Audio Academy

The Golden Gate Park Rose Garden is an oasis of color and smell, popular among both tourists and honeybees. Fuchsia, red, peach, yellow and white blooms explode everywhere.

All week long, we've been playing this sound, and asking you to guess what exactly it is and where exactly in the Bay Area we recorded it.

I’m with emergency responders Nicolas Kinney and Chris Channell in a green and white Paramedics Plus ambulance racing to a 911 call in Fremont. We bump over train tracks and swerve through mid-afternoon traffic.

Harumi Fuji McClure and her husband live in a nice, two-story house in Morgan Hill south of San Jose. It gets pretty hot there in the summers, so they have a large swimming pool and air-conditioning in the whole house. But her electricity bill isn’t high: it’s negative five dollars a month.

Close to 8,000 San Francisco homes and businesses were automatically enrolled in CleanPowerSF in May of 2016.

Growing up with family members who have migrated to the U.S. after severe trauma is something that many Americans face. 

Finding the words to express ourselves can be tricky. Finding the words to describe our sexual identities, in a second language where some words aren’t fully translatable? That’s even more challenging.

San Francisco is in a different place than much of the rest of the country when it comes to trans awareness.

Sam Bass is the principal at Miraloma Elementary in San Francisco. He’s often talking with parents, and he says he once had a conversation about how some students on the gender spectrum were not comfortable going to the bathroom at Miraloma.

Eric Cetnarski works as a sound healer in Oakland. Sound healing can be many things: from listening to our favorite songs to using our voices. 

When I started asking people about their dream transit system for the Bay Area, a lot of people said they want transit to be more convenient. My friend Chris Quines – everyone calls him Burd – plays in punk bands.

In February, new express lanes opened on Interstate 580 near Pleasanton. These express lanes are just like carpool lanes – in most ways. They’re free for buses, motorcycles, and cars with more than one rider. But in an express lane a single driver can get in too, for a price.

The VTA Flex pilot program ended on July 1. VTA's Chief Technology Officer Gary Miskell says they are examining other ways to deploy on-demand transit. When we reported on Flex, the challenges in providing such transit were already visible. 

Moises Olmedo, a software engineer, used to leave 50 minutes to get to work by public transit. He would walk or bike to the light rail station, wait for the train, ride for 20 minutes, and then walk the rest of the way to his job at Cisco. All this despite living just three miles away.

June 7, 2016 is primary election day in California, and as a California voter, it can be frustrating to watch as the results come in from primaries in other states. 

The Mission District is famous for its vibrantly colored murals, and some of the oldest murals can be found in Balmy Alley.

All week long, we've been playing this sound, and asking you to guess what exactly it is and where exactly in the Bay Area we recorded it.

There’s a lot of graffiti at 60th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard in East Oakland. Tags in various colors are thrown up on storefronts all along the street, but the mural on the side of Aswad, Inc., screenprinting shop remains untouched.

All week long, we've been playing this sound, and asking you to guess what exactly it is and where exactly in the Bay Area we recorded it.

In recent years it has become more and more common for arrangements to buy and sell sex to be made online and behind closed doors. A lot of the time it’s not among consenting adults — it’s forced prostitution or sex trafficking.

Many people living in need rely on churches for meals, support or simply a place to get off the street and rest. But like other types of service centers, churches close their doors at the end of the day. And for those without a home or family to turn to, the night can be a long and difficult time.

Jordan Diaz-Boutte is a sophomore at Phillip and Sala Burton High School in San Francisco. From her perspective, consent is still an ambiguous issue.

Last month, San Francisco city workers cleared a large tent encampment of homeless people on Division Street.  Citing complaints about urine, feces and blocked sidewalks, the city’s Public Health Department declared the area unsafe and a public health hazard.

We all know we’re supposed to prepare for earthquakes, but how many of us really have a plan?

The East Bay’s congressional representative Barbara Lee (CA-13) introduced a bill last year that would greatly expand access to abortions. It gets rid of what’s called the Hyde Amendment, the restriction on abortion spending by the federal government.

Twenty-year-old Christine Abiba's ultimate dream is to open a center where teens and older adults can exchange life experiences in order to connect. 

In this piece from StoryCorps, she and 70-year-old Frank Kingman dive deep into a conversation about their views on the meaning of life. 

SF punk Penelope Houston adds a very important track to My Mixtape.

In September 2015, San Francisco lost one of its iconic symbols—its sports cathedral, Candlestick Park, where the 49ers of the 80’s dominated football, winning 5 super bowls in 14 seasons under Joe Montana and Steve Young.

All week long we've been playing this sound, and asking you to guess what exactly it is and where exactly in the Bay Area we recorded it.

Dora Torres is spending the better part of a hot Monday afternoon at Bail Hotline Bail Bonds trying to get her boyfriend Mark Mabutas out of jail. He was arrested in October, charged with mayhem, criminal threats, and assault with a deadly weapon. It has taken Torres months of raising money to try and bail him out today.