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!

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)

Recently, my two different worlds came together for a day of recording StoryCorps interviews at the St. Anthony Foundation. In a quiet room at the back of the lab, we were able to talk with many of the clients about their lives. There was Chris Mardirosian, who was born on an Indian reservation and lost many of his family members by the time he was a teenager, Jim Oxley who taught himself how to gamble and eventually became a professional. There was Stephen Chinazzo, who revealed to us his longstanding passion for ballroom dancing, and Jody Spaziani, who helped his mother through her battle with Alzheimer’s. Each man had a completely different story, but the themes were common: friendship, community, love, adventure, loss and acceptance.

(Stephen Chinazzo)

I see these people nearly every day, but never would have known the struggles they have endured, the joys they have experienced and the lessons they have learned had they not shared with StoryCorps. I was reminded once again of the power of telling one’s story. The ability for people to find common ground if they will take the time to stop and talk to each other. Sometimes it’s that simple.

(William Oberst)

(Jody Spaziani)

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.

As she puts it:

“We had 5 different modules, we had to make sure we didn’t drop any bits…if we dropped a bit…we’d lose track of them, they can’t get off the moon. There were times I was pretty terrified.”

Diane spent her days holed up in her office writing out computer code line by line on paper, testing it, getting stuck, asking coworkers for help, and having to explain to her managers what exactly she was doing when they traipsed by every hour or so. There was little time for peer interaction.

“It was a solitary type work…I liked it…it was like a puzzle.”

By the time of the moon landing Diane had switched to another project studying the effects of the American bombing in Saigon during the Vietnam War. It was in Saigon, curled up in bed at 3:00 in the morning with her radio tuned in, that Diane actually heard the broadcast of Neil Armstrong touching down onto the moon.

“I had been living in an apartment in Saigon, a traditional four or five story apartment, and it was a hot night in Saigon and I turned on the radio…lying there in bed…I don’t even know if I got to sleep because I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to hear it but I was also so terrified something would go wrong, but there was a huge sense of relief in giving myself a really good cry when he (Neil) was able to walk around.”

This July marked the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. A big thanks goes out to Diane and Patricia for sharing their stories and to the Contemporary Jewish Museum whose support of StoryCorps in San Francisco allowed us to capture this anniversary.

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!

And who wouldn’t be? The A.D.S. building was amazing- wooden ceilings that reached to the heavens, a beautiful garden, and a cafeteria that could house an entire army- not to mention the gym and designated movie-watching area. A place to make good friends, eat good food, and have a good time. The attitudes of the A.D.S regulars reflect their experience: they came up to the StoryCorps table talkative and curious, excited about the prospect of having their stories recorded.

(Sarah checking out the equipment)

“You mean to tell me I can talk about ANYTHING for 40 minutes?!”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“What if I wanted to talk about the hot chocolate they serve here in the cafeteria?!

“If that’s what you really want to talk about, then yes.”

“….because let me tell you, it’s AMAZING…”

Apparently the hot chocolate really was amazing, because nearly half of the participants either mentioned it or were on their way to get it. Unfortunately the full schedule of interviews didn’t allow much free time.

I’m not sure if it is the programs A.D.S. has set up or just the drinking water, but to have such genuinely happy and engaging people roaming in and out of your building all day is pretty special.

(Bob and Betsy Sweet)

Many thanks go out to The Adult Day Services Center for being such a gracious host, and to all the participants who made the trip more than worthwhile.

When Tong Kai, a 99 year old on the verge of his 100th birthday banquet, came in to tell his story, I didn’t need to speak his language to know that he has had experiences very few others on this earth have. Thanks to Mabini’s wonderful interviewer Bobby Wong, Tong Kai was able to tell his story in his native language, Cantonese.

(Bobby Wong and Tong Kai)

The San Francisco StoryBooth staff is so grateful to have been able to record the wonderful stories of people from the Mabini Day Health Center. A huge thanks goes out to Kim Gilgenberg-Castillo for scheduling and arranging these interviews, as well as to Bobby, Tammy Wong and Maelin Wang Chien for interviewing the Storytellers.

Roy Chan and Wilson Wong

A happy fellow with an undying passion for baseball, specifically the Oakland A’s, one can almost imagine Wilson as a young boy  running through the streets of Chinatown on his way to play Street Fighter 2 with his friends, stopping at his fathers barber shop to eat an after school snack. For him, Chinatown means more than it does to most people. It’s easy, Wilson describes, to get caught up in the tourist-oriented aspects of the area and forget that hard working families spend their lives struggling to keep their shops open just to make enough money to put their kids through school. The sights, the sounds, the smells; these aren’t novelties to be experienced and forgotten, they are the signs of real people doing real work.Wilson’s connection to Chinatown has grown as he has gotten older. He no longer runs through the streets on his way to ask his father for quarters for the arcade. As an employee at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center located in Chinatown, he has taken the opportunity to give back to the people and the area that were so fundamental to his upbringing. As a program assistant, he helps to perpetuate and grow the Asian cultural heritage of the greater Oakland area.A lover of music and a folk singer, Wilson points out the misconceptions and prejudices that people hold about the cultural so deeply embedded in Chinatown through song:A Chinatown Tale for You Washing dishes is my trade Fine chopsticks and fine plates All for minimum wageI work all day and I work all nightPaid vacations out of sightHere’s a Chinatown tale for you,Lovely wifeI can confessMakes her way as a seamstressWorks the same hours like meI wouldn’t have it any other wayLove her to death Working for better daysHere’s a Chinatown tale for you

A silence fell over the room as the late Studs Terkel began a soliloquy on the human voice, a passionate portrait of man’s devotion to the art of storytelling. I could tell it was well received when the audience failed to notice the bumbling amateur photographer (me) rushing to each side of the room to take essentially the same photograph. Site Supervisor Sarah Geis followed the the recording of Studs with a proper introduction loaded with audio goodies and a basic breakdown of the StoryCorps essentials.

Perri Chinalai, the StoryCorps Memory Loss Initiative (MLI) Coordinator, had trekked from our Brooklyn offices to help promote MLI throughout the Bay Area. Her relentless efforts in visiting future Door-to-Door sites and preparing for the event proved to be extremely productive and are very much appreciated by the San Francisco StoryBooth staff. It was clear afterwards from the reaction of audience that MLI will be a popular one. Thank you, Perri.

The event-goers had been primed and it was time to jump head on into the StoryCorps experience via an iphoto slide show (alright not head on, maybe a hot tub ease-in?) Patricia and I found our moment in the sun. The slide show seemed to get the crowd a little more visibly involved and hands immediately shot up the moment it ended. I always judge a good presentation by the number of questions raised afterwards. It’s encouraging to see people actively seeking information about StoryCorps and wanting to participate in the StoryCorps experience. For nearly 45 minutes afterwards, Sarah, Patricia, Perri, and myself answered questions and chatted with everyone we could. The immediate feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I came away feeling better than ever about the future of the San Francisco StoryBooth.

This is clear to anyone who happens to be in the same room (or booth) with them at any given time. Their conversation ebbs and flows with a comfort and familiarity that only comes with years of comraderie. They don’t finish each other’s sentences because they don’t need to; it’s already understood.

When they first arrived at the booth, both seemed a little unsure of exactly what it was they were getting into. The conversation started off a little timidly.

Andrea: “How are you….?”

Cathy: “I’m okay….a little nervous…”

Andrea: “Yeah, me too. Well, let’s start off with something easy, like…um…how you and I first met?”

(Andrea and Cathy)

As the minutes passed and the initial hesitancy about the situation began to wear off, Andrea asked the question that, unbenownst to me, had been lying underneath the surface from the moment the conversation began:

“Who would you say is the kindest person you’ve known?”

Cathy went on to tell the story of her late husband, Terry, who passed away 2 years ago. Left to try and repair this sudden void, Cathy stumbled upon a video that would profoundly change the direction of her life: Barack Obama’s speech on race relations in the United States. Excited about something for the first time that she could remember, Cathy immediately joined Camp Obama and began working from the ground up by phone banking and traveling to raise grassroots awareness. In the end, she was chosen as a driver for Joe Biden’s motorcade in Florida.

Throughout the conversation Andrea posed the questions that only a loved one could and listened intently as Cathy, at some moments fluid and exuberant, at others careful and reflective, laid bare the details of her life and the personal vulnerabilities she has had to confront.

As the conversation came to an end, Cathy and Andrea rose from their seats and embraced one another: a moment where words were meaningless and silence said everything.

Yes, O You! was truly a sight to see. Thousands upon thousands of people bustling throughout the 3 football field-sized floors, running from booth to booth in an attempt to find that hidden gem before someone else did. And there was the StoryCorps booth, smack dab between L’Oreal and Ameritrade. This, however, proved a blessing in disguise. While the line for free L’Oreal makeovers stretched through what seemed the entirety of the 3rd floor, StoryCorps was perfectly positioned to catch the recently-pampered as they exited the cyclone of over-sized mirrors and lipsticks.

“Hello, have you heard of StoryCorps before?”

“No….”

“We’re a national oral history project dedicated to preserving the stories and experiences of everyday people throughout the United States, we’re based in……”

“Oh, that’s fantastic! I’ve been looking for way to have my grandfather’s story recorded!”

“Oh, I wished I had done something like that before my mother passed away…”

Multiply these examples by a thousand, and you’ll get a rough estimate of the number of people who walked away from our booth with a desire to get involved. It was a combination of the most fatiguing and rewarding work I have been a part of, with the latter ultimately triumphing.

As always, Dave Isay gave a fantastic presentation. Even amongst the clutter and ambient noise, a crowd of people gathered in excitement to listen to StoryCorps clips and hear Dave speak. His presentation was followed by a book signing, coinciding perfectly with the release of Listening Is An Act of Love in paperback.

By the end of the day, we had all lost our voices after hours of chatting with event-goers. A small price to pay for the number of people who walked away having learned a new way to preserve their personal histories.