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Storied: San Francisco

Storied: San Francisco

著者： Storied: San Francisco
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概要

 A weekly podcast about the artists, activists, and small businesses that make San Francisco so special.Copyright 2024 Storied: San Francisco 社会科学
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  • Danielle Thoe, Sara Yergovich, and Rikki's, Part 2 (S8E11)

    Danielle Thoe, Sara Yergovich, and Rikki's, Part 2 (S8E11)
    2026/02/05

    In Part 2, we hear the story of how Danielle and Sara met and eventually acted on the totally bananas (but shouldn't be) idea of opening a women's sports bar. Sara and her partner had just landed in San Francisco and fell right into a supportive community. Not that they didn't have that back in the UK. But their friends there were starting to settle down and have kids, and that life wasn't for them.

    Then we turn to the story of how Danielle and Sara met, on a soccer field, of course. An SF Spikes soccer field to be exact. Danielle was a leader in the queer nonprofit organization at the time, a role she fell into somewhat by accident, but she did manage to make some needed updates. One of those was to bring in more women and non-binary folks. And she considers her time in leadership successful in part because she was able to hand it off and step away.

    Shortly after their first meeting came the idea to open a women's sports bar. Danielle had been putting together watch parties for women's sports championship games for a few years. It involved calling around to see what bars would air the game in question. Not easy. Eventually, she mentioned to a friend the idea of opening her own place. Sara overheard this and chimed in, "I wanna do that!" Neither of the two had any experience opening and operating a place like Rikki's. They did both work service jobs when they were younger. But what they did have under their respective belts was important—building community.

    Danielle's time with the Spikes also served her well as far as things like budgets and taxes are concerned. The watch parties Danielle had organized became more and more of a thing, and started happening regularly at SF spots like Standard Deviant. In addition to offering space, folks from the brewery helped them with financial stuff. Getting wildly differing advice from various sources helped Sara and Danielle learn more about themselves and the two as a team.

    Opening Rikki's around the time that the Golden State Valkyries' inaugural season was starting didn't hurt matters.

    Danielle describes Rikki's early days, being at capacity. She'd walk the line of folks outside and let them know the situation. She even offered neighboring bars that might have Valkyries games on. She talks about being struck by the amount of people who stayed there anyway, watched the game on their phones, and eventually made their way into San Francisco's women's sports bar.

    We rewind a little to talk about Sara and Danielle's decision to name the bar Rikki's, after Rikki Streicher. Back in the day, Streicher owned lesbian bars such as Maude's and Amelia's. We sidebar to hear some of Sara and Danielle's name ideas that didn't make it. Diva Dribble Dive might be my favorite. But back to Rikki …

    They wanted a name that resounded with and was relevant to San Francisco. They went through lists of historic lesbian and women's bars, and kept seeing Rikki's name listed as an owner. They dug deeper on this mysterious character to find that Rikki had a very strong connection to local sports in addition to the bars she ran. She was one of the first sponsors of the Gay Games. The woman part was there. The sports part was there. And the queer part was there. Check, check, check.

    Then we go back to opening the bar. They announced the location on New Year's Day 2025 and opening day was … sometime in mid-June. Because they're still in their first year as a business, every holiday or event either is or feels brand-new. And because they got started amid the Valkyries' rise, they're finding new ways to utilize the space. That includes trivia nights, live music and DJs (eventually; it's all being applied for), other theme and game nights, and soon, the Olympics.

    We end the episode hearing what surprised Danielle and Sara about opening San Francisco's women's sports bar.

    Photography by Marcella Sanchez
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    28 分
  • Danielle Thoe, Sara Yergovich, and Rikki's, Part 1 (S8E11)

    Danielle Thoe, Sara Yergovich, and Rikki's, Part 1 (S8E11)
    2026/02/03
    San Francisco has a women's sports bar! In this episode, meet Danielle Thoe and Sara Yergovich. Together, they own and operate Rikki's, a women's sports bar on Market in the Castro. We'll hear from Danielle and Sara about their early lives and how they made their way to San Francisco and became friends. We'll also hear the story of why and how they opened The City's first women's sports bar, as well as the incredible woman they named it for. Most importantly, both Sara and Danielle (and me, Jeff) are Libras 😉. We start with Danielle. She grew up in Plymouth, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Born in 1990, her earliest memories are mid-Nineties, and she was around 10 when Y2K happened. Soccer was huge in Danielle's life, starting around age 6. She sites the US Women's Team winning the World Cup in 1999 as a profound influence in her life. It was the first time she'd seen women's sports generate that level of excitement, and she was hooked. She continued playing into her high school years, and says that it was around this time that she started noticing how good some of the other players in her soccer club had gotten. Because Danielle's high school was so large (6,000 or so students), she set her sights on a "big" university. It was between Michigan and Indiana universities, and she choose Indiana, whose state college is in Bloomington. In her college years, Danielle didn't really play soccer. Instead, dorm life because a central focus. She landed in the Collins Living-Learning Center, which she describes as "a weird, niche, hippie place," and she loved it. There was space for many different kinds of people and activities, including pottery and bicycle racing, something Danielle took up in her time at college. I've never lived in a college dorm, and probably never will. But this place sounds rad. The dorm also allowed young Danielle a certain freedom she hadn't yet experienced. I'd call it freedom of expression today. Back then, it was the ability to be as weird as she wanted. There would always be someone nearby a little more "out there," no matter what. After Indiana, Danielle returned to her home state and went to grad school at the University of Michigan. While Ann Arbor, and through friends, she met and started dating someone from San Francisco. After Danielle got laid off from a job in Michigan, she decided to join her long-distance partner and move to The Bay. It was 2015. June 25 to be exact. We know this because the very next day was when the United States Supreme Court issued its Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the country. We turn to Danielle's business partner, Sara, to hear her life story and how she got to San Francisco. Sara grew up in Benicia, across The Bay. Her parents met at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. After college, her dad joined the Navy and got stationed in Vallejo, where the young couple moved. Some years later, they settled in nearby Benicia and had five kids. Sara is their youngest. She's also her parents' only daughter. All her older siblings are boys. She owes getting into "all of the sports" to that fact. Her mom signed Sara up for soccer when she was three. Through some kind of odd accident, her mom also inadvertently became the coach. Sara also played volleyball, basketball, baseball, tennis, golf … she was a jack of all trades, master of none," as she puts it. But Sara's mom always put her on boys' teams to make her more competitive, or so the thinking went. When her mom tried to put young Sara on a football team, though, she drew a line. In her high school years, being the only girl on a team came with specific sexist challenges. But for all the jerks who gave her shit, she was able to find boys who were cool, who had her back. She also eventually got a taste of revenge. The coach's son was particularly nasty, but his dad was cool and paired Sara up with the kid for catch before a game. Sara wound up and threw the baseball so hard, the kid cried. We Libras strive for balance. Sara came to San Francisco regularly as a kid, especially when out of town family visited. Eventually, her oldest brother (16 years older) moved to The City and she came to see him a lot. Another brother moved in with him and they lived in several apartments all over town. Sara shares her earliest memory of visiting SF. She remembers a high-rise penthouse and going to Chinatown. We end Part 1 with the time Sara left The Bay—to go to college, first in Santa Barbara, then for her last semester in Kent in England. Check back Thursday for Part 2 with Sara and Danielle. We recorded this episode at Rikki's in The Castro in January 2026. Photography by Marcella Sanchez
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    29 分
  • Kathy Fang, Part 2 (S8E10)

    Kathy Fang, Part 2 (S8E10)
    2026/01/22
    In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Kathy left her hometown of San Francisco for the first time to go to college at USC. Originally, she wanted to major in science. There was and perhaps still is a prevailing expectation in her culture to go into some sort of lucrative career. Surely, no one would want to go into the food business intentionally, so the trope goes. So Kathy set out to make her parents proud. Soon enough, though, she realized she doesn't like science, and switched to becoming a business major. She earned a bachelor's in entrepreneurship and operations and soon got a job in the corporate world at the stock brokerage Merrill Lynch. A short time later, not too happy, she moved to Johnson and Johnson, another job that ended up boring her. Despite this, she was getting more and more used to LA and wasn't thinking necessarily of coming back. Still in her Twenties, the idea of joining her parents at their restaurant started to grow on her, and she took the plunge. She moved back to San Francisco and lived with Lily and Peter for a time. She'd been bringing college friends to her hometown for a while, parading them around to ride cable cars or eat at places like Taddich Grill. They'd explore San Francisco neighborhoods and restaurants with Kathy as their guide. Her friends loved it here. Duh. Returning home felt good for Kathy. Her husband had lived in Hawaii and Georgia and would sometimes urge to go other places. But Kathy is a city girl, an SF girl. "It's always good to be back." Her first year back, she worked with Peter and Lily at House of Nanking every day. She aimed to prove to her dad that she was serious about restaurant work. After that year, Kathy went to culinary school. When she graduated, Peter lovingly let her know that three is a crowd at his eatery and asked his daughter what she wanted to do. "I kinda wanna open another restaurant," she told him. He'd resisted opening a second location for House of Nanking. The idea of Kathy branching out, however, offered an opportunity to do a second restaurant, but have it be unique and distinct from his own place. Because the new joint would be father/daughter (vs. the husband/wife structure at House of Nanking), it provided space for Kathy's dishes, Peter's dishes, and menu items featuring collaborations between the two. The scaffolding was there, and it was solid. But right away, Kathy found herself the victim of outdated stereotypes of what it means to be a chef. Some even felt that the operation was nepotistic, that Kathy was just riding her dad's coattails. They couldn't imagine that she'd because a great chef in her own right. People, amirite? I ask Kathy whether it's an apt metaphor to say that House of Nanking gave birth to Fang. She agrees. She uses this topic as a springboard to describe physical differences between the two restaurants. House of Nanking feels older, more disheveled, with dim lighting. Fang is newer, cleaner-feeling, brighter. I was sitting there that day at House of Nanking, talking with Kathy, and I couldn't help wonder whether Anthony Bourdain had eaten there. She wasn't sure on the spot that day, but I looked it up. I'm almost certain he did not, but I can't help but believe he eventually would've made it. House of Nanking is just "like that." Kathy seizes on the opportunity to share celebrities who have been to her parents' restaurant, and tells the story of a recent mention by comedian and writer John Mulaney. She was in London when Mulaney performed in SF. On stage in The City, he mentioned loving House of Nanking and wishing it was open after his show. Kathy made a few phone calls from across the Atlantic and had food delivered to him. The next night, Kathy Griffin basically said the same thing. And Kathy Fang once again came through, having food brought to the comic actor. Griffin let it be known that House of Nanking is on an unofficial "comedy circuit," meaning a group of comedians who share tips about various cities and what to do and eat there. We start to wind down the conversation by talking about the book that Kathy wrote. Along with her dad, Kathy's new book, The House of Nanking Cookbook, is something that's been in the works for a while. Folks kept asking them to share their recipes, and Peter resisted. But then the show Chef Dynasty: House of Fang came out on Food Network. After her dad saw the show (and he's in it, mind you), he changed his tune. He wanted there to be a record of everything they'd accomplished. Kathy convinced Peter that a book was the best way to do just that. The book is written in both Peter's and Kathy's voices. So it's got the story of opening and carrying on all those years. But it also has Kathy's perspective, growing up in the restaurant and eventually becoming a chef in her own right. After doing research and seeing a dearth of Chinese-American cookbooks, getting her family's recipes out there became even more important for Kathy. The House of Nanking ...
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    28 分
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