Restaurant Customer Horror Stories

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Restaurant Customer Horror Stories

Chef’s Revenge

A veteran cook dishes up restaurant justice

By Bob Engel

EVEN AFTER 26 years in the restaurant business, rude or just plain grumpy customers can still gall me. While simple bad manners can be forgiven, some behavior cries out for justice. Most patrons exhibit a gratitude and contentment befitting their circumstances. After all, they are being waited upon and fed. They don’t have to cook or do the dishes, and they aren’t obligated to invite their hosts back. These diners express satisfaction with the service and appreciation of their meal. Perhaps they even have as their motto “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Waiters know that the customer who responds with a terse “fine” to an enquiry about his meal may be withholding some slight criticism.

Their reticence is respected.

Regretfully, other patrons take advantage of the relationship of diner and wait staff to engage in a fantasia of master and servant, an opportunity to play at upstairs/downstairs, re-creating for a few hours the class society of 19th-century England. Despite widespread comic representations of the surly waiter, it is more likely to be the customer who is churlish, petulant, and difficult.

For the most part, restaurateurs and staff take these less than exemplary human beings in stride. As one former employer told her staff, “The customer is always wrong, but we can’t let them know it.” Occasionally though, a guest’s conduct may be so egregious that some form of comeuppance is appropriate. I am not referring to anything so vulgar as spitting in their soup, a common icon of rebellion that hopefully never occurs in practice. No, the opportunity to serve rude customers their just deserts should be both more straightforward and more creative than that.

In the early ’80s, I worked for a man who was a devotee of Werner Ehrhart’s EST movement, one of those self-empowerment cults that sprang up in the wake of more benign spiritual groups. EST was based on an elaborate series of self-serving theories, and the owner had swallowed it all. He turned straightforward matters of employee relations into intricate exemplars of his staff’s psychological flaws. But we were able to forgive him for his peculiar management methods because he had an equally unique take on his relationship with his customers.

We all know that some customers seem to delight in complaining about their dining experience. One suspects that this is part of what they look forward to when they go out for dinner. Perhaps Mama refused them their bottle, or forced them to eat spinach too early, or never let them speak at the table. Such customers arrive with their antennae bristling, ready to detect any shortcoming. They are inpatient when they wait for their table; and when they are seated, their sensitive feng shui alerts them to the unsuitability of their placement in the room. The soup for them is always cold, the refill of their water never sufficiently prompt. The field of their negativity is well known to attract stray hairs onto their plates.

These ingrates are every restaurateur’s nightmare, and while waiters generally accept them as Job did his boils, my former employer with his EST training had found a more direct response. On more than one occasion I heard him tell customers, “Look, if you want to have a bad time here, that’s OK with me, but don’t lay the blame on us. This is your trip and you’ve got to accept responsibility for it.”

Huzzah. That’s hitting the nail on the head. His employees forgave him many of his trespasses because of this singular line of reasoning, and never mind that he applied it to both the overly sensitive and the genuinely affronted.

WHILE SOME customers arrive at the door primed to find fault, other guests turn from Jekyll to Hyde only after a few drinks too many. A few cocktails or a bottle of wine can make the food taste better, the conversation seem wittier, and the tip more generous, but a certain proportion of patrons make ill-tempered and unpleasant drunks.

A former sous-chef told me of a chic Napa eatery that was beset with a party of four businessmen whose mutual reaction to alcohol was to lose all social grace. Regretfully for the other diners, their table was in the middle of the small restaurant. As the evening progressed, they became louder and more obnoxious. Finally, one of the men in the party began to make lewd comments about their young bus girl.

Enough. The owner strode out to their table and asked them quietly but firmly to leave. Showing no sign of complying, the men engaged the chef in debate but stood their ground. The owner told them that they need not pay for their meal, but that they must leave immediately. Still no sign of movement from the table.

“Get out!” the owner cried, hoping that he might bring the communal force of the other diners to his side and shame the offenders into retreat. They didn’t budge. It was a Mexican standoff. Would he call the police? Grab a cleaver from the chopping block?

The owner’s brilliant solution was this: he flipped the four corners of the tablecloth to the center of the table, gathered it into a bundle, and with a rattle of plates and glassware hoisted it all in the air. Red wine dripped from the bottom of the sack as he carried it back to the kitchen. The men sat at a completely stripped table. They had not a glass or a fork. The dark vinyl top of the bare table glinted where the wine had spilled. The miscreants had no choice but to leave; and as the door closed behind them, the other diners burst into polite applause.

So it is most often the owner of a restaurant who feels at liberty to break the bounds of decorum. An employee, no matter how tempted, must know that to retort tit for tat in a tête-à-tête with a customer could mean his or her job. But an inventive waiter once solved an affront to his Gallic pride without simultaneously endangering his employment.

Michel was a very successful waiter, who despite spending half of his 30 years in the United States maintained a strong French accent, no doubt because it improved his tips. One evening he had particular difficulty with a couple about his own age. It was the gentleman who caused the problem. He ran Michel ragged, flaunted his–generally inaccurate–knowledge of wine and kept a running commentary of asides to his date about the inadequacy of the service and the deficiencies of the food. Between each course Michel fumed in the kitchen, describing the boor’s latest offense. “Now, ee says zee wine eez corked. It eez not.” According to Michel, the man’s girlfriend could see right through the lout, and she graced Michel with sympathetic glances while her date prattled on. “She eez too goud for eem,” Michel complained.

Michel presented the bill. The man paid with a credit card, adding a tip of exactly 10 per cent. The couple lingered at their table long after the bill was paid, the gentleman oblivious to his date’s restlessness.

As they were leaving, the man excused himself to go to the men’s room, and Michel took the opportunity to speak momentarily with the boor’s date. “Per-aps,” said Michel, “you would like to go out sometime with a man who eez more generous and more appreciative.” He handed her his telephone number.

She called the next day. They dated for over a year. Michel sometimes referred to her humorously, but with real affection, as “the best teep I ever got.”

Yet for every boorish patron who gets what’s coming to him, there are many that escape unscathed, at least in this life. But restaurant people–chefs and waiters and owners alike–share a superstitious belief in a restaurant hell. If through some fault they are assigned to this torment it will mean an endless cycle of rotten produce, dishwashers who don’t show up for work, nights when the items you’ve prepped heaviest for are ignored and obscure dishes are ordered in droves.

They take solace from the belief that on the other side of the swinging doors of that hell, former despots of the dinner table are spending their eternity at the worst table in the house, eating cold soup with a dirty spoon, and finding a succession of unsavory hairs in every dish.

Bob Engel is the former chef at Russian River Vineyards.

From the May 24-30, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Barbara Ehrenreich

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Barbara Ehrenreich

Hanging Out

Barbara Ehrenreich rediscovers America’s working poor

By Jonah Raskin

OLD KARL MARX could be oh so wrong, and yet oh so right. He was dead wrong about communism, which he called the salvation of humanity, but dead right about capitalism, which even back in the 19th century he described as a global economic system. Of course, in America, you wouldn’t want to bank on Marx’s ideas. Here, as Wall Street brokers like to remind you, ragged workers are reinvented as rich stockholders, and the toiling masses spend more time at the mall than at the barricades.

Barbara Ehrenreich, a longtime crusading journalist and political activist, knows perfectly well the familiar story of the upwardly mobile, commodity-consuming American working class. Still, she’s kept her faith–through economic boom and economic bust–in democratic socialism (with a feisty feminist twist) and with a modified version of Marxism. In The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed (Pantheon Books, 1990), the best-selling collection of her sassy essays, she noted that the rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, and social upheaval seemed inevitable.

“The Marxist vision at last fits America’s future,” she suggested.

Still, she was shrewd enough to add that in America, predictions about a workers’ revolution are dicey. “For one thing, Americans are notorious for their lack of class consciousness or even class awareness,” she wrote.

Now, in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Metropolitan; $23), a newly published firsthand account of her brief, mostly unhappy life as a waitress, a cleaning woman, and a Wal-Mart salesperson–Ehrenreich seems more confident making predictions about worker protest, and less inhibited as a rabble-rouser, though she doesn’t resort to Marxist terms like “exploitation” or Marxist slogans like “Workers of the world, unite!”

Ehrenreich’s writings–she’s a fiery pamphleteer as well as a cantankerous columnist–have always exploded with anger about economic and social injustice. Now she seems more outraged than ever before about the havoc that the capitalist system has caused at home to almost all of us, whether we’re middle class or working class.

“Wherever you look, there is no alternative to the megascale corporate order, from which every form of local creativity and initiative has been abolished by distant home offices,” she writes in a chapter that depicts the diabolical and dehumanizing world of Wal-Mart, Wendy’s, and Home Depot that’s all over America. “What you see–highways, parking lots, stores–is all there is, or all that’s left to us here in the reign of globalized, totalized, paved-over, corporatized everything.”

Surely Karl Marx himself would find himself applauding Ehrenreich’s indictment. In her last chapter, she seethes with indignation about the absence of civil liberties and democratic rights in the “low-wage workplace.” Sounding like author and social critic George Orwell of 1984 fame, she rails against the ominous power of corporate Big Brother. “We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world’s preeminent democracy, after all, if large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship,” she exclaims.

Nickel and Dimed is meant to disturb, and it does.

With unemployment and inflation both rising, and with fears of a recession, this could be a timely book that invigorates public discourse about our economy. It might also make affluent Americans feel more compassionate toward workers at the bottom of the corporate pyramid.

Nickel and Dimed began as a Harper’s magazine article about the author’s experience trying to make ends meet as a waitress in the fast-food industry near her home in Florida. Reader response was so positive that she decided to do a book on the subject. Ehrenreich might have retreated to a research center. She might have amassed government statistics and conducted formal interviews with working folk. Instead, she plunged into the often invisible world of work among America’s outcasts and untouchables.

What she proved, in dollars and cents, is that it’s impossible for a single person to survive on the wages at the bottom of the economic ladder.

“Immersion journalism” is the term the industry uses to describe what she’s done. Many of the writers I know call it “hang-out journalism.” Still others refer to it as “undercover reporting.” Whatever the term, it’s the best way–often the only way–to unearth the awful truths about the powerful and the powerless in an age when governments and corporations are increasingly secretive, and when PR flacks issue a steady stream of lies. As Ted Conover–the author of Coyotes and Newjack, and the best-known “hang-out” journalist of our age–explains, “The truly meaningful things about a people are not learned by conducting an interview, gathering statistics, or watching them on the news, but by going out and living with them.”

I’ve learned that lesson myself when I’ve written about political exiles and fugitives and about the underground drug economy in Northern California.

Ehrenreich’s low-paying jobs in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota proved to be more surprising than she had imagined. “Before I set out, I didn’t realize how few rights you have in the workplace,” she explains during a recent, long-distance phone conversation, shortly before embarking on a book tour. “My employers had the legal right to search my purse. I felt like I was back in junior high school. I also learned that it’s not easy to live economically on minimum wages; eating in fast-food places can be more costly then eating at home. Sometimes it’s more expensive to be poor than to be rich.”

Of course, Ehrenreich began Nickel and Dimed already knowing volumes about wealth, poverty, and survival. “I’ve been fixated on class issues because of my family history,” she says. “When I was born in Butte, Montana, in 1941 my father was a copper miner. Soon afterward, he became a corporate executive. We moved from Montana to Massachusetts to Southern California. Our houses got bigger and better. By the time I was a teenager I had a firsthand tour of America’s social classes.”

Ehrenreich was also impressed that her father’s economic success didn’t turn him into a Republican, or persuade him to look down on workers who were far less fortunate.

After graduating from Reed College, where she studied chemistry and physics, Ehrenreich earned a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in New York City and seemed destined for a comfortable career in academia. Then history turned her life upside down. “It was the 1960s,” she explains. “I wanted to do something socially relevant.”

Her first book, which she wrote in 1968 with her then husband John Ehrenreich, was titled Long March, Short Spring. More Maoist than Marxist, as befitted the cultural revolution of that era, it was Ehrenreich’s first venture in hang-out journalism, though she was simply hanging out with rebellious students like herself. More than 30 years later, it’s still one of the most illuminating books about the international student protests of the 1960s.

Last summer, during the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, she found herself in the streets, as a journalist covering the protests. “I’m amazed and fascinated by the anti-corporate demonstrations that have taken place from Seattle to L.A. to Quebec,” she says. “I’ve long been a democratic socialist, but I feel a real affinity with the young anarchists. In fact, some of them are my friends.

“From where I stand, it looks like we’re in this together.”

Barbara Ehrenreich talks about ‘Nickle and Dimed’ on Thursday, May 31, at 7:30 p.m. at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera. 415/927-0960.

From the May 24-30, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Healdsburg Jazz Festival

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Healdsburg Jazz Festival

Billy’s Song

Healdsburg Jazz Fest fetes Billy Higgins

By Greg Cahill

THE MOST recorded jazz drummer of all time–that’s how the history books will remember the legendary Billy Higgins. But friends and colleagues of Higgins–who died May 3 of liver failure after a lengthy illness–recall in glowing terms a very special musician who was regarded as a bodhisattva.

“Billy was a Christ-like figure,” says celebrated jazz drummer Billy Hart. “I mean, that might sound extreme, but he was more than a mere mortal.”

Indeed, onstage Higgins displayed an almost childlike exuberance when he got behind a drum kit, smiling broadly and glowing with a visible radiance.

Percussionist and drummer Steve Barrios remembers Higgins being taken to the stage in a wheelchair during the past year, only to rise above his illness for the duration of his stunning performances. Higgins’ last studio recording, on guitarist John Scofield’s newly released straight-ahead jazz CD Works for Me (Verve), finds Higgins at his most tasteful, pounding out a lengthy solo and mesmerizing with his intricate cymbal work.

In two weeks, Higgins will be the subject of a special Healdsburg Jazz Festival closing-night tribute, featuring several top jazz drummers. Higgins, originally scheduled to perform three times during the May 30-June 3 festival, was a longtime friend of Jessica Felix, the event’s founder and artistic director.

Famadou Don Moye will substitute for Higgins at the opening gala, teaming up with Ray Drummond and Craig Handy. Charles McPherson Jr. son of the great alto sax player, will replace Higgins in his drum seat at the closing-night tribute.

HIGGINS, who died at age 64 while waiting for a third liver transplant, began his career playing in R&B bands behind singers Brook Benton and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. In 1957, he joined the Red Mitchell quartet before beginning a three -year stint with avant-jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman.

He left Coleman to work with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Thelonious Monk. In the mid-’60s, Higgins became a highly sought-after session player, recording with Herbie Hancock, Hank Mobley, Dexter Gordon, and Lee Morgan (including the original recordings of “The Sidewinder” and “Watermelon Man”).

Felix first met Higgins in 1974 at the Lighthouse jazz club in Los Angeles. At the time, Felix’s boyfriend was a jazz drummer who had worked with the legendary percussionist. Over the years, Felix and Higgins became close friends. Higgins agreed to perform at the fledgling jazz festival during the first and second years. Knowing that Higgins had advanced liver disease, Felix decided to dedicate this year’s festival to her old friend.

“I knew his time was getting short here on earth,” she says. “I thought it would be great to bring his friends here and do something special, though I really wanted to do it for him while he was alive.

“He was always the person who was there for everyone else.”

Last year, Felix landed a grant from the California Arts Council to bring Higgins back to the festival, and she built three of the festival’s programs around him. While Higgins will be missed, Felix says, his influence will continue to be felt at the festival–Higgins, who operated the World Stage cultural arts center in Los Angeles, had a lifelong commitment to youth education programs and passed that passion along to Felix.

“I’ll miss his presence. His touch was light–we were like partners,” Felix says. “We worked together on our ideas and dreams, and whenever he was in town, he went into the local schools and taught. He got me more focused on education than I ever would have been.

“He was my mentor.”

Festival Schedule

The third annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival, an ambitious alternative to the glut of smooth jazz flooding wine country stages, runs May 30-June 3. It kicks off Wednesday, May 30, at 6 p.m., with a gala dinner and concert by the Billy Higgins Trio, featuring drummer Charles McPherson Jr. at the Trentadue Winery. $125.

The festival continues Thursday, May 31, at 7 p.m., at the Raven Film Center with a much-anticipated Jazz Night at the Movies program with film archivist Mark Cantor, a highlight of past festivals. $10.

On Friday, June 1, at 7 and 9 p.m. the Rene Rosnes Trio will perform, also at the Raven Film Center. $25.

The Pete Escovedo Orchestra, and Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band, bring a Latin flavor to the mix Saturday, June 2, at 1 p.m., at an outdoor concert held at Rodney Strong Vineyards. $25.

The Ray Drummond Quartet (with Craig Handy, Rob Schneiderman, and Billy Hart) performs Saturday, June 2, at 8 p.m. at the Raven Film Center, along with the world premiere of a Lester Bowie film collage, featuring a performance by Famodou Don Moye, Amina Claudine Myers, and Arthur Blythe. $25.

The Heath Brothers–Jimmy, Percy, and Tootie–plus the Billy Higgins Sextet, with Harold Land, Oscar Brashear, and George Bohanon, will perform prior to a salute to Billy Higgins featuring drummers Billy Hart, Famadou Don Moye, and others outdoors at Geyser Peak Winery. $25.

For details about programs or ticket information, call 707/433-8509.

From the May 24-30, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Theodore Dreiser, Sam Quinones

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Two books almost too good to be true

Reviews by Rick Levin (RL) and Sophie Annan (SA)

SANTA ROSA’S Black Sparrow Press has reissued in full, unexpurgated glory Newspaper Days (cloth, $35; paper, $18), the second volume of American novelist Theodore Dreiser’s autobiography. Originally conceived as but a single installment in a sweeping literary project called The History of Myself, the memoir documents the tumultuous, ass-busting years Dreiser spent eking out a living as a stringer for various big-city papers. It’s a zinger, this book–one of the most pleasing, engaging, and interesting works I’ve read in a very long time, by anyone.

In its scope (nearly 700 pages), scene (fin-de-siècle urban-industrial America), trajectory (the coming-of-age of a brilliant novelist), and style (straight-up American naturalism), Newspaper Days seems to capture every palpitation of Dreiser’s young soul, while at the same time providing a breathtaking, revealing panorama of American society as it busts the seams on the 20th century.

Dreiser, who eventually abandoned journalism to write such classic novels as Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, is wickedly, hilariously vivid in his depiction of newsroom goings-on: the strange, jaded idiosyncrasies of veteran reporters, the internal politics of bureau chiefs, the elephantine hypocrisies of media spin. He offers sharp, canny expositions on corporate corruption and class warfare, as well as all manner of Whitmanesque disquisitions on Western history, literary theory, classic philosophy, and the nature of the teeming, spinning cosmos.

And running parallel to and impacted by all of this valuable social history is the most intimate, candid portrait of Dreiser’s own anxious, neurotic, hyperactive, libidinous, brilliant psyche as he awakens to the wide world. This is a grand American book. Every sentence sings. (RL)

WHEN SOMEONE asks, “What do you think of Mexico?” the only sensible answer is “Which Mexico do you mean?” In True Tales from Another Mexico (University of New Mexico Press; $29.95), Sam Quinones, a freelance journalist based in Mexico City since 1994, goes way off the beaten track to explore parts of the country most Americans never see–or even read about.

The book covers a host of fascinating stories. We read about the lynching of two innocent men in 1998; Quinones’ 1997 story (finally being picked up by the U.S. national media) of scores of murdered women in the border town of Ciudad Juarez; the influence of a Los Angeles gang whose mores have displaced those of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a Michoacán village; how the paleta, a Popsicle-like frozen treat, made the isolated village of Tocumbo, Michoacán, “the wealthiest village in Mexico.”

Fascinating as these tales of subcultures are, Quinones is at his best in his informed overview of entrenched attitudes to authority. He tears the lid off the vast reservoir of disgust, fear, and dissatisfaction that enabled Vicente Fox of the right-of-center National Action Party to wrest the presidency from the near-imperial grasp of the PRI in last summer’s election. The Institutional Revolutionary Party did its best for 71 years to keep the country in the dark ages. “Like an old snakeskin, the PRI was crumbling, crusty, unnecessary and in the way,” Quinones writes. “In the end Mexicans shrugged it from their backs with surprising ease.” It wasn’t really easy: the Priistas fought to keep Fox out of the race. The legislators also blocked efforts to grant absentee voting rights to their citizens living abroad; in his recent California visit, Fox pledged to work for such a program.

As Quinones says, “The United States is now part of the Mexican reality”–and vice versa, as recent census figures demonstrate for those who weren’t paying attention. (SA)

From the May 24-30, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Daedalus Howell, Screenwriter/Director

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Daedalus Howell, Screenwriter/Director

Getting the Picture

A Petaluma boy goes to Hollywood

By Daedalus Howell

CUT! Goddamn tourist trams. It’s a hazard of the neighborhood we’re shooting in, a tony faux burg that affords the beau ideal of establishing shots–a nice wide angle of the Leave It to Beaver house. That monolith of Americana is nestled just next door to the Hardy Boys’ joint, around the corner from Boo Radley’s ramshackle abode, and down the hill from the Bates Motel, which overlooks the gooey pastels of Whoville.

It’s also a popular stop on the Universal Studios tour. Every 10 minutes, my old pal and assistant director Abe Levy (a buzz-worthy filmmaker in his own right) calls “Tram!” and we scurry out of the way as the centipede brimming with tourists wends its way through our set, the riders all agawk and snapping photos of an honest-to-goodness real live picture show in the making.

After months of angling in the motion picture industry, I have finally landed an assignment to write, direct, and produce short films for potential theatrical, television, and Internet distribution.

My crew and I are granted one day on the lot to get all our shots. Time is fleeting.

We have been rained out of this location twice, so Jim Cashman, Universal Studios operations group manager of marketing, is booking our shooting dates on the fly. Unfortunately, there’s no way to re-route the trams, which run as mercilessly on time as if Mussolini himself did the scheduling.

The tram operators are nonplused by our obstruction and take potshots at the crew and me over the vehicles’ tinny public-address systems.

“Occasionally the studios will take pity on smaller, low-budget productions and let them shoot on the lot–like an outreach program for wannabes,” squawks a tour conductor. He catches my eye as he passes and lobs, “Hey, look at this one–let’s play ‘Guess the Day Job!’ ”

In this pissing match, I think I’d win, tram-man. The anatomy of my career is as follows: the newspaperman bone is connected to the novelist bone, the novelist bone is connected the filmmaker bone, and the filmmaker bone is connected directly to my ass, through which I often speak and which has of late endured the slings and arrows of being kicked around Hollywood.

Backstory–Elements necessary to the understanding of a story, often clumsily included as a flashback or in a surfeit of jumpcuts.

At the tail end of 1999, I quit my day job as entertainment editor of my hometown paper, the Petaluma Argus-Courier, because, while shoveling through a shit pile of deadlines, an attractive woman from the neighborhood came over, looked at me with her deep brown eyes, and inquired if I wouldn’t rather join her in making caramel apples.

After reassessing my values, I decided that (taken literally or euphemistically) making caramel apples with a pretty girl was truly more in league with my sense of, as the ancient Romans used to say, vocatio–one’s calling.

CUT TO:

Enter Cary Carpe, a part-time Petaluman one decade my senior who is in the midst of piecing back together a once-thriving screenwriting career that crumbled when his wife left him for an aging teen idol.

The bearded, understated, and dreadfully deadpan Carpe and I met five years earlier through Petaluma poet Trane DeVore, who turned him on to my darkly comic novel The Late Projectionist, a semi-autobiographical riff on an aspiring screenwriter trapped in a small town. Truth and fiction would soon merge.

Aware that I recently chased a skirt into the rush-hour traffic of freelance gigs and theater reviews that barely covered my rent (but kept my jackets tight, as I had a habit of guzzling opening-night champagne and liberally grazing pallets of hors d’oeuvres), Carpe gives me my first show biz break.

Carpe is recovering from a five-year case of writer’s block and needs a title for a spec script he plans to write about entertainment industry ghostwriters. I suggest The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghostwriter. He says I’m hired.

I learn the craft of screenwriting while writing the flick with Carpe–feeling all the while like a magician’s apprentice who nightly watches his screen-bound corpus sawn in half and expertly restored, though usually a bit shorter.

CUT TO:

Meanwhile, the brave new world of digital cinema is beckoning. The obstacles (lack of cash) and excuses (being a busy newspaperman) that have prevented me from making a film in the past are no longer an issue. So, in late spring 2000, I begin shooting Hold Me with Your Robot Hand, an 11-minute mockumentary about a boy, a band, and a robot hand.

“Think of it as a sort of Horatio Alger story set in the amputee ward,” I bray to an investor, who, either impressed with my chutzpah or my producer/new girlfriend’s sang-froid demeanor and doe eyes (meet Rachael “Caramel Apples” Costa), cuts the check for the production budget.

After playing nationally on the film festival circuit, the flick is acquired by Lions Gates Films’ online venture CinemaNow for online distribution (CinemaNow.com; keyword search: robot hand).

Buoyed by Tinsel Town’s reception of Robot Hand, I jump headlong into the chrysalis of new media and come out a moth fluttering around the limelight of Hollywood’s backdoor. Which in this case is tucked into the Echo (insert sound of automatic weapon fire) Park district of Los Angeles in an apartment split with Cary Carpe.

There, we set to writing the great American screenplay, and thus is born our partnership. We fancy ourselves a modern-day Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (hail of bullets and all) or Lennon and McCartney (hail of bullets on the side). I have turned a new page in my career as a writer–and find it crested with the words “FADE IN.”

The Pitch–A form of groveling native to Hollywood in which you “show them yours” and they show you the door.

In the meantime, Carpe introduces me to his private fetish–the relatively unheralded world of 1950s educational films (Dating Do’s and Don’ts, Are You Popular?, Soapy the Germ Fighter, What It Means to Be an American, et al.). He suggests we write a ensemble-cast comedy about the people who made them. We write the feature-length screenplay, titled Best Behavior, in a month, polish it for two weeks, and then begin shopping it.

To re-educate the studio executives as to what an educational film actually is, Carpe and I shoot a short parody, Is it Time to Swap?, for would-be swingers.

The buzz on Swap lands us a meeting with new media studio Hypnotic, a start-up strategically partnered with Universal Pictures and and boasting offices in New York and on the Universal Studios lot in Los Angeles.

CUT TO:

EXT. GATE 3 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS–DAY

I utter my name with extra flourish to the unimpressed guard–and lo, the striped barrier arm raises in a 45-degree Sieg Heil to the nouvelle auteurs.

On the lot, it looks like Carnival has collided with a circus train. Carpe and I move among a widening gyre of astronauts and ballerinas, a bevy of teamsters moving prop palm trees in seeming slow motion, a wizard on a bicycle, monkeys smoking cigarettes lit by a fire-breathing man costumed as a satyr, a pantomime horse studded with arrow wounds, and dozens of beautiful young women toting headshots and yammering “Baby, screen kisses don’t count” into wireless devices.

Alas, I suddenly understand Ezra Pound’s inspiration for his poem In a Station of the Metro, wherein he witnesses a succession of Parisian belles worthy of whistles from the hard-hat set:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd/ Petals on a wet, black bough.

The Hollywood version of Pound’s verse, of course, reads like this:

The apparition of these starlets on the lot/ Casting on a black leather couch.

We’re greeted by Andrew Weiner, a vaguely debauched but trim executive with a smile indicating that he might or might not release the lions.

He sits us down in his office, then does some perfunctory meet-and-greet banter to get a clearer bead on who we are and–more important–who we know, or at least pretend to know. I let Carpe do the talking; he’s been around so long that he knows everyone by default, the way a prisoner might remind a guard of his anniversary.

We pop in our screener of Swap and nervously watch Weiner, whose stoic demeanor lets nary a whisper of laughter crease his lips. Finally, the tape ends and he turns to us.

“Nice calling card. So what do you want to do with it?”

I drop the screenplay on the table.

My partner turns to me and whispers, “You do ‘play by play,’ I’ll do ‘color.’ ”

I begin the pitch.

“In an era that liked Ike and loved Lucy, school boards commissioned thousands of sensational, conformist, and often bloody ‘social guidance films . . .’ ”

“Red Asphalt,” Carpe interjects, arching his brow.

I clear my throat.

“Once believed to be an infallible teaching aid, the films extolled the virtues of proper dating habits and good citizenship and the wonders of patriotism,” I continue, then ask rhetorically, “But who were these people that made films of such impossible virtue?”

We pause for dramatic effect, which succeeds only in giving Weiner a chance to check his watch.

“Our comic feature screenplay explores educational filmmaking from a behind-the-scenes perspective . . .”

Carpe adds with relish, “Boogie Nights meets Ed Wood in the dark alley of American educational films.”

“In our research,” I continue, “we’ve discovered that these educational filmmakers were out-and-out sleazebags . . .”

“Despots, junkies, beatniks,” Carpe adds.

“One day, into this melange of vice rolls a student teacher who has virtually raised himself on these films. He is polite, hygienic, clean-cut, possibly a virgin . . .”

“Squeaky clean . . .” Carpe avers.

“This aspiring pillar of society rolls in and whips the studios in shape . . .”

“Squeaky wheel . . .”

“But in so doing, he discovers that those he comes to call his mentors and friends are actually rogues, scoundrels, and weirdos. Does he succumb to their temptations? Or does he take matters into his own self-righteous hands?”

“Squeaky Fromme,” Carpe concludes, then leans back, satisfied.

Weiner blinks. He finally asks, “So what happens?”

“You see Frankenstein? That happens,” I say emphatically.

“This is a comedy?”

“A dark comedy.”

“Are there lesbians?”

“There can be.”

Option–Essentially a down payment on a screenplay or property that grants the producers the right to peddle and develop the work without purchasing it completely; i.e., getting fucked without getting kissed.

Weiner and his associates at Hypnotic read a lesbian-enhanced version of our screenplay. In mid-January 2001, while in Park City, Utah, during the 10-day soiree that comes with the Sundance Film Festival and its satellites (including our own festival, SCAMdance), Carpe and I ink our first deal as partners.

Park City is to film contracts what Geneva is to peace treaties–neutral territory suitable for the signing of documents. Talks are tense. Our then lawyer, a man plainly used to bigger fish, thinks of us as chum and consequently used our contracts–to extend the metaphor–as fish-wrap.

We get a new lawyer (who, incidentally, counts gangsta rap label Death Row Records among his clients and is conveniently a contract and litigation lawyer) and sign on to an option of our feature screenplay, the acquisition of Swap, and the commission of three more shorts to create a series of educational films.

Included in the series is the self- explanatory What to Do with Your Dead Hooker; Let’s Meet Those People–a pair of WASP kids venture to the other side of the demographic spectrum–and Johnny Come Early, a guide to preventing premature ejaculation, all of which we would shoot on the Universal Studios lot.

On Set–See Dante’s Inferno, canto 3: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here . . .”

The back lot of Universal Studios is the lost twin of downtown Petaluma. From the bricks to the iron-front buildings, from the clock tower to the slough, it’s a brick-and-mortar valentine to mom and apple pie–except that it’s all fake and nearly as expensive.

The cadre of Petalumans I have assembled to aid and abet my foray into studio filmmaking feels eerily at home and frolics in the vacant streets as if playing a game of stick ball.

Our star, Petaluma actor Zachary Kahler, arrives at the set fresh-faced and spritzing us with a squirt gun he found in a hole cut into the pages of his hotel room Bible. His watery assaults are combated by Levy, who tosses a brick at Kahler to watch him flinch. Luckily, the brick is a prop made of foam.

Costa quietly warns me that some of the studio people are en route to check our progress.

“It’s difficult see the Hollywood sign when blinded by the glinting sword of Damocles hovering perpetually over one’s head, eh, Daedalus?” my collaborator Carpe whispers wryly into my ear.

Indeed, it’s time to get the shot.

Another tram finally chugs out of the frame, Levy calls everyone to order, and the camera begins rolling. Carpe nods to me: “Go ahead, man, this one’s on me.”

I take a breath, cup my hands, and holler, “Action!”

From the May 24-30, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

“Reverie” Exhibit

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“Reverie” Exhibit

With Gusto

‘Reverie’ exhibit a blast of fun

By Gretchen Giles

VAROOMING off the walls with humor and a wink, the “Reverie” show currently exhibiting at the A Street Gallery in Santa Rosa is anything but what the name might suggest. Taken from a tattoo on Santa Rosa photographer Brian Gaberman’s wrist, the exhibit’s name might be dreamy, but the vision is not. In fact, the collected exuberant gust from these five emerging artists is so confidently giddy that they themselves couldn’t contain it to just one room. Give a peek down the back hall to see the frenetic artistic graffiti that spill down the corridor.

Forget some old graybeard dying for his craft; what the young “Reverie” artists know is that this shit is fun.

Marrying strong design backgrounds (all of the exhibitors are commercial artists) with the aesthetics of skateboard and comic-book culture, “Reverie” notably features San Francisco illustrator and Slap magazine cartoonist Jeremy Fish, whose work threatens to overwhelm the rest. Fish knows his kitsch, taking in TB&A his cigar-brown trophy plaques from some mythic dad’s rec room wall and replacing that presumed stuffed swordfish with friendly, sculpted genital faces inevitably pierced with a cleanly gory bone that would be at home in Wilma Flintstone’s hair.

Similarly, Fish pounces upon a dreary, oversized, Goodwill-type landscape (The Golden Sea) by someone else, painting into a bottom corner the short illustration of a man on his car, beer in hand, enjoying a relaxing outdoor pee in midstream. All Shapes and Sizes, a four-panel painting that puts a pinkly bulging female torso together in pieces, offers a better background than foreground, as Fish puts all hooters/melons/jugs allusions into a humorous ongoing stream behind its horror of flesh.

“Fantastic!” proclaims much of the doodle-scrawl on San Franciscan Ellery Samson’s work, both in the gallery and in the hall-wall frenzy of the studio warren behind the A Street space. Tabs of Acid, a large greeny painting on a recycled wood panel, offers at first look a quick-draw of eyes and noses in continuing profile. But don’t stand on tippy-toe, as that raw sharp nail sticking directly out of the top left corner might pierce an eye or nose or two. The wonderful paranoia in Samson’s restless “canvas” is perhaps explained by the large, painstaking, jigsaw plywood cutouts he otherwise produces of subjects as diverse as cute baby chicks and punk faves Stiff Little Fingers.

Santa Rosa designer/illustrator Matt O’Brien paints directly onto the gallery walls, adding loosely constructed found-wood sculptures to such oversized works as Nimbus. O’Brien aims to control the tension of the wall by exactly controlling what happens on it permanently, creating his own chaos and then working to subdue it.

THIS IS WHERE the show quiets, not slows, down. Brian Gaberman’s silver gelatin black-and-white prints push to explore those limits that photography can still use for surprise. Often shot literally from the belly, at grass level, these silent worlds of down-falling farm structures and upswelling steeples fade purposefully before their own edges, offering a select myopia that have the In Cold Blood chill of an outsider’s creep.

San Francisco painter Jessica Kerollis perhaps offers the most frankly serious work here, but she also incongruously aims for a light gaiety by appending paper party hats and an eight-ball balloon to her portraits. Using acrylic and pastels, Kerollis produces lush rich symbols of fading girlhood, but seems afraid to allow them the full grandeur of their dark beauty, instead adding the ha-ha element of such paper toppers.

Curated by Liana Hibbard, the 20-something college-going daughter of A Street Gallery owner Andrea Hibbard, “Reverie” is by her friends for her friends, and the spacious invitation of “Reverie” is: Ain’t we all?

‘Reverie’ exhibits through June 2 at the A Street Gallery, 312 S. A St., Santa Rosa. Hours are Wednesday-Saturday, from noon to 5 p.m. 707/578-9124.

From the May 17-23, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Open Mic

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Open Mic

Lost in Space

By Lisa Martinovic

SO NOW it’s official: after summarily debating the president’s proposed budget and tax cut, the Senate made like a good doggie and dutifully delivered 54 well-fed and manicured thumbs up onto the doorstep of young Master Bush. But before we lie back and enjoy the pillaging of our national coffers, I want to make sure that we’re clear on how this coup came to pass.

Apparently one day on the campaign trail, then candidate Bush woke up, rubbed his sleepy eyes, and took a good, hard look around. He was shocked–shocked!–to find a looming energy crisis, faltering New Economy, schoolyard massacres, homeless people, ominous signs of global warming, and a seemingly endless parade of ills afflicting this great land that The Family deemed would soon be his. Then he cogitated for the full length of his attention span and, when the second hand was on the 12 again, he slapped his palm against his forehead and exclaimed: “Well heck sake, the problem with America is that rich people just don’t have enough money!” And thus the tax cut was born.

Clearly, the man is a genius.

The wisdom of the Bush vision came to me with the speed of the Nasdaq free-fall the moment I saw Dennis Tito strapping into the Russian space capsule. Gosh, I realized, there are probably gobs of other millionaires who can’t afford this basic wealthy person’s right–corporate titans who as children yearned to be the next John Glenn, but instead of following their bliss spent their lives in service to God and country: building fortunes on the backs of happy, toiling wage slaves.

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have presidents and senators to look out for them. So naturally, Bush wants 45 percent of that $1.35 trillion distributed to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. This is as it should be. Since most Americans are not clever or disciplined enough to manage their own money, it’s up to the rich to serve as wise stewards of our collective fortune by trickling down upon us no more than our little ol’ brains can handle.

God also intended that the rich act as inspiration for bottom-dwellers. In their Armanis and limos and, yes, now in outer space, the rich show us what it’s possible to achieve with a firm commitment to putting profits before people, the environment, and any hope for a livable future.

AT A PRESS conference a couple of days after the U.S. Senate vote, the president was asked how he planned to help consumers cope with spiraling energy costs. Mr. Bush pooh-poohed long-range, systemic approaches and instead crowed that his tax cut would put “money in their pockets to deal with high energy prices.” Touché, King George! And I’m sure it goes without saying that people who are too poor to pay taxes (and hence won’t benefit from tax relief) can jolly well downsize themselves into curbside cardboard boxes where they won’t have to worry about energy bills at all!

Well, before my dim bulb got a compassionate conservative re-education, I had this silly idea. I thought, what if we took that whole proposed tax grab–I mean cut–and shared it with everyone equally, say, by investing in solar power. I did a little research, and it turns out that $1.35 trillion worth of installed solar power would generate one half of all our home electricity needs. Indefinitely. It seemed like a good idea at first; then I looked up into the night sky, considered what was orbiting the big picture, and came to my senses.

When it comes down to a choice between cheap, clean, renewable energy for the masses or joy rides in space for deprived millionaires, Mr. President, you’ve got my vote, too.

Oh, and thanks, Dennis, for helping us understand why this tax cut is “just right.”

Lisa Martinovic is a local writer, slam poet, and creativity coach at .

From the May 17-23, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Maintained by .

‘Startup.com’

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A fan of failure sizes up new film about dot-com flops

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

Leaving the theater, stepping out into the blistering heat of a sweltering spring afternoon, author Paul Collins pauses to glance briefly at the glass-encased movie poster for the film we’ve just finished watching.

Startup.com, a critically-acclaimed documentary by D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim, is the true story of a typical Internet flame-out–a real-life screwball tragedy. The poster features the provocative image of a large DOT being rolled uphill by a struggling human silhouette (think Sisyphus in the Underworld, forever pushing his boulder to the top of the mountain) and bears a clichéd-but-tantalizing tagline: “The Rise and Fall of the American Dream.”

With a knowing nod of his head, a deep-throated chuckle, and a naughty neon-bright smile, Collins turns away, gesturing for me to lead the way. As we head off in search of an air-conditioned spot for our post-film conversation, he laughs again, obviously delighted, and clearly inspired.

Nothing inspires Paul Collins like a good failure.

A sometime teacher and long-time chronicler of the business world–he writes for such publications as McSweeney’s Quarterly and eCompany Now–Collins, a conspicuously intelligent, self-effacing man with bright, piercing eyes and an ever-present “oops-you-caught-me” grin, ranks among the world’s leading experts on the unfortunate art of anonymous failure.

By anonymous failure, Collins means those artistic and scientific efforts that, in spite of their merits, were so spectacularly unsuccessful that their once-famous progenitors have now been all-but-erased from the pages of history.

Until now.

Collins’ abiding interest in, as he kindly describes it, “things that didn’t work out,” has now emerged in the form of a book. Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luck (Picador, $25.00) is a collection of ripping-good stories that have waited a very long time to be told.

The book’s title refers to John Banvard, a painter of enormous panoramas that, for a time, made him the world’s richest and most famous artist–until his one fatal mistake. Subjects of other tales include William Henry Ireland, who made a good business out of forging works by Shakespeare, until he was caught, and Thomas Dick, a popular writer of scientific tracts whose theories led all too briefly to the exciting “discovery” that the Moon was populated by humanoid bats. It gets even funnier.

But Collins’ wounded losers have nothing on Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman, the floundering co-founders of GovWorks, the Internet company that is the primary focus of Startup.com.

Kaleil and Tom, childhood buddies, dreamed of becoming billionaires by age 30. GovWorks seems to be their pathway to the riches. Energetically pitching their on-line service, where users would log on to pay things like parking tickets and water bills, the entrepreneurs amass millions of dollars in startup capital.

Then, as the movie posters promise, things begin to go wrong. But for all its drama, Tom and Kaleil’s eventual fall–alternately tense, heart-breaking, and hilarious–is nothing particularly extraordinary. And that’s exactly the point.

“Failure,” insists Collins, “is normal.”

We’re sitting at a table, observing a trio of homeless people sauntering past the coffee shop window in the heat. “Like hydrogen, which is universal,” Collins says, “or entropy, which is everywhere, failure is really one of the most natural occurrences in the world.

“One of the things I found myself thinking as I was watching the movie,” he continues, “was what I often think when I look at businesses that fall apart, or ideas that don’t work out–which is, I don’t know what they could have done differently. They were relatively sober people. With an idea that was not really that bad–but they got swamped anyway.”

And the reason they got swamped is as common as the cold: Someone else did it better. That someone was EZGov, a competitor with a snaky CEO and a much better name.

“GovWorks is a lousy name compared to EZGov,” Collins agrees. “Tom and Kaleil might have been wise to invest a little capital for a consultant to come up with a better name.”

Still, GovWorks is better than the names we see them bandying about on screen. Their company almost became NexTown, or–no joke–GivetoCaeser.com. And GovWorks, as a concept, is still better than the one they almost launched: Virtual Tombstones.

“I’m glad this movie is coming out when it is,” Collins muses. “I think it’s a useful reminder to people about the essential nature of business, which is that most businesses do fail. Unless a business collapses in a really spectacular way, we tend to only hear about the successes. Most businesses go out with a whimper.”

Collins compares Tom and Kaleil’s experience to that of Alfred Beach, a New Yorker who, in 1870, attempted to build a vast pneumatic-tube passenger system beneath the streets of Manhattan–“It was very Jetsons,” explains Collins–but was scuttled by corrupt officials with their own plans for an underground subway.

“He was blown out of the water by competition,” Collins says.

Unlike Beach, however, Tom and Kaleil couldn’t really be called visionaries. “All Kaleil wanted to do was succeed,” Collins notes–to become a billionaire.

“The vehicle was sort of irrelevant,” Collins says. “If they’d decided that they could have made a fortune off of Virtual Headstones I think they would have done it. What drew me to the people in the book was not just that they were failures. These were people who genuinely believed in something, and often stuck by it, even when everything else was going wrong, even when no one was listening to them, even when there was nothing in it for them any longer except their belief in the idea.”

Good point. Throughout Startup.com, Tom and Kaleil repeatedly state what has become the unofficial mantra of the Dot-Com religion: “If this doesn’t work, we’ll just do something else.”

Well. . .now they’ll get their chance. Next time, says Collins, they might even succeed.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if Kaleil does ends up being a billionaire some day,” he says. “Or at least a multi-millionaire. And if so, people will look back on the events of Startup.com, and just, you know, chalk it up to experience.

“Because, as everybody knows,” Collins concludes, once again beginning to smile, “You can learn from failure. There’s no better way to learn to walk than by falling flat on your face.”

From the May 17-23, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Summer Guide: Music Events

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Summer Guide: Music Events

Heat Wave

Summer sizzles on North Bay arts scene

Edited by Greg Cahill and Patrick Sullivan

READY, SET, kawabunga! Like a smiling swimmer leaping from the high dive into the sparkling waters of your local swimming pool, we’re taking another exuberant splash into the season of warm weather, cold drinks, and lazy days at the beach. As always, under this hot sun a thousand flowers bloom across the North Bay art scene. Music festivals, parades, art shows, dance performances, studio tours: they’re all there, or at least quite a few of them, waiting for you to shake the sand from your swimsuit and point your feet toward fresh sources of fun.

So dive right in!

May

Rose Parade A rose by any other name is not so sweet as the North Bay’s biggest city pours on the small-town charm. The 107-year-old Luther Burbank Rose Parade Festival, replete with 4,000 marchers in 120 units, kicks off May 19, at 10 a.m., with Clo the Cow as grand marshal. Among the participants will be floats, drill teams, bands, clowns, cars, and equestrians. The parade begins at 10 a.m. at Sonoma Avenue and E Street. Curbside viewing is available along the entire route: E Street, Third Street, and Santa Rosa Avenue. The event also offers an assortment of food, music, exhibits, an Italian street painting gallery, and other activities along First Street between Santa Rosa Avenue and D Street. Free. 707/542-7673.

Friday at Falkirk The Falkirk Cultural Center kicks off its summer cultural series with a tribute to George Gershwin on May 25, from 8 to 11 p.m. On June 29, it’s an evening of ragas from North India, and on July 27 listen in for the unmistakable sounds of flamenco. Local caterers craft goodies to complement the entertainment: you can’t go wrong with curry and tapas! Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Ave., San Rafael. $15 for general admission, $13 for Falkirk members. 415/485-3328.

Soundfest 2001 Waterline Beach will be awash with great music during this benefit concert for the Guerneville School music program. Performers to strut the sand include blues guitarist Hamilton Loomis, singer/songwriter Tom Finn, outlaw rock and rollers Jeffrey Halford and the Healers, and “get-up-and-dance” R&B from Kathleen Cairns and Tattoo Blue. BYOB (bring your own barbecue), or buy some right there. May 27, starting at noon. Waterline Beach, 15025 River Blvd., Guerneville. $20 for general admission; free for children under 10. 707/869-0828.

Healdsburg Jazz Festival Just cuz it’s called “smooth jazz” doesn’t mean it’s easy to swallow. For those with more discriminating ears, there is the third annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival, which opens this year on May 30 with a gala dinner ($125) and a concert by Ray Drummond, Craig Handy, and Don Moye. On May 31 at 7 p.m., film archivist Mark Cantor shares a few sets from his collection of jazz on film at the Raven. Pianist Renée Rosnes and her trio touch down on June 1 at 7 and 9 p.m., while June 2 is a full day: Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band and the Pete Escovedo Orchestra at 1 p.m. at Rodney Strong Vineyards ($25). Later that night the Raven hosts the Ray Drummond Quartet and “All the Magic,” a musical and cinematic tribute to Lester Bowie ($25). On June 3 at 1 p.m., the Heath Brothers and the Billy Higgins Sextet take charge of the Geyser Peak Winery picnic area ($25). The festival winds down with a salute to drummer Billy Higgins. Tickets are available at Levin & Co. in Healdsburg. 707/433-8509.

June

Quilt Shows For comfort and durability, factory-made quilts don’t have a patch on the homemade variety. As quilt shows prove, homemade quilts have the decorative aspect covered, too. In June, the Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County hosts a weekend showing of its members’ work. June 2, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; June 3, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Veterans Bldg., 1351 Maple Ave., Santa Rosa. Free. 707/528-1671 . . . . Petaluma boasts the distinction of the largest outdoor quilt show in California, with over 700 samples of the breed decorating downtown. Aug. 11, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Downtown Petaluma. Free. 707/769-0429.

Marin Home Show and Jazz Fest Time was when the sound of home improvement was a forklift drag-racing backwards and a thousand gangly young men in orange aprons saying, “What?” The Marin Home Show changes all that with a full cart of local jazz favorites, including Jules Broussard, the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, and the Battle of the Bands high-school jazz band playoff. Listen in while you wander a maze of home improvement exhibits that’ll make you want to bulldoze the house and start over. (Hey, you could always get the forklift racer to help.) June 2, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; June 3, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Marin Exhibit Hall and Fairgrounds, Marin Civic Center, Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael. $6 for general admission, $5 for seniors; free for children under 14. 415/472-3500.

Music on the Square Something about the genteel shadiness of a well-kept public plaza makes good music even better, and the civic boosters of Healdsburg work that point so well with their free summer concert series, on Sundays, from 2 to 4 p.m. The series kicks off on June 3 with Cannonball, and from there ranges from American marches (June 10) to flamenco (Aug. 12). Take the central Healdsburg exit from Hwy. 101 and drive till you see contented people on the grass. That’s the place. 707/433-3064.

Mondavi Winery Summer Festival Robert Mondavi Winery’s historic To-Kalon Vineyard will see its 32nd year of vibrant outdoor concerts this summer, starting with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on June 30. Other performances include Cesaria Evora (July 7), the Buena Vista Social Club (July 13), Dan Fogelberg in a solo acoustic set (July 28), and smooth jazz with Brian Colbertson, Dave Koz, Michael McDonald, and Norman Brown (Aug 4). Seating begins at 5, concerts start at 7 p.m. $42-$70 for individual shows, with reserve seating for an additional $25. 888/769-5299.

African Marketplace & Film Exposé The West Coast premiere of Black Survivors of the German Holocaust is but one of the cinematic offerings at this cultural confab, with showings scheduled for Friday evening and all day Saturday. If the kids won’t sit still for the serious stuff, send them over for entertainment by the Prescott Children’s Clown Troupe and storyteller Kellmar. The marketplace promises art, clothing, and traditional African cuisine. June 1-2. LBC, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. $5 for general admission, $10 for a family pass; free for youth under 16. Call for times. 707/794-0729.

Cloverdale Heritage Days The annual Black Bart Festival has been usurped by the Cloverdale Heritage Days. That’s the bad news–for fans of the notorious outlaw at least, though we’re sure the Chamber of Commerce is happier. The good news is that the cow-chip-throwing competition is still on. Other fun includes a display of gas-powered washing machines (which might be making a comeback), an open-air antique show, an art show, crafts, winetasting, food booths, a variety of live music–like rock and roll, country, jazz, opera arias, and easy listening. There’s also entertainment like the Black Bart Gunfighters, a Civil War re-enactment, Pomo Indian dancing, bathtub races, clowns, an era fashion show and costume contest, a barbecue, a balloon jump, street dancing, break dancing, and much more. Phew! June 2. Races start at 8 a.m.; everything else runs from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. At the Grange Hall. Western dress is encouraged. And tell ’em Bart sent ya. Free. 707/894-4470.–.

Art at the Source Get up close and personal with artists in their native habitats via Sebastopol Center for the Arts’ annual tour of working art studios in the west county. Remember, please don’t feed the artists while they’re working! Free maps are provided at locations throughout the county (including the Sebastopol Center for the Arts and Copperfield’s Books). June 2-3, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A preview exhibit of work by participating artists is open through June 3 at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 6821 Laguna Park Way. 707/829-4797.

Sonoma Lavender Festival Maybe it’s not much in one of those dried-up balls of soap at your grandma’s house. But the scent of lavender in the middle of a five-acre lavender farm is nothing to sneeze at. Farm tours, craft making, a taste of lavender cuisine, and U-cut blooms make this a sweet-smelling field trip. June 23-24, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sonoma Lavender Barn, 8537 Sonoma Hwy., Kenwood. Free. 707/833-1330.

Beerfest More beer, more beer, MO-O-O-ORE beer! I can’t remember where I’ve heard that song, but it wouldn’t be out of place at this year’s Beerfest. The 10th annual event benefiting Face to Face’s HIV and AIDS programs gathers together more than 35 of Northern California’s microbreweries, plus food purveyors that go way beyond typical pub grub. Live music from the Uncle Wiggly Band adds a rockin’ tone to the festivities. Rain or shine, be there and be thirsty! June 16, from 1 to 5 p.m. Luther Burbank Center’s mall and courtyard, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. $24 in advance (available at Face to Face and some local breweries, or through BASS) and $28 at the door. 707/887-7031.

Valley of the Moon Arts & Artisans Show Enjoy a weekend of fine arts and crafts, jazz, and good food at the Valley of the Moon Art Association’s 40th annual art and craft show. More than 100 Northern Californian artists will display and sell their work during the event. June 2 and 3, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sonoma Plaza. Free. 707/453-1656.

Dry Creek Vineyard Summer Celebration Indulge your senses with a variety of wine and food samplings. On offer are current wines, barrel tastings, and library selections, plus gourmet products from purveyors such as Flying Goat Coffee, Howler Sorbet & Gelato, and DaVero Olive Oil. Visitors will learn to blend their own meritage from the winery’s year 2000 red-wine barrel samples. The event also features live music and dancing. June 2, noon to 5 p.m. 3770 Lambert Bridge Road, Healdsburg. $35 in advance (if purchased by May 21), $40 at the door. 707/433-1000.

Health and Harmony Festival More well-being and all-around “like, wow, man” than you can shake a stick at (not that you would, because that wouldn’t be harmonious), this two-day festival throws down a nonstop stage of music from around the world and our own backyards. The more serious-minded festival-goers can check out ecology, health, and industrial hemp pavilions, while women are always welcome in the goddess temple. June 9-10, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The music lineup includes (June 9) Babatunde Olatunji, Spearhead, Lost at Last, and the Venusians; and (June 10) Judy Mowatt, Pride & Joy, and Dr. Loco. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa. $15 for adults in advance ($8 for seniors and youths ages 10-16), $18 for adults at the door ($10 for seniors and teens 10-16), and $25 for both days; free for kids under 10. 707/575-9355.

Italian Street Painting Festival Before there were graffiti, there were madonnari: The work of Italian chalk artists whose addictively ephemeral art goes back to the 16th century. Of course, you can’t see street painting in a museum, so we’re lucky to have this festival covering the pavement of downtown San Rafael every summer. Watch the pros, and try it yourself! June 9, from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; June 10, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fifth and A streets in San Rafael. Free. 415/457-4878.

Duncans Mills Festival of the Arts You can tell visitors to this humble hamlet by whether they stand looking at the sign and mutter something about missing apostrophes. But it’s not so bad to be a visitor during Duncans Mills’ annual arts, crafts, and family fun fair. In addition to winetasting, arts and crafts, and two stages of entertainment from such musicians as Blues Burners, ESQ, and Tee Fee, you also get a rubber duck race. Could you be the next lucky duck? June 16, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; June 17, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, and free for children under 12. 707/824-8404.

Cotati Jazz Festival This pleasant low-key institution has earned a reputation as “the biggest little mainstream jazz festival in the North Bay.” This year marks the fest’s 21st anniversary with bebop combos, vocalists, trios, quartets, and quintets enlivening a half dozen downtown cafes, saloons, and coffee shops. Scheduled performers include (on Saturday) gut-bucket blues singer Brenda Boykin (worth the price of admission alone), the Eddie and Madeline Duran Quartet, Mark Levine’s Latin Quartet, vocalist Nate Pruitt with the George Marsh Quintet, and the Ed Kelley Quintet; and (on Sunday) pianist Dick Conte (of the now-defunct KJAZ-FM), trumpeter Peter Welker and his sextet, and Chuck Sher’s One World Latin band, jazz vocalist Elaine Lucia and her quartet, and Adam Theis and the Cannonball Quintet. June 16-17, from 1 to 6 p.m. at various locations in downtown Cotati, including the Inn of the Beginning and Tradewinds. $15 for one day and $25 for both (available only at the bandstand in La Plaza Park during the event). 707/584-2222.

Sonoma-Marin Fair Carnival midway, yadda, yadda. Arts and crafts, of course. Main-stage performers include Mark Chesnutt (June 20), Norton Buffalo (June 21), Gallagher (June 22), Lee Ann Womack (June 23), and the Dogstar Band with Keanu Reeves (June 24) . . . so what else? No, wait, that’s pretty cool. But let’s not kid ourselves here. The real reason to visit this old-time country fair is, in fact, the “World’s Ugliest Dog” contest. Is it objectifying unattractive canines, or just plain weird? You be the judge. June 20-24, from noon to 10 p.m. 175 Fairgrounds Drive, Petaluma. $7 for adults, $3 for juniors, and free for kids under 6. 707/283-FAIR.

Russian River Blues Festival This year’s yowza lineup of topnotch blues starts off on June 23 under the header “The Blues Is a Woman,” with ample proof in the form of performers Lady Bianca, Shemekia Copeland, Deborah Coleman, Etta James and the Roots Band, and Rosie Ledet and the Zydeco Playboys. June 24 brings in Keb’ Mo’, Lucky Peterson, Roomful of Blues, Sy Klopps, the Persuasions, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and Gate’s Express. The music starts at 11 a.m. both days. Winetasting, gourmet food, and snacks will be available. Weather, like the blues, runs from cool to sizzling, so layer up and lie back. Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville. $40 for one day and $75 for both days, with discounts for advance purchase. 510/655-9471.

Scrapture Talking trash takes on a whole new meaning at Oh, Rapture, it’s Scrapture, Garbage Reincarnation’s 15th annual junk-art scrapture competition. In addition to sculpture made from items normally dumped in the bin, the event features live entertainment from local musicians. Aspiring artists are invited to participate, but you must register by noon. June 30, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. La Plaza Park, Old Redwood Highway and West Sierra Avenue, downtown Cotati. Free. 707/584-8666.

Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival They’ve moved this three-day folk-fest from Sebastopol up to Wavy Gravy’s ranch in Mendocino County. Camping is now an option, too. But the purpose–honoring the late singer-songwriter Kate Wolf–remains the same, and the performers are still as distinguished as musicians can be. Artists onstage June 29, starting at 1 p.m., include Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Chris Webster and Nina Gerber, and Alisa Fineman and Kimball Hurd. On June 30, beginning at 11 a.m., sit back for performances by Arlo Guthrie, Lucy Kaplansky, the Cache Valley Drifters, and others. On July 1, starting at 10 a.m., Richie Havens, Nickel Creek, Utah Phillips, and many others will take the stage. Black Oak Ranch, Laytonville. $87 for an adult’s full pass, $70 for a Saturday-Sunday pass, $20-$37 for a single-day pass, with discounts for kids and seniors. Camping is extra, but it’s still worth it to not have to drive back. 707/823-1511 or 707/829-7067.

Sonoma Valley Shakespeare Festival Once more into the breach, dear friends, for another summer of Shakespeare in the outdoors is upon us. This year’s festival offers three plays in revolving repertory: a comedy, a history, and something completely different. Twelfth Night plays on June 30, July 1-2, 22-23, and 28; Aug. 13 and 18; and Sept. 2. Henry V plays on July 14, 16, and 21; Aug. 19-20; and Sept. 3 and 8. Good Night, Desdemona plays on July 7-9 and 28-30; Aug. 19-20; and Sept. 3 and 8. Gundlach Bundschu Winery, 2000 Denmark St., Sonoma. $20 for adults and $18 for seniors and children; free for kids 2 and under. 707/584-1700.

Marin County Fair Lots of high-tech here, with website, multimedia, and creatures-and-models competitions edging out the pie-baking contests and greased-pig runs of more traditional county fairs. But there’s still plenty of room between the 31st annual Marin County National Festival of Short Films and the fifth and final Toilet Art Contest for fairgoers of all aesthetic persuasions. Fireworks nightly. June 30-July 4. The music lineup includes: (Saturday) the Persuasions and Night Ranger; (Sunday) the Marin County Blues Festival; (Monday) Don McLean; (Tuesday) Chubby Checker & the Wildcats; and (Wednesday) the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Hiroshima. The cost of music events is included in the price of admission to the fair. Marin Center, Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael. $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and children 4-12; free for kids under 4. 415/499-6400.

Sonoma Valley Poetry Festival For several weeks from June 30 to July 29, poetry breaks its chains and comes roaring out on to the streets of the town of Sonoma at various locations. 707/280-4696.

July

Summer Concert Series As the afternoon heat gives way to a cooler evening ambiance, lying back to some outdoor smooth jazz on the lawn of Rodney Strong Vineyards might be just the ticket. On July 1, mellow out to Rick Braun and Acoustic Alchemy. July 21, take in Keiko Matsui. Aug. 18 is David Sanborn’s night, and the series ends on Sept. 15 with a performance by Peter White and Spyro Gyra. Afternoon showtimes vary. 11455 Old Redwood Hwy., Healdsburg. $30 for general lawn seating; $35 for Golden Circle chair seating. 707/433-0919.

Art in the Park Catch another summer of free outdoor music and theater furnished by the city of Santa Rosa starting in July. This year’s roundup includes Oneye N Oneyemachi (July 8), Blusion (July 15), Ballet California (July 22), Greenhouse (Aug. 5), the Tommy Thomsen Band (Aug. 12), and Lavay Smith and her Red-Hot Skillet Lickers (Aug. 19). Shows begin at 5 p.m. at Juilliard Park, 211 Santa Rosa Ave., Santa Rosa. All performances are free, as is the piece of grass you plop your seat on. 707/543-3737.

Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival In spite of the name, it’s not all about the Bard at Napa’s summer theater extravaganza. Though the season does kick off with outdoor performances of Twelfth Night (beginning July 6) and Richard III (beginning July 13), the players will also present Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound (beginning Aug. 10) and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (beginning Sept. 14). The first two shows run at Rutherford Grove Winery, and the second two at the St. Helena School Theatre. Showtimes vary, so call for details. $18 for general admission, $14 for students and seniors. 707/251-WILL.

Sonoma County Fair They’ve got your goats, they’ve found your flowers, they’ll round up all the rodeo you can stand. And the span of talent the fair is putting onstage is bewildering in its diversity: Elvis impersonators (July 28), Mickey Rooney (July 31), and the Village People (Aug. 3). The Blues Festival is a great bet on Aug. 4, especially considering fair admission gets you into the theater free. July 24-Aug. 6, from noon to midnight. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa. $5 for general admission, with discounts available for seniors and children. 707/545-4200.

Festival on the Green This second annual summer music festival, which is co-produced by Sonoma State University and the Santa Rosa Symphony, boasts four days of splashy events spread through July and August. On July 4, at 4 p.m., “Independence Day on the Green” features music by Hot Lips and the Fingertips. Then, at 7:30 p.m., the Santa Rosa Symphony offers an evening pops concert of patriotic music, followed by a fireworks show. On July 27-29, the festival presents a free Youth Festival Weekend with special guest Knabenmusik Meersburg. On Aug. 11, at 6:30 p.m., violinist Nurit Pacht joins symphony conductor Jeffery Kahane for an evening of Tchaikovsky. On Aug. 12, at 5 p.m., Grammy-winning jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano leads his nonet. It all goes down at the campus lakes at Sonoma State University, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. Ticket prices start at $28 and vary for each event unless otherwise stated. 707/546-8742.

Kenwood Pillow Fights Mix together pillows, mud, and a bunch of feisty entrants clinging to a pole-spanning Los Guilicos Creek, and you’ve got the recipe for an instant crowd pleaser. The feathers fly again as the 35th annual Kenwood Pillow Fighting Championships get under way this Independence Day. Other attractions are the Kenwood hometown parade, 3K and 4K foot races, live music with the California Cowboys and the Gig Jung Band, and games for kids of all ages. You must be at least 14 to enter the pillow fights. Pillows and mud are supplied. July 4: races start at 7:30 a.m.; pillow fights make the feathers fly from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Plaza Park, on Warm Springs Road, Kenwood. $4; free for kids under 12. 833-2440.

Marin Shakespeare Company Summer Season Most people want to kick back in summer, but the Marin Shakespeare Company just goes into high gear: this summer’s offerings start with two comedies in rotating repertory, Shakespeare’s As You Like It (beginning July 6) and the 18th-century Italian farce, The Servant of Two Masters (beginning July 13). Both run through Aug. 19. For something completely different, the company takes on Hamlet, starting Aug. 31 and running through Sept. 29. Friday and Saturday shows are at 8 p.m.; Sunday matinees start at 4. Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, Dominican University, San Rafael. $20 for general admission, with discounts available for students and seniors. 415/499-1108.

Sonoma County Showcase of Wine & Food This is food and wine appreciation boot camp: three days, July 12-14, of tours; tastings; dinners with winemakers; lunches with grape growers; an elegant barrel auction; the ever-popular Taste of Sonoma County, featuring pavilions of possibilities for your palate; and a concert under the stars with the San Francisco Symphony, followed by fireworks and a country swing dance with Asleep at the Wheel. Hey, are you strong enough for this?! (More to the point, is your wallet strong enough?) Tickets are expensive, but the cause is good: Redwood Empire Food Bank and Share Our Strength. 707/586-3795.

Wine Country Film Festival The 15th annual celebration of international and independent films finds this cinematic extravaganza sprawling across the North Bay, hosting big-name tributes and two galas under the stars, and screening films at select theaters and vineyards in both Sonoma (including the Old Winery Ruins at the Jack London State Park in Glen Ellen) and Napa counties. Details about titles and special events will be available closer to the event. July 19 to Aug. 12 at various times and locations. 707/996-2536.

Sonoma Salute to the Arts This 16th annual celebration is billed as an ultra-premium food, wine, and art extravaganza. The theme is “Life Is a Cabaret” There’ll be prizes for the most convincing Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey impersonators. The opening celebration is July 27 at 6 p.m. (Buena Vista Winery, end of Old Winery Road, Sonoma; $75). The haps continue July 28-29 in Sonoma Plaza, with food and wine tasting from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and music and art from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The fourth annual auction is July 28, from 6 to 10 p.m. $150 for the gala opening, auction, and tasting package; everything else is free. 707/938-1133.

August

All-Nations Powwow Native American artists and craftspeople show their pride at this third annual gathering of tribes from all over Northern California and the country. Music and dancing, jewelry and leather crafts, plus Indian foodstuffs to sample, make this a day for visitors to experience a culture that still survives. Aug. 4-5, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Petaluma Adobe, 3325 Adobe Road, Petaluma. $1. 707/769-0429.

Petaluma Summer Music Festival There’s something for everyone this year as the Cinnabar Theater hosts the best in local entertainment, with performers offering everything from a special Chanticleer children’s event to Celtic music to Chinese rhythms. Tickle your funny bone at a presentation of Mavra, Igor Stravinsky’s comic operetta. Be dazzled by the ballet opera The Nightingale. Hear music from some of the world’s greatest composers during the Candlelight Concerts. Enjoy four concerts in two of Petaluma’s finest vintage Victorian showcase homes during Music in the Mansions. Aug. 4-25, at various times. Locations vary, but many performances take place at the Cinnabar Theater, 3333 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. Prices vary. 707/763-8920.

Napa Town and Country Fair Now 71 years old, the fair is taking this year to celebrate Party Gras. A preview gala and winetasting kick things off Aug. 7. Meanwhile, this eclectic five-day fair, Aug. 8-12, features kids’ activities, a destruction derby, a horse show, and music galore (including the Mills Brothers, Coasters, Spencer Davis, and Norton Buffalo). 575 Third St. (between Silverado Trail and Soscol Avenue), Napa. $7 for adults, $4 for juniors and seniors, and free for kids under 5. 707/253-4900.

Healdsburg Guitar Festival This acclaimed international event–held every other year–offers seven concerts, player workshops, guitar-maker seminars, and sales by nearly 100 top luthiers over a five-day period, Aug. 15-19. This year’s lineup spans a wide range of styles and features the California Guitar Trio, Cosy Sheridan, Meridian Green, Del Rey, Pop Rocks, Preston Reed, Geoff Stewart, Rico Stover, David Serva, Dorian Michael, David Jacobs-Strain, William Coulter, and Roy Rogers and the Delta Rhythm Kings. Villa Chanticleer Annex, 1248 N. Fitch Mountain Road, Healdsburg, and other locations. Ticket prices vary. Call for times. 707/433-1823, ext. 18.

Bodega Bay Seafood, Art, & Wine Festival This festival on the ocean offers lots to keep you busy, including arts and crafts exhibits, wine and beer tasting (at extra cost), live entertainment, puppets, pony rides, wetland tours, seafood specialties, and lots of salty air. Aug. 25, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Aug. 26, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Chanslor Ranch, 1 mile north of Bodega Bay on Hwy. 1 (follow the signs). $6 for adults, $5 for seniors, and free to kids under 12. 707/824-8404.

September

Sausalito Arts Festival The works of 270 artists from around the world (selected from 1,200 entries) are the centerpiece of this huge three-day event over Labor Day Weekend (Sept. 1-3) on the shores of San Francisco Bay. Hundreds of craft booths, a children’s theater, gourmet food, fine wines, and premium beers are available. Add to that top-name entertainment, including Richie Havens and John Hammond (both on Sept. 1) and Dave Mason and the Bacon Brothers (both on Sept. 3). $15 for general admission, $7 for seniors, $5 for juniors (ages 5-12). 415/705-5555.

Russian River Jazz Festival It’s all about sun, sand, and sound on the banks of the lazy Russian River when the Russian River Jazz Festival returns to Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville Sept. 8-9 for a weekend of straight-ahead, smooth, and soul jazz. The lineup this year includes (Sept. 8) Bobby Caldwell, the Bob James Trio, the Pete Escovedo Latin Jazz Orchestra, the Bobby Hutcherson Quartet, and Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks; and (Sept. 9) Dr. John, Jimmy Smith Quartet, and Pat Martino, featuring Joey DeFrancesco. Tickets are $35-$80 for a one- or two-day pass.707/869-3940.

From the May 17-23, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Summer Guide: Car Camping

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Summer Guide: Car Camping

Drive Time

Gadgets for the quintessential car camper

By Corinne Asturias

THE YUPPIE machine has gone into overdrive in the outdoors world of late. And the result is more choices. The camper will have to decide in his or her own mind:

Is it worth carrying into camp?

Is it torturous to clean afterward?

Is it worth carrying out of camp?

Is it one of those things you will look at in its box later and feel foolish for purchasing, owning, and dragging into the middle of nowhere and back?

These are personal questions, with personal answers. Here’s some of the latest gadgetry on the shelves at local sporting goods stores.

Ciao, Baby The Camping Espresso Maker

Well, OK, the manufacturer actually spells it with an “X,” as in “Mini Ex-presso Maker,” and this unfortunately puts them in the category of people who spell barbecue with a “Q.” But anyway, this setup is small and durable and stainless steel and shiny. The little cups, like tiny orbs, are quite Euro and could double as shot glasses later in the, er, day. The bottom reservoir of the coffeemaker fills with water, and as it boils, the pressure forces it through the coffee and out a little spout, where hopefully the camper has a cup waiting. Makes two pretty tasty demitasse cups. Price: $24.99. Cups: $1.95 each.

In Hot Water Solar Showers

This is essentially a big collapsible plastic bottle that a camper fills with water and hangs from a tree in the sun each morning. It delivers a spray of surprisingly hot water each evening. The amazing part? It really works. Since there are so many remote campgrounds without showering facilities and even more that claim to have them, but really offer lukewarm, quarter-fed medieval torture devices, this is a solid concept for the devoted camper. (Unfortun-ately, it’s also the closest many of us have ever come to using solar power.) Also great for washing dishes and taking sponge baths. It costs anywhere from $20 to $30. For the serious bather, there’s the Sun Shower Enclosure, for an additional $27.95.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place ThermaRest Pads

Who can put a price on a good night’s sleep? Well, someone tried and it turns out it’s a lot–anywhere from $60 to $100 for the thinnest, most durable, and most comfortable sleeping pad imaginable: the ThermaRest. These semi-inflatable pads have actually been around for many years, but are now available in more shapes, sizes, and thicknesses than seem necessary. They roll up thin and with a few puffs of air (literally, six or so) provide a durable cushion of air between hips, shoulders, and the ground.

Sucking Sound The KamelBak

It is apparently now deemed too much work for the average person to actually remove a water bottle from a backpack, unscrew the lid, and take a sip from it. One must now carry a large flat reservoir on the back with a tube going to the mouth, which merely has to be sucked on for water to trickle into the mouth, like a hospital patient. The KamelBak water system was a wondrous invention for racing cyclists and extreme hikers, but it has now become de rigueur for all activities that take place more than a quarter mile from a drinking fountain. It costs between $40 and $100, and if you can get over the idea that you look like a hospital patient, it’ll help ensure that you’ve always got enough water with you, wherever you hike. Some of the more expensive ones come with zipper compartments and pouches, so they can double as daypacks.

The Kitchen Sink Coleman Camp Kitchen

They’ve finally done it–come up with the mother of all kitchens, and it’s coming soon to the back of a suburban near you. The Coleman Camp Kitchen is essentially a tabletop-sized suitcase on legs that opens up to reveal a countertop, a sink, a stove area, and a wall of hanging utensils and pots and pans. There’s undercounter storage space for dishes and the ever-important paper-towel holder. And because it has legs, the cook need not be restricted by the location of the picnic table. (What is it with the rangers that tables are situated in the windiest location possible?) It also solves the ever-challenging problem of food prep space. And when the work is done, why not close it up and play a game of backgammon on the lid? Drawbacks: it’s heavier than a stove and costs $230. And hey, isn’t the reason for going camping to get away from the demands of the overly tidy kitchen syndrome?

Use the Right Tool The Tool-Box Grill

Petaluma inventor Wayne Hermansen has devised a nifty car-camping accessory–the tool-box grill. This sturdy, highly portable, self-contained, hibachi-like grill is constructed of heavy steel and fashioned like a gray enameled tool box. The vent-free box contains a recessed nickel-plated coal basket and bottom-plate heat shield, so you can just dump the coals and pop this baby right back in the trunk without fear of a car fire. The cost is $69; a grill tools set is available for another $19.99. For details, call 886-BBQ-FUN-1.

Heads Up The Headlamp

Ever notice that a flashlight is (1) never around in the dark, (2) never where you left it, and (3) never pointing where you need it? Well, if you don’t mind looking like a coal miner (and isn’t camping really about letting go, anyway?), there is a plethora of illuminating devices known as headlamps that solve these problems. Various devices from Petzl and Princeton Tec offer an array of headlamps on adjustable head straps, in varying intensities. They run from $20 to $60, with the high end being the high-output halogen model. But, regardless of price, all headlamps have the distinct advantage of pointing where you’re looking and allowing the hands to be free for other things.

Greg Cahill contributed to this article.

From the May 17-23, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Restaurant Customer Horror Stories

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Barbara Ehrenreich

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