In 1993, a salesman in the commercial printing business named Tony Magee began brewing beer in his home in the redwood forests of West Marin. His beer endeavor was just a hobby, but six months later, Magee was producing a bit more than he could drink by himself, with 600 or so barrels in the tank. So he went into business. He designed his own label–recognizable by a patch-eyed dog and a short blurb of wisdom in fine print–and he named his enterprise the Lagunitas Brewing Co. after his small rural hamlet near the Point Reyes National Seashore. Today, the brewery is one of the most successful beer producers in the state.
From the beginning, sales accelerated. Magee increased production to keep pace, and all the while washed the dregs of fermentation down the drain, like any brewer might. But the heaps of yeast and grain began to congest the small community’s sewage system, and in 1994 local officials asked Magee to chip in for maintenance costs or get out.
So Magee packed up his brewing gear and, with that lovely West Marin name, moved his beer factory to Petaluma. There, on the east side of town, the business has grown and grown, with Lagunitas now churning out more than 30,000 barrels per year. Magee and his cohorts continuously experiment with new styles and labels, and 17 staple beers regularly show up in the course of each calendar year.
Magee’s quiet office is vibrantly strewn with papers, posters and exotic beer bottles, and here the company CEO spends his work week just like a king should. He hangs out on the Internet, jams on his acoustic guitar and constructs new label designs with longtime pal and company beer marketer Ron Lindenbusch. Magee also writes and is, in fact, a widely read author. His brain, after all, is the creator of all those irreverent and psychedelic stories that go to press on the label of each Lagunitas bottle–which Magee tends not to spell-check.
Meanwhile, just out the door and a stone’s throw away from the administrative headquarters is the factory end of Lagunitas. Magee’s crew listens to loud rock ‘n’ roll while supervising the automated conveyor system. They move, pack and forklift the beer while the intense noise level discourages much conversation. The ass-end of a delivery truck is there most times, backed into the warehouse door, filling up on its cargo to ship outward into the wide and thirsty world–22 states, Canada, the Netherlands and Indonesia, to be precise.
But amid the brewery’s roar, hustle and bustle, there is a comforting quaintness to the scene. One single conveyor belt several inches wide handles every Lagunitas beer bottle ever seen. The bottles shuffle sideways as they are sanitized, rinsed, dried, labeled, filled and capped, moving steadily along at the rate of up to 3,000 cases per day.
“Out there in the world,” Magee, who regularly strolls through the brewery, muses, “there’s a toilet flushing for every couple of bottles.”
And out in back, barley, wheat, yeast and hops come in by truck at a proportional pace, and a visitor to Lagunitas distinctly perceives a satisfying equilibrium in the order of things here: a perfect balance between the world’s thirst and the world’s beer.
Despite the brewery’s success, Magee assures that Lagunitas is still a “microbrewery.” Thus, he and his team are blessed with the liberty to enjoy the surprises and mishaps of brewing, for things sometimes don’t go as planned. While big breweries promote consistency and nothing less, Lagunitas has enjoyed a few successful blunders. One case in point is its wildly alcoholic Brown Shugga.
“It was originally supposed to be Olde Gnarleywine,” Magee says. “It was the winter of ’97 and I accidentally wrote the recipe wrong for the brewers. They were missing about 350 pounds of malt. They were brewing it on Friday night and they called me at around 7 o’clock.”
The brewers told Magee that the gravity was too low, meaning there was not enough sugar in the mix. Heightening the severity of the problem was the fact that the brewing crew had just hopped the beer to its full potential.
“So you had all this bitterness against this low gravity,” Magee explains. “I was like, ‘Man, how can we save this beer?'”
There was no more malt in the house, so Magee commissioned the boys to hit the town and buy at least 200 one-pound boxes of brown sugar. They followed their orders, sticking up every market in town and demanding all their brown sugar. They paid for it, of course, but so did the town.
“If you were baking the next morning in Petaluma,” Magee chuckles, “you were in big trouble, because there was no sugar left.”
On Monday morning, C&H boxes littered the brew-house floor, but a new line of beer was in the tank. It tasted terrible for two weeks.
“I was like, ‘Oh great, this whole thing’s a big waste,'” Magee groans. “But then all of a sudden in the third week, it just cleaned up and picked up this candy-bourbon note, and that’s the beer it’s been.”
Other seasonal deluges, like Imperial Red Ale, Cappuccino Stout and the dark and delicious Hairy Eyeball, slosh through the Lagunitas brew house each year, but the mainstay of the company is the IPA, which constitutes 60 percent of the brewery’s output. While the business continues to grow, Magee strives to maintain his staff at the current level of approximately 25 people. He also prefers to keep advertising at a minimum.
“Beer speaks, people mumble,” he says, quoting the company motto and mission statement. “Some brewers are in articles all the time, and they probably do make good beer, but I like to let beer speak for itself.”
And so goes the living and learning of life as a brewer. On the east side of Highway 101, in one of the wine country’s largest breweries, the Lagunitas crew continues as a well-oiled machine. People keep mumbling, and the beer keeps talking. It rolls off the ribbon-thin Lagunitas conveyor belt bottle by bottle, case by case, and flush by flush.
Lagunitas Brewing Company. 1280 N. McDowell Blvd., Petaluma. 707.769.4495. www.lagunitas.com.
Other beers we love
Ace-in-the-Hole Cider Pub (aka the California Cider Company) Specializes in ciders, keeping five in the house: apple, apple-honey, pear, berry and the “Wild Card,” a powerful and secret blend of fruit ciders. Pub grub and eclectic live music. 3100 Hwy. 116, Sebastopol. 707.829.1223.
Bear Republic Brewing Famed for its garlic fries, BRB keeps 12 homemade beers and four ciders–apple, pear, raspberry and pomegranate–on tap. 345 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg. 707.433.2337.
Calistoga Inn Restaurant & Brewery With an upscale menu, a weekly open mic and a prime spot by the creek, CIRB offers three regular brews in-house, a porter, a stout and an IPA. Almost impossible to find outside the restaurant. 1250 Lincoln Ave., Calistoga. 707.942.4101.
Dempsey’s Restaurant & Brewery Petaluma’s other favorite microbrewery offers half a dozen handcrafted brews at any given time and rotates among a longer lineup of seasonals. 50 E. Washington St., Petaluma. 707.765.9694.
Iron Springs Pub & Brewery Pouring 12 beers at any given time, ranging from light pilsners to rich barley wines, the selection is complemented by a full menu. 765 Center Blvd., Fairfax. 415.485.1005.
Marin Brewing Co. As with all those listed here, MBC is also a restaurant and brewpub, and cycles through more than a dozen beers throughout the year. Also find the brewery’s selection in local supermarkets. 1809 Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur. 415.461.4677.
Moylan’s Brewery & Restaurant The sister company to the Marin Brewing Co. offers food as well its own range of beer, which is available at the pub and in stores. 15 Rowland Way, Novato. 415.898.4677.
Russian River Brewing Co. Featuring a full pub menu, this hopping place has a wide selection of beers on tap and some fantastic happy-hour deals. 725 Fourth St., Santa Rosa. 707.545.2337.
Third Street Ale Works The popular brewpub maintains a selection of 10 to 15 ales with its full restaurant menu. 610 Third St., Santa Rosa. 707.523.3060.
–A.B.
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May-December
When I reviewed director Roger Michell’s 2004 film The Mother, I mentioned Anne Reid’s lead performance as something every woman over 40 ought to see. Looking at Venus–again, a collaboration between writer Hanif Kureishi and director Michell–it seems to be another case of a film in which the main performance is the most important thing. It is every man over 60, this time, who should turn out for Venus, to see and be captivated by Peter O’Toole’s sunset performance as an old rogue of an actor with one last fling left in him.
O’Toole’s Maurice is still working, sometimes playing a moribund granddad in a hospital bed, sometimes weaving through a cafe where he meets his cronies. He wheezes a dust-dry laugh, a laugh he needs since he’s been rendered impotent from a prostatectomy. In essence, all that’s left is the eyes and the voice.
His chum Ian (Leslie Phillips) is bedeviled by a grandniece, Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), from the provinces who has come to stay with him. Jessie is a scornful and troublesome girl who has no taste for living with an old man. Ian, who is quite fancy, believed he would be able to beckon Jessie with a little bell. Desperate for some help with the ungrateful girl, Ian asks for Maurice’s help. Maurice falls for Jessie, delighted by her sullenness, and tries to infect her with a little culture while marveling at her prettiness.
As a team, Michell tenderizes Kureishi’s shrewder instincts for greater commercial appeal. O’Toole makes sure the film doesn’t turn too courtly, too Cyrano de Bergerac (he tells Jessie outright he’d like a look at her genitals). When he all but buys her affection with jewelry or money for a tattoo, he can jest about it: “No pockets in a shroud.” But we also sense an undercurrent here of one side having a little power and the other having none–good reason for this Venus’ scorn.
The romance has a sharp, demanding side. Feeling sorry for Maurice’s ruined old age, you sympathize with the half-bright girl who has enough principles to keep from becoming a prostitute. But she is out for herself, as well as out for a good time; maybe it is mutual decadence that links the old goat and the young kid. Take, for example, a morning scene, where all we see of Jessie is one plump, pink, bare shoulder and a mound of blankets surrounding by a half-dozen empty beer cans.
Richard Griffiths delivers a comic turn as Maurice’s chum, and there is a moment of keen sorrow when Vanessa Redgrave turns up playing Maurice’s decayed ex-wife, who loves him but can never quite forgive him for what he did to her when they were married. Director Michell is highly televisionistic, and often soppy, as in a scene of Maurice wandering around in a fugue state at some outdoor theater closed for the winter. The story softens up, too, which wasn’t the case in Kureishi’s early days. Maurice denounces “the disgusting happiness and hope” that the young represent, but these two disgusting qualities arrive at the end of the film. It makes for a too-sweet finale for what is almost a captivating May-December, look-but-don’t-touch romance.
‘Venus’ screens at select Bay Area theaters.
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Creating Choices
the arts | visual arts |
Design 2007:
Hello Creative | Russian Orthodox Frescoes | Drawing as the New Design
Photograph by Rory McNamara
Howdy: From left, Jesse Seaver, Eric Spillman, Steve Fischer and Tina Grob-Smith of Hello Creative.
By Patricia Lynn Henley
It’s all about images. About creating a certain attitude, telling a carefully crafted “story” with just the right look, just the right feel for a package design or a corporate video presentation, for a glossy photo calendar or a cleverly nuanced “this is who we are” website.
The company doing this slick, highly creative work is not based in New York or London. Not housed in an open-beam SoMa brick building. Rather, it’s being done in a studio office tucked into the second floor of a funky, former apple-drying warehouse in Graton.
Fresh apples once bobbed into the building via an aqueduct; now ideas and laughter flow freely, as the staff of Hello Creative–Eric Spillman, Steve Fischer, Tina Grob-Smith and Jesse Seaver–craft creative solutions for a client list that has included Apple Computer Inc., Banana Republic and Swatch, as well as Santa Rosa’s Medtronic Vascular, Kendall Jackson wines and others.
The bottom line, Spillman says, is communication.
“That’s what Hello is about, introducing a person or their idea to a larger audience. You can do that one on one, but when it comes to having to reach multiple people far away, you have to go in, figure out who these people are, what their dream is, and that’s the fun part. You get to tap into their ideals, to where they want to go.”
The designers at Hello Creative can do that because they are where they want to be: in a restored two-story building housing artists, studios, businesses and more known as Atelier One in rural, folksy Graton, where most roads are barely wide enough for two cars, and sidewalks are the occasional afterthought.
“I love Graton, I love the whole package,” Fischer enthuses. “It’s not just the studio space, it’s not just Atelier One. It’s walking into town and seeing the characters and being plugged into what’s happening.”
Often, he and Spillman talk over ideas while striding along the bike path that stretches out from both ends of their building. “We’ll just get out and walk, and cover a couple of miles while we’re brainstorming,” Fischer says.
Work also gets done when the three lunch together. “That’s our second office, right in downtown Graton,” says Spillman.
In their studio, rough concrete and brick walls rise up ton an ancient black tar paper ceiling covering the top of the old warehouse. A four-foot-wide window bathes every inch of their space with light. It also provides a view of willow trees meandering along a creek bed, as well as empty barrels and other industrial detritus scattered behind a hulking metal warehouse.
Their office is a symbol that you can be whoever you are and still succeed in business, Spillman says. “We try to take as much of a normal life as possible and include in it our work.”
Sometimes new clients are a bit taken aback when they walk into the funky studio, but within a few minutes they take a deep breath and relax. That’s when the stories come out, the dreams. The British guy who wants to one day raise sheep in Northern England. The San Franciscan who’s always wanted to live a slower, more rural life in the North Bay. The guy who dreams of escaping to Bend, Ore.
“You can hear these people just wanting to get out of their situation, to a degree, and they get a taste of it when they come up here,” Spillman says.
Of course, the folks at Hello Creative also try to mitigate any impression that they’re far away from the action. They’re considering adding a 415-area-code phone line, so Bay Area firms won’t dismiss them as “out in the boondocks.” But they have no intention of moving; they like being able to do great design in Graton.
Spillman didn’t start out there. Born and raised in Oregon, he spent 10 years in New York City, doing communications design for the publishing, entertainment, fashion and finance industries, and working with international companies. But when the first of his three kids was old enough to start walking, it was time to return to a West Coast lifestyle. Not happy with the wet weather in his native Oregon, he checked out Boulder, Colo., and Sebastopol, finally settling in Graton.
“Coming out to California, I had never learned to surf,” Spillman says. “I got here and learned to surf and realized there was this whole other side of existence that the door had not been opened to. That was the pivotal thing for me that made me start to value other things.”
Having bought a house, he then looked for studio space that was “a stone’s throw away and affordable.” He set up shop under the name Art Industria in Atelier One.
“I happened to have a friend with Apple and immediately started doing a ton of work for them,” he explains. “We spent seven years working for them.”
Fischer has worked in graphic design in the North Bay for almost 20 years, including running his own freelance design business. When he joined Spillman in March 2005, they changed the company name to Hello Creative. They considered and rejected the idea of getting an office with more “bling,” like frosted windows and a conference room. “It’s almost like resources are being extended that are going down a drain somewhere, when you don’t need to waste them,” Spillman explains.
A year later, Grob-Smith joined the team. She’s a native of Zurich who trained at a prestigious design school in Switzerland.
“Steve’s talented in ways that I’m not, so it’s a really good fit,” Spillman explains. “Tina is talented in a lot of the ways that I am, so we’re covering everything.”
Seaver brings his extensive multimedia and technical expertise to the group, serving as a CD-Rom and web designer. And depending on the nature of the project, they use a range of freelance talent: writers, photographers, illustrators, video editors and other designers, all working at a distance. “We work as a tight group, but we also reach out and grab these other people,” Spillman says.
They’re close enough to San Francisco to stay connected to the creative scene while still relishing their slower-paced rural lifestyle. And they travel frequently, bringing inspiration with them back to Graton.
“I do miss a little bit the hobnobbing with the super-creative work that’s being done in the big cities, but I go there, to New York or London to visit, and I get charged up,” Spillman says.
And they often bounce ideas among themselves, playing with concepts for their own products and designs, working on projects that haven’t been commissioned and don’t need to be finished in a week or less.
“It’s those kind of projects that give you what you don’t have up here, what you get from the city,” Grob-Smith says. “You start up the creative insight.”
Spillman adds, “Designers are in this spot between being artists and marketing people. They’re right in the middle and can do both. You sort of have to be able to do both.”
His basic focus has changed during his years in Graton.
“It used to be all about doing the hippest, coolest design and getting gratification from that. Now it’s migrated to connecting with the coolest, funnest people. It’s really about getting in, becoming friends with them, problem-solving with them and coming out winners as a team. It’s migrating to be much more human, I think.”
Often their efforts involve defining and refining a company’s identity.
“Identity work can be really challenging because there’s such a huge amount of information that you have to filter through,” Spillman explains. “You have to balance that with your gut feelings, to pretend you didn’t hear any of that material and just operate on your life’s experience or whatever. You balance the two.”
But creating identities, Spillman says, is nothing new.
“When there were different tribes, there was a need for each tribe to have an icon or something so they could communicate or show that they were who they were. It goes way back that there was a need to pick two colors or draw an icon or come up with a word.”
Tribal identities might have included a song. Now it’s a jingle or a tagline.
“We try to look for the moral good in these efforts,” Spillman explains, speaking softly but intensely. “It’s not just about selling something to someone. It’s more like what Apple does, which is helping people obtain their own dreams through the use of their product. We always hope to find that.”
Hello Creative also exists in the Graton of the web at www.hello-sf.com.
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Ask Sydney
Dear Sydney, I have kids who are almost teens. I smoke pot every now and then and am pretty easy-going as far as drinking and pot smoking goes. It doesn’t bother me. What, I’m wondering, is appropriate around the kids? Do I smoke around them eventually? Keep it a secret? When they hit the teen years, do I let them do it around me if they show interest? I would rather they party at home, where they’re safe, but I also don’t want to be a bad influence. Any ideas?–Cool but Careful Mom
Dear Cool Mom: What a loaded topic! The best thing you can do for your kids is to have no addictions. None. You should exhibit calm, loving, inspired, dedicated, focused and understanding behaviors at all times, and you should not drink or smoke at all, not in front of your kids and not in secret. That would be the best thing, and if I were to say otherwise, I would just be trying to make all of us feel better about ourselves. However, if like the majority of humankind you are a flawed parent with some form of addiction–be it sugar, caffeine, hard liquor, infidelities or pharmaceuticals–then you have a decision to make.
As for allowing them to party at home, I don’t think this is a decision you have to make right now. If only childrearing decisions could be so easily pinned down ahead of time! There are too many variables that will only become apparent with time. Write to me in a couple of years, when and if the situation comes up, give me the specifics, and we’ll discuss it then.
Dear Sydney, I’m wondering how you feel about the new Humane Society in Sebastopol. It’s beautiful and houses bunnies, dogs and cats in homelike environments that are warm and obviously very high dollar. Right across the highway from this amazing refuge for animals is the Joe Rodota bike trail, where many homeless folks sleep in the dirt with make-shift tents of plastic. I heard recently that a homeless man from Sebastopol suffered from frostbite. What do you think this reflects about us as a community?–Just Wonderin’
Dear Wonderin’: It would be difficult not to be awed by the splendor that is the Sebastopol Humane Society, and it does seem as if hardly any expense was spared. When walking the resplendent halls, one might be moved to wonder if perhaps the design might be a little extravagant. But this building was made possible in large part by community support. People gave generous quantities of their own money to help build it. And they did this as opposed to building a marble-floored homeless shelter for those people freezing in the bushes, because they love and respect animals with the same sort of compassion and commitment that they love their fellow humans, perhaps even a bit more. There comes a time when your average Homo sapiens begins to gain a certain amount of control over his or her own fate; animals, on the other hand, are completely at our mercy. I suspect that the people involved with creating and maintaining the Humane Society feel as if this animal shelter is the least they can give to creatures that have been thrown by the wayside. Just the same, it is to our great discredit as a species that we can not care for everyone among us with such generosity and vision.
Dear Sydney, it seems like I’m always the one who empties the vacuum cleaner bag, dumps the compost and scrubs the mildew off the shower. How can I get my roommates to notice these things? I’ve brought this to their attention, but nothing seems to change. If I keep bringing it up, I’m going to seem like Super-Cleaning Bitch. If I leave it, I’m risking the chance of athlete’s foot. What should I do?–Love My Roommates, Hate Their Habits
Dear Super-Cleaning Bitch: You cannot force another person to have the same sensibilities as you do in regards to cleaning. Sure, you can start fights or employ passive aggression, but ultimately all you will do is spur a couple of meager and half-hearted attempts at cleaning on your roommate’s part, and then there will be a return to the way things were before. The best way to avoid this scenario, be it with roommates or sweethearts, is to discuss your needs in regards to housework before moving in together, compare notes and then see if you are at all compatible. You probably won’t be, but at least this way you both know what you’re getting into in advance.
And keep in mind, it’s very likely that you are not enabling your roommates at all with your cleaning; they probably genuinely don’t give a shit either way. If they did, they would feel qualms for not pitching in and would help more. The reality is, some people are OK with living in squalor. Rather than worry about cleaning the tub, when they get athlete’s foot, they just buy that stuff that comes in a tube at the drug store and it goes away. Your best angle here is either to treat the housework as a sort of daily challenge that you must transcend with peace in your heart, or insist that everyone pitch in a modest cleaning fee. After all, if they’re going to treat your collective space with total disrespect, then they should at lest have the decency to pay you for your labors. Demand your due, and if it you don’t get it, then get your own place. It’s the only real solution.
No question too big, too small or too off-the-wall.
Imperfect Beauty
By Gabe Meline
By pursuing popular styles and attracting innovative talent, Darwin Meiners’ “Look Ma, No Band” Santa Rosa concert series has injected fresh blood into the old idea of ripping singer-songwriters from the assisted confines of their regular bands and pushing them unaided onto the stage. There’s plenty to recommend at this weekend’s fourth installment, which includes tunesmiths from the New Trust, Hanalei and Love Equals Death, all well-known punk- and indie-rock bands. But the performer destined to leave the strongest and most indelible mark is Des Ark, aka Aimee Argote, a singer from North Carolina with a bristling, urgent presence who plays the guitar, the banjo and the accordion. A circumventive artist whose resistance to adoration unwittingly acquires it twofold, Argote would be easy to love if the prospect weren’t so terrifying.
Writing of sexual delights and disasters with an experienced vulgarity and a chilling, stark honesty, she often houses her tumult in a dwelling of minor-key dissonance, as if to multiply the anxiety it creates. In the eerie rock missive “Jesus Loves You (But Yr Still Comin’ Home with Me Tonight),” Argote’s voice explodes like a comet amid slashing guitars; it is the musical equivalent of either an orgasm or a fist through the wall–it might be both.
A similar haunting lies in the exploratory epic “If by ‘Gay’ You Mean ‘Totally Fucking Awesome,’ Then Yeah, I Guess It’s Pretty Gay,” wrenchingly delivering a painful meditation on a failed fling. Her voice is restrained, almost embarrassed: “There goes the best damn summer that we ever spent,” she laments, “Drinking on the porch rolling our own cigarettes / Jumping up and down in our panties on the bed.” In the detailed delivery, Argote’s only mistake is being herself, and by song’s end, we don’t see how that could ever be a mistake at all. “I can’t tell when you’re gonna figure out that any line you use tonight will work,” she sings, “Because were both as fucking broken as we look.”
Alongside Argote’s hope, the violins, the guitars, the drums all die out and we feel a chill at the imperfect beauty of it all.
Des Ark performs this Saturday, Feb. 3, at Look Ma, No Bands! with Josh Staples, Brian Moss, Chon Travis and Our Lady of the Highway. Sweet Spot Lounge, 619 Fourth St., Santa Rosa. 9:30pm. $5. 707.528.7566.
News Briefs
Cancelling the news
KFTY TV 50 abruptly dropped its nightly news broadcasts on Friday, Jan. 26, throwing 13 people out of work and leaving North Bay viewers with almost nowhere to turn for timely updates on local events. The Monday-Friday 7pm and 10pm news shows got the axe, as did the weekend Week in Review program. But not to worry–the station’s website promises that live local news, weather and traffic updates will continue on its weekday 6am to 10am Armstrong & Getty program, which provides a visual view of this duo’s radio broadcast on Talk 910 KNEW radio. Two dudes in a booth–now there’s some informative TV news. A brief statement from Channel 50 general manager John Burgess is posted on the station’s website. Apparently there wasn’t enough advertiser support to keep the news programs alive. Burgess’ statement also says the programming changes “reflect the evolution of our strategic direction toward a multiplatform approach for news and information”–whatever that means. Burgess didn’t return requests for comment, but his website screed promises a new public affairs program, more web-driven content and a chance for viewers and community groups to develop “locally” based content. Until all that can be created, the station has replaced its news shows with reruns of Becker, Still Standing, Blind Date and Frasier. “This leaves a big gap in local news,” says George Magnan, programming and production manager for cable access stations in Santa Rosa. “What local folks are really going to miss is [news coverage] during an emergency. They’re not going to be able to go to TV 50 and see the flooding, because it’s not going to be there.” It’s unlikely that any one source will be able to fill the gap, says Bruce Robinson, news director for KRCB Public Radio and Television. “We do special news programming and election coverage, but nothing on a daily basis,” Robinson says. “Perhaps this will make us reassess the services we provide, but news coverage is a resource-intensive process, which is why TV 50 is bailing out.” It’s unfortunate, he added, that Channel 50 says it couldn’t find enough advertising support for its news programs. “It’s sad if the local business community won’t support this.” The result is no locally generated television news programs in the North Bay, and not a lot of in-depth radio reports. “The headline services basically follow the lead of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and most local radio stations are just headline services,” Robinson notes. “The San Francisco television stations come up here occasionally and more often than they used to, but it’s not the same as having a local news station.”
First Bite
All we wanted was an oyster potpie, as touted by Siena, the elegant California-Tuscan restaurant at the new Meritage Resort in Napa.
“Rich and creamy,” purrs the restaurant’s online menu, promising plump pastry stocked with salsify, carrots, English peas and oyster mushrooms. The savory dish is listed as a luncheon appetizer, and on a chilly, gray winter day, it sounded like heaven.
But we were arriving for dinner, so I called Siena, begging them to save us a couple of pies. That would be a special request, the hostess answering the phone cheerfully replied, but after checking with the chef, she reported he would be delighted to do so. That chef would be Jeffrey Longenecker, recently relocated from Sea Ranch Lodge, and known for his local, seasonal, terroir-informed approach to cooking.
It was the best oyster potpie I could have imagined. Poor chef Longenecker–it was no mean feat for him to get it to me. First hint of a predicament: We were greeted as the “potpie party,” and told that our dishes were ready if we were. We sipped our complimentary cava (now there’s a fine amuse), nibbled salted breadsticks dipped in fancy Rutherford and Italian olive oils, and wondered–pre-made pies? Say it ain’t so.
Minutes later, we were told, happily no, Chef would need time to make them, did we want salads? My answer will always be yes. Siena sends out a superb platter of whole romaine leaves ($8), curled with smoky prosciutto di Parma, shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano, and what would have been way too much creamy garlic dressing if the thick, rich stuff weren’t so good. A tower of thin-sliced roasted beets and rutabagas ($8) is a sophisticated mix, too, triple-punched with pungent mustard greens, preserved Meyer lemon and smoky white truffle vinaigrette.
We ordered entrées, a maple roasted duck breast ($30) with dried cherry bread pudding, candied yams and root vegetables; and sorrel-wrapped ahi tuna puttanesca ($27) with fontina polenta cake, haystack potatoes and Kalamata-caper-anchovy sauce.
Our waiter intervened. Our pies were full entrées themselves, he warned, wondering where we got the idea they were appetizers. Or that they were even on the menu at all, he suddenly announced, since he’d never heard of them. (Nor had chef, by the way, evidently creating these recipes out of thin air just for us).
Perhaps someone ought to check the Meritage website, I stuttered.
All was forgiven the second the pies arrived. These were beyond glorious, an upscale salute to comfort food. A heavy cast iron crock bubbled with silky bisque so richly creamed and buttered that it shimmered with each spoonful of enoki mushroom, carrot and meaty mollusk. A thick cap of puff pastry shattered in buttery flakes on top, giving way to steaming, doughy innards, and when the pastry was gone, we dunked chunks of fresh-baked rosemary-kissed bread. Thrilled as we were with the chef’s special attention, the pies were also pricey; we hardly expected our lovely “lunch appetizers” to be $30 each. But apparently, the kitchen didn’t either.
Siena, inside the Meritage Resort, 875 Bordeaux Way, Napa. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily; brunch Sundays. 707.259.0633.
Quick-and-dirty dashes through North Bay restaurants. These aren’t your standard “bring five friends and order everything on the menu” dining reviews.
Art Imitates Design
the arts | visual arts |
Design 2007:
Hello Creative | Russian Orthodox Frescoes | Drawing as the New Design
‘Basketball Pyramid’: David Huffman’s mixed-media piece is among the drawings on exhibit at the di Rosa.
By Brett Ascarelli
‘There’s a lot of young blood tonight!” gushes a staff member at the di Rosa Preserve’s opening of “Graphic: New Bay Area Drawing.” Later, I ask another staff member about the evening’s hipster quotient.
“Well, with this kind of show . . .”
“Drawing?”
“Yeah,” she answers.
Enough said. Indeed, drawing is the hip, young thing of the art world, forging its own trail in the last decade among its more august cousins, painting and sculpture. Last year, Art News devoted its entire January issue to drawing, and even the most important international art fairs have been crammed with simple media like pencil and pen.
Bay Area artists have turned out a variety of drawings for the di Rosa exhibit. One pen, gouache and watercolor repeats tiny patterns that resemble rice grains falling from one Smurf’s hat into another. Further on, a dark landscape of ink splatters, skeletal trees and orange basketballs references the modern baroque style of a recent Urban Outfitters ad campaign.
Looking at the iconic, flat and insanely precise works, one is reminded of modern Japanese, American and Swedish commercial aesthetic sensibilities. But this is art, not design. Or is it?
Michael Schwager, di Rosa curator and progenitor of this newest exhibit, stands apart from the food table. This is the second drawing exhibit he’s curated since works in this medium wowed him at the Art Basel: Miami Beach art fair in November 2005. What’s driving the aesthetic?
“Cartooning and graphic novels are a huge influence, I think, on a generation of twenty- to forty-somethings,” says Schwager. “A more informal way of making an image, like cartoons, is becoming more accepted, whereas in the ’50s, most artists worked towards making huge, abstract expressionist paintings.
“It’s very different today. There’s a different aesthetic goal in mind; every generation is different. Pop art commented on consumer society; the ’80s drew on art history. The influences of today are often in popular culture,” says Schwager.
Nevertheless, he cautions, “these artists have much more aesthetic concerns than graphic design. The work comes from a more personal place or from popular culture.”
In fact, Schwager clarifies that the word “graphic” in the show’s title has “no relation to graphic design, whatsoever–I was just thinking graphic in terms of images on paper.”
Dean Smith, 45, has two large-scale drawings in the show. The drawings look like staggered starbursts filled in with thousands of teensy strokes. The pattern they make is not dissimilar to the hairs of his salt-and-pepper beard, only more numerous. Like his drawings, Smith’s personal aesthetic tonight is monochromatic.
“The works are centering devices: centering one’s attention, consciousness and perception,” says Smith, who stopped painting about 12 years ago to focus on drawing.
Are there any pop cultural influences on his work?
“Absolutely zero!” he responds hotly.
But pop culture seeps into our psyches, and it reaches us through the catchy branding of design. Today’s ubiquitous icons can’t help but rub off onto artist’s pads, even if the artists don’t admit it.
Artist Ala Ebtekar does admit it–and happily. His digital prints of cartoony warriors are a highlight of the show. To make them, he scans his original drawings, then works on them with Flash and Adobe Illustrator. The resulting images are Transformer-like men carrying traditional heroic attributes–and hip-hop gear.
In an e-mail from Paris, where Ebtekar is currently staying, he describes why he chose his computer aesthetic. “Most importantly, [these pieces are] really a reflection of NOW,” he writes. “I could have used the medium I am more familiar with–in my case, drawing or painting–but after coming up with the idea of what I wanted these characters to be, and how I wanted them to be read, using the computer as a tool to convey that seemed only obvious. I think that sleekness, and the idea that they could be mass-made (and not a one-of-a-kind art object), is something that appealed to me.”
As current trends in graphic design incorporate handmade typefaces, scribbles and crafts, art itself is doing the reverse. Graphic design is finally coming home to roost–boosting the art form that created them.
‘Graphic: New Bay Area Drawing’ is on view through Wednesday, March 10, at the Gatehouse Gallery in the di Rosa Preserve, 5200 Carneros Hwy., Napa. 707.226.5991. For complete details on the Preserve, go to www.dirosapreserve.org.
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Second Set of Hands
It’s really no surprise that David Byrne was spotted at Clap Your Hands Say Yeah shows a couple years back. After all, the Brooklyn/Philly quintet’s exceptional debut album sounded at times like a twitchy half-hour variation on ’77’s “Pulled Up” and singer Alec Ounsworth’s emotive, acrobatic whine–more so than other vocalists from Tom Verlaine to Ian McCulloch–channeled the most talkative Head’s vocal inflections.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Lou Reed is their next legendary audience member, judging from how their second self-released record, Some Loud Thunder, starts. The opening track kicks off the album White Light/White Heat-style, but beneath a wave of distortion. “All this talking, you’d think I’d have something to say,” sings Ounsworth, barely audible amid production replicating a poorly leveled home cassette recording. Each bass drum crash drowns out everything else, effectively burying any hopes of repeating their first record’s polish.
However, the song’s harmonies fight through and much of this mostly rewarding album is easier to swallow, from the harmonious ’60s-style chamber pop of “Emily Jean Stock” to the instant crowd-pleaser “Underwater,” a low-fi Badlands that pushes the Killers’ recent Springsteen tributes further into embarrassment. But the band’s straying from their proven pop forms offers mixed results. The multifaceted “Arm and Hammer” pleasantly evokes early Who mini-operas, but the repetitive Krautrock excursion “Satan Said Dance” does little else but allow the band to test out their many spooky keyboard effects.
Thunder‘s sometimes blatantly reactionary aural filters are a necessary evil for a sophomore effort from a band who could probably never improve upon their previous twitchy jangle. But also muffled in the ’60s-rock production survey course is their originality, which was more apparent on their debut’s differently derivative aesthetic. Breaking the mold is commendable, as are the formidable melodies that survive the clatter. But if they want to add standing ovations to their namesake, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah should take their talent forward instead of backwards.
Our Friend Logan
Photographs by Sara Sanger
Real: ‘Logan was one of the only performers I know who was exactly the same onstage as off,’ says Michael Houghton.
By Sara Bir
The album of 2007 was released the day after Christmas 2006. We were shepherds watching our flocks of plastic snowmen lawn ornaments, and Logan Whitehurst’s Very Tiny Songs came upon us, glowing with goodness and light.
Logan Whitehurst, founding drummer of the Velvet Teen and the tireless creative engine behind his solo project, Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club, passed away on Dec. 3, 2006, after fighting brain cancer for several years. He was 29. A tribute to his life and art is slated for Feb. 10.
If this is a story of loss, it is also one of legacy, one in which Logan’s swan song, the joyful, 76-minute micro-opus Very Tiny Songs, offers a bittersweet tonic of comfort. Listening to Very Tiny Songs is the audio equivalent of eating an entire bag of M&Ms and savoring every bite.
Logan grew up in the Central Valley, kidding around with his cousins and siblings, winning spelling bees and recording goofy skits. He got into music when his stepbrother started a band. “I went out in the garage, and I’d kind of bang on stuff to keep time for them,” Logan said in a 2003 interview with the Bohemian. “My stepmother heard this and went and paid $75 and bought a drum kit.” Logan would use that same sparkly red drum kit throughout his entire drumming career.
While pursuing a printmaking degree at Sonoma State University, Logan became an integral figure in the Sonoma County music scene. He met Owen Otto in 1995, when Otto’s geek-rock band Little Tin Frog put up flyers looking for a drummer. “It had a They Might Be Giants reference, ‘Rhythm Section Want Ad,'” Otto recalls. “We put Logan in, and instantly it just worked.”
During that time in Little Tin Frog, Logan began recording songs on his own. “I didn’t know how to use a four-track, and I didn’t know how to play any instruments,” Logan said of his early experiments with songwriting. “I couldn’t work out my ideas very well, and I just wanted to play with sounds. I’d sit down and try to harmonize with myself or start a drum machine . . . and that lack of skill translated to great appeal. It sounded like I was either trying really hard to make it bad, or I was just having fun.”
Thus, Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club was born. With a vacant, smiling plastic snowman named Vanilla as his sidekick, Logan charmed audiences with his complete disregard for image and coolness–which, of course, only made him that much cooler. “Logan was one of the only performers I know who was exactly the same onstage as off,” says Michael Houghton, who published the underground music magazine Section M, to which Logan contributed a darkly funny comic strip, “Jonathan Quimby.”
“But I think that ease and earnestness is so rare that it was completely riveting,” Houghton continues. “I’ve talked to the hardest of little street punks who pretty much hate everything, who would gather around and sit in a semicircle when Logan played, giggling and cheering for more.”
Through websites like MP3.com, where his songs had over 100,000 downloads, Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club built a dedicated online following. “It wasn’t just for distributing his music,” says Otto. “He would get in conversation with fans.”
“I think as his music got more of a cult following, he was getting that sort of instant gratification from more and more fans,” Houghton says. “Which is a big part of why he was always so gracious and personable to everyone he met, because they were a big part of his enjoyment of making art.”
Barry Hansen–better known as Dr. Demento, host of an eponymous long-standing weekly radio program showcasing “mad music and crazy comedy”–has championed Logan’s music since 2000, but it wasn’t until he came across Goodbye, My 4-Track in 2003 that something clicked. “Goodbye, My 4-Track just knocked me out from beginning to end,” he says. “It was a bit like hearing Sgt. Pepper for the first time.”
Logan’s solo work–and there are piles of it, a total of seven releases as the Junior Science Club and dozens of unreleased songs–combines a keen sense of wit with offbeat references both highbrow (plate tectonics) and lowbrow (the Spice Girls), all with a vaudevillian knack for showmanship.
“I’ve met a lot of talented people in my 36 years in radio, but Logan is extra special,” says Dr. Demento. “He creates a world that is a lot of fun to be in, even when darker things happen. His music is uncommonly melodic and absolutely loaded with hooks. And when I eventually got to know him a little, he turned out to be so gracious and witty, articulate and confident yet modest.”
Your friend, Logan: A celebration of Logan Whitehurst’s life is planned for Feb. 10 at the Phoenix Theater.
In 2000, Logan joined his former Little Tin Frog bandmate Judah Nagler in the art-pop band the Velvet Teen. Along with bassist Josh Staples, the trio maintained an ambitious touring schedule. It was shortly before leaving to tour Japan with the Velvet Teen that Logan began to suffer from headaches, nausea and dizziness. After many visits to many doctors, Logan was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2004. He moved in with his parents in Los Banos, where ridding his body of cancer though a demanding series of treatments became the singular focus in his life.
“What he went through being sick would have crushed a lot of people a lot earlier,” says Otto. “He had a philosophy of ‘this is my life and this is who I am, and I can’t control everything, so I have to go with the flow of what’s happening.’ He was an enormously optimistic and positive person in general. I could tell you dozens of stories of times where as a band we’d be driving around in the van all miserable, and he’d be upbeat, making jokes and trying to turn the situation around.”
Very Tiny Songs was Logan’s return to making music. This past summer, his doctors were optimistic; his cancer treatment came to a close, and he moved into what all hoped would be an extended period of remission. After being physically unable to make music for several years, Logan was motivated and eager to prove himself. With a future so open it was equally thrilling and terrifying, he looked to his online friends for inspiration and began writing and recording songs on the fly as mechanism to get back into the swing of things.
“I thought, ‘I’d better get ready, because I’m going to start doing stuff again,'” he said when he spoke to me on the phone from Los Banos last July. “I hit on this idea that I could get some sort of communication going with people again if I put it out there that I want suggestions for songs. I’ll make a bunch of songs to put on my website and you guys’ll download them and see that I’m still out there and still wanna do music.”
Fans, many of whom Logan had never met in person, inundated him with song suggestions, and he threw himself into the project, writing one to six songs a day for a month. By the time he was done, he’d recorded 81 songs. Most run only about a minute long, but each one is its own distinct entity–very short stories, or very concise jingles. More properly, they are very tiny songs, and they are hugely entertaining.
Very Tiny Songs is a privileged look into Logan’s creative process, and it conjures up all kinds of fascinating ideas about opening up the mind, dumping it out and seeing the surprising order in what’s there. “I was very much in the moment; there are some songs on there that I’m kind of surprised I actually wrote,” Logan said. “When I would sit down and think, ‘This isn’t good enough,’ the songs would slow down, and it kind of spiraled. So most of the time, if I found I was thinking too much, I would do the first thing that came to mind, the first thing that rhymed.”
Having been recorded in such a freewheeling manner, Very Tiny Songs betrays nary a whiff of sloppy impressionism; the song’s musical concepts are compressed, yes, but undeniably fully formed. “Unicorns” opens with a dewy, soft-focus harp that’s pure fantasy clichÈ, but suddenly veers into ’80s dance-hall synth with a rap interlude worthy of Eric B. & Rakim: “Gonna bust a move with a unicorn / Gonna get on down with the one big horn.” In “Michael Is the President of the English Club,” Logan’s mock-stuffy riff on Anglophilia could easily stand toe-to-toe with an installment of Masterpiece Theatre.
“Pop songs usually have two or three parts: verse, chorus or maybe a bridge,” Otto says. “In most of those songs on Very Tiny Songs, he has the parts. To make it a longer song is the easy part. It would take most people a lot longer to write 81 songs.”
Very Tiny Songs‘ relentless sense of melody and ambitious scope can overwhelm the listener on the first three or even 12 plays, with surprising benefits. “It is such a long album, invariably you’re going to need a snack or someone’s going to call your cell phone,” says Josh Drake of Pandacide Records, the label that released Very Tiny Songs. “In that 70-plus minutes of music, you’ll miss a song, so you’re always finding new ones. He didn’t write a bad song on the whole thing.”
Weeks after he completed the songs and artwork for Very Tiny Songs, Logan was plagued with headaches and dizzy spells. A visit to the doctor revealed that his cancer had returned with a vengeance, and he was told he’d likely have less than a year to live.
After Logan’s death, response from fans and online friends was enormous.
Dr. Demento featured Logan’s music on his first program of the year; tribute videos cropped up on YouTube; people posted consoling thoughts on the Junior Science Club’s MySpace page. On far-flung message boards and obscure podcasts, people came forward to remember Logan.
When writing e-mails to fans, Logan always closed with “Your Friend, Logan.” Reading that always made me feel warm, excited–Logan is my friend!–because, even in the inexpressive confines of text on a computer screen, you could tell he truly meant it. Anyone would be fortunate to have a friend like Logan, and he was a friend to many.
There will be a memorial celebrating the life, art and music of Logan Whitehurst on Saturday, Feb. 10, at the Phoenix Theater. The public is welcome to attend. 201 Washington St., Petaluma. 8pm. 707.762.3565. Those wanting to learn more about Logan and his music can visit www.loganwhitehurst.com and www.juniorscienceclub.com.
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