most difficult and most hated jobs. This sort of detail changes the way you think about a spry 63-year-old who does yoga and brings you bags of delicious peaches from a friend’s orchard.

The opportunity arose to hear more from Frank when he brought his niece, Jo, into the StoryBooth. Frank and Jo spoke honestly about regrets and second chances in life. Frank told Jo that having her in his life is a ‘wonderful gift.’ The love and understanding he and his niece explored during that 40 minutes was a beautiful thing to witness. It strongly reinforced why it is so incredibly important to sit down with the people you love and have a conversation.

I can only say how honored I felt to be a part of it and to have an opportunity to know my colleague and friend better.

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The St. Anthony Foundation is a refuge where thousands of people come each day in need of some form of help. Whether it be food, clothing, medical attention or technology training, the Foundation has been striving for the last 50 years to ensure that San Francisco’s Tenderloin residents have access to resources and a community they can depend on. It’s an experience to walk down Golden Gate Avenue, where the Foundation is located, on any given day and take in the surroundings: people sleeping in doorways, waiting for hours outside the Dining Room in a line stretching around the block at lunchtime, ambulances and cop cars whizzing by every so often.

Outside of StoryCorps, I work at St. Anthony’s Technology Lab where our mission is to educate people and familiarize them with the technological tools of the 21st century. Many of the clients who come in have served sentences in prison, are recovering addicts, or have just never had the confidence to actively learn how to use a computer—much less navigate through the internet. I like to think of the Lab as a melting pot; from Cairo to Kyoto, Sweden to New Orleans, it is as if 60 people from across the globe were selected at random and placed on the 3rd floor of 150 Golden Gate Ave. In other words, it is a perfect place for StoryCorps to capture a wealth of experience and emotion.

(Chris Mardirosian)

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A guest post by Margaret Crandall, one of our amazing San Francisco StoryBooth volunteers. Good luck, Margaret, and thank you! Thursday afternoons just won’t be the same without you.

Margaret, center, in listening mode

From Margaret:

Last December I was laid off from my dot-com job. It was a blessing, really. A kick in the pants to do something more rewarding. I found that something in StoryCorps. I went to a wine-and-cheese StoryCorps event at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, and was so impressed by the project that at the end of the evening I cornered Sarah Geis and demanded to volunteer. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my new-found free time.

Luckily Sarah needed someone to meet and greet StoryCorps visitors on Thursday afternoons to explain the project, answer questions, and chat with people waiting to use the booth. Some people already knew about StoryCorps from NPR. Others had never heard of StoryCorps, and approached my end of the hall with looks of interest or confusion. Others gazed at the wall of photos next to me, snapshots of people from all walks of life who had recorded their stories in the StoryBooth (my favorite is the one of the guy with the little white dog), and asked me if StoryCorps was open to non-Jews. “Absolutely!” I told them. Others, often senior citizens, bashfully told me they didn’t have any stories to tell. I’d laugh and tell them that of course they did. Everyone has a story.

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Millions of people dream about what it would be like to fly into space, to see planet earth from thousands of miles away and touch down onto the desolate, rocky surface of the moon.

Diane Daniels is one of the few people who actually helped make this dream a reality.

Patricia Fodor and Diane Daniels

At the age of 22, when most people are wondering what to do with their lives, Diane was working for a relatively new company called IBM. One day she was offered a position as a telemetry specialist on the Apollo 11 launch. Along with 800 other young programmers Diane handled communications between ground control, the lunar landing module, and (as if her job wasn’t complicated enough) the shuttle crew itself. At any given time ground control had to keep track of 5 modules—all of which were orbiting in space hundreds of thousands of miles away. Yikes.

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Something looked unusual at the StoryBooth in the Contemporary Jewish Museum when the 4pm appointment arrived last Thursday. It may have been the boutonnieres and corsages. Mostly, it was the exuberance of the participants. Beaming with joy, Veronica and Tech Tran were capping their day of nuptials with a StoryCorps experience. Only a few hours before, the newlyweds had tied the knot in San Francisco’s City Hall Rotunda. Now they were celebrating the eventful day with a recording of their first hours of married life.

Congratulations and best wishes, Veronica and Tech!

We celebrate all kinds of things in this country; Birthdays, superbowls, mid-week happy hours and good grade-point averages. Many acknowledge and pay respect to a pivotal historical moment or sentiment, many are simply an exotic spice to dress up the bread and butter realities of everyday life. And then there are the moments when these two worlds collide; a celebration rooted in historical relevance that over time becomes…..well, whatever you want it to.

As I made my way through the sea of people to the StoryCorps booth at the gay pride celebration, I kept thinking ‘If I didn’t understand what this celebration is about, I would be mighty confused right about now’.

I didn’t realize until later that I, in fact, had no idea what the celebration is actually about.

A little backround: in 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar on Christopher Street in Manhattan. In response to this seemingly unprovoked attack, protestors rioted for several days after. This is widely considered to be the event that unified and accelerated the gay rights movement. But like so many other celebrations, it is easy to miss the historical implications of the day and focus simply on the excesses of the moment.

But in looking beyond the bright colors, far-out get ups and cheap beer lies a very real, tangible energy that has nurtured hope and provided community to so many. The gay pride celebration is no longer simply a commemoration of a single past event, it is a reminder to everyone that the future has more struggles in store on the road to equality. And it couldn’t have been a better place for StoryCorps to have been. If there were ever voices that need to be heard, they are the thousands upon thousands of people who were crammed into downtown San Francisco to celebrate the causes of justice, social equality and freedom of expression.

StoryCorps was lucky to have been a part of the gay pride festivities. Thanks to our partnership with the Contemporary Jewish Museum, we were able to reach out to a host of people in the LGBTQ community who would have never heard of StoryCorps otherwise. A big thank you goes out to all who came out in support of such a worthy cause.

StoryCorps is working to launch a new initiative, StoryCorps OutLoud (storycorps.org/outloud), in order to capture even more stories from the LGBTQ community. Be sure to make a reservation at our San Francisco StoryBooth and come tell your story!