Hello! My name is Philo Hagen (figh-lo hah-gen). I’m originally from rainy Seattle, Washington, which in part explains the dark green moss you find growing beneath my California sunshine, then I spent many years in foggy San Francisco, which helps explain my love for big fat Mission style burritos. For more than a decade I’ve been a Los Angeles resident and I love how this megacity supports all of my rather oddball interests – and the weather is so much better here too.

Perhaps you already know me in person or from one of my previous and now defunct web projects, like East Coast / West Coast – the original bi-coastal best friend blog where Choire Sicha (NYC) and I (SF at the time) shared way too much personal information online and wound up winning a Bloggy for it, queerday.com – a bloggy nominated top LGBTQ news site for several years running, or hooping.org – the world’s #1 hoop dance / hula hoop site with 2 million+ visitors annually for more than a decade. Whether you already know me or not though, welcome to my personal website.

Over the years I’ve worn a variety of hats including non-profit management do gooder at places like Marin AIDS Project and The West Hollywood Recovery Center. I’ve done freelance writing for a variety of print and online publications including the San Francisco Chronicle. I was the psychic medium for San Francisco Paranormal that clued folks in on the unseen forces in their homes, lives and businesses. I also performed modern hoop dance on stages across the US and beyond. Probably my biggest claim to some kind of fame though would have to be my short film Gotta Hoop. It won numerous awards and was featured by The New York Times, the Huffington Post and many other publications. Typically, however, I was up to a whole variety of things all at once, and I still prefer it that way.

These days I still do paranormal and psychic work, non-profit management work, and in my spare time you might find me working on that book, updating my nocturnal music blog (darkwave, goth rock, neofolk, etc), tinkering on some song creations of my own, wondering if Kate & I will ever get back to our trauma recovery podcast, roller skating long distances with my best friend Laura, or scoring some tasty al pastor street tacos at my favorite taco truck. Then again I could be off exploring someplace deep in the Mojave, or I could be home watching something on Discovery+ with a big bowl of popcorn.

To learn more about my paranormal psychic work go here. You can find the history behind all the hooping here, and everything else – including repostings of years of previously lost content will hopefully be showing up on the blog. Feel free to reach out about anything really at philohagen@gmail.com and you can also find me on BeReal daily, Instagram occasionally, Facebook rarely – and trying out Bluesky. Thanks for stopping by.