Letters to the Editor: June 27, 2018

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Letters to the Editor: June 27, 2018

Plan on It

Planning is politics, especially in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is sometimes a “shield” here in Sonoma County to try and protect us, and nature, from bad political decisions (“The Sword and the Shield,” June 20). Poor planning, such as building houses on ridges in Fountain Grove, can lead to tragic consequences, as recently witnessed with last year’s fires. It is a sad fact that in our county greed rules, money talks and the biggest money has the strongest voice.

Now the “big money” wants to claim it is CEQA causing the “housing crisis.” Respectful disagreement can show the biggest problem is actually money; rather, the lack of financing for affordable housing, which is, and has been, the problem since at least 2008. According to a recent Business Insider article by Akin Oyedele on
June 20, 2018, “Housing in the U.S. has not been this unaffordable since property values were in free fall 10 years ago.” The article cites Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions reporting, “Mortgage rates hit their highest level in seven years last month, and the national average 30-year fixed rate is now above 4.4 percent, according to Bankrate.com.” This slows lending.

The financial aspect of funding housing is more onerous than environmental constraints for many California building projects. “Big money voices” in Santa Rosa are now out flogging CEQA and the Endangered Species Act for protecting the California tiger salamander as reasons for the shortage of housing construction in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County. This is a cynical canard. There are numerous examples of projects being delayed by lack of funding, even when there are no CEQA or Endangered Species Act protection requirements. Many projects in Santa Rosa have been given incentives such as density bonuses and variances from local land-use controls, but still aren’t going forward. Others proceed slowly due to financing delays.

Take the example of housing development near Railroad Square in Santa Rosa. No tiger salamanders there, but approved projects are still stalled. By planners or money?

Duane De Witt
Santa Rosa

Political Grandstanding

Is bringing on Erin Brockovich another tactic to divert additional responsibilities away from those like the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors? Besides local attorney Roy Miller casting total blame on PG&E, we now have attorney Noreen Evans saying Ms. Brockovich “understands PG&E’s pattern of corporate behavior” and “pattern of malfeasance.” This from a member of a large law firm.

Does this malfeasance include making sure you have electricity and gas to your home and office 24/7, Ms. Evans? I want justice to prevail and to allow the facts to be presented and the responsibility spread around to all respective parties. It is not just PG&E.

Evans and Brockovich’s rock-star media tour announcing “her high-profile participation in the lawsuit against PG&E” is nothing short of grandstanding and vaudeville-type showmanship. It is no secret who really will financially benefit from all of this.

It seems now the biggest concern for those anti-PG&E activists and our so-called elected leaders is, what movie star will play them in the next upcoming disaster flick.

S. R. Finnegan

Sebastopol

Write to us at le*****@******an.com.

Hello, Dollie

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Hello, Dollie

In her everyday life, Santa Rosa’s Kenyetta Todd is a 53-year-old grandmother and military veteran living with PTSD. But when she takes the stage, she transforms into Dangerous Dollie, a burlesque character Todd has developed over the last decade.

Todd performs this weekend at North Bay Cabaret’s four-year anniversary show in Santa Rosa. “I love the North Bay Cabaret because it gives me a creative outlet,” Todd says. “It’s a safe place for people to showcase their creativity.”

Born in Philadelphia, Todd moved to California in 1992, and was stationed at the Coast Guard’s Training Center Petaluma in Two Rock. When she got out of the military in 1996, she stayed in Sonoma County.

Though she’s long held a love for dance and costume design, Todd never thought to combine the two into burlesque performance—which mixes those elements in stage routines that involve bawdy humor and striptease—until her friends threw a pole-dancing class and party for her 45th birthday.

“They had another class called burlesque dancing and I took that class,” she says, “and the next thing you know, I was asked to be in a show, and I’ve been in shows ever since then.”

Also an avid cosplayer, Todd frequently designs and creates elaborate costumes and attends events in character.

“Funny thing is, in the military I was a test model for the new uniforms for women, so I helped them tailor the costumes there—well, might as well call them costumes,” Todd says with a laugh. “I’ve always had a hand in sewing, and [with burlesque], I can fluctuate from costume design to music and more.”

One thing in particular she loves about burlesque, she says, is that “it doesn’t always have to be sexy; it can be funny, it can be political—it’s welcoming for any kind of artistry you want to present.”

Aside from Todd’s frequent appearances at the North Bay Cabaret, she’s performed as Dangerous Dollie at events like the Folsom Street Fair and the recent Pride event in San Francisco.

Joining Todd onstage at the upcoming North Bay Cabaret show will be a wide range of performers, including bellydancer Pauline Persichilli, local musician Big Kitty, and Angelique Benicio, a visual and performance artist from San Rafael who will debut a new art piece called The Carnival of Lost Memories.

“There are a lot of creative people, and everybody’s looking for a stage,” Todd says. “The North Bay is a really nice place if you’ve never been on a stage—everybody is welcoming. The positivity is wonderful.”

Ticket to Paradise

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Ticket to Paradise

Transcendence Theatre Company opens its seventh season of Broadway Under the Stars in Jack London State Park with Stairway to Paradise, the first of four staged concert events scheduled this year.

The company takes performers with Broadway, touring company, film and television experience and creates an original themed musical revue around them. This year’s theme is “Every Moment Counts” and director-choreographer Tony Gonzalez has designed 20-plus production numbers full of memorable moments. The Transcendence playlist includes Broadway show tunes, a mix of recent and past pop hits, classic rock and specialty numbers. They’re all done in Broadway-style, occasionally with a twist. It often works, but sometimes it doesn’t.

The first act runs the gamut from numbers from South Pacific, The Wiz, and Victor/Victoria to “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” and “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” by Paul Simon. Highlights include a recreation of the famous Judy Garland/Barbra Streisand duet of “Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again” with Courtney Markowitz and Shaleah Adkisson, and Christine Lavin’s popular “Air Conditioner” song, also done by Adkisson with Tim Roller.

The act ends on a local note with a performance of “Everything,” a tribute song written by songwriters Mark Beynon and Joe Label, and the Transcendence version of “Oklahoma,” which morphs the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic into “Oh, Sonoma!”

The second act includes numbers from Cabaret, Into the Woods and The Sound of Music mixed with Justin Timberlake, Van Halen and, in the evening’s one clear misstep, Don McLean’s “American Pie.” Sorry guys, but perky, Cheshire cat–like grinning performers singing “This’ll be the day that I die” just doesn’t work for me. It’s a little creepy.

Things snap back with a jaunty Michael Linden performing Drew Gasparini’s “A Little Bit” and large-scale numbers with Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling” and Van Halen’s “Right Now” before concluding with “Finale B” from Rent.

Dress in layers, pack a picnic, indulge in some wine or food purchased from local food trucks and vintners serving on-site, then sit back and enjoy a unique North Bay entertainment experience.

Rating (out 5 five): ★★★★

Rock the Fourth

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Rock the Fourth

If nothing else, the Fourth of July is one of the loudest holidays of the year, with booming fireworks commemorating America’s birthday everywhere you look.

In the North Bay, many of these fireworks are accompanied by live music, and this year’s selection of Fourth of July concerts includes popular local bands, lively community celebrations, long-standing family traditions and more.

In Sebastopol, the skies light up a day early at the 45th annual Fireworks Extravaganza & Music Festival, hosted by the Kiwanis Club on July 3. Music lovers can come together on the football field at Analy High School to hear the dance-inducing music of Buzzy Martin & the Buzztones and the bluesy licks of Volker Strifler beginning at 6pm.

The next day, Sebastopol embraces the idea of “United We Stand” at the seventh annual Peacetown Summer Concert series kick-off at Ives Park. Jim Corbett, best known locally as the founder of music education and events organization Mr. Music Foundation, runs Peacetown with a strong commitment to neighborly camaraderie, and this season’s opening concert—dubbed an “(Inter)dependence Day” event—honors that notion and includes music from cordial Sonoma County artists Jon Gonzales, the Big Fit (formerly known as Frobeck), Bottle Shock and the Poyntlyss Sistars beginning at noon and playing until 8pm.

Another neighborhood staple in Sonoma County, Santa Rosa’s long-running “Red, White & Boom” fireworks show at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds features North Bay favorites the Pat Jordan Band, the Dylan Black Project and Wonderbread 5 taking the stage alongside dozens of local vendors to set the mood for fireworks.

The Sonoma-Marin Fairgrounds in Petaluma also hosts a free Fourth of July fireworks show with local rockers the Grain and the Highway Poets belting out soulful, swaggering sets of music with Lagunitas beer and local food on hand.

Napa Valley’s offerings of Independence Day parties start early, with the Symphony & Salsa Celebration on July 1 at the CIA at Copia in Napa. The free outdoor show boasts Symphony Napa Valley performing patriotic selections like “Stars & Stripes,” while Bay Area veteran Latin band Candela play their signature high-energy originals that get the crowds moving, followed by a pyrotechnic display.

In St. Helena, the Fourth features genre-bending Americana act Dead Winter Carpenters (pictured) sweating it out at the Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch as part of the seasonal Bluegrass-Fed Concert series. Fans can sit on the lawn and enjoy a delectable dinner with the music, before fireworks go off at nearby Crane Park.

In Session

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In Session

Does craft brew have a refreshment gap, when summer days get hotter but the category seems to bring little but ever-stronger IPA, double IPA and triple IPA to the picnic table?

I picked a day widely advertised as the hottest day of the year thus far to conduct a rigorous test of local craft brews chosen for their nod to a refreshing, or lower-alcohol, “session” style of beer, matched against a regular IPA counterpart and the one-time king of summertime beer drinking.

Bear Republic Pace Car Racer vs. Lagunitas Sumpin’ Easy Pace Car is the new “sessionable” version of Racer 5 IPA, the idea being that you can drink more of it, hurray, without melting too fast under the dual assault of solar radiation and dehydration from IPA’s higher alcohol content. Although the lightest of this group in alcohol by volume (abv), at 4 percent, amber-gold Pace Car also presents the most substantial IPA impression with a fresh, floral hop aroma and dry finish. This is the one if you want that big, dry IPA sensation without the big abv. Sumpin’ Easy is the 5.7 percent abv version of Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’—a sort of wheated IPA. Fruity, floral hops—hayride flavor bubblegum?—lead to a tangy, fresh beer with just an echo of the sweetness of the 7.5 percent “Little.”

Bud Light vs. Fogbelt Zephyr Gose A whiff of the erstwhile “King of Beers” brings me back to a summer job I once had in a corn-processing plant. It’s reasonably inoffensive, but not, after all, the top refresher. Reminiscent of the sour aroma of the bacterial beverage my hippie neighbor was growing in a jar in his kitchen that same summer, the Fogbelt Zephyr is an update on an old beer style. Although it’s brewed with apricots, the result is not tutti-frutti, and the tart flavors come together with appealing, fine-bubbled effervescence at 4.5 percent abv. Worth adding to the picnic table.

Lagunitas Daytime Fractional IPA vs. Lagunitas IPA It’s dog-eat-dog with these two. Daytime has a floral hop aroma but less of a dry finish than Pacer. At 4.65 percent abv, it’s a lighter than the 6.2 percent IPA, which is, oddly, less overtly hoppy. Smooth and inoffensive—like the big beer brands seem to be only in their fresh-poured, after-the-tour samples—Daytime should be the baseline of summer beer.

Anderson Valley Summer Solstice The outlier here is a dark amber ale with natural flavors and spices added—wait, isn’t that for winter solstice? Actually, this cream ale is one of my favorites for early summer evening refreshment when the heat lets up and the light begins to dim—or is that just the beer?

Supreme Court Rejects Sonoma County Bid to Drop Lopez Lawsuit

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Supreme Court Rejects Sonoma County Bid to Drop Lopez Lawsuit

The Supreme Court this morning denied a petition that asked for a writ of certiorari from the high court to set aside a lower court ruling regarding the actions of Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) officer Erick Gelhaus. The police sergeant was involved in a 2013 shooting of a teenager carrying a replica AK-47 in Santa Rosa while he was a deputy on patrol in Moorland. The court’s ruling appears to indicate that the last of Sonoma County’s legal options may have been exhausted and it will either have to settle with the family of Andy Lopez in an ongoing federal civil-rights lawsuit, or participate in a trial to determine whether Gelhaus should be granted qualified immunity for his role in the incident. The county has now lost in pleadings before the U.S. District Court, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and now, the Supreme Court. It’s a big blow to the county, and SCSO, given that court-watchers were increasingly convinced in recent days that the conservative court would rebuke the 9th Circuit’s ruling that there were use-of-force issues in the case that ought to be sorted out out by a jury. Here’s the ruling:

June 21: Deep Noir in Santa Rosa

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June 21: Deep Noir in Santa Rosa

As a psychologist and media educator, Terry Ebinger takes a unique approach to film studies in her Cinema & Psyche classes; blending film, history, psychology, cultural anthropology and more. This summer, she presents a new series, “Masterworks of Noir,” that focuses on the art of the heist in classic crime films like The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, Dog Day Afternoon and others. Go deep in exploring existential parables and everyman sagas when Cinema & Psyche’s program kicks off on Thursday, June 21, at Santa Rosa Junior College, 1501 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. $135 for six weeks. cinemaandpsyche.com.

June 22: Books as Art in Sebastopol

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June 22: Books as Art in Sebastopol

This week is your chance to finally judge a book by its cover, as the Sebastopol Center for the Arts gathers three bookmaking and book-art themed exhibits featuring local and international artists. In the main gallery, “Bibliophoria V” shows off visual and sculptural re-interpretations of books, their components and methods of making. In gallery II, “Blind Stitching” and “In Touch with Art” feature textile works by artists with vision loss. Gallery III’s “Bound & Unbound” includes works by the Sonoma County Book Arts Guild. All shows open with a reception on Friday, June 22, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol. 6pm. 707.829.4797.

June 22: Birthday Music in Petaluma

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June 22: Birthday Music in Petaluma

Ever since his time in the Wildwood Boys with Jerry Garcia and his co-founding of New Riders of the Purple Sage in the 1960s, David Nelson’s place in Bay Area music history has spanned rock, bluegrass, country and more. Fronting the David Nelson Band for 25 years, Nelson turns 75 this year and celebrates both milestones with a massive concert featuring the members of the band and several special surprise guests on hand to help blow out the candles. Friday, June 22, at Mystic Theatre & Music Hall, 23 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. 7:30pm. $50. 707.775.6048.

June 22: Laugh with Pride in Napa

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June 22: Laugh with Pride in Napa

New York City is the place to be if you’re a standup comedian, and one of the city’s hottest standups right now is Emma Willmann. She’s been named one of the “Top 10 Funniest Women in NYC” by Time Out New York magazine, appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and currently co-hosts the podcast Inside the Closet, in which she talks about being a member of the LGBT-plus community. This week, Willmann travels from the big apple to wine country for a special Pride event on Friday, June 22, at Blue Note, 1030 Main St., Napa. 7pm and 9pm. $20 and up. 707.603.1258.

Letters to the Editor: June 27, 2018

Plan on It Planning is politics, especially in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is sometimes a "shield" here in Sonoma County to try and protect us, and nature, from bad political decisions ("The Sword and the Shield," June 20). Poor planning, such as building houses on ridges in Fountain Grove, can lead to tragic...
Read more

Hello, Dollie

In her everyday life, Santa Rosa's Kenyetta Todd is a 53-year-old grandmother and military veteran living with PTSD. But when she takes the stage, she transforms into Dangerous Dollie, a burlesque character Todd has developed over the last decade. Todd performs this weekend at North Bay Cabaret's four-year anniversary show in Santa Rosa. "I love the North Bay Cabaret because...
Read more

Ticket to Paradise

Transcendence Theatre Company opens its seventh season of Broadway Under the Stars in Jack London State Park with Stairway to Paradise, the first of four staged concert events scheduled this year. The company takes performers with Broadway, touring company, film and television experience and creates an original themed musical revue around them. This year's theme is "Every Moment Counts" and...
Read more

Rock the Fourth

If nothing else, the Fourth of July is one of the loudest holidays of the year, with booming fireworks commemorating America's birthday everywhere you look. In the North Bay, many of these fireworks are accompanied by live music, and this year's selection of Fourth of July concerts includes popular local bands, lively community celebrations, long-standing family traditions and more. In Sebastopol,...
Read more

In Session

Does craft brew have a refreshment gap, when summer days get hotter but the category seems to bring little but ever-stronger IPA, double IPA and triple IPA to the picnic table? I picked a day widely advertised as the hottest day of the year thus far to conduct a rigorous test of local craft brews chosen for their nod to...
Read more

Supreme Court Rejects Sonoma County Bid to Drop Lopez Lawsuit

The Supreme Court this morning denied a petition that asked for a writ of certiorari from the high court to set aside a lower court ruling regarding the actions of Sonoma County Sheriff's Office (SCSO) officer Erick Gelhaus. The police sergeant was involved in a 2013 shooting of a teenager carrying a replica AK-47 in Santa Rosa while he...
Read more

June 21: Deep Noir in Santa Rosa

As a psychologist and media educator, Terry Ebinger takes a unique approach to film studies in her Cinema & Psyche classes; blending film, history, psychology, cultural anthropology and more. This summer, she presents a new series, “Masterworks of Noir,” that focuses on the art of the heist in classic crime films like The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, Dog Day...
Read more

June 22: Books as Art in Sebastopol

This week is your chance to finally judge a book by its cover, as the Sebastopol Center for the Arts gathers three bookmaking and book-art themed exhibits featuring local and international artists. In the main gallery, “Bibliophoria V” shows off visual and sculptural re-interpretations of books, their components and methods of making. In gallery II, “Blind Stitching” and “In...
Read more

June 22: Birthday Music in Petaluma

Ever since his time in the Wildwood Boys with Jerry Garcia and his co-founding of New Riders of the Purple Sage in the 1960s, David Nelson’s place in Bay Area music history has spanned rock, bluegrass, country and more. Fronting the David Nelson Band for 25 years, Nelson turns 75 this year and celebrates both milestones with a massive...
Read more

June 22: Laugh with Pride in Napa

New York City is the place to be if you’re a standup comedian, and one of the city’s hottest standups right now is Emma Willmann. She’s been named one of the “Top 10 Funniest Women in NYC” by Time Out New York magazine, appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and currently co-hosts the podcast Inside the Closet,...
Read more
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