Yard Tales artwork

Yard Tales

16 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 26 ratings

We tell tales of the train and bus yard, the tenement yard and the prison yard. We detail close calls and chase stories. We dig into larger conversations about crossing boundaries, the other side of the tracks, borders, and forbidden space. Whether to make big life changes, to forward the artistic or professional practice, to escape peril—or just for the sheer thrill of it. With first-person storytellers including trans-disciplinary artist Lupe Maravilla, musician/producer Scott Harding ("Scotty Hard"), drug-user activist and award-winning radio documentarian Garth Mullins (from the Crackdown podcast), graffiti artist and fashion designer Claudia Gold ("Claw Money"), pioneering painter and graffiti artist Chris "Freedom" Pape, and many more.

Documentary Society & Culture Music Music Commentary border tagging subway yard border crossing borders boundaries graffiti bus hopping bus yard chase stories
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Episodes

Ryan McMahon: John Wayne Is Dead

December 09, 2021 12:00 - 1 hour - 57.3 MB

Ryan McMahon; groundbreaking Anishinaabe comedian, writer, producer, and creator of compelling media confronts the borders he has faced throughout his entire career. Borders that he was able to kick down in an effort to create a new space for a new narrative about Indigenous presence in today's popular culture as we know it.

Airto Morales: Behind The Wall

November 26, 2021 04:26 - 56 minutes - 51.6 MB

Multigenerational trauma and a life of violence led to many of Airto Morales' early years being incarcerated, ultimately landing him with a long prison sentence. But even after getting out from behind the wall, Airto never did leave the prison system. Airto is now an advocate and consultant at the Haywood Burns Institute in Oakland, where he continues to work with community to abolish carceral systems across the nation, targeting structural racism and supplanting it with structural wellbeing...

Airto Morales: Trailer

November 19, 2021 05:44 - 2 minutes - 2.14 MB

Airto Morales details the traumatic events that led to a lifetime of navigating systems and institutions that were designed to take him down. Listen in to hear how he used his time behind the wall to find enlightenment and overcome the barriers that were created only to bring darkness.

Chris Pape: Freedom Tunnel

November 11, 2021 12:00 - 48 minutes - 44 MB

First generation NYC graffiti writer, author, documentarian, archivist, and historian Chris Pape, AKA FREEDOM, tells his own surreptitious stories around the Upper West Side Manhattan train tunnel that was ultimately named after him. His decision to live on the streets and paint in the "Freedom" tunnel propelled him toward a career that he never could have imagined. "So, what we did was we kind of herded along some of the tougher guys on our block. We had a lower income housing thing next t...

Claw Money: Key To The City

November 04, 2021 11:00 - 57 minutes - 52.3 MB

World renowned graffiti writer, fashion designer, and cultural icon Claw Money recounts the many borders she had to cross in order to land in the space that she calls Claw & Co. When life puts a fence in your way, you climb it. When it puts a second one, you rip your pants.

Bennington: The Liminal Space

October 29, 2021 07:59 - 56 minutes - 51.7 MB

Bennington alumni spanning four generations come together to share first person experiences and encounters they had on campus. As the stories unfold, undeniable parallels are drawn, and the liminality between life and death is laid bare before us.

Bennington: Ghost Stories

October 29, 2021 07:59 - 1 hour - 55.2 MB

Bennington alumni spanning four generations come together to share first person paranormal experiences and encounters they had on the small campus in Southern Vermont. As the stories unfold, striking parallels are drawn that prompt deep questions about space, who owns it, and who is not welcome to occupy it. Alex Pintair: When we first got to Bennington, it seemed like there was a bit of an indoctrination that would happen between the upperclassmen and the new kids where they would sort of...

Scotty Hard: The Hard Way

October 21, 2021 11:00 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MB

Sometimes we cross a line that we never ask to cross. Join us as luminary musician, producer, and mixing engineer Scotty Hard details an evening that changed his life permanently.   "When I was mixing the show and I was like, dubbing out all the vocals and doing all this stuff and I'm moving back and forth and I'm in the music and I'm like, I completely at that point forgot that I had been in an accident, I was in a wheelchair and that's the sort of power of music and that's why I keep doi...

Bonus: Presenting "Crackdown"

October 18, 2021 11:00 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MB

A special bonus episode in your Yard Tales feed. Last week we were lucky enough to hear Garth Mullins tell his incredibly personal tales of having to navigate forbidden space. We heard about his trajectory towards activism, reporting, and radio documentary work. We also got to hear about the birth of his podcast, "Crackdown." So today I'm bringing you Episode 1 of "Crackdown." It's such a well-made and important show that I wanted to give Yard Tales listeners a chance to hear it. The combin...

Garth Mullins: A Ghost In My Own Life

October 14, 2021 11:00 - 57 minutes - 52.7 MB

Garth Mullins is a journalist and radio documentary producer who focuses on the decriminalization of drugs, issues of race, class, environment, capitalism, colonialism, and oppression. Garth has written for the Vancouver Sun, Georgia Straight, and Vice. His documentaries have appeared on CBC Radio One, he has spoken publicly at countless schools, protests, conferences, and media outlets, and holds multiple awards for his work. Garth is a drug use activist who has worked with organizers to ca...

Susan Tran: Canada Is Racist

October 07, 2021 11:00 - 52 minutes - 48.1 MB

Susan Tran is a Vietnamese Canadian who was kidnapped from her mother in Vietnam at the age of two. But she never knew that she even had a mother because her abductor was her own father, intent on keeping her abduction a secret. After immigrating to Canada, Susan discovered that her mother’s strength and resilience was the foundation for her own self empowerment. Which now allows her to fully embrace her own family and culture, and also empowers her to confront Canada’s special brand of deep...

Lupe Maravilla: Tripa Chuca

September 30, 2021 11:05 - 47 minutes - 43.8 MB

Renowned transdisciplinary artist Guadalupe Maravilla was among the first wave of undocumented immigrants to enter the US from Central America when he immigrated alone from El Salvador at the age of 8. In this audio narrative, Maravilla sensitively recounts harrowing tales of traumas experienced during the events leading up to and including his border crossings and how they later evolved into an illness he uncovered through experimentation with “ancient medicines” — eventually getting diagno...

Luz Fleming: Potreros

September 30, 2021 11:00 - 54 minutes - 50.2 MB

A story of finding family boundaries, fleeing danger, and the inescapable pull of graffiti. On a cold winter night in early 1990s San Francisco, a group of kids attempt to quench their insatiable appetite for bus yard destruction with an all-out assault that doesn't go the way they hoped. Storyteller Luz Fleming has to face the tension of touring his green suburban cousin through the bowels of the city while satisfying his own addictions for adrenaline. The Potrero bus yard’s boundaries that...

Listen To The Yard Tales Podcast

September 24, 2021 18:09 - 1 minute - 1.78 MB

Yard Tales. A podcast about crossing boundaries. Coming September 30th. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and every other platform in the Yard. And we had to crawl through like open sewers in the jungle. It was not a short trip. You're eating bugs, trying to stay alive, trying to escape, trying to get to the water where we got on a boat. And we floated with a bunch of other people, really not knowing where you're floating. And there's no food because we can't carry any food hardly with us....

Introducing: Yard Tales (Season 1)

February 13, 2021 23:33 - 1 minute - 1.37 MB

Welcome to the place where we discussed entering forbidden space. We detailed border crossings. We enter space we never asked to enter. Whether to make big life changes, to forward the artistic or professional practice, to escape peril, or just for the sheer thrill of it.

Introducing: Yard Tales

February 13, 2021 23:33 - 1 minute - 1.37 MB

Welcome to the place where we discussed entering forbidden space. We detailed border crossings. We enter space we never asked to enter. Whether to make big life changes, to forward the artistic or professional practice, to escape peril, or just for the sheer thrill of it.