Everyday Stuff

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Everyday Stuff

Nuts and Bolts

‘Best of’ everyday stuff–
these are a few of our favorite things

UNFORTUNATELY, life cannot be all romance and revelry. Sometimes you have to settle down and do your laundry, wash your dog, have your oil changed. As we make our way from one potentially mind-numbing task to the other, it has been proved that a small part of our brains remains alert, scanning the horizon for any little highlight to engage our intellects or assuage our beleaguered egos: a sunglass salesperson with a delightful professional manner, a gas station decorated with flair and whimsy, or a casually offered remark that the pathway you just walked down might be haunted by ghosts. The human animal lives for such things. Here are some people and places that have brightened our days, in hopes that they may brighten yours.


Best Place to Ponder a
Three-Piece Hemp Suit

George “I Guarantee It” Zimmer kicked in $100,000 for the Proposition 215 campaign to legalize medical marijuana last fall. Does that mean that his 332-store Men’s Wearhouse chain will soon be carrying menswear cut from hemp-based cloth? “We’re definitely investigating it,” answers Kirk Warren, a senior VP at the company headquarters in Fremont, surrounded by hemp fabric swatches, garment samples, and even business partnership proposals. With Armani reportedly readying its first hemp suits for this spring, it appears the race is on. “Thus far, we’re not carrying any of the [hemp-based] products,” Warren says, “but we certainly are interested.” And, he adds, the company is even thinking about hemp-based paper products, too, once they become economically viable. And that’s no pipe dream. The Men’s Wearhouse, 1001 Steele Lane, Santa Rosa. 525-1324.–B.R.

Best Door-to-Door Cigar Salesman

He comes to the door under the cover of darkness. He’ll meet you in a parking lot, in a corporate office, or in a crowded restaurant. CIA? No, C-I-G-A-R. Meet Val Cordova, founder of Cigaramor, a one-man, after-hours, high-end cigar service. For a $30 minimum purchase he’ll meet you just about anywhere with a fat suitcase of premium smoke and billows of good advice to select just the right stogies for you. When not working his day job as a bread baker, Cordova makes house calls to nearly 300 personal customers, offering 70 different varieties of hard-to-find cigars. 542-2667.–D.B.

Best Place to Sidestep a Ghost

According to certain so-called Spirit Detectives–those eerie folks who claim they can sense the presence of the ephemeral dead–Sonoma County is absolutely crawling with transient ghosts, thinly sliced leftovers of lives gone by and a fair number of spectral immigrants who’ve moved here for the climate. You can’t see them, say the experts, but they are here. You may have just stepped in one. One particular local landmark ranks as the numero uno specter-infested region in the whole county: General Vallejo’s former stomping grounds at the Petaluma Adobe State Historic Park. The nasty old general, legend has it, enslaved numerous local Indians, many of whom died at or near the site of the historic mansion. Victoria Bullis, a ghost-busting psychic from San Francisco, has claimed that most of the Adobe ghosts keep clear of the house itself–“Bad energy,” she says–but there are scores of spirits still congregating on the pathways that lead to the old complex, caught forever in a vast family reunion that will never end. So next time you visit the park, think of those who’ve passed that way before, and, hey!–be careful where you step. Petaluma Adobe Historic State Park, Old Adobe Road, Petaluma. 762-4871.–D.T.

Best Used Cars at Used-Car Prices

A road-ripping Datsun 280Z for $300? A Ford pickup for $400? Where do you go? J.J.’s Towing Service, of course. These guys tow the cars of all the tweeking deadbeats arrested on the highway. If the driver doesn’t come back, then the car is sold “as is” on a lien sale. The J.J.’s crew prices ’em to sell. The best part is J.J.’s complete indifference to your purchasing decision: no pressure, no bull. The right car for you will have three interlocking traits: cheap, neglected, and mechanically virtuous enough to survive the abuse. “As is” means that their passing smog certification is up to you, but in this day and age consider that maze merely an opportunity for personal growth. J.J.’s Towing Service, 175 W. College Ave., Santa Rosa. 528-7445.–D.B.

Best Place to Reflect on Mortality

The constant ringing of the Bell Monument to Nicolas Green and the Children of the World provides an unceasing song of love and remembrance for a 7-year-old Bodega Bay boy who was killed two years ago by bandits in Italy. Nicolas’ parents–Maggie and Reg Green–have faced their sorrowful loss with acts of love and forgiveness, not revenge and anger. By donating their son’s organs, they ignited a surge of organ donation around the globe. The 130 bells, a gift of thanks from families throughout Italy, hang from a pyramid structure created by San Francisco sculptor Bruce Hasson. Of course, there’s no right way to memorialize a tragedy, but the Greens have shown us a compelling option. Let the tuneful bells serve as a sounding board for your own inner thoughts. Near the Community Center in Bodega Bay, just north of town and to the west of Hwy 1.–S.P.

Best Place to Serve a Foot Fetish

This isn’t the least expensive place to purchase a pair of clogs. Nor does it have the biggest selection of boots and pumps. But it boasts perhaps the best collection of comfy, sturdy, beautiful shoes in the county. Yes, they even have some Birkenstocks. But look here for terrific brands from Denmark and Germany and fashionable Canadian boots. With popular styles for men and women, their shoes sell out fast. The friendly staff is happy to put you on their call list and phone when new shoes arrive. Satisfy your soul desire at Sole Desire, 441 Coddingtown Center, Santa Rosa. 571-8643–S.P.

Best Place to Dress Like
a Million for 20 Bucks

Want the skinny on the best-kept bargain fashion secret in the county? Get to know the folks at CP Shades and they’ll phone you about their next unadvertised sale. Women countywide have pounced on these loose-fitting, all-natural-fiber, wash-and-wear clothes (no ironing allowed). The holiday line, matching vests and pants made from shiny rayon in an array of gemlike colors, starred at many a winter party. And yes, that million-dollar look probably cost about 20 bucks (if it was on sale). This partial-outlet store carries new clothes at full price along with bargains. The late-spring line features brighter colors, short flared skirts, and a few slightly skinnier items. Check it out. 206 G St. at Petaluma Blvd. S., Petaluma. 773-3290–S.P.

Best Words to Rear End

We don’t know that it originated locally, but the best non-PC carniverous bumper sticker we’ve seen is the one pasted on a beat-up pickup parked on Sonoma street. It asks, “If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?” Second place is a tie between “Only Users Lose Drugs” and the smart-aleck down-the-tubes sass of “Windows ’95/Apple ’86.” Runners-up, decidedly local in origin, are Deaf Dog Coffee’s ubiquitous “Friends Don’t Let Friends Go to [encroaching Oregon-based coffee chain]” and Dutton Radiator’s delightfully tacky boast of its business as the “Best Place to Take a Leak.”–D.T.

Best Place to Get a Ticket

Getting a ticket on Petaluma Boulevard right outside the police station near Payran Avenue at 8:10 a.m., just after shift change, is easy. No accomplishment at all: done it twice. Whether it’s 27 in the 25 or those tags that are a mite past registration, the early birds, freshened up on a night’s sleep and strong coffee, truly do get the worm–particularly at month’s end when, we suspect, those “we don’t have quotas” quotas are due for the officers. And being the worm scrambling through the glove box, past the extra (dried-out) pens, thick stacks of repair invoices–and, incredibly, the half bag of Fritos–to find registration and proof of insurance gets expensively old after the first time. You’d think that some people would learn. Yep, you sure would.–G.G.

From the March 27-April 2, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Love

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Love

Heart’s Desire


‘Best of’ local romance–
sex in the dunes, single dads



TRUE STORY: Seven or eight years ago, in Petaluma’s small, rose-filled Wickersham Park, two young women sat amorously entwined on the grass. Seated on a wooden bench behind the two sat an elderly couple. After a time, the senior citizens arose to leave, but stopped where the youngsters lay. “Are you in love?” the man asked the surprised women. After an uncomfortable silence, they affirmed, shyly, that they were. “This is where we fell in love,” the man replied. He paused, squeezed his smiling wife’s hand, then nodded farewell. Being in love is a wonderful thing. Being in love in a beautiful place is even better.

Best Fountain to Kiss In

One of the reigning clichés of romantic movies is the much-loved, climactic little occurrence known as the “fountain embrace.” You know it, right? Two people spy each other from opposite ends of some public fountain or pond or–as in the case of Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump–the big reflecting pool at the Washington Monument. Instead of walking around the watery obstruction the way normal people would do, these lovestruck souls always clamber right into the darn thing and then kiss and hug somewhere in its big wet middle. Should such a romance-movie impulse ever descend upon you, Sonoma County is full of appropriate spots for your frolick through city-owned H2O. Our favorite choice: Santa Rosa’s Courthouse Square, replete with descending pools crowned by a rectangular, sidewalk-level fountain with enormous spewing spouts that will add drama to any kiss. The water is clean, but cold, and the piped-in classical music often wafts over from the park across the street. And there are always plenty of people around to applaud you, or not. It’s perfect. And yes, it is quite illegal, so we’re not really suggesting it. In fact, we discourage such behavior. Should you see your long-lost love across the courtyard, perhaps the two of you should meet at the water’s edge for the big hug. It’s still quite romantic–and you won’t have to dry off afterwards–D.T.

Best Place to Watch the Ocean
While You Boff Your Mate

Why watch the walls and think of England (don’t ask) when you can make love in the great outdoors? The 2.5-mile Pomo Canyon trail starts at Willow Creek State Park campground and leads to the rocky shores of Shell Beach. About halfway along the gentle trek, through towering redwoods, scrubby meadows, and fields of wildflowers, watch for a gathering of solicitous grassy vistas looking down upon the path. Scamper up there. Fill your eyes with bold blue ocean, subdued green neon hills, nippy white coastal clouds, and the brown feathers of a seafaring hawk. Listen to the music of nature as your mate contemplates the pastel sky and both of you are filled with warmth. Outside is breezy, inside warm, and, well, not dry. Willow Creek Campground is located on Willow Creek Road off of coastal Hwy. 1 next to the Sizzling Tandoor Restaurant at Bridgehaven near Jenner. Open April 1 through Nov. 1. 865-2391.–D.B.

Best Place to Meet a Single Father

So you hired a babysitter and checked out the local club scene. You chatted up a few guys in cyberspace and even tried a personal ad or two. Still no luck? Here’s a tip for busy single moms looking for new relationships. Glide into something new at Snoopy’s Ice Arena. Saturday afternoons are the best time to spot single dads with young ones in tow. Are these men responsible? Hey, they’re spending quality time with their kids. Are they in shape? Well, at least they can wobble around on a pair of skates. Are they emotionally available? How the heck should we know! Still, it’s wonderful to skate, practice a figure eight or two, sip a hot chocolate, and shop for Peanuts trinkets at this Charles Schulz­owned establishment. Redwood Empire Ice Arena and Snoopy’s Gallery and Gift Shop, 1667 W. Steele Lane, Santa Rosa. 546-7147–S.P.

Best Place to Drive Around and
Dream About Your Dream House

Let’s see, the master bedroom should have a sunken Jacuzzi tub, next to a big window with a major view. There should be a big yard, far enough from noisy roads to be quiet, but close in enough for you to be able to get groceries and other essentials in a reasonable amount of time. Close to the coast is nice, too, maybe with a few redwoods for shade in the summer. Where to find it all? Cruise the ridges west of Sebastopol, where the choice spots offer glimpses of the coastal fog banks on one side, the lights of Santa Rosa, and maybe even wispy plumes from the geysers along Mt. St. Helena’s lower slopes. All with picturesque apple orchards in the foreground. Idyllic? To be sure. Plausible? Hey, right up front, we said we were dreaming–B.R.

Best Place to Shop for Wedding Rings

You’ve either popped the question or responded to it in the affirmative, and now you need to buy the wedding rings. Where do you go? The most economical and convenient spots for such purchases are your nearby shopping mall or big-box stores, but these are also –and get ready for an understatement–the least romantic places on the face of the earth. And shouldn’t your quest for rings be as loaded with romantic trappings as possible? We joyfully suggest a trip to Duncans Mills, about an hour’s drive from Hwy. 101 (go northwest on Hwy. 116). The destination–a tiny rustic community–is just part of the whole romantic pastiche. The journey iself will take you through some of the loveliest scenery in Sonoma County. Once there, mosey along the tiny stretch of Hwy. 116 that constitutes Duncans Mills’ downtown. The galleries have loads of unusual items, including handmade jewelry–and wedding rings–that you won’t find in any mega-mall. An ideal setting for browsing, staring into each other’s eyes, and mapping out mutual futures. Handholding is mandatory–D.T.

Best Place to Pour Water over
Your Lover’s Naked Shoulders

The Russian River is indeed the lifeline of the county, but the Gualala River is a helluva lot more private. As any couple who has ever tried to find the perfect spot along the Russian on a splendid Saturday afternoon can attest, when 400,000 other well-meaning people descend upon its banks with their children, dogs, transistors, and hibachis–a romantic finger-food kind of picnic à deux becomes decidedly à don’t. Ah, but the charms of the Gualala River, whose quiet meanders can be found off of Skaggs Springs Road when caught up by Lake Sonoma, are as sibilant as its very name. Pull over where you can and scramble with wine bottles, blankets, and hampers down to its rocky shores. You’re likely to find a river not as rushin’ as the Russian, with rocky natural verandas along its shore, ample pools in which to float, and not one single other person around. Just your lover. Which brings us back to the naked shoulders.–G.G.

From the March 27-April 2, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Best of Sonoma ’97

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Best of Sonoma ’97

Surfin’ Sonoma

From bagels to beaches, wineries to web sites–and every little curiosity in between–The Best of Sonoma County

WE HIT THE NEWSSTAND each Thursday chock full of what we modestly feel are the best in arts, eats, and news. But for seven scintillating days we turn the tables, inviting our readers to fill us in on the best discoveries in Sonoma County, ranging from the smallest details of the best dry cleaner guaranteed to return your cherished garments buttons and all, to the big-picture places perfect for falling to one’s knee to declare oneself almost definitely possibly ready to fall in love.

Of course, we can’t resist making a few picks of our own. Writers in this, our third annual Sonoma County Independent Best of Sonoma County Readers’ Poll, are Dylan Bennett, Steve Bjerklie, Greg Cahill, Gretchen Giles, Zooey Lasinger, Sara Peyton, Bruce Robinson, and David Templeton.

We thank the more than 1,000 readers who took the time to fill out that ballot and lick that stamp. We have learned many things from you. For example, we have learned that Goat Rock is a heck of a place to view a sunset–and we hope that you don’t all decide to sit on it at once. We have learned about the simple joys of surfing at Salmon Creek State Beach. Your picks ranged from the best local art gallery (congrats to Santa Rosa Junior College) to your favorite vegetarian dining place (forks off to the East West Bakery Cafe).

We also have learned from a gentleman, who claims to be a reverend, that Santa Rosa Adult Books and Videos is his preferred gift store, erotica shop, first-date meeting place, and favorite necking spot. Sometimes we learn more than we want to know.

In fact, sex plays heavily on the minds of a lot of readers. One male respondent lists Motel 6 as the best close escape. We don’t know if he’s the same guy who lists Sears as the best erotica store–but, man, those power tools …

And then there is the woman who ranks Helen Putnam Plaza in Petaluma as the county’s best outdoor adventure spot–evidently the caffeinated teen denizens of that park are even wilder than some recent press reports have misled us to believe.

Sure, most of our readers are sweet as honey. But then there is that cranky fella whose passionate handwriting dashes out bad-tempered responses: “Quacks! All of them!” he replies when asked to choose the best chiropractor; “Piss on the Internet!” he snaps at the best web site; “Burn ’em all down!” he snorts in regard to the best local C&W bar; and we’re sorry to learn that the best bartender in the county “quit three years ago.”

We figure this guy must have been that bartender–in any case, he could sure use another round.

Looking for the best tattoo? Got 25 to life? One reader suggests San Quentin State Prison–“Oops!” she adds coyly, “not in Sonoma County.”

Best brunch? One reader favors Jack-in-the-Box for an elegant late-morning meal.

Yet another balks at the notion of being turned into lunch–best surfing spot? “Don’t like sharks,” he responds shortly.

On the other hand, there is the explosion of responses we have received for the best birthing spot category: any taxicab, the woods, or even a ’69 VW will do. Less traditional choices include Chuck E. Cheese’s (talk about the ultimate first birthday party, though the sight of a 7-foot-tall robotic rat could be rather traumatic) and the Catholic Church (no Immaculate Conception jokes, please).

As for the grail-like quest for that favorite fishing spot, well, our readers will never tell. One respondent jots down with guarded finality: “It’s a secret.”

Aw, come on, we’ll only tell 78,000 of our closest friends.




















From the March 27-April 2, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Eats

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Eats

All Fired Up


Smokin’! Donnie Harris keeps the home fires burning at Pack Jack Bar-B-Que Inn in Sebastopol.

Photo by Janet Orsi



‘Best of’ local food and drink–
what a mouthful!

THERE ARE THOSE who feel that our fair county should really be described as ‘Whine Country’ because the choices of eateries are too diverse, too numerous, and too excellent to decide upon for just one short meal, one long evening, or one middling afternoon. There are the fares of every country, the straight-ahead mashed potatoes wish-I-was-in-jammies diners, the seven-fork dinners, and all of that damn good dead grape. But amazingly, day after day, county residents get up, gird their loins, loosen their belts, and foray out for yet another excellent meal. Poor us.

Best Place to Press Beer Drinkers
into Public Service

Many among the thirsty throng of veteran beer drinkers slinging 10-ounce tasting glasses at the Luther Burbank Center proclaimed the Beer Fest the best event of its kind. Although billed as a “tasting,” this hoppy-go-lucky fiesta is made possible by pure, raw party spirit. Last year, the love of drink motivated 1,000 beer nuts to part with 20 bucks each. This collective act of charity meant $12,000 for Face to Face, Sonoma County’s high-profile AIDS relief agency. Determined to downplay the specter of mass inebriation and to educate the public about quality beer, organizer Lynn Newton says this year’s fest features the “Beer Fest Invitational Craft Brew Competition.” The results of the contest will be announced as the party begins. “That way,” Newton intones, “people will know what good beer is.” We’ll drink to that. Don’t miss the Beer Fest–with 40 microbrews, food tasting, and rockin’ tunes–Saturday, April 19, from 1 to 5 p.m., at the Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. For details, call 887-7031.–D.B.

Best Place to Lick Cream
While Sky-Watching

A certain writer we know claims there is a strong psychological link between ice cream sundaes with caramel sauce and single-propeller aircraft; oddly, whenever he thinks of one, he immediately has thoughts of the other. No doubt this arises from all his youthful weekends spent slurping iced dairy products with his dear old dad while watching deft aeronautical maneuvers from a little diner at the postage stamp­sized airport near their home. It’s a good thing for him that he now lives so near to the Two-Niner Diner out at the Petaluma Airport. Like something out of the TV show Wings (or even Happy Days), this unique diner boasts an old-fashioned ice cream counter, lots of airplane stuff on the walls, and big windows, from which sky-watchers have a clear shot of the unusually long runway and all the thrilling gravity-busting activity that takes place thereon. And the caramel sauce, we hear, is heavenly. 561 Sky Ranch Drive, Petaluma. 765-2900.–D.T.

Best Place to Go Gringo

The salty carnal essence at the bottom of a roast pork burrito at El Favorito Taqueria in Roseland is enough to make you squirm with pleasure in your hard orange plastic seat. The low prices, big portions, and fabulous food–fast not fancy–makes El Favorito an underground cult favorite. Located at the unimproved site of a former Church’s Chicken, this fast-moving taco shop is a no-frills, cheap-thrills Mexican food mecca. Clearly, not one centavo of your $3.60 super burrito goes to gratuitous interior design. Call out your order over the blaring jukebox. Eat salsa from a plastic cup. Read a menu board that blatantly identifies “cabeza” and “suiza” as “beef by-product.” Three minutes from downtown Santa Rosa. 565 Sebastopol Road, Santa Rosa. 526-7444.– D.B.

Best Place to Munch Pizza Sans Tomatoes

If you think pizza is defined as a disc of dough plied with tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperoni, then you must not have visited Pizza Gourmet. Here, you’re just as likely to savor a pie bedecked with pesto or a lively green tomatillo sauce and accompanied with such rare fare as caramelized onions, roast chicken, and cilantro (the Acapulco); roasted garlic and red peppers (the Gilroy); or salsa, chilies, beef, avocado, and green onions (the Mexicana). These award-winning departures from the pro-forma norm are just part of an impressively diverse selection of pizzas that anchors a menu of more conventional pastas, salads, sandwiches, side dishes, and desserts. You can also create your own exotic combinations from a list of specialty toppings and sauces, plus seven cheeses and five meats. And, yes, pepperoni is an option. Pizza Gourmet, 7350 Commerce Blvd., Cotati, 795-8008; 1415 Fulton Road, Santa Rosa, 575-1677.–B.R.

Best Place to Find a Thrill
on Blueberry Hill

A long country block off Hwy. 116 near Forestville, Bruce Goetz’s blueberry farm is a genuinely rustic enterprise. His six acres of berries have been growing happily at the edge of the coastal fog zone ever since 1940, when his grandmother started the first commercial blueberry plantings in California. For a few short weeks each summer, they become a magnet for blueberry lovers from far and wide who converge on the farm to carry off baskets, boxes, or flats of plump, fresh-picked berries. The selection of Goetz’s own jams and jellies and baked goods, offered in the weathered barn-turned-store, is augmented by fresh blueberry ice cream in the summer and shelves of holiday gift ideas in December. The berries don’t ripen at the same time each year, but you can get on a mailing list for an early warning, just by asking. Green Valley Blueberry Farm, 9345 Ross Station Road, Forestville. 887-7496.–B.R.

Best Place to Sit in the Sun
for No Damned Reason

Not many places have a whole menu section dedicated to specialty polentas. But the Willow Wood Market Cafe is one of a kind. Despite a yup-scale selection of gourmet grocery items, this is a neighborhood hangout with a west county flavor, smack dab in the heart of downtown Graton. “The town was in need of it,” says co-owner and head chef Matthew Greenbaum, who admits he’s been surprised by the way the cafe has taken off in its first year and a half, quickly outstripping the market side of the operation. Regulars, who know to give way during high-volume mealtimes, when soups, sandwiches, and hearty breakfasts take over, can nurse a cappuccino for hours in between. The outdoor patio in back is a hidden oasis in good weather, too. Willow Wood Market Cafe, 9020 Graton Road, Graton. 823-0233.–B.R.

Best Place to Gnaw on a Bone

All the way from Egypt, Texas, Donnie Harris appropriately named his Sebastopol rib joint Pack Jack’s after the family mule–this man is stubborn about barbecue. Here you get ribs and chicken, beer, wine, and sweet potato pie, all strictly Texas style. And that means a deep-pit barbecue. A firebox stoked with oakwood cooks the meat with smoke and heat. This precious hole-in-the-wall is all country, pure cowboy. Grampa’s “shopping list” hangs high on the wall; it’s an antique single-shot shotgun. There’s a pistol, a whip, a bull-riding rig, and an autographed picture of rodeo stud Joe Beaver, calf-ropin’ champion of the world and a regular customer. Harris’ BBQ sauce is the same recipe that’s been used since the days of slavery. “If it wasn’t used 200 years ago, then we don’t use it today,” he insists. “Poor people are always the best cooks because they have to be innovative to make food really delectable.” Pack Jack Bar-B-Que Inn, 3963 Gravenstein Hwy. S., Sebastopol. 829-9929.–D.B.

Best Place to Cut the Mustard

“Are we dining out today?” shouts Ralph Morgenbessen, downtown Santa Rosa’s hotdog merchant par excellence. The recipient of this effusive greeting, an approaching customer still crossing the street several yards away from Morgenbessen’s unmistakable hotdog cart, responds by shouting his order: two giant turkey dogs, no sauerkraut. Ralph’s Courthouse Classics, as the Brooklyn-bred Morgenbessen has named his thriving wiener biz, has for four years been a popular fixture at Courthouse Square (corner of Mendocino and Fourth). Aside from the fresh, steaming, New York­style dogs–beef, turkey, polish sausage, and Louisiana hot links, with all the fixings gleefully offered–Morgenbessen’s regular clients come for the man himself. Jovial in the extreme and able to engage almost anyone in conversation, he routinely–and this is no mere hyperbole–turns a quick lunch on the run into a warm, good-humored event. “I came to the Bay Area in ’64,” he will tell you, if you ask, and possibly if you don’t. “Just in time for the Summer of Love. The only problem with Californians is they’re too spoiled by the weather. In New York, you could sell a hotdog on a rainy day, but not here. It’s a good thing there are so many gorgeous days, am I right?” Oh, and one more thing. “You want sauerkraut with that?”–D.T.

Best Place to Munch Bagels
while Reading ‘Der Stern’

So you like keeping up with Germany’s beautiful people while munching a bagel and sipping coffee. Then Sawyer’s Books–which has been keeping locals informed for over 50 years–is the place to order your next cappuccino. There’s a new coffee cart in place, featuring a tasty northern Italian blend. Order coffee and enjoy browsing some 1,700 magazines and dozens of newspapers from around the globe at this popular downtown newsstand. And the user-friendly establishment allows readers take a peek at their magazine of choice before plunking down their cash. It’s an honor system that works. Indeed, dedicated patrons have been known to straighten magazine shelves after their messier, newcomer counterparts. And for coffee drinkers who prefer sitting down, there are sidewalk tables, and plans call for a few inside tables. Sawyer’s Books, 638 Fourth St., Santa Rosa. 542-1311–S.P.

Best Place to Knock Back
Sing Ha and Satay

Less money than therapy and tons tastier, too. Burn off that heavy work-a-day stress with an order of spicy Thai food–hold the chairs. Take a load off at the Thai House in downtown Santa Rosa in the cozy, traditional sit-on-the-floor section. Remove your shoes. Grab a pillow. Take some time. Relax in subdued lighting, warm carved wood paneling, and plucky sonorous tunes from Thailand. Cold Thai beer washes garlicky sautéed eggplant, coconut milk soup, and a side order of peanut sauce. Sneak a catnap between bites. 525 Fourth St., Santa Rosa. 526-3939.–D.B.

Best Place to Spit Pits

There are those who simply don’t realize that line dancing goes back much further than the receding follicles on Garth Brooks’ hairline. Heck, it’s all Greek to those folks. As well as it should be: it’s all Greek to the folks at Papa’s Taverna, too. With Greek food and Greek dancing on Sunday afternoons, this hidden gem in the rough, weedy areas alongside the Petaluma River fairly bounces on Sundays with dressed-up folks holding hands with strangers, moving their legs in slow rotations before them, and hopping elegantly to the left. Or is it to the right? The music is live, the food is lively, and there is a small tucked-away outside patio just in the perfect spot for afternoon sun and late-day sunsets that can’t be beat for sitting, sucking the meat from Kalamata olives, forking into the crumbly richness of a slab of fresh feta cheese, and mulling the lemony-ricey goodness of a homemade dolma while watching industrial types work on their docked boats. No wonder the Romans came and stole it all. 5688 Lakeville Hwy., Petaluma. 769-8545.–G.G.

From the March 27-April 2, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Culture

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Culture

Ridin’ High


That Ain’t No Bull: Suburban cowgirl Shelli Gregersen of Santa Rosa takes the (mechanical) bull by the horns at Kodiak Jack’s Saloon in Petaluma.

Photo by Eric Reed



‘Best of’ local culture–
having a crush on wine country

DEFINING SONOMA COUNTY culture is a little like writing a dictionary: if you don’t use a lot of words, you’re probably cheating somebody. Our culture is defined in part by our geography, in part by our history, and in part by the names in our telephone books. Our culture is us, we the people of Sonoma County: We keen connoisseurs of costly caffeine, carousing in cafes and cantinas and clubs; we crane-watchers and cliff-clamberers and carriers of cameras; we coaches and cops and co-authors; we card-carrying consumers of collectible kitsch; we coy creators of complex comix; we clean-cut collegians, compulsively conked-out at classical concerts; we conversational club-hoppers clamoring to be cool; we common-law companions and crab-crackers and cowboys and kids. Put another way: Culture is what you see when you walk down the street. Here are a few of our favorite sights.

Best Place to Ponder What
Might Have Been

In a delicate, laurel-perfumed glade just beside Hwy. 101 south of Cloverdale, a brass historical marker honors the site of Icaria-Speranza, a once-thriving commune established in 1881 by French followers of social scientist Etienne Cabet, whose 1840 novel Voyage en Icarie described a society without violence, misfortune, or private property–utopia, in a word. Already the French proto-communists had reinhabited the old Mormon town of Nauvoo, Ill., but financial difficulties caused several Icarians, as they called themselves, to search for a new location in fertile California. Along what’s now known as Icaria Creek in Cloverdale, they built their dream, farming several hundred acres of vineyards, orchards, and wheat. Alas, utopia proved elusive here, too, for it seems that people are never quite as communitarian as they believe. The bountiful Icaria harvests created a desire for profit, which eventually doomed the share-and-share-alike economy and social structure of Icaria-Speranza. The commune was history by 1886. Still, standing among the petals of light sifting through the trees–the historical marker stands only yards from the site of Icaria’s main barn–it’s hard not to think, “If only … ” Look for directions to the California historical marker near the Asti exit on Hwy. 101.–S.B.

Best of the Worst of Teen Angst

We are Sonoma County teenagers, and this is our life: These are the Sampoerna clove cigarettes and imported Bidis we bought after seeing them in the “bad” column of our freshman Health text. We hang out at A’Roma’s. All afternoon. (Or at least until an employee asks us if we’ve bought anything. “You mean, today?” we ask as we grudgingly leave.) “What do teenagers do around here?” an adult asks. Do? We drive around the Airport Cinemas parking lot smoking a piddly joint stolen from one of our parents, then go in and see the same movie we saw last week. We complain about high school (certain of us love high school, but the rest of us fear and pity them). We figure out schemes for arriving late and leaving early; Jim writes a note from my dad and I write one from his mom. We start drinking too young. We do Xtc with 20 of our best friends when someone’s parents are out of town. We all feel much closer the next morning. We talk behind each others’ backs. Then we go back to A’Roma’s. Is it really that bad? I suppose not. Often, on these glorious spring days, we’ll find ourselves on the way to the beach, the river, the awesome Sebastopol cemetery, the Inn, the Phoenix, Doyle Park, or Shiloh Park, and we’ll remember how lucky we are to live here. –Z.L.

Best Place to Hear Bach on a Sunday Night

For the original unplugged music, there is no finer local venue than the 120-year-old Occidental Community Church. For the past 17 years, it has played host to the annual concert series sponsored by the Redwoods Arts Council. “It’s intimate. The acoustics, I think, are the best in the county,” says RAC president Kit Neustadter. And if the sight lines are not so great and the pews a little uncomfortable, “nobody falls asleep at our concerts and the sound is fabulous,” he adds. So is the list of performers the RAC has attracted to tiny Occidental–a Who’s Who of chamber groups, string quartets, and gifted soloists. The RAC programs are two-thirds classical and one-third eclectic–jazz acts, storytellers, folksingers, even an unusual adaptation of The Tempest performed with Balinese shadow puppets. Tickets for each show are sold separately, but many sell out in advance. For details, call the Redwood Arts Council at 874-1124.–B.R.

Best Place to View a Vanishing Landmark

OK, so economy-sized purple concrete dinosaurs probably never really roamed the earth. That didn’t stop the T-Rex links at the Pee Wee Golf Course in Guerneville from becoming a modest local landmark over the years. And even though the miniature golf course is closed–a victim of the new bridge over the Russian River that is now under construction–it has not yet been dismantled, leaving the proto-Barney figure in place for another round of colorful look-how-deep-the-flood-was-this-time photos in the local daily. But this may be the last time, as the folks who built and operated the Pee Wee Golf Course–and similar facilities at Lake Tahoe and Carson City–reportedly plan to relocate the venerable vertebrate to one of those faraway sites. Pee Wee Golf, Hwy. 116 at Neely Road, Guerneville.–B.R.

Best Place to Step Lively
(Out of the Closet)

So you’re gay but you don’t feel too gay about hanging out in that biker-swamped river bar or being suspiciously stared down as you boogie with your partner among those who are straighter than a forest. So where do you go? If it’s a Sunday night you can go straight to Heaven. Club Heaven, that is. Taking over the Funhouse each Sunday since July of ’95, Club Heaven is manned by Randy Rowlands, the master planner behind this weekly funfest who provides his own security staff to ensure that each week is as safe as the last. “Our community is very diverse,” says Rowland. “When we first opened, our community was very nervous about coming downtown, but we have a policy: If you don’t get along with our clientele, you’re not welcome. Period. But,” he adds brightly, “we have had absolutely not one problem at Club Heaven. Not one. And, every week I try to create something different or unusual.” Among his unusual offerings are the Rowlands Revue of drag queens and kings, which draw an audience that Rowlands estimates is about 60 percent straight. Agreeing that drag performances are often a drag for female audience members who might feel insulted by the garish depictions of womanhood, Rowlands stresses, “This is theater. It’s not sloppy, and it’s not a put-down. It’s the art of performing as a female without the gaudiness that could go along with it.” With the success of the Santa Rosa location, Rowlands is lobbying to open Heaven on Saturday nights at Guerneville’s former Ziggurat club, hoping to fling wide the doors this April 19, just weeks before the Women’s Weekend bash takes over the river. What amazes Rowlands most about the success of his club is that Sunday nights are among the least sexy of the week, yet hundreds still come out to mix and mingle. “We’ve become a destination spot,” he says proudly. Club Heaven, 120 Fifth St., Santa Rosa. 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. $5. 544-6653.–G.G.

Best Place to Soak up Ethnic Folk Music

Who’d have guessed that a former boxing gym at the edge of the Laguna de Santa Rosa would become the premier venue for folk and ethnic music in Sonoma County? Yet that is the improbable history of the Sebastopol Community Center, which in less than a year and a half has presented a remarkable array of off-the-beaten path musical performers. The first annual Sebastopol Celtic Festival in September 1995 “got the ball rolling,” says center director Kim Caruso, and the 500-seat room has since played host to Indian sarod master Ali Akbar Kahn, Scottish fiddler Alastair Frasier, Native American flutist R. Carlos Nakai, and nights of music, dance, and drumming from Peru, Africa, and the Caribbean. Folkie performers over the past year include Tom Paxton, Cheryl Wheeler, and U. Utah Phillips. Plus blues concerts, R&B shows, and Grateful Dead (taped) dance parties. The center is also the co-sponsor of the upcoming Kate Wolf Festival, which will expand to two days when it returns in the summer. Sebastopol Community Center, 390 Morris St. 823-1511.–B.R.

Best Short Sunday Drive

Stands of firs, laurels, and oaks shaggy as raccoon coats, old barns gray and weathered as a codger’s beard, a stalwart Victorian schoolhouse, a valley so quiet that a bird’s song seems thunderous, a ridge so smooth it’s like exploring Ava Gardner’s arm, and ocean views so wide you can see all the way to distant centuries–this is Coleman Valley Road, Sonoma County’s best-kept paved secret. There are no shops or malls along the way, no restaurants (quaint or otherwise), barely any buildings of any kind. The reason to traverse Coleman’s couple of dozen miles is for the pure, slow, elegant pleasure of driving straight into the county’s best scenery without any commercial interference–the nearly lost experience of becoming part of the scenery yourself.At the main intersection in the center of Occidental, point your wheels due west (there’s a sign). Coleman Valley Road concludes at Hwy. 1 just north of Bodega Bay. First-timers will want to drive it east-to-west, as the connection on the coast isn’t marked.–S.B.

Best Place to Achieve Rapture

For some of us, there are few pleasures as acute as standing, dusty to the knees, on a baking-hot June day in the aromatic glory of the Sonoma County dump. What could lead one to Petaluma’s Recycletown for hours of olfactory adaptation and free hot dogs? The art, of course. Hosting its annual “Oh, Rapture! It’s Scrapture” contest of objets d’art culled entirely from recycled items (don’t call them junk), the Recycletown staff don heavy Western-era costumes–sashaying around vehicular paeans to the hot glue gun, risk-taking sculptural oddities employing skis and ironing boards, and small, simple configurations of beauty wrought entirely from Barbie parts and paper clips–before they perform their yearly skit. Ideas recycled from year to year and surprising loveliness found in the dump, that’s scrapture: an evocation of a throw-away culture remade into configurations that even the fussiest housekeeper couldn’t bear to toss. And all of it celebrated on possibly the hottest, stillest afternoon in June with plenty of serious work, plenty of free sodas, plenty of deliciously burned hot dogs, and plenty of goodwill, dust, smoke, and laughter to go around. Oh, rapture! Recycletown at the Sonoma County dump, 403 Mecham Road, Petaluma. June 28. Free. 795-3660.–G.G.

Best Places to Catch a Latin Beat

Here the language is Spanish, the fashion vaquero–that of the Mexican cowboy. Dressed in boots, white cowboy hats, black shirts, and spiffy white dinner jackets, the Mexican dance band alternates between gentle ballads and galloping rhythms. Welcome to Planeta Furia, a 18-and-over Latin dance club on Seventh Street in Santa Rosa that offers an adults-only area for drinking cervezas. Check your machismo at the door; a sign there reads: “No: colors, bandanas, starter jackets, baggies, weapons, or gang groups. Yes: cowboy hats and good clean fun.” A short walk across town, a tuba player pipes a soul-stirring backbeat for a swirling set of dancing señors and señoritas. Here, the drummer stands at the front of a crowded stage overflowing with sassy brass and Latin percussion instruments. On the dance floor couples swing, hip to hip, arm in arm–passionate and sexy. This is Los Caporales. Located in the same Railroad Square building that once housed Magnolia’s rock club, this stylish new venue offers on weekends the best of contemporary Mexican music and dance, including banda (Wednesdays and Thursdays are American music nights). No minors, please. Patrons fall within two categories: couples dancing amid a comet’s tail of swirling lights, and young men watching from the sidelines or kidding around over arcade soccer. At $15 and $12 respectively, the cover charges seem steep at first, but include thorough, no-nonsense security and an authentic Latin band in pleasant, friendly surroundings. Planeta Furia, 528 Seventh St., Santa Rosa, 578-4445. Las Caporales, 107 W. Fourth St., Santa Rosa–D.B.

Best Place to Eat Free Food
on a Saturday Morning

R&B means “rhythm and blues,” of course, but locally it oughta be called R&B&F–rhythm and blues and food–because there’s just something about gettin’ your mojo workin’ that gets your appetite workin’, too. Johnny Otis understands this. Otis, Sebastopol’s most famous R&B vibes player, pianist, hambone leader, apple farmer, and preacher, serves up the hot tunes and hot food every Saturday at 9 a.m. in a live broadcast from Copperfield’s Books for KPFA (94.1-FM). Come on in for biscuits and blues, muffins and shuffles, soup and soul; all the foodstuffs, free for the taking, are provided by Johnny’s pals at local cateries. For two hours, Johnny spins classic oldies, provides wonderful from-his-own-life stories about the songs and the artists, and frequently launches into prodigious, if not downright righteous, political testifyin’ while the food is fryin’. Copperfield’s Books, 138 N. Main St., Sebastopol. 823-2618–S.B.

Best Place to Catch the Blues
on a Friday Night

You’ll never mistake Negri’s for a trendy wine bar. But the funky, smoky Italian restaurant and dance spot in downtown Occidental is the place to hear legendary bluesman Nick Gravenites. Best known for writing “Born in Chicago” for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and credited with helping to bring the Chicago sound to San Francisco in the early ’60s, the founding member of super-group Electric Flag continues to refine his craft. A songwriter for Janis Joplin, Gravenites is still creating and recording songs and living the blues. If you ask, sometimes he’ll belt out “Born in Chicago,” and, well, sometimes he won’t. You just gotta catch Gravenites in the right mood–a blues mood, so to speak. Negri’s, 3700 Bohemian Hwy., Occidental. 874-3623–S.P.

Best Picnic Spot

Don’t know about you but some of us remember way back when Sunday afternoon was widely considered “family day,” a now nearly extinct notion that was once as American as not burning the flag. Food was the primary focus, with massive spreads of chicken and biscuits and Aunt Dot’s gooey apple pie. The adults gathered to trade tool tips and recipes on the veranda while the kids leg-wrestled on the well-manicured lawn. Happily, this tradition is still alive outside of reruns of Happy Days. Each Sunday, the beautiful square in downtown Healdsburg comes alive as dozens of families gather to behave civilly toward one another in public. The picnic tables become festively ornamented with bright tableclothes and overflowing baskets of food. Music–live and recorded–wafts through the air as the multicultural assembly transforms the spot into a heartwarming homage to familial love–D.T.

Best Thing to Do After Losing an Election

You know what they say: All the world’s a stage and politics makes strange bedfellows. But does that explain why Eric Koenigshofer took up acting after losing the 5th District supervisor’s race last year? Probably not. Still–in his winning acting debut–Koenigshofer recently pontificated with panache in Sonoma County Repertory Theatre’s You Can’t Take It with You. Playing a stuffed shirt circa 1938, Koenigshofer as Mr. Kirby seeks to prevent his son from marrying into a nutty family. By play’s end, the old capitalist softens and accepts his future in-laws. Koenigshofer–the candidate-turned actor–enjoyed an applause-filled respite from the political theater.–S .P.

Best Place to Spend May Day

Every May 1, rancher Bill Wheeler calls back the true believers to his rolling 320-acre property off Coleman Valley Road to reconnect with the high, heady days of the late-’60s, when Wheeler Ranch was the quintessential “hippie commune” (as described in Harper’s, no less). “There are no rules!” was the old Wheeler cry. You still hear it, though nowadays the reply often is “But at least there’s Prozac!” What’s fun about Wheeler’s May Day picnic is the playful mingling of Deadheads and beats, songbirds and bongo drums, meadows and sky, and–out on the dirt road leading to the ranch–VWs and BMWs, plus kids of all ages around adults of all sanities. Almost everyone at some point winds up hot and drippy inside a makeshift clothing-optional sweathouse. When you arrive–bring wine, food, and, well, you know–look for the ruggedly handsome guy with the most holes in his jeans. That’s Bill Wheeler. Drive five miles west of Occidental, just past Oceansong Farm. Sometimes there’s a sign, sometimes not.–S.B.

Best Place to Name-Drop

Since going secular in 1981, the Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts has played host to a steady stream of big-name talent, most of whom have left their mark at, if not actually on, the facility. Bedecking the walls of the spacious backstage lounge are large clusters of autographed photographs of the stars who have passed through, many on the way up (Nashville songstress Mary Chapin Carpenter, Dead-apparent Phish, country sweetie LeAnn Rimes), others whose careers peaked some time ago (boho Edie Brickell, perpetual comeback queen Pia Zadora). A few regulars are on the wall more than once (new publicity shots are required), and some of the juxtapositionings are just plain odd, as the pairing of lounge king Wayne Newton with the silent Marcel Marceau, or finding rumpled activist Ralph Nader sandwiched between paint-by-numbers country star Garth Brooks and perpetually hip word-comic George Carlin. But the collection is not 100 percent complete, lacking, for instance, the late crooner Roy Orbison, whose final California tour included a memorable stop in Santa Rosa. Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. 546-3600.–B.R.

Best 1996 Show Worth its Waits

It took a heap of unnecessary legal bills for a local good guy to make it happen. That was the downside. The upside was the show itself, with reclusive neo-hipster Tom Waits–a Petaluma area resident–headlining a rare assemblage of intriguing singer/songwriters that also featured T-Bone Burnett and spouse Sam Phillips, Charlie Sexton, Alejandro Escovedo, and the tragically underappreciated Tonio K. Even at $100 a seat, the Aug. 11 benefit concert at the Raven Theater in Healdsburg–a fundraiser for theater owner Don Hyde’s legal defense fund–was an instant sellout. Living up to the stratospheric expectations of ticket-holders, the once-in-a-lifetime gig dominated conversations for weeks afterward. Hyde, busted on bogus Kentucky drug charges by an anonymous informant, got off, too.–B.R.

From the March 27-April 2, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

The Scoop

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Brass Balls

By Bob Harris

BILL CLINTON announced this month that the corruption caused by private campaign financing can be solved by requiring broadcasters to provide free TV time to candidates. The president suggested that such a measure would help “free our democracy from the grip of big money.”

What he didn’t add is that a grip, applied two ways, is called a handshake.

Just hours after making the proposal, Clinton attended a $25,000-a-plate swordfish dinner in the Crystal Ballroom of the Carlton Hotel. In exchange for some grins with the guests and a couple of Kodak moments, Clinton raised over half a million dollars–90 percent of which would have been illegal under the man’s own guidelines.

Brazen? It gets better. As the speculators and land sharks savored their candied chestnut ice cream, Clinton actually rose up and speechified about the need for reform, saying that “there is much more to do.” Besides looking in the mirror, apparently.

We’re talking serious brass. I’m surprised the TV mikes don’t pick up the rhythmic clanking when the president jogs.

Why the lip service? Needing to happy-face the daily revelations about White House fundraising–go to the side door, small bills only, ask for Lenny–Clinton is cleverly trying to lower the heat by posing as a do-gooder, advocating a populist reform that he knows has zero chance of happening in the near term.

Make no mistake, the free TV proposal would help, and it’s entirely doable, at least hypothetically. New legislation isn’t even necessary; the FCC can mandate free time for political candidates whenever it wants. (The mythical “free market” doesn’t apply here, since the broadcast industry wouldn’t even exist without government-protected monopolies over individual frequencies.)

Not that such a mandate is likely. You’re asking for concerted altruism from a bunch of silk-suited politicians and TV execs. You might as well ask a humming swarm of locusts to play “Kumbiya.”

See, the Democrats want to keep the White House in 2000, which means Al Gore is about to eat more seafood dinners than Moby Dick. As will Kemp, Gramm, and the other whales of the GOP.

Once that first 50 million or so is burning a pocket hole, where do you think Al’s gonna blow it? As you’ve probably realized, the ultimate recipient of much of the money spent in political campaigns is TV itself.

Next election season, go visit a TV station and sit in the lobby for an hour or two. You’ll see an amazingly constant stream of opposing campaign staffers buying time and dropping off their latest attack ads and rebuttals. As you’d imagine, the more panicky the one-upmanship gets, the calmer the station bean counters become.

It’s like watching a poker game where no matter who raises the bet, the casino gets to keep every chip.

In turn, the medium reinvests a big chunk of cash in candidates who favor proposals to make the Murdochs and Perelmans even richer. Clinton himself was financed last year in large part by Time-Warner, which, you’ll notice, was the one media company Bob Dole consistently singled out for verbal abuse.

You think Clinton and Gore are gonna turn their backs on that cash by pushing the FCC to mandate free ad time? Sure, and Chevy Chase is just in a creative lull.

Predictably, the National Association of Broadcasters doesn’t care for the idea of giving away what they can sell, and losing the influence the ad money buys. So they’re ready to start using their government-granted monopolies to synonymize private financing of TV ads, “free speech” (for those who can afford it), and the American flag until we’re all half-convinced that Paul Revere brought coaxial cable to Concord and the Boston Tea Party was hosted by ex-Playboy bunny-turned-MTV hostess Jenny McCarthy.

Free TV for candidates simply can’t fly if the medium won’t give it air.

Besides, there’s only one real long-term solution–a public campaign financing system. Getting it will require citizen activism on a civil rights scale.

Which sounds like a big deal, but it’s not asking much. We’ve no right to expect a healthy democracy until we behave as though we actually have one.

From the March 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Sonoma Radio

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Air Wars

By Greg Cahill and Gretchen Giles

THE RADIO GODS giveth and the radio gods taketh away. Faster than you can say Arbitron, Sonoma County went overnight last week from a three-country FM station market to a three-oldies FM station market. Well, actually, one oldies–KMGG (97.9-FM)–and two classic rock–KHBG (96-FM) and KGRP (100.9-FM)–stations. But we’ll leave it up to the programmers to handle the fine tuning.

What’s it all mean?

First a little history–and don’t pay too much attention to the alphabet soup; it all changes before the end of the story anyway. Last year, KRSH owner Fred Constant announced that he was starting a new venture–KRZY–to go boot-to-boot with local country radio heavyweight Q105. “We think we can create a country station that will have lots of fun and excitement and that will be uniquely different in this market,” Constant told the Independent last May.

Meanwhile, four local stations–KSRO, KXFX, and KLCQ, owned by Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting of Massachusetts; and KMGG, owned by Pacific Radio of Santa Rosa–were purchased by the Amaturo Group of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Two other new local stations–KJZY of Sebastopol and Healdsburg’s KHBG (known as the Bridge)–also hit the local airwaves.

And then country-oriented KFGY (92.9-FM)–Froggy–hopped into the market.

Three country radio stations and you still couldn’t find skewed Texas singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett on the dial.

To appreciate the latest twist, you have to note that Froggy metamorphosed from the aforementioned KLCQ, a classic rock station that pumped out a steady diet of Tom Petty, Joan Jett, and other ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s FM staples.

Thanks to an aggressive $100,000 marketing campaign that targeted a younger (25- to 44-year-old) audience and included a decorated Froggy-mobile and a Frog-zilla mascot, KFGY handily won the upstart slot in the local country radio market.

Then Constant and the owners of KHBG–which had gone on the air last January with programming that leaned toward Sting, Natalie Merchant, and other modern adult contemporary acts–did separate marketing surveys. Guess what? They both concluded that the county needed a classic rock station to fill the void vacated by KLCQ when it went country.

Say hello to the Grape–KGRP (formerly KRZY, which is broadcast from a tower atop Mount St. Helena in Napa County and housed in an old railroad car in Santa Rosa)–and a revamped KHBG, which has traded in its slick Euro-pop for Chicago’s greatest hits.

“The research showed there was a hole in the market for classic rock,” explains KHBG’s new general manager Kent Bjugstad, who jumped ship a couple of weeks ago from oldies station KMGG. “I guess [KGRP] did the same research and came to the same conclusion.”

These days the Bridge is shooting for a slightly more mature audience (30- to 45-year-olds) and plans to offer the Doobie Brothers, Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles, Elton John, Dire Straits, the Cars, and other tracks rooted in the ’70s.

Over at the Grape–simpatico in name with Wine Country Radio owner Fred Constant’s other local radio venture, the Crush–consultants found the same hole. And they’re going to fill it with, well, pretty much the same programming as at the Bridge.

“The Grape will be a hit-oriented radio station,” says Constant, who believes that the country radio market is shrinking. “We did a very sizable research project . . . and since there already were three country stations here, we decided to change.”

That’s fine by Froggy owner Lawrence Amaturo. “Sonoma County residents are listening to country,” he says. “Nationally, it’s true that country is waning [in the urban markets], but in the rural markets such as this, country is thriving. In only five months, Froggy has matched Q105 [in the ratings] and exceeded [the now defunct] KRZY by six times. We have a superb signal and we encourage people to find us.

“As with real estate, in radio there is only one key: signal, signal, signal.”

Stay tuned for updates.

From the March 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Alan Williamson

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Alan Williamson

Four-Square

By the Books: English professor Alan Williamson uses poetry to understand the practice of mindfulness.

Zen and the art of poetry

WHAT DO THE TEACHINGS of Buddha, the scholarly leanings of U.C. Davis English professor Alan Williamson, and the understanding of chronic pain experienced by physician Jon Kabat-Zinn all have in common with the work of poet T. S. Eliot?

As the Buddha himself might once have said: Shucks, a lot.

While Buddha will be there in spirit, Williamson and Kabat-Zinn–who was recently featured in the Bill Moyers PBS special Healing and the Mind–are gathering in the flesh March 22 to discuss the practice of Buddhism and Hinduism in connection to Eliot’s Four Quartets. Planning a day of meditation and discussion, the two will select passages of poetry for contemplation as well as lead conversational forays into the relevancy of Eliot’s writing to the practice of Zen.

“One reason that both John and I wanted to do this,” Williamson says thoughtfully by phone from his Berkeley home of this upcoming event, “is because in some circles there’s too much expectation that you’ll get to a grand, soulful freedom easily from Zen, and that it comes most naturally to those who are originally rather mellow and at ease with themselves. I think that that’s not often the case.

“I think that people are often driven to a spiritual practice because there is a lot inner angst and pain in their lives.”

Published in 1943, while London was shuddering under the German blitzkriegs of World War II, Four Quartets takes the musical rhythm of a concert piece and renders the inward, intellectually informed, and illuminatingly difficult work for which this writer is revered. Part of a vast body of writing that includes The Wasteland and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, as well as many volumes of criticism, Four Quartets is generally acknowledged as being one of this master poet’s masterworks.

Friends since their undergraduate days, Williamson and Kabat-Zinn roomed together while pursuing postgraduate work, sharing a love of poetry among other interests. Both eventually came to the Buddhist path for enlightenment. Discussing Eliot in terms of their spiritual experiences has been a natural meeting place.

“A lot of the experience in the Four Quartets has parallels to meditative experience,” Williamson continues. “That is, the idea that there’s a kind of stillness at the heart of all of the motion of the world, and also the idea of moments of illumination or insight that take us out of the dulled state that we’re usually in in everyday life; how we can prolong that by an attentiveness to our lives even when we’re not feeling illuminated. All of that seems very relative to what people experience as they take up a meditative experience.”

Possessing an intimate knowledge of the poet that few can boast, Williamson’s father was an Eliot scholar, and Williamson–whose scholarly essay My Father’s T. S. Eliot and Mine has won him acclaim–was introduced to the great man when he was but a lad of 7. What does he remember of this once-in-a-lifetime experience?

“I remember his knees,” Williamson chuckles of the American-born poet. “I remember being told that he was British–he was represented to me as British–and that British people had very stern standards of how children should behave. I knew that he was a very famous man, and I remember coming up and looking at his knees and extending my hand up to shake hands.”

Grey flannel knees, one presumes.

“Yes,” Williamson laughs.

Agreeing that there are many other poets to whom he and Kabat-Zinn could tie an investigation of art and mindfulness, the question arises: Why Eliot and Zen? “He converted to the Episcopal Church and was devoutly religious,” says Williamson. “But at an earlier stage in his life, when he was studying philosophy at Harvard, he had gotten very interested in Hindu and Buddhist texts. In the first of the Four Quartets, he refers to the lotus–which is the sacred flower of Hinduism and Buddhism–along with the rose, which is the sacred flower of Christianity.

“There seems to be a kind of deliberate eclecticism and a desire to speak to an audience that includes non-Christians as well as Christians.”

Alan Williamson and Jon Kabat-Zinn appear in a benefit for the California Diamond Sangha on Saturday, March 22, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Luther Burbank Center, Concert Chamber, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. Tickets are $55; bring a copy of Four Quartets and lunch. 763-9466.

From the March 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Project Censored

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Project Censored

Uncensored


George Lange

Un-ease, Soldier: Sorry, private, did we forget to mention that deadly radiation?

All the news that gave ’em fits

Edited by Greg Cahill

IT WAS A GOOD YEAR for censorship. One of the most provocative stories of 1996–the San Jose Mercury News series about possible CIA connections to the nation’s inner-city crack epidemic–received more than the usual derision from the media czars at the New York Times and the Washington Post. Those two influential dailies went out of their way to discredit journalist Gary Webb, who had reported new revelations about the alleged link between America’s national security agency, ultra-right wing Contra insurgents, and drug traffickers.

But for fans of Project Censored–the annual review of the year’s most underreported stories compiled by the Sonoma State University­based media watch group founded in 1976–the CIA/cocaine story is old news. It had been the topic of several alternative news stories selected for Project Censored’s 1989 Top 10 list.

“Most of the stories that aren’t covered represent decisions by the powerful corporations and governments in our society that potentially impact us one way or another,” says Project Censored director Peter Phillips, who took over the post this year from founder and SSU professor emeritus Carl Jensen. “These are stories that are not being fully discussed by the press that is controlled by the powerful themselves.”

This year’s list was culled from hundreds of entries by 125 SSU faculty, students, and community experts. The final lists are selected by a national advisory panel that includes, among others, author Susan Faludi; UC Berkeley professor emeritus Ben Bagdikian; Judith Krug of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association; and Frances Moore Lappé of the Center for Living Democracy.

Project Censored formally will announce this year’s 10 most censored stories of 1996 on Tuesday, March 25, at 7 p.m. at the Evert B. Person Theater on the SSU campus. Gary Webb will be the keynote speaker. Admission is $5/general, and $3/students. A reception will be held at 6:15 p.m.

Here are this year’s finalists:

1. Nukes in Space

The world press had fun with the Chicken Little scenario last year when a Russian space probe packing 200 grams of plutonium-238 broke up in the atmosphere and crashed into the South Pacific. But the news media paid very little attention to NASA’s plan to launch the Cassini probe this year loaded with 72 pounds of the same deadly radioactive substance.

But Saturn-bound Cassini won’t be America’s first use of plutonium-238. At least two other missions–which have received a lot of coverage for their groundbreaking scientific impact, but not for their payload–also carried the isotope to power their batteries in the frigid regions of space. The Galileo probe was launched in 1989 with 49.25 pounds of plutonium on board, and the Ulysses space probe, launched in 1990, carried 25.6 pounds.

Cassini doesn’t have enough propulsion to get it to the gaseous giant, so NASA will slingshot the craft around Venus and buzz Earth at a speed of 42,300 miles an hour and an altitude of just 312 miles (some three times the speed of and at about the same altitude as a space shuttle orbit), using the gravitational pull of our planet to boost Cassini’s speed for its long flight through the solar system.

The problem? If Cassini comes too close to Earth during its fly-by, it could burn up in the atmosphere and rain deadly radiation across the planet. According to the NASA environmental impact statement for the mission, “Approximately 5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time of the swingby could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure” if there is an inadvertent re-entry of the probe.

Here’s the catch. The plutonium is not a necessity for the mission, according to science writer Karl Grossman. The plutonium will generate a mere 745 watts of electricity to run scientific instruments, a task that could be accomplished with solar energy technology expected to be available within five years.

Sources: Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1996; Progressive Media Project, May 1996.

2. Shell’s Oil, Africa’s Blood

In the wake of Nigeria’s execution of nine environmental activists involved in protests against the Royal Dutch/Shell Group in southern Nigeria’s Ogoniland, including Nobel Prize winner Ken Saro-Wiwa, evidence has mounted that the Shell Oil Co. not only failed to use its influence to prevent the unjustified executions, but also contributed to unfair trials for the activists.

The protests began in October 1990 when Nigerian villagers occupied part of a Shell facility, demanding compensation for farmlands that had been destroyed by Shell. Military forces summoned by Shell’s division manager fired on the crowd, killing nearly 80 people and destroying or severely damaging 495 homes. A Nigerian court later called the protests peaceful. Shortly afterward, Saro-Wiwa formed a movement to continue protests against Shell. Still, Saro-Wiwa and the others later were charged with fomenting civil unrest.

According to opposition activists, Shell’s managing director offered to stop the executions only if Saro-Wiwa would cut a deal and call off the protests. He refused and Shell did not intervene. Meanwhile, the Village Voice reported that two key prosecution witnesses were offered bribes by Shell officials to give unjustly incriminating statements against Saro-Wiwa and that the oil giant has been bankrolling the Nigerian military’s efforts to quash the protests.

In response, Shell has launched an international publicity campaign to combat the negative reports.

Nigeria’s government, under the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha, gets 90 percent of its foreign revenue from oil exports. The United States, home to the Houston-based Royal Dutch/Shell Oil Co., imports about half of Nigeria’s oil.

Sources: San Francisco Bay Guardian, Feb. 2, 1996; Texas Observer, Jan. 12, 1996; Editor & Publisher, March 23, 1996; World Watch, May/June 1996; Bank Check, Feb. 1996.

3. Minimum Wage Scam

Big perks for the wealthy were hidden in legislation that boosted the federal minimum wage last year from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour. In fact, the Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996 harbored at least 10 significant provisions that helped neither the owners of small business nor their employees.

The new bill helps the rich by eliminating a surtax on yachts, luxury vehicles, and one-year pension withdrawals over $150,000. It also reinstates tax incentives that encourage leveraged buyouts axed by Congress in its 1986 tax reform legislation and retroactively allows companies to claim tax deductions for exorbitant fees paid to investment banks and advisers. It also weakens retirement and pension protection by eliminating the requirement that companies must offer the same benefits to lower-wage employees as to higher-wage employees.

Source: The New Republic, Oct. 28, 1996.

4. Secret War on Activists

American corporations are spending millions on public relations firms and false non-profit organizations that target activists and legislation considered bad for big business. Most of these bogus organizations focus on labor, environmental, and consumer issues.

Through the PR industry, these companies mobilize privates eyes, lawyers, and undercover spies; influence editorial and news decisions; launch phony “grassroots” campaigns; and use hi-tech information systems to manipulate public opinion and policy.

For example, the Health Insurance Association of America not only supported but created the Coalition for Health Insurance Choices to defeat the Clinton administration’s attempt at health-care reform. In the environmental arena, “greenwashing” corporations are using “Astroturf lobbying” to create synthetic grassroots movements.

These anti-public interest campaigns generate the false impression of public support. As a result, dissenting voices are muffled, scientifically proven unhealthy chemicals and practices are legalized, and public opinion is profoundly influenced.

Sources: Covert Action Quarterly, Winter 1995/96; Earth Island Journal, Winter 1995/96.

5. Corporate Crime Whitewash

White-collar crime costs America 10 to 50 times more than street crime, yet the federal Department of Justice takes little interest in the problem. Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers continue to complain that corporations are burdened by heavy-handed regulations and are calling on Congress to scale back environmental, health, and safety laws.

Based on DOJ records, the federal government almost never brings criminal charges against big businesses. Of the more than 51,000 federal criminal indictments filed in 1994, only 250–less than one-half of 1 percent–involved criminal violations of the nation’s environmental, occupational health and safety, and consumer product-safety laws.

In 1987 alone, 50,000 to 70,000 workers died prematurely from on-the-job exposure to toxins, roughly triple the number murdered the same year.

Source: Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1996.

6. Big Banks, Big Risks

In 1995, record bank mergers–that saw Chase Manhattan and Chemical Bank join to create the nation’s largest bank with $300 billion in assets, and First Interstate and Wells Fargo create a giant $100 billion bank–led to the huge consolidation of the America’s banking resources.

The reason: The Federal Reserve has failed to apply a requirement to test how well the public is being served by the mergers. The result: 71.5 percent of U.S. banking assets are controlled by the 100 largest banking institutions. The implication: a banking system in which big banks are acquiring “too big to fail” status. The federal reserve requires that banks cover just 1.25 percent of insured deposits. Consequently, the bailout of a megabank would come straight from taxpayers’ pockets.

Worse yet, the trend toward megabanks is closing out community access and making it harder to get loans.

Source: Multinational Monitor, June 1996.

7. Cashing in on Poverty

Corporate America is reaping the rewards of a poverty business that preys on the destitute. An estimated 60 million poor people in the United States, without bank accounts or access to competitive-rate loans, must rely on pawn shops, check-cashing outlets, rent-to-own stores, finance companies, and high-interest mortgage lenders.

Those businesses generate $200 billion to $300 billion in annual revenues and are increasingly owned or subsidized by such Wall Street giants as American Express, Bank America, Citibank, Ford Motors, and Western Union.

The enterprise is so lucrative that in 1993, Ford Motors derived three-fifths of its earnings from car loans, mortgages, and consumer loans–outstripping its car sales division. In fact, non-bank finance companies like Ford make small loans at rates as high as 300 percent in some states.

Source: The Nation, May 20, 1996; Houston Chronicle, July 15, 1996.

8. Big Bro’ Goes Hi-Tech

New technologies are placing large segments of the population under surveillance in a trend that is making social satirist George Orwell’s predictions a reality in the so-called free world.

In Britain, nearly 150,000 closed-circuit TV cameras are monitoring the population with powerful zoom lenses that can read a cigarette pack label from 100 yards.

Another type of camera under development can penetrate clothing to search for concealed weapons without the knowledge of the target. The manufacturer of that device reports that he has been flooded with calls from interested law enforcement agencies, though the device has raised new questions about its violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

Meanwhile, new biometric technologies, already being tested by U.S. Immigration authorities, can measure such personal characteristics as fingerprints, retinal patterns, and the geometry of the hand.

Sources: Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1996; Insight, Aug. 19, 1996.


George Lange

No Tanks: The U.S. Army used depeleted uranium shells in the Gulf War. Just one catch: Nobody bothered to tell the tank crews about the danger.

9. Gulf War Glow

During the Gulf War, the U.S. Army deployed depleted uranium weapons, used to penetrate tanks and other armored vehicles, for the first time on the battlefield without warning troops about possible dangers of contamination.

While the Pentagon, Congress, and veterans’ groups debate whether chemical and biological weapons contributed to so-called Gulf War syndrome, the atomic connection went largely unreported.

A memo warning that tank crews should regard targets hit by the hardened DU penetrator rounds as contaminated wasn’t issued until eight days after the end of the 1991 air and ground conflict. Unaware of the danger, the 144th Army National Guard Service and Supply Company performed DU cleanup for three weeks in Kuwait and southern Iraq, where the U.S. Army fired at least 14,000 rounds of DU ammunition.

According to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records, steady transfers of DU shells have been flowing to Britain, France, and Canada during the past decade.

Sources: Multinational Monitor, January and February 1996; Swords to Plowshares, Nov. 7, 1995; The VVA Veteran, March 1996; National Catholic Reporter, Jan. 1, 1996.

10. Facing Global Hunger

The world’s stock of rice, wheat, corn, and other grains has fallen to its lowest level in two decades, leading to projections that world grain prices will double by 2010.

This slide from surplus to scarcity parallels the increasing diversion of water from crop irrigation to use in crowded cities. Thus, as the world population grows and there are more hungry mouths to feed, there also is less land and water available for cultivation of food supplies.

In developing countries, the food shortage will become even more acute because the November 1996 World Food Summit–convened for the first time in 22 years by the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization–decided that poor countries will be responsible for feeding their own people without the aid of wealthier nations.

However, the World Bank and FAO’s predictions of continuing surpluses contradict those of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture and other observers, leading to difficulty in mobilizing support for investment in agriculture or family planning that could stabilize population growth.

Source: World Watch, November/December 1995.

From the March 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Talking Pictures

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Feeling Lost

By David Templeton

Writer David Templeton takes interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate post-film conversation. This time out, he escorts author Naomi Eppell to see David Lynch’s unfathomable new creep show, Lost Highway.

Just ahead of us, a young man is chatting with the ticket taker–apparently steeling his courage before heading in to the theater to see Lost Highway–the latest cinematic oddity from director David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks).

“So,” he asks brightly, “is it really as weird as I’ve heard?”

The ticket taker shrugs. “Abandon all reason,” he ominously suggests. “Try think of it as a dream. It kinda makes sense that way.”

Two hours later, as the film concludes, we know exactly what he means, though in the professional opinion of my guest–author and dream expert Naomi Eppell–the word nightmare might be more accurate.

Eppell is the author of the captivating book Writers Dreaming (Random House, 1994), an exploration of the connection between the dreams and the literary work of writers such as William Styron, Anne Rice, Stephen King, and Isabelle Allende.

“OK. You tell me the story of the movie, as if it were a dream you had. First person. Go on,” Eppell says as she and I are seated at a small outdoor cafe. After 30 minutes of intense discussion over coffee and biscotti, we have yet to make any logical sense out of the adulterous mayhem of Lost Highway. Now–having exhausted all traditional means of conversational exploration–we will attempt to interpret the film as if it were a dream. I take a deep breath.

“I dreamed I was a saxophone player,” I say slowly. “I was played by Bill Pullman. Everything was wrong and off kilter. My wife was Patricia Arquette, and her lipstick was always smeared.”

“Tell it in the present tense,” Eppell suggests. “That’s the best way to remember a dream.”

“I am now talking with the Devil at a party,” I continue. “He has no eyebrows. I go home and find another video. This one has me covered in my wife’s blood. She’s lying in pieces beside me. Suddenly I’m in prison with a terrible headache. I wake up, and I’ve turned into Balthazar Getty.” The details of the movie are beginning to grow fuzzy in my mind. I remember something about a pornography ring and a cabin burning in reverse.

“We’re both already forgetting it,” Eppell laughs. “It is like a dream. A very paranoid dream, probably about suspicion and not trusting your own instincts.”

She nibbles her biscotto, then says, “I think the reason that it works as a dream but not as a movie is that those symbols are personal to David Lynch and [screenwriter] Barry Gifford. They haven’t taken the step of translating it into something that we, as viewers, really care about. Its got a lot of provocative imagery, but those symbols are their symbols. They don’t add any coherence–which is what art is supposed to do.²

“So, as a dream,” I ask, stirring my coffee, “would you think the dreamer was working through normal anxieties or is he a dangerous psychotic?”

“Well, we’re all psychotic,” she laughs, “when we dream, anyway.”

“Pardon me? We’re all psychotic in our dreams?”

“Sure. What makes someone psychotic is that their filters are off, right? They are not able to filter information, to make sense of it, to sort it out. I think that that’s true in dreams, where information and images are coming in raw. You’re not filtering things with logic. You’re just throwing things out in symbolic form, without the filters. That’s how the unconscious works, and I think that’s how this movie is structured.

“For example,” Eppell continues, “I had a dream the other night that had something to do with fruit. Preserved fruits and ripened fruits. And then I was at a party looking for a dentist to check my teeth. I think it all had to do with transition out of the marriageable stage as a woman. It was an exploration of that theme. I mean–there were cherries and tomatoes, and bananas, right? And it made no logical sense. But it was a useful dream. An interesting dream. As a movie, it would be awful.”

“Imagine what Lynch might do with those symbols,” I tease.

“But he wouldn’t,” she counters. “Cherries and bananas and dentists are my symbols. Burning cabins and dismembered women and the Devil with a camcorder–those are his symbols. As far as the dream-movie he’s made, I can’t guess if it was cathartic for him or not. But it does explore ideas in a very filters-off way, which is interesting, if not very enjoyable.”

We’ve now spent the better part of 90 minutes on Lost Highway. I personally am exhausted and can’t help but wonder if conversations like this weren’t precisely what Lynch and Gifford hoped to inspire.

“I’m sure that David Lynch finds a lot of beauty in the movie,” Eppell adds. “Then again, I think Lynch’s idea of beauty is probably different from that of the rest of us, don’t you think?”

Web exclusive to the March 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

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