SUV-lovin’ SOBs–Katie Alvord wants you to brave the wilds of mass transit

THIS BUS STOP smells like urine. An inky swamp of soggy newspapers covers the floor and bench, while a pleasant little pool of thick red liquid–Is it a melted Popsicle? Is it blood? What the hell is that?–lies steaming in the gum-encrusted corner. Countless cigarette butts are strewn about. And it’s hot. At 1 o’clock in the afternoon, it’s a whopping 93 degrees outside, but inside the covered shelter–at the corner of fourth and C streets in Petaluma–it’s at least 10 degrees hotter.

I think I’ll stand outside.

I just have to remember to avoid stepping in that big calcified dog-leaving that so festively adorns the sidewalk nearby. I peruse the street, hoping for the arrival of the Greyhound Bus that (if all is right with the world) is carrying Katie Alvord, author of Divorce Your Car: Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile (New Society Publishers; $17.95). The Michigan-based writer–a transportation iconoclast of the highest order–is in the midst of a 4,000-mile cross-country book tour, which she is conducting entirely car-free.

I plan to intercept Alvord’s bus en route from a book-signing in Oakland to her drop-off point in Santa Rosa, where she’ll mount her handy folding bicycle and ride to Sebastopol for another bookstore appearance this evening.

Before any of that can happen, though, the bus has to drive through Petaluma, where I am still waiting.

A bevy of buses runs by varying services–from Golden Gate Transit and Sonoma County Transit to the local Petaluma service–rumble up to the stop from time to time, admitting or discharging a stream of public-transit aficionados. I soon discover that, by hovering close to the vastly proportioned vehicles, I can find momentary shade from the murderous sun.

So I wait. And wait.

The Greyhound is not technically due to pass through town until 2 p.m., but the scary Greyhound rep I spoke to on the phone warned that I should be here at least an hour ahead or I’d run a serious risk of missing the bus altogether.

“Our buses,” he insisted, “often come early.”

The bus arrives at precisely 2:06. Katie Alvord is waiting inside, lounging in air-conditioned luxury. Waving me back, Alvord points me to the seat she’s saved in the row directly in front of her. There is nowhere else to sit. “There are a lot of people on the Greyhound today,” she beams.

ALVORD REPRESENTS a trend that, according to the stats running throughout her book, is quickly sweeping the country, though at 6 percent Sonoma County still enjoys the lowest percentage of commuters using public transit in the nine-county Bay Area region. And then there’s that public transit strike in Los Angeles this week that has stranded a half million carless commuters.

Still, Alvord says, America’s love affair with the car seems to be cooling off. Whether as a protest against an increasingly fast-paced world, as a means to reduce automotive exhaust and fight global warming, or as a way to avoid being stuck behind the wheel in gridlocked traffic, thousands of people are divorcing their cars–turning to buses, trains, and bicycles or resorting to carpools and car-sharing programs–happily claiming that the whole car-human thing was a dysfunctional relationship to begin with.

She defines two kinds of car divorce: Car Free and Car Light, where the vehicle is used only when absolutely necessary.

Divorce Your Car features a witty foreword by Alvord’s ex-hubby, Sonoma’s Craig Scarborough, who admits the 10-year marriage was made “inappropriate,” in part owing to his own love for “fun things with internal-combustion systems.”

Alvord’s entertaining, eye-opening book has gained her a great deal of attention–and more than a little hostility.

“One talk-show host that interviewed me on the radio,” she reveals, as the bus climbs the on ramp onto a bumper-to-bumper Highway 101, “began the show proclaiming, ‘What you are proposing is nothing short of un-American!'”

If so, Alvord doesn’t care.

“I’m car-free and a much happier person because of it,” she insists. “If someone wants to pursue a simpler lifestyle, divorcing their car fits right in.”

Simpler? As my unpleasant, time-killing experience illustrates, traveling car-free brings plenty of unpleasant inconveniences–not the least of which is the sunburn I earned waiting the prescribed hour for the bus.

Alvord–who’s heard every excuse in the book, and they are all in her book–is fairly tactful in her response to my complaint.

“As an experienced bus rider,” she remarks, “you learn which services typically run a little late and which ones are smack-dab on time. And even if they tell you to get there an hour in advance . . . that’s ridiculous. An hour early? That’s just impossible.”

I believe she’s now laughing at me.

“I mean, duh,” she says, grinning. “As for the other kinds of problems you’re talking about–the cruddy bus stop, the slow schedule, and lack of facilities–those are things that have stemmed from our lack of investment in transit for many, many years.

“Let your decision-makers know that you are using those services and that you want to see them improved, from general statements about it to specifics, like, ‘I was standing at the bus stop, and it was a really unpleasant experience.’ ”

You could make the phone call to Sonoma County Transit or to Greyhound or to the county supervisors.

Alvord looks out the window, where traffic is crawling as we zip by in the diamond lane. Referring to those car-addicted folks who’d like to add a few costly lanes to 101, she says, “Adding lanes doesn’t solve congestion problems the way people expect them to be solved. Because what happens when you add extra lane capacity, after a brief time, you end up with more traffic than you started with.”

The bus pulls into the station in Santa Rosa, and within minutes Alvord has assembled her folding 10-speed bike, attached the trailer-hitch suitcase, and is ready to ride.

“Living car-free is not for everyone,” she admits before she leaves. “The thing is, you can structure your life so that it’s not that inconvenient.”

With that, she pedals off, leaving me to take the bus back home.

As she pulls away, I notice the giant letters printed on the back of her T-shirt: One Less Car.

From the September 21-27, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Protesters disclose the bare facts

By Greg Cahill and Paula Harris

FAMILIAR cheesecake? Not so. At first glance, the posters resemble the provocative ads for products like Victoria’s Secret lingerie, Cosmopolitan magazine, or Obsession perfume–featuring beautiful, young, and very voluptuous models. But look closer (yes, go ahead do what you normally do) and check out their chests–gasp!–the models have mastectomy scars where breasts once were.

The three controversial posters are part of a public awareness campaign by the Breast Cancer Fund, the San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that asks, in a society obsessed with breasts, what’s being done about breast cancer?

Sonoma State University will display the posters on campus at the InterCultural Center Gallery at the student union throughout October, which is National Breast Cancer Awareness month.

It’s not possible to predict what the reaction will be, but the ads caused an uproar when they went up at bus stops around the Bay Area earlier this year. They were removed a short time later because of complaints to the transit companies from squeamish passers-by that the images were “too shocking for the public.”

“[The posters] caused controversy when they went up, but they are supposed to get the word out that breast cancer is a serious problem that shouldn’t be hidden. But it’s important to display the posters because this is something the public isn’t faced with and maybe doesn’t want to be faced with,” says Jen Denzell, an assistant at SSU’s Women’s Resource Center.

Scars have been superimposed onto the models, so that one has a double mastectomy and two have single mastectomies. “The models, advertising executive, and photographer donated their time; I donated images of my mastectomy scars,” says Andrea Ravinett Martin, founder and director of the Breast Cancer Fund.

“We created the ads to guard against complacency in a society that so readily commodifies breasts for business and entertainment purposes. . . . The ads force us to acknowledge that we’re being subjected to a deadly and disfiguring epidemic directed at our culture’s most profound symbol of sexuality and nurture,” she adds. “They also help us understand that a true appreciation of breasts requires us to act more responsibly in the way we treat women, their bodies, and the disease.”

Although the ads originally caused quite a stir, Denzell says more people complained after they were yanked. “It was very interesting,” she concludes.

Articles about the Breast Cancer Fund’s purpose in creating the ads and about the controversy they caused will be part of the display, which is free and open to the public.

Breast cancer is expected to kill at least 40,800 women this year, including 4,000 in California (the highest number of any state). Overall, it is expected that 182,800 new cases will be reported in 2000.

MEANWHILE, Sebastopol shoppers got quite a surprise on Saturday, Sept. 16, when a group of 20 women paraded topless down Main Street before holding a noontime rally at which free breast cancer exams were offered. The shirt-optional march, organized by BABES (Breast Action Brigade to Eliminate Sexism), was billed as the first annual Breast Fest..

The march was held without a permit (required for all street paraders–clothed, semi-clothed, or otherwise), though a spokeswoman for the Sebastopol Police Department reports that the event went off without a hitch.

During the past couple of years, Breast Fests have sprung up across the nation, chiefly as a means to raise awareness about breast cancer and related women’s health issues.

Jill Leslie, owner of Milk and Honey in Sebastopol, participated in the hourlong event, not only to raise awareness about women’s health issues but also to make a statement about the sexualization of women by American culture.

“Certainly breast cancer awareness was part of it, but it was more encompassing than that,” she says. “We also marched to protest the fact that in 23 states it is illegal to breast-feed in public and [marched] to make a statement about the objectification of women’s breasts.

“We should be able to walk down the street without harassment just for having this body part.”

Leslie couldn’t say just how much gawking was going on by spectators, but she felt that the protest helped educate folks.

“Our attitude was: These are our breasts, get over it,” she concludes.

From the September 21-27, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Environmentalists grow impatient over tactics to combat glassy-winged sharpshooter

By Tara Treasurefield

FROM 1993 until a few months ago, Maxina Ventura lived in Schellville in the Sonoma Valley, where pesticides are sprayed on vineyards by both ground and air. A mother of two small children, Ventura says, “Research I did at the agricultural department showed me that we were being covered with cancer-causing and hormone-disrupting chemicals, as well as heavy neurotoxins.

“Suddenly all the cancer deaths in the neighborhood made sense, and our thyroid, nervous system, and respiratory problems were no longer surprising.”

Schellville residents made phone calls, wrote letters, and met with the county Agricultural Commission and county Supervisor Mike Cale to express their concerns. But in the end, they decided that the only way to protect their families was to leave the county. “In my immediate neighborhood, around one vineyard, five households have been displaced by pesticides and others are considering leaving,” says Ventura. “Tractor spraying and aerial spraying are equally harmful. Several people moved to get away from the drift caused by tractor spraying.”

Ventura and her neighbors may prove to be the first wave of a mass exodus from California’s sprawling Wine Country. It appears that everyone who can is ready and willing to spend taxpayer money to fight Pierce’s disease, which can kill grape vines. The current strategy is primarily to use nerve poisons against the glassy-winged sharpshooter, one of the bugs that sometimes carries Pierce’s disease.

With activists throughout Sonoma County vowing to fight spraying through civil disobedience, that strategy will be part of a discussion at two public forums scheduled in the next two weeks in Sonoma County. The ante was raised this week after inspectors found an adult glassy winged sharpshooter–the first discovered in Sonoma County–at a Healdsburg nursury.

According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the wine industry has contributed $250,000 to this effort. In comparison, government officials have earmarked a whopping $40 million of taxpayer funds, and that’s just for starters.

Senate Bill 671, signed by Gov. Davis in May, calls for at least $15 million for sharpshooter/Pierce’s disease control every year until 2006. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., proposed that Congress contribute another $3 million to the anti-sharpshooter war chest. Even more generous, Congress voted to match whatever California contributes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has invested an additional $860,000.

“The sharpshooter is a threat, and we want to deal with it in the smallest area possible,” says Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioner John Westoby. “A lot of things are being looked at, including organics and bio-control agents, but carbaryl looks good right now.”

According to Westoby, the Agricultural Commission will spray carbaryl on the ground in residential areas, but won’t aerial spray.

“We can’t prevent growers from aerial spraying their crops,” he says. “If they do, we’ll be out there watching any applications they did.”

But it’s a big county, and even now the Agricultural Commission can’t witness every incident of pesticide drift.

THOUGH AERIAL spraying occurs now in Schellville and other areas, Nick Frey, executive director of the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association, says, “I think it’s very unlikely that growers will aerial spray to combat the sharpshooter. It’s not a very effective tool, and it’s not the method that anyone would recommend.”

He says that the association doesn’t support aerial spraying in residential areas, but growers might want to aerial spray if the sharpshooter appeared in an area that couldn’t be accessed very well.

While spraying is most likely in residential and agricultural areas, infested host plants in commercial areas could also be sprayed. The current practice is to spray any infested area, and regulations from CDFA define an infestation as “five or more adult insects within any five-day period and within a 300-yard radius, or the detection of multiple life stages.”

It’s a safe bet that some people will resist spraying. In that case, says Westoby, “We’d try to get permission. If we couldn’t get onto the property, we’d get an inspection warrant, and if we determined that it was necessary to treat, we’d get a court order to do an abatement [spraying].”

Westoby sympathizes with organic farmers, who could lose their certification if their crops are sprayed with a pesticide that’s not approved by California Certified Organic Farmers. “If they can come up with an organic material that would work, great,” he says. But he’s reluctant to extend the same courtesy to other county residents who object to pesticide spraying where they live.

“We’d have to check it through the Science Advisory Panel and through the CDFA. Maybe there wouldn’t be anything organic that would be effective,” he says.

Chris Malen, a member of the executive committee of the Napa County Sierra Club, is impatient with the emphasis on protecting vineyards. “Not all of us think wine is so important that we should be sprayed for it. The wine industry has engineered its own demise with monoculture. They need to correct their mistake without forcing poison on the rest of us,” she says.

“To be sprayed in our own homes is a fundamental violation of our constitutional rights. It’s morally wrong.”

Sondra Cooper, a physical therapist in Sonoma, agrees. “They need to come up with an alternative to spraying pesticides on my property. That’s not an appropriate answer to their problem. I refuse to allow them to come onto my property,” she says.

Georgia Kelly, director of Praxis Peace Institute in Sonoma, has another idea.

“Wine is a luxury. To put a luxury item ahead of the health of the people is unacceptable,” she says. “People need to realize that we can respond to forced spraying by boycotting California wine.”

A Pesticides Forum, sponsored by the Town Hall Coalition, will be held Thursday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m., at the First Congregational Church, 252 W. Spain St., Sonoma. A public meeting on the glassy-winged sharpshooter will be conducted Thursday, Sept. 28, at 5:30 p.m., by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, 575 Administration Drive, Santa Rosa.

Tara Treasurefield is chair of the Town Hall Coalition Toxics Committee.

From the September 21-27, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.