Altan

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Altan recover after death of co-founder

By Alan Sculley

IN 1994, the members of Altan faced one of the most difficult moments a band can encounter. Flute player Frankie Kennedy, who had founded the Irish group in 1983 with his wife, singer/violinist Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, succumbed to bone cancer. The loss of Kennedy, obviously, took a huge emotional toll on the group, and it also deprived Altan of the band member who, along with Ni Mhaonaigh, had been the creative catalyst for the group’s music.

But despite losing someone who had been such a formidable presence, Ni Mhaonaigh says the group never considered splitting up. In fact, she says the loss of her husband may have actually strengthened the band and helped Altan–who already were established as the world’s leading practitioners of the traditional Donegal style of Irish music–to further solidify their place in the music world.

“I remember when he died we just said we’ll continue. We didn’t mention a new flute player, not one person,” Ni Mhaonaigh says. “And we just felt we would have to get on with the void of no flute, which was a hard thing to do, but we realized afterwards that nobody could really replace him. And we all kind of . . . this is the strangest thing, I think–the band [members] are playing as good of music or better music than we did prior to his [passing] because everyone kind of tried harder.

“Everyone seems to just fly.”

Part of the inspiration for carrying Altan forward came from Kennedy himself. After he was diagnosed with cancer in 1992, he made it clear he didn’t want Altan to die with him. “We had to reach deeper inside to gain the strength, yeah,” Ni Mhaonaigh says. “And I feel his spirit is with us as well, which was very strong.”

Kennedy undoubtedly would be pleased with what Altan have accomplished over the past half-dozen years. But even before his death, the group had amassed achievements exceeded perhaps only by one other traditional Irish group–the Chieftains.

Altan were formed in 1983 as a duo by Kennedy and Ni Mhaonaigh with the sole purpose of playing the traditional music of the Donegal region of Ireland. Both Kennedy and Ni Mhaonaigh were teaching school in Dublin at the time, and there were no grand ambitions for a musical career. “There wasn’t this huge game plan at the beginning,” Ni Mhaonaigh says. “It was just to play music with all our hearts, and hopefully people would understand what we were about.”

THERE WERE GOOD REASONS for modest expectations. Located in the northernmost region of Ireland, Donegal had always been isolated from the rest of the country. The distinctive music that developed there–the Donegal style is defined by the quick, single-stroke bowing and staccato triplets of violins and a strong Scottish influence that occurred with the intermingling of musicians from Donegal and its neighbor to the northeast, Scotland–had never spread much into other parts of Ireland. So obviously bringing Donegal music to the world seemed pretty far-fetched when the music hadn’t even spread to other Irish counties.

Yet Kennedy and Ni Mhaonaigh made an impact almost immediately. They debuted as a duo in 1983 on the Irish label Gael-Linn Records with Songs from the North, an album of traditional dance tunes and songs sung in Gaelic by Ni Mhaonaigh. Live shows followed–including some short trips to the United States–and this compelled Kennedy and Ni Mhaonaigh to quit teaching and pursue music full time.

By 1987, they had landed a deal with Green Linnet Records, a label with worldwide distribution, and had brought in guitarist Mark Kelly and bouzouki player Ciaran Curran to play on a second album, which was titled Altan.

Soon afterward, Altan became a full-fledged band, with Curran, guitarist Daithi Sproule, and violinist Ciaran Tourish eventually joining as core members. Four more critically acclaimed albums were released between 1989 and 1993 on Green Linnet before Kennedy fell victim to cancer.

Despite this devastating blow, Altan’s career moved forward, as the group, with Dermot Byrne joining on accordion, landed a major label record deal with Virgin. Two CDs for that label, Blackwater (1996) and Runaway Sunday (1997), considerably expanded the group’s worldwide following and set the stage for the release this spring of a new studio CD, Another Sky, which will be released soon on Narada Records.

TODAY, Altan have become firmly established as the premier practitioners of the Donegal style, and in addition to garnering a worldwide following, they’ve also seen a rewarding change in their Irish homeland. “The Donegal style was very much ignored in Ireland for years or not known about,” Ni Mhaonaigh says. “And now–well for a few years now–it’s been the ‘in’ thing to do. It’s a nice way to be, because this music that was played only in little pockets all over Donegal and very isolated areas is now being played all over Dublin and Cork and Galway. It’s a nice change.”

With the highly appealing Another Sky, Ni Mhaonaigh explains she and the other members of Altan are making a conscious attempt to reach more music fans who may never have heard the Donegal style of Irish music. Like the band’s other CDs, Another Sky includes its share of fast-paced jigs and reels, but it also focuses on ballads that could appeal to people who don’t consider themselves Irish music fans.

“Our aspiration is to play good music, and we just love what we play and it’s what we know best,” she said. “We’re not on any huge crusade. We do love the Gaelic language. We do love the music, and if people like it, then we’re totally pleased.”

Altan perform Friday, Feb. 11, at 8 p.m., at the Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. $20-$24.50. 546-3600.

From the February 3-9, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Usual Suspects

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Sutter Medical Center spurns quake retrofits, seeks new location

By Janet Wells

WHEN SUTTER Medical Center of Santa Rosa made the surprise admission last week that hospital officials are looking for a new site to replace the seismically substandard building on Chanate Road, perhaps they were hoping it would curtail a pesky lawsuit looming on the horizon. The hospital’s board of trustees apparently approved the recommendation of chief executive officer Cliff Coates to build a new facility rather than spend a minimum of $11 million to bring the current building into compliance with strict statewide seismic standards by 2008.

Hospital watchdog Dorothy Hansen is well versed in Sutter’s earthquake preparedness issues. Last June she filed a lawsuit charging that Sutter failed to fulfill its promise to use millions of dollars for seismic safety upgrades, using the money instead to purchase furniture, automobiles, computers, and cafe air conditioning. The county, which leases the building to Sutter, declined to be a co-plaintiff in the suit, but Hansen is pursuing her charges that the hospital made false claims by trying to pass off $4 million in capital improvements as seismic safety changes.

According to published reports, the Sacramento-based nonprofit health-care corporation–which sits directly on the Rogers Creek fault–is searching for an appropriate Santa Rosa location, and apparently plans on moving into a new facility in 2006. It is unclear what will happen to the county-owned building if the move goes through.

“[Sutter] contracted with the county to make millions in retrofits and they simply didn’t do it,” says Hansen’s attorney Daniel Robert Bartley. “The county should be fairly compensated. . . . They will have a building that’s worth $4 million less than it should be. Sutter should pay the county in cash if not in seismic improvements.”

Deputy County Counsel Sally McGough said earlier that the county decided not to join the lawsuit because Hansen “misread the lease,” and that the required capital improvements can be in the form of movable equipment. “It seems really clear on its face that money was to go for seismic capital improvements, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out,” Bartley counters. “The county needs to give the public an answer for not taking a stronger stand against Sutter.”

Diocese Debt

HIGH-ROLLER investment schemes may have pushed the Diocese of Santa Rosa’s financial losses to $30 million–more than twice the original estimates, according to recently published reports.

Monsignor John Brenkle, the diocese’s acting financial officer, amended a December report that former diocese leaders ignored auditors’ warnings and exhausted $16 million in parish funds through fraudulent investments, reparations for sexual abuse misconduct, and overspending during the tenure of fallen Bishop Patrick Ziemann and former financial officer Thomas Keys.

This week Brenkle addressed a somber crowd at St. Bernard Church during the first of a weeklong series of meetings about the diocese’s deepening financial crisis, and described the recent discovery of a European-based foundation that apparently was using the diocese’s non-profit status as a cover for a high-yield investment scheme that was akin to a pyramid scheme.

“It could take $30 million by the time we eliminate all of our debt and cover the losses,” Brenkle noted.

On Tuesday, an angry crowd of parishioners at St. Mary’s of the Angels Church in Ukiah called for Ziemann and his former chief financial aide to be jailed. “It’s very inappropriate to call for the bishop to go to jail,” San Francisco Archbishop William Levada told the crowd. “I don’t applaud that.”

Levada further chastised parishioners for equating mismanagement and malfeasance with theft. “You should not make rash judgments.” he said.

But the nearly capacity crowd of 550 faithful, led by the dissident nun, Sister Jane Kelley, who first exposed the bishop’s behavior, walked out of the meeting after accusing Levada of failing to address the church’s moral crisis.

Ziemann resigned in July after admitting to a two-year sexual relationship with the Rev. Jorge Hume Salas, a former Ukiah priest who confessed to stealing money from St. Mary of the Angels Church.

Greg Cahill contributed to this article.

From the February 3-9, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

San Jose Taiko

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San Jose Taiko

Big Beat

San Jose Taiko performers pound out the sound

OVER THE YEARS, Roy Hirabayashi has answered a lot of odd questions. As the co-founder and artistic director of San Jose Taiko–a successful and distinctly innovative performance troupe that has toured the United States many times in its 27-year history–Hirabayashi is often asked, for example, to explain the difference between taiko drumming and Kodo drumming.

It’s a question that makes him chuckle.

“I get that one a lot,” he says. Patiently and gently he explains, “Well, the big difference is that Kodo is the name of a famous drumming company from Japan, and taiko is the Japanese word for the Japanese drum, the same instruments that the Kodo troupe uses. All the drums are taiko, but our company’s name also happens to be Taiko.”

Hirabayashi, in truth, doesn’t really mind the question.

“People become confused,” he says, “and they say, ‘Oh, I saw those people from Japan playing Kodo drums.’ But there’s no such thing as a Kodo drum. That’s a little like saying, ‘Oh, I saw someone playing a San Francisco Symphony string instrument’ when what they saw was a violin.”

That doesn’t mean there aren’t a few important differences between the musical styles of groups like Kodo and San Jose Taiko–or any of the other Japanese drum groups that have made successful careers in the wake of the current world-music boom.

In fact, just like modern rock bands or string ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, every drumming company comes to develop its own unique sound, style, and sense of visual flair. That’s definitely true for San Jose Taiko.

“We very much have a style of our own, different than Kodo or a lot of the other groups coming from Japan, different from other Japanese-American troupes,” Hirabayashi says. “We approach our performances with a unique style that is reflective of us.”

Local ears will get a chance to hear that unique sound on Sunday, Feb. 6, when San Jose Taiko makes its first-ever appearance in Sonoma County, at the Luther Burbank Center.

“In our hands, taiko is very much a Japanese-American art form,” Hira-bayashi continues. “Growing up in the United States, my own musical background is not traditional Japanese. I grew up listening to rock and roll, Latin, jazz, soul music, R&B, whatever. With members made up of third- and fourth-generation Japanese-Americans, and even a number of non-Asians, our music really reflects a wide cultural experience.”

By writing their own musical pieces, the San Jose drummers are free to draw on a full spectrum of musical influences, incorporating everything from rock and roll to various African and Cuban rhythms in a one-of-a-kind blend of powerful sounds and hyperkinetic choreography to reflect their experience as Japanese, as Americans, as inhabitants of the planet Earth.

Using a variety of Japanese drums, ranging in size from the handheld josuke to the large drums the size of wine barrels, the expert drummers are able to coax a breathtaking array of sounds and percussive melodies from their instruments onstage, often leaving audiences revved up and cheering for more.

WHEN SAN JOSE Taiko first began, they were only the third such ensemble in America; the other two were based in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Now there are over 100 taiko drumming organizations. Through the years, Hirabayashi–along with his wife, cofounder P. J. Hirabayashi–has overseen the troupe’s progress as the performers embarked on a series of international tours, began a popular training program for adults and youth, and collected countless awards.

Asked if such longevity and success were expected or dreamed of in the early days of San Jose Taiko, Hirabayashi laughs.

“By no means, no,” he exclaims. “At the very beginning we were just doing it for fun, as a kind of hobby.”

In fact, when the group first started drumming in a Buddhist temple in San Jose, it was intended as a local cultural activity, “something for the youth group to become involved with that was musical and cultural at the same time,” says Hirabayashi.

“It turned out that there were many people from the local Japanese-American community who became interested in participating also, and it sort of grew from there,” he adds.

Hirabayashi explains that he was drawn to taiko drumming as a young adult, while looking for musical forms that were related to his cultural heritage and background.

“When I first saw taiko,” he recalls, “it was a very moving experience for me. It was at my local community Buddhist center, at the summer festival, what we call the Obon Festival, and there was this one man there who always came to play taiko for the dancing that happened at the festival. I was very moved to discover an art form that was intrinsically Japanese, but that could be translated into a distinctly American cultural thing at the same time.”

Having trained over a thousand drummers in the last quarter century, Hirabayashi feels fortunate to have shared his love of taiko with increasingly eager generations of musicians.

“The performance of taiko is a very special experience,” he says. “It’s a combination of many different things, the physical part of playing, the spiritual part, the musical part, combined with the whole ensemble attitude of playing taiko in a group. All of that is what draws a lot of people to playing taiko.”

Not to mention that it’s a first-rate aerobic workout for the performers.

“Drumming can be very physical,” Hirabayashi agrees. “Especially the way we do it.”

In the standard performance, there is about as much running about, with drummers sprinting from drum to drum, as there is actual drumming. And the players are seldom silent, erupting into frequent cries and synchronized shouts as they segue from one piece to another.

“It’s a real flow of music,” Hirabayashi says proudly. “There are interconnected pieces joined by calmer interludes and other activities that take place in between the songs. The whole event is like one big opera of sorts, one musical production, and so it’s really different, a very different onstage environment than you are likely to see with any other drumming company.

“It’s not just a lot of loud power drumming,” he adds.

Best of all, according to Hirabayashi, the audience at a live performance “will actually feel the music, will feel the sound in their bodies, that physical experience of the drum.

“There is,” he says, “nothing like it on the planet.

San Jose Taiko performs on Sunday, Feb. 6, at 7 p.m. at the Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. Tickets are $22.50; or $52.50 with preshow dinner. For details, call 546-3600.

From the February 3-9, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Senior Housing

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Senior Housing

One of the lucky ones: With the help of the Petaluma Ecumenical Project, 72-year-old Arlene Morgan has found a one-bedroom apartment that costs just 30 percent of her gross annual income in rent.

(Not So) Golden

How the local housing market shortchanges seniors

By Yosha Bourgea

ARLENE MORGAN is one of the lucky ones, as she herself is the first to admit. Although her only source of income is a monthly Social Security check averaging $800, the 72-year-old grandmother and former university professor is still able to afford a roof over her head with enough left over for food, clothing, and an occasional trip to the Shodakai Casino north of Ukiah.

In Sonoma County, that’s no small trick.

With the help of the Petaluma Ecumenical Project, a nonprofit organization that provides affordable housing for the elderly, Morgan was able to obtain a one-bedroom apartment in a complex located a few blocks from Highway 101.

For the last three years she has paid 30 percent of her gross annual income in rent, and despite the close quarters she’s happy with where she lives.

“Senior low-income housing, a place like this, is ideal for people who don’t have many things,” she says, glancing around her simply furnished living room. “It’s a very small space.”

Fortunately, Morgan is used to packing light. In the 1970s, she left Mountain View to teach psychology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She returned to California in 1993, after her grandchildren were born, and discovered that housing costs had risen dramatically while she’d been away.

“When I was in Australia, I wasn’t thinking about getting a backlog of funds. That has never interested me,” Morgan says.

“I had no investments, no real estate.

“I was just staggered when I came here. It was going to take all of my Social Security just to pay the rent! I took one look at the cities [in the lower Bay Area] and I knew that wasn’t an option.”

While she looked for a place to live, Morgan stayed with her daughter-in-law in Tomales. It was clear that the only affordable long-term option was subsidized housing. “I might have been able to afford to rent if I didn’t live too long, ” she says dryly, “but you can’t count on that.”

When Morgan discovered PEP, the waiting list for apartments was more than 200 names long. Managers told her it would be two or three years before she could expect to hear anything. She signed up anyway.

Then came a stroke of luck. An opportunity arose to return to Brisbane to teach for a few more years, and she took it. While her name inched up the waiting list in Petaluma, Morgan was traveling around Australia doing research for a book on the status of aborigines in prison. When she returned to California in April of 1996, PEP officials told her the wait was down to about half a year.

Though it took all the money she had, Morgan rented for two months while she waited. Then she got lucky again. An unusually high turnover rate led to several vacancies, and that June, with nothing more than a couple of suitcases, Morgan finally moved into a PEP apartment. And for the foreseeable future, that’s where she plans to stay. “I’m very fortunate,” she says. “There’s a real spirit of community here in Petaluma.

“I don’t know how we’ve been able to maintain it.”

Is Help on the Way? Yes, if President Bill Clinton’s proposal to provide 120,000 affordable-housing units is approved by Congress.

THE POPULATION of Sonoma County, like that of the rest of the country, is growing older as it grows larger. A recent report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration on Aging shows that over the next 30 years, as an escalating population in general and the baby-boom generation in particular reaps the benefits of advances in medical science, the number of elderly people nationwide is projected to double.

“The rapid growth of the elderly represents in part a triumph of the efforts to extend human life,” says Jacob Siegel of the Administration on Aging, “but these age groups also require a disproportionately large share of special services and public support. There will be large increases by 2030 in the numbers requiring special services in housing.”

The 1999 annual report from the Association of Bay Area Governments brings the numbers closer to home. According to the report, in the next 20 years the number of people in the Bay Area over age 65 will increase by 719,000, or 90 percent, to a total of more than 1.5 million.

And in Sonoma County, seniors searching for a place to live are up against a housing market that a study by the National Association of Home Builders says is the fourth least affordable in the country.

There are now more than 11,000 seniors in the county who, like Arlene Morgan, are living on Social Security or low fixed incomes: think $700 a month, or less. With low-income housing already scarce and waiting lists for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 subsidy program often as long as two years, the elderly in Sonoma County are caught in the middle of a housing crisis that is just beginning to get a lot worse.

“Seniors are coming to us on an almost weekly basis with evictions,” says Shirlee Zane, executive director of the Council on Aging. “It’s very typical to see a client [who has] a reduction in their SSI, their utilities are going to be turned off, and they simply can’t meet their rent.”

Pam Wallace, director of the Interfaith Shelter Network, estimates that 12 to 15 percent of her clients are seniors, though not always in the legal sense. The Department of Housing and Urban Development defines a senior as anyone past the age of 62, but Wallace sets the bar considerably lower.

“Our generation, the baby boomers, are coming up on 50,” Wallace says. “Many of the people we see who are over 50 are really frail and at risk. The other factor is that many of the men are Vietnam veterans, and we see a large percentage of them who are homeless. Rather than waiting until people decompensate even more, we think that establishing a lower age for seniors is a good idea.”

Susan*, a 53-year-old woman who had been living out of her truck following an eviction, found not only a room but employment through IFSN. She works part-time as an administrative assistant at the transitional housing facility where she now lives.

“I can set my own hours,” Susan says. “Pam trusts me to get the job done. Nobody’s had that kind of faith in me, or me in myself, for a long time.”

Still, both the job and the living space–which she shares with a roommate–are temporary. Tenants at the housing facility take part in a six- to 12-month program that includes regular meetings with a credit counselor. When the program is over, they are expected to make way for others.

Susan is feeling hopeful for the first time in a long time, but she knows that her financial difficulties are far from over. “Resources for people between 50 and 62 are real limited,” she says.

“[Advocacy] groups tend to focus on families with kids. The potential for gainful employment is limited when you’re my age. I have no retirement, nothing in savings. It’s scary.”

AT A TIME when the need for low-income housing is greater than ever, many landlords are opting out of renewing their subsidized-housing contracts with HUD. And in Santa Rosa, tax-exempt mortgage revenue bonds issued by the city in the 1980s are reaching the end of their 10-year affordability requirement.

Landlords who have paid off the bonds are no longer required to maintain low-income rental units. Many are now charging market rates, effectively displacing residents who cannot afford to pay more.

At Apple Creek Apartments on Third Street and Dutton Avenue, one of the properties to take advantage of the city’s bond agreement, the units that for more than a decade were affordable to low-income families are now priced at the market rate.

Some 48 residents, many of whom are senior citizens, have had to find housing elsewhere.

Property manager Martha Jared didn’t want to force her low-income tenants to move; in fact, she voluntarily extended the agreement for two years to help them. But with the market skyrocketing, she was losing money. For a one-bedroom apartment, Section 8 funds have a cap of $684 per month. The market rate for that apartment now starts at $925. Apple Creek’s loss on its low-income apartments thus ran close to $14,000 a month, or $168,000 a year.

JARED IS PROUD that she has been able to help all her former tenants find new residences. When she heard through a contact in the housing department that a new complex was about to open up, she leaked the information to her residents before it went on the market. “When a new place opens up, it gets filled up so quickly,” Jared says.

Few developers are now willing to take a chance on low-income housing. John Lowry, executive director of Burbank Housing Development Corp., points out that a development marketed at $500 a month per apartment would lose money on every unit.

“There’s quite a bit of market-rate senior housing [being] developed by private developers,” Lowry observes.

“But the closer you get to market rate, the less demand there is. As far as we can see, the demand for subsidized senior housing is huge out there, because they all fill up.”

Gale Brownell of the Santa Rosa Housing Authority says that 270 low-income housing units in the city were converted to market rate between 1990 and 1998. During the same period, she says, 843 low-income housing units were conserved.

“Santa Rosa has more affordable housing now than at any time in the 1990s,” Brownell says. “I think the city is doing a good job in a very difficult market.”

Not everyone is convinced of that. Affordable-housing advocates such as Shirlee Zane say that the city discourages high-density, low-income housing with fees, restrictive building codes, and a convoluted permit process.

“Builders of affordable housing have to jump through these hoops and obstacles that the city gives them, and they can’t profit,” Zane says.

“If you’re a developer, you have to profit.”

Profitability may be the bottom line, but it’s not the end of the story. As landlords, developers, advocacy groups, and government officials struggle with the logistics of our housing crisis, the number of elderly, low-income people in Sonoma County continues to climb.

These are real people, housing advocates say, not statistics or dollar signs. And they’re not going away.

* Not her real name.

From the February 3-9, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Reduced Shakespeare Company

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Reduced Shakespeare Company

Small Talk

Reduced Shakespeare takes on a millennium’s worth of history

REED MARTIN is pregnant. To be accurate, it’s Martin’s wife, Jane, who is technically with child–the Sonoma couple’s second carbon-based life form–but the local actor-vaudevillian is certainly pregnant in spirit.

After several months of touring with his world-famous Reduced Shakespeare Company–the infamously high- and low-brow comedy troupe that has frequently toured the planet with its outrageous condensations of Shakespeare, the Bible, and American and world history–Martin is now gearing up for a few months of much-anticipated “paternity leave.”

It officially begins right after this weekend’s five-show run at the Marin Center of RSC’s latest production, The Complete Millennium Musical, which basically reduces 1,000 years of history to 100 minutes of bawdy, fast-faced tomfoolery–with singing.

“Though some dare not call it singing,” Martin warns. “We also dance, and I can honestly say that as a dancer, I’m a pretty good comedian.”

Having just ended a successful five-week run at the Seattle Repertory Theater, Martin is back home and in high spirits, in spite of a few phenomenally bad reviews in Seattle.

“One reviewer said something like ‘This is possibly the most amateurish, and certainly the least amusing, show I have ever had the displeasure to see on a Seattle stage,’ ” Martin reveals, as he rumbles into a warm gale of good-natured laughter. “Ouch! That’s not a review, that’s hate mail.”

He has good reason to laugh at such nasty jibes. The troupe’s Seattle run went on to sell out every show, becoming the third most successful event in the 35-year history of the Seattle Rep. In all fairness, a number of critics liked the show. The Seattle Times even called it “the most enjoyable history lesson you’ll ever have.'”

“I think we should do what Tom Lehrer did,” Martin says, in reference to the satirical songwriter who, after a critic remarked that a Tom Lehrer concert added up to an evening wasted, gleefully used An Evening Wasted as the title of his next album.

“I’m serious,” Martin says, laughing. “I think we should start using ‘The most amateurish and least amusing show in history’ in all of our advertising.”

Begun as a pass-the-hat group performing wildly irreverent versions of Hamlet at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, the troupe has transformed itself many times.

With the Complete Millennium Musical, Martin and company–the current troupe also features Taylor Young and John Pohlhammer–break history down into six ages, from the Dark Ages to the Information Age.

“We cover every important historical and literary event from Beowulf to Baywatch,” Martin explains, “with 25 original songs, including stuff like ‘The Four Norsemen of the Apocalypse’ and one called ‘Heavenly Bodies,'” the latter being an innuendo-filled Barry White-like disco song, sung by Martin as Galileo.

“We wanted to do something different this time,” he says, “to stretch ourselves–and we really stretch on this one. I’m quite proud of the show.”

With a chuckle he adds, “All hate mail aside.

‘The Complete Millennium Musical’ plays Feb. 3-6, with shows at 8 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, at 6 and 9 p.m. on Saturday, and at 7 p.m. on Sunday at the Marin Center’s Showcase Theater, Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael. $35-$45. 415/472-3500.

From the February 3-9, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Spins

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Spins

Mixed Bag

A bit of blues, a splash of psychobilly

Patricia Barber Companion (Blue Note/Premonition)

DIANE KRALL got a heap of attention in all of those tedious year-end top-pick lists. The only trouble is that the jazz pianist and singer comes across like a lounge act with a damn good p.r. agent–her song selections bottomed out last year when Krall covered Michael Franks’ insipid ode to cuddly companions “Popsicle Toes.” Unfortunately, the media machine for the most part ran over the excellent release by Chicago native Patricia Barber. She basically does the same shtick as Krall, but Barber has a gritty barroom sensibility that resonates in this live date recorded at the legendary Green Mill, an internationally known Chicago club that helped spawn the whole nouveau hipster scene. The originals are engaging, the covers of Sonny Bono’s “The Beat Goes On” and Bill Withers’ “Use me” are modern-cool classics. Hailed as both the No. 1 talent deserving of wider recognition (1999 Downbeat International Critics’ Poll) and the jazz musician most likely to reject success, Barber is a real winner. This is a companion you should, ah hum, Krall to with open arms. Greg Cahill

The Hellacopters Payin’ the Dues (Sub-Pop)

THE CHUCK BERRY family tree runs through the Rolling Stones and the MC5 and branches out to Black Sabbath, the Sex Pistols, and every piece of hard rock that’s come since. Sweden’s the Hellacopters aren’t just a link in that chain, but a reminder that the line between punk and metal is historically thin. Style differences between the genres always funnel into the louder/faster/harder ethos, and the Hellacopters use that ethos to blitz past their influences. “Hey!” uncorks the Clash’s second album, “Looking at Me” sounds like a lost Lynyrd Skynyrd hit, and “Twist Action” is flaming psychobilly, while “Like No Other Man” spits out the riff from Kiss’ “Deuce” at 78 rpm. Payin’ the Dues is only $10 and has a bonus live disc that’s longer (and heavier and nastier) than the actual album. And these guys play some monstrous Chuck Berry licks. Karl Byrn

Various Artists Fire and Skill: The Songs of the Jam (Epic)

DURING THE GREAT and glorious punk heyday (circa 1977), the Jam were almost universally dismissed as mod revivalists, a fact owing to the band’s earlier roots in the British rock and soul scene. Headed by Beatles fan Paul Weller, the band racked up nine Top 10 hits on U.K. pop singles charts before disbanding in 1982. But the band’s high-energy pop and adventurous sonic experiments earned plenty of fans over the years. Some of them have come together on this 11-song tribute, including Liam Gallagher of Oasis and Steve Cradock of Ocean Color Scene (who team up on a cover of “Carnation”), the Beastie Boys, Garbage, Buffalo Tom, Ben Harper, and Everything But the Girl. Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher closes out the set with a rendering of “To Be Someone,” Weller’s tender commentary on the ephemeral nature of fame. You could write this off as much ado about nothing, but bear in mind that Pete Townshend, everyone’s favorite proto punk, once extolled the Jam as representing “everything that is vitally important in rock.”

G.C.

Terry Evans Walk That Walk (Telarc Blues)

PRAISE THE LORD! Singer and guitarist Terry Evans returns with his gospel-tinged R&B backed by a crack band that features guitarist Ry Cooder, drummer Jim Keltner, and background singer Willie Green Jr. Pure heaven. As one half of a vocal duo that once included West Coast soulman Bobby King, Evans has performed over the years with John Fogerty, John Hiatt, Cooder, and a slew of other cats who know something special when they hear it. The Evans/King duo recorded a few well-received albums during the late ’80s and early ’90s before parting ways. This third solo CD finds Evans soaring, moving easily through a soulful set of gospel stomps, blues shuffles, and R&B ballads. With roots steeped in the Mississippi tradition of his youth and one foot still in the choir box, Evans is an R&B tour de force. G.C.

The Supersuckers The Evil Powers of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Koch)

THE SUPERSUCKERS are the type of super-basic, super-hyper bar band that sounds pretty damn good if you’re sober and pretty friggin’ awesome after four beers. Hailing from Tucson, these ferocious focused cowpunks form a link between the Ramones and Merle Haggard (sounding like the former while covering the latter on “I Can’t Hold Myself in Line”). After a failed major-label deal gave them a bad taste of so-called success, they’ve joyously returned to the grungy, speedy sound of their Sub-Pop roots. It’s a disc that you don’t need for musical news, but you do need for, well, the evil powers of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a two-ton shooting star, so belly up to the bar and make a wish while you can.

K.B.

Various Artists Music of Indonesia: Indonesian Guitars (Smithsonian/Folkways)

THE MUSIC of Indonesia–a far-flung nation where 300 ethnic groups inhabit 3,000 islands–usually brings to mind the ancient art of gamelan, which consists largely of gongs and other metallophones. So these 12 tracks of mostly acoustic guitar-based music are something of a revelation for Western ears. The often simple, graceful melodies–played behind a variety of vocals–sometimes recall the sound of the Appalachian hills, a world away. At other times, the tracks evoke crude classical styles, Hawaiian slack-key guitar, or even hybridized pop/jazz. Fascinating stuff. Easily one of the most intriguing world-music CDs to come along in months.

G.C.

From the January 27-February 2, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Edge of Seventeen’

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‘Edge of Seventeen’

Edge of Seventeen.

Ohio Player

A boy’s coming out in Sandusky

By

IT’S 1984 on the coast of Ohio. Eric (Chris Stafford), who lives in the Lake Erie resort town of Sandusky, has just completed his junior year in high school. Stafford, the star of David Moreton’s film Edge of Seventeen, is cute and gawky, a less frantic version of Jim Carrey.

Eric is still a kid, cruising around in his parents’ Country Squire; he’s still under the care of his mother (warmly played by Stephanie McVay), who still packs baloney-and-white-bread sandwiches for her son. Over the summer Eric works with his sort-of girlfriend, Maggie (Tina Holmes), in a cafeteria. There he meets two people who change him. One is the wait-staff manager (Lea DeLaria, as the friendliest butch dyke in cinema history). The other is Rod (Andersen Gabrych), good-looking and openly gay. During the summer and the year that follow, Eric begins to realize that he likes boys. (He thought it was just that he liked David Bowie.)

Edge of Seventeen champions Eric’s struggle to find himself, but it also points out the ways Eric has to lie to himself and his family. And the boy’s treatment of Maggie demonstrates the true blundering cruelty of youth.

But the film is comic. As a former dish-monkey in a restaurant, I’ve waited forever to see a movie scene of the kitchen staff sucking the nitrous oxide out of the whipped cream cans in the walk-in refrigerator. (Nothing like a laughing-gas break to take the sting out of a 10-hour shift.) The film is soaked in the ambiance of a hot Midwestern summer–in everything from a sexy, drunken party during a sweltering night to the vintage disco soundtrack assembled by Tom Bailey (one half of the Thompson Twins). The suitably awkward sex scenes seem real and funny.

Best of all is Holmes, superb in the difficult part of Maggie, a girl who keeps hoping, hopelessly, that she can turn Eric straight. The role of the sad, scorned woman is the worst part in any picture, and the part is doubly jinxed in a picture about a gay man. (Unless, of course, you can just turn it into raving farce, as Joan Cusack did in In and Out.) Holmes shows her pain like an iceberg: most of it is under the surface. She may well be a big star someday.

Edge of Seventeen comes with the traditional finale of a homosexual coming-(out)-of-age movie, a dance party in a gay bar. But earlier, we saw that bar at 2 a.m., with the patrons–formerly so suave and insouciant–slumping, muttering under that miserable blaze of closing-time light. (The sight is almost enough to scare Eric straight.) The ending is also shadowed by the memory of the last mute, despairing look Maggie gave Eric. In moments like these, Edge of Seventeen transcends the commonplace.

Edge of Seventeen opens Friday, Jan. 28, at the Rialto Cinemas Lakeside, 551 Summerfield Road, Santa Rosa. For more information, see Movie Times, page 44, or call 539-9770.

From the January 27-February 2, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Martha’s

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Martha’s

Vision quest: Martha Lopez lends a personal touch to the upscale Mexican cuisine at her popular west county establishment.

On Her Own

Sebastopol restaurateur Martha Lopez finds a place to play house

By Marina Wolf

CHEFING is a transient business. There’s always a better gig at the new place down the street, better pay in the next town over. Ask around, and you’ll be lucky to find a chef who’s been in the same place for three years, let alone 35, as Martha Lopez had at her family’s restaurant, the popular Old Mexico in Santa Rosa, before opening her own place, Martha’s, in Sebastopol.

Lopez is nonchalant about the three and a half decades she spent working and cooking with her family, at the restaurant that their parents opened in 1964, soon after they arrived in the county from Michoacan, Mexico. “I was raised to do this,” she says in a rare moment of relaxation on the green-covered patio behind the cozy new space on Main Street. “I had no other choice. It was my father’s choice,” she says with not a trace of bitterness. “I don’t know what else I might have done.

“I have always done this.”

Lopez’s longtime compliance with her family’s wishes might be startling to Anglo-Americans, who usually want to flee the nest long before it’s a legal possibility. But to Lopez it’s simply the sign of a close family and good household economics. There are six children in the family–“My father had a good source of labor,” says Lopez with a chuckle–and all of them are still working in the family restaurant.

All except Martha.

“They’re not too happy, none of them,” says Lopez with a small shrug. “Because when part of the family leaves, the right hand, you know . . . Because I was one of the oldest, I had more responsibilities. I think the boys will have to pick up some of the duties.”

The “boys,” as she calls her four brothers affectionately, are all in their 30s, and Lopez is confident that they’ll soon fill in the space left by her departure. “They saw what I did,” she explains, “as I saw what my father did.”

THAT STOVE-SIDE training provided Lopez with a well-rounded education, as far as these things go. Lopez’s father did some of everything in the kitchen, and loved it, both at home and in the restaurant. Of course, in Mexico both are often the same place. “There you cook everything in your house, set a table outside, and serve it out like you were at home,” she says.

While U.S. health codes prohibit that exact sort of homeliness, the Lopez family did manage to reproduce the same feel at Old Mexico. Everyone was there, all the time. Ever since she’d finished high school and cosmetology school, Lopez had worked like the rest of them: six days a week, 14 to 16 hours a day.

She doesn’t complain; it was just part of being in the family.

Lopez hasn’t seen her family much since Martha’s opened on Nov. 1; neither she nor her family has the time. The most she has to look forward to is the standard set of American family holidays: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter. The fact that she owns her own home in Santa Rosa makes the separation that much more complete. She has no husband, as her mother did, to take a shift at the restaurant’s stove, and no children to come home after school and help out in the kitchen.

BUT SOME TRADITIONS die hard. Lopez is still working with family: cousin Martha Lobato, who had worked at Old Mexico for 14 years, joined her elder cousin in the Sebastopol venture as hostess and server. Lopez and Lobato are also sharing a home, with Lobato’s two grown sons, who do sometimes come in to help on the weekends.

It reproduces the feel of her old family situation, in miniature.

Certainly the work environment has been downsized. “The first two weeks working in the kitchen, I was banging myself on the corners because I was not used to working in such a small place,” says Lopez. Small indeed: Martha’s will have maybe 17 tables during the summer, when the patio is open. There’s half that many now. Old Mexico, on the other hand, seats about 200 people, including those in the party room, for a total of 50 tables or more. “This is nothing; it’s like a playhouse for me.”

But at least the playhouse is all hers. “I like my independence,” Lopez says, folding her hands together firmly. “Working with the family, you have to go by Father’s rules, and have people tell you what to do, when you know what to do. Getting to decide for myself was the best thing about leaving.”

And it’s not just the sun-backed chairs and the arrangement of the condiments in the kitchen that Lopez can decide about. She’s got more latitude now to play with the ingredients, which she pulls from both her native Michoacan and her California home.

In a cuisine that, in this country, tends toward steam-table sameness, and in a city that already had one Mexican restaurant per thousand people, the young Martha’s restaurant is already serving regulars who appreciate the low price and freshness of Lopez’s approach.

“I’m not going to say my food is that different, but it has my own touch, in every plate.” She is particularly proud of her salad dressing, a creamy avocado sauce that she says came to her in a dream.

But still, after 35 years, why the sudden decision to strike out on her own? “Well, it was a challenge for me. After working for my family for 35 years, I kind of said, ‘I want something else.’ I’m 48 years old, so I had to do it while I still had the strength to do something like this on my own.”

From the January 27-February 2, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Rental Housing

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Rental Housing

No room at the inn: Maceo Campbell and Michal Pincus moved to the county five years ago in search of affordable housing. Instead, they found escalating rents and landlords who charged exorbitant rates for substandardshelter.

No Vacancy

Tight housing market makes local rentals a competitive game

By Janet Wells

FIVE YEARS AGO Michal Pincus and her partner, Maceo Campbell, were driven out of San Francisco by the high rents. The two headed for Sonoma County, which seemed like a perfect spot for artist Pincus and environmental activist Campbell. For $400 a month, they rented a funky trailer in Sebastopol, with a solarium and a tree growing through the roof.

The first big blow to the couple’s North Coast dreams came just a year later. It wasn’t that the trailer baked in the summer and the rain and wind came in through the leaky roof in the winter. Or that the trailer had only a small wood-burning stove for heat.

The kicker was cost.

Pincus suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, but was unable to qualify for disabilzity benefits, and Campbell’s salary couldn’t cover the trailer rent. The two soon discovered that they were priced out of the market everywhere in the county. “We were basically homeless for a couple of years, on the couch-and-floor tour. We even lived in a tent for a while,” Pincus says.

When her disability claim came through last year, Pincus figured the two would be able to afford a studio cottage at the low end of the rent spectrum. Wrong.

“Right after I got approved, I looked in the paper and, man, the carrot got moved. It’s just gone up, up, up,” she laments. “The whole thing almost has become like a comic farce. I followed up on one place that was listed for $500. It was a converted chicken coop, with no insulation. They had a line of people coming to look at this place.”

What the two could afford was an attic room, with ceilings so low that both had to stoop to move around. The landlord, says Pincus, did them a favor by giving them a month’s free rent before starting to charge $300.

“We paid it because we had to. Part of me was so beaten down and so sick, and part of me was furious,” she says. “What makes people who have money better than me so it makes it OK for me to have to live this way?”

Going Up: Sonoma County Rents.

Caught Behind the 8 Ball: Local rental market a jungle for low-income tenants.

No Kidding: Audit reveals discrimination against children.

PINCUS’ STORY isn’t all that unusual, at least in Sonoma County. Just about everyone, it seems, has a housing nightmare to share. Eviction for no good reason. Rent hikes three, even four times in one year. Three people squeezing into one room to make ends meet. A hundred prospective renters showing up for an open house and engaging in a bidding war that drives rents even higher.

These days the notion of a cute little wine-country garden cottage for $500 is quaint, if not downright laughable.

The local economy is booming. The population is growing. The job market is beckoning. The real estate market is red-hot. But there’s a price to pay for success: Welcome to the stratospheric rental market.

Almost half of the county’s renters pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent, an amount that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development deems “unaffordable,” resulting in tenants neglecting such necessities as medical insurance, clothing, and food.

The average rent for a studio in Sonoma County has gone up almost 13 percent in one year to $591 a month, according to RealFacts, a Novato-based company that analyzes real estate markets. A three-bedroom, two-bath apartment is going for an average of $1,227 monthly, an increase of more than 14 percent.

Vacancy rates are so low that it’s not unusual for landlords to get dozens of applications for a single apartment. One recent survey found only one vacancy in 1,118 apartment units in Petaluma, and only three vacancies in 2,298 units in Rohnert Park–approaching an almost unheard-of 0 percent vacancy rate. The overall vacancy rate in the county hovers around 2 percent. Affordable-housing advocates and real estate experts agree that a 5 percent vacancy rate is the watermark of a healthy market that benefits both renters and landlords.

“When the market is as tight as it is now, the market responds by increasing the price,” says Scott Gerber of Marcus & Millichap, a commercial real estate brokerage in San Francisco. “It’s not like landlords are trying to gouge people. There’s a long line of renters out there trying to rent. People are offering to pay more money.”

The good news, says Gerber, is that apartment construction is on the upswing. “If more housing is added, it will stabilize the rent and the vacancy rate will climb.”

Several hundred units of student housing are coming in Rohnert Park, which should relieve some of the demand for housing around Sonoma State University, Gerber says. And in Santa Rosa, city officials in 1998 approved permits for 600 units of housing.

“When vacancy rates are higher, people are not going to build apartments in that market, because it decreases the chance of having a successful project,” says Santa Rosa Community Development Director Wayne Goldberg. “The last time we had a huge burst of multifamily construction was in the mid-1980s, when the tax laws were favorable and vacancy rates were low, which made it profitable.”

Among the projects on the drawing board in Santa Rosa are 287 apartments on Highway 12 just east of Mission Boulevard, about 100 apartments in the downtown area, and 176 apartments at the Mountainview Villas.

But for people like Pincus, many of the apartments coming on line are hardly affordable, charging upwards of $1,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.

When Colleen Fernald Molinari’s landlord wanted to sell the southwest Santa Rosa house she was renting with her husband, a local high-tech-industry worker, and two kids, the family was forced to settle for a smaller three-bedroom house, with almost no yard, and fixer-upper frustrations. The monthly rent? $1,475, almost 50 percent more than they were paying for a roomier, more upscale place.

Molinari, who works in production and distribution at the Independent, says they can’t afford Sonoma County rents. “People stuck in the middle like us have it the hardest. We make too much to qualify for special programs, but not enough to get out of debt,” she says. “We live really frugally. We don’t go on trips. We don’t even go out. Our routine is a video and a grocery store pizza on a Friday night.”

Indeed, Molinari was on the verge of moving to Austin, Texas, last summer, where “you can get twice the home for the price.” But the move fell through, and the couple is now struggling to keep up with the high cost of living locally.

THE TIGHT HOUSING market means more calls for Sonoma County Rental Information and Mediation Services, a publicly funded program that tries to resolve disputes between landlords and tenants. These days it’s about evictions, rent hikes, and desperate pleas for help in finding places to live.

“We get a lot more calls from people that can’t find housing,” says SCRIMS executive director Sherry Couts. “All we can do is refer them to the newspapers and property management firms.”

Tenants can’t believe that multiple rent hikes are legal, says SCRIMS operations manager John Shaw. “We’re coming up against people who think there is rent control. There isn’t. A landlord can raise the rent 2 cents or $2,000, and can raise it every month of the year.”

And if a landlord wants a tenant out, 30-day notice is the only requirement, no cause needed. “That can be really devastating,” Shaw says. “You won’t get another apartment with an eviction on your record.”

SCRIMS is a barebones operation, with one full-time and one part-time employee, aging equipment, and dwindling funding, trying to do mediation for a county of half a million. In a rental market that is increasingly hostile for tenants, SCRIMS doesn’t have the resources to keep up with demand, says David Brigode, housing director at People for Economic Opportunity.

“We have to come up with a new approach to deal with private-sector housing, a better tenant-landlord program, a better fair-housing program,” Brigode says. “People don’t know their rights, or are scared to exercise their rights. . . . There’s no outreach to other agencies or to farm workers to educate people.”

Brigode says that this spring PEO will be vying for SCRIMS’ funding contract from the county and the city of Santa Rosa. PEO, along with Fair Housing in Marin County, already received a $300,000 grant from Housing and Urban Development to do education, outreach, and fair-housing enforcement.

The need for a more aggressive approach to rental mediation is urgent, Brigode says. “Housing is nowhere near job growth,” he says. “It’s like musical chairs. The music stops and someone is left homeless.”

MICHAL PINCUS and her partner did find a way out of their attic garret. They now live in a converted garage, sharing a bathroom and kitchen with six other people. The rent is $400 a month, and the landlord is a friend. But she still dreams of finding a place of their own that’s affordable and livable.

“It’s depressing,” she says about the rental market. “We really have to look at what we’re doing here, and at the greed that’s dictating how we’re making our decisions. It’s changing the face of Sonoma County. You’re driving out people who don’t have a lot of money.

“Ever since the Reagan ’80s, it has become a privilege to have a home,” she adds. “This is wrong. Housing is not a privilege. . . . It is not just for the rich.”

From the January 27-February 2, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Himalayan Chhahari

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Himalayan Chhahari

x

Mountain menu: Fans of Nepalese cuisine have something to rave about with the advent of Himalayan Chhahari in downtown Santa Rosa. Pictured are chef/owner Raju Mothe, Yagya Shrestha, and Sujana Shrestha.

Taste Trek

Savor the exotic at Himalayan Chhahari

By Paula Harris

THERE’S NOTHING like traveling to foreign parts vicariously through the simple act of eating at ethnic restaurants, where a mere menu can become your passport to exotic sights, textures, aromas, and flavors.

While I was growing up in London in the 1970s, the United States was considered the coolest place on earth and American food was the most exotic of all. The high school kids in my class took to wearing jeans, sneakers, and T-shirts emblazoned with that annoying swirly red Coca-Cola motif. They snapped bubble gum and devoured American Graffiti at the cinema.

A new place opened up in my residential London neighborhood–a real American restaurant! The first we’d ever seen. It was a glitzy place called W.C. Fields, and the walls were covered with photos of the drawling comedian.

Every Thursday night, my friends and I would frequent this combination burger joint/deli/soda fountain. We’d dine on novel items like crispy potato skins, Buffalo wings, chili-cheese burgers, and strawberry shortcake. We’d dream we were in L.A. or the Big Apple.

Of course, now that I’ve lived in the states for many years–those items have lost their mysterious allure. But I’m constantly on the lookout for other unusual eateries that can take those trusty old taste buds on tour.

When Himalayan Sherpa Cuisine, a small, no-frills eatery opened on the outskirts of Glen Ellen a couple of years ago, the place really satisfied this culinary wanderlust. The scene featured Himalayan posters and artifacts, haunting bell-like music, and hearty dishes bursting with unusual flavors. When the Sherpa owners brought us steaming cups of fortifying milky chai tea–redolent with cardamom, cloves, and fresh ginger, on a freezing day after a long hike in Jack London Park one afternoon–we closed our eyes, inhaled the scents, and imagined we’d successfully reached Base Camp.

The Sherpa place closed last year, but our addiction to the colorful diverse Nepali cuisine, which uses tantalizing flavorings like cumin, cardamom, green, and red chilies, garlic, ginger, fenugreek, Szechwan peppers, and scallions, was as strong as ever.

A Santa Rosa restaurant called Katmandu Kitchen opened about the same time as Himalayan Sherpa Cuisine and featured Indian and Nepali cooking, but never reached the culinary level of the Himalayan Sherpa Cuisine restaurant.

Now, that too, has closed and a new Nepali restaurant has been born in its location.

Photo by Michael Amsler

Himalayan Chhahari is a casual, comfortable place with friendly service. A new carpet, fabric-covered archways, and red-painted wall trim give a warm effect. There are posters of Nepal on the walls, and sitar music plays softly on the sound system. Diners can be seated either at regular tables or (more interestingly) on the floor, sans shoes.

The wine list is minimal and not properly described on the menu, so stick to imported Indian beers, like Kingfisher or Taj Majal ($3).

Appetizers include momo ($4.25), steamed dumplings stuffed with ground chicken and herbs served with tomato pickle. Although these are pretty good, we’d like to see a vegetarian version also on the menu, such as the tasty spinach-cabbage momo served at the defunct Sherpa place.

The alu chap ($3), deep-fried mashed potato with chopped onion and cilantro served with sweet-and-sour tamarind sauce is a mouthwatering appetizer that smells as good as it tastes.

We sampled an array of curries: mixed vegetable curry ($7.50), including carrots, green beans, and broccoli; chicken curry ($8.95) with onion gravy, tomato and ginger; and fish curry ($11.95), described as red snapper cooked in a rich curry sauce, but actually large chunks of moist salmon.

But all the curries were too tame. For example, the fish curry would have been more exciting livened up with some ginger, whole spices, and scallions.

The chana ko dal ($6.95), a dish of garbanzo beans cooked in olive oil with fresh minced ginger and garlic, which has a souplike consistency, is very satisfying and flavorful.

Another winner was the fantastic garlic nan bread ($1.75), fluffy pillows that are cooked in the tandoor oven and emerging dry and deliciously chewy.

For dessert, try the kulfi ($2.50), homemade Nepali-style ice cream with raisins. It has an unusual icy-custard texture. Or try the kheer ($2.95), a mildly sweet rice pudding with a slight rosewater flavor prepared with coconut, raisins, cashews, cinnamon, and cardamom.

THE LUNCH BUFFET is an unbeatable bargain. For $5.95, you can load your plate (as many times as you like) with smoky succulent tandoori chicken; steamed basmati rice; chicken curry; garbanzo beans; lentils with whole spices; cauliflower and potatoes cooked with tumeric; and red potato and yellow squash curry. Plus green salad, nan bread and an assortment of interesting condiments, including mango chutney, cucumber raita, hot green chili and mint sauce, and sweet-and-sour tamarind sauce.

And while the food in general tastes far less complex than the old Sherpa Cuisine restaurant, Himalayan Chhahari chef Rajul Mothey is so pleasant and accommodating, we’re sure he’ll spice up the dishes on request to send you on that culinary journey.

Himalayan Chhahari Address: 535 Ross St., Santa Rosa; 579-8471 Hours: Lunch, Sunday-Friday, noon to 2:30 p.m.; dinner, daily, 5 to 9:30 p.m. Food: Dishes from Nepal and India Service: Proficient Ambiance: Casual with table or floor seating Price: Inexpensive to moderate with bargain lunch buffet Wine list: Minimal selection Overall: 2 1/2 stars (out of 4), dinner; 3 stars, lunch

From the January 27-February 2, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Altan

Altan recover after death of co-founder By Alan Sculley IN 1994, the members of Altan faced one of the most difficult moments a band can encounter. Flute player Frankie Kennedy, who had founded the Irish group in 1983 with his wife, singer/violinist Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, succumbed to bone cancer. The loss of Kennedy, obviously, took...
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Usual Suspects

Sutter Medical Center spurns quake retrofits, seeks new location By Janet Wells WHEN SUTTER Medical Center of Santa Rosa made the surprise admission last week that hospital officials are looking for a new site to replace the seismically substandard building on Chanate Road, perhaps they were hoping it would curtail a pesky lawsuit looming on...
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San Jose Taiko

Big Beat San Jose Taiko performers pound out the sound OVER THE YEARS, Roy Hirabayashi has answered a lot of odd questions. As the co-founder and artistic director of San Jose Taiko--a successful and distinctly innovative performance troupe that has toured the United States many times in its 27-year...
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Senior Housing

One of the lucky ones: With the help of the Petaluma Ecumenical Project, 72-year-old Arlene Morgan has found a one-bedroom apartment that costs just 30 percent of her gross annual income in rent. (Not So) Golden How the local housing market shortchanges seniors By Yosha Bourgea ARLENE...
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Reduced Shakespeare Company

Small Talk Reduced Shakespeare takes on a millennium's worth of history REED MARTIN is pregnant. To be accurate, it's Martin's wife, Jane, who is technically with child--the Sonoma couple's second carbon-based life form--but the local actor-vaudevillian is certainly pregnant in spirit. After several months of touring with...
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Spins

Mixed Bag A bit of blues, a splash of psychobilly Patricia Barber Companion (Blue Note/Premonition) DIANE KRALL got a heap of attention in all of those tedious year-end top-pick lists. The only trouble is that the jazz pianist and singer comes across like a lounge act with a...
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‘Edge of Seventeen’

Edge of Seventeen. Ohio Player A boy's coming out in Sandusky By IT'S 1984 on the coast of Ohio. Eric (Chris Stafford), who lives in the Lake Erie resort town of Sandusky, has just completed his junior year in high school. Stafford, the star of David Moreton's film Edge of...
Read more

Martha’s

Vision quest: Martha Lopez lends a personal touch to the upscale Mexican cuisine at her popular west county establishment. On Her Own Sebastopol restaurateur Martha Lopez finds a place to play house By Marina Wolf CHEFING is a transient business. There's always a better gig at the new...
Read more

Rental Housing

No room at the inn: Maceo Campbell and Michal Pincus moved to the county five years ago in search of affordable housing. Instead, they found escalating rents and landlords who charged exorbitant rates for substandardshelter. No Vacancy Tight housing market makes local rentals a competitive game By Janet Wells...
Read more

Himalayan Chhahari

x Mountain menu: Fans of Nepalese cuisine have something to rave about with the advent of Himalayan Chhahari in downtown Santa Rosa. Pictured are chef/owner Raju Mothe, Yagya Shrestha, and Sujana Shrestha. Taste Trek Savor the exotic at Himalayan Chhahari By Paula Harris THERE'S NOTHING like traveling...
Read more
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