Episodes

  • D9 Supervisor Candidate Jackie Fielder, Part 2 (S7E2)

    D9 Supervisor Candidate Jackie Fielder, Part 2 (S7E2)
    Oct 29 2024
    In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Jackie considers it an honor to have worked for Lateefah Simon, who's running for Congress in the East Bay for the seat currently held by Barbara Lee. Jackie was tasked with writing memos, and she took that job and ran with it, digging deeply into the weeds of policy. What she found in the existing systems of that time piqued her curiosity around what it might mean if she herself were to enter the fray. Her life up to that point formed her world views, as these things tend to do. But the policies, she says, ticked her off. She had been studying to take the LSAT, with the idea that she would go to law school ... all while volunteering for the campaign to get Lateefah Simon elected to the BART Board. But that November, in 2016, the 45th president was elected, and everything changed ... for a lot of us, but especially for Jackie. It all threw Jackie for a loop. Standing Rock and protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAP) were also happening, which further disillusioned her. She traveled east to join the resistance. She met folks and had deep conversations with her Native American brothers and sisters. She spent time in Minnesota doing more work with indigenous folks. It all created a sense of hope despite the doom seemingly all around. She also noticed the protests in Seattle demanding Wall Street disinvestment. In February 2017, Jackie was back home, full of "let's do it" energy, ready to tackle issues in The Bay. She had moved to The City and started digging further into the weeds of policy in San Francisco. In 2018, she decided that she wanted to make a difference here at home. She helped found the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition. She was tapped to lead the campaign against the Police Officers Association's use of force measure. For that, she worked with Democratic Socialists of America San Francisco and the ACLU of Northern California. She also worked on the No on H campaign, which succeeded. Alicia Garza, cofounder of Black Lives Matter, asked Jackie to teach her class at SF State, and Jackie seized that opportunity. At State, she taught Race, Women, and Class, where she talked with students about DAP and indigenous rights, among other topics. While teaching, she also worked restaurant jobs, mostly on the Peninsula. When 2019 came around, Jackie wasn't sure what to do. Looking back, she was experiencing undiagnosed ADHD. She had a nagging feeling that year, though, that she should run for office. Someone pointed out to her that State Sen. Scott Wiener was running for election unopposed. She thought of the successful ballot measure campaigns she'd been part of. She had spent time living in her van. She'd bounced around between apartments. She decided to go for it. The Jackie Fielder for State Senate campaign was off to a good start. Then lockdown happened in March 2020. Everything about the campaign turned virutal—Zoom speeches and meetings, phone banking on another level, social media like never before. She centered issues like affordable housing, climate change, renters' rights, homelessness, education. She got the backing of teachers, iron workers, electricians, tenants' rights groups, affordable housing groups, and various progressive cultural affinity groups in SF. Jackie didn't win that race, though. She took a step back and got into therapy, where she learned about self-care and self-compassion. She got to a point where she could take better care of herself so that she could then take care of others. Jackie also started a PAC in the time between the 2020 election and now. The Daybreak PAC's main purpose is to support candidates and ballot measures that reject corporate money. Also, Stop the Money Pipeline hired her to be its communications manager in 2021. Through that work, she was able to reconnect with many folks she met years earlier in her Dakota stays. By early 2023, Jackie was co-director of the organization. This summer, in 2024, she took an official leave to come home and campaign for supervisor. Then the conversation shifts to District 9. Of all the places Jackie has lived in San Francisco, she's spent the most time in the district. She's queer and loves the embrace of her community in D9. She also notes that the American Indian Cultural District and Latino Cultural District, two groups that are a big part of her identity, are located in D9. After our mutual love fest of the Mission, we shift to issues that Jackie hopes to address as the next D9 supervisor—public safety, how best to engage law enforcement, drug use, houselessness, housing, jobs, and more. Please visit Jackie's website for more info, especially if you live in D9 (if you're not sure, look up your supervisorial district here). We recorded this episode at Evil Eye in the Mission in September 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt
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    44 mins
  • D9 Supervisor Candidate Jackie Fielder, Part 1 (S7E2)

    D9 Supervisor Candidate Jackie Fielder, Part 1 (S7E2)
    Oct 22 2024
    Jackie Fielder is quick to credit her ancestors with her life and where she is now that she's 30. In this episode, meet Jackie, who's running to be the next District 9 supervisor. District 9 includes the Mission, Bernal Heights, and the Portola. She begins by sharing the life story of her maternal grandparents, who are from Monterey in Mexico. Her grandfather worked in orange groves in Southern California, while her grandmother was a home care worker. She also did stints at See's Candies seasonally. Sadly, both grandparents passed away when Jackie was young. But she learned more about them as she grew up. On her dad's side, Jackie is Native American. Her paternal grandparents grew up on reservations in North and South Dakota. Her dad was born in Los Angeles and raised in Phoenix and went to Arizona State. He got a job as an engineer in SoCal, where he met Jackie's mom. The two met at a club in the Eighties. Her mom's first job was at Jack in the Box, where she got minimum wage. She dreamed of becoming an EMT, but that was before she met Jackie's dad. She ended up working as a secretary for a school district. Jackie is her parents' only child. She was born in 1984. Her dad joined the US Navy. When she was six, the Navy deployed him to Seattle for six months, and the strain on his marriage during that time away never really subsided. It was hard on Jackie, too, of course. When he returned home, her parents separated. Her mom took her to live across the freeway from where they'd been, in a low-income apartment community. Jackie's life changed, dramatically, she says. She was in the same schools, but stopped hanging out with her friends after school or on weekends. Her mom didn't want her playing outside much, in fact. She felt that the new area she moved her kid to was too dangerous. In her new living situation, Jackie and her mom found community. Neighbors helped one another out in myriad ways. Jackie looks back on that time as formative to who she's become as an adult. She also spent time with her mom's extended family in South Central LA. Many family members were in the LA low rider culture. Jackie was immersed in that Latino community from a young age. This also informed her world view today. ​At this point, we pivot to talk about music—how it came into her life and what it means to Jackie. She grew up around disco and Motown, Spice Girls and the Men in Black soundtrack, CCR, TLC, Backstreet Boys. In middle school, Jackie found alt rock. She saw Foo Fighters with her mom. Jackie attended public schools the entire time. She was a good student, got good grades, liked her teachers and they liked her. In hindsight, she wishes she had engaged with sports besides soccer, which she played from age 4 or 5. She says that in Southern California, sports were as important as academics. There were something like 4,000 students at her high school, 900-something in her graduating class. But despite this, Jackie didn't simply receive her education passively. She was on an AP track and did community service work with other students. ​In high school, Jackie worked to establish gardens in elementary schools in her area. She paints the picture of having been such a quote-unquote "good kid" that I ask if she ever had a bad streak or a time when she got anything out of her system. She says not really, but then I half-jokingly suggest that maybe her life in electoral politics is just that. College was expected, though she wasn't sure where she'd end up going to school. She didn't think Stanford was a possibility. Berkeley was her goal, but she didn't get in. Friends and community, though, convinced her to apply to Stanford. She did, and she got it. Thus was Jackie Fielder's move north. ​Originally, she planned to do pre-med in her undergrad years. The motivation behind that plan was wanting to help people. But being interested in education thanks to her mom's work, she attended a talk on public policy and college admissions that opened her eyes, both to the larger societal issue and to her own experience getting admitted to Stanford. She really started thinking about how race and class factor into policy, both public and private. This led to an imposter syndrome-type feeling in her place at college. Still, despite that, she made friends at Stanford, some she's close with today. I note that it's my belief that Jackie is really, really smart (I've listened to and read many things she's said and written, and seriously ...), and suggest that she's driven to knowing things by virtue of a deep curiosity about how systems work. Jackie agrees about that motivating factor, and points to 9/11 and watching a lot of Travel Channel. Both experiences teleported her to different parts of the world, and left her with a deep desire to learn and know about how people organize themselves into societies. Her father was redeployed after 9/11, and that, too, had an effect on young Jackie. But back to her move upstate...
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    39 mins
  • SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Part 2 (S7E1)

    SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Part 2 (S7E1)
    Oct 15 2024
    In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Aaron talks about volunteering at a nonprofit in The City called the Trust for Public Land, where he learned about land acquisition for parks and open spaces. Through that gig, he got a paid internship and eventually, a job. In fact, he met Nancy, the woman he would later marry, there. He eventually moved into Nancy's apartment in North Beach, his first apartment in SF. The move came shortly after the couple visited Nepal to climb in the Himalayas. It was October 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake happened. We fast-forward to 2000, the year I moved to San Francisco. I set the stage for my first brush with Aaron at this point in the recording. My first apartment was on California Street near Larkin. The cable car runs on that block. One day, still very new in The City, I spotted a politician on a cable car campaigning. Back then, I had no idea what the Board of Supervisors was. But lo and behold, it was Aaron Peskin, campaigning for his first term on the Board. Aaron then tells the story from his point of view, backing up just a few years. In his time at the Trust for Public Land, he worked with elected officials often. He learned his way around Sacramento and DC. But more pertinent to this story, Aaron also worked with a North Beach tree-planting organization—Friends of the Urban Forest, in fact—and the Telegraph Hill Dwellers to be specific. The work involved getting volunteers together, convincing folks who'd lived in the neighborhood for decades to plant trees on the sidewalks in front of their houses. It was the late-Nineties. The first dotcom boom was still happening. Willie Brown was at the height of his mayoral power. Chain stores were trying their hardest to move into North Beach. Aaron remembered that he knew the mayor from his work with the trust, and got a meeting with Brown. He brought several disparate groups together with the mayor. Brown told Peskin, "If you don't like the way I run this town, why don't you run for office?" From that dismissive comment, Aaron got involved in the upstart mayor campaign, in 1999, of Supervisor Tom Ammiano. Through this, he met many folks from many grassroots and neighborhood organizations. Ammiano, a write-in candidate, forced a December runoff, which he lost to Willie Brown. But the experience transformed Aaron Peskin. Ammiano urged Aaron to run for the DCCC shortly after the election. Looking over what he'd already accomplished, he ran and got a seat on the committee. It was March 2000. That fall would see the resumption of supervisor district elections, vs. at-large contests where the top-11 vote-getters won seats on the Board that had been in place since 1980. Again, Ammiano nudged Aaron to run for the newly created District 3 supervisor seat. He thought, Why not try once? He won the seat. Aaron credits campaign volunteers with earning that victory. He ended up serving two four-year terms as the D3 supervisor. We fast-forward a bit through those eight years. Highlights include Matt Gonzalez's run for mayor in 2003, Aaron's dive into areas of public policy he had been uneducated on prior to his time in office, and bringing people together to get stuff done. I ask Aaron if it's all ever overwhelming. He says yes, and rattles off the various ways—hiking, canoeing, yoga— he deals with that. We talk about his addiction to alcohol as well, something he's kicked for the last three years. Aaron was termed out in 2008, and says he saw it as the end of a chapter of his life. He ran for the DCCC again, where he won a seat and was the chair of that group from 2008–2012. He helped get out the vote for Barack Obama in 2008, working to send volunteers to Nevada. After 2012, he figured he was totally finished with politics. He went back to the Trust for Public Land. But then a funny thing happened. Aaron's chosen successor for D3 supervisor, David Chiu, won the seat and took over after Aaron was termed out in 2008. Then, in 2014, Chiu ran for an California Assembly seat and won. Then-Mayor Ed Lee appointed Julie Christensen. A special election in late-2015 saw Peskin run against Christensen, mostly at the urging of Rose Pak. He won that election, as well as the "normal" district election the following year. By the end of this year, he'll be termed out again. Highlights of Aaron's second stint on the Board of Supervisors, for him, include: He's become the senior member of the Board, having served with 42 different other members. He's also come to relish the role of mentor for new supervisors. He goes over a litany of other legislation he's either written or helped to get passed Moving forward to the issues of today and Aaron's run for mayor, he starts by praising the Board and the Mayor's Office for coming together to deal with COVID. Then he talks about ways that he and Mayor London Breed have worked together in their times in office. And then we get into ...
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    43 mins
  • SFFILM's Doc Stories 2024 w/Jessie Fairbanks (S7 Bonus)

    SFFILM's Doc Stories 2024 w/Jessie Fairbanks (S7 Bonus)
    Oct 11 2024

    Around this time last year, I covered my first film festival, SFFILM's Doc Stories. The screenings and other events all took place at The Vogue Theater, which is just a short walk from where I live. Long story short, I was hooked. Since then, I've covered SFFILM's International Film Festival, CAAM, and Frameline this year.

    And so I wasn't going to pass up a chance to speak again with Director of Programming at SFFILM Jessie Fairbanks.

    In this bonus episode, Jessie talks about this year's Doc Stories, the 10th such festival that SFFILM has put on to celebrate documentary filmmaking. Learn all about this year's programming, which includes many films and talks I'm hoping to attend.

    Event Details
    Thursday, Oct. 17–Sunday, Oct. 20
    All screenings held at The Vogue Theater
    Go to SFFILM's website to learn more and buy tickets

    We recorded this bonus episode over Zoom in October 2024.
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    29 mins
  • SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Part 1 (S7E1)

    SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Part 1 (S7E1)
    Oct 8 2024
    Aaron Peskin is incredibly easy to talk with. And his life story is one you have to hear to believe. In this podcast, Episode 1 of Season 7 of Storied: San Francisco, the multi-term D3 supervisor-slash-president of the Board of Supervisors-slash-current candidate for mayor of San Francisco shares his story, beginning with the tales of his parents and their families' migration to the United States. On Aaron's mom's side, the story goes back to Russia. His maternal grandfather was one of five boys born to a Jewish family in Saint Petersburg. Two of the boys stayed in Russia, one came to San Francisco, and the other two migrated across Russia amid revolutionary upheaval there to the Mediterranean and later, to Haifa in Palestine. Aaron's grandfather ended up in Tel Aviv. His mom was born there in 1940, when it was still Palestine. She migrated to the US in 1963 to visit her sister, who taught at a temple in Oakland. Aaron's mom ended up meeting his dad on that fateful trip, and the two were married five weeks later. On his dad's side, his grandparents came to the US from Poland before the Nazi invasion in 1939, arriving in New York City where they ran a candy store. Aaron's dad went to City College of New York, where he graduated and got into UC Berkeley grad school for psychology. On his bus ride west, though, the elder Peskin got drafted to serve the US Army in its war in Korea. After service, he finished his doctorate at Berkeley and got a job teaching at SF State, where he stayed for 40 years until he retired. Aaron goes on a sidebar about running into many of his dad's students from over the years, something that happens to him up to this day. His parents settled in Berkeley shortly after they got married, in 1963. They had Aaron in 1964. As a kid, in the 1970s, he remembers some of the goings on at SF State, when student-led protests and sit-ins were happening and the Ethnic Studies was founded. Back in the East Bay, Aaron attended the first fully integrated public school class in Berkeley. One of his classmates, from kindergarten through third, was none other than Kamala Harris. (See photos in the episode post on our website!) Aaron's younger brother is a professor at Arizona State University. Both his parents ended up in higher education. He calls himself the "black sheep" of his family in this regard, as he "only" ended up with a bachelor's degree. Both parents were also therapists, something they carried on amid their academic careers. Growing up in the 1970s, the family spent significant time in The City, coming over as often as possible from their home in Berkeley. Aaron rattles off a litany of activities his parents engaged him and his brother in when they were young. He says that his time in high school in the East Bay was idyllic. He went to Berkeley High, still the only high school in that city. He fell in with a group of four other boys who took weekend hiking and backpacking trips as much as possible. Also around this time, in his later teen/high school years, Aaron popped over to San Francisco to do things like see kung-fu movies in Chinatown or go to The Keystone to see The Cure and punk bands. He saw The Greg Kihn Band, Talking Heads, and other legendary groups at places like the Greek Theater and Mabuhay Gardens. He graduated Berkeley High in 1982, though he and a handful of friends got out a semester earlier than everyone else. They packed up a van, the five of them, and drove around the Western United States and Canada for 100 days. They ended their trip spending the night in the van in the Berkeley High parking lot. The friend group then scattered, predictably, with Aaron and a couple others heading down to UC Santa Cruz. In his freshman year, he and a friend took the spring semester off and rode their bikes from California to North Carolina and up to Washington, DC, as you do. Santa Cruz was different enough from home, but not too far away. The school provided a challenging academic environment for him, also. He ended up studying animal behavior, specifically the northern elephant seal. Through that program, he lived with a team in experimental housing on Año Nuevo Island off the San Mateo coast doing research. But physical chemistry precluded Aaron from going for a marine biology degree. He instead got into a liberal arts program called "Modern Society and Social Thought." While he was going to school in Santa Cruz, he experienced his first political awakening. Aaron was involved in the effort to make the banana slug become the school's official mascot. The student government wanted the slug, but the chancellor wanted the elephant seal. Aaron had the idea of putting the decision to a vote of the student body. They put ballot boxes all over campus, and the slug won overwhelmingly. But the chancellor rejected the results. News articles helped the students' cause, and they won in the end. During his college years, he travelled to Asia on money he'd saved from a job ...
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    33 mins
  • Jeff Talks About Season 7 of Storied: San Francisco

    Jeff Talks About Season 7 of Storied: San Francisco
    Oct 1 2024

    Look at that gorgeous updated logo! Many thanks to my friend Lisa Wong Jackson for enhancing Jim Murphy's design from 2017.

    In this special episode, Jeff talks about what to expect in Season 7 of the podcast—what's changing and what's staying the same.
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    15 mins
  • Michael "Spike" Krouse/Madrone Art Bar, Part 2 (S6E21)

    Michael "Spike" Krouse/Madrone Art Bar, Part 2 (S6E21)
    Aug 20 2024
    Part 2 picks up where we left off in Part 1. Spike shares details of his West Coast road trip, the one where he shopped for a city to move to and possibly lay down roots. It was 1993 and, of all those West Coast cities, San Francisco won. "The energy, the feeling that you belonged, the creative draw," they all contributed to Spike's decision to move to The City. "This is where I wanted to be," he says. He had $600 to his name, which was possible back then. He rented a basement room and got a job at SF Golf Club as a caddie. Spike saw an ad for a creative assistant at an advertising agency in the newspaper, and he got the interview. The other candidates came prepared with portfolios. They were all design-school grads. Not Spike. He brought in painted golf balls and comics. John McDaniels (famous for the well-known "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?" ads) ran the agency and hired Spike. They bonded over comics, of all things. They became friends in the two years Spike worked for John, and enjoyed (I mean, really enjoyed) lunch together every Friday. Then, in 1995, a New York agency bought the firm and hoped to force John into retirement. They took Spike to lunch and offered him more money and a promotion. But Spike saw how they thought of his mentor, and decided to bail. He took a buyout and went to Paris for a year, where he drew comics and took language classes. He tried to get his comic, Man vs. Woman, syndicated in newspapers. That didn't work out, but it was a learning experience. And so Spike came back to his 4,000-square-foot loft in South of Market, kept the comics going, and got a job bartending at many places all over SF. One of the places he sent his single-panel comics to was The New Yorker. He'd included a bottle of wine in one of his shipments, and that helped him stand out. Spike got an invitation to the magazine's office the next time he was in NYC. Folks at the table that day told him to go experience life, but keep doing comics. One of the things they told him to do was paint. And so, upon his return to The City, Spike picked up a paint brush. Eventually, he started to earn a master's degree in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute (RIP), but never graduated. He made important connections at the school, though, and picked up skills along the way. He kept bartending while going to SFAI. When he stopped going to grad school, he realized that his life had two streams—bars on the one hand, and art on the other. In 1997, his buddy Alex had the idea to take over what was called Jack's, a bar/venue at the corner of Fillmore and Geary. Alex asked Spike to help open the new spot—newly dubbed The Boom Boom Room—and Spike agreed. They started with the gutted shell of a space. They aimed to create a classic Fillmore-style juke joint, a throwback to the incredible legacy of the neighborhood. Folks from the hood brought in photos of old spots, and Alex and Spike did their best to simulate that look and feel. Through his time with Alex opening The Boom Boom Room, Spike started to get to know so many musicians, some of whom play at Madrone to this day. After Boom Boom opened, though, Spike went on to bartend at other spots around town, places like Tunnel Top, Tony Nik's, and Paragon. A new baby, his first kid, was on the way, and he tried to figure out a way to make more money. Managing a place could mean more money, but he also didn't want to manage for anyone else. He wanted to be his own boss. For the next five years, Spike developed a vision of what it could mean to have his own place. Along the way, he'd sometimes stop in at The Owl Tree and chat with the owner. He thought, "I could do a place like this." He mentioned buying the place from Bobby, who owned it. But Bobby wasn't ready. Then Bobby told Spike, "OK, when I'm ready, I'll sell it to you. But I'm not done!" Bobby died a month after that, and so it never happened. Then the spot that would become Madrone became available. Starting in 2004, the Madrone Lounge opened. Spike would come to the hood a lot and liked the place. He knew the original owner, Layla, from their time at SFAI. Spike and I sidetrack just a bit to talk about the history of the building and the space. Built in 1886, it was formerly a pharmacy. That shut down after the 1989 earthquake, and Burger King, who wanted a 30-year lease, wanted to take over. But folks in the immediate area opposed that plan. It was then that Layla got a liquor license and opened Madrone Lounge. Layla ran the place for the first four years, until the day-in, day-out took its toll. And so she began to think about selling the place, but not to just anybody. She wanted the new owner to share a similar vision of what the place could be. Needless to say, that person was none other than Spike Krouse. But it didn't happen overnight. Spike wasn't able to get the money together, but they had talked about the place enough that Layla came to ...
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    35 mins
  • Michael "Spike" Krouse/Madrone Art Bar, Part 1 (S6E21)

    Michael "Spike" Krouse/Madrone Art Bar, Part 1 (S6E21)
    Aug 13 2024
    Michael "Spike" Krouse's arrival on this planet was something of a miracle for his parents. In this episode, get to know the founder of Madrone Art Bar (currently one of my favorite places in San Francisco). Spike's dad, a fighter pilot who flew missions in World War II, was much older than his mom. He flew for the Navy when the U.S. went to war with Korea as well. He ended up stationed in Alameda. When he retired from the Navy, in 1967, he took a job in Las Vegas, where the pay was good and the housing was affordable. His dad was director of operations for a nuclear test site in Nevada. Over the years, he dealt with his share of PTSD, and to cope, started gambling. Spike's mom was born in Paris during the German occupation of that city. Her father was "on a train," meaning he was headed to a concentration camp. He ended up being liberated from Dachau years later, but the experience took a toll on him—mentally, physically, and spiritually. He passed away and his family was devastated. Spike's mom, then an infant, was sent to live in the basements of different churches. Her earliest memory is of Allied troops liberating Paris in 1944. US troops handed out chocolate bars to French kids along the Champs-Elysees. When she was 13, she followed her older brother to Israel. After that, she migrated to Italy, where she was recruited to do TV commercials. With that success, Spike's mom moved back to Paris, where she danced for a living. She got into some movies, also. With that, travel picked up—New York, LA, and eventually, Las Vegas. In Vegas, she ended up doing a one-woman burlesque dancing show. Maybe you can see where this story is headed, but Spike's dad was in the audience at one of these shows. Soon after this, the two headed up to San Francisco and got married. Spike was born about a year later. By his dad, Spike has a half-brother and a half-sister, who was close to his mom in age (his sister has since passed away). But it was his mom's first marriage and Spike was her first, and only, kid. Spike says that the Vegas where he grew up was more like a small town where everyone knew each other. It was nothing like it is today, in other words. Among other activities, Spike and his friends would lock up their bikes and go pool hopping at the various casino resorts back in the 1980s. His family traveled around a bit when Spike was a kid. They visited his aunt and uncle (his mom's siblings) in Paris several times. Because his mom was born in France during German occupation, she hadn't been given citizenship at birth. But in the early 1990s, thanks to a reparations trial, that happened. And it extended down to her offspring and their offspring. Today, Spike's kids enjoy French citizenship, as does he. The family also visited San Francisco, when Spike was around nine or 10. He remembers riding cable cars and going to Fisherman's Wharf. They'd travel places in their pop-top van that was equipped with an RV hookup. They also went to San Diego, where his dad received cancer treatments around the time Spike was 13. In his high school years, he and his friends threw lots of parties, and Spike was the one who made flyers for these shindigs. There'd be illicit boxing matching between rival schools. There'd be kegs, there'd be gambling. He was into New Wave and metal, but his taste was really all over the board. Thanks to his parents, there was jazz at home, Serge Gainsbourg, Edith Piaf. And he'd go to all-ages clubs in Vegas. Spike never really played instruments, though. His talents around music were mostly visually artistic. He played sports—football, baseball, golf. As a kid, he and his friends stole golf balls from a nearby course. His punishment was to hit balls at a driving range for two months. Thanks to this, he got pretty good at the sport. But, especially by the time he went off to college, sports took a backseat to throwing parties. College meant Marquette University in Milwaukee. Spike talks about the art scene in Milwaukee and how much he liked it. His school didn't offer any art degrees, otherwise he would have majored in that. But someone at Milwaukee's art museum had amassed quite a collection of German Expressionist art, and Spike liked to check that out. He says he chose the school partly because it was so far from Las Vegas. He shares the story of a ballroom in Milwaukee that he rolled into looking for work. It was his first foray into the business side of parties. He was only 18, but that was OK back then. He got a job barbacking, and three months in, got promoted to bartender when someone called in sick. There was a Vegas connection to the place—it was part of a money-laundering ring that involved cash from casinos in Nevada. So, in a sense, Spike was right back where he started. Sort of. The place had big-name acts at its upstairs, 2,500-seat venue. Acts like Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the up-and-coming Smashing Pumpkins. ...
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    33 mins