The California Report Magazine

History, Dancers and...Ghosts? North Beach's Condor Club

A former bartender at San Francisco’s Condor Club, the first topless bar in America, says the place is haunted. She describes a bottle of Hennessy that wouldn’t stay put, footsteps on empty stairs and a shadowy figure she’s sure was legendary dancer Carol Doda. “Spooked” podcast producer Zoë Ferrigno visits the North Beach club and digs into the history behind the stories, including a deadly accident that may not have been an accident at all.

One of Bay Area’s Only Desi Drag Collectives Serves Bollywood Glam and Queer Joy

Jason Sharma grew up mesmerized by Bollywood actresses but felt he couldn’t look or act like them. Raj Krishna did drag in secret in Singapore before moving to the U.S. Now they perform as Chai Auntea and Bindi Masala as a part of Masala Mahal, one of the only Desi drag collectives in the country. KQED’s Srishti Prabha follows them from a rehearsal in Oakland to a South Asian pride party in San Francisco, and delves into their response to feeling cast aside by both their own culture and mainstream drag.

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Election Roundup: Gas Prices, Latino Vote, and the 'Most Important Statewide Race?'

With Election Day around the corner, sky-high gas prices are influencing some of California’s most competitive congressional races, from San Diego County to the Central Valley. KQED politics correspondent Guy Marzorati and Political Breakdown co-host Marisa Lagos break down how Democrats and Republicans are courting Latino voters, where both parties could be falling short, and why the competition for California’s next insurance commissioner could be the “most important statewide race” this November.

LAN Parties Are Back, Clunky Computers and AllIn the Y2K era, gamers lugged their bulky monitors and towers to friends’ houses to play video games all night on a “Local Area Network.” Now LAN parties are making a comeback across California, from a Napa winery to a streetwear shop in Los Angeles. Reporter Jennifer Swann spoke with gamers – of all ages – embracing the anachronistic tech and making in-person connections.

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What Happened to the Quantified Self Movement?

Before Apple Watches and Oura rings, self-tracking was a hobby for tinkerers. In 2008, WIRED journalists Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly invited about 20 of them to a meetup in Pacifica. It grew into the Quantified Self movement — a worldwide community of people running careful experiments on their own health and habits. In this excerpt from KQED’s Close All Tabs podcast, reporter Gabriela Glueck traces how that DIY subculture went mainstream once tech companies started selling wearables.

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Oakland Pet Lovers Provide Care to Unhoused Residents’ Furry Friends

For people living outside, a trip to the vet is often out of reach. Meg McAdam's Human and Pet Initiative drives through Oakland's homeless encampments, handing out kibble and vaccinating dogs and cats for free – no questions asked. Reporter Alastair Boone rides along for a day and finds that caring for the animals is also how McAdam earns the trust of their owners. This story originally aired on KALW's "Crosscurrents."

A Humboldt County Field Trip Becomes a Race to Save a Baby Whale

When a group of Humboldt County elementary students took a field trip to their local tide pools, they expected to find crabs and sea anemones. They also witnessed a pod of orcas attack a mother whale and her calf just offshore. Teachers and students found themselves at the center of a desperate rescue when the injured calf washed up on the beach in front of them. This story was produced by KQED's Sukey Lewis and first aired on "Snap Judgment."

At Sutro Heights, Strangers Gather to Scream at the Sea

Did you just get laid off? Is your love life a disaster? Did not one, but two, of your violins get stolen? These are all good reasons to release a “guttural scream at the sea” according to Danielle Egan, who invited a crowd of strangers to join her in a collective wail at the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco.

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Ultramarathoning Helped Him Train for Life After Prison

When Cesar Quijano was paroled from Ironwood State Prison in 2022, he'd spent most of his adult life behind bars. Quijano joined a reentry program near San Diego, but he still struggled to disrupt old patterns – and to alter his path for good. Then, a new mentor suggested he take up running. Reporter Lucy Copp follows Quijano’s journey as he goes from fighting to finish a mile, to taking on a grueling 100-mile race through the mountains of San Diego. This is an excerpt from LAist Studios' podcast "Imperfect Paradise,” where the story recently won a national Murrow award.

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This SF Renter Is Trying to Beat the AI-Fueled Housing Boom With an Analog Approach

Facing a rental market where even a shared apartment can cost thousands per month, San Francisco resident Harlow Srain has spent nine months cold-calling landlords and property managers, to see if they might be willing to charge less for rent. KQED Housing Reporter Adhiti Bandlamudi follows Srain's search as she fights to stay in the community she's built, rather than move to a cheaper apartment farther away.

Inside the Unlikely Dance That Brought Two Cultures Together at San Quentin

Amu Wynn and Angel Rodriguez are both incarcerated at San Quentin, where Wynn dances with the prison's Native Hawaiian group and Rodriguez leads its Aztec Dance troupe. For the prison's annual Day of Peace, the two broke with prison norms to stage an unprecedented joint performance blending their traditions. This is an excerpt from KALW’s podcast "Uncuffed."

Meet the Woman Attempting to Swim the Entire California Coast

In July, Catherine Breed got in the ocean near the Oregon border with a goal: to swim all 900 miles of California's coastline and end near the Mexico border by October. She swims up to 15 miles a day, calling the journey her love letter to the California coast — a tribute to the women in sports who came before her.

Inside the Nation's Biggest National Park Cleanup, Now in Its Third Decade at Yosemite

Yosemite has seen record visitor numbers this year after the park dropped its reservation system. And more visitors means more garbage. Right now, thousands of volunteers are descending for its annual "Facelift" cleanup, hauling everything from cigarette butts to smashed bicycles out of the park. Susan Valot reports on the event, which has removed more than a million pounds of trash from Yosemite since its founding.

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The Speaker: A New Podcast on Nancy Pelosi's Unlikely Path to Power

Ahead of Nancy Pelosi's retirement, KQED's Scott Shafer traces her improbable 1987 rise in a new podcast The Speaker: How Nancy Pelosi Changed the Face of Power. The first episode revisits her primary against Democratic Socialist Harry Britt, who had hoped to become San Francisco's first openly gay congressman amid the AIDS crisis — a race Pelosi narrowly won on her way to becoming one of the most powerful women in American politics.

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Inside the San Francisco Church Where John Coltrane is a Saint

If Coltrane were still alive, he’d be celebrating his 100th birthday this month. In a story from our friends at KQED's Bay Curious podcast, Asal Ehsanipour visits the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco, where Reverend Franzo King and Mother Marina have spent 60 years turning the jazz legend's music into a spiritual practice. What began as a living room listening clinic in the 1960s grew into a congregation that has weathered evictions and a copyright lawsuit. Still, they persist in the belief that Coltrane's saxophone carries a divine message.

Old Timers and Newbies Look to Cash in by Panning in Gold Country

With gold prices hovering near record highs, a new wave of prospectors is showing up along California's Yuba and American rivers, joining old-timers who've been panning for generations. KQED's Katherine Monahan talks to sixth-generation miners, gold-shop owners and newcomers about whether the modern gold rush is worth the effort or mostly hype.

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We’re reprising a story from 2020 that has a lot in common with a case in Massachusetts that has recently made national headlines: the closely-watched murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of murdering her three children. Clancy’s trial has reignited a debate about how the legal system treats cases of women who kill their own children. More than a decade ago in Los Angeles, Carol Coronado killed her three daughters, all under age 3. The two tragedies are very similar: psychiatric experts argued that both Clancy and Coronado were suffering from postpartum psychosis. And lawyers for both women pursued an insanity defense. These are topics KQED health reporter April Dembosky has spent years investigating, and she discovered that over the last three decades, it’s actually gotten harder to win an insanity defense based on postpartum psychosis.

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Who's on Route 66 these days? Les Français

Route 66 is turning 100 this year, and communities around the state are gearing up for this milestone birthday. The 2,400-mile highway system stretches from Chicago to Santa Monica, and has always drawn tourists. But as KCRW’s Jennifer Swann reports, the promise of Route 66 is not exactly what it used to be.

Meet the Bald Eagles Who Inspired a Movement

A pair of majestic bald eagles named Jackie and Shadow became internet sensations after a devoted admirer set up a camera and began livestreaming their nest. Their rise to stardom sparked a movement to protect their fragile habitat above Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. But the story took a sad turn earlier this month when one of the eagles died. Host Sasha Khokha checked in with KVCR's Madison Aument about what’s next for the remaining eagle and its fans.

How One Professor is Teaching About Cesar Chavez Now

Last spring, when sexual abuse allegations first surfaced about labor leader Cesar Chavez, communities across the state took immediate action – from taking down statues to renaming buildings and painting over murals. But educators had to rethink how they taught students about the farmworker movement. Oliver Rosales teaches history and ethnic studies at Bakersfield College in Delano, where the United Farmer Workers were based. He spoke with host Sasha Khokha about how his curriculum has changed this fall.

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Detained at Green Card Interview: How a Bay Area Family Is Healing From Sudden Separation

Since the Trump Administration’s deportation campaign began last year, more than 100,000 children who are American citizens have had a parent detained, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution. Peter, who is married to an American citizen, was the main caregiver to his son when he was taken into custody at his green card interview in November 2025. As KQED early education reporter Daisy Nguyen reports, the sudden separation took a toll not only on him and his wife, but also on their developing baby.

At This Los Angeles Rehab, Moms in Recovery Live With Their Children

Mothers who struggle with addiction and substance abuse are often reluctant to get treatment because going through a rehabilitation program could mean leaving their kids behind at home. Residential rehabs that let mothers bring their kids are extremely rare. But there is one program in Southern California that’s one of the very few across the country, where moms and kids under six years old can stay together. Reporter Clare Wiley takes us inside.

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Mendocino’s Tribes, Farmers, Environmentalists Agree: Take Down Eel River’s Dams

For over a century, dams have blocked the Eel River’s natural flow of water in Northern California. Now, tribes, environmentalists and utility companies have come up with a plan to tear down the dams, as part of the “Two Basin Solution.” Reporter Sam Anderson found out what a free-running Eel River would mean for local Round Valley Indian Tribes, industry and wildlife.

In Altadena, A Youth Music Scene Crops Up from Eaton Fire’s Ashes

After the 2025 Eaton Fire destroyed thousands of homes in Los Angeles, music lovers organized fundraisers to reconnect artists with instruments lost in the fire. Now live music shows in Altadena’s vacant lots and backyards have sprouted a new scene, where teenage punk and indie bands draw audiences from across Southern California. Reporter Steven Cuevas has the story.

Looking for a Last-Minute Summer Road Trip? Try Pinnacles National Park

Pinnacles National Park doesn’t have the name recognition as Yosemite or Joshua Tree, but it stokes just as much wonder. For our Hidden Gems series, KQED outdoors reporter Sarah Wright traveled to this small park just an hour east of Monterey to find out why it's worth a summer getaway.

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What does it mean to live, work, and make decisions in a rapidly automated world?

Life, Automated explores this urgent question. It's a new podcast distributed by KQED and made by our partners at the Ryan Institute for Complexity at Northwestern University, Episodes drop every other Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts.

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San Francisco Airport’s Fear of Flying Clinic Welcomes Nervous Passengers Aboard

If your stomach drops at the thought of getting on an airplane, you’re not alone. Millions of Americans share a fear of flying. Some psychologists say the way through it is to rewire the brain, by gradually facing the very thing that feels dangerous. But you can’t just hop on a plane whenever you want to practice. That’s where a Bay Area program hosted at San Francisco International Airport can help. For nearly 50 years, they’ve been helping uneasy travelers get back in the air. Reporter Evan Roberts brings us the story from five miles up.

⁠San José’s Batman, Fighting for the Unhoused, Is the Real Life Superhero ‘We Need’⁠

If you happen to be in downtown San José at night, you might spot a man in a mask, wearing a black and purple cape and toting a cart full of supplies.. This is the Batman of San José — a volunteer who has spent nearly eight years walking the city at night to help unhoused residents. He’s a far cry from the vigilantes of comic books. He isn’t swooping from rooftops, seeking revenge or delivering justice through fists. His superpower is noticing people who feel ignored, and offering them food, first aid supplies, and sometimes, being someone they can confide in. KQED’s Srishti Prabha brings us his story.

This episode orginally aired on January 16, 2026

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Outside Sacramento, California's Largest Urban Bat Colony Takes Flight

Thousands of drivers cross a bridge to Sacramento every day, with no idea what lurks beneath them: a quarter-million Mexican free-tailed bats. Each summer at sunset, they burst out in swirling formation, drawing crowds to guided tours. As part of KQED's Hidden Gems series, reporter Srishti Prabha visits the Yolo Causeway to find out what makes these misunderstood creatures worth a closer look.

From Mono Lake to the Coast: Why These Seagulls Stay in the Bay

Whether they're stealing hamburgers or swiping ice cream cones, seagulls have earned a bad reputation. In the San Francisco Bay Area, their presence appears to be growing, as California Gulls have become year-round residents. For the Bay Curious podcast, KQED’s Pauline Bartolone found out why tens of thousands of birds ditched breeding grounds in the Eastern Sierra and have permanently relocated to the Bay.

Welcome to Nancy's Airport Cafe, Where Regulars Fly in for Pie

Along Highway 5 in Glenn County, Nancy's Airport Cafe has spent decades serving pie and hospitality to rice farmers, truckers, and pilots who fly in just for the food. As part of the California Foodways series, reporter Lisa Morehouse visited the restaurant in 2017, when walls were covered in photos of regulars, and waitresses always remembered their orders.

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This week we're featuring two of our favorite stories from the past year.

Meet the Duduk Whisperer: A Bay Area Armenian Folk Musician Revives Centuries of Soul

San Francisco Bay Area-based Khatchadour Khatchadourian is pushing the boundaries of traditional Armenian music. The vocalist and musician plays the duduk, an ancient double reed wind instrument carved from apricot wood, which has cultural ties to the country. Last October, KQED’s Elize Manoukian brought us this profile about how Khatchadourian is preserving culture through sound.

Small Ring, Big Dreams: The Central Valley’s Backyard Wrestling Underdogs

If you turn off Highway 99 just north of Stockton, you’ll find the 209 Dragon’s Den. The venue is wedged between a private home, a plant nursery and a barn, offering one of the humbler places to tangle in the independent wrestling scene. Since it launched about a year ago, it’s been drawing wrestlers from around the state. But the 209 Dragon’s Den isn’t just a place to bring the community together– it also helps wrestlers better understand themselves and their sport. In March, reporter Hannah Weaver took us ringside.

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Vinyl Album Found in San Francisco Contains Echoes of a Filipino American Love Story

Jess Garcia loves perusing San Francisco thrift stores for treasures. One day, she came across a vinyl record titled "In Baghdad By the Bay: Cora and Santos Beloy," which piqued her curiosity. She rushed home to listen and was amazed at the sweet nostalgic quality of the voices she heard. When she looked for more information on the couple she couldn't find much, but had this feeling there must be more to their story. It turns out this Filipino American couple were "San Francisco famous" in the 1970s, playing a celebrated set in the Fairmount Hotel's Tonga Room among many other gigs. In this story from KQED’s Bay Curious podcast, reporter Asal Ehsanipour found out they were also larger than life figures in their local community.

Hmong Cooking Class Gives Central Valley Youth a ‘Taste of Tradition’

Fresno is home to the second largest Hmong community in the United States, with over 80,000 residents in the Central Valley. In 1992, Kristy Xiong immigrated here from Thailand as a child and says she held on to her culture through traditional foods. Today she's teaching a monthly class that is helping young Hmong students cook these dishes to reconnect to their heritage. From the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative and KVPR, Esther Quintanilla takes us into the kitchen.

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This week on The California Report Magazine:

What Skid Row Taught Acclaimed Violinist Vijay Gupta About Music

When violinist Vijay Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at just 19 years old, he was the youngest to ever take a chair in a major orchestra in the U.S. But despite that shining achievement, he was desperately unhappy. Now in his late 30s, Gupta has a new memoir out called Restrung. It explores how, after years of struggling to live up to other people’s expectations, he found his true voice working with homeless people on the streets of Skid Row. Reporter Steven Cuevas has this profile.

⁠Life Lessons from a Game of Chess⁠

Visits with loved ones are a special time for people who are incarcerated in California. Families come from all over the state to see their loved ones for a short while, and it's one of the only opportunities incarcerated parents can connect with their kids. In this essay from the podcast Uncuffed, producer Fonuamana Fuahala recounts connecting with his son — who he hadn’t seen in years — over a game of chess.

When Chinese Flower Growers Helped the Bay Area Bloom

Santa Clara County stretches from San Jose up through Palo Alto and into the surrounding foothills. Today, it’s an area known for sprawling tech campuses and suburban neighborhoods, but for a large part of the 20th century, this landscape looked very different. Some would say it was blooming. KQED’s Gabriela Glueck brings us this story.

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‘Podcasting Democracy’ Helps Constitution Come to Life for Teens

As America gets ready to celebrate its 250th birthday, a new project called Podcasting Democracy is helping high school and middle school students engage with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Participants created a series of audio commentaries connecting how those founding documents still affect their lives today, and how they can use constitutional principles to create positive change in their own communities.The curriculum is free and available to teachers nationwide. It was written by KQED Education’s Rachel Roberson, who along with 17-year-old student Eumari King Perez sat down with host Sasha Khokha to talk about the project.

Time-Traveling Rock Opera Celebrates Pasadena

A new time traveling rock opera called Pasadena Right Here, Right Now imagines the city’s distant past, its far-off future and its fire-scarred present. Composer Russell Mark spent a year talking to dozens of locals from Pasadena and Altadena, who helped inspire the opera’s storyline. It begins in the Pasadena of the future. In the year 2125, a professor at Caltech develops a time machine to travel back to 2025 Pasadena. As reporter Steven Cuevas tells us, the multi-part song cycle blends rock instrumentation with chamber music, to create a love letter to the region.

Long Beach Man Faces Deportation to a Country He’s Never Seen⁠

Since President Trump took office, his Administration has talked about deporting criminals, even as they’ve mostly detained immigrants with no criminal background. But exactly who are those immigrants President Trump is calling the “worst of the worst?” KCRW’s Andrew Lopez met one Long Beach man who, despite spending the last 10 years turning his life around, is now facing a future in a new country— a place he’s never been.

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How a Pacifica Bar Became a Flashpoint for Queer Civil Rights

The San Francisco Bay Area is known as one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly areas in the country but it wasn’t always this way. Back in 1956, the beachside city of Pacifica was the scene of a police raid at a local bar, known to be friendly to the queer community. Hazel’s Inn’s owner, Hazel Nikola had her liquor license revoked and was arrested along with 90 of her patrons. As Ana De Almeida Amaral reports for the podcast Bay Curious, the raid would be a blueprint for law enforcement over the next 15 years.

‘Like an Angel’: Meet the Helpers Working at Bay Area Immigration Court

For decades, San Francisco was home to was Northern California’s principal immigration court. Over time, advocates built around it one of the most extensive immigrant-defense networks in the U.S. a web of nonprofit legal organizations, volunteer court companions, rapid-response groups and pro bono attorneys who help immigrants find their way through a system where they’re not guaranteed legal representation. But the Trump Administration has closed the court and by the end of this year, thousands of cases are expected to be transferred to Concord, about 30 miles to the northeast, where the immigration court is only a couple of years old and the support infrastructure around it is still developing. Sergio Jaime Lopez knows the importance of building up that network. He once stood in front of an immigration judge himself and is now one of many local advocates who are helping immigrants navigate the changing U.S. immigration system.

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