Page 164 | Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties

Santa Rosa’s KBBF celebrates 50 years on air

Will Carruthers

Jul 25, 2023

Santa Rosa’s KBBF celebrates 50 years on air

After a sometimes-tumultuous tenure, Santa Rosa’s KBBF, the country’s first bilingual public radio station, is celebrating 50 years on the air.

“KBBF is a trusted and vital community institution. It is the only Northern California station that provides local news, public affairs, and emergency information in the region in Spanish and English as well as in several indigenous American languages,” Alicia Sanchez, president of the board of directors of the Bilingual Broadcasting Foundation, the station’s nonprofit backer, wrote in a newsletter earlier this month.

The founders of the station included local college students and community leaders, all caught up with the political energy of the moment. The project was initially funded by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation.

When the signal first went live on May 31, 1973, volunteers hopped in their cars, tuned in to KBBF and drove off in various directions.

“It turned out that the signal reached, at that time, 18 counties,” Sanchez said in an interview.

For a few years, between the mid 2000s into the early 2010s, the station was subject to public scrutiny, with in-fighting and controversy about its use of funds, according to press coverage from the time.

However, KBBF managed to weather the storm. While the station still operates on a shoestring budget and relies heavily on volunteer labor, it continues to make a meaningful contribution to the community, especially during times of crisis.

“For us, there have been significant events that make it all worth it … One of them was during the killing of [13-year-old] Andy Lopez [by a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy]. Because we [as a nonprofit] cannot advocate, what we did is we opened our airwaves for people to grieve the loss of a child,” Sanchez said. “What was so interesting was to hear the people calling in and talking about the grief and sending prayers to the family and all that, but also the grief they had gone through personally.”

The station also proved a vital resource for Spanish speakers during the October 2017 wildfires, when Sonoma County was revealed to have lacking translation services. Since then, they have offered important coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

KBBF’s anniversary celebrations kicked off on Sunday, July 23, with a public party at Santa Rosa’s Bayer Park. On Aug. 3, the station will hold a private, ticketed fundraiser dinner at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. Seats at the event will cost $150 and up, with proceeds going to pay for various costs.

“To be sustainable, we need your support for backup broadcasting equipment and to expand our operations, which is crucial for us to stay viable and broadcast to our listeners, who depend on us for invaluable life-saving emergency information,” Sanchez wrote in a recent fundraising pitch.

Information about KBBF’s Aug. 3 event is available at kbbf.org/50th-anniversary-gala-fundraiser.

Electric Zam: Meet Snoopy’s new ice resurfacing machine

Chelsea Kurnick and Will Carruthers

Jul 21, 2023

Electric Zam: Meet Snoopy’s new ice resurfacing machine

‘Peanuts’ and Zamboni go together like Michael Jordan and Nike.

Four years before the basketball star first signed the deal which resulted in the Air Jordan, cartoonist Charles Schulz and Frank Zamboni struck up a correspondence after the ‘Peanuts’ author first mentioned a Zamboni ice resurfacing machine in a comic strip.

Hang around with ice rink workers long enough and you’re likely to catch them paraphrasing one of Frank Zamboni’s best-known lines: “The principal product you to sell is the ice itself.”

Although Frank died in 1988, Zamboni’s eponymous company is still family-run and still produces some of the best-known ice grooming machines in the world.

This April, Snoopy’s Home Ice partnered with Sonoma Clean Power to buy a brand new electric Zamboni. The effort came as part of the rink’s ongoing efforts to refurbish the rink, with an eye towards energy efficiency and improving ice quality.

Snoopy Senior World Hockey Tournament 2023 — The snow the Zamboni scrapes off the ice gets dumped into a vat where it is melted, cleaned and ultimately recycled back onto the ice sheet.

“Everyone who works here is happy that the air we breathe has no emissions from the new Zamboni,” Tamara Stanley, the rink’s general manager said.

The old machine, which the rink used for approximately 20 years, was propane-fueled. While air quality levels were safe for skating, the old machine required AQI tests after each pass on the rink.

“Like any gas-powered vehicle, you had to worry about emissions and sometimes it required maintenance,” shift manager and Zamboni driver Dave Rosefield said.

Rosefield is one of many employees at Snoopy’s who grew up playing hockey or figure skating at the Santa Rosa rink.

“Growing up at the ice arena, it’s pretty natural for hockey players to be excited about driving the Zamboni,” Rosefield said.

Rosefield’s enthusiasm for the machine is echoed by America’s favorite beagle himself in more than a dozen of Schulz’ comics strips. Schulz’ relationship to the Zamboni family and their machines is chronicled inside the Warm Puppy Café.

Just like cars and tractors, modern-day Zambonis come loaded with technology. Snoopy’s new Zam is decked out with the Zamboni Connect System, an electronic monitoring system, and FastICE, the ice-making system attached to the machine’s rear, which Rosefield likened to a high-powered version of a produce mister in a grocery store.

Player’s praised the ice quality at this year’s senior hockey tournament, which is harder and, thus, allows for faster skating than it used to. Skaters can thank the new Zam and the 2019 rink resurfacing when Snoopy’s replaced sand under the ice sheet with a concrete slab for the different feel under their blades.