Debriefer: April 15, 2015

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Debriefer: April 15, 2015

GATEKEEPERS

Marin County officials shut down the Western Gate Book Common and Teahouse for operating without all its permits in order. Co-owner Scott Traffas tells Debriefer via email that he’s working toward a resolution and hopes to be officially up and running before summer.

The Western Gate swung open late last year as a sort of soft opening. The Japanese-style teahouse is located in a tiny strip mall that used to house a pop-up consignment shop. This paper wrote a profile, then the Point Reyes Light wrote them up. Someone in Marin County must be able to read, since the county then showed up and said: Um, you need a permit to serve tea, yo. Whoops.

But you can’t keep a good idea down—and the Western Gate is a great one. Traffas hopes to cultivate a sort of community space at the edge of West Marin, a spiritual kind of welcome mat, with tea and great books, and conversation too.

“From here it looks like a mid- to late-May grand opening,” Traffas writes. “From what I saw during our prelude, I’m feeling good about the overall project. Unless the county really throws a wrench into it, I feel confident we are going to be able to bring something creative and vital into being.”

CLASSROOM IMPASSE

Santa Rosa public school teachers are singing the post-recession blues this week as contract negotiations with the school board remain at an impasse and state mediators are on the way to try and break the logjam. On April 15, all parties will meet behind close doors to try and hash out the details of a new contract; the current one runs out June 30.

Santa Rosa Teachers Association president Amy Stern says a major haggle point with the district is over medical benefits. According to a district-funded study from November 2014, Santa Rosa City Schools’ salaries are on a par with others around the state—about $80,000 a year. The study asks: “Are benefits competitive in the district? No, they aren’t.”

The two sides tangled over a longstanding arrangement where the district doesn’t provide health insurance but instead kicks a $1,400 annual subsidy for teachers to purchase their own. That arrangement has run its course in the face of rising healthcare costs and salaries that can’t keep up. The district offered a 2 percent retroactive wage hike; teachers rejected that and said they want a 5 percent hike, split between wages and the healthcare subsidy.

“We’ve agreed that we can’t agree,” says Stern. She adds that a teachers’ strike is the least-desired outcome for all parties. The contract that expires June 30 has a no-strike clause in it, she says. That clause would expire along with the rest of the contract, should it come to that. Stern says it probably won’t: “I don’t think the teachers or the district want to get it to that point.”

Do No Pharma

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Do No Pharma

In late February, former Santa Rosa Junior College student Jane Moad lodged a series of complaints with the state and SRJC against the Mountain Vista Farm alcohol and drug rehabilitation center in Glen Ellen.

The complaints from Moad allege that the residential treatment center utilized college interns, herself included, to dispense medication to residents, something she says they were not legally authorized to do. She also alleges that medications were dispensed to residents who didn’t have a prescription for them. Those medications, Moad says, included Valium.

Moad, 55, was an intern and then a per-diem counselor at the facility last year when she was instructed, she says, to dispense medications to residents. Moad says she dispensed the medications under protest until she was terminated on Feb. 2.

“My issue isn’t that they have medication or that they dispense it,” she says. “My issue is that there’s no training. Within a month of working there, they had me giving out Valium.”

Moad is no longer associated with the school or the rehab center, one of the nation’s oldest. She’s a recovering alcoholic and an attorney who says she went back to school after she “decided to use my time and energy to help people who have similar problems to me.”

Moad’s complaint, filed with the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) by Sonoma attorney Robert A. Edwards, alleged that there was a medical cart at Mountain Vista Farm that contained prescription drugs, and that residents without prescriptions for these drugs were able to access them.

“[P]rescription drugs such as diazepam and Suboxone are kept in a middle drawer of the cart, the property of no particular client but with past clients’ names attached to prescription bottles,” Moad alleged in her complaint. “[T]he facility felt it could dispense these ‘leftover’ medications to any and all clients as needed, even without a prescription.”

Spokeswoman for DHCS Carol Sloan couldn’t confirm or deny whether they had received Moad’s complaint. Moad provided the Bohemian with a letter from the state dated March 5 that says they did.

Moad also filed her complaint with SRJC, which conducted an investigation of its own. The college clarified its protocols for interns following Moad’s complaint, which she also sent to the Novato-based Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC).

That organization provides accreditation to schools like
SRJC and is regulated by the
U.S. Department of Education.

“Our role here is to nudge a resolution to this complaint,” says ACCJC vice president Jack Ford.

Junior college spokeswoman Ellen Maremont Silver says resolution has occurred. The college offers internships throughout the area, she says, and even though the school’s priority is to protect its interns, “it is not possible for us to do an extensive legal screening of every company and know every situation.”

“Mountain Vista has since revised their polices,” says Maremont Silver. “We’ve confirmed that they no longer request that any interns handle patient medications. We’re comfortable with that. We also looked to see if we could do anything differently here. We reviewed how we were handling internships. We have very clear practices and procedures to protect students, faculty and staff.”

The college has two interns serving at Mountain Vista this semester, she says. According to the new protocols, they “will not be permitted to dispense, administer or handle in any way patient prescription medication.”

The college also pledged to include the relevant state laws that govern rehab centers into its curriculum, and relevant faculty at SRJC are now subjected to training on the state laws too.

Sloan, the DHCS spokeswoman, says that non-medical rehabilitation facilities such as Mountain Vista are subject to state licensing requirements, and that clients are permitted to see doctors and take prescribed medications. She drew a distinction between Mountain Vista and places like the Betty Ford Clinic, which is a licensed medical facility.

In an email, Sloan detailed the licensing requirements for places like Mountain Vista: “Medications at DHCS-licensed facilities are self-administered, must have the proper prescription label and must be prescribed to the person taking it. Facilities may store all resident medications, and facility staff members may assist with a resident’s self-administration of medication.”

Mountain Vista Farm’s founder, Lee Hamilton, defended the practices at the facility, which has historically emphasized the 12-step, Alcoholics Anonymous approach to addiction. The center gets generally high marks for offering a comparatively affordable 30-day treatment in the neighborhood of $10,000, according to online resources that rate rehab clinics.

“This is a non-medical facility, and this state takes a lot of care to tell us what we can’t do,” says Hamilton. Mountain Vista is “set up for non-licensed people to do the oversight of the self-administration.”

Hamilton says interns are not allowed to dispense medication, and that Moad was wearing two hats while engaged at the clinic—intern and then paid staffer. “It’s not our problem if she was confused over the role she played,” he says.

Hamilton stressed that medications are not being given to residents who don’t have a prescription for them. “That is not happening at Mountain Vista Farm at this time” he says.

“If that was happening, the staff certainly had a big correction,” adds Hamilton. “We’re really clear with our staff that medications may not be borrowed.”

The California Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes in 2012 published a report called “Rogue Rehab” that was critical of DHCS for its regulation of residential rehab programs. The study was prompted in part by a series of 2008 deaths at a Riverside County facility, and linked at least one of them to a resident there who died after taking an unprescribed antidepressant. The report said this was not an isolated incident, and examined the “widespread flouting of the state’s ban on medical care at residential drug and alcohol programs.”

Sloan says that the “DHCS has taken several actions to address recommendations in the ‘Rogue Rehab’ report. DHCS implemented a new death investigation policy and procedure and also implemented a quality review process to ensure that red flags are detected during the application review process and during routine licensing. Currently, residential facilities licensed by DHCS are statutorily non-medical and medications are not allowed to be dispensed by staff.”

Debriefer can be found online at Bohemian.com this week.

Artist Sanctuary

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Artist Sanctuary

In the calm of the windswept Marin headlands, an artist’s imagination can run as wild as the flora and fauna outside. Indeed, the Headlands Center for the Arts campus at Fort Barry is such a place where artists can fully immerse themselves in their art.

In operation since 1982, the 2,100-acre arts center comprises nine rehabilitated military barracks (circa 1907); boasts subsidized artist living quarters and studio spaces with expansive views; and features exhibitions, lectures, performances and communal dining.

Open to artists of all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, the nonprofit strives to invest in artists whose work will have an impact on the cultural landscape at large.

With the rarity of subsidized opportunities, it’s not such a bad idea to start rethinking about writing that book, filming that documentary, staging that production or producing that art collection you’ve been contemplating.

“Headlands is honored to be very beloved by the local community, and is the recipient of long-time support from many foundations and individuals here in the bay, as well as nationally and internationally,” says communications and outreach manager Vanessa Kauffman. “That said, we run on a very lean budget and are experiencing some growth which requires increased support and revenue.”

Designed for Bay Area–based artists, the Affiliate Artists program provides partially subsidized studio space and public presentation opportunities for artists like David Janesko. Formerly with the U.S. Geological Survey, Janesko is a geologist and interdisciplinary artist focused on engineering test models that manipulate sound, light and found objects into geologically based, multimedia works of art.

Offering geological tours of the Marin Headlands landscape is one of Janesko’s pastimes; experimenting with obsolete mechanical products and different types of lenses is another. Other works in progress include earthquake sound recordings, a collage made from crude oil spillage, and comparative clay models that outline the growth rate of a fingernail in tandem with changing landscapes. Eager to explore as many ideas as he can during his time at Headlands, Janesko confides, “This is all I really want to do.”

Each year, the Headlands Center for the Arts awards 45 local, national and international artists in residence with fully subsidized four- to 10-week residencies that include housing, flexible studio space, chef-prepared meals and occasional travel and living stipends, when available.

Among the artists in residence selected for the summer of 2015 is director-playwright Tina Satter of New York, founder of the critically acclaimed Half Straddle theatre company.

Overjoyed at being invited to the Headlands this summer, Satter admits, “My normal life living in NYC is very hectic and fractured, bouncing between rehearsals, teaching, the administrative needs of my company and just day-to-day survival. At Headlands, I will have the amazing luxury of getting to focus a majority of my time on my creative process, and will get to work in a way that allows me to deeply consider ideas, work with given elements and test them out before it’s worked on collaboratively.

“The biggest thing is how it will hopefully train me to slow down,” Satter adds.

Satter’s theatrical troupe delves into feminist and queer dynamics in relation to the larger social fabric. “I think of the projects we make as performative laboratories to deconstruct the preconceived—we’re always trying to make something you’ve never quite seen before and working to reframe known idioms and situations usually presented to us onstage.”

A prime example of Satter’s distinct theatrical aesthetic is her 2013 production House of Dance, a four-person play featuring the choreography of Hannah Heller, which tells the story of a young transgender tap dance student preparing for a competition.

During her tenure at Headlands, Satter will be working on the conceptual design, script and lyrics for her upcoming production Ghost Rings, a theatrical song cycle about two female friends, one of whom wills the universe to make her pregnant with the other person’s child.

In describing this new production, Satter says, “The show creates a narrative of friendship, desire, parenthood and different kinds of family, with the song cycle designed to operate as a live-action graphic novel that allows the piece to be both harrowingly funny and moving.”

Slated for an April 2016 premiere, Ghost Rings will be performed at New York Live Arts with musician-composer Chris Giarmo.

To date, more than 1,200 artists have passed through the Headlands Center. Fancy seeing your name among these artists? Here’s your chance. Interested candidates in the 2016 Artist in Residence program may submit applications between April 21 and June 5, 2015.

For more information, visit Headlands.org.

Body and Soul

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Body and Soul

Living in the North Bay, it can sometimes be easy to forget what makes this place such an attraction to the world at large—great food and wine, beautiful scenery, myriad outdoor activities, fine art and spiritual enrichment. It’s a feast for body and soul. We live here, so why not take advantage of all the North Bay has to offer, and be a tourist in your own backyard? No need to travel. As we savor the spring and anticipate the coming summer, we thought we’d survey the many ways to feed your mind and body in the North Bay, or more often than not, feed both at the same time. —Stett Holbrook

Go Climb a Rock

In the pantheon of outdoor enthusiasts, none are quite like the close-knit rock-climbing community. Perhaps it’s the unique way they face and overcome real fear in their endeavors, perhaps it’s the singular exhilaration of reaching a supposedly unreachable goal, most likely it’s a combination of all of the above and more. No matter the reason, the one thing that’s quite clear is that when someone falls in love with rock climbing, it’s a lifelong affair.

Here in the North Bay especially, with no shortage of amazingly rugged natural terrain, rock climbers are everywhere, and anchoring this community is Vertex Climbing Center in Santa Rosa. Built in 1995, Vertex was one of the first climbing gyms in the Bay Area, and it’s the place to learn anything and everything about the ever-expanding movement. The indoor climbing walls will test your mettle whether you’re a beginner or an expert. The training also includes yoga and breathing classes to help with mental concentration.

Once you’ve got your training out of the way, it’s time to take it outside, and Vertex leads the way and provides the gear for several outdoor climbing experiences around the North Bay. Try your skills either on the two-day-long Sonoma Coast Bouldering tour, the Anchors climb at the immense Goat Rock near Jenner and the Leading Edge climb at Mount St. Helena in Calistoga. Just don’t look down. 3358 Coffey Lane, Santa Rosa. 707.573.1608.—C.S.

Take a
Cooking Class

“Farm-to-table” is the overused phrase of the moment. It’s supposed to connote a virtuous restaurant that sources its ingredients from local purveyors. But if you really want to revel in the cornucopia of local farms and ranches, don’t leave it to a restaurant to do the cooking. Do it yourself.

Even though the North Bay is chock-full of great restaurants, time and budget require us to cook for ourselves most of the time. But it’s easy to get caught in a cooking rut and make the same old thing. I know I do. Goat cheese soufflé and roast chicken became dinnertime staples of my repertoire, so much so that my family protested because I made it so often. So I had to reach for a few cookbooks to mix it up. What I really needed was inspiration. And I knew where to get it. Located just off the Sonoma Square, Ramekins offers a wide range of cooking classes each week.

This month there’s an intro to Burmese cuisine and rustic Italian cooking. Next month, they’ve got classes on summer sushi, Lebanese barbecue and craft cocktails with chef David Bush and mixologist Jeremy Sommier from Oso restaurant. Ramekins even offers a tour of local carnicerias. Clearly this is no ordinary cooking school. Most classes are between $95 and $125. If you still lack for inspiration, you’ll have no one but yourself to blame. 450 W. Spain St., Sonoma. 707.933.0450.—S.H.

Fly a Plane

We all love the scenic beauty of the North Bay to be sure, but even if you’ve traversed every inch of this area on foot or on bike, you haven’t seen everything. Sometimes, to appreciate this area in full you have to get high—really high, like 10,000 feet high. That’s where North Coast Air comes in. Located at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, this flight school and aircraft-rental business not only offers scenic and educational air tours that span the Golden Gate to Napa Valley, but North Coast can take you as far as you want to go with pilot training and schooling, so you can take to the skies on your own.

These two- and four-seat Cessna planes are a lot different than the bulky commercial flights you’re thinking of, however. The rush of the engine and thrill of banking alongside a hilltop is a breathtaking experience. If you’re not too sure about all this, an introductory flight is the best way to get off the ground. Meet an instructor, meet an airplane, get in the seat and see for yourself if flying is for you.

If you fall for flying small aircraft like so many others have, North Coast Air also helps with the FAA schooling and paperwork as well as the flight training, and within weeks you could be a certified airman (or woman). North Coast Air flies seven days a week, and you can book a tour by calling 707.542.8687. Find them at 5010 Flightline Drive, Santa Rosa.—C.S.

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Learn to Surf

Admit it. You’ve always wanted to learn how to surf. Or maybe you took a few lessons in Hawaii or Mexico but never stepped foot on a board again once you got back home. Sure, the water is cold here, but modern wetsuit technology makes that moot. Shark attacks? You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning. Stop making excuses and get in the water. As a Californian, it’s your duty to do what landlocked landlubbers can only dream of.

The coasts of Marin and Sonoma counties are generally not friendly to neophyte surfers, but that’s why God created Bolinas. Bolinas has served as the training ground for many a North Bay surfer. And it happens to be best in the summer when the water starts to warm up a few degrees. The folks over the 2 Mile Surf Shop will teach you what you need to know. The shop offers laudably small (usually three to six people), 90-minute lessons to get you in the water and on your feet, however briefly. The cost is $50. They also rent board, wetsuits and booties, and offer private instruction for $120. Lessons in humility are free. 22 Brighton Ave., Bolinas. 415.868.0264.—S.H.

Ayurvedic Alchemy

Developed thousands of years ago in India, Ayurveda is one of the oldest holistic practices of self-care, believed by many to promote good health and maintain balance among mind, body and spirit. In the North Bay, Ayurveda practitioners at the dhyana Center in Sebastopol have been creating individualized approaches to self-care through this ancient tradition that includes yoga classes, oil massages and education.

And when I say yoga, I don’t just mean 20 minutes on a mat striking poses. The bevy of classes at dhyana Center vary from the quick and energizing Yoga Alchemy to the inwardly expansive and meditative Yoga Nidri, also known as “yoga sleep.”

The dhyana Center also houses a self-care sanctuary to soak and steam your worries away and even an herbal apothecary bar and lounge where you can sip fresh and healthy “mocktails” based on Ayurvedic doshas, aka the bodily humors that make up our inner constitutions. There is also a full service treatment center where massages and warm oil are used to enhance the immune system and relax the nerves.

Ayurvedic practices also come across at the dhyana Center through a variety of educational workshops and events. Nutrition, aromatherapy and massage technique classes are all being offered throughout the year, and if you want to get serious, the center will take you on a day-long retreat called a Pancha Karma to unwind the emotional and physical stresses you’re caught up in and really get away from it all. 186 N. Main St, Sebastopol. 707.823.8818.—C.S.

Take a Winery Bike Tour

I once did a Dry Creek Valley winetasting tour on bike. It was August and about 98 degrees. I didn’t plan my ride well and there were long gaps between wineries. As I staggered into each air-conditioned tasting room, sweat poured off my body. Not a good look when you’re trying to appreciate the finer points of Dry Creek Zin. Lessons learned: Don’t bike around Healdsburg on a near triple degree afternoon, and don’t go without mapping out a route. Better yet, let someone plan your two-wheeled tour. Someone like Sonoma’s Goodtime Touring Co.

The bike tour company grew out of Penny and Doug McKesson’s bike shop, and became its own business when the bike shop closed. For $129, the five-hour guided tour includes a bike, helmet and a locally sourced picnic lunch. Each tour guide is versed in local history, wine making and cycling. The leisurely ride includes stops at small and notable wineries that aren’t available for sale outside of Sonoma. (Note that the cost doesn’t include tasting room fees.) Why join a tour rather than bring you own bike and do it on your own? Convenience for one. Lugging a bike can be a hassle. An even if you do, you may not have a bike rack.

If you don’t mind a few stares and nerd catcalls, they also offer Segway winery tours through their partnership with Sonoma Adventures. You might look a little goofy as you drive one of the pushmower-looking devices around, but you’ll be in little danger of breaking out into a sweat. 17898 Riverside Drive, Sonoma. 707.938.2020.—S.H.

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Three Times
the Soul

The idea here is that you’ll get your spiritual house in order, and find that one special spot, or maybe a few of them, to play the role of place-based soother of the soul. Or at least that’s the goal. I’ve always been a sucker for a spiritual narrative that hints at the Journey—and prefer it to be set to music. I think of a lyric from Guided by Voices, “I got up at 7 o’clock / Drove myself up to the lookout rock,” as the perfect architecture on which to hang your meditative moment, your hangdog soul looking for guidance and the good foot. And coastal Marin County provides one lookout rock after another.

This is what we do in the land of aching beauty and the sublime: we find our own balance and engage with a living narrative that maintains, sustains and enhances it.

I live in a tiny seaside town in West Marin whose many spiritual benefits lend one to never want to leave—and whose residents, many of them, consider Bolinas itself to be a sacred space.

But leave I must, and over a year of departures I’ve carved out a provisional trio of points of spiritual reference that I can reach by heading in one of three directions, basically, out of town: the Frogs Hot Tubs in Fairfax, the Vedanta Retreat in Olema and Red Rocks Beach outside of Stinson Beach.

I will say that I approached a recent Sunday visit to Fairfax’s Frogs Hot Tubs (10 School St. #B, Fairfax; 415.453.7647) with a bit of trepidation. I eased the car over the super-winding Bolinas-Fairfax Road that morning with some backdrop of worry that this maiden voyage to the legendary hot-tub hippie hangout would be a frustrating mess.

I’d read online, probably on Yelp, that Russian sauna fanatics from San Francisco would descend on Frogs on Sundays, and do things like pour beer all over the sauna’s hot rocks to create steam.

This was not my vision for a peaceful, grounding sauna encounter. And by the time I got to the Frogs parking lot, I was muttering, to no one in particular, that the Russians could have the Ukraine, I just wanted a peaceful, meditative encounter with a hot sauna. I had worked up a resentment, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Not good.

So I walked in, dropped a $20 with the friendly guy at the front desk, got a towel and a tour—and the late-morning silence left me feeling more than just a little goofy, and relieved. No Russian sauna fanatics today. Whew.

The Frog’s been around since the high-holy hippie days of yore, and offers a few options for day-trippers. There are a couple of private hot tubs for rent, a public hot tub and a couple of saunas. The top deck is a clothing-optional, sun-worship zone with some chaise lounges and umbrellas. It’s a comfortable and easygoing atmosphere, total “body beautiful” zone with ample shapes and sizes and orientations wandering around. Your experience may differ, and online reviews do pop up with the occasional creep sighting.

The sauna on this blessed morning was empty and sweltering and provided the perfect tonic for an insistently brow-furrowed brain clattering. Sweat the assembled toxins, and clear your mind of the dark thoughts that clamor for monkey-mind annoyance at things you can’t control, such as the threat of many drunk Russians. You’ll feel lighter and looser as the sweat pours out. Now jump into that ice-cold tub of water. Yowza! Repeat until you’re blissed-out, and head to the Vedanta Retreat.

I like to think of the Vedanta Retreat (9799 Hwy. 1, Olema; 415.663.1258) as a kind of destination of intention; it’s enough to know that it’s there. Most days, I’m commuting to work up Highway 1 for the first bit of the haul to Santa Rosa—and have become intimately aware of every curve between Bolinas and the Olema turnoff onto the Sir Francis Drake. That’s a kind of meditation in itself. For the first year or so that I took the ride, I’d pass this humble little wooden sign along the way, just outside of “downtown” Olema, that announced the Vedanta Retreat. Blink and you’ll miss it.

The retreat offers stays of up to five days for people who are serious about their spiritual practice, and aren’t just scamming for a free vacation in West Marin. A Bolinas friend brought me there one afternoon for a tour late last year—and it’s a wonderfully mellow compound with all the West Marin check-offs: a creek, some cows, lots of trees and meadows. A groundskeeper let us wander around to our heart’s desire and told us if we wanted to sign on for a retreat, that we’d have to get cleared by one, maybe two, swamis.

The retreat is hooked in with the Vedanta Institute of Northern California, based in San Francisco. There’s a big house on the grounds with a library room that’s loaded down with religious tracts of all persuasion. I haven’t been back since I took the tour, but it’s enough to just see the sign along the road and know what’s going on up the dirt road, over that little bridge and around the bend—it leads to enlightenment.

Meditate on the sign as you cruise south past the retreat. Stay on Highway 1, blow past the unmarked turnoff for Bolinas, and you’ll soon be led to my favorite beach for spiritual guidance and rejuvenation, Red Rocks in Stinson.

One of my go-to meditation enablers is that I like to sit and think about the visual and aural power of the crash of the surf against big boulders. I’ve always been drawn to this idea of the very soft thing colliding with the very hard thing—and how both sides wind up giving a little. You can’t see it, but every time a crashing wave hits the boulder, the boulder gives a little of itself to the sea. I think of the dissipating sheen of water across the shimmery stone, and let go of whatever it is that needs to be let go. Ideally, this exercise is done while you are nude and in the lotus position, on top of one of those boulders, in the heat of an afternoon filled with cavorting hippies.

There’s a glut of such opportunities for those seeking a soul-scrub at the littoral edge. California’s got rocky coastline
in spades, and so there’s a subjectivity here that’s born of convenience—I live pretty close
to the beach that I’m most drawn to in these parts, just south of Stinson Beach along Highway 1. It’s the first parking lot out of town, on your right.

Red Rocks is special for a few reasons. One, you have to work a bit to get there. It’s a short hike down from Highway 1, but it’s kind of rugged and lends to a feeling of accomplishment when you finally arrive at the small and very rocky beach (look for the naked people playing Scrabble). The beach also features a kind of sea cave at the north end that you can hang out in during low tide. It’s the coolest thing.

There are numerous and well-worn gravel-and-sand perches on the beach for you and your towel. But I like to find a flat, warm rock at the edge of the shore, on an incoming tide, and let it all wash over me. I’ll eat an apple and say a prayer for a loved one who is ailing and then plunge into the cold surf—so naked it hurts.—T.G.

Cauliflower Dreamin’

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Cauliflower Dreamin’

Any vegetarian, no matter how patient and mindful he is, has once asked the question: Why, oh why can’t there be vegetarian fast food, too?

The wait is over.

Veggie Grill is a canny entrant in the fast-growing vegetarian “fast-casual” restaurant sector. Since launching in Irvine in 2007, the Santa Monica–based chain has expanded to 28 locations on the West Coast. The first North Bay outpost opened in Corte Madera in 2014.

Many items on Veggie Grill’s menu are based on “Chickin,” a product made by the Gardein company from soy protein concentrate, vital wheat gluten—both claimed to be non-GMO—and a host of other ingredients including “ancient grain flour.” The burgers contain similar ingredients.

Although they dare not print the word, Veggie Grill’s menu is also vegan—no animal products involved. Is it fast? Time from ordering to receiving food was about five minutes on one visit, 12 minutes during a busier evening.

Crispy cauliflower ($5.95) was the standout snack. Blanketed with batter and totaling 590 calories, this is surely no diet food, but it’s a tasty bite, the crunchy cauliflower neither raw nor overcooked. If you harbor a hankering for hushpuppies or deep-fried mushrooms (Brown’s Chicken, anyone?), this is, at least, a reasonably healthful alternative.

The savory kale caesar salad ($9.45) contains mostly lettuce, but unlike the insult of iceberg that most fast food joints offer as a salad, there’s leafy green romaine here. I liked the creamy, caesaresque dressing and the tempeh bacon garnish, but vegan just can’t do parmesan. Again, the mac-n-cheese ($4.65) side demonstrates why, for many of us, fake cheese is the Waterloo of vegan cuisine. Eat it fast, before the glue hardens.

The buffalo mini-wrap ($3.85), a knockoff of certain other fast food snack wraps made with more of that “chickin.” It’s a spicy but cheap thrill, a late-night snack that any intoxicated college kid could put together.

Much better is the signature Sante Fe crispy chickin’ sandwich ($10.25). The ersatz chicken patty is moist, not overly breaded, and tears to the tooth with a degree of meat realism.

Ultimately, vegetarian fast food must live or die on the cheeseburger, and Veggie Grill makes the grade with its basic VG-cheeseburger ($9.95). Slightly smoky, chunky and meaty, the burger’s only fault is that it’s a little dry. But it’s a spot-on take on the meat substitute genre of vegan fast food dreaming.

The choice of sides includes Yukon gold fries—pretty good, cut just thick enough so they aren’t saturated with grease.

But I was also asked, “Or asparagus soup with that?” With a hint of mint and some puréed texture, here’s a more than serviceable little bowl of asparagus soup—a real vegetable serving, seasonally offered as a side to a fast-food burger. Who would’ve thought we’d see the day?

Veggie Grill, 100 Corte Madera Town Center, Corte Madera. 415.945.8954.

Master of Puppets

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Master of Puppets

The handcrafted puppets in the Independent Eye’s dreamlike staging of Shakespeare’s King Lear are eerily lovely.

The aging Lear, who hands the reins of his kingdom over to his daughters, believes he is still in control of his destiny, but his family has plans of its own. Clearly, none of Shakespeare’s works is better suited to the puppet-show treatment than this, a tragedy of weak-willed people becoming puppets to their own desires and to each other, helpless in the hands of fate.

Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller of Sebastopol have worked sixteen-months on their Lear, building over 30 puppets for the production now running at the Emerald Tablet in San Francisco.

Bishop appears as Lear; Fuller, in full clown makeup and red nose, is Lear’s faithful fool. All the other characters are played by puppets, voiced and manipulated by Bishop and Fuller, the latter delivering a number of humorous, non-Shakespeare passages that serve as modern-language narration to summarize the goings on. That’s helpful, because even cut down to a slim 100 minutes, Lear is a play with a whole lot going on: dozens of primary characters, multiple sub-plots and some of Shakespeare’s loveliest and saddest writing.

What might have seemed a mere stunt in other performers’ hands is here clearly a work of passion and artistry. The puppets are truly magnificent, and at times, under Bishop and Fuller’s manipulation, their blank faces come alive with no more than a tiny adjustment of angle. It is nothing short of genius. The sound design by Fuller is
also amazing, constructed entirely from Fuller’s own voice, transformed through a vocal processor into a soundtrack of haunting reverberations and otherworldly music.

For all its visual and auditory glory, however, the production—as currently constructed—is frustratingly confusing and muddled. Though Bishop easily ranks as one of the best, most heartbreaking Lear’s I’ve ever seen, his performance is hampered by the need to play scenes against puppets he’s voicing himself (with not a lot of vocal variation from one puppet character to another) and adds to a strangely muddled flow in the proceedings. At times, it’s hard to tell who’s saying what to whom.

An additional puppeteer would free Bishop to engage and interact unencumbered. A performance this good deserves it. In the end, how much you enjoy this eerie Lear may depend on your ability to ignore the problems and simply surrender to the strange, lush beauty of it all.

Rating (out of 5): ★★★½

‘King Lear’ runs Friday and Saturday through April 25 at the Emerald Tablet. 80 Fresno St., San Francisco. Shows at 8pm. $20–$25. Tickets are available online at www.brownpapertickets.com and at the door.

A True Crime

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A True Crime

Simultaneously condemning and promoting exculpatory baloney, True Story, directed by Rupert Goold, contrasts two evildoers. One is Mike Finkel, a New York Times Magazine writer, disgraced after he used composite characters in a cover-story about modern-day slavery on the African cocoa plantations. The other is Christian Longo (played here by Palo Alto’s own James Franco). Longo was merely a multiple murderer.

Finkel (Jonah Hill) is barred forever from the Times—literally in the wilderness, since he’s hiding out in snow country in Montana. There he learns that an arrested suspect in a multiple homicide stole Finkel’s identity while he was on the run in Mexico. The reporter heads to the coast of Oregon to meet the jailed Longo, in custody as the prime suspect for killing his wife and kids.

As Finkel and Longo later collaborate on a book, we’re meant to wonder whether this suave Hannibal Franco is going to make Jonah Hill his Clarice. Franco is a lot of things, but is he scary? Is he either diabolical or scary in the banality-of-evil way, or the seductive, diabolical way? Is he indeed too self-charmed to really let the evil in?

Cinema doesn’t have to moralize, but it ought to teach us some pity. The announcement that Longo finally got published is spun as a triumph of hustle—in fact, Longo was trying to do some good, using his notoriety for an op-ed piece to allow organ donation for prisoners. I don’t fancy the way True Story shackles the viewers in a chain of guilt: you want easy answers from your newspaper, ergo you’re complicit. You want to understand the criminal mind, ergo you’re an accessory after the fact.

The movie seems small-minded in a cinematic world that contains Hitchcock’s works—say, Shadow of a Doubt—films that place a dark mirror before us, so we understand both the passions of a killer and the killer inside us.

‘True Story’ opens Friday, April 17, at Boulevard 14 Cinemas (200 C St., Petaluma; 707.762.0800) and Summerfield Cinemas (551 Summerfield Road, Santa Rosa; 707.522.0719) and at Rialto Cinemas ( 6868 McKinley Street, Sebastopol, 707.525.4840

To a T

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To a T

Born and raised in the East Bay, siblings Erika, Rachel and Chloe Tietjen of the sassy folk outfit the T Sisters have spent a lifetime harmonizing and songwriting, and it shows. Now based in Oakland and dedicated full-time to music, the band makes its way to the Occidental Center for the Arts on Saturday, April 18.

“From a young age, we sang a lot,” said Erika Tietjen. “It was my natural form of creative expression.” With both parents steeped in music and dance, the girls spent their days “experimenting with harmony without knowing it,” as Tietjen says.

The sisters also spent childhood summers immersed in musical theater camps, and by the time college separated the siblings, they were performing and writing original pieces during their summers together.

Back in the Bay Area, the sisters performed in San Francisco in 2008 when they took some of their songs to an open mic. Asked back to be the featured act, they needed a name, and Erika credits Rachel with coming up with T Sisters on the fly.

“It was never a conscious decision to become a band,” explains Tietjen. “We just continued to play music and produce shows as part of different creative communities. It happened very organically.”

After five years of playing, that organic seed bloomed in 2013 when the sisters developed into a full band and quit their day jobs.

“It was well planned; we were raised with pragmatic artistic values,” assures Tietjen. “By the time it happened, we were ready to dive in, we were antsy to work.”

For their 2014 debut album, Kindred Lines, the T Sisters brought in a bevy of guest musicians, like guitarist Grant Gordy, bassist Todd Phillips and others. “It was a very collaborative process,” says Tietjen of that album. “Now we have a much more concrete ideas about our arrangements.”

Primarily vocalists and songwriters, the sisters are now focused on creating both subtle and shifting song arrangements as well as harmonic vocals and lyrics. This new focus is apparent on their recent EP, Ready for Love, which also features an arresting a cappella cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Attics of My Life.”

The sisters also have a slew of new material, ready to be unveiled at their upcoming concert. If you can’t make the show this week, fear not; the trio will be back in the North Bay soon, playing at Oysterpalooza in Valley Ford on May 24, and the inaugural Railroad Square Music Festival in Santa Rosa on June 7.

T Sisters perform on Saturday, April 18, at the Occidental Center for the Arts, 3850 Doris Murphy Court, Occidental. 8pm. $15–$20. 707.874.9392.

Crop Report: Spring Grass

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Crop Report: Spring Grass

It’s asparagus season in Sonoma County, but outside of a few farm markets, it’s hard to find it though local sources. Why is that?

Unlike lettuce or tomatoes, perennials live for several years. The majority of farmers in Sonoma County are leasing their land. Most are pushing the limits, taking life one day at a time. In order to pay their bills, it usually makes more financial sense to grow annual crops, ones that provide multiple harvests and revenue streams each year. The thought of dedicating new ground to establishing perennials, which may not have a sellable harvest for the first two to three years, is daunting.

Paul Wirtz, farmer and owner of Paul’s Produce in Sonoma, is a bit different. Paul (pictured) has been tending land in Sonoma Valley since the 1980s and is entering his 28th season of growing beautiful, chemical-free produce, including asparagus. His is a great example of a small (less than 20 acres) family-owned farm on leased land.

The fact that Paul has asparagus is the result of several factors: his farm has a quarter-acre, triangular shaped piece of land that was underutilized; he planted a diversity of crops that allowed him to wait the initial two-three years for the asparagus to start producing; and he had a desire for a late winter/early spring revenue stream.

Because of these factors, Paul is something of an anomaly. The big question for North Bay farmers is whether they have the confidence that the land they are committing to longer-term projects will be around for them to reap the rewards. Bigger still is the question of how to get more farmers to diversify their crops and own their land.

Tim Page is a co-founder of f.e.e.d. Sonoma, a micro-regional produce distributor in Sebastopol. For more info,
visit feedsonoma.com.

It’s a Malbec World

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It’s a Malbec World

We should celebrate World Malbec Day on April 17, according to Wines of Argentina, because a bit of legislation submitted on that day in 1853 resulted, just 150 years later, in Malbec becoming that nation’s darling on the world wine market.

Malbec makes an intensely colored red that’s somewhere in between Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and is a natural choice for barbecue—or asado, as they call it down south.

To promote a “virtual tasting” that will be led on April 17 by Master Sommelier Gilles de Chambure on the wine video website, toutsuite.com, a press agent sent us a few bottles of Argentine Malbec. So we asked around for some of the local product to match them up against, and were surprised at the bounty that showed up—plus more from Argentina. Most remarkable was the varietal consistency across the continents. Here are the standouts.

Viña Cobos 2012 Bramare Luján de Cuyo Malbec ($45) Ultra–purple wine from an ultra-modern winery south of Mendoza, Argentina. Controversial, but I thought the quality aroma of graham cracker, brown bread crust and herbal notes introduced an intense, blueberry syrup palate with aplomb.★★★★

Chateau St. Jean 2012 Estate Sonoma Valley Malbec ($50) A hit of purple ink on the nose, stone, oak and char; stuffed with luscious plum compote flavor and grippy tannins, yet not too drying on the finish. ★★★★

Arrowood 2011 Sonoma County Malbec ($42) A more savory aroma, with earth, creamy blueberry and smoky oak; intense, inky fruit, easygoing finish.★★★★

Imagery Estate 2012 Upper Ridge Pine Mountain-Cloverdale Peak Malbec ($42) Graphite on the nose, at first; simple blueberry syrup; simply enjoyable.★★★½

Viña Cobos 2013 Felino Mendoza Malbec ($19) Smoky, with hints of animal that had me thinking cat fur—even though the feline-inspired label was covered for our blind tasting. Plush as a Persian cat, and the sweet, intensely plummy fruit clings to the palate.★★★½

Chateau St. Jean 2012 Alexander Valley Malbec ($40) Stone dust and savory notes; more of that Malbec fruit, but not a standout. ★★★½

Windsor Oaks 2012 Block 35 Chalk Hill Malbec ($35) I like the blackberry pastille aroma over stone; tasters were split on the very tangy, grapey, puckery finish. ★★★

Tomero 2011 Reserva Mendoza Malbec ($25) Treated to French oak, this is high style, Mendoza-style: reduced aromas resolve to savory notes; tannic and juicy. ★★★

Debriefer: April 15, 2015

GATEKEEPERS Marin County officials shut down the Western Gate Book Common and Teahouse for operating without all its permits in order. Co-owner Scott Traffas tells Debriefer via email that he's working toward a resolution and hopes to be officially up and running before summer. The Western Gate swung open late last year as a sort of soft opening. The Japanese-style teahouse...
Read more

Do No Pharma

In late February, former Santa Rosa Junior College student Jane Moad lodged a series of complaints with the state and SRJC against the Mountain Vista Farm alcohol and drug rehabilitation center in Glen Ellen. The complaints from Moad allege that the residential treatment center utilized college interns, herself included, to dispense medication to residents, something she says they were not...
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Artist Sanctuary

In the calm of the windswept Marin headlands, an artist's imagination can run as wild as the flora and fauna outside. Indeed, the Headlands Center for the Arts campus at Fort Barry is such a place where artists can fully immerse themselves in their art. In operation since 1982, the 2,100-acre arts center comprises nine rehabilitated military barracks (circa 1907);...
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Body and Soul

Living in the North Bay, it can sometimes be easy to forget what makes this place such an attraction to the world at large—great food and wine, beautiful scenery, myriad outdoor activities, fine art and spiritual enrichment. It's a feast for body and soul. We live here, so why not take advantage of all the North Bay has to...
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Cauliflower Dreamin’

Any vegetarian, no matter how patient and mindful he is, has once asked the question: Why, oh why can't there be vegetarian fast food, too? The wait is over. Veggie Grill is a canny entrant in the fast-growing vegetarian "fast-casual" restaurant sector. Since launching in Irvine in 2007, the Santa Monica–based chain has expanded to 28 locations on the West Coast....
Read more

Master of Puppets

The handcrafted puppets in the Independent Eye's dreamlike staging of Shakespeare's King Lear are eerily lovely. The aging Lear, who hands the reins of his kingdom over to his daughters, believes he is still in control of his destiny, but his family has plans of its own. Clearly, none of Shakespeare's works is better suited to the puppet-show treatment than...
Read more

A True Crime

Simultaneously condemning and promoting exculpatory baloney, True Story, directed by Rupert Goold, contrasts two evildoers. One is Mike Finkel, a New York Times Magazine writer, disgraced after he used composite characters in a cover-story about modern-day slavery on the African cocoa plantations. The other is Christian Longo (played here by Palo Alto's own James Franco). Longo was merely a...
Read more

To a T

Born and raised in the East Bay, siblings Erika, Rachel and Chloe Tietjen of the sassy folk outfit the T Sisters have spent a lifetime harmonizing and songwriting, and it shows. Now based in Oakland and dedicated full-time to music, the band makes its way to the Occidental Center for the Arts on Saturday, April 18. "From a young age,...
Read more

Crop Report: Spring Grass

It's asparagus season in Sonoma County, but outside of a few farm markets, it's hard to find it though local sources. Why is that? Unlike lettuce or tomatoes, perennials live for several years. The majority of farmers in Sonoma County are leasing their land. Most are pushing the limits, taking life one day at a time. In order to pay...
Read more

It’s a Malbec World

We should celebrate World Malbec Day on April 17, according to Wines of Argentina, because a bit of legislation submitted on that day in 1853 resulted, just 150 years later, in Malbec becoming that nation's darling on the world wine market. Malbec makes an intensely colored red that's somewhere in between Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and is a natural choice...
Read more
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