Breaking It Down

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music & nightlife |

By Brett Ascarelli

When you think of hip-hop, west Marin County probably isn’t the first place to come to mind. But on April 21, the youth-geared Sprout Fest will take over San Geronimo to celebrate what to many has become a notoriously problematic genre, associated with gangster and, more recently, cocaine rap.

Speaking by phone from his West Marin home, festival organizer Noel Bartholomew, 22, explains that the mainstream music industry has changed hip-hop for the worse. “A lot of it has gotten pretty negative towards women and towards everyone else,” Bartholomew says. “That’s not what the original art form was about–it was about creating tools for youth to express themselves in a positive way, a nonviolent way.” Some say that during hip-hop’s age of innocence in the 1980s, gang switchblade wars gave way to break-dancing battles. Maybe that’s just urban legend, but hip-hop definitely gave youth a creative outlet.

Bartholomew says that he used to listen to gangster rap but now prefers underground hip-hop, which is more traceable to its roots. And that’s what Sprout Fest–whose name refs the 2001 Bean Fest in San Geronimo, now in its next stage of natural growth–is all about: the roots of hip-hop. “We want to really honor [its] African heritage,” says Bartholomew, who is originally from Switzerland. Arts workshops during the afternoon will focus on break-dancing, beatboxing, graffiti painting, poi-ball dancing, spoken-word poetry and West African drumming taught by master musician Amadou Camara. Bartholomew will himself teach a workshop on capoeira, the graceful Brazilian martial art which has inspired some hip-hop acrobatics.

Recording artist Radio Active, who has worked with Michael Franti and Spearhead, will lead one of the workshops and also emcee the evening concert which features local artists D.U.S.T., Urban Apache B-Boys, Capoeira Mandinga, Shatzi Rainbow, Jahan Khalighi and Greenroom. Concertgoers can vie for $100 prizes in an old-school B-Boy Battle where the best breaker wins, and in other contests.

Sprout Fest breaks out on Saturday, April 21, at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center, 6350 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., San Geronimo. Workshops, including organic lunch and snacks, for youth and twenty-somethings from 11am to 5:30pm; free. All-ages concert begins at 6pm. $5-$20. Organic dinner available for purchase until 7pm. Blankets or beach chairs recommended. 415.488.8888.




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War Play

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War Play

April 18-24, 2007

My blood boiled as I raced into the forest. I leaped over logs and tangles of twigs, and moved deeper and deeper into this jungle of darkness. Watching carefully for movement in the dense foliage ahead, I readied my finger on the trigger of my gun. Shots came suddenly, echoing from the southwest, rapid-fire reminders of the battle about to begin, and I wished for a moment that I could turn into a horsefly and buzz safely into the canopy above. But, alas, I was who I was, where I was, and this was war. And war is hell.

Actually, this was just the Paintball Jungle, a 65-acre plot grown over with eucalyptus trees just west of Highway 29 in American Canyon. Every Saturday and Sunday, the Jungle swarms with a hundred or more masked gunmen who shoot each other in good fun with half-inch diameter paintballs. Guests can show up unannounced any time on weekends, rain or shine, but first thing in the morning is best. That’s when owner Robert Delia, aka “Magic Carpet Bob,” a scarred and handsomely grizzled Navy vet and former professional paintballer, delivers his 30-minute orientation speech.

“Gather round for your orientation!” he shouts at about 9am. Fifty eager paintballers do as they’re told, forming a half-circle around Bob, who stands waiting atop an old monster truck tire to enhance his mighty stature. By now we’ve all signed waivers, paid our $55 in dues at the open-air reception desk and been equipped with guns and helmets, but there are some basic safety rules we must hear about, first and foremost of which is to never, ever enter the target range or the forest without first putting on one’s safety goggles.

Bob also briefs us on the various game styles we’ll be enjoying, like Capture the Flag, Center Flag and the Elimination Round. Each, happily, involves running through the woods, hunting people with a relatively harmless gun: a boy’s dream.

Yet a scattered dozen or so of my peers seem to take this business very seriously. They have come dressed in full army fatigues with American flags embroidered on their sleeves. They wear jungle-green bandanas and camouflage foliage in their hair. Several of these men have gigantic $1,000 machine guns with silencers and sights, and I want to tell them that there’s a real army and a real war out in the world, in case they’re interested.

“Now, remember,” says Bob, “the whole point of this in the end is to have fun. Now are you ready?”

“Yeaahh!!!” comes the war cry of an army.

Several Jungle employees come around to tie our arms with either fluorescent red or green ribbons, thereby dividing us into teams. I receive a red ribbon, which is actually pink. On a loud speaker, a male voice orders us to our bases. “Greens to the Hornet Nest, Reds to the Airplane Bunker. Game starts in three minutes!” I put on my goggles and follow a gaggle of stern-postured pink soldiers into the thick woods, and this drops me right back into the previously interrupted narrative, which, as you recall, had me racing through the jungle. Ahem.

“Hey, pal, you know where you’re going?” I asked the camouflaged fellow ahead of me.

“Naw, this is my first time here.”

Yet the bumbling lot of us somehow found our base, where a referee sat waiting, holding a walkie-talkie and wearing an orange vest. Our flag–more of a rag, really–flew proudly in the middle of the Lincoln Log-like structure. Sheltered turrets stood at the five corners, and the prospects of dwelling in this cozy inn for the duration of the 30-minute game, taking cheap shots into the woods at enemy and terrorist sympathizers, wooed me into declaring, “I’ll defend the fort!”

With six others, I entered the small complex, climbed up to one of the guard platforms and made myself comfortable at a firing slot in the wooden wall. Momentarily, the ref received a message through the walkie-talkie. Then a loud horn blew in the distance, echoing through the woods, and our man shouted, “Game on! Go get ’em!”

Two dozen of our pink soldiers dashed westward into the woods toward the unseen enemy with the goal of retrieving their flag. For several minutes, we heard nothing while watching the surrounding sphere of jungle for enemies.

And then from one of our sentinels: “Movement to the southwest!” I, too, saw an apparition out in the shadowy woods to the northwest, and a second later a paintball from the south breezed past my face and splattered on a post behind me. We were surrounded. My comrades began shooting from their respective duck-blinds while I stayed low, waiting for the prime opportunity to blast an enemy fighter in his vitals. Opportunity arose when I spied someone about 200 feet away crouched behind a stump. I aimed through the slot in the wood structure and popped off a half-dozen rounds, but I watched each of my paintballs zip waywardly and splatter in the foliage before reaching their target.

There must have been 20 Greens around us, and they were closing in. An armed man ran out from behind a tree and charged forward. He was just 60 feet away, hoping to reach the next patch of cover before anyone could take him out, which I did.

“Hit!” he shouted, nobly obeying the honor system. He straightened up, lifted his hands skyward and calmly walked off the scene. I enjoyed watching him perish.

We picked off several more insurgents, but the Greens had us outmanned. Increasing volumes of paint splattered all around me, and the breeze of paintballs overhead kept me cowering on my knees. And then they were in our fort, swarming viciously like hornets. Presumably, a similar battle was taking place across the forest at the Greens’ base, but the horn had yet to blow and it seemed our flag was going to be the first to go.

I fired feverishly, hitting nothing but wood and earth. Abruptly, a line of machine gun fire pat-pat-patted up my front side. Paintballs hurt, and I screamed in fright and lifted my gun in the air to announce my death. Meanwhile, my men dropped like flies, and the Greens made off with the flag. The ref, still standing by with his walkie-talkie, announced the loss to the horn blower. The trumpet sounded through the woods a moment later, and the game was over. Ten remained before closing time.

While most paintballers at the Jungle make an entire day of running around in the woods and getting shot, I didn’t have what it takes. By 1pm, with a dozen welts rising on my head, neck and torso, I was toast. I was bleeding in several spots, my shirt had been torn open and, frankly, I thought these wounds were pretty darn awesome.

Magic Carpet Bob owns the Paintball Jungle with his partner of 27 years, Karen Kazman. Bob’s adult sons, Eli and Zoe, also help out with the business. Zoe even played on the same professional team as his dad back in the early ’90s, traveling across the country and Europe, and together helping to win for their team the Paintball World Championship in 1991, about the time that we tried to loot Iraq for its oil the first time around.

But the paintballers I’ve seen are a far cry from real soldiers; they’re lovers, not fighters, and Eli believes that paintballing is the second greatest form of recreation in the world.

“It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on,” he quips.

For others, it’s therapeutic, a chance to blow off some pent-up steam from the office. Ryan Crain, 28, a creative-marketing director from Vacaville, sees paintballing as harmless, a chance to be something that most days of the week he’s simply not.

“It’s great,” he says. “You’re outside, playing dress-up and running around like a soldier in the woods.”

Ditto for me. Stalking strangers with a toy gun answered a long-neglected boyish desire to hunt and be hunted, an urge I once satisfied through classroom daydreams of fighting in wars both ancient and modern, and kicking ass, of course. Perhaps the most satisfying thing about paintball is that the game makes sense; your enemies are as real and tangible as their neon wristbands. In today’s real wars, it’s just so confusing! Men, women, children, newlyweds kissing on the altar–any of them could be terrorists, and the only safe thing to do is to blast them, safety goggles be damned.

But what do I know about war? Paintballing took me to my ultralight personal threshold for violence, and I hope that I never have to put on army fatigues and load a real weapon.

Because I’ve read that there’s a real war going on out there. It’s not in a jungle of eucalyptus trees, and I hear it’s hell.

Paintball Jungle, 2 Eucalyptus Drive, American Canyon. 707.552.2426.


Money Pit

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Money Pit

April 18-24, 2007

It’s not as though there isn’t any money. In California, 51 cents out of every tax dollar–including sales and income tax–goes to education. On top of that, voters last year approved a $3.5 billion bond for public schools. Nevertheless, the state has some of the lowest test scores in the country. In 2005, California ranked 47th for education, meaning that only three other states had students who scored worse on standardized tests.

However, the Department of Education believes we still aren’t spending enough. Per-pupil spending in California is 30 percent below the national average, according to DOE director of policy and evaluation Pat McCabe.

Still, others are suggesting that it isn’t so much the amount of money in the educational system as how the money is being used–primarily for inefficient and bloated programs that aren’t reaching the classrooms.

A recent study by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and the California Business for Education Excellence claims that one such example is the Academic Performance Index (API), a score that attempts to measure how well schools are doing. According to the study, the state spends $1.25 billion on improvement programs to help struggling schools become proficient, and yet they have had “little if any academic improvement.”

The study, called “Failing Our Future,” compares student test scores from 1,620 low-performing schools that participated in the improvement programs to those of schools that didn’t participate in the programs. It found that there was “no significant difference in academic achievement over time.” Not only that, the study asserts that the state doesn’t have a high enough growth rate for nonperforming schools, and that minority and low-income kids are still being left behind.

“We found no real accountability for the schools,” says Vicki Murray, a senior fellow in education studies at PRI. “There needs to be consequence for failure. As it is, parents don’t have meaningful options in California. If you’re a parent and you have a child enrolled in a school that’s not up to snuff, what do you do?”

In 1999, California established the API score to quantify how well the schools are doing. Every year, students take a series of tests ranging from language arts to math. Based on the overall test scores, the state does a calculation and assigns each school a number ranging from 200 to 1,000. The goal is for all schools to reach 800, which is considered proficient.

The API conflicts with another measurement system, the Adequate Yearly Progress score, part of the No Child Left Behind Act established by the Bush administration. For a school to be proficient under this newer federal system, it would have to have a score of 875.

“The state still stresses 800 because it’s an easier score to meet,” says Lance Izumi, who co-authored the study. “The more schools meet the state target, the greater number of schools appear to be on track.”

For those schools not reaching 800, there are two state programs designed to help them improve. The problem, according to Izumi, is that the billion-dollar programs don’t work because their growth target is too low. Schools that agree to enter the program only have to improve 5 percent a year. At that rate, a school with a score of 635 or less–a plight of more than 3,400 schools–would take between 61 to 84 years to reach 800.

“We’re sacrificing generations of students while the schools are making small incremental progress,” says Izumi.

McCabe believes the study’s criticism is unrealistic. The reason the growth target is low is because it’s so hard for schools to improve with their limited resources.

“It’s a realistic target,” says McCabe. “It’s very difficult to move huge numbers of kids across these proficiency lines. The average gains per year are between 10 and 11 points. We’re holding the schools accountable, but we try to make the targets reasonable.”

In practice, many schools do seem to improve faster than 5 percent a year. From 1999 to 2006 in Sonoma County, median scores steadily increased by 78 points for elementary schools, 67 points for middle schools and 48 points for high schools. The improvement may be slow, but it’s steady.

“There is some logic to what the study is saying,” says Don Russell, assistant superintendent of the Sonoma County School District. “But it’s not what’s occurring in the schools. The schools aren’t saying, you know, we only have to improve 5 percent a year so let’s draw this out for 20 years. People are saying, ‘Golly, we’d better improve our scores and get better.’ So it’s not really a strong argument.”

The study also says that by focusing on overall school performance, kids who are lagging behind will improve at the same rate as everyone else but will never catch up, an issue that is especially troubling for minority or low-income children.

“Let’s say that a school has a score of 400,” says Izumi. “The white students have a cumulative score of 500 and the African-American and Hispanic kids have a score of 350. Even if all the groups hit the growth target, it doesn’t close the gap between the minorities and white students.”

The Department of Education seems aware of this problem. It is in the process of changing the target structure so that some of the subgroups, like minority or low-income kids, will be required to grow faster than they have in the past. In theory, it will start closing some of those gaps.

But blaming the API for the problems in the schools is misdiagnosing the problem, believes McCabe.

“The API is just a measurement,” he says. “It gives us a list of schools that are not making progress and shows us their growth over time. Blaming the API for schools not making progress is like blaming the thermometer for causing the cold.”

For Izumi, the API is one of many expensive programs not making enough of a difference in the educational system.

“They are wasting a lot of the taxpayers’ money, and a lot of folks are calling for more,” he says. “Money has been poured into the system. And it has not improved it one iota.”


Tech Teens

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Trimming the Herd

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The Byrne Report

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April 11-17, 2007

Last month, I had the pleasure of chatting with media critic Norman Solomon at the Pine Cone Diner near his home in Point Reyes Station. We exchanged pleasantries about how lucky we are to be living in the ecologically buxom North Bay. Then we got down to discussing the matter at hand: exactly how our federal government uses public-relations techniques to sell state-sanctioned murder and war-for-profit to the American people decade after decade after decade.

Solomon, 55, is a slightly built man with piercing eyes and a gentle demeanor. Since the mid-1980s, he has been dogging the game of mainstream journalism. As a leading press critic, he writes a national Media Beat column and hosts a radio show. He speaks to audiences around the country about war, truth, government lies and the science of spin. And he has written a dozen books that should be required reading in journalism classes. They should also be penitential reading for the Fox News, CNN, NPR and New York Times propagandists while they serve prison sentences imposed by people’s courts under the Nuremburg Principles for aiding and abetting crimes committed by what Solomon calls the “warfare state.”

To comprehend how and why the prevaricating, incompetent, buccaneering Bush-Cheney administration remains in power, we must detoxify our media-poisoned brains. Truth to tell: from Hiroshima to Baghdad, we have been psychologically conditioned to accept unpardonable acts of violence as moral imperatives. A succession of “elected” spokespeople for the corporativist agenda, including hot-war presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush I, Bill Clinton and George Bush II, have employed the words “peace,” “freedom,” “democracy” and “liberation” as the warp and woof of propaganda invented to cloak in moral terms a series of brutal, sadistic, terroristic, high-tech wars waged primarily against Third World civilians and their environments.

On April 21, a rough cut of a film based on Solomon’s most recent book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, will premiere at the College of Marin in Kentfield. The activist-writer hopes the movie, which is narrated by Sean Penn, will help people to see through the fog of media and work to unravel the military-media complex. The tightly directed movie is packed with snippets of presidents lying through their eyeballs as they manufacture excuses for aggressing, such as Johnson’s phony Gulf of Tonkin ploy and Bush II’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Solomon shows how, for 50 years, chief executives from both political parties have cynically extolled the benefits of “peace and freedom” while simultaneously ordering the slaughter of populations of noncombatants in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan and back to Iraq, to name but a few instances of for whom the bell of our national shame ceaselessly tolls.

As Solomon observes, “War becomes perpetual when used as a rationale for peace.”

War Made Easy shows generations of interchangeable reporters dutifully recording sanctimonious bullshit preached by generations of interchangeable politicians claiming that industrialized violence is the path to peace. Oblivious, or uncaring, about how they are being used by the war machine, the scribblers mechanically jot down simplistic explanations for the commission of unspeakable acts that are done for complex geopolitical reasons to which neither the scribes not the public is privy.

Today, they are paid to amplify professionally designed fear memes such as “Islamo-fascism,” “dirty bombs” and “biowarfare” while demonizing the enemy of the week as a “little Hitler.” Solomon points out that we are trained to view our wars through the eyes of the invaders (us) and not the bleeding eyes of our victims. Political dissenters and war protesters are easily portrayed by the entertainment news “hosts” as traitors or ne’er-do-wells. Meanwhile, platoons of intellectually shallow journalists seldom ask tough questions about the power elite’s motives until American troops are defeated in battle. And then they blame the leaders of the moment and never a socioeconomic system that thrives upon and lusts for endless war.

The worst of the journalistic lot, says Solomon, are the “embeds.” They willingly embrace and allow themselves to be smothered by the invading apparatus as they bond with soldiers. Public relations is now a weapon.

Solomon corrects a misperception that, on the whole, television news coverage of the Vietnam War was more truthful than today’s coverage of Iraq. It is true the CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite declared on the air in 1968 that the Vietnam War was a “cosmic disaster.” But, for many years, Cronkite casually promoted the outright murder of 2 million Vietnamese. Wearing a flack jacket, he laughingly flew along on bombing missions over North Vietnam. He gloried in the ability of our machines to incinerate unarmed peasants. And when he finally critiqued the leadership, it was for losing the war–not for waging it in the first place.

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Family Lies

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Dutch Courage

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Dutch Courage

April 11-17, 2007

In Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, the rich, beautiful and talented Rachel (Carice van Houten) has a little problem. It’s 1945 in occupied Holland, and she’s Jewish. Her current residence–a cubbyhole in the barn of a Bible-walloping farmer–was accidentally bombed. She’s left in the cold, with only a sizable packet of diamonds and a wad of $100 bills that would choke an elephant.

Fortunately, the Dutch resistance intervenes and gets her aboard a canal boat to Belgium. The craft is machine-gunned by the Nazis. She survives scratchless, except for a demure ricochet wound to the forehead.

Later, during an assignment for the resistance, Rachel is picked up on by a sensitive SS officer, Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch). She has to make the decision: Will she prostitute herself for the resistance?

As in Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, Black Book has indecision about whether this is erotica, comedy or a serious statement about the underground fight against the Nazis. Critiquing the ruthlessness of the resistance is not new; a 1996 French movie here titled A Self Made Hero did a memorable job of it. Black Book supposedly has merit as Verhoeven’s return to his Dutch roots. To be fair, this director’s first film since Hollow Man has elements of national color and regional humor.

Some have resented Verhoeven for the titillation of his work (American critics can get punitive when they get aroused), and it’s true the Dutch have a more relaxed attitude toward skin. Thus, the deliberate Gouda cheesecake throughout this film, as Rachel suns herself in her underwear and indulges in frequent bouts of toplessness even in a cold climate. Verhoeven refers to his most famous scene–Sharon Stone crossing her legs in Basic Instinct–in showing Rachel bleaching her pubic hair so as to better play the part of a natural blonde.

Maybe the universal appeal of sex is supposed to leaven the references to today’s occupations, as in this utterly subtle line when a Nazi officer is speaking to the Dutch Gestapo, congratulating them: “You fight against the terrorists for our fatherland.” As that line suggests, Black Book is not a movie to take seriously. It’s simplistic, madly nostalgic and larded with romantic visions of the end of the war. Koch is nearly as magnetic as he was in The Lives of Others, and Van Houten has a hundred years of Hollywood good-time girls behind her to draw upon (Stella Stevens comes to mind when watching Rachel smirk as another man bites the dust).

But because of the episodic and heartless direction in Black Book, because of the dramatic last-minute escapes and the glossy, adventure movie sheen here, Verhoeven is still what he has been for years: a director in the international style. And that means the same thing as an architect who builds in an international style, like an airport hotel.

Verhoeven may think his lack of tone in this story is the ultimate kind of moral relativism, and that it’s daring to suggest that an SS man could be kind and resistance leaders could be brutal. It’s not just a matter of self-respect or the respect of your contemporaries. Once you make a movie as lowball as Showgirls, with such bottom-grade coincidences and ultrabasic melodrama, you never really come back.

‘Black Book’ opens Friday, April 13, at the Century CineArts Sequoia, 24 Throckmorton Ave., Mill Valley. 415.388.4862.


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Singular Status

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Singular Status

April 11-17, 2007

According to popular theory, the age of digital downloading spells the death of the compact disc and thus, by default, the death of the album. If so, then what’s left? If the new model for distribution and consumption of rock/pop is now just song files purchased randomly for mp3 players, then it’s not unreasonable to expect a rebirth of the single.

While disc sales have been in decline for several years, music download sites have proliferated, largely as legal “for profit” sites due to the aggressive arm of the major labels crushing peer-to-peer file-sharing sites. These pay-to-download sites seem eager to promote hit tracks, usually featuring their list of the week’s top 10 downloaded songs. The home page of Napster.com, for example, has a hot button going directly to fully listenable versions (not just samples) of their top 10.

Historically, singles have never been a profit center for the record industry, but rather a tool for marketing albums. In the ’60s and ’70s, consumers enjoyed the A- and B-sides of vinyl 45 rpm records, but radio stations often received singles pressed with only the label’s chosen hit A-side. Sometime in the late ’80s, after the compact disc replaced the vinyl LP, the industry stopped manufacturing singles altogether (on vinyl, cassette or disc) except for specialty markets like club DJs. As product, the single has often been the bridesmaid and not the bride.

Though there haven’t been substantial sales numbers for singles in the last 15 years, downloading has suddenly returned the sale of hit songs to a place of power on the charts. Singles are poised to be an essential profit engine that’s much greater than ever imagined. Downloads of singles are now crucial to the Billboard charts, where the mighty Hot 100 has always been an amalgam of radio play and sales.

The single song file itself is today’s driving mode of consumption. Even the indie obscurities of MySpace are presented and buzzed about as songs and demos. In the mainstream, American Idol finalists, like rocker Daughtry and country songstress Carrie Underwood, are guaranteed to have top-selling (that is, top-downloaded) songs.

Even with this reborn potential for sales, the single is still being viewed as a mere promo. Billboard notes in its explanation of chart data that “while the consumer’s decision to purchase is a significant vote of popularity, singles have a job that extends beyond being a sales vehicle: to capture radio play and, hopefully, stimulate album sales.” In a recent marketing ploy, iTunes begin offering reduced prices on full albums from which consumers had already purchased at least one track.

So this means the album isn’t dead after all? More likely, the new music market model simply reaffirms the value of the hit. How else did we all get so much from Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” the first song to hit No. 1 based on downloads?

In his 1989 survey of 1,001 classic singles The Heart of Rock & Soul, music critic Dave Marsh noted, “In our society, there’s an essential cultural need for a unitary, memorable musical motif. At some point . . . this desire may have been consciously manufactured by shrewd entrepreneurs or some other stratum of cultural manipulators, but it hardly seems eradicable today. There may have been societies in which people preferred long compositions evolving into one coherent theme . . . but that’s not the case in any of the urban, industrial societies in which rock and roll is created and consumed.”

That communal desire for immediacy anchors the opposing reactions my family had to a disc I burned last week of the top 10 downloaded songs on iTunes. “There isn’t a ‘Satisfaction’ or a ‘Born to Run’ on there,” my wife complained, sharing my generational bias toward significance. “I don’t buy albums,” commented my 19-year-old daughter. “I just download songs I hear that I like.” They both want songs with impact. I enjoy top 10 singles like Akon’s sensitive reggae-lite hit “Don’t Matter” and Fall Out Boy’s rocking “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race,” knowing that there are many more strong single tracks, regardless of format, waiting to become hits.


Making Change

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Making Change

Photograph by Brett Ascarelli
Flagship: The original Grocery on Hwy. 29 retains its funky ambiance.

The historic and original Oakville Grocery, which has been in business for more than 125 years, radiates ambiance in every nook and cranny, and that feeling rubs off on nearly everyone who steps inside the hallowed space. In Napa County, where brand-new million-dollar mansions and spanking new wineries backed by new money push out the old, a bit of genuine, local history seduces vintners, bankers, bakers and bikers.

In fact, the Oakville Grocery has served locals and tourists from before the turn of the last century, through Prohibition of the 1920s to the Depression of the 1930s and the wine boom of the 1980s. It seemed as eternal as Napa’s rolling hills themselves. Then, in 1997, Dean & DeLuca, the glamorous gourmet food giant, invaded and little by little made life miserable for its poorer rival down the street.

At first, local residents were distraught. Then, many mourned when the little store with the global reputation filed for bankruptcy last winter and, what’s more, when Leslie Rudd, the owner of Dean & DeLuca and the CEO of the Rudd Group snapped it up. A market-savvy, Kansas-born multimillionaire and the cofounder and benefactor of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, Rudd rarely comes out of hiding at his vast Napa estate. Of all the wine and food barons in Northern California–including Robert Mondavi and Michael Chiarello–he’s surely the most invisible and reclusive.

When his company announced the purchase of the Oakville Grocery (now a three-store chain), Rudd issued a press release and let his public-relations staff handle inquiries. “I am honored to now be the steward of both the original Oakville Grocery location as well as the market that has been an icon of the wine country experience since 1881,” he allowed himself to be quoted as saying. “I am committed to refurbishing this beloved landmark so that it will serve as a symbol of hospitality to Napa Valley visitors for many generations to come.”

Two days after the deal was finalized–on a sunny, spring morning with the hills a bright green, the old, valley oaks sending out new leaves–there was no sign of refurbishing at the Oakville Grocery on Highway 29. The hand-painted Coca-Cola sign still needs a fresh coat; the tin roof begs for cleaning and so do the benches in front of the store. The picnic tables want new legs, and the sagging umbrella could use replacing. But inside, business seemed as brisk as ever, though Linda Cook, the efficient store manager, appeared to be unusually vigilant and perhaps even defensive about the sale. “I have absolutely nothing to say,” she exclaimed, in response to a reporter’s request for an interview, though, when asked, “Do you like the food?” she fired back, “Of course, I do!”–and sounded like she meant it.

It would be hard not to like the food at the Oakville Grocery. It would also be nearly impossible not to find something appetizing, even for the most finicky eater, though finding the items on a shopping list might take time. Intrepid shoppers enjoy the Oakville experience, because they have to hunt for what they want, and sometimes they even discover something new and unexpected, like the Katz and Company wildflower honey.

Ozzie Gallegos, the recently hired, bilingual wine buyer, apologized to a customer for not having a larger assortment of wines and for a nearly nonexistent and embarrassing section of French and Italian reds and whites. Born and raised just minutes from the Oakville Grocery, Gallegos knows its long, rich history and the roles Joseph Phelps and Steve Carlin played in shaping the store’s image from the 1970s to the year 2000. “There’s no such thing as a slow day here,” Gallegos says. “If you’re claustrophobic, you don’t want to be here in the first place.” He adds wistfully, “I hope they hold on to the aura of this place.”

In the deli, a small army of Mexican women make hot and cold sandwiches: grilled cheddar and young Asiago or smoked turkey and Brie. These speedy lunchtime miracle workers slice Serrano ham from Spain, mortadella from Italy, and Willie Bird smoked turkey from Sonoma County. Probably the very best food they wrap and package are the freshly made Green Chile tamales with black beans, cheese and corn and the sumptuous steak chimichangas that come with bite-size cubes of steak, Jack cheese, pico de gallo and bell peppers.

Just 4.3 miles north of the Oakville Grocery on Highway 29, Beethoven reverberates at Dean & DeLuca, the megastore big enough to house four or five Oakville Groceries. Dean & DeLuca offers more of everything: more room, food, wine and lots more stuff, including Dean & DeLuca T-shirts. It’s also spotless and a bit sterile. “May I help you, sir?” an employee deferentially asks me. Everything is neatly arranged, and, far more than the Oakville Grocery, Dean & DeLuca is clearly about branding itself, marketing itself.

Phil Box, who has worked for Robert and Magrit Mondavi and for Francis and Eleanor Coppola, sees Rudd’s purchase of the Oakville Grocery as symptomatic of what’s happening to Napa. “Everyone wants a piece of the county,” he says. “The nouveau riche have rushed in, and Napa has become a place to see and to be seen. I’ve met all kinds of royalty there: counts and countesses from Italy, barons and baronesses from France.”

Perhaps new paint, new floors and more modern fixtures will add to the glory of the once grand Oakville Grocery. Perhaps Leslie Rudd will achieve yet another triumph of repackaging. But it’s no wonder Napa residents ask one another what he means when he promises to become a “steward” of the Oakville Grocery, and what he has in mind when he talks about “refurbishing.” It’s no wonder, too, that local residents ask friends and family if they’ll respond to the new sign on the old, weather-beaten front door that reads, “Full Time and Part Time Positions Available: Cashiers, Barista, Grocery, Deli, Sandwiches.”

The Oakville Grocery now has three locations: 7856 St. Helena Highway (Hwy. 29), Oakville. 707.944.8802; 124 Matheson St., Healdsburg. 707.433.3200; and 715 Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto. 650.328.9000.



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