Page 9 | Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties

Your Letters, July 29

Letters to the Editor

Jul 28, 2026

Sicko-phants

By now, Americans who have been paying attention—and there are a few of us left—have come to realize that any focus on the petulant lying machine in the Oval Office is a tactical error if we want to get to the truth of any story. That is old news.

What we should continue to do is focus on the legion of enablers that surround him, to understand what they are doing and to try and make them all as uncomfortable as possible when we can, because they are instruments of his corruption.

One of the great pleasures of the Trump Era is watching his loyalists squirm, suffer and shrink.

My current favorite is Todd Blanche, who is trying to become our full-time attorney general.

He is bogged down, just a little, by Epstein, by the IRS deal and by the oh so clever anti-weaponization fund.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t go in so much for watching people suffer, even people who deserve it. These public servants are happy exceptions. Though I hold no hope that the Team of Sycophants will ever be held individually and fully accountable, I do expect that they will grow to despise themselves as much as we do them.

Craig J. Corsini
San Rafael

Black Kettles

Chump said that the U.S. also targets China surreptitiously, though he wasn’t specific about which U.S. actions he was referencing. Yeah, first accuse China of election fraud and spying, THEN admit the U.S. does the same. TACO.

Gary Sciford
Santa Rosa

Critics

I recently heard that Gavin Newsom was criticizing Elon Musk for being a trillionaire, and I got to thinking that would be like Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticizing Adolf Hitler for being a Nazi.

Doug Haymaker
Forestville

Bohemian Groove, Protest ‘Worth the Effort’

Lois Pearlman

Jul 21, 2026

Bohemian Groove, Protest ‘Worth the Effort’

There were no kings present at Bohemian Grove Saturday morning, as Donald Trump is not a member, but Mary Moore, who co-founded the protests there 45 years ago, was certainly Queen for a Day.

Sitting in a folding chair, Moore addressed the approximately 50 supporters who had gathered just down the road from the private Monte Rio campground. She got a big “coyote howl” for her steadfast support of bringing all the issues together at the many protests over the years, and a couple of happy birthday songs. Moore turned 91 July 14, Bastille Day.

“This is a perfect place if you’re an activist who is frustrated by single issue politics,” Moore said, naming many of the famous activists who have attended the protests in the past, including Angela Davis, Dolores Huerta and American Indian Movement founder Bill Wahpepah.

Moore and her colleagues in SONOMoreAtomics organized the first Bohemian Grove action in 1980. They had been protesting the construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor near San Luis Obispo and discovered that many who profited from the nuclear industry attended the annual two-week encampment at the Bohemian Grove. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists and politicians discussed the feasibility of the first nuclear bomb, called the Manhattan Project, at the Grove.

A former employee at the Grove provided them with a membership list, which also included many prominent business and political leaders. For many years, until his death from AIDS, the employee, who they called “Deep Throat,” brought them membership lists and information about the Lakeside Talks at the encampment, which focused on both national and international issues, according to Moore.

A year later, Mother Jones magazine published an article by Rick Clogher, about the Grove and the protests, and suddenly it went from an almost secret gathering to an international story. The protest group, now calling itself the Bohemian Grove Action Network, helped Clogher sneak onto the Grove during both weekends of the encampment.

The Bohemian Club administration, however, says the encampment is actually an opportunity for like-minded men to have a good time together. It even features an opening ceremony called the cremation of care, where the men burn an effigy of “dull care” in front of a 40-foot stone statue of an owl and commit themselves to enjoying a pleasant vacation.

Unlike the large, and sometimes boisterous, protests in the 1980s and 1990s, Saturday’s event was sedate. There was no line of sheriff’s deputies holding back the crowd, only a single officer in a patrol car who drove quietly up to the Grove entrance and then back toward Monte Rio.

Instead, this protest began with a ritual called the “Resurrection of Care,” to counter the Cremation of Care, and then proceeded to a handful of speeches and a skit about protesters entering the Grove and confronting the campers. The Grove is guarded by security, and outsiders can only enter by invitation.

The protest participants Saturday were mostly gray-haired west county residents, many of whom had attended Bohemian Grove protests in the past. In her speech, Moore referred to them as “aging hippies.”

One of them, Jan Shade, said in a brief interview, “I’m here because I have a history with the Bohemian Grove protests, and I’m mighty, mighty proud of the people who have come over the years.”

Possibly the youngest participant, 45-year-old James Woodruff, pushing a small cart loaded with beverages and snacks, said, “This is different than the usual protest I go to in Santa Rosa. It’s a perfect place to protest all the inequality.”

Still, the organizing group, the newly-formed Sonoma County chapter of CODE PINK, felt the protest was worth the effort, no matter the size of the turnout.

“I think it never hurts to draw attention to the disparity of wealth,” said Robin Latham, the lead organizer.

Sleep on It, ‘Once Upon a Mattress’ Staged in Sonoma

Beulah F. Vega

Jul 21, 2026

Sleep on It, ‘Once Upon a Mattress’ Staged in Sonoma

Sonoma Arts Live closes out its 25/26 season with Once Upon a Mattress, the musical reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Princess and the Pea. Directed by Larry Williams, the fractured fairy tale plays on the Rotary Stage in Andrews Hall through Aug. 2.

The show, with music by Mary Rodgers; lyrics by Marshall Barer; and book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller and Marshall Barer, is a roughly two-hour visit to a fictional medieval kingdom where Prince Dauntless (Tim Setzer) is looking for a bride. His mother, Queen Aggravain (Beth Ellen Ethridge), along with the court wizard (L.C. Arisman), keeps devising a series of tests designed to keep Dauntless mommy’s little boy. All is going according to plan until Princess Winnifred (Daniela Innocenti Beem) shows up and steals Dauntless’ heart.

There’s a lot of talent on this stage. Aside from Beem and Setzer, who both deliver adorably lovable performances, there’s the raw power of Whitney Isabella’s voice and the charismatic and acrobatic stage presence of Seanna Nicol.

Carly Leahy is perfectly cast as the minstrel who ushers the audience into the show’s world, and Arisman is right at home playing the kooky wizard. Jake Russell, as the mute King Sextimus the Silent, stole every scene he was in, especially during the two (yes, two) songs he performed without a sound.

Adriana Gutierrez’s costumes (with help from Barbara McFadden) bring her eye for lush fabrics and vibrant colors to the stage, though no other costume comes close to the grandeur of the Queen’s red Asian-inspired dress.

Despite all the good, there were some questionable design decisions made, the main one being Gary Gonser’s set. Usually, I would be excited about a minimalist set for such a complex show, but the choice to make extensive use of curtain openings and closings stole precious momentum that this show simply couldn’t afford.

Scene shifts were not the only time that the pacing slowed more than the story could handle. The opening pantomime was overlong and lacked the necessary crispness to sell the clowning work being so valiantly attempted by the chorus.

Theater is hard. Musical theater is harder. Comedic musical theater that calls for both excellent voices and clowning is quite probably the hardest. There are excellent voices, energetic and amusing acting and some truly spectacular clowning here, but together the whole doesn’t quite pass the test.

Sonoma Arts Live presents ‘Once Upon a Mattress’ through Aug. 2 on the Rotary Stage at Andrews Hall in the Sonoma Community Center, 276 E. Napa St., Sonoma. Thurs–Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $25–$42. 707.484.4874. sonomaartslive.org.

Bottega Is Fire: Napa Valley Restaurant Hotter Than Ever With New Chef

Spotlight

Weeklys Staff

Jul 21, 2026

Bottega Is Fire: Napa Valley Restaurant Hotter Than Ever With New Chef

There are restaurants where birthdays are quietly acknowledged with a candle and restaurants where celebration seems built into the architecture.

On a recent Sunday at Bottega Napa Valley, this reporter’s birthday was one of four observed during our seating. The room seemed calibrated for the occasion: low light, crisp linen, dark wood, brick, a visible kitchen and sculptural chandeliers that resemble illuminated octopuses suspended overhead.

Bottega has occupied this particular corner of Yountville’s culinary imagination since 2008, when the late chef Michael Chiarello conceived it as an Italian restaurant animated by California ingredients and Wine Country conviviality. Today, owners Rich Frank and John Hansen carry that legacy forward with executive chef Alex Espinoza, a Tra Vigne veteran who joined Bottega in 2021 and later became the first executive chef to lead the restaurant after its founder.

Espinoza’s cooking has roots far beyond Napa. Raised on his family’s farm in Guatemala, he learned open-fire cooking, overnight stew-making and fresh cheese-making from his mother before beginning his restaurant career as a teenager. He later worked at Meadowood and Peju Winery, refining a style that respects tradition without treating it as a museum piece.

Our selections came from the “Bottega Experience,” a guided tour through the menu that moves from crudo and antipasti into pasta, secondi and dessert. It is not a shy meal. The opening courses establish the restaurant’s range: hamachi sharpened with Calabrian ponzu and Ossetra caviar; burrata with grilled peaches, prosciutto, pistachio pesto and balsamic; and a shaved Brussels sprout salad that proved one of the evening’s sleeper hits. Whole Meyer lemon dressing brightens the sprouts, while Marcona almonds, sieved egg and Pecorino Romano give the dish enough richness and texture to keep “salad” from sounding virtuous.

Then comes the cacio e pepe, a pasta course that comes with a heap of tableside theatricality. Prima Pecora cheese becomes a molten bowl as Booker’s Bourbon is added and ignited. Chitarra pasta is tossed through the melted cheese until every strand is sumptuously coated, then finished with black pepper and truffles. The performance could easily overwhelm the plate, but the dish earns its fireworks: salty, silky, boozy at the edges and almost indecently lush.

The Spaghetti alla Sophia Loren offers a different kind of glamour. Created for the screen legend on the occasion of a visit for her birthday, the dish layers Gragnano spaghetti with tomato water, aromatic oil, Early Girl tomato sauce and blistered cherry tomatoes. The result is deceptively direct—tomato and pasta, stripped to their essentials—yet full of depth, sweetness and acidity. It makes a persuasive argument for treating simplicity with reverence.

The smoked and braised short rib is the meal’s deep bass note. Espresso agrodolce intensifies the meat’s richness, while creamy ancient-grain polenta and Calabrian peperonata provide sweetness, heat and a soft landing. It is the sort of dish that slows conversation for a moment.

Bottega’s wine list is appropriately encyclopedic, spanning Napa heavyweights, Italian benchmarks and less predictable discoveries. The Cline Seven Ranchlands Pinot Noir offers a familiar Sonoma County option by the glass, while the 2024 Girolamo Russo “a Rina” Etna Rosso from Sicily brings volcanic lift, savory character and a welcome sense of adventure.

What Bottega does best is make abundance feel communal rather than merely luxurious. The open kitchen, attentive pacing and celebratory room keep the experience warm even when the food turns extravagant. By dessert, another birthday candle had appeared elsewhere in the dining room. At Bottega, apparently, everyone gets in on the flame game.

Bottega Napa Valley, V Marketplace, 6525 Washington St., Yountville. 707.945.1050. botteganapavalley.com.

Krushing It: Singer-Songwriter Teddy Thompson Plays ‘Backyard Concert’

Don R. Lewis

Jul 21, 2026

Krushing It: Singer-Songwriter Teddy Thompson Plays ‘Backyard Concert’

Those who consider themselves true music fans may want to make it a point to go see Teddy Thompson.

The singer-songwriter plays solo as part of the free, summer-long Backyard Concert series hosted by radio station The Krush 95.9 this Thursday—in its literal backyard.

Can’t make it? All the better for the people who can, as it will be less crowded for a show that potentially may be the best one of the summer. Is that a bold statement considering the plethora of amazing bands this summer has put forth? It sure is, and with good reason.

Teddy Thompson is the son of music royalty—his parents are Richard and Linda Thompson. Yet rather than lean in to the nepo-baby accusation, Teddy Thompson has carved out a lovely niche for himself with his honey-sweet, high and lonesome voice and penchant towards achy-breaky, country tinged torch songs that are at once sardonic and self-effacing. Seeing as he was indeed a wee lad when his parents recorded arguably the greatest breakup album of all time with 1982’s Shoot Out the Lights, Teddy Thompson insists he’s really not a sad guy.

“That has a lot to do with the quality of my voice, and just what people hear in that rather than the material itself is maybe what I think makes people think that my whole world is heartache,” he says. “But it’s also what songwriters do. I think Otis Redding sang more about heartache and heartbreak than I ever have, but he didn’t sound quite as high and lonesome.”

He continues, “Most songs are about love or loss in some way. And so I’m just doing what most of us do, and not because it’s the obvious thing to do; it’s just because there’s a reason for that, and it’s because the most powerful emotion that most of us have is love and loss. So that’s why people keep writing about it, and that’s why it’s effective.”

For his latest album, Never Be the Same, Thompson again worked with producer David Mansfield, who has a storied career as session player for countless artists as well as becoming a member of Bob Dylan’s 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. He is also composer for film soundtracks such as those from Heaven’s Gate, The Apostle and Killers of the Flower Moon and worked with Thompson’s 2023 album My Love of Country.

That album is an adoring tribute to country music icons like Dolly Parton, Lorrie Morgan and Randy Travis and includes a version of the all-time great drinking song, “I’ll Regret It All in the Morning,” which appears on the aforementioned album by his parents, Shoot Out the Lights.

When asked about his process of putting together an album and how it relates to his seemingly slower output, Thompson remains self-effacing.

“I just get up and try to do some music every day and write and work on things. And when I’m done is really the time when I figure out maybe what most of the songs are about, if anything. If there’s any kind of unifying theme, it’s more in retrospect. I’m not self-aware or self-important enough to be constructing some grand design, some overarching theme of terrible importance that’s going to rock everybody’s world,” he notes.

Still, it’s worth noting that Never Be the Same is dripping with sad songs about loss of all kinds. And while also sounding very much like a Teddy Thompson album, it feels very different from previous ones. Even the title, “Never Be the Same,” has a double entendre vibe as both an admonition and statement on one’s condition after going through a change like a breakup, a move or letting go of a bad habit.

“I’m just doing the songs. I’m not thinking. I’m just trying to be honest and authentic and write something good. But then at the end of it, when I had the songs and I was typing out the lyrics and I was able to see what I’d done … it’s an interesting thing,” he says. “You don’t really see the forest for the trees maybe when you’re doing it, and then when you’re putting it all together is when you realize there is a lot of that theme sometimes on the surface and sometimes just on the periphery of the songs, which is about change or the lack thereof.”

Teddy Thompson appears in the Krush Backyard Concert series on Thursday, July 23. Doors open at 5:30pm, and music starts at 6 pm with John Hollier & the Reverie opening the show at Wine Country Radio, 3565 Standish Ave., Santa Rosa. Beer, wine and food are cash only. For more information, visit krsh.com.

Fear Not: Day-Long Punk and Metal Fest Returns

Jordan Ranft

Jul 21, 2026

Fear Not: Day-Long Punk and Metal Fest Returns

It was a blazing Sunday in late July 2025, the kind of cloudless summer day where the heat crept through the windows and walls of every indoor refuge and pulsed in defiance of the whirring AC units working to cool the interior of buildings.

I was standing inside the dark belly of El Infierno Cantina, a bar in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square with a sizable venue space and stage in the back. From a safe remove, I watched the hulking frontperson of Failed Sun, a Bay Area hardcore band, as he thrashed, skulked and screamed on the floor in front of the stage.

The crowd, which held a diverse array of people ranging from teenagers to older adults in classic punk T-shirts, writhed, two-stepped and crashed into each other, swept away in the sonic frenzy of the music, snarling and dripping with sweat. As soon as Failed Sun finished their set, the lights went up at the back of the room, where another band had set up for a pit-style performance and immediately began playing. After this band concluded their set, which lasted about 20 minutes, another band was already primed back on the stage, ready to continue the madness.

This was the fifth installment of Nothing to Fear, a day-long punk and metal festival in Santa Rosa, which is priming for its sixth year of chaos this year on Sunday, again at El Infierno Cantina. The festival is promoting a roster of 17 bands playing back-to-back sets in a nonstop flurry. Tickets are $25 at the door, which, for those doing the math, comes out to roughly just more than a dollar per band.

Gabriel Ferreira, who books shows locally under the moniker of “Down the Street Booking” and is the organizer of Nothing to Fear, credits Covid, or rather the vacuum of live shows as restrictions were being lifted in 2021, as the catalyst for the initial iteration of the fest.

“When things were opening back up, there were so many bands I knew that were hungry to get back out there and play,” he said.

Leveraging a relationship with the now closed bar/venue, Whiskey Tip, Ferreira organized a six-band festival he dubbed “Outside Bands,” a cheeky nod to the bigger San Francisco-based festival as well as a celebratory statement that live music was coming back post-pandemic.

The first three years of the festival took place at Whiskey Tip, and eventually the name changed to “Nothing to Fear,” which Ferreira reports came about from him and his friend sitting around and coming up with names for bands that sounded cool. In 2024, the festival moved to El Infierno, another venue that he had a personal relationship with, and has remained there since.

“It gets a little bigger every year,” Ferreira noted, “and it does a little better every year too.” Ferreira insists that he doesn’t think about this event, or any of his others, in terms of success. Rather, his motivation for throwing shows comes from a desire to play music with bands he likes and provide a platform for his friends. He refers to Nothing to Fear as a “Homie Fest,” meaning the bands are, predominantly, ones he has met throughout the years as a performing musician himself. “I wish something like this was around when I was younger. I’m fortunate enough to host something like it now,” he added.

The lineup this year boasts bands both local and from the greater Bay Area. Ferreira’s band, New Low, a brutal and cerebral post-hardcore outfit, will be playing alongside bands with names like Throat Rip, Lab Rat and Gumby’s Junk. Headlining will be Sabertooth Zombie, a punk band that formed in the mid-’00s in Rohnert Park and went on to break out into the regional and national scene. Ferreira is excited at the prospect of bringing them onto the Nothing to Fear stage.

“They are pretty busy guys and are selective with the shows they take,” said Ferreira, who later confessed that every time he runs this festival, he walks away convinced it is the last time.

“It’s a lot of preparation, and I’m not the best at asking for help,” he explained. “When you run a show, you are the first one in and last one out, and the first three hours are always this stressful thing where you’re worried the show is going to flop.”

Eventually though, the crowd grows and things start running smoothly, and Ferreira is able to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

“One of these days, I’ll be a real quitter,” he said with a laugh, but that day hasn’t shown up yet.

Santa Rosa, and Sonoma County at large, has always had a robust ecosystem for music, but that lane tends to be relatively narrow in terms of genre that can find a home at a venue. Much of the space for live music, locally, tends to veer toward food and beverage crowds. While there is nothing innately bad about this, it means that heavier and more aggressive forms of music have a harder time finding stages in the scene. Who wants a mosh pit to open up at a wine tasting?

That said, punk and metal have a long-standing legacy in the region, to the point that the Museum of Sonoma County currently has a large exhibit dedicated to the early days of DIY punk shows in the county.

“This music and these shows are part of the fabric of our city,” Ferreira observed.

This cultural aspect is kept alive by the local organizers who are in it for a pure love of the game. While the music, abrasive and aggressive as it is, may not be for everyone, there is an argument to be made that keeping it alive in the area helps to combat homogenization.

“It’s a great way to get involved in your local music scene,” Ferreira said. “The first time someone handed me a flyer for a punk show, I was in high school, and it opened a door for me. I realized that this was something I could access in my own backyard.”

He paused for a second, before continuing with a smile and saying, “That moment ruined my life, because now, all this time later, I play in a local band, throw shows, and it has totally consumed me.”

In this writer’s opinion, there are worse things to be consumed by.

‘Nothing to Fear,’ a day-long punk and metal music festival, begins at 2:20pm, Sunday, July 26, at El Infierno Cantina, 120 5th St., Santa Rosa. Tickets are $25 at the door, which opens at 1pm.