As a 14-year-old, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott learned to play guitar when he ran away from home to join the rodeo—and he hasn’t put it down since. A friend of Woody Guthrie, by 1969 he was on the Johnny Cash Show. The friends he influenced include Cash, Tom Waits, the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones. After generations of making timeless country folk music, Ramblin’ Jack plays a low-key performance on Sunday, Nov. 24, at Hopmonk Tavern. 224 Vintage Way, Novato. 7:30pm. $25. 415.892.6200.
Remember that band Santa Esmeralda, the ’70s one-hit wonder with the groovy disco remake of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”? After more than 30 years MIA, the band has reunited as the older and groovier Generation Esmeralda. The band’s sound blends Latin rock dance grooves with melodic hooks, impressive guitar licks and cha-cha with a splash of gypsy-infused Flamenco. The band returns from their tour of Brazil to play on Friday, Nov. 22, at Sausalito Seahorse. 305 Harbor Drive, Sausalito. 9pm. $10. 415.331.2899.
Maybe you used to create huge castles and dragons when you were a kid, and want to recapture that youthful creativity. Maybe you have kept up with ongoing developments and think you’ve got the ultimate plastic architectural creation. Or maybe you’re a parent who steps on the damn things in the middle of the night and wants to see if your kid can win a grand prize. Either way, the Lego Building Contest is nigh, with free entry, three skill levels and prizes ranging from Lego figures to a $200 gift certificate. Test your trickery on Saturday, Nov. 16, at the Brick Hutt. 420 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. 1pm. Free. 707.479.3698.
In their book Game Change,Time magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin and New York magazine national affairs editor John Heilemann scoured every nook and cranny of the 2008 presidential race to paint a revealing look at how politics works—so revealing, in fact, that it was adapted to an HBO movie starring Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin. Now, Halperin and Heilemann follow up that bestseller with Double Down: Game Change 2012, collecting the best juicy bits from the Obama / Romney slugfest. Halperin and Heilemann read and discuss the book on Thursday, Nov. 14 at Book Passage. 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera. $33, includes book. 415.927.0960.
Even if Kurt Cobain hadn’t sung a note, he’d have improved the world by introducing to the larger public the work of underground geniuses: Daniel Johnston, the Wipers, Scratch Acid, the Raincoats, the Butthole Surfers, the Vaselines, the Melvins and many, many others. Among those who benefited from Cobain’s imprimatur is the Meat Puppets, from Arizona, who joined Nirvana onstage for their MTV Unplugged performance and whose album Meat Puppets II will sell eternally to those seeking out the Cobain family tree. They play on Thursday, Nov. 14, at Sweetwater Music Hall. 8pm. $17-$22. 415.388.3850.
As the Sebastopol Grange pioneers a revival of farmers and food producers gathering together, the small rural-looking building on the edge of town with the overgrown parking lot has also recently been hosting touring folk musicians. This week, Tish Hinojosa, one of 13 children born to Mexican immigrants, brings her captivating songs and humanitarian voice to the small hall on Thursday, Nov. 14 (7:30pm; $25-$27). On Wednesday, it’s Slaid Cleaves, an area favorite from Austin who always dazzles on Wednesday, Nov. 20 (7:30pm; $25-$27). For tickets and info, see www.northbaylive.com.
On Tuesday, thousands of Sonomans will choose whether to “protect” or “preserve” the city through a ballot measure proposing a limit on hotel size. Despite the ambiguous names of the groups on either side, Measure B is the most controversial decision, at least in terms of campaign money, that the city of 10,000 has ever been asked to make.
Nearly $150,000 has been spent on both sides of the measure, which, if passed, will limit the number of rooms a hotel in Sonoma may have to 25. About $90,000 has been spent by Protect Sonoma, the group against the measure; almost $58,000 by Preserve Sonoma, including a $25,000 loan from its leader, former Sonoma mayor Larry Barnett.
At the heart of the measure is a 59-unit luxury hotel, conference center and restaurant proposed by lobbyist, developer and newspaper owner Darius Anderson. He is principal owner of the Press Democrat and the Sonoma Index-Tribune, as well as the historic building housing the latter paper. It’s that property, which was included in the sale of the newspaper, on which Anderson has plans for the hotel.
Despite Anderson’s hotel inspiring the petition-driven Measure B, Barnett insists his fight is not personal.
“We’ve certainly made an effort not to make any individual the focus of this campaign,” says Barnett, arguing that the Measure is about town character. “We don’t want to see Sonoma turned into an overcrowded, overdeveloped, busy, noisy town so dominated by tourism that it’s not pleasant to live as a resident.”
On the other side of the issue is Protect Sonoma, which says restricting potential tourism dollars would hurt the city and possibly lead to other, unwanted developments. “I believe in the process that exists,” says Nancy Simpson of Protect Sonoma. “We have to look at every project on a case by case basis.” Simpson says the system in place—development zones, permit applications and approval from the Planning Commission and City Council—has worked so far.
There are currently four hotels in Sonoma exceeding Measure B’s proposed limit with more than 25 rooms. Those hotels would be grandfathered in, but Measure B would restrict their expansion unless hotels in the city reach an 80 percent occupancy rate. Statistics from the city show occupancy average peaks at 77 percent over the past 10 years in the late summer months, dipping to 39 percent in January. Hotels over 25 rooms average an 11 percent higher occupancy rate than smaller ones over the same period, and currently account for 78 percent of all the hotel rooms (and 80 percent of the hotel taxes) collected by the city. Just over 20 percent of Sonoma’s annual revenue is generated by hotel taxes.
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Barnett, who was instrumental in implementing Sonoma’s Urban Growth Boundary in 2000, says the city can do fine with smaller hotels and shouldn’t sacrifice its character for the needs of out-of-towners. Using phrases like “fabric of a community” and “tempo of life,” Barnett explains that the proposed 59-room hotel is a sign of impending changes to come if Measure B fails. “Sonoma cherishes and guards its particular nature and qualities quite seriously,” he says. “It’s really easy to end up turning into Yountville.”
Campaign financing against Measure B comes largely ($37,000) from Anderson’s Chateau Sonoma Hotel Group, LLC. But Simpson says she isn’t interested in helping developers take over her town. “We’re not pro-development,” she says. “I care about our small-town character.” She cites the lack of real estate available for development in the city and the Urban Growth Boundary as limits that are already in place for large hotels, and says Measure B risks pigeonholing the city into approving less desirable development. “We can’t just assume hotels are the only thing that threatens our small town character and credibility.”
As it happens, both Simpson and Barnett share the same ideology on this topic. “‘Reinforce small-town character of Sonoma’ is in the general plan,” says Barnett. “Our initiative actually puts a number to that.”
Simpson, who agrees with the sentiment, counters that assigning hard numbers to “character” is not the right approach. “This is a balancing act,” she says.
At the Sonoma County Jewish Film Festival, My Best Enemy stars the most interesting leading actor in Germany: Moritz Bleibtreu as Victor, a Jewish prince and Viennese gallery-owner’s son.
The family is facing uncertain times. It’s a few weeks before the Anschluss, the absorbing of Austria into Hitler’s Reich. Victor’s pal from childhood, practically a cadet member of the family, is Rudi (Georg Friedrich) the housekeeper’s son. After a night of drinking, Victor lets this old friend know about a secret: the family has, concealed, an original Michelangelo drawing sold by the Vatican centuries before. Mussolini has learned of it, and would like the drawing as a present from the Fuhrer.
Director Wolfgang Murnberger makes a hard-edged comedy of what comes next. Rudi turns out to be an officer in the SS, but he isn’t able to keep his uniform throughout the film, and this is a wartime milieu when clothes very much make the man. The Nazis’ ardor for valuable art undercuts their qualities of dread, and reveals them as the common, greedy thieves they were. So Murnberger does get the snickers he’s looking for. The bit about a protocol meeting, regarding who gets greeted first at a confab between Der Fuhrer and Il Duce, is nicely like the barber-chair war in The Great Dictator. (“Heil Hitler” can be a very funny line, given the inflections an actor can give it.) Praiseworthy casting of the woman who intermediates between the hapless Nazi Rudi and his suave prey Victor: Ursula Strauss may bear the name of that composer, but she looks like a Dvorak, Ann Dvorak, slender, dark-eyed and refreshingly droll.
To paraphrase that astute movie critic Josef Goebbels, My Best Enemy is built like a convoy: it tries to keep up with the slowest vessel in the audience with some heavy-handed slapstick (underscored by Matthias Weber’s too-obvious soundtrack) and a too-broad clue of where the hidden Michelangelo is concealed. Bliebtreu, though, is compulsively watchable, and keeps this wobbly film together.
‘My Best Enemy’ screens Thursday, Nov. 14, as part of the Sonoma County Jewish Film Festival at Rialto Cinemas. 6868 McKinley St., Sebastopol. 1pm and 7:30pm. $10-$12. 707.528.4222.
“Sometimes in the food world, we only talk about the pretty things,” says restaurateur Roy Choi, discussing his new cookbook that topped both the Asian and Mexican cookbook lists on Amazon last week. “I wanted to create a book that felt like Milpitas.”
Choi, most famous for inventing the Korean taco and igniting the food truck movement with his Kogi food-truck fleet in Los Angeles, is now shaking up the food publishing scene with a new memoir-cookbook, L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food, the first release from Anthony Bourdain’s new publishing imprint. Choi appears in St. Helena as part of Flavor! Napa Valley on Nov. 23.
For L.A. Son, Choi kept three goals in mind: make it affordable, truly tell the story of L.A. immigrant life and keep it rated R. He succeeds at all three. In addition, his own personal narrative details struggles with adversity, addiction and finding his calling in life.
Choi moved from South Korea to Koreatown in Los Angeles as an infant. His parents failed at liquor store and restaurant businesses before striking gold with a jewelry business. As their wealth grew (they eventually moved into Nolan Ryan’s former Orange County house), Choi struggled with his identity in SoCal’s bleach-blonde suburbs.
He turned to the streets, disappearing alone for days and bumming around Hollywood, becoming the only Asian member of a Latino lowrider club and running with a crew called the Grove Street Mob. He flirted with alcohol and crack before falling to the soft touch of green felt on Indian casino card tables.
Amid Choi’s troubles, there was food, recipes of which are peppered throughout the pages of L.A. Son: carne asada with the lowriders, pho and pork fried rice from casinos and some of the healing dishes from his mother’s kitchen after his parents finally staged an intervention for his gambling addiction.
Choi says he wrote most of L.A. Son‘s personal stories between midnight and 6am, “because I had to tap into a place that was blocked off. I couldn’t write about those things when other people were awake, because I would consciously think people were looking at it or concerned about it,” he says. “Even if you haven’t read in a while, you can read this book because it’s alive. It just feels like me talking to you, right here.”
This week, Choi talks at Flavor! Napa Valley, a three-day festival featuring local chefs Cindy Pawlcyn, Dario Di Conti, Tyler Rodde, Michael Chiarello and Christopher Kostow alongside high-profile visitors like Todd English, Scott Conant, Mario Carbone and Masaharu Morimoto. And while he won’t be prepping for Thanksgiving dinner (“I don’t believe in the lies that holiday represents,” he says), he’s all but guaranteed to inspire attendees with his own unique recipes—and his life story.
“I think the great part of it now, in that arc, is that it’s moving further and further away from having to define it as a Korean guy doing this, and it’s just becoming a story that inspires others,” Choi says. “It doesn’t matter where you come from or what color you are—it’s just an American story.”
Harvey is one of those plays that almost everyone has heard of but few have actually seen.
The gentle little comedy by American playwright Mary Chase debuted in 1944, and ended up running on Broadway for five years. The story of an amiable alcoholic who claims to have a six-foot invisible rabbit as a best friend, Harvey won the Pulitzer for drama in 1945, and five years later was made into an Oscar-winning film starring Jimmy Stewart. It is that version most people have stumbled across, with Stewart’s indelible portrayal of Elwood Dowd that’s become a pop-culture icon of nonconformist optimism and genial human kindness.
But it all started with the play, which the Ross Valley Players are currently staging in a production that shows why audiences were so taken with Harvey seven decades ago. Steve Price gives an uncannily spot-on imitation of James Stewart’s vocal timbre and steady-soft acting style, while still bringing a bit of his own interpretation to the role of Elwood. He’s the kind of guy who likes everybody, casually inviting cab drivers and telephone marketers over for dinner, the sort who loves nothing more than hanging out in bars with his invisible friend, enjoying the company of his fellow human beings.
So of course his family wants him committed to an asylum. His status-seeking sister, Veta (Pamela Chiochetti), is still angry that her father left his house and fortune to Elwood, whose rabbit fixation has made her family a bit of a joke in social circles. Only by having him committed—and out of the way of her attempts to marry off her daughter, Myrtle Mae (Robyn Grahn)—can she gain control of the fortune and her freedom from Harvey, whom she admits she occasionally sees herself.
A series of misunderstandings at the local asylum, where the doctors claim to be able to cure anyone of delusions with a single shot of a mystery drug, leads to Veta being accidentally admitted herself, while Elwood loses track of Harvey, who, invisible or not, delusion or not, clearly has some sort of agenda of his own.
Under Robert Wilson’s unfussy but pace-challenged direction, the charming, old-fashioned story is brought to (mostly) satisfying life by a cast of community theater favorites and a few RVP newcomers. Though I wish the tone were a little more grounded and a bit less cartoonish and high-pitched, the story still works, bringing Harvey to life in all his invisible, amiably subversive glory.
Rating (out of 5): ★★★
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