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Yap Zone: Emma Silvers on Growing Up Free Range in Albany
In a staff spotlight, COYOTE’s two Albany kids talk Gordo’s orders, small-town teenage debauchery, and more.
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Hey there and welcome to the Yap Zone, our biweekly (that means every other week) bonus COYOTE story. This newsletter is an exclusive offering and extra dose of gratitude for our Yapper- and Howler-tier members. Thank you, and we hope you enjoy!
You know that awkward feeling when you run into someone you knew from high school? Maybe you spot a former classmate, frenemy or prom date who you haven’t talked to in decades in the aisles of a grocery store, or sitting a couple tables away at a restaurant? For those of us who grew up in the Bay and decided to stay close to our hometowns, it’s a familiar social dilemma: Do you wave? Nod? Say hello? Or quickly avert your eyes to avoid the dreaded small talk? (Guilty as charged, sometimes I walk through my local Trader Joe’s in a baseball cap for this exact reason. Pfft, like I’m some celebrity who’s avoiding the paps.)
Fellow COYOTE co-founder Emma Silvers has never been that person for me, even though our paths have crossed many times.
In addition to both graduating from Albany High School and UC San Diego, Emma and I also ended up working at KQED together in neighboring departments, nearly a decade before we teamed up to help start COYOTE.
One of the best parts of starting a worker-owner newsroom is that I get to learn directly from talented people like Emma. On top of being a savvy editor, she manages to not only be on the pulse of what’s buzzing in the Bay Area arts and culture scene, but she also shapes the conversations that people end up having. She’s written some of our most-read stories. Take for example her essay on why taking Waymos shouldn’t be seen as a safety measure for women, her scoop on the closure of Bottom of the Hill, and one of her most recent bangers, a critique of SF Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Civic Joy Fund.
When we’re not juggling various work tasks, Emma and I love talking shit about Albany, where we both grew up. But really, it’s our way of trading nostalgia and war stories about what it was like to spend our formative teenage years in this small, sometimes complicated, city in the East Bay. (Case in point: check out this episode about a high-profile Albany controversy on a podcast I used to host).
In this COYOTE staff spotlight, I spoke with Emma about how Britney Spears helped jumpstart her career in journalism, what it was like growing up free-range in Albany, and why COYOTE is allowing her to write in a new way.