Recent Free Public Talks
Video Archive
2026 (February-December)
A place to meet and talk unmediated by corporations, official spokespeople, religion, political parties, or dogma.
All events are free.
We host indoor discussions at 518 Valencia Street, near 16th, in San Francisco (close to 16th Street BART) about a dozen times a year.
To subscribe to our Talks as a podcast, paste the link into your favorite podcast software (iTunes, Podcast Addict, etc.)
Wed., February 25, 7:30pm
Memory Keeping from Indigenous Perspectives
Public Talk at 518 Valencia
Shaping San Francisco’s year-long case study of the Padre Junípero Serra statue included a folklife-based, community-led research process centered on memory-keeping practices. Indigenous community researchers explored everyday practices from their own cultures that carry collective knowledge. The researchers included members of Urban Native communities, Indigenous migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, and urban youth. Their research invites reflection on how genocide, relocation, and migration continue to erode Indigenous ways of knowing, and how communities continue to protect and hold on to them. The process was facilitated by storyteller Adriana Camarena. Several community researchers will share their findings. The discussion will be presented in Spanish and English.
Part of Shaping Legacy: San Francisco Monuments & Memorials, a project of San Francisco Arts Commission
Video here.
Wed., February 11, 2026, 7:30pm
The Priest, the Imperialist, and the Sculptor
Public Talk at 518 Valencia
Please join us in closing a year-long case study of the Padre Junipero Serra statue. Jonathan Cordero (Association of Ramaytush Ohlone) critically examines the romantic myth that supports the veneration of Serra and reveals the actual calamitous impact of the mission system. Chris Carlsson explains how an unlikely series of events led to the so-called “Mission Revival”, the commissioning of the statue by James Phelan, and giving Serra an undeserved new role in a manufactured public memory. He reveals that the statue's placement in Golden Gate Park in 1907 in fact bolstered a white supremacist agenda at the dawn of the 20th century. LisaRuth Elliott explores Douglas Tilden, the cosmopolitan sculptor revered in the deaf community, and his many other contributions to the SF civic art collection and beyond. This evening is a chance to talk about the reanimation of a man through a monument, the fraught relationship between a patron of the arts and his protegé, and how these honorific likenesses and what they are supposed to signify become part of our urban space.
Part of Shaping Legacy: San Francisco Monuments & Memorials, a project of San Francisco Arts Commission
Video here.