The Bay Area’s world-famous pirate radio station, Pirate Cat Radio, is back on the air, but you’ll have to be a migrant worker or Google millionaire to tune in to its signal.
The Federal Communications Commission kicked the fourteen-year-old radio station, housed in San Francisco’s Mission district, off the air in 2009 and fined it $10,000 for illegal broadcasts on 87.9 FM. But Pirate Cat has returned on 89.3 FM KPDO in Pescadero, a chic farm community 49 miles south of its cafe/studio in San Francisco. A group in Pescadero heard of Pirate Cat’s plight and effectively donated a 300-watt radio license to Pirate Cat. Perhaps 3,000 field pickers, Google execs, and aging hippies can get the radio signal in their cars and houses, while thousands more continue to stream the station each week from PirateCatRadio.com.
