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“I get lot of calls about animals in pools,” said Ray Hartley. “Squirrels in pools. Skunks in pools. Usually I tell people, ‘You don’t need me. You’ve got a skimmer, just gently scoop it up!’ ” Recently, though, a woman rang about a deer in her pool.

“That was a first,” said Mr. Hartley, owner of Intrepid Wildlife Services in Westchester County, N.Y. His tagline: “Your castle shouldn’t be a zoo.”

On a recent rainy afternoon over veggie burgers at NeueHouse, the co-working space in the Flatiron district, three Vedic meditators were discussing drink options for a new kind of happy hour they were organizing.

“Tonight would be a good night for tea,” Katia Tallarico, 33, a lanky psychotherapist from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said to Light Watkins, 42, an organizer from Los Angeles typically partial to a hot lemon-ginger elixir.

“It’s O.K., we have a really great water, from Australia,” said Andrea Praet, 34, a trend strategist from Greenpoint, who also runs an urban retreat series, with Ms. Tallarico, called the Uplift Project. Around 5 p.m., the three made their way over to set up a “bar” and buffet at General Assembly, a fourth-floor technology school and site of New York City’s inaugural Shine: an inspirational, alcohol-free evening.

Founded by Mr. Watkins, the bimonthly after-work party began in Venice Beach, Calif., where it quickly grew to 200 attendees from 12. On this night, for about the price of a glass of nebbiolo at the NoMad, 90 New Yorkers were submitting to an evening of meditation, “enlightertainment” (including live music and film) and vegan food. “Though meat is an option,” Mr. Watkins said. “We want to be normal.”

And “normal” in Manhattan typically involves booze. “Alcohol is such a part of the city’s culture,” said Ms. Tallarico, who drinks occasionally but said her social life doesn’t revolve around it. “There’s nothing wrong with drinking. But people are looking to evolve. They’re looking to wake up.”

Though malbec has arrived at the movies, and brunch cocktails now go way beyond Bloody Marys, some are seeking social gatherings where alcohol isn’t even a temptation.

A recent 50-person “juice crawl” through SoHo was so enthusiastically received that the organizer, Anna Garcia, said she would be hosting them weekly this year. The year-old Manhattan-based social group Clean Fun Network was so overwhelmed by the initial response, it had to temporarily shut down, said Jimmy Hamm, a founder.

And tickets to the Shine sold out within a week, with a lengthy wait list. “We didn’t even do anything,” said Ms. Tallarico, who donned a shimmery top for the occasion. “It is the Shine,” said Ms. Tallarico, putting on lip gloss. Ms. Praet, who pumped her shoulders to a silent beat as volunteers unloaded bottles of floral essence water, said, “Fun, fun, fun.” Ambience, though, was a bit of a concern. “The light is definitely too bright,” said Light.

That’s the thing about alcohol-free events — they tend to be “unsexy,” said Catherine Salway, owner of Redemption, a new “bar” in London’s Notting Hill that opened last August, serving beet-o-tinis, coco-ritas and the like.

“A lot can be done with décor and music,” Ms. Salway said. “It’s not alcohol creating that vibe, it’s the people.” She opened a second location this month in the trendy Shoreditch neighborhood. A former brand director for Virgin, Ms. Salway is also eying New York and (brace yourself) Las Vegas. “If we can convince Londoners to take a night off booze. …” she said, trailing off.

Back above Broadway, doors opened to a disproportionate number of tall, willowy women with flawless skin and a blasé, “I-just-have-more-fun-without-it” attitude toward alcohol. At the name-tag table, everyone was asked an icebreaker: “What actor would you cast to play you in a movie?” Elle Fanning. Kate Hudson. Several Natalie Portmans. A man in a blazer scanned his phone, stumped. “You know, in ‘Sex & the City 2’? When they’re in Dubai? That butler?” asked Siddhartha Banthiya, an investment banker.

People lined up for sunchoke salad and kale-pumpkin-seed pesto. “This is truly a breath of fresh air,” said Porl Gordon, a multimedia designer and regular drinker, guzzling a green juice. “Conversations are more solid and rooted than any alcohol-fueled chat.”

Nick DiMattina, 28, an Australian life coach, said that he had come looking for love, and that he prefers to date sans alcohol. “It’s the only way to see the real person,” he said. “I told my friends, this is where you’ll meet a cool girl.”

Likewise, Jennifer Ekeleme, 37, a freelance brand strategist, thought she had decent odds of meeting “a straight, down-to-earth, culturally aware man” — at least better than during her drinking days at an ad agency. “Booze was always flowing, people would just get hammered and start talking about how unhappy they are,” she said. “It was getting too hard to justify the toll alcohol was taking on my body, wallet and spirit.”

At the Shine, though, people were all smiles. “This is the only real happyhour happening in Manhattan right now,” said Mr. Watkins, kicking things off with a human massage chain. Next, Emily Fletcher, a meditation guide, took the mike and commanded people to close their eyes and plug their right nostril with their thumb, exhale with the left, then alternate.

Meditation Bar in Austin, Tex., offers “Happy Hour” classes, and MNDFL, which opened in November on East Eighth Street, has quickly morphed into more than a place to just sit in silence. “We dedicated half the space to feel like a living room, with couches and free tea,” said Lodro Rinzler, MNDFL’s co-owner and author of “The Buddha Walks Into a Bar. …” “We have real mugs,” said his partner, Ellie Burrows. They also host MNDFL Taste, a partly silent organic catered dinner, paired with water.

“Today, we had training that ended with a happy hour, but I didn’t go,” said Stephanie DiSturco, 26, a digital media planner who chose to go to MNDFL instead. At the Shine, as people sipped water, some vowed to start meditating more, others exchanged business cards. A 40-something woman who works in finance, was glad to have a new kind of night out.

“Rarely, do I ever come home from a bar and say, ‘That was really amazing,’” she said.

Romantic it was not. For starters, it was too dark to see. “Oh shit, I forgot a flashlight,” said Wendy, rummaging through her bag. “Honey, just use your phone,” said Sara, lying spread-eagle on the couch in her office, wearing a button-down blouse and nothing else.

It was noon, a Thursday in February, and a nice man had just masturbated in the bathroom down the hall. A week or two earlier, over tea at a nearby café, the semi-stranger had generously offered to help Sara and Wendy. And, unlike so many men who’d preceded him, there he now stood, true to his word, holding a plastic cup with his sperm in it, ready and willing to impregnate Sara.

Except, oops, they needed scissors. Luckily, Wendy had a Leatherman in her truck. She returned with the blade and sliced off the top of a syringe. At least it was sterile.

The same could not be said of Sara’s office, but it was a few blocks from their donor’s place of work, and—as any 41-year-old woman undergoing fertility treatment knows—timing is everything. According to Sara’s basal body temp and ovulation strips, it was go time. By the light of her iPhone 6, Wendy squirted the man’s semen into Sara’s cervix.

Afterward, everyone but Sara dashed back to work. A therapist in private practice, she lay on her couch for an hour, hips elevated—shopping online for sweaters, waiting “for the little guys to swim up there.” Hoping, but careful not to get her hopes up too high, that this time one of those little guys would make it.

Getting to this point had been quite a journey—a term often used by cancer patients undergoing chemo, but also by lesbian couples looking to conceive. It’s a cliché, but an accurate way to describe the quest that two women undertake when they decide to start a family. There’s no “Oops! I’m pregnant!” when you’re a lesbian. “That would be nice,” Sara says, drolly.

Five years ago, the petite, pretty PhD had been single and living alone in the Bay Area burbs. (Well, with seven rescue cats.) She’d recently come close to buying a house back East to be near her mom, whose help she’d have needed to have a baby on her own. It was something she’d been determined to do until, ironically, her realtor, a lesbian, talked her out of the house (and the solo parenting) and told her to move to San Francisco instead.

So then there she was, in a one-bedroom rental, wrapped in a blanket and weary of dating, online shopping of a different sort—fielding emails from random dudes supposedly seeking progeny and a platonic parenting partner. “I am well-endowed,” boasted one forty-something man on the European site Coparents. “I am extremely good-looking,” offered another. “Let’s do it the natural way,” suggested the last suitor, before Sara shut her laptop. This wasn’t the way she’d wanted to do this.

In the last few years, websites like Coparents, Modamily, and FamilyByDesign have appeared, aimed at connecting aspiring parents of all stripes. The media immediately glommed on to the new trend in family making, with everyone from Good Morning America to CNN touting smiley, straight, single women who’d all found success starting nuclear families with men they’d met online. But, says founder Ivan Fatovic, 20 percent of female Modamily members identify as lesbian, and he expects that number to climb with the legality of same-sex marriage. Now he’s making a more concentrated push into the LGBTQ market, specifically here in San Francisco, where he hopes to host offline mixers that bring together queer people considering kids.

Such startups have clearly filled a need. But dating for sperm left Sara depressed. “It was like being on Match or OkCupid, but worse,” she says. “I mean, how many people do you interact with online that you actually even want to go to dinner with? Imagine trying to find someone to be your kid’s dad and in your life forever?” (She was adamant that the donor not be anonymous, but rather a fatherlike figure to her child.)

She had always wanted to fall in love first, but the clock was ticking. A year passed before she met Wendy at a gay dance party. “I’m pretty sure I told her on our first date I wanted to have a baby,” she says. Five years younger and focused on her career, Wendy was in no rush to start a family. So Sara waited a little longer, until she hit 40 and realized that if she wanted to have a biological child, it was now or never. Wendy agreed. And then they had sex, and nine months later their baby was born! Ha. That would be nice.

From the moment a lesbian couple decides to have biological children, they’re in for a constant stream of deep discussion and decision making, discrimination and dollars—often a lot of dollars—along with the kind of messy, emotional drama that straight folks, barring fertility issues, never have to face.

Queer couples who have biological kids are a minority within a minority. Those who do want kids face legal battles and societal judgment and constant frustration over the fact that—no matter how in love they are—they cannot biologically have a baby together, and have no choice but to rely on a third entity. Considering that same-sex marriage was broadly legalized only last year, it’s no surprise that societal acceptance of queer couples having kids still has a ways to go. Which is why, as one lesbian mother puts it, “It’s important to bring our stories out of the closet.”

Many of the issues faced by lesbian couples looking to conceive are, of course, similar to those faced by all women of bearing age, in the sense that they all need something they don’t have: sperm. However, that’s where the similarities end: The list of topics every lesbian couple analyzes to death goes way beyond those faced by straight women. Who should carry? How will the non-carrying parent feel? Who will be the donor? Will he be known or anonymous? Do we want a donor who does diaper duty or do we want a donor we see once a year (or never)? If anonymous, what kind of qualities do we want in the sperm supplier? If known, how do we ask him? Who will we ask? An acquaintance? A coworker? A second cousin? How will we inseminate? How will we pay for it? Can we pay for it? Wait, how much will this cost again? For biracial couples: What race do we want our baby to be?

Typically, when you read about queer couples having kids, the accounts are very matter-of-fact: “The couple went to a sperm bank.” Or, “A friend agreed to be the donor.” Between the lines, though, there’s always a story—one rarely told. “Everyone talks about fertility issues, and how painful and emotionally draining that can be. For lesbians it’s a whole other kind of roller coaster,” says Sara, echoing essentially every lesbian couple I spoke with for this story (many of whom, like Sara and Wendy, wished to remain anonymous). “No one understands what we go through.”

Elizabeth (not her real name), a mother of two boys, was in her early 30s when she first learned the lesbian version of the birds and the bees. “We had no idea what the steps were,” she says. “Once we decided to have kids, we were like, ‘OK, now what?’” Like many of their sistren, Elizabeth and her partner looked for help. The bible is The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy & Birth (2006), by midwife Stephanie Brill. But reading a book only gets you so far. Apart from several local support groups—like Baby Buds, for lesbian and trans Asian Pacific Islanders, and Our Family Coalition, which occasionally holds parents-to-be gatherings—there are very few solid resources. Says LGBTQ advocate, author, and recent mother Michelle Tea, “As a queer person who wants a baby, you’re pretty much left to figure it all out on your own.”

Which is partly what moved Tea to write a play-by-play blog for three years called Getting Pregnant with Michelle Tea—until she finally did. Tea had a story to tell “and no one to tell it to,” she says. “All of my queer, broke artist friends didn’t want to hear it. They were like, ‘Why do you want to ruin your awesome gay life and throw away your freedom and disposable income to have a baby? Parenthood is for straight people.’”

Betsy Kershner, a photographer living in the Sunset whose wife, Toby Branz, has been trying to get pregnant for the last two years, felt similarly alone and went searching for others’ stories. “But when I googled ‘lesbian moms,’ all that basically came up was porn or stock images of super-femme-y women with pregnant bellies,” says Kershner. So two years ago, she started a portrait series called The Pride + Joy Project, intended to reveal real-life two-mom families and show, “Look! Lesbians can have babies, too,” she says. “There’s so little social conversation about how queer women make their families. I wanted to know everything.” And, as she soon discovered, so did everybody else.

In January, she started a Facebook group called Queer Mamas and invited 110 of her friends. By day 10, it had ballooned to 10,000 members, with 24-7 posts from Sweden to San Anselmo. From “What is the best piece of advice for me and my wife hoping to conceive this year?” to “We got ourselves a donor!!” to “My five-month-old cries every time he hears a man speak. Tips?” to “Can anyone recommend a good book about penises?,” the conversations signal an insatiable appetite for more intel. “People are clearly craving this connection,” says Kershner. “They want to talk about it.”

But they don’t always want to talk about it with everyone. More than one Queer Mama has posted questions like “Does it bother you when people ask, ‘How’d you make your baby?,’” generating reams of impassioned replies. Some find the inquiry nosy and/or offensive. “A mom asked me on a playdate and I felt cornered,” commented one woman from San Francisco. “I wanted to reply, ‘How was your child conceived? From fucking from behind or were you on top?’”

Lauren Gersick, a college counselor and mother of a seven-year-old boy in Bernal Heights, thinks it’s weirder not to ask about it. “It’s not like I’d prefer that people ask. But to be honest, I’m often more struck by the silence. There was obviously a man somewhere. I always wonder, ‘Do people wonder?’ Because I would. I do!”

I’ll admit: I’ve been friendly with Lauren and her wife for close to two years now. Our kids are in the same class; we’ve had them over for supper; I mean, we saw Zootopia together—and yet it wasn’t until reporting this story that I’d ever asked about their son’s origin. It wasn’t because I wasn’t curious. Of course I was. I’d just always presumed that if a lesbian couple (or, for that matter, a single mom or a gay dad or a straight married woman struggling with fertility issues) didn’t bring it up first, it was off-limits. But such once-taboo topics are slowly becoming acceptable cocktail party conversation. It’s not uncommon anymore for an acquaintance to confess that she’s freezing her eggs or to gripe woman-to-woman about progesterone injections. And as more same-sex couples marry and have kids, it seems inevitable that how they procreate will no longer be such a fraught topic.

With the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling in June 2015, the rate of same-sex couples marrying has more than doubled, perhaps even tripled, within the year, says Gary Gates, formerly the research director at UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. While it is difficult to track the number of same-sex couples having biological kids, Gates says there is a definite increase in “intentional parenting.” The number of adoptions by same-sex couples doubled between 2000 and 2009. According to 2000 census stats analyzed in Gates’s book, The Gay and Lesbian Atlas, 10 percent of same-sex couples in the San Francisco metro area were “raising” kids. (This includes not just children they conceived but also adopted children.) In 2010, 13 percent of same-sex couples in the San Francisco metro area were raising kids. And according to research covering 2012–14, that percentage soon increased to 14.4.

Given the increasing frequency of LGBTQ people giving birth or raising children, shouldn’t it be OK to talk about the process by which that happens? Clearly, you shouldn’t ask strangers in the Safeway line, as a white mom of an adopted Ethiopian-born daughter told me someone recently did. As in: “Excuse me, how much did your baby cost?” (Yeah.) Family is, of course, deeply personal. But given the proper context—and language—asking a woman how her child came into the world seems fair.

Still, choosing the right language often stymies people, says Gersick. “No one knows how to ask.” And so they don’t. (Attention, unwitting heteros: One of the most offensive questions you can ask a lesbian mother is “Who’s the real mom?” They’re both real moms. The other: “Who’s the father?” There is no father.) Despite the fact that the language surrounding parentage has been “common in our culture for hundreds of years,” says Gersick, “it’s just not language that always works for our family. Intellectually, I get what someone means when they say ‘dad,’ but emotionally, it feels undermining.”

Of course, some lesbians are guilty of taking language to the opposite extreme, too. The desire of many female couples to minimize male involvement in their family making is understandable, but some take it a step further and pretend they bucked biology altogether. “They’re like, ‘What man? We did this on our own,’” says Sara. (Although reproductive science and stem cell research might one day make it so.) For now, every egg needs a sperm. It’s just a matter of how you get it.

Pick your poison: fresh or frozen?

Sperm banks have been popular with lesbians since the 1980s, when, as a 1989 New York Times article put it, there was a national “baby boom of unusual complexity.” Partly in response to the needs of would-be lesbian moms, the Bay Area boasts the largest concentration of sperm banks in the country. San Francisco’s Pacific Reproductive Services (PRS) and the Sperm Bank of California were among the first to specifically serve the lesbian community. At California Cryobank, 60 percent of clients are lesbians, up from 30 percent 10 years ago.

The pros to sperm banks are plentiful. Donors are thoroughly vetted. The sperm is tested for sexually transmitted and common genetic diseases. There are rarely legal or parental-rights issues with sperm banks, as it’s all quite clear-cut: Donors either are WTBK (willing to be known, once the child turns 18) or agree to remain forever anonymous. But, says PRS founder Sherron Mills, “most donors these days are WTBK; no one wants anonymous anymore.”

In love, you compromise: He smokes, but he’s smart; he’s hairy, but he loves House of Cards. In sperm selection, you are able to customize your donor down to an almost ridiculous degree. Bachelor’s or master’s? Engineer or artist? Five nine or six feet or, hmm, maybe six two? Hilariously, at California Cryobank, the largest sperm bank in the country, with a popular Palo Alto branch, you can even choose a donor based on his celebrity look-alike, with an infinite scroll of options: Jake Gyllenhaal or James Gandolfini? South Korean idol Lee Joon or a young John Stamos?

Elizabeth and her wife didn’t actually want sperm from so close to Stanford University. “My brother had gone there and told us the entire men’s water polo team donated on a regular basis. ‘Those guys are assholes,’ he said. ‘You don’t want their stuff.’” But of course, one woman’s trash… “I would’ve loved a water polo player’s sperm from Stanford,” Gersick says. “I’d be more worried about some dweeby tech bro.”

The biggest downside to sperm banks, though, is the cost. Browsing might initially be free, but if you want any info beyond the basics (age, height, education, occupation, interests), you’ve got to pony up. Baby pictures of the donor, $15; adult photos, $15; the full 18-page profile, another $10 per potential donor. Some banks offer profiles that include personal essays and audio for $245. There are sign-up fees, liquid-nitrogen-tank fees. One vial of sperm runs between $690 and $890. Physicians recommend two inseminations per cycle, and it typically takes multiple tries, which means that on average a couple can burn anywhere from $2,000 to more than $10,000 on sperm alone.

Then tack on midwife fees, doctor’s visits, and medical inseminations—IUI, ICI, IVF—which, when they are covered by insurance at all, are often covered only after six unsuccessful attempts, whether a woman is gay or straight. “The lack of initial coverage is a huge issue for our patients,” says Marcelle Cedars, director of UCSF’s Center for Reproductive Health.

Lesbians, who can get pregnant only by insemination, are essentially categorized as “infertile” from the get-go. In the best-case scenario, insurance coverage will kick in for lesbians after six unsuccessful insemination attempts, but a majority of insurance plans have no fertility coverage, says Cathy Sakimura, family law director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR). Like Sara and Wendy, most lesbian couples who are self-employed (or low-income or don’t work for companies like Google with generous insurance plans) have to pay out of pocket. There’s really no getting knocked up for free when you’re a lesbian. (Unless you have sex with the donor, which Tea did try, once or twice, to no avail.)

“The current coverage plans are unfair to lesbians,” Sakimura says. “Lesbian and bisexual female couples and many transgender parents cannot conceive without assisted reproduction, yet many insurance companies require them to meet a higher burden before getting coverage than different-sex, non-transgender couples who cannot conceive without assisted reproduction. They may be denied completely or have to pay for 6 to 12 months of assisted reproduction before getting any coverage.” Hetero couples, by contrast, can try to conceive during those 6 to 12 months via intercourse. The NCLR is currently fighting to get full insurance coverage for fertility treatment for same-sex couples, transgender people, and single mothers—for anyone who cannot conceive with a partner without assistance. “We are advocating on an individual basis at this point, and are interested in litigation if a case is presented,” Sakimura says. She and the NCLR are also fighting for the complete recognition of same-sex parents and parents using assisted reproduction in every state, so that families can travel and move freely without fear of losing their parental rights.

Most insurance forms don’t even account for two-woman (or same-sex) couples. “It ends up looking like my wife is a single woman trying to get pregnant, thus invalidating me as her spouse,” says Kershner. “In so many ways—because I’m female, because I cannot create sperm, because they don’t have a box to check for married, same-sex couples—it’s all very maddening.” (Also maddening: Because of fears about HIV transmission, the FDA still prohibits gay men from participating in sperm bank programs at all.)

Sperm supply is also an ongoing issue. California Cryobank has 500-plus donors in its catalog at any given time. PRS has 135. Each donor at PRS is asked to make 65 “deposits.” This sounds like a lot of sperm, but it’s not nearly enough to meet demand. “We always need more donors,” says Mills. Competition for the best sperm is Ivy League tough, the interview process extensive. “Everyone wants the tall, blond, blue-eyed rocket scientist,” Mills says. And there are only so many of them. There’s only so many of anyone.

To guard against one man spawning a small city—the so-called Delivery Man effect, named after the 2013 movie in which Vince Vaughn plays a former sperm donor who discovers he has 533 kids—sperm banks set limits. Back in the ’80s, at PRS, the maximum number of families who could use a given donor was five. “But we kept running out of donors!” says Mills, so they raised it to 20. (Each family can have as many kids as they want from one donor.) In 2013, PRS “thought it was a good idea,” says Mills, to lower the limit to 15.

Although the San Francisco metro area has the highest percentage of adults in the country who identify as LGBT, according to a 2015 Gallup poll (6.2 percent; in San Francisco specifically, it’s about a percent higher), it’s still a relatively small subset of the region. And the number of queer couples who have biological kids is even smaller. One unusual potential consequence of this small number of women “overfishing” a small pool of donors is conceiving a child who turns out to be a “dibling”—a donor-conceived sibling. To avoid this, some lesbians intentionally seek sperm out of state, paying shipping fees for peace of mind. It’s doubtful that two San Francisco high school sweethearts would end up together forever only to find out they’re diblings, but there have still been awkward moments. At Tea’s baby shower, one outspoken mother noticed a toddler with the same superfine, spiky hair as her child’s. “Oh my God, I bet we have the same donor!” she ran around the party shouting. The other mother was mortified. Later, they exchanged donor numbers, and sure enough…

Going the fresh-sperm route, like Sara and Wendy, may be cheaper—and more effective—but it presents its own hassles and heartbreak. “In the beginning you think the world is your oyster,” says Sara.

Before Sara and Wendy even announced they were ready to conceive, they had all sorts of offers from good friends, peripheral friends, guys they’d meet in bars. “It helped that Sara is hot,” says Wendy of her partner, who is slim, with a wide smile and long blond locks. “No one wants an ugly baby. People see her and are like, ‘I’d have a child with her.’”

After a “bajillion conversations,” they decided to go with Wendy’s younger brother. He could be bossy, and they were worried about boundaries, but they loved the idea of both being biologically related to their baby. Plus, ever since he was 16 he’d assured his sister he’d hand over his sperm whenever she said the word.

Wendy was uncomfortable. “I’m not a big favor asker,” she says. “I felt vulnerable asking something so big.” Still, they went ahead with it, and at first Wendy’s brother said yes. But then he talked it over with his girlfriend. A week later, he sent an email saying sorry. He’d changed his mind.

Sobs. Anger. Devastation. Once they recovered from the setback, they moved on to plan B: Sara’s best friend, Brendan (not his real name), whom she’d briefly dated back in high school and with whom she’d later talked about the possibility of having kids. But Wendy, as the non-carrying partner, was afraid she’d end up feeling like a third wheel in her own family. “He’s still kind of in love with her,” says Wendy. “They’re so close, I worried it would feel too much like their kid.” Plus: “He’s thin and wiry. He looks kind of sickly.”

She agreed to let Sara ask him anyway. They wanted a solid option. But as with people’s awkward reactions to death or cancer or divorce, you can never predict how someone will respond when asked to be a sperm donor. When officially faced with the proposition, Brendan “just disappeared,” says Sara, disappointed in her longtime friend. “He never even said no. He just kept me hanging, and sent me a cryptic text weeks later with some metaphor about sea changes and shifting winds. I was like, ‘I don’t have time for metaphors.’”

Time was, indeed, marching on, Sara’s eggs getting older and fewer by the minute. She and Wendy went back to their short list and analyzed every possibility for hours. “When actually confronted, though, we realized guys just get overwhelmed,” says Sara. “Their life flashes before their eyes. They envision this little creature running around the world that they have no control over, and they freak out.”

Sara begged, “Does anybody know anybody?” It turned out her friend’s friend, a gay accountant in his 40s, was interested. The three of them went out for drinks and discussed it. He was in. Wendy and Sara picked up the tab, thanked him profusely, and said they’d be in touch. Then, on the way home, Wendy told Sara, “I’m just not that into him.” Yet another intense conversation ensued. “Wendy thinks if we’re going to hang out with this guy for the rest of our life, he should be cool and fun, a good dancer,” says Sara. “I’m like, ‘Who cares! I just want a good person.’” And this guy was. But he was also moving back East, which didn’t sit well—the point was for the guy to be around. It killed Sara, but they turned him down. “It was so hard,” she says. “You’re so grateful, this person offers to do you this huge favor, to change his whole life for you, and he is excited about it. And you have to call and say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’”

They were getting desperate. “I was ready to ask the mailman,” says Sara. But then, miraculously, they hit the jackpot. Designer sperm! For free! Sara had once been awarded a prestigious fellowship at a university, and she posted a Hail Mary plea on the fellowship’s alumni Facebook page. To her shock and awe, a fellow scholar—a local, strikingly handsome scientist and PhD candidate who is also an accomplished artist who rescued his dog from the streets of Asia—replied. It was love at first email.

Brunch, also including his husband, was arranged. Sara put on her best. “I wanted to look like a viable woman, worthy of his sperm,” she says. She spent 50 bucks on flowers. Wendy made a comically large fruit salad, which she put in a beautiful wooden bowl and carried uncovered on her lap on the drive to his place. On a sunny, warm day, there they sat, two sets of strangers making small talk over vegetarian bacon and organic eggs until Sara steered the conversation to the matter at hand: his semen. Would he share it? And if so, what would the ensuing relationship look like? Wendy and Sara left knowing they’d found the one. The feeling was mutual. Until it wasn’t.

The honeymoon phase didn’t last long. There were weeks of cold contract negotiations and a couple thousand dollars in (his) lawyer’s fees. Meanwhile, Sara continued her fertility injections and acupuncture appointments. Although a 2013 law (AB 2356) allows lesbians to be inseminated with fresh sperm at a clinic without having to retest the same donor’s sperm for HIV at every insemination (straight couples don’t have to retest the sperm every time, as it is assumed the man is the woman’s monogamous partner), Sara and Wendy preferred “at-home” insemination. “It’s more intimate,” says Sara. And cheaper. At the time, though, that meant finding a doctor willing to be present to vouch that two consenting adults never had sex, meaning the man would not legally be the father. (In January, a new law passed stipulating that sperm donors are not presumptively defined as fathers in cases where children are intentionally conceived through assisted reproduction—and that no medical professional need be present during insemination.) After recurring logistical nightmares involving where and when to meet, finally they were ready to inseminate.

They wanted the first time to be special. On the floor of Sara’s office, Wendy arranged a picnic, lit candles, played Stevie Nicks, and did the insemination herself. Afterward, Mr. Designer Sperm had tears in his eyes. “We’re going to make a beautiful baby,” he said. It didn’t take. And after two more unsuccessful inseminations—and two insemination dates for which Sara painstakingly prepared and Designer Sperm didn’t show—he officially pulled out.

Donors renege. It happens. It’s a lot to ask. It’s a huge time commitment, and donors can’t ejaculate for two to five days beforehand, which is a disincentive for some men. Sara and Wendy didn’t know why, exactly, Designer Sperm had bailed, but they were devastated. It felt like a breakup. Another lesbian couple who went through a similar situation told me that the experience of losing their ideal donor was “like mourning a death.”

Donorless, pumped up on Follistim, and poised to ovulate, Sara was distraught. She didn’t want to miss a cycle. Near tears, she called her doctor and shared her predicament. He listened. And then saved the day: He knew someone.

The next day, Sara and Wendy met this man at a café. He was kind and smart and good-looking. They had no idea if he was a good dancer, but he wanted to help. Eight weeks after the insemination by iPhone light—which resulted in her only positive pregnancy test thus far—Sara went in for her first ultrasound. Nervous and excited, she lay on the table, placed her feet in the stirrups, and waited for the doctor. The mood was tense, if cautiously optimistic. They were a team of three facing a fifty-fifty shot, with Wendy holding Sara’s hand and the doctor holding a condom-covered wand. Everyone quietly hoping for a heartbeat.

Originally published in the June issue of San Francisco

Elizabeth Goumas’s top criterion in choosing an elementary school for her kindergarten-bound son, back in 2009, was that it be within walking distance of her house. “If there were an earthquake, I wanted to know that I could get there,” she says, half joking. School leadership, diversity, and a supportive community were all close seconds. What wasn’t a priority, whatsoever, was a language immersion program. “My husband and I had totally ruled out immersion,” says Goumas, a blond, blue-eyed former software sales executive. “We thought it was too complex, too much to take on.” Chinese immersion wasn’t even on her radar.

As it often goes, though, with the San Francisco public school lottery, the Goumas family didn’t get anything on their wish list. Instead, they were assigned to De Avila, a closed school in the Haight that was due to reopen as a Chinese immersion K–5 elementary. “It was also across from a head shop and kitty-corner to the free clinic,” says Goumas, laughing. “We were like, oh no.”

But then they joined a summer playdate with other newly accepted families and saw their son hit it off with two bilingual Chinese kids. “Our biggest worry had been, how is Nicolas going to find his best friends? Will he be able to find them in those four or five kids who speak English?” Social concerns allayed, they decided to “take a leap of faith.” They also decided not to mention the Chinese thing to their son. “The first day of kindergarten,” says Goumas, “he came home and said, ‘Mom! My teacher didn’t speak any English!’”

Six years later, Goumas’s son (now in fifth grade) and daughter (in third, and about as tall as her Chinese teachers) are fully proficient in Cantonese; De Avila is one of the most sought-after public elementary schools in the city; and Goumas is throwing Chinese banquets out of her lower Pacific Heights home—despite the fact that she herself can’t understand a lick of the language. “Sending my kids to De Avila has been a transformational experience,” she says. She marvels as her nine-year-old chats up Cantonese speakers all over town, from the fiftysomething women fondling fabric at Britex to the waiters at Chinese restaurants. She says, “We feel connected to our community in a way we never would have.”

In 1981, the first Mandarin immersion school in the country—the private Chinese American International School (CAIS)— opened on Oak Street in San Francisco. West Portal Elementary followed three years later, becoming the nation’s first public elementary school to offer a Chinese immersion program. Since then, as China’s role in the world economy has grown, so has the number of non-Chinese parents (and second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Chinese-American parents) who want their kids to learn the language spoken by 1.2 billion people.

This fall, San Francisco will have a total of 14 Chinese immersion programs. Eleven are public, most at the elementary and middle school levels. Half are Cantonese, half Mandarin—and all are in high demand. Some operate as a separate language program within an otherwise conventional school; others, like De Avila and Presidio Knolls, a private K–8 Mandarin school launched in 2012, are full immersion. All in all, roughly 2,700 students are enrolled in Chinese immersion programs in the city.

And more are coming. Alameda County got its first Chinese public immersion school, Yu Ming Charter, in 2011; it receives four applications for every available spot. Next year a public school in Redwood City is introducing Mandarin immersion, and parents are clamoring for Mandarin immersion schools in Menlo Park and San Jose. In total, there are about 50 Chinese immersion schools in California, most of them in the Bay Area.

A majority of their students, not surprisingly, are Chinese-American or have one Chinese parent. While these schools are international and multicultural in obvious ways, they are not exactly bastions of diversity. At De Avila, 63 percent of students identify as Asian, 18 percent as white, 4 percent as Hispanic, and 1 percent as African-American. The demographic breakdown is similar at CAIS, where 38 percent of students are Asian-American and 41 percent multiethnic, 19 percent Caucasian, 1 percent black, and 1 percent Hispanic. The student body at a public K–8 immersion school, Alice Fong Yu, is 66 percent Asian and just 5 percent white. (Because they speak the language, some Caucasian students actually self-identify as Chinese.)

What is ‘Asian’ anymore, anyway?” asks Beth Weise, a former parent at Starr King Elementary and the author of A Parent’s Guide to Mandarin Immersion, published in 2014. “My daughters’ dad is Asian, so they are half Chinese, but they are being raised by two white lesbian moms.” Jeff Bissell, head of school at CAIS, agrees, pointing to the number of mixed-race couples in the area. “San Francisco is a wonderful mishmash,” he says. “The term ‘Caucasian’ is becoming less and less relevant.”

Semantics aside, interest in Chinese immersion education is on the rise, say administrators like Bissell and De Avila principal Rosina Tong. Parents are drawn to it because they want to stimulate their kids’ brains (being multilingual has cognitive benefits, studies show) and prepare them for the working world. Not surprisingly, a big draw is the traditional Asian emphasis on academics. Chinese immersion schools are invariably high-performing, which makes them attractive. “Take a closed or under-enrolled school and make it Mandarin, and test scores go up, enrollment goes up. You get a socioeconomic mix, and you attract parents who might otherwise go private. Waitlists form,” explains Weise. “It’s a win-win for everyone, the district and the families.” She adds, “I’ve never heard of a Chinese immersion school where it isn’t considered cool to be smart.”

It’s also become cool to be global. Linda Vann-Adibe, admissions director and parent at CAIS, says that what’s attracting parents today is the hope of creating global citizens in an increasingly globalized world—and the desire to give their children a competitive edge. Those goals, she says, were less evident 13 years ago, when she was a kindergarten parent—or even 6 years ago, when she started working in the admissions office. “Parents are more sophisticated now. They used to think: I’m not Chinese; why would I learn Chinese? The new parent thinks: It doesn’t matter whether I speak Chinese. This is the future.”

Patti Huang, a Taiwanese American who is married to a white man, says that she chose Starr King to prepare her kindergarten-age daughter for the competition that she will eventually face from the billion-plus Mandarin speakers around the world. Huang also wanted to spark in her daughter a general love of languages. “The heritage thing is a perk,” she says. “And there’s an element of wanting to make grandparents proud.” The desire to connect with their cultural heritage continues to be a major factor for many multiethnic and Chinese-American parents. “I have always wanted immersion,” says Kim Wong, who is also married to a white man. Their six-year-old son attends a traditional public school and takes Saturday Mandarin classes because he didn’t get into an immersion program. “I regret not knowing how to speak Chinese,” Wong says, “and there’s a loss of heritage. I want my son to at least be able to talk to my grandma if I can’t!”

For Weise, it’s also about creating opportunity. “I’m not telling my girls, ‘I want you to become biotech moguls in Singapore or software engineers in Shanghai,’” she says. “I’m just giving them tools. Maybe they’ll decide to become potters or open a restaurant. Learning Mandarin is about options.”

It’s also about rote memorization—and ridiculously difficult. To be considered literate, one must learn about 3,000 Chinese characters. And when it comes to learning those characters, the younger the better. Prime time is kindergarten and first grade, when children’s brains are like sponges and everything is new—washing hands, tying laces. Why not tack on Cantonese, too?

And these assimilated days, no one has a leg up. Most kids in the immersion programs, whether Chinese-American, multiethnic, or Caucasian, are starting from scratch. Some may have attended Mandarin preschool, but about 90 percent of families who choose Chinese immersion education, Weise estimates, don’t speak the language at home. Families who do tend to be more concerned that their children master English, so they choose all-English programs. And newer immigrants may not even be aware that immersion programs exist.

Income levels skew somewhat higher at Chinese immersion schools, Weise adds. In 2012, for instance, the number of Chinese-immersion students who qualified for reduced-fee or free lunch was around 34 percent, versus the district-wide 61 percent—at De Avila, it was only 17 percent. But that’s by no means universal, says Weise. And for parents who view private school as the pinnacle, getting into a Chinese immersion program is a “golden ticket”—they get an academically strong school without having to pony up $25,000 in tuition.

That’s not to say that everyone’s a happy customer. Some white parents just want a more multicultural experience for their kids—and then are shocked by what being a minority in middle school can actually mean. Back in 2003, long before Mandarin was trending, therapist Samantha Smithstein and her husband purposely sought out immersion—any immersion. “Spanish, French, Korean, Chinese…we really didn’t care which one.” They ended up at Alice Fong Yu (AFY). The first few years were wonderful, says Smithstein. “The kindergarten and first-grade teachers were warm and good at gestural communication—my kids loved it. They just soaked up the language.”

But the honeymoon didn’t last. By middle school, Smithstein’s twin daughters were miserable. “Many of the teachers were harsh. Some would publicly humiliate students, make them cry,” says Smithstein. “It was scary for my kids.” Her twins have since graduated, and her son, now in the seventh grade, is doing better than her daughters did. Still, she struggles to make sense of the experience. “I don’t know whether it’s the school or the principal or just a cultural difference. I’d heard stories about schools in China that are intense, and I’d think, is this the price I pay for sending them to a Chinese school?”

Sophie Wallace, a white French woman married to a white American man, has kids in the fifth and eighth grades at AFY. She raves about their experience, academically and socially. “The great plus is that the kids learn early on that they are not a majority, so they can’t be cocky,” she says.

But for Smithstein, AFY’s social structure was a definite minus. Many children have a tough time at that age, but her twins were outcasts. “There was a kind of racism at the school that was not addressed,” she says. “By eighth grade it became clear that the ‘in groups’ were the Chinese and mixed kids, and the ‘out group’ was the non-Chinese. By eighth grade most of the out group had dropped out—maybe only five or six non-Chinese kids were left. My kids told me it was the low point of their lives.”

Still, Smithstein doesn’t regret her choice. “When I step back, I know that it was a really cool experience. I feel good about the academics; they were exposed to a different culture; they are unafraid to plunge into new experiences; they traveled to China. They are two tall Jewish white girls who speak Chinese—so many positive things came out of it.”

One of the biggest positives? “We cannot help with homework,” says Mikhal Bouganim, a founding parent at Presidio Knolls. “And I love, love, love it.”

Hi Rachel,” greets my barista on most mornings. He smiles. Scrawls my name and personalized order in black marker on a white paper cup. Swipes my card. And then—before turning to the La Marzocco espresso machine to make my latte—he swivels the iPad around to face me.

The screen, which stands in for a cash register at this shop, displays five simple options: 15 percent; 20 percent; 25 percent; custom tip; and then, in a cautionary bright yellow, no tip. My barista stands there as I complete the transaction. Today, because he looked me straight in the eye as I aimed my finger at the tablet, I panicked and pressed 20 percent.

The American way of tipping, in case you haven’t noticed, is getting a software update. As mobile payment systems like Square, PayPal Here, Shopkeep, and Flint jockey with each other to determine the future of how we pay for stuff—in a cashless world where practically anyone, even your babysitter, can accept credit card payments—the future of the tip is likewise up for grabs.

Judging from the performance of Square and Shopkeep, two apps with fairly similar approaches to tipping, the future looks, well, pretty gratuitous. Compared to the old-fashioned tip jar, their sleek tablet interfaces are a major step up for baristas, bakers, and sandwich makers. The whole tipping exchange seem less like a meek request for a handout and more like an evenly matched game of computer chess: When the iPad swivels around, it’s as if to say “Your move.” Sometimes, I like to watch how people respond. Today, out of five customers at my local cafe, which uses Shopkeep, three selected 15 percent; one opted to custom tip and manually typed in $1; and the fifth flailed his finger around for a few seconds, unsure what to do, and then, somewhat sheepishly, went with no tip.

If the primary motive to tip is to win the approval of the server, then automating the process will eat away at that motivation over time.

Among the millions of businesses that already use Square (the current frontrunner in the payments race), 45 to 50 percent of all tippable card transactions included a tip in 2013, up from 38 percent the year before, the company says. Individual businesses, too, report a pretty dramatic surge in gratuities. In Seattle, Molly Moon Neitzel, the owner of Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream, says tips to her staff have increased by nearly 50 percent since the company adopted Square. In Manhattan, Matt Lindemulder, the owner of Porchetta, a trendy sandwich spot in the East Village, says tips have increased by 20 to 30 percent since he switched to Square last April.

“Before, customers had the option to tip, but it was easy to ignore; they could plead ignorant, order a sandwich, and just walk away,” Lindemulder says. “Now, the suggestion is right there in front of them.” And the power of suggestion is pretty powerful.

Square’s harnessing of it is no fluke. A spokesperson told me that the company’s interface is deliberately designed to “encourage tipping.” And there’s a lot of science to confirm that it works: Behavioral economists have explored why interfaces like Square’s do indeed get us to tip more. But it would be premature to declare that the cashless future will be one in which gratuities keep increasing. In fact, it seems just as likely that the tip is headed for a decline.

AMERICANS HAVE ALWAYS HAD an uneasy relationship with tipping. “The vast majority,” wrote the anti-tipping polemicist William Scott in 1916, “do so under duress.” Ever since the custom migrated over from Europe in the 19th century, it has offended democratic sensibilities, undermined workers’ access to a straightforward wage, and generally put people in a bad mood. Just in the last year, rants against tipping—some calling for abolition—have run in Esquire, Slate, and The New York Times.

But the high point of the crusade to abolish gratuities came way back in the early 20th century, when the Anti-Tipping Society of America attracted 100,000 members, and six states passed short-lived anti-tipping laws. Since then, tipping has only gained traction, both as a cultural norm and an economic crutch. The average tip has crept up from 10 percent in the early 20th century to around 19 percent today. And it’s gotten easier, not harder, for employers to pass their labor costs on to the public, as laws in many states have given businesses a pass to pay tipped workers just a fraction of the federal minimum wage (some as low as $2.13 an hour).

Meanwhile, the list of people we are expected to tip always seems to be growing. Some years ago, The New York Timespinpointed the moment—in 1990—when Starbucks made it company-wide policy to “put a tasteful and discreet cup on the counter” for baristas’ tips. (There had been nothing before.) Now Stabucks has started accepting tips through its own mobile payment app, guiding customers to the default options of 50 cents, $1, or $2. Even for a cup of drip.

To really understand what’s going on when we tip—and how new technologies might change our behavior—it helps to start out by asking: What’s the motivation behind tipping? It’s not as straightforward an economic rationale as many people think. According to research by the Israeli economist Ofer Azar, only about 13 percent of Americans say they tip to influence future service. By contrast, 60 percent of Americans say they tip out of guilt. Sixty-eight percent say they do so out of gratitude. Eighty-five percent, because it’s the social norm. And four percent, pricelessly, to avoid being yelled at.

It all boils down to this: “The primary motivation for tipping is to win the approval of the server,” explains Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University who has extensively studied the subject.

Standing face-to-face with your barista, as Square essentially requires you to do, presumably involves a stronger dose of this social pressure, Lynn says, than what a diner typically feels when taking a moment to sign a credit card slip in a busy restaurant. And certainly stronger than what a café customer feels as their eye brie!y rests on a tip jar.

So Square does two things. On the one hand, it heightens all the social motivations involved in tipping, giving tippers more of an interpersonal push than usual. But it also makes the decision to tip almost effortless, thanks to a technique that is a subject of fascination among behavioral economists.

It’s called default tipping: giving customers a defined set of options instead of leaving the whole transaction in their hands. If you want to deviate from the given options, it’s up to you to make the extra effort.

This turns out to be surprisingly effective. We are extremely suggestible in the face of prompts. Not only do default tip options nudge people to tip where they otherwise might not—as Square’s track record shows—but in other settings, higher default tip suggestions have been shown to lead directly to higher tips. A 2013 study by economists Kareem Haggag and Giovanni Paci compiled data from 13 million rides in New York City taxis with credit card touchscreens designed by two different companies. One company’s touchscreens suggested tipping 20, 25, or 30 percent for fares over $15, and tips of $2, $3, or $4 for fares under that amount; the other company suggested tips of 15, 20, or 25 percent for all fares.

Ever since tipping migrated from Europe in the late 19th century, it has offended democratic sensibilities, undermined service workers’ access to a straightforward wage, and generally put people in a bad mood.

Haggag and Paci found that the touchscreens with higher defaults produced tips that were, on average, 10 percent higher. Those same touchscreens also prompted a bit of a backlash: A slightly higher proportion of riders said stuff it, and left no tip at all. But this reaction was drowned out by the much larger increase in generosity.

Defaults work for several reasons, according to behavioral economists. Most importantly, they make decision-making easy, by lessening what psychologists call our “cognitive load.” It takes less effort to defer to a prompt than it does to make a judgment call from scratch or do even a little mental math, and our minds appreciate the fast lane—even if it takes us somewhere we might not otherwise go. “Because people don’t like to do even a little bit of extra work,” Cass Sunstein, the legal scholar and co-author of Nudge, writes in a 2013 article, “the suggestions will matter a lot, and the average tip will increase significantly.”

Defaults also exert a kind of psychological pressure, making customers think that if they tip below the suggested amount, it means they didn’t like the service. They help establish (or alter) a social norm, guiding customers toward an idea of a proper tip—even if the customer never really had one in the first place.

Consider, for instance, the sweet, befuddled Swedish tourist behind me in line the other day at yet another popular San Francisco café. Presented, for the first time, with the sleek Square screen after purchasing two cappuccinos and a bag of coffee beans, he pressed 25 percent. “I didn’t know what to do,” he told me. “So I just picked the middle one.” If touchscreens really were cash registers, this one would have just said ka-ching.

IT’S STILL TO EARLY to tell, however, whether Square is the Facebook of mobile payments—or the Friendster. There are other models out there that could gain traction, and there’s nothing inherent in mobile technology that nudges people to tip more. The new mobile payments company Flint, for instance, doesn’t suggest default tips—but instead lets customers set their tip with a slider bar. “There are no psychology games being played,” says the company’s CEO, Greg Goldfarb.

And Square seems to have at least one big vulnerability. Despite how easy it is to punch a percentage on a touchscreen, you do carry a heavy cognitive load when you buy a latte with Square. It’s the mental baggage associated with the social interaction itself: that momentary need to manage how you come across to another human being. So what happens if a payment company decides it’s a smart business move to take that away, too—to make purchases even easier on customers by making them less personal?

As it happens, there is another service-oriented company that has had great success offering so-called “friction-less” transactions. Uber, the five-year-old business that has upset the taxi industry, is celebrated for several reasons, but one fact that’s been relatively overlooked is that Uber has achieved something rare in the history of American tipping: It has converted a big chunk of tipping territory—the business it has seized from taxi companies—into non-tipping territory. Drivers who work directly for Uber do not receive gratuities at all, and are instead paid a straight commission—automatically, with no need for the customer to pull out a credit card, glance at a meter, or even give a second’s thought to a tip. This is a big part of the company’s appeal. (Ordinary taxi drivers who use Uber to accept payments do still receive tips—but even then, the 20 percent gratuity is automatically deducted from your credit card as you hop out of the car.)

So maybe the old American anti-tipping spirit, harnessed to modern-day mobile payment technology and a business model that capitalizes on our discomfort with feeling pressured to pay people, will finally gain serious ground. And maybe more companies that pay employees a straightforward wage or commission will gain a competitive advantage.

But here’s a final possibility. Maybe the practice of tipping will stick around, but our tipping behavior will become totally automated—governed by a default setting that we enter into our personal digital-payment profile settings once, and only once. A new app geared toward diners, called Cover, aims to do pretty much just this. Cover allows you to pre-set your own default tip anywhere between 18 and 30 percent for all restaurant transactions. You can change the tip amount during a given meal if you’re moved to do so, but otherwise the default stands, and you can leave the table without ever being presented with a physical bill.

Given what we know about tipping, this could bode ill for the millions of Americans who depend on gratuities: If the primary motive to tip really is to win the approval of the server, then automating the process—and removing the social component—will probably eat away at our motivation to tip over time.

Cover’s co-founder, Andrew Cove, reports that since his app launched in 70 New York restaurants in 2013, the average tip has been 22 percent. That’s higher, he says, than what most restaurants see from typical credit card payments.

But even if you start with a high default, there’s no guarantee you’ll stick with it. There may come a day when you do some digital spring cleaning and say, You know, I can’t really afford to pay everyone a 22 percent tip anymore—I’m going to notch that down and become an 18 percenter. And should that moment come while you’re sitting at home, it will be a totally abstract calculation—uninfluenced by the heat of a social interaction with someone who has looked you in the eye or drawn a smiley face on your check.

Matt Lindemulder, the owner of the Porchetta sandwich shop, says he tries to give people space while they decide how to tip using Square. “I usually give them a moment of silence,” he says. “I don’t want them to feel like I’m trying to influence them or anything.” But here’s the thing: His mere presence does. And the same technology that heightens that influence right now could, with a simple update of the software, take it away.

…and agree that famously secular San Francisco
is having a religious awakening. A divine conversation—with drinks.

Moderated by Rachel Levin

What brought you to
 San Francisco?


Rabbi Noa Kushner: I know it sounds clichéd, but it was an act of faith. San Francisco embraces experimenta- tion. I knew that if I tried out the Kitchen in other parts of the country, it probably wouldn’t fly. But here we have this very experimental culture, this prototype culture. Pastor Aaron Monts: For me, it was definitely a calling. I’m a Cubs fan, from Chicago. I came for a Giants game 10 years ago, and it was an amazing experience. Six years later, I moved here. Reverend Shundo David Haye: I was a sound engineer in London and read about the bicycle coalition’s annual party in the Bay Guardian, and I thought, “That’d be fun—I’ll go talk to some people about bikes.” Instead, I met a woman who lived at the S.F. Zen Center. She became my wife.

The city has not always been on the friendliest terms with organized religion, particularly the Catholic church. Were you wary of starting something religious here?

Kushner: San Francisco is actually one of the most religious towns I know. In our first year, we already have a mailing list of 600-plus. Hundreds of people attended our High Holiday services this fall. And we didn’t make it easy for them—we couldn’t hold services at our regular space at Friends School, so we did them at the Fort Mason General’s Residence. Which meant people had to climb 50 steps to get there! I continue to be blown by how much people seem to be aching for community. Haye: The tape recorder isn’t capturing all of our heads nodding. At our first meeting, we were expecting maybe 10 people to show up. But we had 25, then 30, 4o, 50. The room was overflowing.

Who would you say is your congregation?

Haye: We get all sorts, in their 20s, 30s, a lot of tech-types looking to turn off the noise. They’re ambitious and under the constant stress of a startup, but inside they have something else going on. They come here to express that. Monts: We’ve been called a “hipster church” before. But that’s not really us. We have some people who grew up going to church or who were disenfranchised by the church, but also a lot of people who’ve never set foot in a church before. Our community is the most diverse I’ve ever seen, not just ethnically and racially, but socioeconomically. We have people who’ve sold their startups and people living in SROs. We’re kind of like a mini, more intimate Glide, but without the choir. We do have a banjo, though! Kushner: We get the farmers’ market crowd—a little yoga, a little LGBT, a little bohemian. Maybe they were going to Pizzeria Delfina before, and now they’re going to Shabbat and then to pizza. Monts: We get a lot of young people who heard about us through friends and thought, “Hey, that sounds cool.” We actually lack elders. I wish we had 70-, 80-, 90-year-olds to share their life experience. Haye: Come over to the Zen Center. We’ve got a lot of old people. Our former abbotess is 86. She’s amazing.

How does your approach break from tradition?

Haye: Buddhism is a very formal organization, and it can be austere and forbidding for newcomers. But part of our mission as Zen monks is to spread the dharma. So with YUZ, we wanted to break down the barriers and present the content in a more accessible way. Kushner: We don’t want to water down the content either—but we want to present it without the typical trappings that surround religion, without the formalities.

Noa, did you come up with the name
“the Kitchen” to capitalize on the city’s 
food obsession? 


Kushner: No, that was just lucky. The idea of the kitchen was that, well, almost everyone has one. (In New York City, we might not be able to say that!) The kitchen is the room where everyone wants to be, where everyone gathers—where it all goes down. Haye: Kitchens are pretty central to Tassajara as well: we’ve been called a food cult before, and food preparation is considered part of the practice. Potlucks have become a big thing with YUZ; hikes, picnics, movie nights—it’s become a social outlet.

Your organizations are basically startups—but without VC backing. How do you make it work?

Monts: Yeah, Ikon did actually have a few “angel investors.” But 70 percent of our operating income comes from weekly offerings. Kushner: No way! We’re not allowed to handle money on Shabbat. We can’t pass a basket. Haye: We have a unique financial situation. Tassajara [which doubles as a summer resort] is basically a cash cow for us, and we also have Greens Restaurant. Monts: I have to do it, but I’m not equipped to run the business side of the church. I don’t have an MBA—I went to Bible school! Kushner: The Kitchen is as risky as any startup. We have some grants, which help, and we charge membership fees—we have to pay our teachers. But I’d love to see a venture capitalist invest in a religious organization! The payoff won’t come in money, but I’d love to meet a VC who sees payoff in a spiritual light. I see it every day.

The Rumpus interview with Chad Stokes of Dispatch

Odds are, Barry Manilow and Anita Baker have never heard of Chad Stokes — or his band Dispatch, the reggae-funk-rock trio with whom they share the fall calendar at Radio City Music Hall. But any liberal arts college grad under the ever-rising age of, say, 32 knows every word of the band’s lyrics by heart—as evidenced by the hearty, head-nodding (occasionally pogo-stick-like-jumping) sing-a-longs at every sporadic (and, always, sold-out) Dispatch show since its one-hundred percent indie rise.

In August, Dispatch released its first album in 12 years, “Circles Around the Sun,” on its own Bomber Records label. Back from Europe, the band kicked off its cross-country tour in Vancouver, B.C. last week– they play Radio City this Friday (Oct. 5). Tickets sold-out, months ago, in just a couple of hours.

That’s nothing. The last time Dispatch played in Manhattan, in 2007, they sold out three nights at Madison Square Garden in 23 minutes. And donated all profits from ticket sales— more than $1 million  — to Zimbabwe. Who the F does that?

Chad Stokes Urmston. A slightly scrappier Bono who founded the nonprofit Calling All Crows, which inspires music fans to social activism, and has so far raised a quarter of a million dollars for empowering women in Sudan and Afghanistan. He launched his first solo album Simmerkane II last year (on which Carly Simon collaborated). He’s also the front man of State Radio, the ska-punk-rock band he started in 2005 after Dispatch disbanded– following its free, “final” show at Boston’s Hatch Shell, which ended up drawing 120,000 fans from as far away as Australia, closing down Storrow Drive, and making history as the largest independent music concert ever.

Chadwick, Braddigan, and Repete (self-anointed nicknames, all) met at Middlebury Collge in the mid-90s; their upbeat music spread from dorm room to dorm room across the country during Napster’s heyday. They repeatedly turned down offers from the major labels (“You guys could be the next Dave Matthews!” the bigwigs dangled). Instead, Dispatch remained independent all the way. Eventually, infighting and political differences broke up the band — just as it was reaching its peak. 

These guys gave up the dream of every fledgling college band. And yet, still, more than a decade later–they are arguably bigger than they would’ve been had they stayed together.

What do you think, Chad? Is Dispatch bigger now than it would’ve been if you hadn’t broken up?

 I think so… We broke up and somehow became bigger. There’s something about the chase, right? It was a crazy phenomenon, really. So much of it was timing. It was the late ‘90s. It was Napster. The music industry was changing so quickly, and we were part of all that. I feel like we kinda slipped in the backdoor on the old guard, on the old labels.

Why did you guys break up anyway? After 120,000 people showed up for the “Last Dispatch” at the Hatch Shell in Boston, were you guys, like, Umm, maybe we should stick this out?

We were all in our early 20s… At that age, we were all vying for control in the band… Who’s the lead singer? Who’s getting the most attention… Dispatch was all we had; it defined us so much. It defined me too much. I needed to get away. 

What’s different now that you’re 36? I mean, now that you’re dads and all.

I think there’s a lot more appreciation and maturity and acceptance of everyone’s flaws. Now that we’re, wow, 13 years older, we realize how lucky we are. To be recording again. To have a career in music. To still be a viable band.  I think the fact that we all have other creative outlets helps too. I have State Radio. And my solo thing. So it doesn’t have to be all about Dispatch.

What about your political differences? You like to use music, and performances, as a platform. Is it tough to have to bite your tongue, especially in this election year?

 Well, yeah. We definitely all have different views. I like to express this and that on stage, but it’s too polarizing for Brad. And it gets too much away from the music for Pete. That’s why on this tour we chose to focus on education. We’re donating one dollar of every ticket– and album — sold to Amplifying Education. It’s something we all really wanted to rally behind.

So, okay: Did NASA really offer you $2 million to take the song “Circles Around the Sun” off your new album?

Weeelll… we’ve sort of been perpetuating the Untold Story of Larry Perry. How back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the government came and took this six-year-old kid with severe cerebral palsy, who couldn’t speak, away from his parents and sent him into outer space. How NASA tried chimps but wanted to get a better read on humans and so chose Larry because he was “expendable.” At that time, people with disabilities weren’t seen as real people. And how the funny thing is, Larry had the time of his life. But, no it’s not true…It’s just what we’ve been telling the media when they ask us what the song “Circles Around the Sun” is about.

How come?

 Honestly, I was getting bored telling the real story behind the song. Which is that my friend Larry Perry had cerebral palsy and was a real adrenaline junkie, so I’d take him on all these crazy amusement park rides… When he died, I had this one idea for a song, but when I started writing the lyrics, it just took this whole celestial sci-fi twist… Then Brad and I came up with NASA’s whole Shut Up Dispatch campaign. The other day, Pete said, “You guys are telling the Larry story as if it’s true.”  And we were, like,“It is true …” But, ultimately, it’s just a story. Like all those memoirs everyone is publishing these days.

I heard you guys played an impromptu free show in NYC’s Washington Square Park the other day? Rock stars should really do more of that.

 I was skeptical. It was the day our new album was coming out (Aug. 22) and we weren’t doing anything special so Brad drummed up [no pun intended, Brad is the drummer] this idea to dress up as Statue of Liberties and go stand around Washington Square Park. So we went to one of those year-round Halloween stores on 11^th Street and got these silver masks. The kind that looks like you can’t see out, but we could. We sent a note out on Twitter, got to the park, put on our costumes, and hopped up on a bench. The plan was to stand completely still for a while, you know, like statues— and then eventually just start singing. At first no one noticed us. Then a few folks gathered around. And, suddenly there were, like, 1,000 people swarming around us. We took off our masks and started playing. It was really fun.

How’d it end?

 We hadn’t anticipated it, but getting out of there was hard. We pushed through the crowd and started running away. By Waverly, I was still running. Then I realized: Wait, I can stop running now. We’re not the Beatles.