Marga Gomez, Part 1 (S8E1)

Marga Gomez grew up in Washington Heights, New York City, immersed in a family of Spanish-language entertainers.

Welcome to Season 8, Episode 1 of Storied: San Francisco. I first learned of Marga more than a decade ago, through comedy and performance circles I was adjacent to. Because I don't have the world's best memory, I cannot recall exactly where or when I saw her perform, but I do remember feeling an immediate pull to her work. In this episode, Marga shares the story of her parents, growing up in NYC, and coming to San Francisco.

We begin in Manhattan, where Marga was born to a comedian/producer/screenwriter Cuban-American dad and a dancer/aspiring actor Puerto Rican mom. Marga went to Catholic school as a youngster, which she says was every bit as harsh as folks say. Looking back, Marga thinks the only discipline she got when she was a kid was through school. Her parents, she says, were narcissists.

The two met when Marga's mom danced in a show produced by her dad. The shows were varietal in nature, and took place on stages live at theaters showing Spanish-language Mexican movies.

Her dad had danced in shows in Havana pre-Castro. Some white American show producer-types with Johnny Walker, the Scotch company, brought him to New York, unaware that he didn't speak English. It was the Fifties—the height of a Spanish entertainment craze (think Ricky Ricardo).

Many folks from Latin America were also immigrating to the US, and New York especially, in those days. And they, too, wanted entertainment. Marga's dad found work in that world, first as a performer, then as a producer.

Growing up with locally well-known/borderline famous parents instilled in young Marga a sense that she could do anything she wanted. But when they split up, Marga went with her mom to live in a white neighborhood on Long Island. She was one of the only kids of color in an otherwise homogenous, affluent area. No longer in the Spanish-language community that raised her, she lost that sense of becoming a performer in her own right. She just wanted to graduate high school and get out.

And that she did. She ended up at a New York State school on the border of Canada, in Oswego near Lake Ontario. It was still the same weather she used to, but it was time to explore—with pot, acid, and women.

She got really into "storyteller" musicians around this time, some women, Dylan, that kind of thing. And she met a woman who later was the reason Marga came to San Francisco.

Marga's impression of San Francisco before she moved here was shaped by a magazine feature about the Hippies here at that time—the Seventies. She owes that attraction to her mom's strict parenting style—it was a rebellion in every sense. She'd not made it through to graduation (too much acid, she says), but followed her girlfriend across country to this magical new city.

It was 1976, the year of the US Bicentennial. Marga's girlfriend did all the driving (she still doesn't have a license), taking the scenic route along Route 66, through the heart of the United States during its 200th birthday celebration. They saw a lot of Americana—the good and the bad (racism, misogyny, homophobia). It made landing in SF all the more poignant. They came up the California coast, saw Big Sur, then arrived in The City.

We end Part 1 with Marga's story of the first place in San Francisco she and her then-girlfriend went—Castro Street. That story is also how her upcoming show, Spanish Stew, begins. More on that in Part 2, which drops this Thursday.

That's also the date of the Opening Night of Every Kinda People. We hope to see you at Mini Bar that night for an evening of community, art, drinks, laughter, and love.

This episode is brought to you by Standard Deviant Brewing. We recorded it at Noe Cafe in Noe Valley in August 2025.

Photography by Jeff Hunt