Giant Gourds

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Thinkin’ Big

By Dylan Bennett

TO BE HAPPY with himself, Kenwood butcher Tom Geney needs to gain at least another 50 pounds this summer. He’ll need lots of food, drink, and careful attention to lying around. Topping the scales at only 147 pounds last year, Geney hopes to break the 200-pound mark this fall. Even then, he’ll only be a little guy in the art of growing giant pumpkins, the largest vegetables on earth.

“I should get serious,” says Geney, 56, who carefully tills his pumpkin beds with compost and turkey manure, and plies his plants with copious plant food, water, and steer manure “tea.”

Serious indeed are a couple dozen giant pumpkin fanatics in Sonoma County, who pursue the Big One with unsettling obsession and compete for high honors at the Harvest Fair. To be the giant pumpkin king, a gardener must now get well past 500 pounds. But that’s nothing. Last year, someone in New York State grew a record-breaking 1,060-pound pumpkin.

“That’s the biggest vegetable grown on the face of earth at anytime in history. That’s incredible,” gushes Ulysses van der Kamp, who grows the great orbs on Sonoma Mountain. His biggest gourd last year was about 300 pounds, says van der Kamp, who won first place for most unusual pumpkin–it was square because he grew it in a box.

“It’s an addiction,” states van der Kamp flatly. “It’s unbelievable. Some pumpkins on the East Coast grow over 20 pounds a day. You can literally almost watch them grow. I’d like to get over 500 this year, but then so would everybody.”

If Geney needs to get serious, then van der Kamp is already there. He recently spent $800 on Mango Mulch at Grab-N-Grow, the garden soil company on Llano Road near Sebastopol. And he’s open to help from higher powers. “We live right next to the Zen Center, so we get all the positive vibes coming over. I’ve thought about having the roshi come up and bless my pumpkins.

“Everybody thinks I’m nuts.”

In early May, pumpkin growers plant seeds of the Pacific Giant or Great Atlantic variety. Then they commit themselves to a long summer of watering, feeding, weeding, pruning, and pest and rodent control. The main vines are buried, forcing them to lay extensive roots. The prize winners are selected for success as mere blossoms by virtue of their stamen count and proximity to the main root. Each vine is allowed to grow three or four gourds to about the size of a baseball before all but the fastest-growing are culled.

Then the lead squash is tapped for glory.

“The bottom line is you need to start with good seed, and the pumpkin can’t do without for a day of its life. You can’t let it starve for a moment. Whatever goes wrong takes away from the pumpkin,” says van der Kamp, now in his fourth pumpkin-growing season. At 30, van der Kamp is the baby of the giant-pumpkin-growing community.

Speaking of great pumpkin patches, appropriately it was van der Kamp’s job as a chef at Charles Schulze’s Redwood Empire Ice Arena that led him to his pumpkin-growing mentor Ian Allison. Van der Kamp, charged with finding a giant pumpkin for the ice arena’s Halloween-themed Great Pumpkin Patch, contacted Allison, who has a full-blown case of pumpkin fever.

Allison, 72, a retired Santa Rosa business executive, is a 10-time Sonoma County Harvest Fair winner for biggest pumpkin entry during the 1980s. He has a simple explanation for the excitement around these big, sluggish veggies: “It’s competitive,” he explains. “Like horseracing, it gets in your blood.” But for Allison, it’s deeper than that. He’s the president of a non-profit outfit called Seed Corps that promotes gardening to children, and pumpkins are a big part of that effort.

TV star Eddie Albert of Green Acres fame is Allison’s partner in this garden plot.

“The easiest thing to grow is a pumpkin,” says Allison at his lush experimental gardens on Mount Taylor, overlooking Bennett Valley.

“If a kid grows a pumpkin, pretty soon he’s going to be growing a garden. And if he’s growing a garden, he’s growing good healthy food. And if you teach a man to grow food, then you teach him to eat for the rest of his life. That’s our bible on this thing.”

But even pumpkins have their predators. Allison says his crop last year was destroyed by “bacterium wilt,” a disease carried by the 12-spotted cucumber beetle. During the winter he grew a thick cover crop to purify the soil. And last year someone stole van der Kamp’s biggest pumpkin before he could weigh it. “It must have taken two or three guys,” he calculates. Most big pumpkins, however, are destined for happy endings. A youngster correctly guessed the weight of Geney’s big pumpkin last year at the supermarket where Geney works and triumphantly carted the great sphere home to carve a heavy-duty jack o’ lantern.

Allison says many of the fat fruit are donated to schools and hospitals.

Clearly, the popularity of growing giant pumpkins flourishes on the connection between the plant world and the human impulse toward rejuvenation, reincarnation, and reproduction. Geney started his first pumpkin to celebrate the birth of his granddaughter and to start a tradition of big pumpkins for the child each Halloween. Allison is on no small crusade to connect people to the earth in an age that grows ever more synthetic.

“It’s the closest a guy can come to having a baby,” says van der Kamp, comparing nine months of pumpkin care to nine months of labor. “You don’t just plant seeds and walk away.”

From the February 27-March 5, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

Mystery Meat

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No-Brainer

By Steve Bjerklie

NINETY-ONE years ago, journalist Upton Sinclair caused a sensation when he reported, in his muckraking novel The Jungle, that meatpackers in Chicago routinely added rats, dung, nails, borax, tubercular spittle, and human fingers to meat products. Now the government admits that other items not generally considered meat–namely, spinal cord and bone marrow–have been part of the meat supply for years. A field inspector described the meat product processed by advanced meat recovery (AMR) machinery as “blood, bone marrow, and muscle gumbo.”

But new research indicates that bits of brain might also be ground up in meat that’s used as pet food. You think mad cows might be a problem? Try mad cats. That’s at least one documented result of serving brains infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy–BSE, or “mad cow disease”–to kitty in the form of cooked cat food. Mad cats, in fact, have been a problem in the United Kingdom for several years.

The government’s reaction to its own data? “We do not have any public health concerns,” stated Thomas Billy, administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, at a press briefing last week, even though consumption of nerve tissue such as spinal cord and brain is thought to be the primary way human beings contract an always fatal variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from BSE-infected cattle.

A year ago, the British government finally admitted what it had heretofore denied: 10 human deaths so far in Great Britain are attributable to nerve tissue consumption. The ensuing furor almost destroyed the British beef industry. Billy was quick to point out that no mad cows have ever been found in the United States, and the importation of cattle from Great Britain was banned in 1989, but recently the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, following Britain’s lead and hoping to negate the chief way BSE spreads in livestock, proposed a ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feeds.

One consumer spokesperson suggested that the government, which seemed to miss The Jungle‘s primary aim of eliminating horrid working conditions in meat plants, is quite concerned if one cow eats the nerve tissue of another, but now shows only a mild worry if that same nerve tissue winds up on the dinner plates or in the baby food of human beings.

A study conducted by the FSIS found that 58 percent of samples of deboned beef contained marrow and spinal cord, a violation of federal inspection regulations. All of the samples had been deboned on AMR equipment, which forces recoverable meat off of bones by high pressure. The technology has been used widely over the past five years, though last year England and France both banned AMR systems owing to similar findings of marrow and spinal cord.

Billy said at the briefing that he does not know how many U.S. plants use the technology; estimates ranges as high as 75 percent of high-volume beef slaughterhouses processing carcass bones through AMR systems. The resulting deboned meat–or “gumbo,” if you will–is used as an ingredient in sausages, baby food, and some fast-food hamburgers (at least two fast-food chains, McDonald’s and Burger King, specify they will not accept AMR meat).

Despite Billy’s lack of public-health concerns, his agency will quickly institute new visual-inspection procedures to limit marrow and spinal cord from entering the food supply, but will stop short of banning the automatic deboning of neck bones and vertebrae, the sources of spinal cord.

Meanwhile, Dr. Nathan Bauer and his colleagues at Texas A&M University published an abstract last September in The Journal of Veterinary Pathology reporting the bad news on brains: namely, that in a random testing of some 220 lungs of slaughtered cows, seven contained “macroscopically visible pieces of brain tissue,” grey matter that might carry BSE. In other words, brain bits can lead to mad cats. And maybe mad humans, too.

The cattle’s brains get into their lungs from the method by which all cattle are slaughtered in all U.S. beef packing plants: Each animal is “stunned” by means of a bolt of air shot into the brain; moments later the throat of the comatose cow, bull, or steer is slit and the animal dies by loss of blood (which the Humane Slaughter Act deems the safest, most humane, and microbiologically cleanest way to kill a large animal).

Dr. Bauer’s research shows that in the few seconds between stunning and bleeding, pieces of the brain, which is often splattered inside the skull by the “stun gun,” can enter the bloodstream and work their way into the organs. While the problem may be localized to pet food–cattle lungs are not considered by the USDA to be fit for human consumption (though they are eaten in other parts of the world, including Europe)–mad cats and dogs in the house are no picnic.

And though there is yet no proof of it, Bauer’s research suggests that close human contact with mad pets might also prove to be a vector for transfer of spongiform diseases.

All of this leaves consumer organizations wary and angry. They’ve complained about mechanically deboned meat and AMR-processed products for years, claiming that bone particles and marrow are present in deboned meat without any label notification to consumers. But the discovery of bits of spinal cord in AMR meat and pieces of brain in organ meat destined for pet food brings up the very real, very deadly specter of BSE.

“At a minimum, this is a truth-in-labeling issue,” comments Robert Hahn, director of legal affairs for Public Voice for Food & Health Policy, a major consumer-lobbying group. “Consumers do not want to unwittingly eat bone marrow and spinal cord in their ground beef. And with regard to spinal tissue, we believe there is also a potential health issue.” He adds, “As far as we know, BSE does not exist in U.S. cattle. Still, because there are no guarantees, we believe the only prudent course is to exclude cow brain and spinal cord from the food supply.”

Prudent.

Definitely a no-brainer.

From the February 27-March 5, 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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Talking Pictures

Star Struck


Feeling the Force: Darth Vader meets Carlos Altamirano, 11, Mario Altamirano, 9, and Brenda Ochoa, 10.

Photo by Janet Orsi



3 kids get first taste of the big screen

By David Templeton

Writer David Templeton takes interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate post-film conversation. In this–his 100th such movie-house colloquy–he takes a trio of young first-time theatergoers to see the remastered edition of Star Wars.

LIKE MOST other American kids, Mario Altamirano, Brenda Ochoa, and Carlos Altamirano, (ages 9, 10, and 11, respectively) have watched plenty of television. They have seen countless videos, can name all the films of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and know the plots of classic Disney cartoons.

Asked if they like movies, each one exclaims, “I love movies!”

But until today, at this matinee screening of the newly re-released (compliments of Healdsburg’s Raven Theater), neither Brenda nor Carlos nor Mario has ever experienced a movie in a real movie theater.

Born in Mexico, each of my guests this afternoon immigrated to the United States when they were much younger, and have grown up speaking both English and Spanish. Their lack of movie-house experience is due mainly to the economic priorities of their parents.

“Can we sit in the front row?” Carlos asks, after we’ve been ceremoniously welcomed and ushered in by the theater’s manager. The front row it is.

Clutching popcorn and sodas, Brenda giggles in anticipation of Star Wars (arguably the ultimate big-screen film) while Carlos tries to locate the projector room and Mario theorizes about which way the velvet curtains will open and what color the screen will be.

The curtains part from the middle, the screen is a shimmering silver, and the show begins.

“I stopped breathing,” Brenda whispers as the end credits roll to the thunderous John Williams score. “I kept forgetting it was a movie. It was so big I thought it was happening to me!”

“Is it always so loud?” Carlos asks. “If the TV at home was that loud, I think the furniture would be jumping all over the place.”

On the drive to a nearby restaurant for lunch, the car is full of high-decibel, well-imitated sounds of lasers, droids, wookies, and Darth Vader’s ominous breathing noise.

“I like Darth,” Carlos says a few moments later, as we all take a seat at the table, “because he can get into people’s minds from far away. He was like the dark side of Superman.”

“I liked when they blew up the Death Star,” Mario chimes in.

“Whenever something blew up it made my stomach feel funny.” Brenda adds. “It kind of tickled.”

“Was this movie on TV a few weeks ago?” Carlos asks. Yes, I reply, I think that it was.

“I can’t believe this,” he groans. “I was going through the channels and I saw the part where Darth and Obi Wan were fighting. But I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was Star Trek or something. I thought it looked boring, so I turned it off.” He slaps his forehead, as everyone else grimaces in sympathy.

When Brenda remarks that she liked Princess Leia, Carlos says, “She was cool. Her hair looked like horns.”

“Buffalo horns,” Mario nods. “Or breakfast rolls.”

“She was pretty,” Brenda continues. “And she had talent.”

“It surprised me that she was wearing lipstick,” Mario grins. “I didn’t know they had that in space!”

Having learned that Carlos likes Darth and Brenda likes Leia, I ask Mario to name his favorite character.

“Probably Luke, because he trusted people,” he says. “But I liked C3PO because he would translate for the other robots.”

“That robot can speak 1,000 languages,” adds Carlos, noticeably impressed. “I don’t think there even are a thousand languages. Not on Earth.”

“Spanish, English, French,” Mario lists out loud, counting them off on his fingers.

“Indian, German, Japanese, Chinese,” continues Brenda.

“And all the American Indian languages,” Carlos says. “That robot probably knows all of them.”

He suddenly laughs, holding his stomach, and says, “When the movie was over, I felt really dizzy. Does that happen all the time?”

I suggest that perhaps his dizziness came from sitting so close to the screen.

“Really?” Brenda asks. “Then I want to sit in the front row every time!”

Join David Templeton and West Coast Live host Sedge Thomson, San Francisco monologuist Josh Kornbluth, men’s mythmaker Sam Keen, and dream-y author Naomi Eppel for “Talking Pictures Live,” a benefit screening of Orson Welles’ 1941 classic, Citizen Kane. The event marks Templeton’s 100th Talking Pictures column. You are invited to a pre-screening reception, the film, and a post-film chat. Friday, Feb. 21, at 6:30 p.m. Sebastiani Theater, on the Plaza, Sonoma. Tickets are $8. 996-9576.

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

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

Amadeus

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Mostly Mozart

By Gretchen Giles

THE GREEKS examined the human being in relationship to the gods, and the Elizabethans examined man’s relationship to God. [Playwright] Peter Shaffer is examining man’s relationship to a much-diminished God. On some level, this puts the power of man to create on the same level as God’s ability to create, and this is the central challenge that comes across.”

Finishing his thought, Paul Draper leans back in an upholstered seat in the empty Evert Person Theatre at Sonoma State University and smiles. A freelance director who donates his time to San Francisco’s Magic Theater as reader of original scripts, Draper is obviously pleased to meet the challenges raised by the mighty psychological drama Amadeus, opening Feb. 28 at SSU.

Set amid the ending shambles of composer Antonio Salieri’s life, Amadeus–made into an Academy Award­winning film in 1984 by director Milos Forman–is far more about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s rival than it is about the envied genius himself. A court composer of much renown, Salieri lived with the anguished knowledge that while he could hear and appreciate the full mastery of accomplished composition, he himself could never achieve it. Does this torment lead him to fill Mozart’s cup with a venom powerful enough to kill the man in his prime? Ah, there’s the rub. In fact, there’s the play.

“This is a modern play,” stresses Draper of this intensely 20th-century work, which marries notions of the divine from our era with passions of 200 years ago. Noting that Shaffer is a Mozart aficionado who owns thousands of Wolfie’s recordings, Draper–a deeply intelligent and quiet man in sweater and loafers–nonetheless devoted hours of library time delving into the 18th century and into the particular intricacies of Mozart’s and Salieri’s lives.

“I found out in my research that there are a number of anecdotal pieces of evidence about Salieri and the question of whether he did murder Mozart,” says Draper. “There was a piece published in the Vienna newspaper just days after Mozart died suggesting that he had been poisoned, suggesting that another rival composer had been hired by the Freemasons to kill Mozart because he wrote The Magic Flute and brought the Freemasons into it.”

Laughing over the enduring nature of conspiracy theories, he continues. “But in a kind of interesting twist, there is the suggestion that when Salieri was on his deathbed, he said to people, ‘I had nothing to do with the murder, I did not kill Mozart.’ But then he attempted suicide, so you’re left with this notion of, well, like O.J. Simpson: ‘If I didn’t kill my wife, why am I driving two miles an hour, eluding the police, down the freeway?'”

Of the 30 performers onstage, only one is a professional actor. Tahmus Rounds, an SSU graduate, plays Salieri. Fearing that all his rehearsal time would be spent with the actor portraying this complex character, Draper decided on a professional in order not to leave the other actors neglected.

“Working with student actors is enormously exciting,” he says, as members of a stage management class bustle into the auditorium, instantly changing the air in the room from that of quiet reflection to a charged atmosphere of whoops and yells and compliments on Draper’s new haircut. “You go out into the professional world and it’s easy to forget that there’s a reason why you do theater.

“The reason I do theater is because I want to tell a story and deal with great literature and to communicate with an audience ideas that are important,” he says, leaning forward. “You get out into the commercial world, you can forget that those are the reasons why you are doing it; and working with the students, you can just see this fire in their eyes.”

Amadeus runs Friday-Sunday, Feb. 28 through March 9, at 8 p.m. with matinees each Sunday at 2 p.m. Evert Person Theatre, Sonoma State University, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. Tickets are $6-$15. 664-2353.

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

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

The Scoop

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Dark Star

By Bob Harris

I JUST SAW Star Wars again. It’s big fun. But don’t take the kids just yet. You know by now that George Lucas’ stock for this stew was Joseph Campbell purée, which laser-blasted into the collective unconscious by drawing on cultural archetypes and recycling every old story we’ve ever loved.

However, Lucas also played (accidentally, let’s presume) on some old prejudices that surely resonate at least as intensely.

For starters, the Rebellion is whiter than the Texaco letterhead. Sure, there’s a token malt-liquor-ad black, played by (who else?) Billy Dee Williams, but not until the sequel. Apparently, in a universe where arms, legs, and antennae sprout interchangeably, human skin doesn’t even tan–not even on a desert planet with two blazing suns.

Chewbacca, however, is a perfect sidekick. Ignore the hair and here’s a stereotypical “good” black–frighteningly large and strong, prone to violence, and not too bright; but loyal, subordinate, and happy to do the heavy lifting.

When blond-haired, blue-eyed Luke gets the idea to rescue Leia by pretending to escort a prisoner, it’s only natural that the cuffs belong on the big guy.

Notably, none of the various latex-headed mutants display any redeeming qualities, jabbering strangely and toiling in unimportant poverty. Great–Lucas even stereotypes the Third World.

And what’s the deal with C3PO’s sexuality? OK, laugh. But think about it. Even though it–it–is a genderless robot, “he’s” treated by everyone as male, albeit sexless. Why does that resonate? Simple. We’ve seen this character before.

What’s the stereotype of gay men? Let’s see: effete, low in self-esteem, afraid of a physical fight, duplicitous out of self-interest, obsessive over their companions, and conscious of appearances. C3PO exactly. Try not to laugh when the droids fool the Storm Troopers by hiding in a closet.

It’s a man’s world. Other than Luke’s aunt–who cooks for the menfolk twice before getting incinerated–we’ve got exactly one female here. Per stereotype, Leia (cute pun, guys) contributes nil beyond pleading for help (via the droids) and throwing a hissy fit and leading everybody into a garbage bin.

She’s really just a prize for the Phallic Ones.

In the climactic Death Star assault, when the Rebellion needs every pilot they can find, the only job for a girl is to sit home and hope one of the P.O.s will save them all. C3PO stays behind, too; we already know why he can’t be a pilot.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Darth literally cockfight over who’s the master, slapping long hard cylinders held with both hands. Puh-leeze.

What the hell does Han Solo smuggle? Since mobsters like Jabba would gladly kill over his stash, it sure ain’t tamales. Drugs? Guns? Naked Ewok pictures? No one cares–as long as Han serves the Rebellion.

Excuse me, but that’s precisely the rationale the CIA has used with drug smugglers in Nicaragua, Laos, Afghanistan, and everywhere else. Nice ethics to teach your kids.

Han–a career criminal–kills Greedo unnecessarily, although the 2.0 version has been altered so that the bounty hunter fires first. And Han chickens out of the final dogfight, showing up only to sucker-punch one peon bad guy after everyone with any real cajones has already exploded in a fiery ball of Industrial Light and Magic. This is a hero?

Ultimately, what kind of “democracy” is the Rebellion fighting for? Cursory mentions of a republic are made, but we’ve also got Princesses, Lords, and Jedi Knights. OK, so a constitutional monarchy? Not if we can trust our own eyes: The Princess considers herself entitled to command Luke and Han, simply by birthright; Obi-Wan’s occult powers allow him to gleefully command “weak minds” against their own will–a manifestly fascist goal; the rebel alliance salutes Luke and Han with a faceless, boot-clicking military phalanx every bit as robotic as the Empire; etc.

Lucas’ vision is unrelentingly royalist. Carrie Fisher even tries a dinner-theater British accent in quieter scenes, dropping it when the action picks up.

More tellingly, Luke’s destiny is to become a Jedi, just like his father. So greatness is genetic–a truly dangerous idea. I seem to recall a few million people dying the last time folks bought that one.

Bottom line? Aside from constant sexual and race stereotypes, political amorality, and authoritarian faith in the divine right of kings, Star Wars is just terrific.

The Scoop is archived at www.goodthink.com

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

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

SRJC President

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Dirty Linen


on SRJC president

By Bruce Robinson

BOB AGRELLA’S dirty laundry is going to be quite well aired in this county by the time this whole process is over with,” Santa Rosa attorney Jim Bertoli declares. Last week, Bertoli filed a $2 million lawsuit against Santa Rosa Junior College and Agrella, its president. That suit charges that last year Agrella and the SRJC board of trustees illegally fired Sylvia Wasson, a foreign-languages instructor, who is accused of writing a series of unsigned letters that sharply criticize Agrella and his administration.

Wasson, a 22-year employee at the junior college, was abruptly dismissed Jan. 14, with a terse sendoff that asserted the six anonymous documents contained statements about Agrella “that are false and defamatory and which had the purpose or effect of undermining his leadership . . . and brought discredit to the College District.”

The letters, which began appearing in August 1995, accuse Agrella of abusing the rights of district employees, precipitating an unprecedented number of lawsuits and costly settlements, restricting free speech on campus, and imposing a climate of fear and intimidation. Several also make reference to the president’s alleged extramarital affair with a staff member, allege racism in his dealings with specific college employees, and charge that Agrella is hypersensitive to criticism and aggressive in his efforts to suppress it.

“The charges that I am the author of six anonymous mailings critical of Robert Agrella are false and slanderous,” Wasson indignantly told the SRJC board of trustees Feb. 4. “All letters I have ever written to this administration I proudly signed.”

Wasson’s detailed statement was a public rebuttal to an accusatory process that had, until that point, been very private. SRJC legal counsel Bob Henry says the investigation into the origins of the “hit pieces” began April 1 after the fourth letter appeared.

“By June 1996, a certified document examiner, who had reviewed all the letters received as of that date, determined that the author could be identified, and was, in fact, an employee of the district,” Henry wrote in a statement that was released at the Feb. 4 college board meeting. The examiner, Patricia Fisher of Oakland, also apparently linked Wasson to the letters through an analysis of the handwriting on some of their envelopes.

Bertoli contends the surreptitious investigation itself violated Wasson’s constitutional and contractual rights of due process. “They failed to give her a hearing of any kind,” he protests. Before a disciplinary action is taken, the district “must give notice of proposed charges, and documentation, and a right to respond. They didn’t do any of that.”

Henry says the district tried to “pursue this matter in the strictest confidence to protect the employee’s rights and privacy.” But in this and other recent employment disputes at SRJC, aggrieved workers charge that the district is twisting confidentiality to the employees’ disadvantage.

“The principle of confidentiality relating to personnel matters, intended to protect an employee, has the contrary effect if administrative power is abused and due process is not observed,” wrote Carol Montoya, an SRJC Spanish instructor, in a statement of support for her colleague. “Confidentiality then serves to conceal abuse and violation.”

THIS IS THE SECOND time Wasson has been involved in a dispute with Agrella. As an administrator at SRJC’s Petaluma Center, Wasson went to the president–on the advice of the campus police–in the fall of 1993 with complaints about her boss, Associate Dean Henry Bell. Wasson told Agrella she was unhappy about having to cover for Bell, who, according to her lawsuit, “would be absent without leave for days participating in bridge tournaments on school time.”

The administration responded by asking Wasson to file sexual harassment charges against Bell, which she refused to do because she deemed it inappropriate. When she again met with Agrella, “he said to me, ‘Without your statement, I have nothing to hold against him.’ I believe that I was supposed to do the dirty work and get [Bell] fired,” Wasson says.

Wasson was fired for the first time then, but after threatening legal action and public embarrassment, she was reinstated and allowed to “retreat” to a teaching position, provided that she refrain from discussing the matter. Bell later negotiated his own departure, reportedly at a cost to the district of two years’ salary and benefits, a total of $160,000 or more.

But Wasson found herself trapped in a professional gulag. “Robert Agrella refused to give me letters of reference, which meant I had no way of pursuing my career elsewhere in any academic institution,” she says stoically, “but I also could not rise within this institution because of the stigma put upon me.”

Through it all, Wasson adds, she has maintained excellent evaluations, including one round that was completed just days before her dismissal.

A crucial question in Wasson’s case centers on whether the disputed letters are protected under the constitutional right to freedom of speech. Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Sawyer is due to rule on that on April 16.

The district has secured a consulting legal opinion that the critical letters were not protected by the First Amendment and that the district could properly take action against their author. The key, Henry says, is a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled “that critical speech, even on a topic of general public concern, did not outweigh the public employer’s interest in avoiding a disruption of the workforce.”

Bertoli and Wasson scoff at the suggestion that SRJC has been disrupted by the letters, but Henry says they have been sent far beyond the campus, to school accreditation officials and conferences of junior college administrators, causing extensive “harm to the name of the district.”

But does that harm result from the letters or the actions of the president whom the letters describe? Former SRJC President Roy Mikalson shocked the college community when he appeared unexpectedly at the Feb. 4 board meeting to point an accusing finger at Agrella and voice his support for Wasson.

Mikalson, who retired in 1990 after 19 years as president, says Agrella “likes to be right and he doesn’t like people who criticize. I think it’s generally felt on the campus that if you do disagree with him, you might have a problem.

“I was very disappointed with the board,” he continues. “They have to sort this thing out some way, because, boy, it’s headed in the wrong direction.”

As to the impact all the internal disputes have had on outside perceptions of SRJC, “I think we still have the reputation,” Mikalson says, “but it’s wavering a little.”

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

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

Downtown Santa Rosa

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Downtown Santa Rosa

Santa Rosa Stew


Janet Orsi

‘I don’t know who could be more sensitive to downtown businesses than I am. We listen, we hear, we are being as responsive as we possibly can.’
—Santa Rosa Mayor, Sharon Wright

Are too many cooks spoiling the recipe to save Sonoma County’s biggest downtown?

By Janet Wells

AT FIRST glance, downtown Santa Rosa seems like a pleasant place to spend some time and money. Stores, restaurants, fountains, crosswalks of tidy paving stones, benches, places to get stuff copied, lots of caffeine outlets. But stay awhile and try to catch the gotta-be-here buzz. Good luck.

At times, downtown appears to have a palpable anxiety that drives people away.

The twinkly lights along Fourth Street are festive at night–and cast a symbolic shadow on the unlit neighboring streets. During the day, restaurants are lively and crowded, offering an uncomfortable counterpoint to the plethora of empty storefronts. Railroad Square–the old part of town–has historic buildings, a renovated rail depot, and a pretty green slice of park that causes a lot of handwringing since it’s the preferred hangout for the homeless.

In the summertime, the Thursday Night Market attracts a big crowd to Fourth Street, although that hasn’t crossed over to the other six nights and three seasons. Groups of youth congregating around nearby Courthouse Square–unswayed by the classical music booming from the treetops, part of the city’s plan to discourage loitering–find downtown sidewalks perfect for lively socializing, driving lone pedestrians to the other side of the street.

Years ago, the city spent millions to split the square into two spiffy parks. Now the most populous element in the grassy areas are the signs prohibiting just about everything.

Everyone agrees that Santa Rosa, the county’s largest city, has the makings of a great downtown. So why all the long faces? Countless individuals, civic groups, business organizations, and city committees over the years have tried to push downtown to the pinnacle of its supposed potential. The result? A spruced-up commercial zone without a heart.

Santa Rosa’s downtown–bordered by Railroad Square on the west, Sonoma Avenue on the south, College Avenue on the north, and Brookwood Avenue on the east–is bizarrely bisected by Highway 101, one of the busiest freeways in the state, and Santa Rosa Plaza, an imposing shopping mall that sprawls over five city blocks. And just a mile to the south lies the bustling Marketplace, a year-old mall that gave many downtown shop owners the fits.

Now downtown has a 12 percent vacancy rate for both office and retail properties–down from an estimated 25 percent last year, but still more than twice the rate considered healthy. Those numbers aren’t the worst ever, but they’re far from rosy. Palo Alto, by comparison, hasn’t had over a 2 percent vacancy rate in its downtown for more than 10 years.

But what does a downtown really matter, anyway? If the market dictates that stores go out of business, so be it, right? People have plenty of alternatives in Santa Rosa for playing, shopping, and working.

Consider first, though, the sobering fact that sales tax revenue is Santa Rosa’s biggest single source of income, comprising 32 percent of the city’s $62.4 million general fund. Last year, downtown businesses, including Santa Rosa Plaza, contributed almost $2 million of that sales tax chunk to city coffers. Then consider that a downtown is a barometer for the rest of the city.

“Downtown is something that every resident of Santa Rosa should be concerned about,” says Santa Rosa City Councilwoman Noreen Evans. “Downtown is the heart and center of our city. It represents the character of our city. What’s happening downtown has an effect on the city, economically, socially, and culturally.”

Many voices contribute to the cacophony of opinion concerning downtown’s future. What will it take for downtown to thrive? Easier parking? More boutiques, movie theaters, night clubs, and restaurants? Better architecture? More office workers? Business tax incentives? Zoning changes? An arts center? Sidewalk cafes?

Maybe all of the above. It mostly boils down to–surprise, surprise–money and politics. Some people have high hopes for the city’s recently appointed Downtown Partnership Commission. Others say the commission is a city mouthpiece comprised of the same old political cronies. And with recently voter-approved urban growth boundaries curbing outward expansion, greenbelt advocates say this is the perfect time to boost downtown foot traffic and shopping with pedestrian-friendly planning and low- and middle-income apartments over storefronts.

Indeed, one wild card in turning downtown Santa Rosa into the county’s crown jewel could be titled “How Badly Do You Want It and Why?” Many downtowns boasting successful revitalization have had a cadre of people at the helm, people with not just a financial or political interest in such a project, but a personal stake in helping effect a civic transformation. However, Santa Rosa may have too many cooks in the kitchen.

When it comes to downtown revitalization, the city does not lack for people with ideas, passion, and commitment, but will they ever be able to agree on a recipe for success?

The City Official

Novice Councilwoman Evans made downtown the centerpiece of her November election campaign. An attorney who works downtown and is a regular at the local shops and cafes, Evans says she wants to help create “a place where people say, ‘That’s my town. This is where I go to hear music. This is where I go to hang out and buy my fresh produce on the weekend.'”

That warm fuzzy notion is far removed from the present. In one recent count of six square blocks of the downtown’s core, there were 19 empty storefronts. Check out the dearth of people on the streets–particularly at night and on weekends–and the picture is even bleaker.

“Downtown is in a really sensitive state of flux. . . . The market is de-emphasizing retail,” says Evans. “Downtown can go in one of two ways. We can put in the time and effort to fill up storefronts or continue seeing decline and decay.”

Evans is acutely aware of the politics involved in such an endeavor. She was appointed to the Planning Commission in 1993, when the city was in the midst of a major brouhaha over the proposed Marketplace, which boasts big-draw discount stores like Costco, Target, and Office Depot.

Greg Rogers, Santa Rosa’s financial planning manager, insists that, despite dire predictions, downtown businesses have not suffered because of the Marketplace, which provided “pure straight growth” and added more than the $500,000 in sales tax revenue last year to the city’s coffers.

Ask any downtown merchant about the Marketplace and they won’t jump for joy.

Evans considers it a tradeoff, at best. “It did bring new jobs, retail, and tax dollars. But it is not without negative impacts on downtown,” she says.

Consider these figures: Last year, total taxable sales at the Plaza reached $190 million; downtown businesses rang up $45 million in 1996; and in just one quarter, from May to August, the Marketplace racked up a hefty $35 million in sales.

Evans doesn’t believe that the Marketplace takes business directly away from downtown merchants, though it certainly doesn’t help fill those empty stores. After all, a single, small downtown business probably isn’t going to attract much enthusiasm from city hall as a candidate for fee waivers or other incentives.

“It takes a city that’s willing to say no to certain types of development in certain places and areas,” Evans says, “and that hasn’t happened.”

Is the City Council ready to do that now? “I don’t know,” she adds.

For now, Evans is focused on a downtown project that’s less politically charged than big-money development decisions: Santa Rosa Creek restoration. “That creek goes right under city hall,” she observes. “There used to be good steelhead fishing in Santa Rosa, and there’s a fish ladder under city hall. We’ve had this crazy idea to tear up city hall and get the creek back to the light.”

While that plan is a little extreme, there is a $5.6 million pot from the city’s redevelopment agency and the Prince Family Trust to create a pedestrian/bicycle path along the creek and restore the creek’s natural ecosystem between Santa Rosa Avenue and Railroad Avenue, site of a planned convention center.

But creek restoration is just the beginning of Evans’ enthusiasm for revamping downtown. “Have you talked to anyone about all the other stuff going on? Trains stopping at Railroad Square? The convention center? A multiscreen theater? Reuniting Courthouse Square?” she asks. Downtown needs projects like these, she insists, along with cultural activities, affordable housing, and restaurants to attract “people on the street 24 hours a day with money in their pockets ready to spend.”

The Merchant

Downtown stationer Dave Madigan likes to call himself a troublemaker. He certainly minces no words in assigning blame for downtown’s woes. “I blame [Mayor] Sharon Wright,” he says bluntly. “I don’t think she has the downtown’s interest at heart. I think taking care of her political friends and allies has been her No. 1 goal.”

Wright–who works for the Chamber of Commerce, consults for the building trade-oriented Sonoma County Alliance, and chaired the former Downtown Development Association for seven years–is baffled at the idea that she doesn’t fairly represent the downtown community. “I’ve been in business or had an office in downtown since 1981. I don’t know who could be more sensitive to downtown businesses than I am,” she says. “We listen, we hear, we are being as responsive as we possibly can.”

Madigan doesn’t buy it. “I’ve taken a lot of flak for blaming bad changes on the city itself, on the City Council. They haven’t cared. Their only interest is in tax money. I’ve tried to work with the City Council over the years and nothing ever happens.”

The Madigan family stationery store at Fifth Street and Mendocino Avenue has been a downtown fixture for 41 years. And 35-year-old Madigan grew up downtown. “I’ve been here since I was small enough that the cash register used to hit me in the head when it opened,” he laughs.

Madigan doesn’t do much business with the city–“I had someone buy forms the other day, the first time I’ve had [a city staffer] in this store in 10 years”–and has been unimpressed with the city’s attempts to turn downtown into a showpiece. The city renovated Fourth Street a few years ago, “but forgot about Fifth Street, Third Street, Mendocino Avenue,” he says.

Last summer, Madigan organized the Downtown Business Association, a group of unaffiliated merchants, after feeling frustrated by the myriad official committees that have been formed downtown. And don’t confuse Madigan’s group with the Downtown Partnership Commission, a 17-member group appointed by the City Council in December and the latest downtown organization to incur Madigan’s ire.

“We have too many of the people [in these groups] being reused over and over, favorites of the City Council,” Madigan says. “The city set up that group so it wouldn’t have to deal with groups like mine. The Downtown Partnership Commission won’t rock the boat. They will rubber-stamp whatever the city wants.”

What is it that Madigan wants and feels he isn’t getting? Parking.

“A parking ticket fee is $15 for an expired meter or $20 on Fourth Street for going over the time limit. That’s outrageous when I can go to Coddingtown or the Plaza and park free all day,” he fumes. “If you come downtown for a $3 sandwich and get slapped with a parking ticket, where are customers going to go [in the future]?”

Parking in downtown Santa Rosa is a dream compared to downtown parking in many cities. Santa Rosa’s five city garages–with 3,000 spaces–allow 90 minutes of free parking, and many of the 1,175 street meters take nickels and dimes as well as quarters. Some lots even allow 10-hour parking. Try to find that in San Francisco.

Still, most communities in the county offer limited, free downtown parking, while Santa Rosa garners more in parking fees than tax revenue from its downtown. Revenue from city garages, meters, and permits was $1.6 million last year, along with an additional $712,000 in parking citations. By comparison, retail tax revenue from downtown businesses (not including Santa Rosa Plaza) was about $453,000 during that period.

So which is more of a priority to the city? “If [Santa Rosa’s city parking and transit management officials] think they can get away with it, they will write everybody’s grandmother a parking ticket,” Madigan answers.

One of Madigan’s first goals for the Downtown Business Association was to have parking meters removed. The city nixed that idea, so now he’d like to see a “kinder, gentler ticket policy,” with $10 as the maximum citation.

In October, the DBA surveyed 600 downtown businesses and merchants and found that most want cheaper parking for customers, an 11 p.m. curfew for teens, and fee waivers for major projects. Another key goal of Madigan’s group is to avoid having to pay any kind of mandatory fees or assessments to be part of a downtown group. All downtown merchants used to pay up to $2,000 to the Downtown Development Association for parking assessment, promotions, and security. That group disbanded in 1993 in disarray after local businesses complained that they weren’t getting enough for their money.

Madigan is wary that the Downtown Partnership Commission will resurrect mandatory fees for group marketing and promotions. “I know how to do that for my business. Why should I pay someone else?” Madigan asks. “If [the Downtown Partnership Commission] tries to shove it down our throats, we’ll just give them the finger.”

The Commission Member

Santa Rosa Plaza manager Chris Facas has been on a lot of downtown committees. By his admission, most have failed to accomplish much. “There were a lot of incarnations of groups, all with good intentions, none of which were ever recognized by the city,” Facas says. “You can do some projects, but you can’t get a good comprehensive outlook unless you have the city’s involvement.”

Facas has just been chosen head of the new Downtown Partnership Commission, which, he ways, “truly represents downtown.” There are a number of people who would argue with Facas about who exactly represents whom, but the commission certainly has some heavy hitters on it, including Mayor Wright, Councilwoman Evans, and San Francisco developer Tom Robertson, who has an ownership interest in about 85,000 square feet of downtown property, including the refurbished Rosenberg Building that houses Barnes & Noble Bookstore.

The group’s mission is to carry out recommendations from previous downtown studies. While the commission faces all-too-familiar issues, the intent this time is different, assures Facas. “The furthest thing from anyone’s mind is to come forth with another plan or another document,” he says. “This group’s function is to make real change, to make these things happen.”

Facas would like to see the downtown area become “the cultural mecca of the county.” That goal is shared by Robertson, whose San Francisco North Properties owns a partnership in the Fifth Street building that houses the Sonoma County Repertory Theatre and Massés Billiards.

Robertson, widely regarded as the single most influential person in the future of the downtown and a proponent of a strong downtown cultural element, declined to be interviewed in depth for this story. He has said in the past, however, that he considers downtown Santa Rosa to be an undervalued gem.

“The downtown is vibrant, but not anywhere near where it could be,” Facas says. “That means the incentives aren’t out there for it to happen.” Facas sees an incentive program, such as fee waivers or zoning restrictions, as a crucial step in encouraging businesses to locate downtown.

Facas also believes it is time to revisit the idea of a local merchants’ association. “Marketing the center [of the city] and themselves and events is what makes people come out,” he says. “Money for that will have to come from the downtown merchants.”

That news should send Madigan’s blood pressure soaring.

Facas is in an interesting position as a commission member who also happens to manage a shopping mall that not only creates a barrier between downtown’s two sections, but also competes with downtown businesses. The relationship between the mall and downtown businesses certainly isn’t synergistic, although that’s the ultimate goal. The elephantine Plaza, with free parking for 3,200 cars and a byzantine maze of entrances and exits, creates a barrier to through traffic.

Optimists who see the Plaza as a link between downtown and Railroad Square have never tried to get from one to the other after the mall closed. The Plaza, opened in 1980, hulks over Third Street–the only walkway between the two sections of downtown–creating a subterranean pathway that is dank, dark, and scary. Meanwhile, ideas such as lighting, murals, signage, and sidewalk handrails to encourage (not to mention protect) pedestrians have yet to be implemented, and even a low-cost trolley bus that transits the two areas goes largely unused.

“I probably have less to gain, from a business angle, from a vibrant downtown than downtown businesses do,” says Facas. “But I come here every day. I virtually live in the downtown area. That’s the main reason to be involved. I see the potential it has.”


Janet Orsi

‘The city’s vitality–Sonoma County’s vitality to a large extent–is dependent upon downtown. Those businesses that move in and don’t find a niche don’t survive. You have enough failures in an area over time and it gets a bad reputation.’
—Bob Marshall

The Gadfly

When Bob Marshall retired, he and his wife wanted to move to a small apartment in downtown Santa Rosa. “I wanted an urban environment where we could have one car between us and I could walk out in the morning to buy coffee and a bagel.”

The search for housing didn’t turn up anything affordable, but it did pique his interest in downtown revitalization. “I go to all the meetings. I’m a gadfly,” says the genial Marshall. “I’ve done a ton of reading over the years.”

Marshall agrees with urban theorists Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford and their criticisms of 1950s and 1960s downtown planning as being people-unfriendly. “It’s impossible to walk across the street. That’s really where we went wrong with downtown,” he says. “The freeway bisects it. There’s a mall plunked down in the middle.”

For Marshall, the building vacancies and lack of foot traffic are downtown’s biggest detractors. “[Courthouse] Square is very underutilized,” he says. “It should be the center of our town, a place to sit if there’s an art fair or a concert in the afternoon. As it is, the noise of the tires going by on the cobblestones, bumpity-bumpity-bump, even throws the musicians off. The center court in the shopping mall is replacing the town center.

“The city’s vitality–Sonoma County’s vitality to a large extent–is dependent upon downtown,” he continues. “Those businesses that move in and don’t find a niche don’t survive. You have enough failures in an area over time and it gets a bad reputation.”

But downtown isn’t a lost cause, adds Marshall. “The old hulk of a Rosenberg department store that once represented urban blight is now refurbished and one of the good places downtown.”

With corporate giant Barnes & Noble taking over the Rosenberg Building at Fourth and D streets, downtown now has three major bookstores in close proximity. Instead of taking business from the smaller, independently owned bookstores, Marshall believes, Barnes & Noble has increased the customer base of its competition.

“These stores attract a good cross section of people, and support a couple of good coffee shops, too,” he says. “Those three stores, plus the record shops, are not competitive with suburban malls. Crown Superstore [a chain retail book seller] is starving in the Marketplace, [as far as I can see]. You can roll a bowling ball down those aisles.”

People go to the Marketplace not for a shopping experience or leisure, but to buy. And buy they do in record amounts for Santa Rosa. Marshall suggests that those tax revenues from the Marketplace that exceed original estimates be used as incentive subsidies for turning downtown into a niche of hospitality and entertainment.

“Let’s enjoy the revenues and use some as seed money to relocate certain businesses downtown,” he says. “That will bring a lot of people.”

The Urban Designer

Laura Hall doesn’t live or work downtown. But that’s where her heart is. “I studied public open spaces in school. I love talking about plazas,” says the urban designer with Carlile, Macy, Mitchell & Heryford.

Hall is a member of the Coalition to Restore Courthouse Square, a group that is working to redesign the old square–split in two in the late ’60s–and block the cobblestoned stretch of Santa Rosa Avenue that runs through the middle. “Santa Rosa is in dire need of having a heart that is not bisected,” Hall says. “Twenty years ago we started carving up downtowns for cars. That was the model of the time. Everyone did it all over the country.

“People don’t want to admit that they made a big mistake by bisecting the square,” she adds. “A lot of money went into the design and existing configuration of the square, and it’s really easy to get defensive when you’ve spent a lot of money.”

Downtown’s real foe isn’t parking or competition from malls or even vacancies, she continues. Those are just symptoms of downtown design that, in places, goes “way beyond pedestrian-unfriendly to pedestrian-terrifying.”

“It’s about architecture and whether buildings work, about spaces divided up correctly to invite pedestrians,” she says. “People are fooling themselves if they think downtown will work with Courthouse Square the way it is. It’s two big dead spaces. It draws energy out.”

The coalition’s report on reunification design, cost estimates, and traffic impacts is due in March. Preliminary estimates put the project cost at about $1.8 million, says coalition chair Terry Price. He emphasizes that the group plans to fund the project with private sources and public grants, rather than any kind of tax assessment for downtown businesses.

He adds that preliminary traffic studies show that the impact of blocking Santa Rosa Avenue, one of the busiest arteries through downtown, is significantly less than many business owners fear. “The amount of time increase we’re talking about at an intersection is a matter of seconds, ” Price says, adding that some slowdown in traffic is desirable. “We want downtown to be a place people go to, not speed through.”

Right now, groups of kids are about the only people hanging out in Courthouse Square and on downtown sidewalks, a trend some shoppers and merchants find disconcerting. “A lot of people find it hard to walk in front of 30 young people. They don’t like to feel that conspicuous. But it’s easy to use kids as scapegoats,” says Hall. “When any one group takes over a spot, there’s something wrong with it.

“You want a cross section.”

Courthouse Square, which has “no clear path of navigation,” makes people feel uncomfortable, she adds. The coalition’s design calls for a more traditional town square, tree-lined, with diagonal walkways. “The square won’t solve all the problems, but it will be an opportunity for pedestrians, for more people on foot,” she says. “People are yearning for these kinds of spaces.”

Downtown itself is a business, and “businesses tend to have a life cycle of about 50 years,” says Santa Rosa Economic Development Specialist Lyn DeLeau. “Our downtown has lasted 150 years, and the reason it has–not to put too much of a Pollyanish spin on it–is because people are looking at it again and again, keeping up with a changing economy and competition.”

The problem now, she says, is the lack of a “unified voice of downtown [merchants and residents] to come to the council and say, ‘These are the kinds of things we need.'”

Clearly, downtown revitalization is a quagmire of ideas, opinions, criticisms, and emotions. But common themes do emerge. One refrain? Every person interviewed for this story interrupted their litany of downtown ills to point out that Santa Rosa has a good downtown. Such a statement can sound plaintive, defensive, and well, lame, in light of the statistics and the lack of bustle on the streets.

But for the optimist, perhaps it’s a rallying cry, the starting point of consensus, and a long-awaited sign that all these chefs just might succeed in coming together to cook up a great downtown.

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

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

Rick Reynolds

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Rick Reynolds

Ready for Re-entry


Janet Orsi

Riding High: After several years out of the national limelight, Rick Reynolds is preparing for a new network TV sitcom.

Seven years ago, comedian Rick Reynolds was a star on the rise. Now, after hiding out in Egg City, he’s preparing for a network TV spot

By Greg Cahill

ASK RICK REYNOLDS about the appeal of quiet, small-town Petaluma in the North Bay, and this fast-talking Emmy-nominated comic launches into a rapid-fire spiel that sounds as though it was scripted by the local Chamber of Commerce. “The biggest allure for me, I think, is being around ordinary people–real people–because this second show is from the dramatic events of my life,” says Reynolds, whose 1990 one-man comedy show “Only the Truth is Funny” was hailed for blurring the lines between traditional lowbrow stand-up and the allegedly more exalted realm of art.

“That’s why it’s taken me so long to do the follow-up–I’ve been waiting for shit to happen.”

Two years ago year, Reynolds, 42, debuted his new one-man comedy show, “All Grown Up–And No Place to Go,” at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma. The show, which opened last spring in San Francisco and once again put reynolds in the limelight, picks up where the first one left off, with Reynolds in a mid-life crisis and ruminating on parenthood, his brush with success, and the difficulties of being an adult.

This week, Rhino Records is set to release a two-CD version of the performance (it also includes a 25-minute bonus track called “Life, Kids, Marriage, and Stuff”), setting the stage for Reynolds’ return in March to network TV and a new sitcom, “Life . . . and Stuff,” co-starring Pam Dawbar. It airs on CBS.

“In ‘All Grown Up . . .’, it just dawned on me that most people are unhappy,” says Reynolds, leaning back in a comfortable leather desk chair at his Victorian office overlooking downtown Petaluma. As he speaks, Reynolds is perched in front of a flickering computer screen and surrounded by a vast collection of vintage pulp-fiction books, Beatles dolls, and other memorabilia.

“We live with this emotional pain that we never talk about,” he continues. “In my case it comes from the pressures of a relationship and kids, and the irony not only of the huge love and satisfaction that brings you, but also the amount of work and frustration. I’m unhappy a lot. And I talk to my friends, and they’re unhappy. And I go, ‘Is my circle of friends so different from the world?’

“I say in the show, we all dress up, we put on our happy faces, and we fool everybody into believing that we’re happy together. And everybody else fools us. So everybody is left isolated, thinking, ‘Something is wrong with me; I’m the one whose life sucks.” I think it helps just knowing that everybody’s life sucks.

“I’m here to tell you. “

In his first show, this insightful monologist–whose pathos-ridden, highly confessional work has put him in the same league as Spalding Gray, Lily Tomlin, and Eric Bogasian–struck a nerve with every comedy fan who ever fretted over growing up in a dysfunctional family. “Only the Truth Is Funny,” a humorous sentimental journey into his world, opened in San Francisco in 1990 to rave reviews before moving to New York and catching the eye of Rollins & Joffe, the high-powered management team behind Woody Allen, David Letterman, and Robin Williams.

In 1991, the show played a successful six-week run in Los Angeles. Hollywood’s elite flocked to the shows. Bette Midler came to see it. Steven Spielberg sent Reynolds 20 pounds of fudge after the comic mentioned onstage his passion for the gooey confection.

The show’s huge success led to a book deal, Only the Truth Is Funny: My Family and How I Survived It (Hyperion, 1991), and a Showtime cable special. NBC-TV signed him to a $750,000 development deal, which resulted in an unaired sitcom pilot and an offer to stick around to create other new shows.

But Reynolds ended his association with Rollins & Joffe, packed his bags, and returned to Petaluma, where he had relocated about seven years ago and now lives in a spotless old Victorian with his wife, Lisa Ludwigsen, and their two young children. “This was a period that a lot of people who are struggling would kill for,” he reflects. “I mention in the show how ironic it was that my marriage started to fall apart right as this happened. Every night in L.A., I would say, ‘Who’s here tonight?’ And somebody would say that Jack Nicholson was the first one to shoot to his feet and give me a standing ovation. And then backstage one night, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, and Anne Bancroft in tears giving me hugs. Mary Tyler Moore, Lily Tomlin. Just tons of things. Unforgettable.”

But the strain of maintaining that pace nearly destroyed his marriage. “You know, I fell out of love with my wife, it got very sad, it got very ugly,” he says candidly. “We’re in therapy; I’ve learned things. I did the new show one week in a stand-up club in Seattle, just to kind of get it on its legs And I was amazed, especially when I did the therapy stuff: couples looking at each other, laughing at the setups. Laughing at me–or laughing with me–or clapping for me.

“I just felt: I’m not alone.”

Yet Reynolds now must contend with the additional worry of no longer being the freshest face in show biz. “I want to talk about this issue,” he says. “I mentioned that in the first show. What will people say? Will they say, ‘He’s repeating himself’? I worry about the reviews, only because the reviews are very important to having a successful run. I remember all these people loving this new voice. You’re going to discover that it’s the same voice. It’s the new voice you loved before, but it’s the same voice.

“Hopefully, [the new sitcom] will be a success. You hate to have a big success and then failure,” he adds. “And that’s the problem with the higher you go. Who in show business is just like this? Everybody. Marlon Brando. He came back up, sort of. But, you know, everybody falls. Where’s Kevin Costner now? Three failures in a row. Biggest thing in the world. Then boom! Every time I see ‘the new blond bombshell,’ I think, “She’s going to be so depressed for most of her life.

“So I worry because I just don’t want it to be compared that much to the first show. I want it to stand on its own.”

A web exclusive to the February 13-19, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

The Scoop

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Bootie Rule

By Bob Harris

PRESIDENT CLINTON’S Feb. 4 State of the Union address to Congress focused on education, encouraging every family to follow Hillary’s example and read to their kids, although he didn’t specify which futures contracts Chelsea liked best. The president also advocated zero tolerance for schoolyard guns and drugs–apparently those should stay in the CIA, where they belong–and called for serious, bipartisan campaign finance reform. Never mind that new Starbucks franchise in the East Wing.

Clinton didn’t say anything unexpected–his only break from the text was to tell the GOP that he knows life is a bitch–but the speech was still a major womping deal. If you know what to watch for, you can scope the whole political year.

State of the Union addresses are always rife with lines expressing political positions as vapid aphorisms; e.g., “This Congress should not engage in child cannibalism, because [fist pounding podium]  . . America  . . should . . . not  . . eat  . . the future.”

Next comes a 30-second stroke break, during which everybody who agrees hops up and applauds as if Jehovah One just read the author’s preface to the Book of Life, and everyone who disagrees smiles tolerantly as though someone else’s 6-year-old just blew school glue through his nose.

The more folks standing, the more likely a particular bill will become law. This is Bob’s Big Rule of Bootie: butts in the air, high fives a-slappin’; butts in the chair, ain’t gonna happen. Exceptions to the Bootie Rule occur when the public passionately wants something that the corporations abhor, in which case the obvious presidential lip service is received with thunderously facetious support.

This year’s best example was campaign finance reform: Clinton, who has more dirty money than Papillon, vigorously called for cutting off the lifeblood of everyone in the room. All butts arose, but these asses lie. The McCain-Feingold campaign finance act is toast.

Still, if you watched the speech closely, you learned the Balanced Budget Amendment doesn’t have the votes, public school “choice” does, aid to legal immigrants will probably be restored, and a whole lot of other stuff that will definitely affect your life.

You don’t exactly need a big throbbing lobe to tally this.

Just a passing interest.

I watched Clinton’s speech from the studios of Politically Incorrect. P.I. might just be the most important show on TV, for two reasons: It’s one of the few shows where actual debate occurs, and it’s the only one where genuine progressives are respectfully allowed to speak their peace. Frankly, I’d like to be on the show someday, so I thought I’d go hang out and be friendly.

It turned out that P.I. was preparing for a special live show to follow Clinton’s address and the scheduled rebuttal from J. C. Watts, the GOP lawn jockey du jour. So everybody had to watch the speeches on the monitors and wait.

It was less than 20 minutes before the audience lost interest.

Granted, Clinton’s a lousy speechifier. We’ve all seen the lip-biting pain-feeler deal before, and the guy’s answering machine probably has a 10-point plan for how he’ll return the call. Still, he can declare a nuclear war, so you probably at least want to make sure he’s lucid.

However, P.I.’s studio audience–a reasonably hip group–got so fidgety waiting for Elvis to leave the building that the producers actually had to pass out candy to keep people in their seats. Amazing.

The networks couldn’t toss a similar smelt to the folks at home, so they delivered up the next best thing–the new O.J. verdict. The P.I. audience immediately began cheering and making animal sounds. So much for minutiae like pending constitutional amendments and the restructuring of Social Security and the public school system.

Instead, we all watched (through our TVs) Peter Jennings watching (through his monitor) a reporter watching (through a window) another reporter listen-ing (through a small square speaker) to the announcement of a financial judgment (yet to be determined). All because a guy you’ve never met is accused of killing two other people you never met in a place you’ve probably never been and will never go, a crime that will never affect you in any way other than to provide a thrilling taste of trickling blood.

To its singular credit, P.I. treated O.J. as a minor amusement. Everybody else–the media and public together–have made O.J. bigger than the president of the United States.

The Scoop is archived at www.goodthink.com.

From the February 13-19, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

Boozoo Chavis

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Boozoo Chavis

That’s Who


Carol Friedman

All Bark and Plenty of Bite: Boozoo knows.

Boozoo fires up the Powerhouse

By Greg Cahill

LET’S GET something straight. Boozoo Chavis, 66, is the undisputed King of Zydeco–no ifs, ands, or buts. Second, talking to the colorful, immensely likable performer on the phone from his home on Dog Hill in Lake Charles, La., is a surreal experience, to say the least. For instance, there’s that thing about the racehorses. He’s got a few–NRBQ sang about them in the 1989 tribute “Boozoo, That’s Who”–but Chavis is reluctant to talk about them because he doesn’t want people to think he’s rich.

Of course, he’ll spend a solid five minutes talking about the fact that he doesn’t want to talk about his steeds.

And then there are the dogs, the four-legged kind–or maybe he’s talking about ugly women, it’s so hard to tell. “We have so many dogs on Dog Hill, that’s where it got its name,” he explains in a molasses-thick Louisiana accent. “They used to have all the pretty women there on Dog Hill. But they don’t got no more now. There’s just one, that’s all they’ve got here. There ain’t no more dogs and there ain’t no more women on that hill. They’re all married and the dogs are all scattered away. The dog man came and picked ’em up. But I’ve got one here.

“So, you see, I’ve got an answer for all of that.”

Indeed, he does. Chavis is an American original. He started playing local barn dances at age 16, blending the blues and Creole music to fashion a red-hot zydeco hybrid. He later ventured on to the Louisiana/East Texas “Crawfish Circuit,” rivaling the reigning King of Zydeco, Clifton Chenier, for recognition as the first to popularize the genre. Back in 1954, Chavis even recorded the first commercial zydeco single, “Paper in My Shoes,” a hit record that sold 100,000 copies and featured his high-octane button accordion and growling vocals driven by a pumping, bass-heavy beat.

“There’s a tradition there,” he says. “But it’s automatic. People ask how I do this or how I do that. It comes automatically. The music comes straight from me–it’s got a beat with it,” he adds.

“If you’ve got that beat, you’ve got that music.”

In 1984, Chavis came storming back on the then-burgeoning Cajun/zydeco scene, which was rapidly diffusing into progressive and traditional camps. He released a successively fervent series of recordings on the Maison de Soul and Rounder labels. The 1987 death of Chenier served to renew interest in Chavis, a staunch zydeco traditionalist. In 1994, acclaimed music documentarian Robert Mugge (best known for 1991’s Deep Blues) went behind the scenes and captured the competitive spirit of the supposedly laid-back southwest Louisiana music scene with The Kingdom of Zydeco. It chronicled a zydeco shootout for the crown vacated by Chenier. It also used the rivalry between Chavis and upstart Beau Jacques to underscore the musical rift between old-timers, like Chavis, and those young lions who infused their spirited sound with rock, pop, and even rap.

Of course, there never really was any serious doubt about Chavis’ status. “We all know who the King of Zydeco is,” he says. “I don’t need no crown–it’s all in my fingers and in my head. You know, I’ve got some knowledge in that old gray head. I’ve got some stuff up there that you’d never realize.”

Believe it. His 1991 eponymous major label release on Elektra Records’ short-lived American Explorer series drew rave reviews. And Chavis’ most recent outing, Hey Do Right (Discovery), reveals just how deep his bag of tricks really is. These days, he’s at his creative peak, playing and writing better than ever. “Some people think that because I got old, I can’t play no more,” he sniffs. “Shit. Old ain’t got nothing to do with that.”

On that note, we’re back to talking about his travels, his hometown, and those damned dogs. “Lake Charles is a nice place to live, though it could be better,” he concedes. “But I really like Baltimore and Iowa, where you don’t have nothing but corn on every side of the road. I love that. I can’t stay in town. Don’t pen me up!–because if you do, I’ll bite you. Don’t jam me. But Lake Charles is all right–it’s just like everywhere else.

“And it’s real nice in [neighboring] Lafayette–it’s holy. Those people have holy land. Crawfish got soul over there. Crawfish is over here, too. But they got some dogs around the crawfish, you know. Two-legged dogs . . . “

Boozoo Chavis performs Thursday, Feb. 13, at 7:30 p.m. at the Powerhouse Brewing Co., 268 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. Tickets are $12.50. 829-9171.

From the February 13-19, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

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Boozoo Chavis

That's WhoCarol FriedmanAll Bark and Plenty of Bite: Boozoo knows.Boozoo fires up the PowerhouseBy Greg CahillLET'S GET something straight. Boozoo Chavis, 66, is the undisputed King of Zydeco--no ifs, ands, or buts. Second, talking to the colorful, immensely likable performer on the phone from his home on Dog Hill in Lake Charles, La., is a surreal experience, to...
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