News Briefs

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June 27-July 3, 2007

Buying the LCT

The cabaret-style musical and dinner theater performances at the Larkspur Cafe Theatre (LCT) will be under new management beginning July 1. For the past three years, the 100-seat venue has been operated by Erma Murphy and Daniel Patrick, who presented more than 400 shows ranging from theater and family-friendly fare to acoustic and world music. Patricia Sheen, who has leased the space for 18 years from American Legion Post 313, is selling the LTC to Becky and Thom Steere, owners of Mill Valley’s Sweetwater Saloon, the site of near-legendary rock and blues performances for more than 30 years. The Steeres say they don’t plan to change LCT’s eclectic mix of theater and music, although they do intend to expand the food offerings and upgrade the sound system.

Power theft

A $7.4 million project installing thousands of photovoltaic solar panels at the Sonoma Valley sewage treatment plant hit a minor snag sometime during the night of June 20, when someone stole 27 of the panels, worth about $27,000. The panels will be replaced in time for the project’s July 6 dedication ceremony, says Tim Anderson of the Sonoma County Water Agency, which operates the treatment plant. The solar panels are about 3-feet-by-2-feet, and the theft probably involved a sturdy vehicle and more than one person. “It might take two people to dismantle them and move them without breaking them,” Anderson explains. He adds that the commercial-grade panels would not work with a residential solar energy system, and were most likely taken by “someone who had a use for power in a remote location.” The water agency will be adding video surveillance cameras at the solar project site.

Krug’s labor clash

The California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ARLB) recently filed formal charges against the Charles Krug Winery for allegedly violating labor laws last summer. Instead of negotiating a new contract with the United Farm Workers union, the company laid off 27 vineyard workers and turned its vineyard operations over to an outside management firm. Located in St. Helena, the winery has been owned and operated by three generations of the Peter Mondavi family. “The company denies that there were any violations committed,” says Freddie Capuyan, ARLB regional director. Speaking by telephone from his Salinas office, Capuyan adds that the next step will be a hearing before an administrative judge, possibly sometime in August.


Paradise Lost

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Paradise Lost

June 27-July 3

Madam Marie’s Temple of Knowledge is a small, 10-foot-square fortunetelling booth on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, its hand-painted outer façade promising tarot card readings and crystal ball insights with a mystical eye. But on a recent June day, along with the mostly empty storefronts lining the boardwalk, it stands closed, and its inactivity is ominous. No one, it would seem, can see exactly what the future holds in store for this once-booming resort town called Asbury Park, N.J., home to the romanticized teenage memories of its favorite hometown hero, Bruce Springsteen.

That Springsteen has culled routinely from this city for inspiration is a celebrated fact, most directly in the distant world of the richest poetic ode to this area, “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” from his 1973 album The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. The scene is classic, scary, salacious: boys dance along the shore with switchblades; tilt-a-whirl rides never stop; and girls promise to unsnap their jeans. It captures what every teenager feels–or wants to feel–when they first start going out on the town, and along with its clever line about Madame Marie telling fortunes better than the cops, it has inspired countless pilgrimages, like mine, to Asbury Park.

Times have changed since 1973, and most Springsteen fans and amusement-park enthusiasts are profoundly aware of the city’s gradual deterioration. The last time I was here, in 1995, the Asbury Park that once impelled Springsteen’s muse was a decidedly hopeless case. Boarded-up buildings reigned along the oceanfront. One building in the middle seemed to define it all: a faded blue amusement hall called Palace Amusements, its crumbling murals of bumper cars and decaying promises of fun a poignant sight for those who, like me, tend to subscribe to the notion that everything used to be better a long time ago.

Springsteen did his part to preserve the Palace, not only by enshrining it in his famous anthem “Born to Run,” but by donating proceeds from concerts in 2003 to a group called Save Tillie, who worked to protect the 115-year-old building from the wrecking ball. (“Tillie” is the name of the welcoming mascot painted on the Palace walls.) The group tried every approach imaginable, but even the endorsement of Bruce came up short. The Palace was razed in 2004.

But times are changing again in Asbury Park. Today, there are construction crews and tractors on the old Palace site, clearing the land for a future building. In fact, Asbury Park’s waterfront is currently a mile-long tableau of noisy trucks, hardhats and jackhammers, workers toiling in orange vests with a hopeful determination to restore the area to its former stature. As a banner hung from the recently refurbished Paramount Theater declares–invoking the Boss–“The Glory Days Are Back!”

Are they really? The neon signs hanging from remaining landmarks, like Asbury Lanes or the Baronet Theater, lie in a tangled mess, as useless as the area’s mostly smashed parking meters into which nobody can have realistically dropped any change in years. And despite a redevelopment zone dumping fortunes along the waterfront, the only completed projects so far seem to be a swath of lawn in the asphalt surrounding the Stone Pony (Springsteen’s old strumming ground, still hosting live music six nights a week) and a genuinely out-of-place luxury condominium complex nearby.

The rest of the construction falls into a category called speculative building, a risk that almost all redevelopment takes, especially in areas that are virtually abandoned. The idea that each project will feed off adjoining projects to attract people to the waterfront is a dicey one. The number of people here walking the planks of the actual boardwalk itself can be counted on a six-string telecaster, while across the street, the construction crews labor on, under the new mantra of Asbury Park: build it, and hope they will come.

It’s hard to imagine the new Asbury Park, luxury condos and all, retaining much of the flavor of Springsteen’s young pier life, no matter how many replica images of Tillie get painted onto the signs of frontage road dive bars. Maybe, as they say, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

As for Madame Marie? She’s probably the only one who can really predict if this whole cockamamie rebirth of Asbury Park, this brash upscaling of an American classic, is actually going to work. And the fact that she left town years ago to tell fortunes in nearby Ocean Township might be saying something.


The Byrne Report

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June 27-July 3, 2007

In the superficial beauty pageant that passes for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating process, preening candidates are recoiling from taking substantive stances on the pressing issues of the day, especially economics. They prefer to evolve policy positions tailored to fit the uninformed opinions of media-soaked meme-consumers who believe that the economy is not in a shambles, because they can still charge food to their 30 percent–interest credit cards. The cliché-driven websites of the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns do not even get close to using the d-word, as in out-of-control deficit, a situation which presages national bankruptcy.

The last thing that the air-brushed candidates want to talk about is the skyrocketing national debt or the looming bankruptcy of credit card holders. Socked by falling housing prices and the transformation of the American economy into a service and consumption model in which labor productivity is slowing down like a used battery as cheap imports from China proliferate, our balance of trade is in a $856 billion hole and the personal savings rate fell to –$132 billion for April.

President Bush’s budget deficit, which has been growing like a war-watered weed despite years of warnings to stop deficit spending issued by financial experts working for the government, exposes the failure of the neoconservative agenda. By comparison, Bill Clinton not only balanced the budget, he used hundreds of billions in surplus monies to start paying down the national debt; Bush’s 2008 projected deficit may go as high as $516 billion. Since 2000, the national debt has shot up by a trillion dollars to $8.4 trillion.

The Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker, has been pointing out for years that the best way to create savings (and increase productivity) is to reduce the annual budget deficit. Savings grow the gross domestic product as people and institutions earn interest by investing in the domestic economy instead of becoming ensnared in nets of revolving debt issued by those legally sanctioned usurers known as credit card companies. It is axiomatic that personal and governmental savings stabilize the economy; debt destroys it.

Once upon a time, flush with budget surplus, the Government Accountability Office’s director, Paul Posner, testified before Congress that “government budget deficits represent dissaving–they subtract from national saving by absorbing funds that otherwise should be used for investment. Conversely, government surpluses add to saving.”

Posner reported that in 1998 and 1999, due to unexpected tax revenues from the booming dotcom economy and a slower growth in healthcare costs than had been expected, the federal government experienced its first back-to-back budget surplus in more than 40 years. “[T]he budget is already virtually in balance and . . . we could experience a period of budget surpluses . . . continuing throughout the next 10 years,” he predicted. The combined surplus for those two years was $162 billion (almost enough to fund a year’s worth of Medicaid). Fiscally overjoyed, Posner projected that the national debt would sink to a mere $900 billion by 2009. Thanks to Bush & Co., that was not to be.

In January 2007, Comptroller Walker told Congress the bad news: “The federal government’s financial condition and fiscal outlook are worse than many may understand.” The operating deficit for 2006 increased to $455 billion, and the government’s net worth decreased to –$9 trillion. Worse, the long-term structural deficit rose from $20 trillion to $50 trillion during the first six years of Bush’s administration. “Continuing on this imprudent and unsustainable path will gradually erode, if not suddenly damage, our economy, our standard of living and ultimately our domestic tranquility and national security,” Walker warned.

The situation is so dire, he continued, that “closing the fiscal gap would require spending cuts or tax increases equal to 8 percent of the entire economy each year over the next 75 years, or a total of about $61 trillion in present value terms. To put this in perspective, closing the gap would require an immediate and permanent increase in federal tax revenues of more than 40 percent or an equivalent reduction in federal program spending.” (The Department of Defense uses about 50 percent of the discretionary budget, plus about a $100 billion per year in “emergency supplementals,” i.e., automatic deficit spending, for the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Ending the counterproductive “global war on terror” could seriously deflate the budget deficit.)

“The cold, hard truth,” Walker said, “[is] that neither slowing the growth of discretionary spending nor allowing the tax [cut] provisions to expire–nor both together–would eliminate the [long-term] imbalance. . . . Although Social Security is a major part of the fiscal challenge, contrary to popular perception, it is far from our biggest challenge. . . . [R]ising healthcare costs pose a fiscal challenge not just to the federal budget but also to states, American business and our society as a whole. . . . Washington suffers from myopia and tunnel vision.”

So how did we get from a surplus in 2000 to the bleak present and the bankrupt future that Walker envisages? Fiscal terrorism: Bush and Congress gave control of the economy to energy corporations and war contractors while clearly and deliberately ignoring the well-being of America. And despite increasingly shrill warnings to reduce the deficit by the government’s accountants, Bush’s proposed 2008 budget goes in exactly the wrong direction.

The federal budget for fiscal year 2008 is nearly $3 trillion, including a half-trillion-dollar deficit. Going directly against the advice of government economists, Bush proposes to extend and make permanent the huge tax cuts (mostly benefiting the rich) adopted in 2001 and 2003. This will reduce tax receipts by $1.9 trillion through 2017. Extending all of the tax cuts set to expire during the next 10 years will cause a revenue loss of $3.1 trillion during the same period. However, the alternative minimum tax, which socks it to the middle class, is scheduled to remain in place for the long run, despite being temporarily (and cynically) fixed for the presidential election year.

Bush proposes to “slow” the long-term growth of Medicare and Medicaid not by addressing exorbitant healthcare costs, but by creating new tax credits for healthcare. He furthermore proposes establishing personal accounts–initially funded by the government with tens of billions of dollars deposited on Wall Street–for Social Security in 2012.

Check it out: Despite the repudiation of Social Security privatization by the American people, Bush is going ahead, under the radar, with his crazy plan to turn Social Security over to such superprofit-seeking entities as Goldman Sachs. (Look at your 401-K, if you have one. Will the volatile stock market sustain your retirement needs? Not likely.)

On the deficit-spending side, Bush is substantially boosting funding for his global war against the poor and his waste-plagued homeland security programs. Interest spending on increased debt will go up by $7 billion. Bush also proposes to cut nondefense spending, but, says the Congressional Research Service, “How the administration plans to achieve these reductions . . . is not illuminated in the budget.” The Service concludes that “the current mix of federal fiscal policies is unsustainable.”

But have you heard a Democratic Party presidential candidate say so? Why not? Because getting out of the hole will require ending political pork and tax cuts for the rich, who are the only people who seem to matter in our crazy plutocracy.

or


Back to the Future

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Back to the Future

music & nightlife |

Photograph by Sara Sanger
Rib-cage rattlers: Polar Bears like to go loud.

By Sara Bir

Some bands are driven both musically and organizationally; one of the members appoints himself as the band’s internal manager and administrative assistant, performing the necessary but far-from-rocking tasks of sending out demos to record labels, booking shows and schmoozing with people who have potentially helpful connections to other people or institutions.

This is not the case with the face-melting Sonoma County trio Polar Bears. They play, and they play loud, and that is their top priority. That other stuff? It’ll get done . . . eventually.

That’s perhaps why their second release and first full-length album, The Future King, spent months in limbo, inches away from completion. The band–bassist and vocalist Benjamin Henning, guitarist and sometime vocalist Matthew Izen and drummer Shane Goepel–freely admit that when they began recording in early 2006, a plague of adversity made it difficult to deal with the recordings.

“We were really excited about making the new record,” Izen recalls during a conference call from their practice space in Petaluma. “We got off to a good start. Shane did the drums in two days. We spent the next couple days doing bass [tracks]. We go to do my guitar tracks, and my amp shitted out. And every single day after that was totally off.”

A frantic scramble to get the amp fixed was the first in a long line of setbacks–scheduling conflicts and lack of funds–that messed with the band’s momentum. “It just turned into a big nightmare,” Goepel adds. “Eight months later, we were talking about re-recording the whole thing. We were so close to getting done.”

But finish they did. And in a way, the convoluted path to completing the album, which came out earlier this year, fits its theme; the songs on The Future King concern the notion of time travel, including its political and metaphysical repercussions. “It’s kind of a concept record, but a very loose concept,” Henning says. “The way I thought of it was using time travel as power. When we were starting to write this record, we were in the middle–and still are–of this war. Power and how wars repeat themselves forever was a big inspiration.”

The band cite the film Primer, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and Latin American magical realism as influences for the thematic component of The Future King. (“A Maker’s Regrets” refers to a Borges story of God creating the world, only to realize when he’s done that he’s made a mirror image of his face.)

The album shows just how much Polar Bears have evolved as performers and songwriters since their 2004 EP Shorts Are for Warm, which was packed with jagged, stop-start technical hardcore infused with a playful dash of dance-punk. The songs on The Future King are more straightforward, but offer a more nuanced sense of melody and are embedded with intriguing nuggets of sonic exploration. And don’t worry, it still sounds great–heck, better–played loud.

“On Shorts Are for Warm, each of the songs would have cool parts,” Goepel says, “whereas with The Future King, it’s more about how the songs relate to one another. We started off in this mindset of this technical, kinda mathy rock. I think The Future King is our straight-up rock record. We ditched the complicated timing, but at the same time added a bunch of weirder stuff that we didn’t do before. Over time, we’ve come to improvise pretty well with each other. We’ve tried to use that as a ground for experimenting.”

A sizable tour this fall is in the works, something the band have not undertaken in a number of years. Recently, Izen stepped down as the New Trust’s guitarist, and he now has more time to devote to Polar Bears. “I was getting spread too thin being in two full-time bands, and I felt like I needed to concentrate on the Polar Bears stuff.” he says. “This is my first love, as far as bands go. It’s the first real band we’ve all been in. We’ve been playing together for a long time.”

Henning says that, over time, “the three of us weeded out the other stuff. It’s the perfect creative relationship in this particular situation.”

A hearty component of that creative relationship is a shared love of volume; Polar Bears not only cherish their loudness, but flaunt it. And it’s not loudness for the sake of loudness, but something deeper. “The actual physical presence of the volume–so loud you can actually feel your rib cage rattle?” says Goepel. “That’s something that we all really enjoy in life.”

By Sara Bir

Currently I’m working as a retail associate at a fancy-pants cookware store, a job I thoroughly enjoy with two major exceptions: the pay (low) and the music (shit). It’s a chain store, and like many chain stores, they broadcast music from preset digital channels. My managers and co-workers, who are all intelligent people with functional senses of humor, bizarrely favor the Adult Contemporary channel, which is not so much a digital radio station as it is a 4-hour mix of the worst pop music offerings of the past 15 years. This means that, when I work an 8-hour shift, we hear two different Matchbox 20 songs two times each–a cruel and malicious fate for a company to foist upon its faithful sales associates. There’s also a Coffeehouse Rock channel; the only difference between that and Adult Contemporary is that Coffeehouse Rock includes more songs from Shrek.

It is slowly wearing upon my soul. Mediocre-to-sucky music in small doses is tolerable, but hearing the same 100 crummy songs during the majority of waking hours can turn a person despondent and violent. Cripes, even the customers have been complaining about James Blunt.

This is why Santa Rosa’s Polar Bears exist. I was at the end of my rope, my spirit too broken to rally its mistreated music receptors. Then, lo and behold, the fine young men of Polar Bears sent a copy of their newest CD, The Future King, and all became right with the world.

Polar Bears are the furthest thing from maudlin. The band–bassist/vocalist Ben Henning, guitarist/vocalist Matthew Izen, and drummer Shane Goepel–has progressed much during its six-year lifespan; The Future King is a fully-formed work, whereas their 2004 EP, Shorts Are for Warm, was more of a collection of aggressively technical but slyly funky songs that hinted at things to come.

“With Regards from the Doom of Society” opens the album with a determined, menacing guitar riff that sets the tone for all that follows. Polar Bears still break into a dancy beat (nicely evidenced on “A Maker’s Regrets” and “A Queen and a Coffin”), but–even better!–they frequently lapse into some truly awesome arty improvisational shit, exploring negative space as much as they do positive space (there’s an especially nice bit at the end of “Two Gates”). It’s the sort of lovely implosion of sound that made daring, guitar-based bands like Fugazi and Sonic Youth so compelling: you get your hooks, your rock-outs, and your out-there experimentalism all in one expansive, unpredictable dose.

The lyrics are about time travel and the cyclical nature of evil. I can’t understand the words as Ben Henning sings, or often screams, them, but the overall theme of the album is cool as all hell. Note that Polar Bears don’t just scream; they harmonize and scream. Scream-onize, let’s call it, and it’s a very dynamic method for chewing the metaphysical fat.

And it sounds good loud. The Future King made me forget Rod Stewart’s pathetically limp-dick cover of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” Hundreds of Rod Stewart songs in the world–some of them great–and the cookware store picks that one. What happened to “Hot Legs”?

But passionate rock music is not good to shop to; it requires too much of a commitment from the listener. If a song is an amazing song, you can’t help but cease caring about a $250 Le Creuset 5-quart casserole and start caring about nothing but that song. Rest assured that Polar Bears will not be rocking the cookware store anytime soon.

Find The Future King at the Last Record Store in Santa Rosa, or buy it directly from the band at one of their performances: www.myspace.com/plrbrrs.




FIND A MUSIC REVIEW

Beyond Organic

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Biophilia:
Kelp! | Climate Control Campaign | Georgia Kelly | Why I Hate Being Green | Eco-Hostelry | Shout-Outs | Green String Farms

By Ray Sikorski

Scotty Goodman refuses to be called a farmer. He’s a forager.

“I gotta be on hands and knees in the middle of weeds that are over three feet high,” he says, proudly displaying the ample bounty of Petaluma’s Green String Farm, a bounty that apparently includes a whole mess of weeds. “Pulling carrots out when the weeds are up to your shoulders–it’s not so much farming at that point as it is foraging.”

The weeds are part of the farm’s quirky majesty. The lanky yeoman explains that in the doctrine of Green String, weeds reign supreme. Along with helping to maintain the soil, they act as natural deterrents for pests that would otherwise eat the crops.

Of course, that doesn’t make Goodman’s job any easier.

“I’m constantly scanning: Can I eat this? Can I eat this?” he says, explaining that some crops have been planted adjacent to, or even on top of, each other. While searching for broccoli he may come across kale. “It’s kind of willy-nilly.”

Goodman and his wife, Hsiao Tsai, have been managing the Green String Farm’s market at the corner of Frates and Old Adobe roads, where all the food is grown to a standard deemed “above and beyond organic.” The brainchild of Sonoma Valley organic farmer Bob Cannard and winemaker Fred Cline, the 145-acre farm is yet another link in an eco-friendly chain that includes solar power and four-legged “wooly weeders”–also known as sheep–to trim the rows between vines.

Cannard taught organic farming methods for 23 years at the Santa Rosa Junior College, and his farm near Glen Ellen continues to be the sole purveyor of produce for Berkeley’s acclaimed Chez Panisse restaurant. Once decried as a faddish fool for his unorthodox methods, Cannard has since become a guru of sorts, giving lectures in natural-process farming as far away as China and Taiwan. He explains that while the standards of the federal organic program are generally reliable, the costs and the amount of paperwork are prohibitive to small farmers. So while his crops always meet or exceed federal standards, they don’t get the friendly green “organic” sticker now commonplace in supermarkets.

It doesn’t seem to bother him.

“I’ve never been able to justify it,” Cannard says of the official designation. “I don’t even have a scale. I never weigh anything.”

Instead, Cannard and Cline decided to simply come up with their own system. The duo founded the Green String Institute (www.greenstringinstitute.org), the goal of which is to promote natural-process farming and to give foods produced under its edicts a recognizable label. Cline Cellars wines will be the first to bear the label, which will appear later this year.

While the process may appear willy-nilly, Cannard claims there’s method in the madness. For years he observed the natural world, wondering why land untouched by humans appeared trouble-free, while human soils were filled with disorder. He reasoned that plants have a natural tendency to grow harmoniously with what occurs naturally around them–including bugs.

“We don’t look at bugs as pests at all, but as indicators of plant health,” he says.

The Green String name came from the string theory-like interrelationship of the basic forces of nature. Cannard says the idea is to do as little as possible to the land, leaving it progressively better, rather than progressively worse.

Cannard’s theories captivated Cline, who had been taught traditional pesticide- and fertilizer-based agriculture at UC Davis. The forward-thinking Cline latched on to Cannard’s ideas, eventually converting his vineyards to grow under the Green String principles.

So far, only a handful of farmers have signed on to the Green String label, including two on the East Coast. (Cannard is planning a series of Internet-based lectures to recruit more into the program.) He says the demand for truly organically grown food is so strong that within 20 years all our food will be basically organic.

Until then, the Green String Farm acts as a showcase for the techniques. The farm stand features over 200 kinds of seasonal produce over the course of the year–plus farm-fresh eggs!–and recently moved up from a four-days-per-week to a seven-days-per-week schedule.

Which means a lot more rummaging about in the weeds for our brave forager, but Goodman says he doesn’t mind the extra work.

“It’s just flat obvious how much better and healthier and more vibrant this food is.”

The Green String Farm, 3571 Old Adobe Road, Petaluma. 707.249.0144. www.greenstringfarm.com.


Green Scream

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Green Scream

Biophilia:
Kelp! | Climate Control Campaign | Georgia Kelly | Why I Hate Being Green | Eco-Hostelry | Shout-Outs | Green String Farms

Unbearable: A starving polar bear, unable to find ice upon which to rest, fruitlessly hunts walrus in ‘Planet Earth.’

By Gretchen Giles

We begin the giddy loveliness of our annual three-dot thingee with a heartfelt commercial plea for every one of us to view, purchase and memorize Sir David Attenborough’s excellent new series, ‘Planet Earth.’ Produced by the BBC and currently screening on the Discovery Channel, this 11-part series is now on rental shelves and is worth every single penny. A love letter to the planet, PE utilizes the newest photographic technology and is uniquely packaged into such categories as “Fresh Water,” “Caves” and “From Pole to Pole,” causing the viewer to fall hugely, achingly, in love with our sweet green spot.

Most importantly, Attenborough–whose great career has entirely been involved in drawing attention to the unique biospheres of our universe–does not dwell on the certain dangers that we’re currently facing (or, in the United States, not facing). The viewer can just wholly swoon over the beauty of the place and not fret about the demise of the place. (That said, the segment following a polar bear becomes an unbearable and unintentional eulogy to this great animal.) Rather, the last three hours separately focus on global warming, overpopulation and wanton misuse of resources, topics cannily broached by a team of experts.

The environmental movement, it seems, has undergone a revamp in which executive directors and think-tank folks now talk earnestly of the economic impact of letting the earth go to hell. How much, for example, would the lowly plankton cost were we to have to replace it? About $35 trillion, that’s how much. Isn’t it, they reasonably ask, therefore cheaper to protect it? This type of fiscal smarts may just be what the earth needs as it reaches its own bottom line. . . .

Speaking of TV, we finally have a spot to shout out to KRCB senior producer Valerie A. Landes, who recently won an Emmy award for her excellent Natural Heroes series, an “eco-film fest” for TV. Preparing for its third season, Natural Heroes springs from KRCB’s Rohnert Park offices but is distributed on some 60 public television stations nationally and features mini-docs from around the world about good folks who are doing good work for the environment. To learn more about submitting your own film or to watch individual episodes, go to www.naturalheroes.org. . . .

Speaking of Rohnert Park, the former Agilent campus there has lain dormant for several years now, but a new buzz is beginning as Codding Enterprises offers up ambitious plans to build the largest green community in California on the 175-acre site. Seizing on the “new urbanism” concept that mixes pleasure with work, Codding envisions utilizing the existing infrastructure that Agilent created to tweak out Sonoma Mountain Village, a new community of housing, work places, dining and recreation all in a walk- and bike-friendly plan that treads lightly on the earth.

In addition to creative reuse of water, they propose a nonprofit “incubator” focusing on biofuels, and have installed a $7.5 million solar energy system that is reported to be the largest privately owned installation of its kind in Northern California, aimed at providing power to some 2,000 entirely eco-friendly homes and offices that will, if all goes to plan, be erected in some 12 years.

Aiming for a platinum-level LEED certification (see our story on the Gaia Napa Valley hotel), Codding Enterprises may be one of the few developers who retains a chief sustainability officer in the form of one Geof Syphers. We look forward to seeing this development develop. . . .

Speaking of developers, hardhats off to megacontractor Ghilotti Construction Company, which recently converted its 150 heavy equipment vehicle fleet to a biodiesel blend, even though it’s more expensive and they simply didn’t have to. . . .

Speaking of biodiesel and drinking (OK, we were just thinking about drinking), Green Machine offers a party bus run on biodiesel that allows winetasters the sobriety of a healthy planet while keeping them directly out of the driver’s seat. They also offer such reliable jaunts as monthly trips to Harbin Hot Springs. To learn more about sustainable daytime drinking and not driving, go to www.gogreenmachine.biz. . . .

Speaking of getting hammered, our locally owned Friedman’s Home Improvement has just introduced “Plan-It Hardware” in its Santa Rosa, Sonoma and Ukiah stores aimed at making it easy for the home-improvement enthusiasts to improve away with far less consequence to the family and the planet. Screening products for their safe and sane qualities, Friedman’s now identifies them with special signage and even employs so-called eco-evangelists to helpfully roam the aisles, looking for ways to point out toxins best avoided. . . .

Speaking of cow horns stuffed full of manure, the Wine Emporium in Sebastopol hosts a small convivium on organic and biodynamic viticulture practices at the store on Thursday, June 21, from 6:30pm to 9pm. Presenters include Gaston Leyack of Marimar Estate, Sue Bass of Porter Bass Vineyards and Dan Schwarze of Long Meadow Ranch. Expect a food and winetasting that riffs on the differences between conventionally grown comestibles and those that arise from biodynamic/organic practices. Space is limited, RSVP required. Wine Emporium, 125 N. Main St., Sebastopol. 707.823.5200. . . .

Speaking of 22.6 soda bottles, international niche retailer Lowepro, whose U.S. office is based in Sebastopol, has just launched a new product. Catering to professional photographers and their ongoing need to lug around hefty pounds of insanely expensive equipment, Lowepro produces camera bags and photographic carryalls of all stripes. In an effort to raise awareness of the dire plight of the polar bear (see above and weep), the company has launched a new product, the Primus AW, constructed of 51 percent recycled goods equal to those 22.6 soda bottles. A portion of all Primus AW sales will be donated to Polar Bears International. To learn more, go to www.lowepro.com and www.polarbearsinternational.org. . . .

Speaking of lovely long strings of mozzarella cheese, Stefano’s Solar Powered Pizza, with outlets in Mill Valley (11 E. Blithedale; 415.383.9666) and Corte Madera (2225 Corte Madera Ave.; 415.924.9666), is proud to announce that it’s pulled off a seemingly impossible feat: producing sun-fueled pizza. The Mill Valley store is now completely solar-powered, dropping Stefano’s monthly PG&E bill from $1,000 a month to a lightweight $6.75 a month and gaining itself a “green business” award from the Marin County Board of Supervisors. Congrats, and please pass us a slice of the Greek. . . .

Speaking of good dead grapes, many area wineries have made the switch to solar in recent years. A by-no-means-complete list of huzzahs go to Benziger, Cline, Domaine Carneros, Far Niente, Fetzer, Frog’s Leap, Robert Keenan, Paloma, Peju, Quivira, St. Francis, Shafer and V. Sattui, all of which have made or are making the switch. The initial investment is generally recouped in five to seven years, and vintners have the pleasure of watching their energy bills plummet to a cool two figures while knowing that their viticulture is not harming the earth. . . .

Speaking of nosing around other people’s homes, green living can easily be an everyday thing, as Daily Acts’ founder Trathen Heckman ably proves. Heckman opens his home to the public on Saturday, June 23, from 10am to 3pm for a tour of the permaculture environment and sustainable living model he and his wife have created in their rented home–proving that one doesn’t have to own a house to make it rest lightly on the earth and neither does one need limitless piles of dosh. Participants in this Everyday Green Living tour will take bikes to the Heckman’s and then cycle over to a community garden. A good time is guaranteed for all. $25. For details, go to www.daily-acts.org. . . .

Hey! Speaking of nosing around other people’s homes, did you know that there is now such as thing as an “ecobroker,” a real estate agent certified in the ways of the green? Well, meet father and son Bernie and Chris Stephan, who offer a discount on their own costs for those home sellers who upgrade their living quarters to be more eco-attractive. The greenest seller could save $2,500 on closing costs rebated by the Stephan team. Sure, it’s a gimmick, but as gimmicks go, this ain’t a bad one. Learn more at ec********@*********ma.com.


Morsels

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June 20-26, 2007

Solar System

Just thinking about the bresaola at Woodlands Market in Kentfield makes us wish our office were closer to the Ross border. But now, this family-owned and -operated grocery store is also winning props–at least from us–for boosting its environmental practices to the level of its gourmet food.

Woodlands has gone solar! OK, this actually happened almost two years ago, but you read it here last.

After the Novato-based SolarCraft Services installed over 700 solar panels on Woodlands’ roof, the store now generates about the same amount of power that it would take to run 35 homes daily–except that Woodlands’ energy is clean. In terms of air pollution, Woodlands’ solar system will, by 2035, simulate the effect of taking some 683 cars out of operation.

The decision to go solar seems to have been just another stab at being responsible. Woodlands’ store management purports to have a pro-community philosophy. For example, instead of doing a lot of advertising and attracting customers with loss leaders, the company saves money to pay forward. Since the company opened over 20 years ago, it has invested some $1.9 million in the local community, primarily its schools.

It may be hella-spensive to shop there, but maybe it’s a small price to pay if a business is doing right by both its local and planetary communities. Plus, where else can you pick up a quarter-pound of bresaola?

Quick dining snapshots by Bohemian staffers.

Winery news and reviews.

Food-related comings and goings, openings and closings, and other essays for those who love the kitchen and what it produces.

Recipes for food that you can actually make.

Project Air

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Project Air

Biophilia:
Kelp! | Climate Control Campaign | Georgia Kelly | Why I Hate Being Green | Eco-Hostelry | Shout-Outs | Green String Farms

Congenial climate: The Climate Protection Campaign’s Dave Erickson got the glad hand from the EPA for his agency’s work.

By Patricia Lynn Henley

Standing in a place of honor on a bookshelf in the Climate Protection Campaign (CPC) office in rural Graton, the gracefully curved wood and distinctive metal plaque that is the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2007 Climate Protection Award is less than a foot high. But it represents big hopes, big dreams and big accomplishments, and it’s all about working on the local level.

“We consider ourselves to be ‘systems integrators,'” explains CPC technical director Dave Erickson. “We’re able to look across the community and see how the pieces fit together. We’re empowered to do that, and the government isn’t, necessarily.”

When it comes to global warming and climate changes, grassroots efforts come in under most people’s radar, Erickson adds.

“People think it’s got to be the federal government, it’s got to be the state government, it’s got to be the government. We’re really happy with what we’ve been able to accomplish working with local businesses.”

In Erickson’s view, the most important aspect of winning the EPA award, one of five “team” awards given this year, is raising awareness of the effectiveness of community-based solutions.

“It’s exposure for the local, grassroots approach, which we think is really one of the most effective tools in the toolbox for combating this global problem. Ultimately, it’s all about the planet and taking care of what we think is the most serious problem facing humanity today, because the planet is basically in danger. We are at risk of dangerously interfering in the climate.”

Founded in 2001 and based in rural Graton, the CPC has five employees. Created to bring together Sonoma County government, businesses and communities to achieve larger greenhouse-gas-emissions reductions together than could be accomplished individually, this nonprofit organization persuaded all nine of Sonoma County’s mayors to sign on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. It also encouraged all nine cities plus the county itself to enlist in the international Cities for Climate Protection effort. The CPC helped the municipalities gather baseline emissions data and to create a bold goal of cutting emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2015.

The CPC also signed the Sonoma Wine Company as its first partner in its Cool Business Alliance, assisting the company in cutting its emissions by 43 percent while nearly doubling its production. These and other accomplishments made the CPC the smallest organization honored in a program that accepts nominations worldwide. The private awards ceremony was held May 1 in Washington, D.C. Afterward, Erickson spent the remainder of his five-day trip visiting Democratic members of Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Lobbying at the federal level was an eye-opener, Erickson says. For many in Washington, D.C., the federal government is seen as the be-all and end-all, the expected source of all possible solutions. The combination of Erickson’s lobbying efforts and the EPA award highlighted local efforts tackling climate-protection issues.

It’s enlightening, Erickson explains, to realize the potential impact of changes at the community level. “Sonoma County has 193,000 residential housing units and 54 million square feet of commercial space. All of that has to be upgraded in its energy efficiency. The most cost-effective way we’ve found to reduce greenhouse gases is to reduce energy use by increasing efficiency.”

Our hydrocarbon-based economy focused on fossil fuels needs to transition into something non-hydrocarbon-based by defining new economic and organizational forms, Erickson says. “We think groups like ours are best positioned to see how that’s going to work. Government is not really in a position to do that.”

What’s next for the CPC? A community climate-action plan. “It really expresses all this in an action-oriented way that hopefully will allow folks–entrepreneurs, business owners, community groups–to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and to do it in a way that makes them money,” Erickson asserts.

That’s because greater energy efficiency means lower energy costs. And while it may have already become a trite saying the answer is, indeed, to think globally and act locally.

“There can be meaningful, powerful local action that enhances governmental efforts and integrates diverse segments of the economy to work on this project in a coordinated way,” Erickson adds. “We are engaged in a global, humanity-wide project to shift where we get our energy from and how we use it in a way that doesn’t dangerously impact the atmosphere.”

To learn more about what you can do to reduce greenhouse emissions, go to www.climateprotectioncampaign.org.


News Briefs

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June 20-26, 2007

It’s in the bag

Having a supermarket employee politely inquire “Paper or plastic?” could become a phrase of the past thanks to a worldwide movement to ban plastic bags. The trend has already made inroads into the North Bay. Fairfax town manager Linda Kelly is notifying local businesses about a potential ban on the previously ubiquitous plastic bags. “It affects all our restaurants, any takeout food place and all retail establishments,” Kelly explains. The first reading of the proposed ordinance was June 6, with the council voting 5-0 in favor of the ban. A second reading will be July 10; if approved, the ban starts Feb. 10. So far, Kelly says, there’s been no opposition.

“The big push is to encourage people to bring their own reusable canvas bags to stores,” she explains. According to the ordinance, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used annually worldwide–over 1 million bags a minute–and more than 19 billion disposable bags are dispensed in California each year, creating 147,000 tons of waste. The “findings” section of the ordinance asserts that “because plastic does not biodegrade, every piece of plastic that has found its way from California shores to the Pacific Ocean for the last 50 years still remains in the ocean or has been accumulating in the central Pacific gyre and a ‘Pacific garbage patch’ now exists made up of floating plastic and styrofoam debris. The remaining plastic is deposited on local or distant shores.”

In March, San Francisco supervisors approved a plastic-bag ban, and the county of Marin OK’d a campaign to convince consumers and businesses to voluntarily stop using plastic bags; a Marin ban could follow. Sonoma County officials are working to implement a new state law requiring easier recycling of plastic bags. So far, there appears to be no official move toward restricting them in Napa County.

Elsewhere, in April the tiny town of Leaf Rapids in northwestern Manitoba became the first Canadian municipality to ban plastic bags, with a $1,000-a-day fine for not complying. The town’s 550-some residents were given cloth shopping bags before the ban went into effect. Phoenix and Los Angeles are studying plastic-bag bans, which are already prohibited in Bangladesh. A Paris ban starts this year, followed by a nationwide ban in France in 2010. Either mandatory or voluntary programs to reduce the number of plastic bags have been in place for several years in South Africa, Ireland, Kenya and Australia.


‘Spring’ Time

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‘Spring’ Time

June 20-26, 2007

Every year in early June, the actors, directors, choreographers, lyricists and regular folks who give a damn about what happens on Broadway gather together in New York City to wear tuxedos and make like the Oscars—only with more style, classier production numbers and less viewers watching the show on television. There are those who feel that what happens at the Tonys has little effect on the rest of the world.

They are, of course, entirely wrong.

When the annual Tony Awards were held again on June 9, the world of theater saw the evidence of something very big having taken place, a shift in the world of theater that could possibly be felt for years to come. In terms of the most victorious shows, the obvious winners were Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia, which won more awards than any nonmusical play in Tony history, and an obscure musical titled Spring Awakening.

All of this is worth noting for the dual facts that The Coast of Utopia is a nine-hour historical drama about Russian anarchists and revolutionaries broken into three separate plays, and Spring Awakening is a new musical adaptation of German playwright Frank Wedekind’s late-19th-century play (first produced in 1906) about cultural alienation, parental abuse, teenage sex, abortion and suicide. It won eight awards, including best musical.

While it may seem reasonable that such weighty works would be so highly honored (award shows often give their tchotchkes to “difficult” material), what is so surprising about Utopia and Awakening is that both of them have been solid financial hits. Success on Broadway means that a show will have life beyond Broadway, as it is given lavish touring productions and then made available for production by any small independent theater company able to pay the royalties.

Spring Awakening, which has seen lines of teenagers wrapping around the block of the Eugene O’Neil Theatre, is already scheduled for an open-ended San Francisco run in 2008. It is a good bet that the Coast of Utopia trilogy will be in the Bay Area by the end of the same year.

But the most profound impact these shows have on the theater world extends far beyond the productions themselves. Suddenly, the people who put up the bucks to get plays and musicals on the stage are realizing that, as in the case of Utopia, people do still have a taste for rich, highly literate new dramas, and, with Spring Awakening, that teenagers actually can be lured into the legitimate theater if the material appeals to them and if the musical score and choreography really rock the house.

Apparently, the Great American Play is not dead after all, and in the near future we will be seeing more shows grappling with intellectual themes and political ideas. And at the same time, with the earthquake shake that is Spring Awakening, we are about to see more shows designed to appeal to the worldviews and aesthetic sensibilities of folks under 30.

In both cases, it’s about time.

American theater has long worried about its lack of young audiences (beyond those brought to the theater by their parents to see Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King), and Spring Awakening, astonishingly, has corrected that by doing something impossibly audacious. The producers have retained the original time and setting of the play—which explores sexual mistakes made by young people because of the lack of information allowed them by parents, teachers and clergy—and by reworking the language to reflect the parlance of modern teenagers and adding a rock score and some hip-hop-inspired dancing, they’ve created a show that speaks to the pain and frustration that many young people feel but rarely see reflected on the stage in a way they would actually want to see.

Truth is, with so much emotion and energy—and with its eye-popping choreography that has the cast pogo-ing across the stage and leaping on and off of classroom chairs and singing tunes like “The Bitch of Living,” “My Junk” and “Totally Fucked”—this show is nothing less than electrifying.

And it will change the landscape of American theater. If theater producers are not already looking back at every project they previously declined because it might only appeal to teens and twenty-somethings, they have missed the lesson of Spring Awakening. And while older Tony watchers may have been surprised to see the Best Musical award go to a show featuring German school kids singing about sex and death, love and confusion, the pain of loss and the wary anticipation of the future, the only real surprise is that it took so long for this to happen.


Museums and gallery notes.

Reviews of new book releases.

Reviews and previews of new plays, operas and symphony performances.

Reviews and previews of new dance performances and events.

News Briefs

June 27-July 3, 2007 Buying the LCT The cabaret-style musical and dinner theater performances at the Larkspur Cafe Theatre (LCT) will be under new management beginning July 1. For the past three years, the 100-seat venue has been operated by Erma Murphy and Daniel Patrick, who presented more than 400 shows ranging from theater and family-friendly fare to acoustic and...
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Paradise Lost

June 27-July 3Madam Marie's Temple of Knowledge is a small, 10-foot-square fortunetelling booth on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, its hand-painted outer façade promising tarot card readings and crystal ball insights with a mystical eye. But on a recent June day, along with the mostly empty storefronts lining the boardwalk, it stands closed, and its inactivity is ominous....
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The Byrne Report

June 27-July 3, 2007In the superficial beauty pageant that passes for the Democratic Party's presidential nominating process, preening candidates are recoiling from taking substantive stances on the pressing issues of the day, especially economics. They prefer to evolve policy positions tailored to fit the uninformed opinions of media-soaked meme-consumers who believe that the economy is not in a shambles,...
Read more

Back to the Future

music & nightlife | Photograph by Sara Sanger Rib-cage rattlers:...
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Beyond Organic

Biophilia: Kelp! | Climate Control Campaign | Georgia Kelly | Why I Hate Being Green | Eco-Hostelry | Shout-Outs | Green String...
Read more

Green Scream

Biophilia: Kelp! | Climate Control Campaign | Georgia Kelly | Why I Hate Being Green | Eco-Hostelry | Shout-Outs | Green String Farms ...
Read more

Morsels

June 20-26, 2007Solar SystemJust thinking about the bresaola at Woodlands Market in Kentfield makes us wish our office were closer to the Ross border. But now, this family-owned and -operated grocery store is also winning props--at least from us--for boosting its environmental practices to the level of its gourmet food. Woodlands has gone solar! OK, this actually happened almost...
Read more

Project Air

Biophilia: Kelp! | Climate Control Campaign | Georgia Kelly | Why I Hate Being Green | Eco-Hostelry | Shout-Outs | Green String...
Read more

News Briefs

June 20-26, 2007 It's in the bag Having a supermarket employee politely inquire "Paper or plastic?" could become a phrase of the past thanks to a worldwide movement to ban plastic bags. The trend has already made inroads into the North Bay. Fairfax town manager Linda Kelly is notifying local businesses about a potential ban on the previously ubiquitous plastic...
Read more

‘Spring’ Time

June 20-26, 2007Every year in early June, the actors, directors, choreographers, lyricists and regular folks who give a damn about what happens on Broadway gather together in New York City to wear tuxedos and make like the Oscars—only with more style, classier production numbers and less viewers watching the show on television. There are those who feel that what...
Read more
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