Fun with Food Across the Bay

On this episode of North Gate Radio, five reporters explore how the intersection of food and community shapes the fabric and future of the Bay Area. You’ll hear from an Indigenous chef in Oakland reconnecting with her ancestors through a new cookbook, a legendary restaurateur reflecting on how the Berkeley Free Speech movement inspired her activism, and a job training program in Alameda teaching people how to regenerate the soil. We also visit a “bean-up” potluck at Willard Park and close with a trip to the Mission to uncover the history behind the neighborhood’s favorite ziplock cocktail.

 

This is a recording of North Gate Radio that was broadcast live on KALX radio station, 90.7FM.

 

 

Full Transcript

 

Grace McCarty: Good morning, and welcome to North Gate Radio. I’m Grace McCarty.

Steffi Puerto: And I’m Steffi Puerto. Today is April 30th, and we’re excited to share stories about the intersection of food and community shaping the Bay Area.

Grace McCarty: We start our show with a local Indigenous chef releasing a new cookbook.

Crystal Wahpepah:  I can make that soup and, right in front of me, I can close my eyes and smell it, and I’m with my family, of course, I’m with my ancestors.

Steffi Puerto: Then, we visit Berkeley’s campus with alum Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse.

Alice Waters: And somebody said, you know, there’s something happening at Berkeley, maybe we should go. And, that’s what we did.

Grace McCarty: Next, an initiative teaching people to grow more food with less water in Alameda.

Luis Jiménez:  With this practice, we imitate the nature instead of manipulate the nature.

 Steffi Puerto: And, we hear from Bay Area residents celebrating a humble crop.

Madeline Schapiro:  Beans absolutely changed my life.

Grace McCarty: Finally, we’ll explore a Dolores Park alcoholic delicacy.

Joe:  San Francisco Bay Area, we do it different than anywhere else.

Steffi Puerto: But first, Gabriel Lopez with the news.

 Gabriel Lopez: Live from North Gate Radio, good morning! I’m Gabriel Lopez with the news. We start in Oakland, as Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for making the

artificial intelligence company for profit. OpenAI was founded as a non-profit organization with money from Musk. Musk testified before an Alameda county courtroom claiming that Altman and

company steered OpenAI away from its original non-profit mission, which was to avoid an apocalyptic outcome. Now, he says the mission is to make money. OpenAI’s counsel struck back,

claiming Musk urged the artificial intelligence company to become for-profit with him as the head as far back as 2017. The trial is expected to go for the next three weeks. On Tuesday night UC

Berkeley students held a vigil for Iranian schoolchildren killed during the Israeli-US war against Iran. At the protest, students placed photos of the school children at Sproul Plaza and lit candles.

It’s been about a month since US-made Tomahawk missiles struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in southern Iran. The official death toll is 156 people, mostly children according to an

Iranian general prosecutor’s office.

Last week, Makan Nasiri, the last missing child from the school was marked as deceased after a 38 day search amidst the rubble. And finally, Oakland original Boots Riley debuted his latest feature

film “I Love Boosters” at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland this week as part of SFFILM festival. The film stars Keke Palmer, Taylor Paige, and Naomie Ackie as the shoplifting Velvet Gang taking

down a fashion tycoon played by Demi Moore. It’s a comedic drama about class, labor and dialectical materialism … dialectical what? Well, the movie has a clever way of making that Marxist

theory accessible. The film hits theaters May 22nd. For North Gate Radio, I’m Gabriel Lopez.

Grace McCarty: Blue corn waffles, gooseberry jam, and Three Sisters stew are just a few of the recipes you’ll find in a new cookbook from Crystal Wahpepah, an Indigenous chef and owner of

Wahpepah Kitchen in Oakland. Wahpepah is on a book tour and Reporter Dinée Dorame caught up with her on Zoom to ask her how the recipes provide a connection to home.

Dinée Dorame: Indigenous chefs are taking a spot on the national stage lately, especially as people start thinking more and more about where their food comes from.

Chef Crystal Wahpepah has been a leader in that movement. She is a member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, but says she found her inspiration to become a chef where she grew up in

Oakland.

 Crystal Wahpepah:  And of course, the Intertribal Friendship House had a lot to play into that.

Dinée Dorame: The Intertribal Friendship House is just south of Lake Merritt, and it’s hosted community dinners since the 1950s.

That’s when the U.S. Government was in the middle of implementing its Indian Termination Policy, which relocated Native American families from reservations to cities. And that’s how Wahpepah’s family ended up in Oakland.

The government promised jobs and housing, but would also end up removing federal recognition status for more than 100 tribes in the process.

Away from the reservation, community dinners became a way to stay connected. Wahpepah still remembers what those dinners were like as a child. 

Crystal Wahpepah:   I remember specifically fry bread. I smell fry bread, and I hear, um, drum and dance and I hear all the children playing also at the same time, people coming in the

community and talking and catching up on life.

Dinée Dorame: And as a little girl, Wahpepah often wandered into the kitchen where all the aunties were cooking.

 

Crystal Wahpepah:  You know, you don’t want no kids hanging around in the kitchen but at the time, Sarah Poncho, she was the cook at the IFH and she would never kick me out. She was

different and she always embraced me. 

Dinée Dorame: As Wahpepah got older, she knew she wanted to work with Indigenous foods, but there wasn’t a clear professional pathway for that. For one thing, she didn’t see any Indigenous

chefs.

Crystal Wahpepah: I knew that there was really no Indigenous chefs. Or even no culinary school for that matter.

Dinée Dorame: To learn the craft and the tools of cooking, Wahpepah went to “Le Cordon Bleu” in San Francisco. But she knew that if she really wanted to learn about Indigenous foods, she had

to go back to the community.

Crystal Wahpepah:  And that is working on different farms and seeing how everything comes to be, like for instance, I love maple, grew up with maple, but then you go to Michigan and you

really can see the maple tapping and how it’s made, where it comes from, and where the traditional part comes from. But that can’t really teach you in culinary school, right? Harvesting the wild

rice…that’s not taught in culinary school.

Dinée Dorame: After culinary school, Wahpepah started asking herself, how do I use that training to put a fresh spin on traditional recipes?

She spent a decade experimenting while catering powwows and community events, and in 2020 she opened a restaurant in the Fruitvale district in Oakland… and it got recognized, quickly.

Crystal Wahpepah: And I believe we were only open for three months and we received the James Beard nomination.

Dinée Dorame: Now, she’s out with a new cookbook called “A Feather and a Fork”. One of her favorite recipes in the book is the Three Sisters stew with venison.

Crystal Wahpepah:  I can make that soup and right in front of me, I can close my eyes and smell it, and I’m with my family, of course, I’m with my ancestors.

Dinée Dorame: While she includes some of her childhood favorites, what makes Wahpepah an interesting chef in the Indigenous food scene is that her recipes are intertribal.

Wahpepah says she wanted to reflect her community in Oakland. She says it’s home to about 18,000 Indigenous people, many of whom are far from their tribal homelands.

As a Navajo person living 1,000 miles away from my own tribe’s territory, I appreciated the blue corn mush recipe in her cookbook. Blue corn is a staple ingredient in Navajo foods. Our blue corn

mush usually requires juniper ash … not as easy to find in the Bay as in New Mexico.

Wahpepah’s recipe offers alternative ingredients you can buy almost anywhere … so I can bring home a little closer. She says that’s why she opened her restaurant in Fruitvale. She remembers a

man walking in on the very first day it was open.

Crystal Wahpepah:  He sat in the corner over here in the bar area. And he was crying and I went over to him and I asked if he was okay, and he just gave me this biggest hug. And, he says, I

haven’t had blue corn bread since I left home. I left home when I was 18. And he said thank you for having the space.

Dinée Dorame: And Wahpepah says that’s the moment she knew she was on the right path.

For North Gate Radio, I’m Dinée Dorame. 

Steffi Puerto: Restaurant owner and cookbook author Alice Waters is known for changing how Americans think about food. What her fans may not know is that her motivation to become a

changemaker grew out of her time at Berkeley.

Alice Waters: Being in Berkeley in the sixties opened my mind in a way that I don’t think it could have happened otherwise.

Steffi Puerto: Reporter Joni Binder walked the Berkeley campus with Waters to take her back to her student days.

Alice Waters: It really begins right here, at the University of California in 1964. I can’t even remember what subject I was majoring in … I think it was “Free Speech major”.

[Bells ring]

Joni Binder: Tell us where we are.

Alice Waters: We are at the foot of the Campanile on the Berkeley campus. I always look for it when I’m coming back home. I just see it higher than anything else.

Joni Binder: You came here in 1964.

Alice Waters: I did.

Joni Binder: Besides the reputation of Berkeley, what drew you to this campus?

Alice Waters: My father said, “You can choose any of the campuses you want because they cost $97 a semester.” And somebody said, “You know, there’s something happening in Berkeley, maybe

we should go.”

Mario Savio [Internet Clip]: There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious…

Alice Waters: We were here in the middle of the Free Speech movement.

Mario Savio [Internet Clip]: And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers…

Joni Binder: Tell us where we are now. 

Alice Waters: We are about to walk up to Sproul Plaza. And I remember distinctly walking up here because Mario Savio said, we’re gonna have a sit-in inside this building and it’s likely that if

you’re sitting in you’ll probably be arrested.

Mario Savio [Internet Clip]: If the police are going to come in and announce to you, that if you don’t leave, you’ll be arrested … if you know that you are going to be arrested …

Alice Waters: I walked up just all the way to the door and I opened the door.

Joni Binder: Yeah?

Alice Waters: And, and I just saw all the people and police coming in the back and I just said, “I’m not brave enough to do it.”

Radio Announcer [Internet Clip]:  California patrolmen are moving in, led by an Inspector going forward.

Alice Waters: Yeah. It’s so strange to be sitting here. I almost have tears.

Joni Binder: Aw.

Alice Waters: Because my unwillingness to come in, and get …

Joni Binder: We’re in right now…

Alice Waters: … arrested.

Joni Binder: I mean, I, maybe the security guard will arrest you? We can …

[Music]

Joni Binder: There’s a before and after. There was America before the Free Speech movement. There was an America before the Civil Rights Movement. How did it feel? How did it happen? Take

me back.

Alice Waters: It just felt like we were in a country that was making these gigantic decisions and Berkeley was a little bit exceptional. We were in the place of discussion and discovery. I think

probably because of Mario Savio’s eloquence and his conviction.

Joni Binder: And to be such a great speaker that this plaza filled…

Alice Waters: Yes. 

Joni Binder:… with people.

Alice Waters: Filled with people. Just packed. 

Joni Binder: So much news and change and these big ideas emanate from right where we’re sitting, right where we are. We’re in the bellybutton of big ideas.

[Music]

Alice Waters: And we all accomplished something extraordinary. I mean, we really helped stop the war in Vietnam.

Joni Binder: For North Gate Radio, I am Joni Binder. 

Grace McCarty: Climate change is making farming in California increasingly difficult. But, a group of trainees is learning how to regenerate soil while improving their livelihoods. Reporter

Patricio Provencio talks to the folks who are building an environmental workforce from the ground up.

Patricio Provencio: REAP Climate Center sits on an urban farm in Alameda. It’s a little more than four acres, and it has a rich, earthy smell that fills the air.

Renata Browne: Grab your shovel. Let’s go ahead and dig in.

[Noise of shovel hitting the soil]

Patricio Provencio: Half a dozen people from the Bay Area are taking part in a jobs training program. Kaitlynn Chavez lives in Oakland and is headed to the compost heap.

Kaitlynn Chavez: Today we’re turning the compost pile. We did a moisture  check and we turned it a bit, and now we’re adding some moisture with some water and essentially mixing it all up.

[Noise of shovel hitting the soil]

Patricio Provencio: Chavez is a 28-year old recycling educator, but she hopes to learn how to do composting and explore new career pathways.

[Noise of shovel hitting the soil]

Patricio Provencio: So does Luis Jimenez. He’s a recent graduate of REAP’s job training program. Jiménez is in his late thirties and lives in Berkeley. He’s originally from Spain and has seen

climate change drastically in his life.

Luis Jiménez: Where I’m from in Spain, people say, “Oh, it’s so hot in summer!” And then here in the Bay Area, for the last 10 years, like basically I could say it doesn’t rain.

Patricio Provencio: As climate change dries out the soil and California faces a consistent water shortage, there is a growing awareness that farms need to find ways to grow food with less water.

One of those ways is regenerative agriculture. That’s a farming approach that protects the environment by cutting down on chemicals and restores soil health with practices like composting.

Luis Jiménez: With this practice, we imitate the nature instead  of manipulate the nature.

Patricio Provencio: This approach is a response to a broken system. There’s a growing consensus that the way we farm hurts the planet, the soil, and the people who work it.

Luis Jiménez: In normal agriculture they use pesticide, and it’s not good for climate change, for the soil. And it’s not healthy for humans.  These people that work in the farms, they use pesticide.

After too many years using it, they say cancer is high up and they have a lot of sickness.

Patricio Provencio: Jonathan DeLong is the director of REAP. He says as farms start to incorporate regenerative farming, they’ll need people who know how to get the job done.

Jonathan DeLong: Our work here is to give people the tools to find jobs and stay in employment.

Patricio Provencio: REAP hopes it can train people from underserved communities for those regenerative farming jobs. The program is funded by a state grant of more than half a million

dollars.

Graduates earn certificates in compost and biochar practices. Biochar takes plant and wood waste and bakes into a charcoal-like sponge that helps soil hold onto water and nutrients. With those

certificates they can apply for jobs as compost technicians, urban forestry assistants and land restoration specialists. 

Jonathan DeLong: The enticement for the employer is we want to bring you people who are already trained and understand your needs before they get there.

Patricio Provencio: But, getting a job that pays them well could prove challenging. Timothy Bowles, a researcher at UC Berkeley, says that agricultural workers usually struggle to make ends

meet.

Timothy Bowles: Adequate income in agriculture is a challenge, especially if you have a family, if you have kids, you’re thinking about healthcare or childcare, right?

Patricio Provencio: But Bowles says there is growing demand for workers who go through REAP’s training program. He says the work is skilled and can offer more stable, year-round jobs.

Timothy Bowles: They require people to have a lot of fluency with how to use them in a way that ends up having a positive impact, not only on climate change and drought, but also on

productivity and profitability.

Patricio Provencio: Now that he’s finished the program, Jiménez, the Spanish teacher, wants to get a job as a compost technician.

Luis Jiménez:   I like to be outside. I like to work with my hands. I like to touch the soil. That makes me happy.

Patricio Provencio: The job can pay anywhere from $50,000 to $90,000 dollars. But Jimenez acknowledges most farmworkers don’t get paid nearly as well, especially the people who work the

fields.

Luis Jiménez: We depend on them because we need to eat, so they should get paid more than a doctor because they feed the doctors too. They’re heroes.

Patricio Provencio: As the trainees make their way through the program, its success will ultimately be measured not by the compost produced, but by the number of graduates who can get a

decent job in the field.

For North Gate Radio, I’m Patricio Provencio.

Steffi Puerto: On a Sunday afternoon, once a month in Willard Park in Berkeley, you can find a large potluck. Filled with around 70 people gathered on blankets under the shade of a large tree.

This potluck is special. It features one humble food and one of its biggest fans. Reporter Chelsea Kurnick brings us the story.

Chelsea Kurnick: This potluck has a lot to offer – dips, salads, casseroles, cakes, desserts, and candy. But the food all has one thing in common.

Nane: Beans.

Josh: Beans.

Tessa: Beans. 

Lindsay: Beans. 

Madeline Schapiro: Beans.

Chelsea Kurnick: Y’all, I’m at my first bean-up. I talked to the organizer, Madeline Schapiro, who has a following on the internet where she goes by Bean Supporter.

Madeline Schapiro: A bean-up is a bean meetup, um, which started when I posted a photo from my birthday where I made myself a bean cake. And a fan on TikTok was like, “When are you

doing local bean-ups?” And I just threw my first one a week later. I was like, “Yeah, sure. Why, why not do a bean-up?” I just want beans in community.

Chelsea Kurnick: Schapiro has been eating beans a lot for about nine years.

Madeline Schapiro: I was in college and I was experiencing a lot of health issues that we couldn’t really get to the bottom of.

Chelsea Kurnick: Doctors told her it was stress, but Schapiro felt there was more going on and she felt dismissed.

Madeline Schapiro: Beans absolutely changed my life.

Chelsea Kurnick: Schapiro says she started eating a lot more beans and she started feeling a lot better.

Madeline Schapiro: Soluble fiber is so great for your gut. There’s like no other way to put it, also like they’re rich in iron and folate.

Chelsea Kurnick:  About a year ago, before she even had the seed of an idea for a bean-up, Schapiro was in a creative rut. Then, she decided to only eat beans for 30 days, and to share that

experience on the internet as a way to connect with other bean lovers.

Chelsea Kurnick: What did 30 days of Only Beans teach you?

Madeline Schapiro: That I can do wild things with beans, far more wild than I thought I could and I became more comfortable with my own voice. I’ve never liked hearing this outta my own

voice at all, but after recording myself three times a day for 30 days, showing all my meals, I was kind of okay with it.

Chelsea Kurnick: Just to be clear, Schapiro says, you should not try this at home.

Madeline Schapiro: Please do not only eat beans for 30 days. Absolutely no.

Chelsea Kurnick: She says, eat beans … with other things.

Madeline Schapiro: Beans with eggs, beans with grains, beans with greens.

Chelsea Kurnick: Eating only beans isn’t great for one’s health long term, but it was a good way for Schapiro to go viral. In less than a year, she’s amassed 100,000 followers from across

Instagram, TikTok, and Substack. Most of the content is recipes ranging from lemon cardamom lentil granola to two-ingredient dips.

She also tells her followers about how sustainable beans are.

Madeline Schapiro: They’re a regenerative crop. They’re great for the planet and great for the soil. They minimize environmental impact of food growth.

Chelsea Kurnick: Schapiro loves the bean-up because it brings people from the internet together in real life to bond over beans.

The event which happens roughly monthly, draws out fellow legume lovers like Ari and their partner Ali.

Chelsea Kurnick: Did you already own a Barbie logo “Beans” hat?

Ari: I did, I did yes. I obtained this hat maybe a week or two ago from some gay person on the Dyke marketplace who was selling this bean hat. I am obsessed with beans, so I had to buy it.

 Ali: I will say the reason we are here is because Ari’s obsessed with beans.

Chelsea Kurnick: But not everyone here is. Some are just drawn to a good party like Josh who saw the invite on Partiful, an event app. We met at his second bean-up.

Josh: I think the idea of a theme just really gets me going. Um, I think more parties should have themes.

Chelsea Kurnick: What did you bring? Tell me about your dish.

Josh: I brought a dish that’s called le̍k-tāu-phòng. It’s a pastry made with mung beans. And I had had it growing up when my mom would make it, and actually that’s the only time I’ve ever had it.

And so it was, uh, kind of a journey to like remember and kind of figure out how to make it.

Chelsea Kurnick: It was delicious. It was so good.

Josh: Oh, I’m so glad.

Chelsea Kurnick: Did it taste like what you grew up eating with your mom?

Josh: I think very close. Yeah. I’m happy with it.

Chelsea Kurnick: And then there was Nane for whom beans are a recent love. She made three dishes for the bean-up.

Nane: Pickled green beans, uh, chocolate bean cake with goat cheese and strawberry, and a white bean with herbs dipped with crispy lentils on top and mushrooms.

Jorge: The chocolate cake with, uh, strawberries and goat cheese. It’s such a fantastic combination.

Chelsea Kurnick: That was Nane’s friend Jorge, and he’s right, it was.

Chelsea Kurnick: Do you cook with beans in a, like, dessert context otherwise?

Nane: No, I don’t cook with beans at all. Originally, I’m from Tonga. There’s no beans in Tonga at all. Tonga is in the Pacific. Turns out it’s really delicious. I just never had it before.

Chelsea Kurnick: The next bean-up is Sunday, May 3rd at 1:00 PM at Willard Park in Berkeley. Expect a crowd – as of this week, 384 people have liked Schapiro’s Instagram post.

Madeline Schapiro:  To me the sexiest something can be is like, approachable slash affordable. Convenient and nourishing. And beans are all of those.

Chelsea Kurnick: For North Gate Radio, I’m Chelsea Kurnick.

Grace McCarty: On a sunny weekend at Mission Dolores Park, you’ve probably seen these ziplock bags packed with mini liquor bottles and mixers.

They’re called “Cutty Bangs” and they’ve become a staple of a night out in the Mission.

The Cutty Bangs are sold at liquor-stores across the city. I stopped by Mr. Liquor on Valencia Street with my friend Saylor Fell … where a woman was buying one of these Cutty Bangs.

Store Client #1: You don’t have the one that we usually get. Which one? The grab him by the balls. You know, there. Buzz your balls. Buzz your balls. I’m out of that stuff. Okay, but you still have

it? You still have it? Okay. Okay.

Grace McCarty: If you grew up in the city, you will recognize what I’m talking about. Those ziplock bags with the funny names that people drink in the Mission. I never questioned it, I honestly

figured they were in corner stores all across America. Me and my best friend from high school, who I probably shared my first drink ever with, came with me to where we remember going, Mr.

Liquor on Valencia.

Saylor Fell: Okay. So I’m about to cross the street and I already see DJ Khaled holding two bottles of maybe some musician’s rosé. It’s the guy in the window.

Grace McCarty: Yes, there is a cardboard cutout …

Saylor Fell: … and flashing lights.

Grace McCarty: It’s an unassuming gray store on the corner of 23rd Street, underneath giant red neon lettering, the type of place you see less and less of in the city. From across the street, you

can already see the party happening inside the store. …

Okay, first observations. Music’s playing. There’s Bad Bunny. We have a disco light. And…

Saylor Fell: They changed some stuff around.

Grace McCarty: In the back, all the ziplock cocktails, designed to grab and go. And the names are still ridiculous.

Grace McCarty (scene): Ooh, let’s read some of these names aloud. Okay, so we have Gorilla Milk, Booty Call, Only Loud, Rainbow, Thug Paradise, Nude Beach, Mile High Club, Cutty Bang…

That is a name of one of them. So, maybe we should try that one.

Saylor Fell: They’re kind of expensive. They’re like, they range from like $18.99 to $22.99, but I appreciate the .99.

Grace McCarty: They’re actually super local, and they’re all from one source.

Grace McCarty: So these are a family business?

Joe: Yeah. Yes. It’s a family business, by the way.

Grace McCarty: This is Joe, who didn’t want to use his last name. He prefers to be called Mr. Liquor anyway. He said his family has been selling these bags for nearly 40 years.

And people do love them. We watch regulars file in and out, everyone getting their baggie and cup of ice like a routine. So I asked some customers, what keeps you coming back?

Store Client #2: It’s not, it’s not really the weather. It’s just the vibe. We come here to just get a drink. We hit up DP, Dolores Park, and we just have a sesh, drink this drink, and we have a good

time. Then, we go get some dinner. Sakis, ramen. It is just like a Mission thing to do. Frisco thing to do.

Store Client #3: Oh, it’s just so fun. Like just even reading the names, I don’t know. It’s, you get to hang out.

Store Client #4: Yeah, it’s, I think it’s like the whole experience, also just like the different combination of flavors you can get. And they’re pretty strong.

Store Client #5: Also, no one else really does that.

Grace McCarty: Mr. Liquor says it’s not just about the baggies, but the Mr. Liquor experience.

Joe: I like to mix up fun with work, so I’m actually just working, but I’m having fun. My customers, I make them feel like a family.

Grace McCarty: And most importantly, it’s a Mission thing. And these pieces of San Francisco culture are important to hold onto.

Joe: We want San Francisco to get back like what it used to be. You know, like there’s … San Francisco used to be parties all over the place and all week long. And that’s what I want to see again, to

see our culture too, to see how we do it here in San Francisco, because we, San Francisco Bay Area, we do it different than anywhere else.

Grace McCarty: So the point of a cutty bang? It’s fun. Don’t overthink it.

For North Gate Radio, I’m Grace McCarty, on Valencia Street.

Steffi Puerto: Ok, Grace we’re back in the studio …

Grace McCarty: Yeah, this didn’t make it into the story but you were out with us trying these cutty bangs. I’m going to play some of that tape.

Steffi Puerto: We have the Mike Ike Club.

Grace McCarty: Mile High.

Steffi Puerto: Oh … the Mile High Club, which was $13.99.

Grace McCarty: And what’s in it?

Steffi Puerto: It’s a Minute Maid, a bottle of Ciroq red berry, a bottle of Tanqueray-imported London dry gin, a bottle of Smirnoff Blue Raspberry Lemonade, and two straws.

Grace McCarty: And a cup of ice.

Steffi Puerto: And a cup of ice. I’m gonna put my straw in, mix it in a little. Okay, my first sip. That’s really good! It tastes like blue, like blueberry lemonade. Can’t even taste the alcohol.

Grace McCarty: Would you have a rating?

Steffi Puerto: I’d give this a 7 out of 10.

Grace McCarty: 7 out of 10, that’s not bad for something that comes out of a zip lock bag, you know!

Steffi Puerto: It tasted like a big old headache but hey I’m always down for a cutty bag when I’m in the city.

Grace McCarty: That’s it for North Gate Radio. Thanks for tuning in. Today’s show was produced by Brenda Yami-Lex Vas-kez and Zoe Meyer.

Our Director was Lylah Schmedel-Permanna, and our Executive Producer was Lenea Sims.

Steffi Puerto: Rick Johnson was our engineer. Queena Sook Kim and  Ethan Toven-Lindsey were our faculty advisors.

Grace McCarty: North Gate Radio is a production of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. I’m Grace McCarty.

Steffi Puerto: And I’m Steffi Puerto. Tune in next Thursday to hear more stories from our program.