Played around with a disposable film camera during @bringchangetomind ’s Revels and Revelations, to the delight of everyone who lived through the 90s. Read what Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Sarah Silverman had to say about Robin Williams, Mister Rogers, and destigmatizing mental health at @sfexaminer 📰
Photos by me, except the photo of me c/o @drewaltizerphotography
We started Hella Local because we love San Francisco — it’s where dreams become reality and magic happens daily. It’s in the people, the food, the stories, and the foggy air itself. Everything we do is because San Francisco made it possible ✨
- Johnny and Ali
#ITALLSTARTSHERESF
April is the @nobhillgazette ’s annual travel issue, and I had the great honor of writing this year’s cover story about San Francisco’s sister cities, including in depth explorations of Seoul, Taipei, Barcelona, and Sydney. As I write in the 10-page story, “Sister cities are, in essence, mirrors. And San Francisco has chosen her reflections carefully.”
The piece is out now at nobhillgazette.com, and in print. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read my work ✨
San Franciscans finding the @sfgiants 9-9-9 Challenge at @oraclepark disappointing is proof that small wieners and minimal alcohol are not part of the City’s culture ❌
If you really want to slam 9 hot dogs and 9 beers in 9 innings, do it the old fashioned way like I tried (and failed).
Over the past few years, I’ve been quietly working on a documentary called Kings For A Day, an intimate portrait of a 400-year-old Maya tradition that exists both in the highlands of Guatemala and within immigrant communities in California. At its center is the annual Skach Koyl horse race in Todos Santos Cuchumatán, a ritual of music, costume, intoxication, and complete chaos that becomes a rare moment of collective release and unity. What began as curiosity has grown into a deeply personal project about what it means to carry culture across borders in a time when those borders are increasingly politicized.
This film feels urgent right now because immigration in the U.S. is so often discussed through fear, soundbites, and abstraction rather than lived experience. Gaining access required years of returning, listening, and building trust within a community shaped by civil war, genocide, and displacement. Beneath the wild spectacle of the race is a slower, character-driven story about family and belonging. As the trailer launches, I’m looking for thoughtful partners, collaborators, and anyone who feels connected to this story and wants to learn more or help bring Kings For A Day into the world.
Thank you to those who helped make this possible. Please check out the link in my bio for a full sized version of the trailer and more info, otherwise stay tuned!
Thanks to my parents working in San Francisco and California politics since before I was born, I hear, “I remember when you were only this tall!” fairly frequently. But it hits different coming from the one and only Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi 😆
Growing up in San Francisco, I thought the firefighters’ red toy barrels were as standard as eating It’s-Its in summertime, but it turns out these are local traditions that set us apart.
It was a joy to join @sffdlocal798 at the union hall for the launch of this year’s @sfftoyprogram , the oldest of its kind in the country, and to share in their feast of cioppino (another San Francisco invention), this year made by Station 11. Thank you to program director Mike Guajardo for helping me with this article, and to everyone in the San Francisco Fire Department for everything you do for our city! 🚒
