E ditor’s note: First Bite is a new concept in restaurant writing. This is not a go-three-times, try-everything-on-the-menu report; rather, this is a quick snapshot of a single experience. We invite you to come along with our writers as they—informed, intelligent eaters like yourselves—have a simple meal at an area restaurant, just like you do .
My mom is picking at something beige on her plate. She holds a forkful aloft, inspecting it, then offers it to me for analysis. “Might be toast,” she muses. I take a bite, feeling the dry graininess on my tongue, the starchy crust and the blandness that tastes only of butter. It’s poorly done polenta. She gives me a chunk of the gray meat that sits atop. It’s overcooked fish—mahi mahi, we suppose, as our waitress had recited it as the catch of the day ($17)—that hunkers in a puddle of white wine sauce under a fistful of dry parsley flakes.
Now it’s my turn. “Bacon grease for sure,” I vote, pushing my plate of meatloaf ($16) in her direction. “Maple syrup, maybe. Microwaved hamburger.” She identifies ketchup, and nibbles at a scoop of stiff mashed potatoes alongside. We both agree that the side dish is spinach, rather than the promised Brussels sprouts. She sighs. I cough. We both put down our forks. This little game we’ve been playing at Sky Lounge Steakhouse & Raw Bar isn’t fun anymore.
When we first sat down at the restaurant on a recent Saturday night, we’d been amused. There’s a retro charm to the place, tucked as it is inside the Sonoma County Airport, overlooking the tarmac with its walk-up plane ladders and looking like a throwback to the ’50s.
But this Sky Lounge wasn’t at all what we had expected. It opened in August to a fair bit of publicity. It’s newsworthy because the North Bay’s only commercial airport reopened last spring after a long hiatus. As such, Sky Lounge is a gateway to wine and food country, an important first and/or last impression for visitors. Appropriately, it promises “top grade” beef and seafood from local farmers and fishermen, in a “first class restaurant with a creative menu emphasizing freshness and quality.”
A centerpiece, deliciously showcased in marketing materials, is the raw/sushi bar. It sounds like a nifty proposition even for folks not trapped waiting for a plane: Hog Island oysters in truffle-ponzu mignonette, kona kampachi spiked with spicy mayo and jalapeño wafer or a soft shell crab BLT.
Yet tonight, there’s no sushi or raw display at the tiny wheeled-in sushi stand off the kitchen. There’s apparently no real food either; our waitress tells us the chef is off. So instead, our dinner is just coffee-shop clam chowder ($6) that’s been so beat-up by reheating that there’s yellowish skin across the top, a caesar ($11) drowned in mayonnaise and a few marinated anchovies and Asian lettuce cups ($9) buried under flabby pork clumps.
Outside, it’s so densely foggy that the PA system alerts us an incoming flight is being diverted to Oakland, and its passengers will be bused back here. A pack of people settle in at the bar to wait, arming themselves with cocktails. Don’t they know that the first rule of going to the airport is to check and make sure the plane is on schedule? The second rule, apparently, is to find out if the chef has arrived.
Sky Lounge Steakhouse & Raw Bar, 2200 Airport Blvd. (in Sonoma County Airport), Santa Rosa. Open for breakfast and lunch daily; dinner, Wednesday&–Sunday. 707.542.9400.
Quick-and-dirty dashes through North Bay restaurants. These aren’t your standard “bring five friends and order everything on the menu” dining reviews.
Some Place Like Home
A s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to target local illegal immigrants, some community members are trying to make Sonoma County a “county of refuge.” If it passes the Board of Supervisors, it would mean that although ICE could still conduct operations in Sonoma County, local law enforcement would not be able to help them unless required by federal law to do so.
Other cities in the Bay Area, including San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond, have already declared themselves places of refuge. Locally, the movement started because of concern that the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department is allowing ICE agents to ride along in patrol cars, as reported in these pages (“Caught Being Brown,” Aug. 29).
The sheriff’s department says ICE is helping with Santa Rosa’s growing gang problem. But the County of Refuge Campaign—which includes groups like Committee for Immigrant Rights, the ACLU and the Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County—believes that Latinos are being racially targeted. They say the police are stopping people for such minor infractions as broken taillights, and ICE is using it as an opportunity to question them about their immigration status.
The campaign is calling it a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unlawful search and seizure. And that, coupled with ICE raids on immigrant homes in nearby towns like San Rafael, is pointing to a disturbing pattern of human rights violations.
“I keep hearing these stories about how people are afraid to let their kids outside to play because of ICE,” says Heidi Doughty, one of the organizers of an education forum on Sonoma County as a County of Refuge. “It’s crazy. People in this county are working their tails off, they are afraid to drive a car, and now they are afraid to leave their children to go to work. It reminds me of [how the Nazis treated the Jews during] World War II. You know, step by step by step.”
On Dec. 4, the County of Refuge Campaign presented its case to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. Presenters brought with them 4,500 letters signed by members of the community supporting turning Sonoma County into a County of Refuge.
The letters were gathered on the Internet, in shopping centers and in churches. In fact, some faith-based institutions have taken an active role in informing the public about attempts to make Sonoma a County of Refuge. The synagogue Congregation Shomrei Torah and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation are sponsoring a series of educational forums on the issue. The next forum will be held at the beginning of 2008.
The forums are important because few people know the full extent of ICE’s actions in the North Bay, believes Larry Carlin, co-chair of the synagogue Shomrei Torah’s social action committee.
“We don’t know how pervasive the issue is,” he says. “We know it’s there, but a lot of it is anecdotal information. But one thing is clear: people are afraid to come out of their houses for fear of being arrested.”
Doughty, a fourth- and fifth-grade elementary school teacher, helped organize the forum because she wanted to give people a chance to speak out about this fear. She became concerned about ICE’s activities when she started seeing how it was affecting some of her students.
One little girl in particular started experiencing stomach pains so severe, she missed several weeks of school. After talking to her mother, Doughty learned that the girl was afraid to come to school because she thought her parents would be deported while she was gone.
“I thought, ‘Oh, she’s a kid, she doesn’t know what the reality is,'” says Doughty. “But then in September, she told me that ICE had come in the middle of the night to her aunt’s door and started pounding and screaming. The aunt had been here for 15 years, and they took her and dumped her in Tijuana. I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is true.'”
Faith-based institutions have a history of helping immigrants find refuge. During the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish congregations banded together to give Central American refugees pouring into the United States social services and advocacy support. For many, it is a moral issue about how human beings should be treated.
And that affects far more people than just believers, asserts Carlin.
“It’s much greater than a moral issue,” he says. “It’s about the rights of an individual. Our Constitution guarantees these kinds of rights, and to prevent a certain segment of the community from being protected by these rights, I think it’s unfair. I think it’s not right.”
Leisurely Listening
B ox sets make great Christmas gifts—they’re impressively packaged, they come with fancy booklets to pore over and they can be listened to for hours on a leisurely holiday. But most importantly, loved ones often truly want a certain box set, yet often won’t justify buying it for themselves. That’s where you come in. This year has been especially generous in the box-set department; here are a few of the good ones to throw under the tree.
‘Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965&–1970’ An amazing four-CD set that digs ridiculously deep into the San Francisco ’60s underground, Love Is the Song We Sing comes complete with detailed liner notes and reminisces about the heart of the definitive cultural revolution. All the heavy hitters from the Summer of Love get their usual due, but it’s the utterly obscure groups (the Vejtables, Mourning Reign, the Harbinger Complex, to name a tiny few) that distinguish this set from a mere nostalgia piece. An essential pick for anyone who grew up in the Bay Area during the 1960s.
Miles Davis, ‘The Complete “On the Corner” Sessions’ I have to admit, it was the famous fat-booty artwork that originally lured me to On the Corner , and on an initial listen I didn’t feel anything click. But I tucked it in my memory as one of those albums I’d probably dig on down the line, and sure enough, over the years I’ve pulled it out to increasingly enjoyable results. This set showcases the uncut, unedited band, playing live and raw in the studio, crafting jams that were too heavy for the public to comprehend even 20 or 30 years into the future. A sticker on the outside talks about Davis going “beyond the outer limits of jazz, rock and funk”; in doing so, he rewrote the boundaries of all three.
‘Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration’ As with the San Francisco box set, it’s the obscure tracks on this affordable two-CD set that make it worth picking up, as with “Your Good Thing (Is About to End)” by Mable John. Who the hell is Mable John, and why did such an amazing singer nearly get lost to the cut-out bin? It turns out she was Little Willie John’s sister, and as for why she’s not a household name, who knows—all you have to know is she’s on this set, which, incidentally, is impeccably sequenced. The lineup of “Mr. Big Stuff” followed by “Never Can Say Goodbye” and then “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get” is almost as good as the one-two-three punch of “Tramp,” “Soul Finger” and “Born Under a Bad Sign.”
‘People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs 1913&–1938’ A stunning three-CD overview of early American blues and folk recordings that’s sure to sink Christmas merriment at the drop of a needle. The songs from these restored 78 rpm records chronicle disasters both large and small: the sinking of the Titanic, the Baltimore fire of 1904 and the Mississippi flood of 1927, to name but a few. If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to live in a world of train wrecks, explosions and fatal diseases, look no further; the brilliant liner notes by Tom Waits put it all in perspective. Incredible.
‘The Heavy Metal Box’ A mammoth set spanning 1968&–1991, from Iron Butterfly to Sepultura, with every screeching solo, chunky power chord and high-pitched wail in between. The best part is that no matter how old or dated this stuff gets, it’s still guaranteed to make parents totally miserable. Hell yeah! Most diehard metal fans could probably do without Great White or Poison, and including Spinal Tap almost seems like admitting defeat, but seriously, Hawkwind, Iron Maiden and Slayer in the same Marshall Amp-shaped container? Dayy-uumm.
Roy Haynes, ‘A Life in Time’ Three CDs plus a DVD that only scrapes the surface of Haynes’ vast discography as one of the most-recorded drummers in jazz. If you’ve got a loved one who recently went to see Haynes at Yoshi’s and couldn’t stop drooling afterward, this one’s a no-brainer. Every kind of combo is represented, including those led by Charlie Parker, Oliver Nelson, Bill Evans, Bud Powell and Eric Dolphy, up to Haynes’ own Fountain of Youth and Birds of a Feather groups. Thwack thack thack bmm boom bmm thwack!
‘The Brit Box: UK Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium’ Even snobby Anglophobes who cringe whenever Catherine Wheel or the Stone Roses are mentioned will find it hard to argue with the Cure, the Smiths, Spacemen 3, Pulp, Supergrass, Elastica or Spiritualized. (I have a friend who is aghast at the glaring omission of Shellyann Orphan, but when you’ve got Thousand Yard Stare and Gay Dad, who needs Shellyann Orphan?) Grant yourself extra twee points for wrapping this up with a stringed tea bag as a ribbon and crumpets as a bow.
The Beatles, ‘Help!’ There’s a wonderful fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants feel to this movie, and the unwritten vibe clearly enshrines the absurd. Discovering marijuana in the early stages of the skyrocket ride to immortality was never more exciting. As has long been pointed out, this is also the dawn of the music video as we know it, with the ski-pole edits in “Ticket to Ride” predating Michel Gondry by a good 40 years. A deluxe version of the regular two-DVD set includes lobby cards, a poster, a book with unseen photographs from the film sets and a reproduction of Richard Lester’s original annotated script. How tempting is that?
Led Zeppelin, ‘The Song Remains the Same: Collector’s Edition’ The first time I saw this film, I fell asleep during “Dazed and Confused.” When I woke up, Jimmy Page was still playing the song’s violin-bow solo! Which means: the songs are crazy long. This is ’70s excess at its finest, and there’s bound to be someone in the family who’s been frothing at the mouth over Zep’s reunion show in London, so give ’em the next best thing.
Megadeth, ‘War Chest’ No one who sat through the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster can ever forget the crying, sniveling, whimpering Dave Mustaine scene where he talks about getting the boot from Metallica and how it ruined his life. Redemption is his, however, with this massive, avenging box set that chronicles Megadeth’s career and shows that Mustaine got heavier and heavier while James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett hella wussed out.
Emmylou Harris, ‘Songbird’ The beautiful voice of Emmylou Harris turns up in so many undiscovered corners of the recording world that it would be impossible to collect even a petri-dish sample of everything she’s done. This set focuses on some of her personal favorites from the last 35 years, eschewing radio hits and well-known concert staples. With a well-written book, a DVD of live performances, there’s even a home recording, thoughtfully included, of Harris singing “Immigrant Eyes” for Guy Clark on his birthday.
Class War
L ike the original, the film version of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement takes place on two vastly different summer days. The first half unfolds in a British manor in 1935. It delves so far into the world of upper classes that I expected Jeeves to wander in. After all, the turning point of the plot is, essentially, a Bertie Wooster-style mistake.
During a heat wave on a weekend, young Robbie (James McAvoy) gets into a scrape. He’s the cook’s son who is practically a member of the wealthy Tallis family of Wiltshire. Recognizing his talent, the Tallises have sent him to school. Now he’s begun to notice young Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley), just back from college. They have a small disagreement; a precious vase gets broken. Cecilia strips and dives into the family’s fountain to taunt Robbie a little.
Later that day, Robbie writes a small note of apology, which he foolishly gives to Cecilia’s prying little sister, 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan). Worse, he accidentally gives Briony the first draft of the note, composed in midswoon after seeing Cecilia clad only in a wet slip. In a few candid sentences, he describes what he’d like to do to her if he could. This note leads to thorough disaster, implemented by Briony’s fervent imagination.
After the calamity, Atonement heads to World War II, where Robbie, now a wounded soldier, atones for his mistake the hard way. The trick in Atonement is that there are other apologies in the offering, and other punishments are handed out by fate. Maybe the worst is life as a nurse in a regimented, pitiless London hospital during the Blitz, a life as bad as that in any prison.
The success of the novel owes partially to the fact that we get it both ways. As in Brideshead Revisited , the twitty, lounging, English-upper-class types show their steel during the war. And yet they also commit unforgivable atrocities against those of us who drop our aitches. The success of the movie is due mostly to the unfussy way director Joe Wright portrays interwar manor life.
Wright is reunited with his star from Pride and Prejudice , the petulant, desirable Keira Knightley. Knightley’s body, as slender as any art deco icon, is draped in backless green silk. The color is hard to carry off, but the purpose of it is revealed when heat and desire redden Cecilia’s skin, or when the crimson lights from police cars turn her to cinnamon.
Reversing the usual pattern, Wright uses a swift, hand-held camera in the manor and majestically composed scenes for the warfare. The early scenes have the darting camera as Briony deals with a gaggle of unwanted cousins; it’s there for the instant that Briony catches Cecilia in mid-coitus, splayed out like a starfish against the library wall.
The real art comes in the later scenes, with Robbie’s march to the English Channel with the fleeing British Expeditionary Force. During these scenes, McAvoy advances to the lead rank of English film stars. The revealing shot of the terminal beach at Dunkirk is a stunner. Clammy, smoky light floods in as the camera cranes up. We see the thousands of milling soldiers, junking their trucks and shooting the horses so that the Nazis won’t have them. Amid the destruction, the remains of hallucinatory beachfront attractions still stand. A brawl breaks out in a gutted cafe. A choir practices in a gazebo amid the lolling or marching wounded, with a tattered Ferris wheel in the background. The sequence is Atonement’s finest moment.
Whether the film transcends the formality of the book is another matter. Atonement starts with a clacking typewriter. It’s such a sinister mechanical sound to younger ears, and it becomes the drum track in the title music. This clacking is the emblem of a seriously engrossing but repeatedly overdetermined film. In Atonement , we can’t seem to get away from the idea that this is a story, just words on paper.
‘Atonement’ opens on Friday, Dec. 14, at Rialto Cinemas Lakeside, 551 Summerfield Road, Santa Rosa. 707.525.4840.
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First Bite
E ditor’s note: First Bite is a new concept in restaurant writing. This is not a go-three-times, try-everything-on-the-menu report; rather, this is a quick snapshot of a single experience. We invite you to come along with our writers as they—informed, intelligent eaters like yourselves—have a simple meal at an area restaurant, just like you do .
Belly up to the long bar at Tres Hombres at 10pm on a Saturday and it’s like Acapulco at the height of the tourist season. But saunter in on a weekday afternoon and it’s more like a sleepy Mexican village. The upscale restaurant in Petaluma’s new Theater District complex has been open since the end of September, and though it has received mixed reviews from locals, it feels like it’s here to stay.
Granted, there are nuances to work out in the kitchen, in the dining room and on the menu. We performed our patriotic duty and mentioned our concerns to the chef. But the food looks great and tastes good, and it’s a fun place to hang out for an hour before or after a movie, or to eat, drink and revel. At the bar, there are more than 70 different tequilas to choose from, and on the menu there are salads, burgers, tacos, tostadas and fajitas. Chef Gray Rollin, who looks like a surfer and made the surfer scene in Maui for years, makes traditional Mexican food with an Asian twist. It’s colorful, spicy and it wants to explode with all kinds of flavors. Local Mexican food has rarely, if ever, been this exciting.
On a quiet Tuesday afternoon, a pal and I enjoyed a leisurely lunch while elderly ladies dined at a neighboring table. We started with pints of Lagunitas pale ale ($4.50) that came with chips and first-rate salsa. We ordered a small guacamole ($5.25) that was quite large, but was deemed too salty. We both had the “spicy tortilla soup” with strips of red and green tortillas that I loved but my pal found too spicy.
Then we shared an excellent caesar salad ($7.50), a large chile verde entrée with tender chunks of pork ($12.75) and a veggie burrito ($10.50) with bite-sized bits of zucchini, broccoli and carrots, along with delicious black beans and rice. It all came at once, which was too much at one time, and we couldn’t eat it all. For dessert, we tried the Baja banana ($5.25), deep-fried bananas with cold ice cream and rich chocolate sauce that would have fed four.
Soccer was on the TV screen behind the bar, and music on the sound system, but we were able to carry on a conversation about Petaluma’s restaurants. We agreed the more the merrier, and that Tres Hombres is the best Mexican restaurant in Petaluma, surely the best new Mexican restaurant in Sonoma County, and maybe just the best Mexican restaurant in the North Bay.
Chef Gray Rollin looks like he doesn’t have a Mexican bone in his body, but he knows how to cook Mexican dishes, and he’s training Mexicans to cook their own cuisine, which he says he enjoys but finds a bit loco. In fact, bona fide gringos are cooking some of the best Mexican food anywhere these days, from Petaluma to Puerto Vallarta, so don’t hold it against the men in the kitchen at Tres Hombres that they don’t all hail from the heart of Mexico.
Tres Hombres. 151 Petaluma Blvd. S., Petaluma. Open for lunch and dinner daily; brunch, Saturday&–Sunday. 707.773.4500.
Quick-and-dirty dashes through North Bay restaurants. These aren’t your standard “bring five friends and order everything on the menu” dining reviews.
See No Evil
O n March 12, 2006, five American soldiers gang-raped and murdered a 14-year-old Iraqi girl named Abeer Qasim Hamza near the occupied town of al-Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad. After the rape, the troops butchered Abeer, her parents and her baby sister. A soldier who witnessed the atrocity belatedly ratted the platoon out to military authorities, who prosecuted.
Thus was al-Mahmudiyah added to the growing list of places where thousands of American soldiers have committed unspeakable acts in Iraq, including Haditha, Abu Ghraib and Fallujah. (Atrocities in Afghanistan are a related matter). The war on Iraq is the modern Holocaust. Since 1991, about 2.5 million Iraqis (10 percent of the population) have died as a result of incessant bombing, ground wars, blockades and military occupation.
Under the leadership of G. H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and G. W. Bush, the American public has turned a blind eye to this holocaust while energy and weapons-manufacturing corporations and military contractors, such as Halliburton, Blackwater, URS and Perini, have thrived on pain.
Finally, after six years of complicity with the war regime, some in Hollywood have found the guts to challenge our Eichmannesque culture by making a handful of antiwar films, ranging from Robert Redford’s Lions and Lambs to Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah to writer-director Brian De Palma’s cinéma vérité about the al-Mahmudiyah bloodbath, Redacted.
Produced by billionaire-libertarian Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures, the movie was shot in Jordan. Realistically acted, the story is revealed by hand-held video cameras wielded by self-obsessed soldiers, fixed security cameras and web cams. When it was released in November, the deranged demagogue Bill O’Reilly ranted against it on Fox television, claiming that freedom of speech does not extend to criticizing American troops.
To date, only 28 movie theaters in the country have shown the astonishingly apropos Redacted, which puts the blame for al-Mahmudiyah not on a few renegade soldiers, but where it belongs: on the American people.
Be assured, it is not the violence of certain scenes that repels people from seeing Redacted; American filmgoers relish vicarious participation in murder and rape. No, movie audiences shun Redacted because they instinctively realize that a decent person cannot see this film and remain a political ostrich.
I interviewed Izzy Diaz, who plays a pivotal role in Redacted . There was no official, celebrity-spotlighted opening of the movie in Los Angeles, he said, but he attended the first showing of it. “Out of 13 people in the theater, I knew eight of them.”
He explains: “People are not yet ready to hold a mirror up to themselves.”
The Rialto Cinemas Lakeside in Santa Rosa and the Opera Plaza in San Francisco are the only two theaters in Northern California that have had the courage to show Redacted . I saw it at the Rialto with three other souls. I did not go there to be entertained. I went because it is my duty as a human being to witness the story of these crimes that were committed by my countrymen in my name. Seeing the movie was an excruciating experience, but it reaffirmed my commitment to do everything I can to help end America’s global war against humanity. It is not true that we are powerless to act against the cruel and savvy criminals who run this country, but it is true that claiming powerlessness makes it easier to stand in line at Whole Foods.
The Rialto’s proprietor, Ky Boyd, did his part: he brought Redacted to the screen and earned all of $400 in three days. Where were you, Sonoma County? You rushed to see Fahrenheit 911 , which allowed cackling viewers to blame Bush, but not themselves, for incompetence in Iraq. But you avoided Redacted , which teaches us that we are responsible for the carnage. Bush-Cheney-Rice and Congress are only as monstrous as we allow them to be. We nourish them with our silence, with the self-fulfilling mantra “There is nothing I can do.” (Say it a million times a day and it will still not be true!)
To paraphrase a question posed by one of the arrested soldiers in Redacted , “We bomb and kill these people, so why can’t we rape and kill them?” Indeed, what is the difference between bombing and raping? Netflix this film now, and discover if you can figure out that difference while continuing to live your really important life. Listen for the best line in the film, delivered by the soldier with a late-blooming conscience: “I watched it happen and did nothing to stop it.”
Be warned: If Americans continue to do nothing, then we will deserve whatever payback comes our way, be it plague, bomb, flood, the Mormons or even another Clinton.
Jug-a-Lug
C all me Ebenezer, but I don’t do Christmas. There are several reasons for this, beginning with the fact that my father worked in the greeting-card industry for 32 years. This meant that throughout school and beyond, I could make some extra bank every holiday season setting up Christmas displays. I have been in the bowels of every major shopping mall on the West Coast.
Christmas is best shared with the little ones. The hopeful spirit of the season seen on the face of an expectant kid pretty much sums it up for me, and without any ankle-biters around, I now skip the tree trimming.
There is, however, one North Bay tradition I look forward to: the annual gathering of musicians known as the Christmas Jug Band. Approaching the Yule with tongues firmly in cheek, the members of this loose collective have been bringing their own unique take on the season to North Bay venues for 30 years.
A weekly Mill Valley jam session was the beginning of the CJB. The players insisted on using instruments true to the jug-band tradition, favoring old arch-top guitars, washboards and kazoos; any axes deemed too “good sounding” were forbidden. Dan Hicks was hosting an open mic night at the now-defunct Old Mill Tavern, and the ragtag group, many from the Commander Cody band, would gather to celebrate jug-band music. In 1977, the Tavern’s owner suggested a Christmas Eve gig, and the ritual was born.
Initially known as “The Three Wise Men + Four = One Jug Band,” the band performs throughout the Bay Area every December, and giving back, they always include at least one charity gig, usually benefiting Mimi Farina’s Bread and Roses Foundation.
The fun has spread worldwide. The German indie label Trikont has included the CJB’s “That’s His Red Wagon” on its collection of wacky holiday tunes released this year. Also new for 2007: Christmas Jug Band mini-washboards.
Country Joe McDonald has been seen warbling with the jugheads, and past participants have included Norton Buffalo and Angela Strehli. Whether you sing along to “Santa Lost a Ho” or strum your newly purchased washboard to “Someone Stole My Santa Suit,” catching a CJB show is a Yuletide treat sure to relieve the stress-induced mania that can be the holidays. Ankle-biters generally welcome.
The Christmas Jug Band perform on Friday, Dec. 14, at the Mystic Theater (23 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. 8pm. $22; all ages. 707.765.2121), at the Berkeley’s Freight and Salvage Dec. 18; the Larkspur Cafe Theatre on Dec. 21 (500 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur. 8pm. $22; all ages. 415.924.6107), and for the big finale, Dan Hicks and the Lickettes will join the Jug Band at the Masonic Center on Dec. 22 (23 Corte Madera Ave., Mill Valley. 8:30pm. $25; 21 and over only. 415.388.2550).
Letters to the Editor
Prince Praise
I beg to differ regarding your article on Prince (“Nothing Compares 2 Sue,” Dec. 5). Yes, he’s eccentric, but aren’t all geniuses and artists a bit left of center? You never mentioned his sheer perfection of music in any form or how he has reinvented himself over the last 26 years. I defend Prince and all of his idiosyncrasies. He’s always been amazing in his live performances. I don’t want to know his political or religious beliefs. I think this article perpetuates the “weird” Prince you would like us to believe in.
Karyn Lobley
Santa Rosa
Guided by Folly
Mr. President: The concept of a prolonged war with another nation seems ill-fated. The financial outlook of this war appears to be guided by folly.
Dante Negrete
Rohnert Park
Thinks we’re a Resto Trade Mag
I was impressed to see this type of article (“Fork Votes” by Dan Imhoff, Nov. 21). Not only was it politically astute, it was geared toward environmental and local farmer awareness. Even greater, it stressed the benefit of people contacting senators to address the issues.
That the restaurant industry is moving in this direction is a positive thing. If only the grocers’ association be equally concerned with something other than their profit bottom line. The only reason that industry is getting into the organic act is the great deal of money to be made (the same reason as corporate America). Of course, they will try to weaken the standards as has already happened, defeating the whole purpose of the organic alternative.
Due to rising consumer awareness of the dangers of mainstream American food (which corporate America and the grocers’ association have been pushing on us for years) and the burgeoning organic market, one would think these jackals would get the message: Informed Americans understand the difference between safe, quality food and typical supermarket fare.
It’s nice to know some in the restaurant world realize that serving quality food and listening to consumer preferences really does pay off. Everyone wins—and isn’t that nice for a change?
Robbin Rogers
Smithville, Ohio
Two-fer: Memory & Self-promo
I recently read your follow-up article on forgotten or lost tapes from local bands (“Dolby Days,” Nov. 21). I was the first lead vocalist for Insanity Puppets, and was also a member of local bands Transmission and Test Monkey, as well as doing vocals for a techno project known as Universal Black, which is the creation of keyboardist/composer Serene Voltage.
All of the above bands were local Santa Rosa&–based bands, spanning almost 10 years (1985&–1993). Some of us still keep in touch, but I do not have any copies of old demos, T-shirts, pictures or even video of live performances. There are people somewhere with these old recordings and pictures, along with bootleg tapes and fliers. I was never the type to hang on to such items, and so they have been lost over the years.
It was a real pleasure to read about the “old days” when we had all those good times. If you would like to know more about these bands or the “real” history of the Insanity Puppets (Guthrie and Adolfo were not original members), I could tell you an accurate account on how the band started and who were the original members as well as the creators of the first songs. Keep a lookout for my first CD on the indie label Lost City Records, locally produced. Name of project? Steamfitter.
Dan Schram
Santa Rosa
Come on up!
Great story (“Homeward Bound,” Nov. 28). It’s important to hear positive things people are doing in response to the fallout of the Iraq War. Veteran’s Village seems like something our political leaders would have pioneered many years ago if their leadership was truly in line with the needs of returning soldiers. What a great story. And VeteransVillage.org is a great website. Very poignant. May many Santas land on the rooftop of Veteran’s Village.
Every time I read the Bohemian I start thinking I should move North!
Johanna Harman
Mill Valley
Wine Tasting Room of the Week
I t’s amusing to imagine what Quixote’s organically farmed vineyards would look like if Friedensreich Hundertwasser had had a go at them. The architect might have demanded that no two of the same varietal be planted side by side. Mismatched trellis styles would spiral across the vineyard, grapes would spill over the roof and straight rows would be forbidden!
Fortunately for the vineyard manager, the Austrian iconoclast designed the winery building, which is now the sole mecca for Hundertwasser fans in the United States. In these pages, we’ve covered Quixote in advance of its long-anticipated public opening (June 22 and Nov. 23, 2005), then explored the architecture (June 13, 2007), and now we come to drink the wine.
Former Stag’s Leap Winery owner Carl Doumani was looking for something different for his new project. When he happened upon Hundertwasser, he inherited a legacy. Hundertwasser (1928–2000) rejected the “dictatorial” hard edges of modernism. He abhorred the straight line, the flat surface and uniformity, and sought to reconnect humanity with natural forms. The warmth with which people react to his buildings suggests that he achieved more than postmodern gimmickry. There is a sense of dignity to the colorful little castle that grows out of the landscape beneath the Stag’s Leap palisades, commensurate with the architect’s humanistic aspirations. That is carried over into the appointment-only tasting at Quixote Winery, a leisurely experience worth the admission.
Behind me, autumn sunlight streams through windows framed by voluptuous glazed columns. General manager Lew Price sits at the head of a large plank conference table and introduces each wine as the group seems ready. Three separate parties strike up easy conversation mostly, of course, about the architecture. Everybody has a Hundertwasser story. A young lawyer from San Francisco had always wondered about the poster of Hundertwasser that she’d grown up with courtesy of her father, also in attendance. I once answered an ad for a ride share in Vienna. The driver told me to meet him at the corner of such-and-such streets. When I looked up across the street, there was the famous Hundertwasser housing project, all turrets and splashes of tile, and trees growing willy-nilly.
The wine? Yes, well the initial citrus zest of the 2001 Quixote Cabernet Sauvignon ($60) is followed by silky tannins in harmony with lush plum fruit. The 2002 Quixote Petite Syrah ($80) is also uncommonly soft and complex, dark with plum and dense as fruit leather. The 2004 Quixote Petite Syrah ($60) represents an anomaly vintage, Price says, but it got my attention for its rich flavors of black cherry, black licorice, cool earth and fruitcake and prominent tannin. The 2004 Panza Claret ($40) is lighter bodied, with a bright nose of plum and Bing cherries.
Besides the labels and the screw-cap enclosures, there’s nothing particularly offbeat here. Quixote and Panza (the “value” label named for the literary sidekick) wines are all about warmth, texture and seamless integration. Would the proper Hundertwasser response be to smash the bottle? That’s what he did to a shipment of tiles he deemed “too perfect.” I think I’d rather admire the wine’s people-friendly, organic, rounded shape in the mid-palate a little while longer.
Quixote Winery, 6126 Silverado Trail, Napa. Visits by appointment only; $25 per person. 707.944.2659.
Clean House
R ecently, a reader told me of her semi-successful attempt to build a green home. Unaware of exactly what it meant to “build green,” she trusted that her contractor, who assured her that he was a “green” builder, would know how best to proceed. Unfortunately, mistakes regarding heating choices, positioning of the house and building materials led to her new home, beautiful though it may be, being colder, draftier and less efficient than she had hoped. Only after the construction was complete did she learn what components could have been put into effect in order to have made her dream home a green home.
“How,” she asked me, “are you supposed to make sure you’re getting a green builder when anyone can say they’re ‘green’?”
Never having built my own home, I didn’t know the answer, so I decided to ask around. Word of mouth led me to Birdseye Builders, a contracting company run by Joseph Hicks and Jeremy Allen. Birdseye is “Build It Green” certified, and promises environmentally conscious building practices from design to efficiency to disposal. Even their work trucks are fueled by biodiesel. I contacted Jeremy Allen, and he agreed to meet with me and answer some of my questions regarding what it really means to build green.
Allen and I meet at Peter Lowell’s, the wine bar located in the new sustainable town home complex that has recently opened on Sebastopol’s Florence Avenue. This seems an appropriate meeting place, and we are able to stroll about the complex and check out some of the environmentally friendly perks, like dual-flush toilets and an ingenious water-recycling system. Allen says that he has worked on tract developments before and warns that they are generally not “conscious” places, with profound waste and reckless use of materials being the norm. With the inevitability of development in mind (after all, we do need places to live), Allen sees these housing blocs as a step in the right direction, as well as a brave move on the part of the developer. “Once you say you’re going green, you’re putting your ass on the line, and everyone is watching.”
Allen was alerted to green-building certification while visiting the Sonoma County Permit and Resource Department, where he came across a display for Build It Green, a California nonprofit that promotes sustainable building practices and offers classes and certification for builders. In order to keep up his certification, Allen must take a certain number of classes per year, extra work he doesn’t mind as the courses keep him on-task and aware of new resources and advancements in green building materials. Allen believes it is vital that when he says he is a green builder he is keeping resource efficiency in mind, as well as making it clear to his customers that he isn’t, he laughs, “building something that people can eat at the end.”
The word “green” is so overused that it’s beginning to lose some of its meaning. This is not a new concept, Allen insists. The native people of this country were green, which meant living in harmony with the natural environment, not dominating the landscape the way we do now. There are so many factors to consider when building green, and there is no getting away from the fact that what we build will have impact. Even within the environmentally conscious world, there are compromises that must be made. Some potentially “green” materials, such as concrete, have to be mined, and concrete contains fly ash, which comes from scraping chimneys at coal plants. Florescent lights, while touted for their energy efficiency, contain mercury and are toxic to dispose of.
I ask Allen what he would recommend for those who are not able to build themselves an entirely green abode. He recommends first reading Natural Remodeling for the Not-So-Green House by Carol Venolia. He cautions that it is important to remember that re-using is the best option; recycling, a last resort. We all like to give ourselves a big pat on the back for recycling, but the fact is, most of us have no idea what happens to our recyclables once we toss them in the bin or, in the case of the remodel, a huge dumpster.
As I wave goodbye to Allen, I feel fairly exempt. After all, what does a renter care about such responsibilities? Then he ruins my glow by giving me the same morsel of advice my mother has been giving me my entire life: “Oh, and don’t forget to turn down the heat and put on a jacket.”
I know he’s right, but I don’t have to like it.
To find out more about Birdseye Builders go to www.birdseyebuilders.net. For more information on Build it Green go to [ http://www.builditgreen.org ]www.builditgreen.org.
First Bite
Some Place Like Home
Leisurely Listening
Class War
First Bite
See No Evil
Jug-a-Lug
Letters to the Editor
Clean House
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