Sparkletack was an accident.
A podcaster friend suggested that I try this brand new medium (well, it was new at the time), and I was curious. But what did I have to say? Well, San Francisco is the one theme I inevitably return to, so I recorded one short show about the city… just for fun. And then another. And another. And a second life as amateur historian and storyteller was born.
Turns out there was a hunger for stories about San Francisco, as well as for entertaining and accurate presentation of local history — history made accessible without dumbing it down. Despite being eternally too busy (and a bit of an introvert) to do much promotion for Sparkletack, I discovered that my stories about “the city that knows how” had acquired an intelligent and enthusiastic audience from all around the world.
If you’re listening, you could be anyone from an 8-year old to a retiree, from a passionate history nut to a lover of stories, from a technical wiz to someone who’s just learned how to send an e-mail.
a little press and a lot of support
- Sparkletack’s 2-part “Treasure Island” podcast was made the unofficial “official history” of the island by the Treasure Island Development Authority, and placed on San Francisco’s city website.
- Listed among the Top Ten Best Podcasts of 2007
- Sparkletack was profiled in the June 2007 issue of 7×7 San Francisco.
- Warmly reviewed in the January 2006 issue of San Francisco magazine
- Featured on Budget Travel Online in the December 2005/January 2006 issue
- Praised in Annik Rubens’ book Podcasting (by the number one German podcaster, winner of the “best non-English podcast” in the international 2005 Podcast Awards)
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Sparkletack was an iTunes featured podcast in 2005, shortly after Apple’s “podcast conversion experience”.
- Fans from Munich to Aberdeen, Kyoto to Honolulu, Rome to London and all points in between.
- Blogged about and linked to in innumerable personal web pages (thanks, guys!)
- SFGenealogy.com has even graciously offered to archive every episode, should I ever cease production.
sparkletack FAQ
- You can always contact me by email at richard (at) sparkletack.com.
- There’s a page about about how to subscribe to podcasts here, and how this website works here .
- The website design is by yours truly (my day job …
- …as is the show’s theme music.
- I first started listening to podcasts while looking to improve my German — das momentan ziemlich gut geht!
- It takes between 20 and 40 hours to research and record the average episode — but the honest answer is “it takes as long as it takes”.
- Many of the photos on the Sparkletack site are home-made. The portrait of the SF burrito has even been featured on Wikipedia. What a proud moment! (burp)
- No, as a matter of fact I’m not sure what a Sparkletack is… though one listener recently suggested a connection with the Transcontinental Railroad’s “Golden Spike”. Hmmm…
- I’m proudly (albeit really obscurely) related to another, earlier fan of San Francisco — Sam Clemens, aka Mark Twain.
The making of the show can get slowed down by any number of things — my full-time job as a graphic designer, for one. Real life, travel, and my lady friend take up most of the rest of my time — not that I’m complaining! And my latent tendency towards perfectionism means that hours (if not weeks) of thought and meticulous research (hunting down old books, visiting archives, interviewing likely suspects, prowling the internet, taking pictures) go into each show.
What was once a struggle to meet a self-imposed weekly deadline has evolved into something more pleasurable — I now work on a story for as long as it takes to feel satisfied that I’ve told the story in the clearest, most accurate and entertaining way that I can. Fortunately, my listeners seem to be a patient group!
These stories want to be told. And once a story is heard it’s hard to stop telling it. Of course, San Francisco isn’t the only city with a story or two to tell, and I am looking forward to the day when you start “sparkling” the stories in your city so that I can listen to them too.
Thanks for listening…
Richard Miller
richard (at) sparkletack.com
