Oct 10, 2023
Welcome to Season 6 of the
Storied: San Francisco podcast!
We really couldn't dream of a better place to kick things off than
Bayview's Old Skool Café. In Part 1, we
meet Teresa Goines, the founder and president
of Old Skool. Originally from Tucson, Teresa spent a lot of time
growing up in the country (which we call desert) outside
Tucson.
She left to get a bachelor's
degree in psychology at UC Santa Barbara. She had planned to become
a therapist, citing her father's severe disability with instilling
a caretaker mentality in her from a young age. She had always
wanted to alleviate suffering in others.
But after college, Teresa had an opportunity to work with youth in
the Santa Barbara County prison, as she was also interested in law
enforcement. She says she wanted to mitigate trauma at its
source.
In her time spent time with incarcerated youth, Teresa heard
stories of mere survival over hope and promise. Many inmates got
few or no visitors and no mail. These were 14- and 15-year-olds.
Teresa felt like society had thrown them away, but despite it all,
they were hungry for love and opportunity.
Teresa started a career exploration program for the youth where she
brought in firefighters and computer programmers and took kids to
the local city college. Through these efforts, she saw them
starting to hope. But as soon as they were released from prison,
they'd go right back to the street economies they were familiar
with. Many youth would tell Teresa that they wanted to be back in
prison, because it was safer there and there's more love.
Thinking about how to stop this cycle is what led to Old Skool
Café. But how she got there is its own story.
She lived in Guadalajara for a stint, and then went to New York
City for a job opportunity that ended falling apart before she
began. This was 2001, and her original start date was Sept. 10.
A college friend who was from San Francisco and moved back here
after graduation told her, "Come here." Teresa decided to try it
... "for a year."
Upon arrival on New Year's Eve 2001, she worked in a gang
prevention program and Head Start. The vision of Old Skool started
coming together in 2004, with dinners set in her home at the
outset. At the end of 2005, she quit her job to do Old Skool
full-time.
To inform the nascent operation, Teresa listened to
incarcerated kids talk about what they got out of being in gangs
and translated that to its themes: belonging and purpose. She
wanted to offer those ideas in different forms and the ideas came
in three parts: 1. She wanted to break the cycle of going back to
jail, 2. She saw that SF is a foodie city and that we love music
here, and 3. The City is a tourist destination with a huge
hospitality industry, and hospitality jobs can be taken just about
anywhere.
It didn't hurt that servers get tips in cash, and cash competes
with life on the street. The more introverted youth could be back
of house at a restaurant, using their creativity and focus back
there and seeing people up front love what they do. Teresa always
saw room in the operation for entertainment. She noticed that her
youth crew included comedians, poets, dancers, and singers.
To secure a space for Old Skool outside her home, Teresa
connected with local church leaders, who told her that
churches needed to get behind her vision. A group of Bayview
pastors had a place in mind and gave Teresa a good deal on
rent. Eventually, she had a chance to buy the building that housed
Old Skool, and so she learned how to raise money.
One donor gave them $300K, which allowed them to get a matching
loan for the same amount. Old Skool paid off its loan at the end of
2019, right before the pandemic.
In terms of what's next at Old Skool, Teresa points to their
growing team of adults and youth, both formerly incarcerated and
kids from the foster system. Folks in other cities have reached out
asking for an Old Skool of their own, and now the SF team has a
chance to explore that. We end Part 1 with Teresa expressing how
very important it is to them that Old Skool Café is rooted in San
Francisco.
Old Skool's hours are as follows:
Happy hour every Wednesday from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Dinner Thursdays through Saturdays from 5 to 9 p.m.
Visit Old Skool's website for
more info and to sign up for their newsletter. Follow them
on Instagram.
And look for Part 2, when we'll hear more from Old
Skool Chef Eddie Blyden, next week wherever
you get podcasts.
We recorded this podcast at Old Skool Cafe in the Bayview in
September 2023.
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather