HIP HISTORIAN
Radio host mixes jazz with tales of Marin County's past
Radio Sausalito has a new program exploring the good, the bad and the strange of Marin's history.
Chris Tognotti, the host “Night Harbor,” finds inspiration from newspaper archives and long-forgotten stories of the county's past. He shares the tales along with jazz selections each week.
Growing up in Larkspur and Corte Madera, Tognotti practiced performance arts and developed a love of writing. He wrote for several outlets before deciding to move into the audio world, and began producing the podcast “Now We Know,” about '80s and '90s pop culture, with a friend.
Tognotti, 35, said his generation is “finding our minds drawn inward and back to the past, trying to get away from some of the stuff going on right now.” He decided to pitch a show that explores the past, combined with his passion for Japanese jazz from the '60s and '70s.
Radio Sausalito accepts volunteer broadcasters and will train novices, and station manager Jonathan Westerling mentored Tognotti on broadcasting basics.
“Chris' enthusiasm for great jazz combined with his lifetime of curiosity about Marin brought great energy to the process and he made quick progress in creating his unique musical trip down our local memory lane,” Westerling said.
Tognotti has committed to 52 one-hour shows for one year. Each episode contains about three stories accompanied by jazz tunes he thinks go well with the stories he finds.
"There's just a resonance for this place for me. I think there's a real magic, and a real strange duality, to Marin's history."
— Chris Tognotti, Radio Sausalito host
“I've always just had a fascination with the region and the landscape,” said Tognotti, who lives in Berkeley. “There's just a resonance for this place for me. I think there's a real magic, and a real strange duality, to Marin's history.”
He demonstrated scripts for upcoming episodes, including a story about marijuana being sold out of a Mill Valley KFC in 2002, and another on a neighborhood dispute when a man allegedly operated a sanatorium out of his home.
Tognotti said he is interested in exploring periods in the county's history before it was “hyper-expensive, extremely rich” and was a rural getaway, even “lawless” in some areas. He also enjoys stories about the divide between protecting natural resources “versus enabling more people to live here.”
Tognotti lived in Section 8 housing as a child and said he felt the difference between himself and other Marin children.
“You wouldn't think there's room in Marin for people who don't have money,” he said. “I know how hard it is to talk people about that stuff and have them not get defensive. There is a real self-image for people in how they see themselves and how they see the image of the county.”
Tognotti also hopes to share stories about the region's Indigenous people and on the county's history of being “an extremely racially segregated place.”
“I want to be able to appreciate the good, and also be unsparing of the bad,” he said.
The show is produced at the Radio Sausalito studio in the wine cellar of a Sausalito home. Westerling said the station remains volunteerand listener-powered.
“For me, it's a pleasure to keep the station going as a strong testament to the connection that people all over the world have with Sausalito,” he said.
Tognotti's show can be heard 8 to 9 p.m. Fridays and Mondays at 1610 AM or at radiosausalito.org.