{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"TJ, Loveberry and The Top Chefs Band, Part 1 (S8E23)","description":"There\u2019s a band in San Francisco comprising musicians from The City and whom I discovered on social media playing shows on a stoop here in SF. I can\u2019t quite be sure when I discovered them, or whether it was me or my wife, but either way, right from the start, we knew we\u2019d stumbled upon something special. Something truly unique. Something joyful, beautiful, free \u2026 something for the people. People could gather around with neighbors, some they know, some they might be meeting for the first time. Community is something of a buzz word lately, especially in light of things like gentrification, neo-tech fascism, and just plain ol\u2019 fascism. But for good reason\u2014it\u2019s one of the most powerful tools we have not only to resist all the nonsense being forced on us, but also to overcome that crap and move on toward creating a world of inclusion, equity, diversity \u2026 and good tunes. The band\u2019s name is Top Chefs. This last episode of Season 8 of Storied: San Francisco is, not by accident, all about them and the magic they create. We start things off with TJ Milan, lead arranger for Top Chefs and co-editor of what they call \u201cStoop Sessions.\u201d TJ was born and raised in San Francisco. His dad came out here from Connecticut, and his mom is from The Philippines. His parents lived in South of Market, and TJ lives in that neighborhood today. TJ\u2019s mom came to The City with her parents when she was young. She later joined the Army, serving with a support group for the Green Berets. His dad had moved to New York first for work. Then he got offered a job in San Francisco in the late Eighties and took it. In the mid-Nineties, the two met at a law firm where they both worked. In 2002, they had TJ, the youngest of their three kids\u2014he has an older sister and an older brother. His dad is an amateur saxophone player. More on that in a bit. The family lore goes that his sax stylings played a part in his parents\u2019 union, because duh. I give TJ the opportunity to rattle off his SF schools, something he\u2019s proud to do\u2014Clarendon Elementary, Hoover Middle School, and School of the Arts (SOTA). He describes his time at SOTA as \u201cvery chaotic.\u201d There was beef between the SOTA kids and the Academy kids in his days. Academy is sort of a school-within-a-school for SOTA, a majority\/minority arrangement. Despite that situation, though, TJ met the person who\u2019s still his significant other to this day. The only time TJ left San Francisco for any significant time was to go to college at The New School in New York City, where he studied jazz. But he credits most of his education with Community Music Center in The Mission. The entire time TJ spent in NYC, he felt in his heart that he would return to his hometown. He played out a lot while he lived in New York, but the market for saxophonists was saturated. He came back to SF around September 2024. It started off rough, as he puts it. He started busking to make ends meet. Then we turn to Liam Berry, aka Loveberry, the head of audio production and guitar player in Top Chefs and co-editor of Stoop Sessions. His mom came here from San Diego. Her mom came to the US from Ecuador, where she was raised. His mom\u2019s dad is from Illinois. Loveberry\u2019s grandfather was on a work trip in South America when he met his grandmother. That couple went to Philadelphia before landing in San Diego. Their daughter, Loveberry\u2019s mom, moved to The Bay to go to UC Berkeley to study biology. I take us on a sidebar about how San Diego can be cool to visit for like two days, max. But there\u2019s only so much that good Mexican food and nice weather can do for me before I need to get back home. His dad is from Cupertino. His dad\u2019s dad is from Philadelphia and his dad\u2019s mom is from Houston. They met when his grandfather worked for NASA and was stationed at the Johnson Space Center in Texas. His grandfather was transferred to the Ames facility on the Peninsula and brought his wife with him. Loveberry\u2019s dad wanted to get out of the area where he grew up, but he didn\u2019t want to go too far. So he got into SF State for meteorology. He ended up working in the data science field after discovering that meteorologists don'\u2019t make great money. His parents met at a party through mutual Cupertino friends who\u2019d moved up to Berkeley and Oakland. They were still together until a couple years ago, when Loveberry\u2019s dad passed away. He was almost raised in Oakland. His dad worked a low-paying job at a tech company and his mom, back then at least, worked different admin jobs (today, she\u2019s a librarian). They\u2019d lived in the Inner Sunset and put bids in on a couple houses in Oakland, where they could afford to buy in the late Nineties\/early 2000s. They also bid on one house here in The City, in The Castro. And that\u2019s the one they got. That\u2019s the house Loveberry grew up in, and when his parents first bought it, the house needed a lot of work. There are family stories about moving in and a mysterious tub of some sort of toxic goo. Schools he went to and music intertwine for Loveberry. He started at Rooftop K\u20138, where kids worked on a different art project every year. When he was in second grade there, Loveberry started to gravitate toward guitar and started taking lessons. He went to high school at Gateway, which didn\u2019t have a music program at the time. So he and some friends started the school\u2019s music club. In the summer between his sophomore and junior years of high school, Loveberry smoked pot for the first time. He also did an internship at NASA over that same summer. Going back and forth between those two wildly different worlds, he preferred the community that came with smoking pot with friends. Music became more and more a thing, but so did partying. Shit got out of control. He got out of high school to get himself into rehab. After rehab, he wanted to go to music school in Los Angeles, but his parents nixed that idea. Instead, he stayed in The City and worked at a few different local eateries. So he never left. A guy he met playing open mics in SF offered Loveberry $1,000 a month to open a recording studio and music business. It didn\u2019t work out, but it showed him that he could persue music and art as a lifestyle. He worked at some nonprofits and did visual art as well as music. He met Afterthough (Aft) in 2021. Top Chefs formed soon after that. Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the final podcast of Season 8. We recorded this podcast on Scott Street near Alamo Square in June 2026. Photography by Marcella Sanchez ","author_name":"Storied: San Francisco","author_url":"http:\/\/www.storiedsf.com\/","html":"