Best Place To Confuse Your Local Vegan

Best of Restaurants

Mar 24, 2021

Did you know figs technically aren’t vegan?

Living around here, and especially in this given day and age, we all know more and more foods that are vegan, but it’s a curveball to learn about something so reliably placed in the Fruits & Veggies brick in the food pyramid getting disqualified.

“How?” one may wonder aloud to the page of their favored printed newspaper.

It turns out, some species of wasp burrow into the fruit to lay their eggs inside. They proceed to lose their wings and antennae, then die up there and the fruit enzymes digest the wasp’s body and absorb it. Kind of freaky.

You know nature’s a cruel, uncaring mistress when one of your main predators is a fruit. One we use to make cookies for old people. (I’m kidding, of course. I love me some Fig Newtons. Shoutout!)

Still, it’s a paradigm shift, the thought of plants eating something with a heartbeat. It’s something we’d expect on an alien planet, or in an alternate universe. What’s next, camels that swim? Mushrooms that play chess? It’s madness!

Of course, carnivorous plants are nothing new. But that doesn’t make them any less cool. Venus Flytraps, Yellow Pitcher Plants, Australian Sundews and other meatless life forms, all with unpronounceable Latin names that make your vegan uncle tear out what malnourished hair he has left. The best part may be that we don’t even need to track down Sir David Attenborough to learn all about them—though his company, and fatherly voice, are always appreciated.

California Carnivores, a Sebastopol-based plant nursery that specializes in carnivorous plants, has already gone through the trouble of corralling these monstrous veggies together in one spot. Your succulents are cool, but a Cobra Lily has more game in its stem than that aloe plant has in its whole body. Virtual tours only at the moment, but plan your visit for when they reopen.—ED

California Carnivores, 2833 Old Gravenstein Hwy, Sebastopol. Currently closed to the public. 707.824.0433. www.californiacarnivores.com

Best Oasis of Fine Food in a Culinary Urban Desert

Best of Restaurants

Jonah Raskin

Mar 24, 2021

Best Oasis of Fine Food in a Culinary Urban Desert

Call it a pantry, a community kitchen and an oasis of fine food nestled, all together, in a culinary urban desert. Three Leaves attracts hungry folks eager for soups, salads, entrees and sweets made with fresh, local ingredients.

Owned and operated by Georgia-born and Alabama-bred chef Rob Hogencamp, Three Leaves was already set up for take-out when the pandemic hit. Because of this, it thrived during the pandemic, at a time when many cafes and restaurants folded.

If there’s a secret ingredient in the mix at Three Leaves, it’s Hogencamp himself, who began his cooking career by barbecuing in the Deep South at the age of 15. He isn’t sorry he left home and came to California.

“There is no place I’d rather be than in Sonoma,” Hogencamp tells me inside his spotless kitchen. For years he worked with the “Healing Meals Program” at the nonprofit, Ceres, where he learned that eating can be a way to maintain health. Near the start of the pandemic, he reached out to Liberty Duck, Petaluma’s world-renowned poultry farm. Ever since then, he’s made duck meat balls, duck curry and duck pot pie—which comes with vegetables that aren’t over-cooked—plus a gluten-free biscuit topping that Alabamians would die for. All the dishes at Three Leaves are gluten-free and dairy-free.

Recently, Hogencamp ran out of his highly coveted meatloaf. He returned to the kitchen and made a dozen or so more loaves with a mouthwatering chipotle glaze. Every week there’s a different culinary theme. It might be Mexican or Vietnamese. At lunchtime, Thursdays and Fridays, workers from nearby Kaiser and from county offices arrive in droves for food that tastes good, looks good and is nutritious.

The “Three Leaves” in the name of the company don’t refer to the leaves of any plant, but rather to the “leaves” or “blades” in Hogencamp’s culinary equation that includes farmers, chefs and foodies, who can go online and order complete ready-to-heat-and-eat meals, or shop à la carte at the pantry itself. Three Leaves proves that “to-go” food can be nourishing as well as fast and convenient. On a recent visit, I purchased a Mexican wedding cake cookie which I scarfed and a container of salsa made with pumpkin seeds (rich in zinc and good for the immune system). I took the salsa home and added a dollop to my own split-pea soup for a delicious supper.—JR

Three Leaves, 925 Corporate Center Parkway, Ste D, Santa Rosa. 707.595.0316. www.threeleavesfoods.com

Best Time Travel Device

Best of Services

Mark Fernquest

Mar 24, 2021

Last summer, a gleaming portal opened in the center of Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square. It took the familiar shape of a mailbox. Beside it, a sign instructed, “Please submit your questions, grievances and love letters to the past or future.”

Responses were provided by “a team of dedicated portal professionals” and shared on Instagram, passing not just through time but also from the physical world onto the World Wide Web.

The concept for this magical service came from Santa Rosa artist Jessica Yoshiko Rasmussen, who collaborated with artists Julian Billotte and Anna Wiziarde to source and gild a real-life mailbox. A staggering 34 volunteers provided tender and surprising multimedia responses to the letters and objects passed through it.

The United States Portal Service was made possible by funding from the Open & Out call for artists—a grant initiative that invited local artists to enliven downtown Santa Rosa’s temporary pedestrian zone, created to allow restaurants to serve outdoors during the dystopian Covid-19 pandemic. The portal was one of several local artist projects funded for between $500 and $7,500 each.

Rasmussen says, “I’m such a big proponent of small local grants, because [this project] is not something I could have otherwise afforded to do.”

The U.S. Portal Service was inspired by Rasmussen’s observation that time in 2020 was completely disrupted unlike anything else we’ve experienced. It was also a chance to invite people to reflect on and share about the Black Lives Matter movement, Covid-19 and everything happening in politics—including threats to the U.S. Postal Service.

For three months, the portal opened, fielding 27 letters to the future, eight letters to the past, 52 letters on other topics, 62 objects, two ballots (yes, they were promptly delivered to an official receptacle) and three gifts of marijuana.

“On the day Biden’s presidency was announced, we got Champagne corks, marijuana, lighters, a full pack of cigarettes and coins; people used it as sort of a wishing well,” Rasmussen says.

Infamously, the portal service also received a cease and desist order from USPS, which was reported by the SF Chronicle Datebook. There’s good news, though—the portal will open again sometime in 2021 at the Museum of Sonoma County, housed in what was once the Santa Rosa Post Office and Federal Building. This time, the portal invites reflections on 2020. Follow @united.states.portal.service and @museumsoco on Instagram, so you don’t miss it.—CK

Best Way to Fiddle Around

Best of Cannabis

Jonah Raskin

Mar 24, 2021

Nobody knows the world of the cannabis dispensary better than big, bearded, jovial Cameron Hattan, though he hasn’t ever owned or operated a dispensary. He doesn’t want to own one. There are too many headaches. For years, Cameron was a bodacious cannabis farmer. Now he’s a bodacious cannabis salesman and distributor who works with rural farmers and brings their products to distant urban markets.

“Getting weed on the shelves of a dispensary is one of the most difficult things in the world,” Cameron tells me on a wind-swept hillside outside Sebastopol. He adds, “The cannabis industry is like no other. You can’t use banks or credit cards. Everything has to be in cash.”

Cameron sounds like he’s complaining, though he might simply be describing the realities of the cannabis world. He looks out at the rolling green hills and says, “For years, I knocked on a dozen California dispensary doors a day. I’ve been to hundreds of them. In the early days, many kids who worked behind the counter had no retail experience, though they had smoked dope.”

Cameron pauses again and catches his breath. “Prior to the passage of Prop. 64 in 2016, dispensaries were poorly marked and hard to find,” he says. “After Prop. 64, purchasing shelf space became the norm. If you didn’t pay to display, your products weren’t carried or were stacked in a dark corner.”

For nearly a decade before Cameron and his wife, Shannon, got into the distribution game, they grew marijuana for the medical cannabis market that was ushered in by Prop. 215, which California voters approved back in 1996. The Hattans were the first licensed cannabis growers in Sonoma County, focusing primarily on CBD-dominant strains. When their business expanded, they partnered with other “legacy” growers and grew a portfolio under their very own “Fiddler’s Greens” brand. It’s thriving, and so is their distribution company, “High Tide.”

Shannon Hattan grew up in Texas and attended Texas A&M. In the mid-1990s, for a class project, she did research on cannabis, which led her down a rabbit hole and into the marijuana wonderland. She met Cameron in the Virgin Islands, where he worked as a bartender after a stint with the Marines.

A long and windy road brought them from the Islands to Northern California where they began to cultivate cannabis for their own health and wellness.

The Hattans spend much of their time educating the public about a plant they’ve come to love and respect. The bottom line, folks: try Fiddler’s Greens weed (www.fiddlers-greens.com). If your favorite dispensary doesn’t carry their products, ask for them and tell them the Hattans sent you.—JR

Best Way To Make Childhood Memories Way More Badass

Best of Family and Pets

Mark Fernquest

Mar 24, 2021

Best Way To Make Childhood Memories Way More Badass

For me, like for many of us, the prospect of graduating from high school and entering the “real world” stirred up its fair share of anxiety. Though it wasn’t necessarily college, a working life or flying the nest that really caused my anxiety—in my naivete I thought that once I graduated high school, it would be socially unacceptable for me to wear a backpack.

Thank God I was wrong.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve found more and more artifacts from my childhood being adapted to last into my adult life. For instance, Pixar movies contain elements that are good for their audience of kids and now their parents, too. A real-life Pixar movie, as it were, can be found out past Bodega Bay in the form of Candy & Kites. “A happy little store specializing in being nice to you since 1983!” boasts a pocket-sized pamphlet. Candy, flags, windsocks, literal buckets of saltwater taffy, garden décor, air toys and more line its walls and the space surrounding the unassuming little store.

It sounds sweet and innocent, and it is. But, two words: “stunt” and “kites.”

These aren’t the two-bit classics one might imagine, the adorable combo of two sticks, string and some printer paper. These are Mama and Papa’s kites. These are kites meant for cutting the sky, kites that audibly motor while they slice the wind, kites that need an action movie soundtrack. These kites are Top Gun, at the beach. They’re “Danger Zone”, by Kenny Loggins, on a string. Few have ever flown a kite so hardcore that they have to bear in mind the safety and well-being of nearby people and animals in case they crash it.

But now, you can!

So do yourself a favor, swing by Candy & Kites on that next trip out to the beach, and feel the power of nature’s fury course through those thin lines of cotton. But best of all, the next time your outdated uncle tells you to “go fly a kite,” just smile, knowing you’re packing the pro’s-choice retort to those poorly chosen words.—ED

Candy & Kites, 1415 Highway 1, Bodega Bay. Open Friday–Monday, 11am to 5pm. www.candyandkites.com

Best Place To Overload Your 1/2-Ton Pickup Truck With Building Materials

Best of Home Improvement

Mark Fernquest

Mar 24, 2021

Best Place To Overload Your 1/2-Ton Pickup Truck With Building Materials

Friedman’s Home Improvement, in Santa Rosa, is my favorite go-to for building supplies. Why? Because of its enormous, drive-in “expressyard.” Every time I drive in to buy a single item—say, a treated 2×12—I leave with my Nissan Frontier maxed to capacity with concrete blocks, pavers, gardening soil and more lumber. And I’ve never regretted it yet.

Case-in-point: Last May I moved from an apartment in downtown Santa Rosa to a glass house in an apple orchard in rural Sebastopol, and for the first time in millennia, I found myself with room to garden, plus a patio and a deck and a fenced-in yard all of my own. In the weeks that followed, a strange and unstoppable force caused me to hightail it down to Friedman’s again and again to purchase planks and cinder blocks and decking screws and ½ wine barrels and soil and God knows what-all else. In seven short weeks I installed a five-tier, above-ground, semi-shaded vegetable garden, two stretches of decking, an 8-foot-long gardening bench, benches for sitting on and a raised counter for a camp stove—all of it portable and movable.

Need treated lumber of any conceivable size and dimensions? Friedman’s has it. Need untreated lumber of any size and dimensions? Friedman’s has it. In fact, it has every building component an enterprising homeowner or contractor could ever want or need, all of it self-serve: composite boards, pre-built wooden fence panels, fence posts of all types, spools of fencing wire, water tanks, stock tanks, metal and wooden gates, culverts, cinder blocks, bricks, conduit, irrigation line, pavers, pallets, shingles, pre-built raised garden beds, wheelbarrows and bags of concrete, sand, compost, conditioner and gardening soil.

I won’t lie—the exit line can get a little long at times, but I use those down minutes to catch my breath after the effort it takes to overload my truck. Actually, my truck takes a breather, too. Whether you’re a Friedman’s regular or a first-timer, I hope to see you there this spring.—MF

Friedman’s Home Improvement, 4055 Santa Rosa Ave., Santa Rosa. Mon–Fri 6am to 7pm, Sat 7am to 6pm, Sun 8am to 6pm. 707.584.7811.

Best Place to Catch Covid-19

Best of Recreation

Mark Fernquest

Mar 24, 2021

I’m a relative newcomer to Sebastopol, and I’m as fond of it as I am of every hippie community I’ve ever lived in or visited. And that list is long—Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Boulder, Bolinas, Arcata, Santa Fe, Taos, Jerome, Bisbee, Orcas. The Boomer hippies settled in beautiful places, and I go out of my way to visit these places and live in them whenever I can.

But for all its artistic allure, Sebastopol leaves me somewhat baffled. My walks past Skategarden Park during the pandemic are perplexing. On any given sunny afternoon the skatepark is awash with a sea of teenagers … sans masks. Is the local skate scene a super-spreader event waiting to happen? Actually, judging by the sheer number of kids, the event would have already happened if it was going to. But what do I know? I’m a paranoid Gen X writer, not an epidemiologist.

Built in 2008, Skategarden Park is located in downtown Sebtown, on Laguna Park Way, across from The Barlow. It contains an elaborate, 15,000-square-foot skate structure in addition to a playground and community garden plots. There is also an “art wall” that is covered with colorful graffiti murals.

My own skateboarding career began on my driveway in 1976, on sheet-metal trucks and clay wheels, and ended soon thereafter on a fiberglass board with polyurethane wheels, back when the notion of global pandemic was B-movie sci-fi. But I still maintain a fondness for the sport, well over 40 years later. And Skategarden Park seems like an early-Gen X-er dream-come-true, with every conceivable curve, dip, rail, ramp and drop I never had the chance to tackle at age 8. To the kids who skate there: I wish you good health in all ways. I will watch from a distance—respectfully and without being a creeper—from behind my tried-and-true N95.—MF

Best Industry To Sublimate Your Rock Star Dreams in: Cannabis

Daedalus Howell

Mar 24, 2021

Best Industry To Sublimate Your Rock Star Dreams in: CannabisLast month, cannabis website Leafly released its annual jobs report, which showed that despite the pandemic and the economy going into slo-mo, the legal cannabis job sector sprouted up 32%, to 321,000 workers, by the end of 2020. To that end, those working in the legal cannabis trade—including those who directly service the industry, such as accountants and PR pros—currently outnumber electrical engineers, EMTs and paramedics, or dentists in the U.S. Even more pipe-dropping is the fact that the industry grew a whopping 71% through 2020 and took in $18.3 billion in revenue. For perspective, that “approaches the size of the recorded-music business,” writes cannabis columnist Dan Mitchell of our sister paper the East Bay Express. Apparently the music biz only booked a measly $20 billion in 2019 according to the Recording Industry of America. Looks like it might be high time to put down the guitar and pick up a career in cannabis which—if you’re like any of the aspiring rock stars I know—you’re already kind of doing. Amirite?—DH

Best Damn Media Personality: Steve Jaxon, The Drive, KSRO

Daedalus Howell

Mar 24, 2021

Best Damn Media Personality: Steve Jaxon, The Drive, KSRO

I fully admit that this particular “Best Of” selection may read more like a personal Valentine than a scrupulously researched exercise in journalistic integrity. In fact, not only can I guarantee a direct and provable conflict of interest, I can promise I’ve abided by none of the ethics and standards in practice expected of accredited members of the media. I accede without reservation, that, at this moment, as a journalist, I’m less Woodward and Bernstein, and more Lenny and Squiggy. Though some North Bay readers may have used their votes to recognize another deserving local radio professional as “best media personality,” only an editor, such as myself, can declare The Best Damn Media Personality. And so it is, as both fan and friend, that I declare Steve Jaxon, the host of The Drive on KSRO, the Best Damn Media Personality of the North Bay. An award-winning daily dose of news, politics, comedy, music and arts, Jaxon’s The Drive also features our weekly segment, The Boho Buzz. With both the personality and pipes—the best in the biz, as it were—Jaxon fills not just the ears of the North Bay, but also its hearts.—DH