Healthcare For Farm Workers

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Healthcare For Farm Workers


Photograph by Rory McNamara

To Your Health: They tend to the vines, but do they tend to their health?

Silent Suffering

North Bay farm workers face a healthcare crisis

By Joy Lanzendorfer

Efran Castillo was in pain. For some days, the vineyard worker had been hobbling around. He had stepped in a hole, fallen, and hurt his ankle. Since he spoke no English, had no healthcare insurance, and didn’t know how to get help, he simply tried to live with the pain.

His supervisor, noticing his problem, told Castillo that his injury was covered by workers’ compensation and took him to the nearest emergency room. There, no one spoke Spanish, and even with the supervisor translating for him, Castillo found the hospital intimidating and confusing. Nearly illiterate, he had trouble filling out the required forms. After waiting hours and being shuffled from room to room, his ankle, which was broken, was put in a cast.

Castillo was assigned no doctor, and follow-up care was not clearly explained to him; when it came time for the cast to be removed, he naturally went back to the emergency room. Since federal law dictates that hospitals cannot turn away people seeking care at an emergency room, the hospital had no choice but to devote emergency resources to a nonemergency situation.

Farm workers tend to have more health problems than most other groups of workers in Sonoma and Napa counties but less access to care. As a result, they often misuse the already overtaxed emergency departments or let problems get to the breaking point before finally seeking help. And because the issue has not been tracked, no one really knows how big the problem is. One thing is clear, though: as the number of migrant and farm workers increases and the cost of health insurance continues to go up, this issue will weigh more and more heavily on the North Bay’s sagging healthcare system.

Uninsured, Uniformed

The exact number of both regular and migrant farm workers in Sonoma and Napa counties is unknown. The 2000 census showed that Latinos made up 23.7 percent and 17.3 percent of Napa and Sonoma counties’ population, respectively. And few of the farm workers have health insurance, though again the numbers are sketchy. In Sonoma County, 60,000 people are estimated to be uninsured, but experts have called that number low, and no one knows how many are farm workers. Napa’s Queen of the Valley Hospital estimated that 64 percent of Latinos in Napa County are uninsured.

“No one has hard numbers on how many uninsured farm workers are in our area,” says Jeff Meckler, M.D., medical director of Alliance Medical Center in Healdsburg, which primarily serves the Hispanic population. “It depends on what type of worker you’re talking about. The undocumented workers rarely have insurance. With the documented workers, it depends on whether or not their employers offer insurance.”

But whether insured or not, Hispanic workers often have health problems related to their lifestyles. Farm workers tend to eat a lot of fast food, loaded with fat and sugar, which puts them at a greater risk of obesity and high cholesterol and in turn ups their chances of getting chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Though immediate injuries such as Efran Castillo’s broken ankle are covered by workers’ comp, other kinds of work problems can be ignored, such as ongoing back pain or foot injuries.

“We primarily see a lot of untreated chronic conditions, especially diabetes, high blood pressure, and hypertension,” says Beatrice Bostick, head of Community Health Clinic Ole, the main source of healthcare for Hispanic workers in Napa County. “Chronic illnesses are troubling to treat, because even when we diagnose a problem, it is difficult to get the workers to come back for follow-up care.”

The effect of pesticides on farm workers is also becoming a concern. A study published last year in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine showed that Hispanic farm workers in California have much higher incidents of leukemia, as well as brain, stomach, and skin cancers. The study did not, however, establish a clear link between the cancer rates and pesticide exposure.

Local doctors haven’t seen as many cases of cancer as the study suggests they would. Some speculate that this may be because pesticides used in vineyards are somewhat gentler than those used on other kinds of crops; others believe it may be because very ill workers tend to return to Mexico for treatment.

But some doctors are seeing other disturbing trends that may be linked to pesticides. Meckler, for example, has seen several cases of birth defects in the last five years. One baby was born without eyes and several others with abdominal wall closures.

“I have no idea if the birth defects we’ve seen have anything to do with pesticides or not,” he says. “It just seems like we’ve seen more than you would expect. It would be good if there was some reporting system to collect hard evidence on whether this is at all linked to pesticide exposure.”

Because migrant workers often leave family behind in Mexico when they come to the United States for economic reasons, they are often socially and emotionally isolated, which leads to high incidents of depression and other mental illnesses, some experts believe. And though there are a considerable number of programs directed at children of farm workers, a lot more could be done to ensure the children’s care.

Doctor, Doctor

With a lack of numbers on how few North Bay farm workers are getting the care they need, the problem may be worse than many realize. A study of 971 California farm workers (including those in the North Bay) by the California Institute of Rural Studies revealed that more than a third of the men had never been to a doctor in their lives. Even fewer people had dental and eye care. More than half the men and two-fifths of the women had never been to a dentist, and two-thirds of both sexes had never been to an eye doctor. Not surprisingly, nearly 70 percent of those surveyed lacked any form of health insurance, and only 7 percent were covered by a government-funded program.

But poor healthcare access for farm workers is more complicated than the fact that many employers don’t offer insurance, though that is part of the problem. In fact, some vineyards and farms do offer health insurance. Alliance Medical, for example, estimates that roughly one-quarter of its Hispanic patients are insured through their employers. Queen of the Valley Hospital estimated that nearly one-third of Napa County Latino residents have insurance.

“Some vineyard owners do provide insurance for their workers,” says Andy Demsky, spokesperson for the Napa Valley Vintner’s Association. “There is even seasonal coverage for temporary workers. It just depends on the vineyard.”

But even when employers do offer insurance, many workers can’t afford the co-payments. Because migrant workers can earn less than $10,000 a year, co-payments must compete with other more immediate needs such as food and housing. Though nearly 17 percent of those surveyed in the CIRS study said their employers offered health insurance, one-third of that amount didn’t participate in the plan because they couldn’t afford the payments.

When employees don’t have healthcare insurance, their options are greatly reduced. Legal aliens can apply for government programs such as Medi-Cal, which will cover some of their needs. Clinics like Community Health Clinic Ole and Alliance Medical will work with patients to develop a sliding-scale fee based on their income and whatever insurance they have.

As in Castillo’s case, the misuse of emergency rooms is also a common path for the poor. Since hospitals must offer care regardless of the patient’s ability to pay, many uninsured people use ERs as their primary care providers. Because of this and other factors, the majority of emergency rooms in the nation are losing money and have no way to recoup costs. And misuse adds to overcrowding in the emergency room, so that severely ill or dying patients are often turned away because the beds and resources are already in use.

Greek to Me

When it comes to dealing with being uninsured, farm workers are no worse off than other low-income workers who can’t afford healthcare. However, Mexican workers have extra obstacles that other working poor don’t have, according to Rick Mines, Ph.D., one of the researchers who worked on the CIRS study.

“The farm workers are similar to other working poor in terms of healthcare access, except they have additional cultural barriers,” he says. “These barriers are a huge problem. We found that because they don’t have these barriers, the working poor can utilize the healthcare system much better than the farm workers can.”

All such barriers are secondary to illegal aliens, who often fear that seeking healthcare will put them at risk for deportation. As a result, many will not get help unless they are very sick. But beyond this, the most obvious cultural barrier is language.

In Sonoma and Napa counties, many healthcare providers have bilingual people on staff, but they are usually in the minority. And even if there is a large bilingual staff, few specialists and doctors are bilingual. Without someone there to translate, farm workers have trouble explaining symptoms, may not understand prevention and care instructions, and can’t ask for clarification if they are confused. Put all this on top of feeling sick–sick enough to seek care when you typically avoid doing so–and it’s easy to see why language would be a huge issue for the worker to contend with. And language barriers are one of the reasons workers don’t understand what healthcare resources are available to them in the first place.

Transportation is also an issue, especially when cash-strapped workers can’t afford to take much time off work, according to Kathy Ficco, executive director of the Medical Access Program at St. Joseph Health System, Greater Sonoma County.

“We have one woman who needed to go from Roseland to Southwest Community Health Center on Lombardi Court in Santa Rosa, a 10-minute drive for you and me,” she says. “On the bus, it was an hour and a half to get to the clinic. In her case, she usually has three sick children with her. It’s very difficult for them to travel without a car.”

But perhaps more than anything else, it is the cultural strangeness of our healthcare system that keeps many workers from seeking care. To be unable to get to a healthcare provider and then explain yourself once there are both definite obstacles, but that’s nothing compared to not knowing where to go and how the system works to begin with.

In Efran Castillo’s case, uncertainty of how the local healthcare system works kept him from getting help for his ankle and made the experience confusing and intimidating when he finally did. The California Institute of Rural Studies found that most farm workers prefer Mexican healthcare, which is quite different from U.S. healthcare. Though not as accurate and careful, Mexican healthcare means less bureaucracy and waiting, fewer laboratory tests, quicker diagnosis, and immediate issuance of medicine, all by someone who, of course, speaks Spanish and shares the same cultural background as the patient.

Maria Matsen, who worked with migrant and farm workers in Napa County for 12 years and is a member of the Latina Advisory Board, feels that cultural sensitivity is the first step to reaching the throngs of unknown health problems among the farm workers.

“Yes, we have Health Clinic Ole and some other healthcare resources in Napa County, but we could do a lot better,” she says. “Cultural sensitivity is the key to understanding how this group of people works. We can’t expect them to change to our way of doing things. We would be better off teaching them how to incorporate healthier thinking into their habits. I think a lot of people in charge of some of these programs don’t understand that.”

Some providers are beginning to reach out to the silent population. Alliance Medical Center received a grant to go into the farm worker community where they plan to do health screening and educate the population on the existence of the clinic. St. Joseph’s Medical Access Program received a $500,000 grant from the California Endowment to fund a dental clinic van, which will go out into the community to offer dental care and education. The program also runs a medical unit that supplies the community with some medical care and education on issues such as cooking and prevention of diseases.

According to Ficco, St. Joseph’s Medical Access Program supplies the only vans in the North Bay that directly reach the farm worker community.

“I think that Queen of the Valley would like to have a van, and the community has told them that a van would help,” she says. “But many feel that the needs of the Hispanic population have been met. What they don’t seem to understand is that the van reaches the population the clinics aren’t reaching. We can provide newcomers with links to the clinics.”

Sick Days

Healthcare rates are still rising. Insurance rates are expected to increase for the fourth year in a row to the highest amount yet–early numbers are indicating a 25 percent increase for HMOs in 2003. As rates continue to rise, fewer employers will be able to afford healthcare insurance, and those who continue to maintain insurance are likely to pass more of the burden on to the employees. Southwest Community Health Center is already seeing 200 to 300 more patients a month as more people without insurance seek care. Next year, the clinic expects to see more patients, including middle-class patients who can no longer afford premiums.

While rates are increasing, evidence suggests that the number of migrant workers coming into the two counties is increasing as well. The Press Democrat recently reported that the number of day laborers has increased to 120 in Graton and 200 in Fulton.

What does all this mean for the farm worker? As more Mexicans come in to the area and jobs remain tighter compared to earlier years, there will be more competition for jobs, lower wages, and less health insurance.

“The problem is likely to get worse for the migrant workers before it gets better,” says Meckler.

From the May 30-June 5, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

2002 Summer Events Guide

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2002 Summer Events Guide


Bad Ass Blues: Etta James and the Roots Band rolls into the Robert Mondavi Summer Festival.

Popping the Summer Cherry

The long-awaited summer event season bursts with juice

By Davina Baum and Sara Bir

Summer in the North Bay is a panoply of pleasures, a litany of larks. For those who don’t have the luxury of three-month summer vacations, the long, sunny days go the distance in convincing us that lunch breaks in the park and early-evening bike rides down shady winding roads (swerving around the touristic masses) confer summer’s bounty well enough. But the weekend, the weekend! That’s when summer really kicks in, that’s when the choices become wrenching–when a weekend could involve rocking with Cinderella, talking water conservation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dipping fingers in some Italian street painting, and sitting back for some jazz at Rodney Strong (all June 7-9), if you plan it right.

Although there’s certainly a large something to be said for sitting in the hammock with a book all day, drinking lemonade and sucking on cherries, summer invites a certain amount of activity. Herewith, activities galore. The next few months are a wine-swilling, booty-shaking, fine-food-scarfing extravaganza, so plot it out carefully and save the relaxing for October.

May | June | July | August | September

Busy Beyond His Years: Julian Lage has a hectic summer ahead: He performs at the Jenner Concert Series, the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, and Jazz on the River.

May

Jenner Concert Series
The Jenner Theater has been upgraded and is ready to rock with local and international music, all for a great cause: Portions of proceeds benefit the Jenner Watershed Legal Fund. Heat up the dance floor with Julian Lage, the Dave Mac Nab Trio, and others. May 25-June 29. Jenner Theater, behind gas station, downtown Jenner. $15. 707.865.2771 or 707.865.1938. (SB)


Luce warms up the summer days.

Daze on the Green
A little alternative rock is just what the soul needs to get summer kick-started, and Mill Valley is happy to comply–with a little help from Sweetwater and KFOG. Benefiting the Southern County Youth Athletic and Music programs, this May 27 event rocks out with Stroke 9, Box Set, Vinyl, and Luce. Mill Valley Community Center Field, Mill Valley. Admission is $8. 415.388.2820. (DB)

Bluegrass in the Valley
If bluegrass gets you going, skip the Daze on the Green (see previous) and head straight for Sunday’s Bluegrass in the Valley. After all, proceeds benefit the same organization, and for $5 you can see Peter Rowan, the David Thom Band, the Modern Hicks, and the Alhambra Valley Band. May 26 at the Mill Valley Community Center Field, Mill Valley. 415.388.2820. (DB)


Babatunde Lea closes the Healdsburg Jazz Fest.

Healdsburg Jazz Festival
There will be a vast array of talent spreading itself around Healdsburg for the fourth annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival this year. Early birds can get warmed up on May 27 at 8pm with a prefestival benefit at the Healdsburg Hotel when film archivist Mark Cantor screens a few gems of jazz cinema. The festival officially kicks off on May 31 at the Raven Film Center (7pm and 9pm; $30) with African rhythms maestro Randy Weston in a solo piano recital. On June 1, the festivities move outdoors to the Rodney Strong Vineyard with a triple bill (noon; $35): the Cedar Walton Trio (featuring Jackie McLean), Curtis Fuller Super Band (James Williams, Javon Jackson, Michael Bowie, and Louis Hayes), and the Julian Lage Group (Art Hirahara, Todd Sickafoose, and Alan U’Ren). Before you know it, it’s over, with the festival finale on June 2 on the Healdsburg Plaza (2pm; free) with the powerfully talented Babatunde Lea Quintet. In addition to these main events, the festival offers a number of free concerts–see if you can keep up. On May 31 the Jeff Pittson Trio performs at the Healdsburg Hotel (8pm-midnight); the Eddie Marshall Quartet shakes up Felix and Louie’s on June 1 (9pm); and the Mark Levine Trio delivers a delightful jazz brunch on June 2, also at Felix and Louie’s (11am-3pm). Healdsburg Town Square. Tickets are available online at www.healdsburgjazzfestival.com or by calling 707.433.4633. (DB)

Wine Country Classic
Watch 30 of the world’s premier racing cars roar out of retirement at the Sears Point Raceway’s Wine Country Classic. From a 1915 Ford Model T to the 1985 Tyrell F1, all of the cars once competed for motor racing’s Holy Grail: the FIA Formula One World Championship. There will be hot-rod drag racing and a classic car rally through the lovely streets of Sonoma to the Plaza downtown with the Sonoma Valley Vintage Racecar Festival. May 29-June 2, Sears Point Raceway, Highways 37 and 121, Sonoma. Prices vary. 1.800.870.RACE. (SB)

Friday at Falkirk Cultural Series
No more fretting over how to kick off the weekend: San Rafael’s Falkirk Cultural Center has three Friday events all planned out for you. May 31’s “Totally Tango!” explores the dance, music, and food of Argentina. Slide into swanky old standards with June’s “Jazz Impressions of Cole Porter.” Falkirk transforms into a tiki paradise with the “Exotica Tribute to Martin Denny,” an evening of swizzle-stick contests, exotic drinks, and onstage totem carving. May 31-July 26, times vary. Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Ave., San Rafael. $15 general; $13 Falkirk members. 415.485.3327. (SB)


Photograph by Joy Phoenix

Artist Genna Panzarella makes street magic.

June

Heritage Festival
If the varieties of food don’t get you (catfish, pad thai, ableskiver, kringle, borscht, baklava, cabbage rolls) then perhaps the dancing will (Greek line dancing, Thai dance and boxing, African American stomp). Or maybe it’s the world-wise handicrafts that will have you running for the Petaluma Community Center on June 1 to attend this first annual Multicultural Heritage Day. Petaluma Community Center, 320 N. McDowell Blvd., Petaluma. $8 adults. 707.763.9556. (DB)

Art at the Source
Open studios are an amazing thing, a rare chance to see artists in their native habitat. This year’s Art at the Source is especially celebratory as Sebastopol Center for the Arts recently inaugurated their new, expanded headquarters. Over two weekends (June 1-2, June 8-9), 92 artists and craftspeople will swing open their barn doors, chicken coops, lofts, or studios, and allow curious visitors to observe how they live and work. It’s entirely individualized: You can see one studio, or you can see them all (good luck!). Develop your own self-guided tour by visiting the Center’s preview exhibit or by looking at the catalog online at www.artatthesource.org. Sebastopol Center for the Arts is at 6780 Depot St., Sebastopol. 707.829.4797. (DB)

Marin Home Show
While you’re shopping for corian, shiny faucets, and the latest in recycled building material at the Marin Home Show on June 1-2, you might feel a little bump in your step, a little wiggle in your rear. It’s not the bulldozer demonstration shaking things up–it’s the jazz bands, of course. With acts like the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra and Rex Allen’s Swing Express playing, home and garden improvement has never seemed so satisfying. Marin Center Civic Center, San Rafael. $6. Check www.marinhomeshow.com for more information. 415.472.3500. (DB)

Valley of the Moon Art Association Art Show
On the super-quaint Sonoma Plaza, artists will offer their wares. This is an all-weekend event, but if you go on Sunday you can partake in the Ox Roast (see below). June 1-2, Sonoma Plaza, Sonoma. 707.996.1090. (SB)

37th Annual Ox Roast
The roasting in question is just not any ox–it’s a massive barbecue of Harris Ranch beef in Sonoma’s Plaza. Add corn on the cob, Sonoma Valley wines, and the Valley of the Moon Art Association’s art show to the equation, and you have yourself a damn fine afternoon. Stroll the plaza, roasted ox and wine in hand, and browse through local artists’ booths. The handpainted Sonoma Valley cows you may have spotted hanging around the Valley (don’t worry, they’re fiberglass, not living) will be lined up in front of city hall, mooing along with the jazz and rock bands playing. Sunday, June 2, 11am-5pm, Sonoma Plaza, Sonoma. 707.996.1090. (SB)

Healthful Living Extravaganza
If the doleful winter months have seen you planted firmly on the couch with a TV dinner on one side and a beer on the other, it’s time to learn a little bit about the benefits of healthful living. At this Healthful Living Extravaganza at the Napa County Fairgrounds on June 2, speakers such as Howard Lyman (“the Mad Cowboy”), the Benton Sisters, and Hans Diehl will put their best feet forward, sharing the knowledge of healthful living to all and sundry. Napa County Fairgrounds, Tubbs Building, 1435 N. Oak St., Calistoga. $10 donation. Preregistration is advised. Call 707.987.3995. (DB)

Hit the Road Jack Run
This 10K run, a certified ASATF course, is about as lovely as you can get, scenerywise. For you walkers and runners who just don’t feel like running a whole 10K, there’s a 2.2-mile course for y’all. Sunday, June 2, 8am. Sonoma Plaza, Sonoma. $17 adults; $13 ages 16 and under, if registration is postmarked by May 23. $20/$15, on day of the race. For more information, call 707.938.8544. (SB)

Virginia Woolf Conference
This isn’t your typical summer festival: no cotton candy or roller coasters, no smooth jazz in the sun, just hundreds of like-minded literary folk celebrating the talent of Virginia Woolf. A variety of multimedia presentations, including a musical essay, a dance performance, panels, films, and of course readings aplenty. June 6-9, Sonoma State University, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. 707.664.2882. (DB)


Photograph by Marina Chavez

Don’t stop believin’ in Journey.

Konocti Field
Konocti is going all out this year, serving as the one-stop concert venue for all the aging rockers out there. The lineup is jaw-dropping in all its hair band glory: Meat Loaf (July 6), Scorpions and Deep Purple (July 31), Lynyrd Skynyrd (Aug. 2), Heart (Aug. 3), Journey (Aug. 23), Sammy Hagar (Sept. 1). Did I forget to mention a triple bill of Poison, Cinderella, and Winger (June 7)? Make sure your lighters work, tease your hair out to there, and dig out the daisy dukes. 8727 Soda Bay Road, Kelseyville. 800.660.LAKE. (DB)

Sonoma Odyssey Bayou Boogie
Thirty Russian River wineries uncork their best at the Sonoma Odyssey, a gala replete with a Sonoma-style barbecue, a silent and live wine auction, and boogie tunes from Gator Beat (I don’t think they will be serving any gator, sadly). Proceeds go to the Sonoma County Wine Library. Psst! You gotta make reservations. Saturday, June 8, 3pm. Richard’s Grove and Saralee’s Vineyard, 3575 Slusser Road, Windsor. $30 WLASC members; $40 nonmembers. 707.837.2816. (SB)


Voices In Harmony: Copper Wimmin’s a cappella stylings will ring through the Health and Harmony Festival.

Health and Harmony Festival
From the Goddess Temple to the psychic readers to the Inner Peace Meditation Garden, there’s no lack of healing energy at this year’s Health and Harmony Festival (June 8-9 at Sonoma County Fairgrounds). Harness that energy and direct it toward the five stages, where ongoing entertainment encourages lots of wriggle dancing and harmonious swaying. Let the music move you, man. Daytime entertainment on Saturday includes the Robben Ford Band, Copper Wimmin, and Lost at Last, among others. On Sunday, groove to Taj Mahal, Jai Uttal and the Pagan Love Orchestra, and more. Saturday night kicks in with the Techno Tribal Community Dance. The festival’s theme, “One Planet, One People, One Peace at a Time,” will be expanded upon by speakers Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Casey. Admission is $17-$20; $20-$25 for Saturday evening’s dance. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Santa Rosa. 707.547.9355. (DB)

Italian Street Painting Festival
The streets of San Rafael burst into color during the Youth in Arts Italian Street Painting Festival. The event brings together 400 professional and student madonnari (street painters) and is modeled after a festival in Grazie di Curtatone, Italy. Besides live music and tasty treats, there’s a “Festival Mercato” (that’s “market” to you) and a “Children’s Avenue,” where junior can become a madonnari, too. Saturday and Sunday, June 8-9, 9am-6pm. Fifth and A streets, San Rafael. 415.457.4878. (SB)

Petaluma Art and Garden Festival
This is a brand-new festival that aims to provide a stylish and fun atmosphere for shoppers to get acquainted with downtown Petaluma. Food and winetastings, children’s art activities, an art display and sale, and a garden sale will compose the merriment–and there’s live entertainment, too. Sunday, June 9, 9am-6pm, A Street parking lot and Kentucky Avenue, Petaluma. 707.762.9348. (SB)


Hiroshima’s smooth jazz accompanies smooth wine.

Rodney Strong Vineyards Summer Concert Series
Smooth jazz pairs perfectly with big, fruity Chardonnay. How convenient that Rodney Strong would offer the two in the same place. The 2002 Concert Series starts on June 9 at 3pm with Richard Elliot, Warren Hill, Marc Antoine, and Jeff Golub. The summer event moves slowly toward harvest season with Bobby Caldwell and Joyce Cooling (June 29, 3pm), Hiroshima and Strunz & Farrah (July 20, 4pm), and Dave Koz and Friends (Aug. 18, 3pm). 11455 Old Redwood Hwy., Healdsburg. 707.431.0919. (DB)

Napa Valley Opera House
On Friday, June 14, at 8pm, the halls of the Napa Valley Opera House will ring out with song for the first time in 88 years. And what a song it will be. Grammy Award-winner Dianne Reeves will reinaugurate the site in fine fashion. Other events planned for the newly renovated opera house include a community showcase of local talent on June 15 and a celebration of Cole Porter songs on June 16. Mark Levine and the Latin Tinge perform on June 18, and Dix Bruce and Jim Nunally take the stage on June 21. 1030 Main St., Napa. 707.22.OPERA. (DB)

Marin Art Festival
Between the Marin Lagoon and the Marin Civic Center in the heart of San Rafael, the Marin Arts Festival promises a relaxed atmosphere and elegant ambiance. Over 200 local artists’ work–paintings, jewelry, glassware, and more–reflect the character of Marin. There’ll be jazz quartets, hands-on art projects for children, and international cuisine in the dining pavilion. If you can’t get Dad to come out, you can at least do some Father’s Day shopping there. June 15-16, Marin Center, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael. $8. 415.472.3500. (SB)

Napa County Landmarks Walking Tours
This tour was made for walking! Learn about Napa County’s rich history, and stretch your legs a little in the process. Historians guide you through the architectural styles and forgotten stories buried under the familiar facades of Calistoga Avenue, Napa’s Mansion District, downtown Yountville, and St. Helena. There’s even a tour of Tulocay Cemetery for those of you who are more into human mortality then Gothic Revival and Queen Anne. The Saturday tours (you missed the first one, ha ha!) stretch into the early fall, so there’s plenty of opportunity to get in on the walking. June 15-October 22, 9:45am. Starting locations vary. $7 general; $2 children 3-12. 707.255.1836. (SB)

Sonoma-Marin Fair
The Petaluma Fairgrounds gets a shot of retro rock at the Sonoma-Marin Fair (June 19-23) with the dulcet tones of the Beach Boys, the reigning king of ’80s rock Eddie Money, and smooth-sailing Christopher Cross. Music’s not all there is on offer. The wine competition allows local wineries to go head to head with their neighbors, while the technology pavilion promotes 21st-century knowledge. Of course, the traditional fair accoutrements–hot dogs, cotton candy, and roller coasters–will not be in short supply. Petaluma Fairgrounds, Petaluma. $12. 707.283.FAIR. (DB)


Harvey Cohen’s seed packet art springs up at the San Anselmo Art Fest.

San Anselmo Art Festival
Stroll lovely San Anselmo, sampling fine food, taking in local craftspeople’s bounty of loot, and soaking in the warm, summer sun. For a reprieve from the heat, jump into one of San Anselmo’s 130 antique dealers. Perhaps you’ll find a bargain on an antique hand fan. June 22-23, 10am-6pm. San Anselmo Ave., between Bolinas and Tamalpais streets. 510.970.3217. (DB)


The Preservation Hall Jazz Band swings at Mondavi.

Robert Mondavi Winery Summer Festival
This year’s lineup is killer, bringing in a such a string of legendary talent that it’s mind-boggling. The festival kicks off with Omara Portuondo accompanied by the 13 Buena Vista Social Club band members, then marches into Independence Day (OK, not really–it’s July 6) with New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Boz Scaggs, jazzman Dave Brubeck, and Etta James and the Roots Band round out the season’s events. All proceeds from the concerts are donated to the Napa Valley Symphony, and you, my friend, get to spend intermission dabbling in Mondavi wines and Sonoma Jack cheeses. June 22-Aug. 10, Robert Mondavi Winery, Highway 29, Oakville. $42-$95. For tickets, call 888.769.5299; for concert information, call 888.RMONDAVI. (SB)

Mill Valley Wine and Gourmet Food Tasting
What better pairing is there than food and wine? Food alone is fine, maybe a little bland, and wine alone is OK–but together they work magic. On June 23 (1-4pm), Mill Valley’s Lytton Square becomes a gourmet paradise, with over 70 local wines and 35 food producers and restaurants. It’s a gourmand’s dream. $25 advance; $28 day of event. 415.388.8466. (DB)

Concerts in the Park
Bring out the blanket and relax on yo’ can or shake your booty to the groove (it depends on whose playing, I suppose). Novato’s free Concerts in the Park (Pioneer Park, that is) span from Japanese drumming to rock and roll oldies to Dixieland jazz. June 23-Sept. 29. 415.897.4323. (SB)

Windsor Summer Nights on the Green
Make tracks to the Windsor Town Green for summer markets featuring about 38 vendors including Windsor Farmers Market, Willie Bird turkey barbecue, Pasta King pasta, Bear Republic root beer and root beer floats, live music on the bandstand, and Jubilee Jumps for the kids. Buy your vegetables and flowers for the weekend, and have dinner for around $5, all to the sounds of live music. June 27-Aug. 22, 5-8pm. Windsor Town Green, Windsor. 707.838.5382. (SB)

Jarvis Conservatory Zarzuela
The 2002 season of Jarvis Conservatory’s Zarzuela Festival (a zarzuela being an operatic Spanish performance with musicians, singers, and dancers) brings this lost art to life with two productions packed into one evening: Gigantes y Cabezudos and La Alegria de la Huerta. June 28-30. Times vary. Jarvis Conservatory, 1711 Main St., Napa. $45-$30. 707.255.5445. (SB)

Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival
Once again, people gather to commemorate and celebrate the legacy of singer-songwriter Kate Wolf. Three days on a beautiful ranch with an array of talent: Greg Brown, Utah Phillips, Bruce Cockburn, Nanci Griffith, and Kathy Mattea, among others. It’s a worthy celebration. Ticket prices range. Call 707.829.7067 for the full story, or go online at www.monitor.net/kate. Black Oak Ranch, Laytonville. (DB)


Photograph by John Livzey

Booker T. Jones sings the blues on the river.

Russian River Blues Festival
Guerneville hosts the Russian River Blues Festival (June 29-30) again this year, and again it’s not to be missed. The big-name event includes contemporary blues vocalist Robert Cray, San Francisco favorite Tommy Castro, Coco Montoya, Deborah Coleman, Kenny Neal–and that’s only Saturday. On Sunday, the Bobby Blue Band, the W. C. Handy Award All-Stars (featuring Joe Louis Walker, Billy Bob Arnold, Maria Muldaur, Duke Robillard, and the inimitable Ruth Brown), Booker T. Jones, the Elvin Bishop Band, and Mighty Sam McClain take the stage. Johnson’s Beach, Guerneville. $35-$170. 510.655.9471. (DB)


Boys Of Summer: The Beach Boys perform at the Sonoma County Fair.

July

Marin County Fair
Hot July days cool off pretty quickly when the water gets splashing, and the Marin County Fair aims its nozzle directly at you on July 4 weekend (July 3-7, to be exact). This year’s theme, “Wa-ter Way to Go!”, might be a linguistic stretch, but it hits the right spot. In addition to all the water-related activities (like water-tasting contests, watershed exhibits, and the Great American Duck Water Race) and the rollicking carnival rides, the musical entertainment makes a big splash, with stars like Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, and Natalie MacMaster (July 3); Preservation Hall Jazz Band (July 4); John Kay and Steppenwolf (July 5); and Mickey Hart and Bembe Orisha (July 6). 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael. $9-$11. 415.499.6400.

Green Music Festival
Sonoma State University’s Green Music Festival begins with a red, white, and blue bang on July 4. “Independence Day on the Green” promises the best fireworks in Sonoma County set to patriotic standards and Wild West film favorites. “A Midsummer Night on the Green” on Aug. 3 presents the Santa Rosa Symphony with pianist Jeffrey Kahane touring Europe through classical music. Aug. 4, get hot and spicy with “Cuban Jazz and Salsa on the Green.” There’s also a new Chamber Music Series and a special visual arts event, the largest exhibition of Ansel Adams’ photographs ever presented north of the Golden Gate Bridge, with an emphasis on Northern California and Sonoma County. Sonoma State University, 1801 East Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. 707.546.8742. (SB)

Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival
With a brand new venue at Riverbend Plaza in downtown Napa, the Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival presents the comedy As You Like It and the tragedy Othello for their 2002 season, showing both the broody and the bawdy sides of the Bard. Bring a picnic, quaff some wine, and see the works of Will in a casual comfort the stinky peasants of the Globe Theatre could not have even dreamed of. July 5-Aug. 11, Riverbend Plaza, Napa Mill, 500 Main St., Napa. $24-$18 general. 707.251.WILL. (SB)

Art in the Park
Free music outdoors–it’s what summer’s all about (well, that’s what these listings would lead you to believe). Grab that blanket and make tracks to Juilliard Park in Santa Rosa for the Art in the Park Sunday performance series, featuring local musicians–jazz from the Heavies, the Spanish guitar of David Correa and Cascada, and Caribbean steel drums with Shabang–paired with culinary samples from fine area restaurants. A silent auction of original artwork tops off the series, and don’t forget your second annual series T-shirt, available for sale (after all, what is an arts event without a T-shirt to go with it?). July 7-Aug. 25, 5-7pm. Juilliard Park, 227 Santa Rosa Ave., Santa Rosa. Free. 707.543.3737. (SB)

Sonoma County Showcase of Wine and Food
Living to excess is what this lavish weekend (July 11-13) is all about, allowing you to indulge your every wine and food whim. This year’s theme embraces the cultures and flavors of Asia and the Pacific Rim, so delectable items will be tantalizingly plated and wine glasses will spilleth over with the bounty of the vine. The experience, while not cheap (individual events run $50-$225), encompasses a wide range of events, including “appellation experience,” winery dinners, a live auction, and a gala performance on Saturday night by the San Francisco Symphony. Call for reservations, locations, and ticket prices. 800.939.7666. (DB)

Wine Country Film Festival
Offering “films alfresco,” the Wine Country Film Festival is kind of like a drive-in movie without the car and with Sauvignon Blanc and canapès instead of soda and popcorn. Under the stars and in the vineyard with a great screen towering over them, festivalgoers last year were treated to films from the world over. This year the Wine Country Film Festival moves to a new venue at Domaine Chandon in Yountville, with both outdoor and indoor theaters. Domaine Chandon will become a Film Festival Village for two weekends, complete with a Cine Cafe. The festival’s final run moves back to its old digs in Glen Ellen’s idyllic Jack London State Historic Park and Sonoma’s Sebastiani Theatre. July 18-Aug. 11. 707.935.3456. (SB)

Marin Shakespeare Company
The Marin Shakespeare Company veers slightly off the Shakespeare path this year to present A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, directed by author-director Douglas Rushkoff. The mystical, whimsical play–featuring Arabic music, dancing, and a flourish of magic–will be shown in repertory with a piece more in line with the company’s Shakespearean past, Much Ado about Nothing (July 19-Aug. 25). The season ends with a bang with the classic Macbeth (Sept. 6-28). Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, Dominican University, San Rafael. 415.499.4488. (DB)

Sonoma County Fair
Ride the Zipper! Eat funnel cakes with strawberries and whipped cream! See the goats and the flowers! Participate in the Beach Boys lip-sync contest! Witness Charo and Tower of Power perform live and in person! Throw Ping-Pong balls at 100 goldfish bowls and miss every time! Win a 3-foot-tall fluorescent green stuffed alien! And “Ride the Wave to the Sonoma County Fair” (this year’s theme, by the way). July 23-Aug. 5, Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa. $5 general; $2 kids 12-7; free 6 and under. 707.545.4200. (SB)


Keb Mo sings out for solar living.

August

Music in the Vineyards
The eighth annual Napa Valley Chamber Music Festival’s name is a bit misleading: the concerts are not literally out among the vines, but in the stately ambiance of winery settings where audiences can experience chamber music in the intimate surroundings it was originally composed for. A roster of nationally known artists in residence (e.g., the Kronos Quartet) cozy up in host wineries including RMS Brandy Distillery, Clos Pegase, and the Hess Collection. Performances take place each weekend on Saturdays and Sundays, beginning late in the afternoon or early evening, and include a winetasting at intermission. Midweek events feature new chamber music concerts, recitals, lecture demonstrations. The two open rehearsals are free and available to the public. Aug. 7-25. $25 per concert. Call 707.578.5656 for information, 800.965.4827 for tickets. (SB)

Russian River RoadRunner Road Trip
This road trip involves neither cars nor running–but this celebration of the Russian River Wine Road does involve plenty of wine. Over 40 Russian River wineries will gather at the Road Trip to pour tastings for guests, who will also be able to munch their way through gourmet Sonoma County foods and a barbecue courtesy of the Western Boot Steakhouse. Wine seminars, a scavenger hunt, and silent and live auctions mark the day’s events, all topped off with live Western swing music, making this the summer’s most effortless road trip. Saturday, Aug. 10, 12-4pm. Kendall-Jackson Wine Center, 5007 Fulton Road, Fulton. $50 general; $35 RoadRunner members. 800.723.6336. (SB)

Sonoma County Dixie Jazz Festival
Traditional Dixie jazz explodes at the Rohnert Park Doubletree Hotel on Aug. 16-18. From ragtime to hot dance to Dixieland, the foot stomping will rattle the floors and shake the skirts. Three days, four stages, 13 bands will leave the traditional jazz fan sated–at least until the next year’s festival. Bands include Steve Waddell’s Creole Bells, the Jazz Salvation Company, Clint Baker’s New Orleans Jazz Band, Cell Block Seven, and the New Orleans Wanderers. Tickets are $20-$80. Doubletree Hotel, 101 Golf Course Drive, Rohnert Park. 707.539.3494. (DB)

Cotati Accordion Festival
In what is perhaps the best summer music event in all of Northern California, the Cotati Accordion Festival allows lucky festivalgoers to experience the beauty that is the accordion. From its intricate mother-of-pearl inlays to its sonorous exhalations, the humble squeezebox deserves all the lovin’ it can get. And it gets a lot this weekend (Aug. 24-25) at Cotati’s central square, with every possible style of accordion playing imaginable. Polkacide, Dick Contino, and the lovely Lady of Spain are not-to-be-missed highlights. Cotati Town Square, Cotati. $10. 707.664.0444. (DB)

Pacific Coast Air Museum Air Show
The PCAM honors Americans who fought and sacrificed to protect our country with “The Sound of Freedom”, the theme for 2002’s air show on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 24-25. The emphasis on vintage warbirds will include formation flybys and aerobatics throughout the show. Skydive Santa Rosa’s parachute jump follows preshow demonstrations of model airplane aerobatics. Along with memorabilia, vendors, and a pancake breakfast, SmokeN Thunder Jet Car and Dennis Sander’s Sea Fury will also be there–and while I have no idea what those are, they sound interesting. Aug. 24-25, Charles M. Schultz Sonoma County Airport, 2330 Airport Blvd., Santa Rosa. 707.575.7900. (SB)

Solar and Good Living Festival
Organic food, workshops, exhibits, music, and fun for the kids–all this to celebrate and educate about one of the most important needs this world has: renewable energy. Speakers include Amy Goodman, host of radio’s Democracy Now; Paul Hawken, founder of Smith and Hawken; David Freeman, advisor to Governor Davis on energy issues; and, for the star power, actress Shelley Duvall. Entertainment includes Keb Mo and Todd Snider. Check out the bicycle-powered stage, and get inspired to make some changes yourself. Aug. 24-25, Real Goods Solar Living Center, Hopland. (DB)


Photograph by Bruce Burr

Poncho Sanchez joins Arturo Sandoval at Kendall-Jackson.

Kendall-Jackson Outdoor Concerts
It’s said that music soothes the soul and the savage beast. Highly undocumented (and largely fabricated) is the rumor of music soothing the much-lauded grapevine. But if true, the fruit at Kendall-Jackson will swell and plump with the rollicking southern blues of the Neville Brothers and the Blind Boys of Alabama (Aug. 31, 3pm), and the searing Latin jazz of Arturo Sandoval and Poncho Sanchez (Sept. 28, 3pm). High rollers can opt for the reserved seating, which includes a split of wine and lunch ($88); lawn seating is $42. 5007 Fulton Road, Santa Rosa. 707.546.3600. (DB)

Sausalito Arts Festival
It’s the 50th year for the Sausalito Fine Arts Festival, rated America’s No. 1 outdoor fine art festival. The festival draws 60,000 attendees, who gather on the waterfront to experience world-class art and the big-draw music acts gracing the entertainment stage. This being an arts festival, there’s 20,000 original works of art by over 270 artists, plus gourmet tasty things and fine wines. Aug. 31-Sept. 2, Bay Model Visitor Center and Marinship Park, Sausalito. $15 general; $7 seniors; $5 kids. 415.331.3757. (SB)


Sex You Up: Al Jarreau kicks back at Jazz on the River.

September

Tomato Festival
Cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, pear tomatoes, tomato tomatoes. . . . Savor over 150 varieties of homegrown tomatoes in the prime of ripeness. The sixth annual Tomato Festival, a benefit for North Bay school gardens, also offers swing dancing, garden tours, an art show, winetasting, and gourmet foods. Tickets include food sampling, four winetasting tickets, logo wine glass, and a tasting tray. Sept. 7, 11am-4pm. Kendall-Jackson Wine Center, 5007 Fulton Road, Santa Rosa. $40 advance purchase only. 707.525.6217. (SB)

Jazz on the River
Soak in the warm weather, the warm water, and the warm sounds of cool jazz Sept. 7-8 at Jazz on the River in Guerneville. Saturday’s entertainment includes sexy soul crooner Al Jarreau, smoky-voiced Julia Fordham, as well as Peter White, Joey DeFrancesco, and the Benny Barth Trio. On Sunday, get the lawn chairs out for Rodney James, Rick Braun (with an all-star band including Steve Turre, Javon Jackson, and Cedar Walton), David Sanchez, and 14-year-old Julian Lage. Tickets can be bought per day at $37.50-$90, or a two-day package for $70-$180. 510.655.9471. Johnson’s Beach, Guerneville. 510.655.9471. (DB)

From the May 23-29, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Spider-Man’

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‘Spider-Man’


Arachnid Love: He’s more sexy than the Fly, more svelte than the Hulk.

Web Master

The ‘real’ Spider-Man has his say

Writer David Templeton takes interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate postfilm conversation. This is not a review; rather, it’s a freewheeling, tangential discussion of life, alternative ideas, and popular culture.

It’s late afternoon in Baltimore on the opening day of Spider-Man, and Dan Poole’s cell phone won’t stop ringing. Across the country, armies of thrill-seeking matinee-goers have already spent millions to catch the long-anticipated movie version of the classic Marvel comic book. Right now, thousands of internet junkies are hotly debating the movie’s controversial organic web shooters (in the original comic book, Spider-Man shoots webs from mechanical gizmos he invents himself). Poole himself caught the first Baltimore screening of the day, and now, not long after, his friends and fans are calling up to get his reaction to the movie.

But they’ll have to wait, because Dan Poole–the guerrilla filmmaker and comic-book fan commonly known as the “real Spider-Man”–is tied up, energetically describing that response to me.

And here it is: Spider-Man, the movie–directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, and Kirsten Dunst–very nearly drove Poole up a wall.

Literally. Of course, Poole is a guy who has actually climbed walls.

“It was very hard to sit still through,” he admits with a laugh. “It did make me want to climb something or swing from something. But I just sat there, wanting so badly to have been in it!”

That desire–to be in a Spider-Man movie–is what inspired Poole 10 years ago to shoot his own stunt-filled, crudely shot Spidey adventure, The Green Goblin’s Last Stand. Poole’s movie–in which he dons a Spider-Man suit to scale real buildings and dangle from incredibly high bridges–has made him a legend among independent filmmakers. Now, a self-made documentary about Poole’s exploits, titled The Real Spider-Man: The Making of ‘The Green Goblin’s Last Stand,’ has become a certified film-festival phenomenon, snagging two awards during January’s edgy No-Dance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

“So,” I ask, “what’s it like to be Spider-Man?”

“Well, climbing walls is a lot of fun,” he says. “I gotta tell you, though, that climbing in that costume is not easy. The mask is a bit suffocating and your eyes tend to get fogged up. But swinging–swinging from bridges, swinging from building to building–that’s when I really feel like Spider-Man. In this new movie, whenever Tobey Maguire is swinging, climbing, or jumping, it just made me feel so . . . envious. I could identify with those moments.”

“OK, let me ask you straight,” I say. “Did you like Spider-Man?”

“Damn! I loved it!” he confesses at considerable volume. “Ain’t nobody going to be saying too much bad shit about this one. It’s good. I give it an A minus.

“I have some reservations,” Poole continues. “I hated the Green Goblin’s mask. Willem Dafoe’s face is scary enough without a mask. And of course there’s never going to be any excuse for the organic web shooters. No excuse.”

“Hey, if I were bitten by a genetically engineered spider and mutated into a half-spider, half-man, I’d want organic web shooters,” I reply.

“OK. Look,” Poole replies, “when you read a couple titles a month of a particular character like I have, you absorb the parameters of the character and you expect others to be faithful to those parameters. His name is Peter Parker. His superhero name is Spider-Man. He builds his own mechanical web shooters. He never shoots web fluid out of his wrists or his ass or his nose or anything. You gotta do it the way it’s written. It’s history. Sure, it’s pop-culture history, but it has touched millions of people and you simply don’t mess with it. Otherwise, why not call him Bruce Parker? Why not call him Spider-Guy?

“Anyway,” he goes on, “other than those quibbles with the movie, you can’t deny how well Sam Raimi treated the material. You can’t deny that Raimi is a fan.”

I ask Poole to explain what it is about Spider-Man that makes people so passionate.

“Other superheroes–Batman, Superman, guys like that–are always sexy and alluring,” Poole explains. “They can almost do no wrong–the Hulk being one exception, I should add. But Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, is a character that people identify with because he is so real. He’s got problems. Peter Parker is not somebody people feel like they want to be. Peter Parker is somebody we feel like we are.

“Anyway,” adds the real Spider-Man, “That’s how I feel.”

From the May 23-29, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Gender And Art

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Gender And Art

For The Birds: An example of Amy Wilson’s earlier work, ‘Quiver’ flourishes and flirts with bold, macho strokes.

Why Chromosome

Should we talk about gender when we look at art?

By Gretchen Giles

The once bustling Rohnert Park campus of the Next Level Communications offices is now like a ghost village–it’s really too big to just be a town. One building is completely closed, and the other has a few anxious executives and many empty cubicles tuned to the unearthly hum of computer servers stacked in dust-free rooms. The lights are dimmed to save energy, and in this shadowy enclave of sapped enigma quietly glow the energetic, vital forms of an elderly man whose obsession with the line, the triangle, and the circle will evidently never be sapped.

Healdsburg painter Horst Trave, now 83 and one of the founding members of the San Francisco school of Abstract Expressionism, exhibits a full-length retrospective of his career, titled “The Objective Eye,” here through November. Walking the halls, listening to my own heels ring out in the humming silence, I too am gratefully immersed in the line, the triangle, and the circle. Though Trave’s canvases are titled by the date that he completes each one, there is a timelessness to the work that seems to refute one painting being 30 years old and another more recent. Reds put to canvas in 1976 echo the reds he marked in 1958, which harken his crimsons for the new millennium.

The deep rejection Trave has to subjectivity, to representation, to any aesthetic concern that can’t be completely answered and examined within the confines of each individual canvas is relentless and stunning. While entropy reigns in the halls of a devolving tele-economy, a fresh demanding spirit–some of it 60 years old–frankly breathes from the walls.

I turn a corner. The Trave paintings end, and the curatorial team is hanging another’s work. Brightly colored with recognizable forms and an almost giddy air, these paintings contrast sharply with Trave’s luminous world. I give a quick glance and literally sniff to myself in irritation. “Women’s work,” I think with fast disdain and physically turn away.

Stupendously, enormously, shamefully wrong. The work that I so ridiculously dismissed as being a woman’s–and therefore an irritant–is by the late William Morehouse, one of the “Sonoma Four” group that included William Wheeler, Jack Stuppin, and Tony King. These four artists turned the somewhat fey pleasures of plein air painting–a genre itself criticized as being indulged in by Sunday dabblers–into a ripe masculine opportunity for drink, travel, and riotous argument.

My snap error was an instantaneous private thought. But why should the erroneous perception that a painting was created by a woman make me enjoy it any less, particularly since I’ve never been aware of considering an artist’s gender otherwise?

San Francisco artist Amy Wilson is all over this. Exhibiting seven paintings under the title “Curve and Flourish” at the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art through June 30, Wilson sets out to exactly produce “woman’s” work and thereby aims to uproot any such lingering thoughts by simply blasting them out–in the prettiest way possible.

Working on massive canvases, roughly as big as she is at 5’8″, Wilson has carefully chosen a “feminine” color palette of delicate greens, pinks, and purples. And her womanly themes–food, food, sex, food, decoration, food, sex–are in direct opposition to what she feels to be a macho element in painting, best exemplified by the explosive works of such postwar artists practicing Abstract Expressionism as Jackson Pollock.

“I call it Power Puff art,” Wilson says cheerily of her oeuvre by phone from her San Francisco studio. “My premise is that we do interpret form in terms of gender, totally apart from subject matter itself. My idea was to identify colors, shapes, and lines that are perceived as being feminine and then make a painting that could also be identified that way. They’re almost Abstract Expressionist parody paintings,” she says.

Gay Dawson, director of SMOVA, suggests that Abstract Expressionism is known for “an uncontrolled, raw, spontaneous, almost childlike aesthetic” that Wilson upends. According to Dawson, Wilson seems to ask, “How can I make a painting with the opposite values and still have a presence in the room?”

Dr. Susan Landauer, chief curator of the San Jose Museum of Art and author of The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, cites Franz Kline as an example of a gender-based artist of the past. “[He] was known for his big brush and very masculine work,” Landauer says. “His paintings encapsulated the power that was seen to be expressing America’s brawn to the rest of the world after WWII. That kind of muscular heroics was common in the work of the New York school [of Abstract Expressionism]. A lot of it came from a sense of machismo.”

Citing just four women who were involved in the movement centered around the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), Landauer agrees, “there was a definite bias against women.”

But surely that’s changed? Wilson, who received her MFA in 1999, says, “When I was in graduate school, I had done these very decorative works. I showed them in a seminar and the teacher said, ‘These are likeable but not respectable.’ I felt like he was speaking to the prettiness of the work and that, frankly, he wouldn’t have said this to a male student.”

Well, pretty is as pretty does, and such paintings of Wilson’s as Fancy, Sweet Thing, and Bustle do first and foremost please the eye. Mannered, exact, in some cases verging on the obsessive (as with her older decorative abstracts such as Quiver and Creeper), they seem to be about voluptuousness, comfort, and, perhaps, the well-appointed pleasures of a ’50s-era dinner party, the hostess a vision in sheer apron and heels serving one of those froufrou desserts found on old recipe cards.

But my goodness, isn’t that a baby-bottle nipple pierced with lacy fillip in Bustle? Doesn’t Sweet Thing offer two white thighs scooped hugely onto an ice cream dish with a large pink pudendum rising horribly up between them, a pubic frizz scorched atop? Is that bacon snaking nastily up the walls in Quiver? And doesn’t Fancy appear to have a yellowed bone upended in the confectionery fun, a line of merry peppermints cascading innocently right through the marrow?

“They’re subversive,” Wilson agrees with a chuckle. “I want them to be seductive in a way, something that’s offering itself up to be consumed.”

And then perhaps spat out again, when a tasty nugget of poison is gingerly tongued.

But wait, now that I’m having subconscious thoughts bubble to the surface, I wonder why Trave continues to follow a path of objective examination he started some 60 years ago, and why Wilson uses painting to express her modern feminism. Shouldn’t he have done it all by now? Shouldn’t she be making videos or hanging artfully from the rafters in a warehouse somewhere?

Why, in short, paint at all–male or female?

Trave has said that he does it for no better reason than it makes him “feel human,” which is certainly reason enough.

Wilson responds, “I ask myself that question all the time. If you really have some kind of message, traditional art galleries aren’t really the place to get it out. And painting occupies the same place in the art world that women do in the real world, at least in some other countries. But paint,” she pauses, considering the sensual reward of actually using the stuff, “is generous.”

If only we could all be as wide-spirited as a tube of acrylics.

‘Horst Trave: The Objective Eye’ runs through November at Next Level Communications, 6085 State Farm Drive, Rohnert Park. By appointment only. 707.874.1919. ‘Curve and Flourish: The Biomorphism of Amy Wilson’ exhibits through June 30 at the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, 50 Mark West Springs Road. Hours are Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm; Sundays, 1-4pm. Special Thursday evening hours, 5-8pm, are free. Admission is $2 for nonmembers. 707.527.0297.

From the May 23-29, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Sonoma County Ecological Footprint Project

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Sonoma County Ecological Footprint Project

Ballooning Out Of Control: Mathis Wackernagel demonstrates how resources can be stretched to the breaking point.

Photograph by Scott Hess


Dangerous Feet

North Bay Environmentalists meet to compare footprints

So how big is yours?” That was the question on everyone’s lips when several dozen environmentalists, scientists, and North Bay community leaders came together on May 10 for a three-hour conference focusing almost entirely on feet. Or to be specific, footprints. Ecological footprints.

The rather unusual public meeting–sponsored by Sustainable Sonoma County, headquartered in Sebastopol, and the Oakland-based Redefining Progress–marked the big moment for the Sonoma County Ecological Footprint Project. As announced last November, the project was launched in order to calculate the size of Sonoma County’s ecological footprint and to compare it to the average national and international footprints and the footprints of neighboring counties.

We’re not talking about shoe sizes.

Simply put, your ecological footprint–an idea developed about 10 years ago by activist and author Mathis Wackernagel, director of Redefining Progress–is a calculation of the demand an individual puts on nature, based on the average amount of resources one consumes. Taking into account such things as transportation, housing, and food, each footprint is expressed in terms of acres. The more stuff one uses up, the bigger one’s footprint. In this case, bigger is not better.

Wackernagel, appearing early on in the conference to announce his findings, provided a bit of context by first informing the crowd that the average American leaves an ecological footprint of 24 acres, which he compared to France where the average is 13 acres. Marin County, it turns out, exceeds the U.S. national average with a footprint of 27 acres, and Sonoma County (drumroll, please) comes in just under the national average with a footprint of 22 acres per person. Think that doesn’t sound so bad?

“Consider this,” explained Ann Hancock, Sonoma County Footprint Project coordinator. “If everyone on the planet consumed like we do in Sonoma [County], it would use up four more Earths.”

The whole concept of the ecological footprint, she explains, has become a common tool among scientists and ecologists studying the earth’s capacity and different populations’ demand on it. The footprint’s greatest value, according to Hancock, is that the concept is rather compelling, relatively simple to understand, and easy to visualize. To date, hundreds of thousands have estimated their own personal ecological footprints by logging on to www.myfootprint.org. There, a simple 16-point questionnaire asks you for such information as how many times a week you eat meat, what size home you live in, and what kind of mileage your automobile gets. A click of a button later, the size of your footprint appears, along with the number of planets that would be chewed through were every human on earth consuming at that same rate.

Lest overwhelmed foot-measurers become despondent and suicidal at the size of their prints, Hancock says there are plenty of fairly painless steps one can take to reduce footprint size. Drive less. Conserve energy. Go to farmers markets more.

Hancock jokingly suggests distributing little buttons to those trying to reduce their own footprints. “Really. They could all say, ‘Mine’s Smaller!'” she laughs.

For an environmentalist in touch with the kind of numbers reported at the conference, Hancock and Wackernagel were both in surprisingly high spirits. Which points to yet another radical idea that emerged at the event: a sense of humor.

Throughout the conference–which was attended by only one North Bay politician, Windsor councilmember Debbie Fudge–a remarkable spirit of lighthearted fun kept popping up among all the furrowed brows and frightening statistics.

Hancock says the levity was intentional.

“I’ve been looking for ways to find humor amidst all of the usual environmentalist doom and gloom.” There’s another reason for injecting humor into the report. Says Hancock, with a laugh, “We’re distributing 500 copies to every elected official and community and business leader in the area. So if we make it fun to pick up, maybe they’ll actually read it.”

Copies of the Sonoma County Ecological Footprint Project report can be obtained by calling Sustainable Sonoma County at 707.829.1224 or by visiting www.sustainablesonoma.org.

From the May 23-29, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Soda Pop Health Issues

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Soda Pop Health Issues


Killing Me Softly: Pleasing to the tongue, harmful to the body?

Battle Royale

Is soda pop being demonized in the fight against obesity?

By Joy Lanzendorfer

Americans are fat. Our propensity for super-sized value meals, sugared beverages, and too much TV has taken its toll. As a result, the number of obese Americans has soared to “epidemic proportions,” according to Surgeon General David Satcher. In response to this crisis, some believe a war on fat has been declared. The newest enemy? Soda pop.

The most recent battle against soda was a bill (SB 1520) penned by California Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento. Originally, the bill would have taxed soda (excluding diet versions) 2 cents a can and raised $342 million yearly to replace lost revenue in schools and fund educational programs targeting obesity. However, strong opposition led Ortiz to put the tax proposal on hold and instead propose a ban on the sale of soda by schools.

“The opposition to the bill was much louder and angrier than I anticipated,” says Ortiz. “Nevertheless, legislators are always reluctant to support new taxes, especially during election years, which I did anticipate.”

As of this writing, the bill is under consideration by the Revenue and Taxation Committee, which it must pass before going on to the Senate. But whether it passes or not, Ortiz’s bill is the latest in a number of proposals across the country targeting junk food. Governor Davis recently signed a bill prohibiting schools from selling foods that don’t meet specific dietary factors, such as those with a high fat content. In Maryland, a proposed bill would require restaurants providing sugared beverages to also provide a sugar-free alternative. The Kentucky House recently banned sodas and certain high-fat snacks from school vending machines. In Connecticut, a bill was filed to repeal a 6 percent sales tax exemption for candy sold to college cafeterias, senior centers, and daycare centers.

These states are focusing on junk food because of convincing data that obesity is becoming the country’s biggest health crisis. According to Satcher’s report, 61 percent of adults are overweight or obese, and some 300,000 people die each year from obesity-related health problems (compared to 400,000 yearly deaths linked to cigarette smoking). Children are affected as well, with 13 percent nationwide considered overweight. And in California, according to Ortiz, 30 percent of children are listed as overweight or obese.

“Obesity is definitely a huge problem,” says Eileen Jensen, family nurse practitioner and employee health manager for St. Joseph Health System, Greater Sonoma County. “In addition to increased injuries, obesity has been linked to many illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension. Much of the time, these diseases can be prevented through weight management.”

It’s an expensive problem as well. In California, the cost of overweight adults is roughly $24.6 billion. Nationwide, obesity costs $117 billion per year in “direct and indirect costs.”

Soda is often mentioned because it has been specifically linked to childhood obesity in addition to adult obesity. Nicknamed “liquid candy” because of its high sugar content and null nutritional value, children get little benefit from drinking soda besides the obligatory caffeine and sugar high. And studies show that drinking soda is becoming a habit for many students, with the average teenage boy drinking 2.2 cans a day and the average teenage girl drinking 1.7 cans a day. In the United States, the average kid drinks more soda than milk.

But while these are good reasons for concern, some groups believe that these scientific findings have spurred a nationwide war on fat, which, in its most extreme form, threatens an individual’s right to choose his or her children’s diet. One such group is the Center for Consumer Freedom, which formed in direct response to the war on fat and now represents more than 30,000 supporters, including numerous eating establishments.

“We’re seeing activist groups and politicians attempt to affect consumer diets through hysteria or other political means,” says CCF communications director Mike Burita. “We believe that they use studies like the recent surgeon general’s report as leverage to advance their causes. We’re against all the bureaucrats and activists who think they can decide better than you what’s best for you.”

One trend in the war on fat is to categorize certain foods as bad or good. Some groups, like the Center for Science in the Public Interest based in Washington, D.C., even advocate subsidizing healthy food and taxing unhealthy food. Demonizing certain foods does little to help obesity since it takes the focus off lifestyle changes and moderation, according to Burita.

In this light, bills to ban certain foods in schools take on dangerous implications. Such bills strip schools of much needed revenue. Analy High School in Sebastopol, for example, sells soda in its student store, vending machines, and cafeteria. According to co-principal Doria Trombetta, the vending machines and student store support the associate student body, which funds sports and other student activities. Without the sale of food like soda, the school would lose a “great deal of those activities.”

In addition, banning foods in school can open doors to other laws. Shannon Brownlee, a Markle Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, has advocated banning soda in schools as a “wedge” to open foods and beverages up to new government regulations and restrictions. And while legislators’ motives may not be that deliberate, there is some logic to the idea that since soda is already taxable, it’s easier for legislators to target than, say, butter or cream.

“Soda has been subject to the sales tax for as long as anyone can remember,” Says Ortiz. “Clearly people in this state have agreed for a long time that soda can barely be categorized as a food and is not essential to anyone’s diet. I would not necessarily advocate taxing and subsidizing a whole range of foods, but we do need to find ways to get people, especially kids, to think about the choices they make and how those choices affect their overall health and quality of life.”

Though an all-out war on fat is disputed, efforts to tackle the obesity problem are definitely coming into play. The surgeon general’s report stated that obesity could soon cause as much preventable disease and death as cigarette smoking. A RAND study published in March called the health risks of obesity “worse than smoking, drinking, or poverty.”

According to the CCF, the comparison to cigarette smoking is not coincidental. The group says that a parallel can be drawn between the movement to ban junk food from schools and the movement to ban tobacco advertising to kids.

“The same model that was applied to the tobacco industry can be applied to the food industry,” says Burita. “Obesity is starting to be compared to smoking more and more.”

But in the end, all sides agree on the best response to the obesity epidemic.

“The key to this issue is education,” says Jensen. “People need to be taught about obesity and to, for example, drink more water instead of drinking soda. I don’t think extra taxes or banning certain foods will make the same kind of impact that more education will to the problem.”

From the May 23-29, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Summer Beverages

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Summer Beverages

Hints Of Summer: Warm weather is nicer under the influence of a cool Vinho Verde or a refreshing Lillet.

We Like Cold Beverages

Summer means it’s time for high-fun, low-impact drinks

By Sara Bir

There are more efficient ways to beat the heat then tipping back a relaxing drink–like, say, taking a dip in the pool or cranking up the AC–but what about those who don’t have a pool? Or an air conditioner? Or even a house with decent air circulation? This is when we must literally take matters–matters being cold beverages–into our own hands.

The stifling heat of summer is a marvelous time to indulge your inner lazy slob; i.e., sit around in a lawn chair and do nothing. Keep in mind, though, that a long, hard day of enjoying cool summer drinks can render you asunder faster than you might desire. To keep both the levels of fun and functionality steadily plugging along, here are some low-alcohol, high-pleasure bevies to soothe your inner thermostat.

Vinho Verde

A sticky Port is the last thing you’d want to drink on a sticky day, so turn to Portugal’s “green” wine–so-called not because it is green, but because it is meant to be drunk young. Most of the Vinho Verde exported from Portugal is white, with no vintage date. Straw-colored and gently fizzy on the tongue, Vinho Verde is a nubile wine with party potential. Acidic but easygoing, it pairs excellently with seafood and spicy foods, and is so well-suited to picnics and cookouts (e.g., grilled fish or chicken) that it seems a crime to drink it indoors. Plus, it’s cheap, as in hella cheap, as in $5 to $6 a bottle.

If you entertain often, Vinho Verde is a great wine to buy by the case. Your guests (and you) can spend a casual afternoon sipping away and not skid under the table. Looking at some old notes documenting my first encounter with Vinho Verde at a winetasting, I noticed the impressions I had carefully recorded: “Wheeee!” I did have a point, albeit a simply worded one: Vinho Verde is all about fun. Casal Garcia and Aveleda are two common Vinhos Verdes; I found three selections at Beverages & More.

Lillet

Aperitifs (French for “appetizers”) are the best thing ever, and Bordeaux’s Lillet is the aperitif wine. Lillet over ice is just as swanky as a cocktail, but instead of clubbing your palate to death before you even get to dinner, it piques it up. Lillet comes in red and white variations, the red being the sweeter, spicier, and less often tasted of the two.

Sunny but sophisticated, Lillet Blanc screams out “summer!” It’s a pretty pale-gold, off-dry with a hint of orange blossom and honey. Lillet matches up well with cold summer appetizers: shrimp, crudités, little toasted things with dip (the slight sweetness and acidity cuts through brandade expertly). Serving Lillet could not be easier: a chilled glass, a few ice cubes, a twist of orange–boom! It’s also fun with club soda and a lime twist. Once, on a fluke, I even tried it with sparkling mineral water, and that was good, too.

You could easily develop the bad habit of walking around the house in cheap nylon slips, glass of Lillet in hand, pretending you’re Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8. She never drank Lillet in the movie, but that can be overlooked.

Dubonnet is another French aperitif wine with both red and white variations, but lackluster Dubonnet is no Lillet, my friends! A bottle of Lillet (around $15) may be a few dollars more, but it’s a few dollars well-spent.

Cheap American Beer

Is this too obvious? How come a chilly Hamm’s on a 90-degree day hits the spot about a thousand times better than a Hamm’s on a mid-January evening? Cheap beer tastes like water, water quenches our thirst, and summer makes us thirsty. That’s when a shiny, condensation-dappled can of good ol’ American lager beer feels sooo right. And, as implied in the name, it’s cheap.

I’m a big fan of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I don’t like Bud, Corona makes me sick, and Coors shares a nickname with Bob Seeger’s band. In a blind taste test, I bet I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but PBR me ASAP, thanks.

Once, a beer authority told me that Bavarian beer (according to the Bavarian Purity Law of 1514) contains no additives and thus will not give you a hangover, because additives are what make your head hurt the next day. He’s probably right, but that has not waylaid me from the hangover-strewn path of fine cheap American beer.

In any case, a cool cheap American beer drunk outdoors is on par with a carefully brewed fine beer drunk indoors. Fine beer outside is all right, but on a lazy day, who wants to be bothered with distractions of quality? Why waste precious great beer when you are not very likely going to put forth the effort to properly appreciate it?

Shandy

How about a tasty beer and lemonade? Wait–keep reading! This English classic is greater than the sum of its parts. OK, I know mixing lemonade with beer sounds gross–and therefore typically British–but think: What could be more refreshing than to combine the two most refreshing summer beverages known to humankind? It’s sweet but not too sweet, crisp and tart, and fizzy enough to not be distracting.

The shandy has a few how-tos: first, the lemonade part needs to be good lemonade, preferably homemade. And for God’s sake, don’t even think of using Country Time.

Second, the beer: In England, they use pale or light ale. The ratio of beer to lemonade is flexible. I like 1-1, but some prefer one part beer to two parts lemonade. You’ll just have to play around and see what works for you.

An interesting bit of info: according to my friend who went to school in Scotland and married a bona fide Englishman, lemonade in England is sometimes a fizzy, lemon-flavored carbonated beverage. So versions of shandy that replace the lemonade with ginger ale are not totally out of line. I have not tried any, because I am a big fan of lemonade. I have, however, opted to fill the beer portion of my glass with Pabst Blue Ribbon (see above) instead of the requisite ale, and I like this better than the traditional shandy. In England I could be tarred and feathered for such behavior, but at least I’m trad enough to put real lemonade in my shandy rather than fizzy “lemon drink.”

From the May 23-29, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

2002 Healdsburg Jazz Festival

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2002 Healdsburg Jazz Festival

Cultural Ambassador: Randy Weston brings the rhythms of Africa to the Raven.

Jazz Notes

Healdsburg Jazz Fest beats the odds

By Greg Cahill

Call it the blast effect. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., had an unexpected and far-reaching impact on fundraising by nonprofit arts organizations, an impact that rippled across the country. Coupled with the recession and the unprecedented exodus of hundreds of millions of charity dollars to the victims or families of victims of the attacks, it was devastating for arts organizations surviving on a shoestring. The Healdsburg Jazz Festival–already struggling to gain a foothold in a region dominated by wineries that routinely spend big bucks to promote low-brow smooth jazz programming–was among those that felt the blow, forcing the fledgling four-year-old event to scale down its programming this season after three years of promising growth.

“This year was very difficult to pull together,” says festival founder and organizer Jessica Felix, a longtime jazz fan who also owns a local art gallery. “Last year took so much energy that our volunteers were slow to recover. Then, after Sept. 11, there was zero momentum. When we finally decided to try and pull a festival off we had to make it somewhat smaller due to the short time frame.

“We didn’t have enough time to do a successful fundraising drive, making our sponsorships smaller. The sponsors themselves are all having financial problems as well.”

That hasn’t stopped Felix and her cadre of volunteers from creating an impressive festival lineup that includes such legendary jazz performers as Cedar Walton, who has recorded with John Coltrane and many others, and trombonist Curtis Fuller, who has contributed to jazz orchestras under the batons of Gil Evans, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones.

On Friday, May 31, pianist and composer Randy Weston–whose 50 albums have garnered two Grammy nominations–offers an African rhythms solo piano recital during two shows (7pm and 9pm) at the Raven Performing Arts Center. It’s a rare opportunity to catch a truly remarkable performer in an intimate setting. Tickets are $30. Saturday, June 1, features a day-long concert at the Rodney Strong Vineyards, a triple bill with the Cedar Walton Trio with David Williams and Albert “Tootie” Heath and featured guest Jackie McLean (whose résumé includes stints with Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers); the Curtis Fuller Super Band (with James Williams, Javon Jackson, Michael Bowie, and Louis Hayes); and the Julian Lage Group (with Art Hirahara, Todd Sickafoose, and Alan U’Ren). The concert starts at noon. Tickets are $35. The free concert in Healdsburg Plaza, a festival tradition, returns on Sunday, June 2, with Babatunde Lea Quintet (with Richard Howell and Angela Wellman) and the Operation Jazz Orchestra.

Other festival-related events include Jazz Cinema under the Stars at the Hotel Healdsburg, a program of rare jazz film clips compiled by film historian Mark Cantor. The event–held in the courtyard on Monday, May 27 at 8pm–costs $20 and includes a glass of wine and a dessert. The screening is a benefit for the Healdsburg Jazz Festival Education Program.

For more information about festival events and tickets, call 707.433.4633 or visit www.healdsburgjazzfestival.com.

From the May 23-29, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Webcams

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Webcams


Photograph by Rory McNamara

Somebody’s Watching Me: It’s not paranoia; Carli Schultz Kruse is being watched.

Free to Be Me

Weirdos, freaks, and regular people from Mill Valley bare their souls online

By M. V. Wood

When technology first started invading our privacy, Americans worried about looming societal changes. If everything we say and do can be recorded and shown to others, how will we lead our lives? Will we all take on the role of saints and conform to some standardized ideal of normalcy? That idea sent chills down our collective, free-spirited spine. And so some self-preserving, intelligent, unconscious life force led the people of this great nation to create The Jerry Springer Show.

The program normalized any behavior that you and I might possibly come up with. So now when you’re in a hotel room or public restroom and you know there’s the chance you might be secretly taped, you can think to yourself, “Eh, whatever.” It’s all rather ordinary and commonplace compared to the stuff we’ve seen before. So don’t worry; do what you need to do. And remember who you have to thank for that freedom.

That’s how Jerry Springer saved life in America, as we know it.

But we’re not ones to let down our guard in the fight for liberty. So while Springer featured obvious freaks, reality TV stepped in and showed us that even those members of society who seem more average are, essentially, a bunch of weirdos as well. And the margins of what constitutes “normal” widened even more.

The newest vanguards for the preservation of America’s freedoms are folks like Carli Schultz Kruse of Mill Valley. They’re not freaks. They’re not weirdos. They’re our neighbors. And they’re reassuring proof that humans are an odd and messy lot.

Not surprisingly, Kruse isn’t even aware of her mission as a warrior; she thinks she’s just an egocentric exhibitionist.

Kruse, 29, greets me at the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her husband and cats. She shows me to the couch, asks if I’d like a glass of water, and tells me to sit down and make myself comfortable. There’s not even a hint of sarcasm in her voice as she says this.

I’m not comfortable. As I sit there, I spy the little camera pointed in my direction, taking a picture every 30 seconds. Those pictures can be viewed and downloaded by anyone who happens to be visiting Kruse’s website at www.lunesse.com. I’m not one of the warriors. If a camera is pointed at me, I sit up straight and suck in my stomach.

Kruse plops down on the couch, tucks her feet under herself, and has absolutely no intention of sitting up straight. She seems oblivious to the one-eyed intruder. Last month, Kruse celebrated the three-year anniversary of the day she pointed three webcams at her life. Two are at home, one’s at her office. They’re on all the time, following her day-to-day life: making breakfast, reading a book, talking on the phone. They cover all work and living spaces except for two private areas.

“No cameras in the bedroom or the bathroom. That’s where I draw the line,” she says. Once again, she says this in all sincerity, as if having a camera in either of these rooms is a viable option. Of course, there are people who make a lot of money doing just that. But Kruse is not that kind of girl. There’s no money or nudity involved in this little endeavor. It’s a labor of love.

Kruse is one of a growing number of online diarists who have taken the next step in exposing their inner selves via modern technology. As if it weren’t enough that they were already writing about their most intimate moments and personal desires online, now these folks are offering up peepholes as well.

The cameras are “just a natural extension” of the online diary Kruse has been keeping for the past six years, she explains. “I know when I read other people’s journals I wonder what they look like and what their house looks like and things like that. And I figured they might have the same feelings about me. So I put up the cameras.”

Kruse says that about 170 people visit her website each day. Although the webcams are an added benefit for her fans, she believes the journal is the main draw.

Unlike some of her contemporaries, Kruse doesn’t entice readers with lurid tales of hedonism by the Bay. Her journal’s strength instead lies in the fact that the entries are so universally human and touching. For example, on the day before her wedding, she wrote about her fears of intimacy and about finally falling in love. (Of course, that someone who fears intimacy would bear so much on the Internet offers a rich playground for any budding psychoanalyst.)

Kruse writes: “I’m absolutely crazy about DLJ [her groom]. I want to see a smile break across his face, have love astound him in its depth–I’m slowly still letting my guard down, and in the past few months, I’ve made big hurdles in letting the old scars show for what they are, and trust him not to pick at them. It was so hard to believe that someone could really care enough to not hurt me, to find joy and pleasure through keeping me safe and happy.”

Though she writes about the euphoria of pure love, Kruse doesn’t shy away from detailing life’s more earthy pleasures as well. She talks about waking up one morning to the delightful sensation of her lover “spooning me, and he was pressing into me, slowly moving, in short, I was being poked.” In another entry she writes: “I was once again lain on my back on my bed, towel beneath me, and treated to a fair amount of attention by DLJ, shaving cream, and a razor.”

Those types of entries are always written in purple font. “My mom and I have a system worked out,” Kruse explains. “She likes reading my diary. And I like her to; it helps us stay close. But neither of us wants her reading the parts about my sex life. So I put all those entries in purple so that she knows to skip them. Sometimes I’ll get e-mails from people complaining that there haven’t been enough purple entries for a while.”

When asked why she would sacrifice so much of her privacy for no tangible reward, Kruse replies, “I don’t really know why I do it.”

The fact that Kruse isn’t completely aware of her motivations isn’t for lack of trying. She tries and tries to understand her intentions, her emotions, her thoughts, her ambitions, her life. And all this introspection finds a place in her journal. “I’m sure that anyone who spends that much time thinking about themselves must be at least a bit of an exhibitionist–and somewhat egocentric,” she muses.

But Kruse’s site isn’t some narcissistic shrine. She doesn’t try to come off as a sex goddess or a genius or a saint. Instead, her goal is to expose her true self–scars and warts and all–as honestly and openly as possible. There are still some parts of herself she keeps private and hidden, but she admires the online diarists who are able to be more revealing. They’re using technology to make all the varied nuances of humanity rather ordinary and commonplace.

Who knows, maybe by the time technology completely invades our privacy and there’s nowhere left to hide, we won’t be frightened into conforming into some standardized ideal. Maybe by then, when we catch a glimpse of Big Brother staring at us, we’ll just think to ourselves, “Eh, whatever.”

From the May 16-22, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Dogtown And Z-Boys’

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‘Dogtown And Z-Boys’


Z-Girls, Too: Peggy Oki, an original Z-boy, plays with the big boys.

The Z-Boys of Summer

‘Dogtown and Z-Boys’ carves the new wave of old school

By Sara Bir

Northern California, 2002. There are skate parks all over the North Bay. If you ask a random person on the street who Tony Hawk is, he or she might very well know. The X-Games have brought underground sports to the mainstream. If you skate, you probably won’t get beat up for it.

Dogtown, 1975. When you can’t surf, you skate. Forget about helmets and knee pads–sometimes you don’t even skate wearing shoes. Prevailing style sees skateboarders rigid and upright on their boards, but you crouch close to the ground, carving the urban undulations of asphalt and concrete the way your surfing idols ride waves. You look like a bunch of shaggy-haired misfits with ratty deck shoes and torn-off back pockets, and you don’t give a shit.

Even though skating has graduated from a worldwide network of pariahs to a very visible billion-dollar phenomenon, the story of how it evolved from the stick-figure-stiff tricks on banana boards to today’s monster-sized extreme stunts has been quietly dormant for years. Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary chronicling the pivotal years that saw the birth and explosion of skateboarding as it is practiced now, may be the movie that communicates skateboarding’s appeal to the nonskating public.

“Watching that movie brought back a whole lot of memories,” says Kurt Hurley, who’s been skating since 1963 and in 1978 went pro for three years. Now he owns and runs Brotherhood Board Shop in Santa Rosa. “These guys rode for a surf team and skated, which would never happen today. Skateboarders and surfers don’t connect like that anymore.”

Dogtown was the nickname for a rundown section of Santa Monica and Venice that was the antithesis of polished Beverly Hills and a truly urban beach neighborhood where, in the 1970s, kids from broken homes hung out surfing all day. The hot spot was the Pacific Ocean Park pier, which just happened to be in the middle of a tangled mass of rubble that jutted out from the water like a broken skeleton. Dogtown‘s footage of surfers navigating the spiny wreckage is mind-blowing.

The Jeff Ho & Zephyr Productions Surf Shop became a sort of clubhouse for Dogtown kids, who passed time by skateboarding. “Their motions reflected their surfing style, and it crossed over,” Hurley says. “They got into skateboarding because [the surf] got blown out by 10 or 11 in the morning, and they didn’t have anything else to do.”

What they wound up doing was getting very good at skating, which, with the introduction of the urethane wheel in 1974, was seeing a resurgence of popularity. Noting their talent, the Zephyr Surf Shop shaped them into a team, the Z-Boys, and sponsored them.

It’s the old 8mm and 16mm footage of the Z-Boys skating schools and pools that makes Dogtown and Z-Boys. Even though they’re 25 years old, the images flow with a vibrancy and immediacy that’s spine-tingling. It’s a time capsule bringing us into a singular, complete moment, simultaneously fleeting and timeless, that wordlessly explains why they skated: Their motions have a stunning purity.

“All the good skateboarders then, they all surfed,” says Hurley. “Ninety-nine percent of the skateboarders today don’t surf. It was the difference between the guys that had style and they guys that didn’t. It was more fluid. Skateboarding today’s more technical; it’s not as styled out.

“Now guys are so into skateboarding, they start at five years old. You could go to any town, anywhere in the world, and there’s someone skateboarding. Back then there wasn’t. We took all of our p’s and q’s from those guys in that movie. Those were the guys I skated against, those were the guys I looked up to. We were trying to be as cool as them. We wouldn’t admit it, but we were.”

Hurley was one of the first skaters doing frontside airs, a move that’s integral to the high-flying style known as vertical skating. Dogtown and Z-Boys shows Tony Alva doing what is arguably the first ever frontside air. So why don’t kids today know about him or any of the other influential skateboarders from the ’70s?

“Skateboarders today owe everything to us,” says Hurley, who was actually at one of the pool sessions filmed in the movie. Still, he doubts that kids skating now will incorporate more style into their tricks as a result of seeing Dogtown and Z-Boys, whose mantra is “going big works only as long as you look good doing it.” “I took a couple of my good friends to see the movie,” Hurley says, “and one of them brought his son–who’s a really good skateboarder–and he fell asleep. They can’t relate; it’s not even their style. It’s almost like watching Elvis. Some people get how profound he was, and some people don’t.

“The one thing that I think is really cool about skateboarding today is the guys who are really good don’t have an air about them. It’s almost cool to be not cool now. Back then, if we walked into a pool, everybody stopped and watched us, and we made sure they watched us. But nobody took us seriously, and we wanted to be taken seriously. So we had something to prove.”

The Z-Boys broke up after their first contest and simply receded into the background as the years passed. “After the skateboard revolution of the ’70s died off, that next generation took over,” says Hurley. “Most of those guys took off to places that they wanted to be, to do what made themselves happy.”

“I’m 43 years old, and I still skate. You’re going to see more 40-year-old guys like me skating in the future.” In fact, right after this interview, Hurley was off to skate a pool he had just found out about. The discovery of an unskated, secret pool still holds the same allure that it did in 1978. The style of skating may change, but the reason to do it never will.

From the May 16-22, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Healthcare For Farm Workers

Photograph by Rory McNamaraTo Your Health: They tend to the vines, but do they tend to their health? Silent SufferingNorth Bay farm workers face a healthcare crisisBy Joy LanzendorferEfran Castillo was in pain. For some days, the vineyard worker had been hobbling around. He had stepped in a hole, fallen, and hurt his ankle. Since he spoke no English,...
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2002 Summer Events Guide

Bad Ass Blues: Etta James and the Roots Band rolls into the Robert Mondavi Summer Festival. Popping the Summer CherryThe long-awaited summer event season bursts with juice By Davina Baum and Sara BirSummer in the North Bay is a panoply of pleasures, a litany of larks. For those who don't have the luxury of three-month summer vacations, the long,...
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‘Spider-Man’

Arachnid Love: He's more sexy than the Fly, more svelte than the Hulk.Web MasterThe 'real' Spider-Man has his say Writer David Templeton takes interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate postfilm conversation. This is not a review; rather, it's a freewheeling, tangential discussion of life, alternative ideas, and popular culture.It's late afternoon in...
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Gender And Art

For The Birds: An example of Amy Wilson's earlier work, 'Quiver' flourishes and flirts with bold, macho strokes. Why ChromosomeShould we talk about gender when we look at art? By Gretchen GilesThe once bustling Rohnert Park campus of the Next Level Communications offices is now like a ghost village--it's really too big to just be a town. One...
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Sonoma County Ecological Footprint Project

Ballooning Out Of Control: Mathis Wackernagel demonstrates how resources can be stretched to the breaking point.Photograph by Scott HessDangerous FeetNorth Bay Environmentalists meet to compare footprints So how big is yours?" That was the question on everyone's lips when several dozen environmentalists, scientists, and North Bay community leaders came together on May 10 for a three-hour conference focusing...
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Soda Pop Health Issues

Killing Me Softly: Pleasing to the tongue, harmful to the body? Battle RoyaleIs soda pop being demonized in the fight against obesity?By Joy LanzendorferAmericans are fat. Our propensity for super-sized value meals, sugared beverages, and too much TV has taken its toll. As a result, the number of obese Americans has soared to "epidemic proportions," according to Surgeon General...
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Summer Beverages

Hints Of Summer: Warm weather is nicer under the influence of a cool Vinho Verde or a refreshing Lillet. We Like Cold Beverages Summer means it's time for high-fun, low-impact drinksBy Sara Bir There are more efficient ways to beat the heat then tipping back a relaxing drink--like, say, taking a dip in the pool or cranking up...
Read more

2002 Healdsburg Jazz Festival

Cultural Ambassador: Randy Weston brings the rhythms of Africa to the Raven.Jazz NotesHealdsburg Jazz Fest beats the oddsBy Greg CahillCall it the blast effect. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., had an unexpected and far-reaching impact on fundraising by nonprofit arts organizations, an impact that rippled across the country. Coupled with the...
Read more

Webcams

Photograph by Rory McNamaraSomebody's Watching Me: It's not paranoia; Carli Schultz Kruse is being watched.Free to Be MeWeirdos, freaks, and regular people from Mill Valley bare their souls onlineBy M. V. WoodWhen technology first started invading our privacy, Americans worried about looming societal changes. If everything we say and do can be recorded and shown to...
Read more

‘Dogtown And Z-Boys’

Z-Girls, Too: Peggy Oki, an original Z-boy, plays with the big boys. The Z-Boys of Summer'Dogtown and Z-Boys' carves the new wave of old schoolBy Sara BirNorthern California, 2002. There are skate parks all over the North Bay. If you ask a random person on the street who Tony Hawk is, he or she might very well know....
Read more
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