Death, Doulas, and Digital Afterlives

Dying often involves a set of choices, rituals, and conversations we tend to avoid until we can’t. In the Bay Area, people are confronting that reality head-on: talking openly in “death cafés”, seeking natural burials, flying loved ones home across borders to honor final wishes. On this episode of North Gate Radio, 5 reporters examine death and dying in The Bay and Silicon Valley’s promise of digital immortality.

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Accuracy and availability of North Gate Radio transcripts vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. The authoritative record of North Gate Radio’s programming is the audio record.

Host/reporter Haydee Barahona: It can be scary to think about death. We plan weddings for months. Births, with entire teams. But death? Do you think about death?

(short music interlude)

Host/reporter Gabriel Lopez: I unfortunately think about death all the time.

Haydee Barahona: I honestly don’t really think about it that often, but when I do, it is pretty scary.

[Music]

Gabriel: From Silicon Valley to the Muir Woods, death in the Bay Area is as diverse as its life. 

Haydee: Death here has an economy

Emily Miller: “ The vault is one of the highest ticket items. In the typical markup, could be two and a half or three times. So that’s a huge source of revenue.”

 Gabriel: An ecology

Sonia Getz: “ When the family is present for the burial. The grounds crew is gonna put all the soil back with a shovel, like by hand, not with a machine.”

Haydee: And its fair share of challenges. 

Marielle Cuison:  ”If she was buried in the Philippines, that means it would be a little harder for like my sister and I to go and visit her all the time or put flowers on her grave.”

Haydee Barahona: I’m Haydee Barahona, 

Gabriel Lopez: and I’m Gabriel Lopez, and you’re listening to Northgate Radio. A radio show and podcast produced by students at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. In this episode five journalists do a postmortem on death, doulas, and digital afterlives in the Bay Area. 

[Music up and out]

HAYDEE BARAHONA: Host intro: Twelve strangers in the East Bay come together to talk all things death — and nothing is off the table. Reporter Daniela Sandoval went to Oakland to meet with a woman who is both a hospice volunteer and hosts Death Cafe.

DANIELA: Leslie Howard is a yoga instructor and hospice volunteer who hosts Death Cafe at Nest Yoga in the Piedmont neighborhood in Oakland. She explains how she first became interested in this work.

LESLIE HOWARD: One of my longtime yoga students was diagnosed with stage four uterine cancer, and I’d been seeing her privately for over a decade. We were very close and I thought, how could I serve her best? And I decided to take a death doula training, which is basically someone who is the supporter of the dying person, um, that goes a little bit beyond what hospice does.

DANIELA: Death doulas provide even more emotional support and help the dying manage end-of-life logistics.

DANIELA: Is there something in your experience that you found surprising about death or the experience of dying?

LESLIE HOWARD: It’s actually not as hard as I thought it was gonna be.

LESLIE HOWARD: I have had the good fortune — and I know this isn’t the case for all hospice volunteers — but everyone that I have been assigned to has been ready to go, has been okay with it.

LESLIE HOWARD: Anyway, in the training is where I heard about Death Cafe.

DANIELA: The practice started in London in 2011, founded by Jon Underwood, who was inspired by Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz and his “café mortel” gatherings.

LESLIE HOWARD: The idea is basically to bring people who are interested in this not being a taboo subject, um, and a place where you might not be able to talk about certain things, to come together and be able to talk about it. Anything about death.

DANIELA: And it resonated. By the next year, Death Cafes were happening in the United States, too.

[background sound of people entering the Death Cafe – Leslie explains that it will only be 12 people in the group today.]

DANIELA: On an afternoon day in October, twelve people meet up for Death Cafe at Nest Yoga. It’s the light-filled studio where Leslie usually teaches. Some sip tea, others nibble on gluten-free cookies, and slowly, everyone settles in.

[background sound of people entering the Death Cafe and Leslie offering gluten-free and gluten-full cookies and hot water for tea]

DANIELA: Out of respect for privacy, I’m not allowed to record the group’s conversation. Instead, what you’ll hear are my reflections on what it’s like and what I took away from the experience.

[sound of people entering the Death Cafe and settling into the space]

DANIELA: Before entering I take off my shoes. Metal chairs are organized in a circle. I sink into one, feet flat on the ground, palms resting on my knees.

LESLIE HOWARD: The first thing we do is just introduce ourselves and just, you know, give a minute of why we’re there.

DANIELA: As people take turns introducing themselves, my nerves start to rise, and I find myself rehearsing what to say over and over in my head. I was the third-to-last person to go.

DANIELA: I share my name — Daniela — and that I grew up Mexican, in a culture that celebrates death and even jokes about dying.

LESLIE HOWARD: And then it just kinda, um, you’ve heard the expression “popcorns around the circle.” You know, somebody says something and that sparks something somebody else wants to say. It can be about the afterlife, it can be about end of life. You know, we get a fair amount of people who are taking care of people who are dying and just want to be heard as like, this is really hard.

DANIELA: I recorded an audio diary after the Death Cafe ended. Here is my retelling of what I shared in the circle.

DANIELA: I spoke about how I think that at the end of my life, I will meet with my ancestors. For sure, the people that I know are waiting for me are my grandparents, both on my paternal and maternal side. And it’s just like, I don’t know, maybe it’s helpful to think that there will be an afterlife, and that someone is waiting for me.

LESLIE HOWARD: Most people don’t wanna think about their death, which is understandable. But at the same time, if you think about it, it makes it so much easier for the people around you because otherwise they’re trying to guess what you might like.

DANIELA: I’d always thought I was comfortable with the idea of dying, but this gathering is making me realize there were a few things I’m not quite ready to face. This is the first time I really gave thought to how my friends and family might process my passing.I’m imagining the way they would grieve, and continue living without me… and that feels really heavy.

[sound of people leaving the yoga studio mixed with transition music – attendee thanks someone for inviting them to the death cafe.]

DANIELA: Leaving Death Cafe, I felt a quiet kind of gratitude. These conversations aren’t easy, but sitting in that room with strangers, sharing stories and listening without judgment, I understood why Leslie does this work. Talking about death for an hour didn’t make it less real, or that much easier to process, but I did walk away with a greater appreciation for all that life has to offer.

[ambi sound of people leaving the yoga studio, transition music up]

DANIELA: For North Gate Radio on KALX, I’m Daniela X. Sandoval.

[transition music ends]

Gabriel Lopez: When some immigrant families in the Bay Area experience the death of a loved one, honoring their final wishes could mean sending them back to their home country to be laid to rest. Haydee Barahona reports on what it takes to transport a loved one’s remains to a different country, and how that helps families grieve.

Haydee Barahona: It’s a dark evening in Marielle Cuison’s apartment as she lights a candle. 

[sound of candles being lit and Cuison putting things on her grandfather’s alter]

She places it on top of her altar, a small shelf with prayer cards and photos of family members who have passed. Cuison is a death doula, and she made the altar back in 2018, two years after her grandfather died. It’s her way of still being in his presence, even when she can’t visit his grave.

Marielle Cuison: I had found his picture when we were going through, like finding photos of him after he died. There was something about this that just stood out to me and I wanted to keep, and I think it’s because it’s just him. And it’s in the house that he had designed. So he, like, designed this whole house and and it’s, like, in the town where he grew up.

Haydee Barahona: And was that the same home that his wake was at?

Marielle Cuison: Yeah. So this is the outside area, but then inside that direction was the living room, and that’s where his wake was.

Haydee Barahona: When Cuison’s grandfather died, his family already knew how he wanted to be honored. He had talked openly about death for years and asked for a viewing in the Bay Area so his family and friends could celebrate his life.

Marielle Cuison: They loaded his casket into the hearse and then we were just like, “Okay, see you in the Philippines.”

Haydee Barahona: Because his final wish was to be buried in his home country: the Philippines.

Marielle Cuison: One thing that he was very specific about was in the Philippines, where his parents are buried and his sister is buried, there’s a spot there. And he would point to it and say, “Oh, this is where I’m gonna be buried. Like, this is where I’m gonna be.”

Haydee Barahona:  A few days after his celebration of life, here in the Bay, Cuison and her family arrived in the Philippines to prepare for her grandfather’s wake.

Marielle Cuison: I still remember the moment that they brought his coffin. It really felt like full circle. Like, it’s like he’s finally home, like literally home at his house, but also just back in the Philippines.

Haydee Barahona: For some immigrant families, honoring a deceased loved one’s wishes can involve laying them to rest in their home country. Melissa Castañeda is a funeral director at Duggan Serra Mortuary, a Bay Area funeral home that specializes in transporting human remains. They transport internationally to places like the Philippines, Mexico, Central America and Egypt.

Melissa Castañeda: Most of the time it’s because this is not where they were born, and so their goal is to be at rest in their home country. Another factor that comes into play is going to be their family. So maybe mom, dad, brothers, sisters, children are back home, and so they want to be able to say goodbye to their loved one there as well.

Haydee Barahona: Castañeda says its a process that can take up to two weeks. There’s a lot of paperwork to fill out. Each country has different requirements when it comes to shipping human remains. It can also get expensive. Duggan Serra Mortuary estimates that a cargo flight to ship a body to the Philippines, for example, can cost about $3,000 alone. And on top of that…

Melissa Castañeda: You have to purchase a casket, you have to pay for the flight, you have to pay for the paperwork, the consulate, maybe it’s multiple family members that also have to get there.

Haydee Barahona: Castañeda says families have the option to either transport the full body out or send cremated remains, which is less expensive.

But she says those with strong cultural and religious practices tend to opt for a full-body ship out rather than cremation, regardless of the cost.

That’s what Cuison’s family did with her grandfather. She says that part wasn’t too difficult because he had been clear about his wants and saved money to make that happen.

Marielle Cuison: It allowed my family just to, like, grieve and not have to, like, scramble for money, ’cause I feel like the financials always add an extra burden to families. That’s like another cloud kind of like raining on you.

Haydee Barahona: But, it wasn’t totally smooth. Cuison says her family ran into logistical challenges when it came to traveling to the Philippines to attend his burial.

Marielle Cuison: Not everyone was able to just like buy a ticket right away, take time off work, or like, if they were taking care of someone, you know, everyone had different circumstances

Haydee Barahona: Cuison says she learned a lot about death from this experience with her grandfather. And, she was so inspired that, at 28, she trained to become a death doula in 2018. Ever since, she’s helped about 50 people and encouraged her living family members to talk more about death and how they want to be laid to rest. 

[musical scoring sneaks in here and fades under the rest of this story]

She’s been in conversation with her mom about her end-of-life ideas. So far, her mom’s plans are looking different from her grandfather’s.

Marielle Cuison: If she was buried in the Philippines, that means it would be a little harder for like my sister and I to go and visit her all the time or put flowers on her grave. So she had considered like, you know, if she’s cremated and then maybe we scatter her ashes like in Lake Tahoe, ’cause she loves Lake Tahoe, then it’s like we can always just visit Lake Tahoe or visit like anything that helps us feel connected to her.

Haydee Barahona: Their family doesn’t have it all figure out yet, but Cuison continues to use what she learned from her grandfather’s death to help her mother and others prepare for when that time comes. For North Gate Radio, I’m Haydee Barahona.

[music transition up and ends]

Gabriel Lopez : When someone you love dies, the decisions come fast. You’re tired. You’re grieving. And suddenly, you’re sitting across from a funeral director being asked how someone should spend eternity. Most people pick what they’re told to pick. A polished casket. A sealed vault. But what if there was another way?

Reporter Sophia Cutino went to Fernwood Cemetery in Mill Valley, one of the few places that offers natural alternatives to traditional burials in the Bay Area. 

SOPHIA CUTINO: Fernwood Cemetery sits on a hill dotted with native oak trees  amidst meadows and bay forests. 

[OUTDOOR sounds, birds chirping]

It’s hard to tell whether this is a cemetery or a park.  Fernwood’s funeral arranger, Sonia Getz points out how wildlife here is thriving…

SONIA GETZ: This is a place that offers food, shelter. Place to raise their young. And we also don’t cut like the grass, because the beauty of this place comes from the natural surroundings. 

SOPHIA CUTINO: Here, you can lay your loved one to rest. by returning their body completely into the earth. No concrete vault. No embalming. And if there’s a casket…Well… Sonia says only natural wood is allowed. This work is personal for her. She lost her dad when she was young and she says her mom…

SONIA GETZ: She felt a lot of pressure when my dad passed away to Buy a more expensive casket, the funeral director she was working with pressured her in that way, which is a horrible thing.

SOPHIA CUTINO: Emily Miller, is a licensed funeral director, who started her career, working in funeral homes, here, in the East Bay.

EMILY MILLER: For me it’s an economic story.

SOPHIA CUTINO: She is now the founder of Colorado’s first environmental Burial Preserve and on the Board of Directors of the Green Burial Council. 

EMILY MILLER: The vault is one of the highest ticket items. The typical markup could be two and a half or three times. So, that’s a huge, huge source of revenue.

SOPHIA CUTINO:  With no casket, no vault, and no embalming. Emily says this could be thousands in savings. And, she adds it’s an environmental story too.

EMILY MILLER: So we are actively, you know, warming the climate when we make concrete vaults, and then it, you know, prevents or delays the body from returning to the earth only for these sort of business reasons.

SOPHIA CUTINO: A natural burial is the oldest tradition. These practices are not new, but a way of returning to what we’ve been doing for most of history.

EMILY MILLER: I think that people are finding their way back to more simple dealth care, which is inherently environmentally friendly, in part as a rejection of this industrialized disposition of, of getting rid of the body behind closed doors.

SOPHIA CUTINO: A new, technologically-advanced frontier of the green funeral industry is human composting. This is when the natural process of decomposition is accelerated with machines to turn your body into plantable soil. Started in Washington State, Earth Funeral is one of two providers of this service in the United States. Their representative Haley Morris breaks down how it works. 

HALEY MORRIS: Each process takes place in a customized vessel that we’ve specially engineered for human composting. Then inside that vessel, we have created basically optimal conditions for the body to transform into soil over the process of several weeks.

SOPHIA CUTINO: Washed and wrapped in a shroud, the body is placed in the vessel with organic materials like wood chips and wild flowers. Then it is humidified, heated, and processed to create a safe, nutrient rich soil.  Whether it’s scattering the soil at a meaningful location, planting a garden in your loved one’s honor, or donating portions to help reforestation, Haley says human composting changes the way families talk about death. 

HALEY MORRIS: Ask your family, what kind of tree do you wanna become? You know, get that, get that conversation rolling in a way, making all the kind of end of life plans and decisions that can be really tough and for, you know, formidable and intimidating to people but if they just have to make one decision about maybe what they want. Their last act on earth to be. And then when you present the idea of turning into soil and how that could be meaningful for the environment, I think that’s maybe a way to have that conversation.

SOPHIA CUTINO: This process was only legalized in California in 2022. After rules and regulations are set, Earth Funeral is hoping to have a facility here after the law takes effect in 2027. Human composting is a growing industry offering an eco-friendly alternative to cremation. Emily Miller – who we heard from earlier – says it’s better for the environment but she still thinks that the gold standard is natural burial. 

EMILY MILLER: Body composting sequesters carbon, but it doesn’t go all the way to. Protecting biodiversity. What I like about it is that it’s similar to cremation in that you can take the remains, split it up, um, do different things with it, wear it in a necklace. You can’t do any of that with natural burial. But we can also do the most good environmentally because we’re dedicated to this natural space.

SOPHIA CUTINO: Proponents of Natural burials say they turn cemeteries from places that house the dead to places that nourish life. [outdoor sound from Fernwood with birds chirping in the background]Back at Fernwood cemetery in Mill Valley Sonia Getz values a view of death that centers connection—to people and to the natural world.

SONIA: When the family is present for the burial, the grounds crew is gonna put all the soil back with a shovel, like by hand, not with a machine. It really seals that return to nature in the most natural way possible. It takes away that distance that I feel like we feel with nature sometimes as like, we’re kind of messy, humans stepping all over nature, but really we are part of this earth.

[transition music up for a few seconds and fades under the next narration]

SOPHIA CUTINO: While I was reporting at Fernwood – I ran into a grieving sister who told me her name was Tara. Tara’s brother, recently died, and wanted to be put to rest, here, without a casket. With tears in her eyes she told me she has made the choice to also have a natural burial when her time comes. 

[music and birds chirping]

For North Gate Radio, I’m Sophia Cutino. 

[transition music up for a few seconds and ends]

Gabriel Lopez: Imagine creating a digital version of yourself that your loved ones can interact with, long after you’re gone. A digital version they can speak to, ask questions of, and always have with them.

StoryFile is one of the several platforms that can give you the opportunity to do just that.

Reporter Minahil Arif has more…

Minahil: StoryFile started with the concept of capturing Holocaust testimonies.

Later, the company made historical stories for museums and archives with Institutional StoryFile.

 Denise Campbell. I wanna do a story file, I wanna do a story file.I wanna do a story file.

Minahil: But requests from every day people started to pour in says StoryFile’s Chief Operating Officer Denise Campbell. 

Denise Campbell: So, of course we wanna figure out a way to make that happen.

Minahil: Turns out it wasn’t too hard to add to what they were [00:01:00] already producing. And, now StoryFile provides its service – at a price – to private individuals. And, It’s not cheap. Campbell says it starts from 200,000 dollars and increases based on the number of days a person is filmed in studio. She says it usually takes 2-10 days to film all of the interviews that it takes to create a Storyfile. 

Denise Campbell: So, these private citizens are doing things like leaving messages for their family or telling the stories that they really wanna make sure their grandchildren or future generations will know about them. 

Minahil: So I am on zoom with Campbell. She shares her screen and pulls Terry Virts storyfile. A retired Nasa Astronaut. As soon as she clicks on it, a short video of Terry introducing himself pops up. 

Denise Campbell: My name is Terry Virts got a degree in Applied mathematics. I was a pilot in the Air Force. I flew F16. I was an astronaut for NASA for 16 years. (fade under)

Minahil: Now that we’ve been introduced, I want to know how the digital version of Terry Virts will answer a question …

 I wanna ask, what was the training like to go into space?

Denise Campbell re-asks question: What was the training like to go into space?

Terry Virts from the Storyfile application: So when you’re doing training in the space shuttle for launch and landing, we call that asset and entry. Uh, during the launch time, this, the simulator supervisor, the sim soup piles on malfunction after malfunction after malfunction. So the crews have to deal with these things way more than you would ever have in real life (fades under)

Minahil: Oof! That was electrifying and a bit unsettling at the same time. If this is what you can do with a non-generative storyfile…Imagine the possibilities with a generative version. That’s when it allows you to ask whatever you want and you will get an answer whether the person recorded anything related to your query. StoryFile is now working on an app that includes a generative component. And, new demands are coming in. People don’t just want to make their own storyfiles, they want to create ones from the digital archives of dead loved ones. 

Denise Campbell: They want to be able to recreate that person to say, happy birthday to another family member, or Congratulations at a wedding,

Minahil: Campbell aknowledges that a digital recreation of a dead loved one might be wonderful for some and totally wrong for others.

Denise Campbell: It’s kind of like any other, piece of technology and any other grief process. So we do recognize that, although I might not want to do that, [00:04:00] there are people who want to reconstruct for the purposes of bringing joy into their life.

Minahil: I reached out to Jonathan Stray at the Center for Human Compatible AI at UC Berkeley

Jonathan: We try to figure out how to make artificial intelligence beneficial for humans

Minahil: I wanted to get Stray’s read on all of this. Are applications like these beneficial or do they have the potential to prey on vulnerable people who are grieving their dead loved ones? 

Jonathan: I’m not sure it’s different really, from selling funeral services, which you’re also selling to people who are grieving. I can see how it could be emotionally manipulative, but I think that’s really up to the individual person. It’s very hard to tell someone what is right for them, especially this kind of thing. 

Do we wanna live in the world where lots of people talk to dead relatives via machines? 

I don’t know. 

Minahil: While talking about different ways of creating digital versions of dead loved ones, Stray reminded me that AI can never recreate certain memories.

Jonathan: It’s not going to remember that time, you know, when you and your father went fishing and he said he loved you. Right. Like it is so there’s gonna be big gaps.

Minahil: Whether you opt in or out. AI is already changing how we remember and how we are “remembered.”

For Northgate radio, this is Minahil Arif

[music transition]

Haydee Barahona:  The Bay Area is home to a variety of musicians making heavy music, angular guitars, brooding baselines, and theatric flirtations with the macabre ranging in genres from post-punk to death, metal. Reporter Gabriel Lopez has long wondered what the artists who make this music think about death and how that inspires the work they create.

So he asked a few, 

Gabriel Lopez: Do you ever think about dying? Do you ever think about your death or your own mortality? 

Andres Ruiz: Yeah, I think about my mortality. I actually had a, um, I had a very close call. 

Gabriel Lopez: This is Andres Ruiz, guitarist for false figure. 

Andres Ruiz: I would’ve died in a really horrible way. I still have a bit of PTSD from that.

Val James: Yeah, I think about it all the time. I used to be quite obsessed with it when I was a kid. 

Gabriel Lopez: Here is Val James. Singer and membrane. 

Val James: My most vivid memory of like thinking about death, um, at a young age was my 10th birthday. I was really upset and my mom was asking me like, well, why are you so upset? And I was like, because I’m in my double digits now. I’m more likely to die in my double digits than I am to get to my triple digits. That was my logic. As a 10-year-old, 

Greg Wilkinson: I think you’re born knowing that you’re gonna die. You have that guarantee.

[10 seconds of music from the Static Abyss song “Cathedral of Vomit”* heavy metal riffs and harsh drums]

Gabriel Lopez: I’m personally terrified of dying. Its cold loneliness pervades my anxieties. Yet him surrounded by it. In the alternative music scenes I frequent here in the Bay Area. Almost any night here you can find yourself in a dimly lit room watching a band turn death into sound, that is at times abrasive and at others cathartic. Why you may ask? Greg Wilkinson of autopsy who just told us that he thinks we’re born knowing we’re going to die has another theory. 

Greg Wilkinson: I feel like growing up in the Bay Area, it is kind of rough around the edges and chaotic. It’s noisy, it’s loud. There’s lots of machinery and cars and BART trains and you know it’s just grinding all the time, and I feel like there is a catharsis listening to music that is equally as distorted and I kind of just feel like I’m listening at home, you know, when I hear that stuff.

Gabriel Lopez: Wilkinson is a local metal musician and Grammy award-winning studio engineer who graciously invited me to his recording studio. Ear Hammer Studios in West Oakland. He and band mate, Chris Reifert, play in the phantasmagoria of death when they write songs for the renowned death metal band Autopsy. For Reifert, writing death metal is at times campy or pulpy using death as a source for fantastic thinking. 

Chris Reifert: I’ve written all sorts of songs about death and dying and mortality and blood and guts and all that stuff. It’s excellent source material. So if you got a riff that’s heavy and dark sounding, the lyrics need to reflect that, and it can be whatever you want. You could look at it like reality, like, oh my God, this could really happen. This is awful. Or if you’re like, oh, this is a cool fantasy, like reading a creepy, you know, comic book or reading a Stephen King novel or watching a, you know, saw 18 or whatever they’re up to now, or whatever it’s gotta read like it sounds and sound like it reads.

[15 seconds of audio from the Autopsy song “Final Frost”* [angular guitar riff with a guttural screaming vocal]

Gabriel Lopez: For Andres Ruiz, lead singer and songwriter of False Figure, post punk another genre on the heavier end of popular music is where the aesthetics of death meet emotional eruption. 

Andres Ruiz: It is very cathartic and ultimately very therapeutic. Whether it’s a breakup, a loss of a friend, a death of a friend, death of a family member, the really heavy stuff that kind of weighs you down. I want to speak to that.

[15 seconds of audio from the False Figure song “Original Sin” an uptempo danceable beat and sharp guitar sound]

Gabriel Lopez: When I started reporting this story, I immediately thought about interviewing Val James, a vocalist for hardcore punk bands like Membrane and Rhizome

[10 seconds of audio from the Rhizome song “Deaf/Blind”* [fast punk drums and Val’s screaming vocals]

Gabriel Lopez: After surviving the mass death of the COVID-19 pandemic and the isolation of quarantine they realized life was too short to live in the wrong gender. 

Val James: I feel like for my mom, it felt like a death. She said that she felt like she lost her daughter. I was like, you’re not losing a daughter. You’re just getting a better understanding of how I see myself and where I’m at and how like I’ve grown.

Gabriel Lopez: The death of Val’s former self changed the relationship to the music scene. They found life in. 

Val James: Because I feel like punk was part of my journey of figuring out who I am, how I relate to the world, who I want in my life. ’cause my world was just punk forever, and now it’s like… it’s not. 

Gabriel Lopez: Val hasn’t fronted a punk band since transitioning.

Val James: I still think that it was important for punk to be in my life, to be who I am now in so many ways, but I’m also like, I’m not trying to go to every show. All the time, like I don’t, I don’t got time for that. 

Gabriel Lopez: Our time on earth is short, and for the punks and metalheads of the bay, that isn’t a bad thing. In the circle pits and breakdowns of heavy music, you can find the beating heart of life amidst the ticking clock of a good song. Death is a sure thing, but the requiems of the Bay alt scene make it a lot less lonely. For Northgate Radio, I’m Gabriel Lopez.

[Music back up as a transition and fades under the show outro and credits, 15 seconds of audio False Figure song “Original Sin” an uptempo danceable beat and sharp guitar sound]