Page 967 | Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties

The Highwaymen

Features

Richard von Busack

-

Mar 27, 2013

The one and only time I met Allen Ginsberg, I wasted the moment talking about the 1991 movie of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Ginsberg started the conversation, though, by asking me what I thought of David Cronenberg’s work. I said I thought it was expurgated. Ginsberg responded in about these many words: “The movie didn’t ruin the book. The book’s still on the shelf. Next customer!”

So Walter Salles’ long-delayed film version of Jack Kerouac’s famed novel On the Road cannot ruin the book, at least by the standards of Ginsberg, who is portrayed in its pages as Carlo Marx (played by Tom Sturridge). Produced by Napa’s own Francis Ford Coppola, this film version has been 50 years in the making, not counting some re-editing and time on the shelf after its debut in May 2012 at the Cannes Film Festival.

It’s been a long road. Right after the novel’s 1957 publication, Kerouac claimed to friends that Marlon Brando was interested. Brando’s people passed, however. Years later, Gus Van Sant was interested—a seeming natural to direct the adaptation, particularly in light of My Own Private Idaho.

Rumors blue-skyed Johnny Depp as the Kerouac figure, Sal Paradise, with Brad Pitt as Kerouac’s solar deity/car thief Dean Moriarty, based on legendary local Monte Sereno character and live wire Neal Cassady. Billy Crudup and Colin Farrell were also proposed as Sal and Dean. Garrett Hedlund, who eventually got the role of Dean, told me that a version with Paul Newman—at about the time Newman starred in Hud—would have been the one he wanted to see.

Director Salles previously made the Great (South) American road movie, The Motorcycle Diaries, clearly influenced by the Kerouac frame of mind. Making On the Road, this seemingly unmakable movie, Salles spent many years and what he claims were 60,000 miles finding the kinds of locations Cassady and Kerouac would have seen from their car windows in the late 1940s.

The filmmakers borrowed and rented cars from collectors of the since-vanished Hudson. The California desert town of Twentynine Palms doubled for Silicon Valley’s Campbell, where Kerouac once did a stint of manual labor loading boxcars back when the region was devoted to orchards instead of chips.

At long last, On the Road—linked with Twain and Whitman as quintessential Yankee literature—has been achieved with an Argentine director, a Puerto Rican–born script writer named José Rivera and a British actor as Sal Paradise (Sam Riley, star of the Ian Curtis biopic Control).

As Moriarty, Minnesota’s Hedlund excels in depicting radiating sexuality and lightninglike motion; he’s introduced in a balletic slamming of cars into the tight spaces of a New York City valet parking lot.

Sometimes, the other characters carry baggage from previous acting work. Kirsten Dunst’s Camille is based on Carolyn Cassady, a former local who has been trying for decades to set the record straight about her years with Kerouac and Cassady. Camille is introduced by Carlo as “Helen of Troy with a fucking brain.” A description like that is hard to live up to, and Dunst must also compete with memories of Sissy Spacek in the 1980 film Heart Beat, with Nick Nolte as Neal and John Heard as Jack.

Kristen Stewart, who filmed this between her two last Twilight movies, is maybe not as naive and sad as the real life LuAnne Henderson, known to posterity as MaryLou, the barely legal Mrs. Moriarty. Decadence is a good look for Stewart—the darker the circles under her eyes, the better she delivers.

Viggo Mortensen plays the mad, bad and dangerous-to-know Burroughs character, tending his weird Louisiana citrus farm.

Sturridge successfully avoids Jiminy Cricketism as Carlo. He’s a mentor, not a sidekick—the symbol of not just the beatitudes but also the hard work Sal Paradise is going to need to do to become a writer.

The movie won’t please everyone, but it’s made with freshness and unpretentiousness by a director who blends in autobiographical material with the fiction.

Salles deals with perhaps the number one problem with making a movie of On the Road: that is, Sal Paradise’s tendency to adore Dean Moriarty, who, as his fictional name suggests, is both a teacher and a criminal.

The sheltered writer learns from proscribed people—from homosexuals, drug addicts, jazz musicians. Since the film is more intense about Moriarty’s own exploits (including a little hustling with a moist-eyed trick played by Steve Buscemi), the movie is ultimately more broadening and frank, believe it or not, than the book.

[page]

The Man

No need to revise the standard view of Kerouac as a tragic figure, to ignore the surfeit of drink that diluted a writer’s talent. Whether he liked it or not, Kerouac was the front man for the “Beat Generation”—a marketer’s wet dream of pointy beards, berets and septic (and overpriced) coffeehouses.

Less well-known than the famous thirst is Kerouac’s achievement at being an ESL writer, as he was French-speaking until deep into his childhood Happily, the film emphasizes the serious prose apprenticeship, the love for Thomas Wolfe and Marcel Proust, which proceeded Kerouac’s scatting and bopping in print.

Kerouac’s grim side was worsened by the idea that “the wrong son died,” as the running joke in the movie Walk Hard had it. He was haunted by his brother’s death at an early age. He was a born-again Buddhist who never shook the old-school Catholic worship of (in his words) “little lamby Jesus.”

He dwelt in the shadow of his bigoted French-Canadian mother, a woman as tough as the army boots she used to make in the factory. Kerouac was a football player who dropped out, a macho with a taste for bisexual experimentation.

He was above all, a sufferer of the typical malaise of Depression-era kids who went into the arts: the inner terror that he was, despite all the admiration and all the love, at bottom, a bum. The movie mentions Paradise’s father scorning him on his deathbed for having uncalloused hands.

On The Road covers a small period in the late 1940s when Kerouac crisscrossed the United States by thumb, or more often by bus, or drive-away rental: New York/Bay Area/Mexico City via Denver and New Orleans. These were the freest years in Kerouac’s life, before mad fame, the final crash and the sodden last decade in Florida.

The Searchers

Via phone, Salles says, “You know, this was ultimately an eight-year search. We interviewed the persons who inspired the characters in the book in San Jose and Los Gatos, [including] several members of the Neal Cassady family. And we met with Al Hinkle, who is Ed Dunkel in the book.

“This in-depth research process allowed us to understand the complexity, the social and cultural background of the book. The late 1940s and early 1950s were very hard times to live. A generation was seeking to redefine their future. The book is at once an ode to freedom, an ode to youth, and an ode to literature.”

From the start, this version of On the Road added biographical behavior to Kerouac’s fictional surrogates, Salles says.

“Yes—we were so informed of the real stories that we were able to somehow improvise their logic. The book is so rich and polyphonic that you can actually select the leitmotifs.

“This is a narrative about the transitional years from youth to adulthood. You also have to face pain, and we wanted that to be part of the film.”

Before the filming, Hedlund came to the South Bay to talk to some of the survivors who remember the real men and women behind the fictional alter egos.

It was “a wonderful experience,” says the 28-year-old actor. First in Montreal, which doubled for post-war New York City, Hedlund went through what he described as “Beatnik Boot Camp,” reading and listening to tapes of LuAnne Henderson and Jack and Neal Cassady.

[page]

“Then I flew to San Francisco,” he continues. “While I was here, I also got over to Berkeley to meet Michael McClure—that was incredible. I met with John Cassady [Neal’s son, who lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains] and heard a lot of anecdotes. I realized how the Cassady family wanted their father perceived, how great a father he was and how much his family loved him.”

When I interviewed John Cassady last year in connection with the documentary The Magic Bus, I was surprised at his enthusiasm. Commonly, the children of bohemian types grind an axe about how they suffered from the absenteeism and the bad behavior.

Cassady said, “Are you kidding? My upbringing was the complete opposite. I had an idyllic existence. I felt like a rock star—my father was not famous, he was infamous. I loved the attention. To this day, it’s like, don’t get me started.”

“That’s what he told me, too,” Hedlund said, “that he couldn’t wait for his father to get home from work, that all the kids would be hanging on Neal’s biceps.”

Hedlund had read On the Road in high school. “I started with Fitzgerald and Salinger—I moved on to Kerouac, Bukowski and those cats,” he told me. “I was fascinated by the spontaneous prose and the thought process—reading about getting out and living life. Of course, you’re reading it, and you’re still in high school and you have a curfew. You get jealous.”

A Kerouac Revival?

On the Road spearheads the beginning of a small wave of Kerouac adaptations: Michael Polish’s version of Big Sur—the story of an alcoholic breakdown previously described in Curt Worden’s 2008 documentary One Fast Move or I’m Gone. This new film of Big Sur uses the real names of the characters; Josh Lucas is billed as Neal Cassady.

Daniel “Harry Potter” Radcliffe plays Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings, a film of a key event in Kerouac’s life: the time the author (played by Jack Huston) was nearly arrested as a accessory after the fact to a murder.

The other day, a fellow fan and I were wondering why The Dharma Bums, one of Kerouac’s best books, never made it to screen. It could be shot for cheap in the Sierra Nevada; moreover, of all Kerouac’s mentors, the poet Gary Snyder (called “Japhy Ryder” in the book) is perhaps the least ambiguously admirable.

Kerouac’s books are still carried by travelers, who can read the rapid prose and marvel at the eye and ear, the ebullience and the sorrows. We’re already nostalgic for the time and space of the pre–Interstate America. The Fort Sumter of the Culture War may have been the 1978 deregulation of airlines, making airfares cheap and making the restless want to go airborne, changing what once was the Heartland into what is now Flyover Country. The film of On the Road, done at last after so many false starts, recovers the beauty of speeding over land, heading no place in particular.

Get Sauced

Small Bites

Nicolas Grizzle

-

Mar 27, 2013

0

“We always hear from people sad to see all this fruit falling on the ground and rotting,” says Jolie Devoto Wade, co-owner of Apple Sauced Cider in Sebastopol with her husband, Hunter. And with that, they decided to do something about it: make cider.

The company is inviting Sebastopudlians to harvest those apples before they go bad for a project called Backyard Cider. The idea, says Wade, is to put those apples to good use and donate profits of the resulting brew to Slow Food’s Apple Core Project, which seeks to raise awareness and preserve the heritage Gravenstein apple from extinction. “We kind of wanted to make a political statement and just use Gravensteins,” she says.

Well, there will be the occasional oddball thrown in, but “basically it’s going to be all Gravensteins this time of year.” The variety yields cider with a tart, sweet, tangy flavor and a nice spice. “We have no idea what people planted in their backyards 40 years ago,” says Wade. But the taste “really depends on how you make the cider.”

The company, which sold over 1,000 cases of cider in 2012 and plans to make 5,000 this year to meet demand, will hopefully produce about 200 cases of Backyard Cider, bringing in a few thousand dollars for the Apple Core Project. The company will announce a late August drop-off date soon.

Apple Sauced Cider, 655 Gold Ridge Road, Sebastopol. www.applesaucedcider.com.

Oh, Baby!

Movies

Jessica Dur Taylor

-

Mar 27, 2013

0

Though the U.S. spends more money on maternal health care than any other country, it’s statistically safer to give birth in Cuba, Estonia, and over 40 other nations worldwide. Part of our problem is the fact that nearly one out of every three babies (twice as high as recommended by the World Health Organization) is born by Caesarean section, a leading cause of complications and death in childbirth.

Since its inception in 2008, the nonprofit Better Beginnings for Babies has worked to debunk this trend of pathologizing birth. Led by veteran midwife Rosanne Gephart, who runs the Women’s Health and Birth Center in Santa Rosa, Better Beginnings promotes the idea of “faith and trust that, for most women, pregnancy and birth are normal.” The nonprofit provides emergency doula services to laboring mothers, educates people about birth options and breastfeeding, and helps to fund the lactation clinic, open to all mothers in the community, at the Birth Center.

“Trust the wisdom of your body,” Gephart often told me while pregnant, “it knows what to do.”

This weekend, the community is invited to support Better Beginings’ endeavors at an annual benefit. The event includes dinner, a silent auction, an Easter egg hunt for the kids, and a keynote address by filmmaker David Stark, creator of the popular BabyBabyOhBaby films. The event gets underway on Saturday, March 30, at the Sebastopol Masonic Center. 5pm. $14–$16. 707.539.1544. —Jessica Dur Taylor

After I’m Gone

Theater

-

Mar 27, 2013

0

‘Forgiving someone’s just like throwing a switch,” says Vi, a recently deceased British housewife and mother, to her not-quite-grieving daughter Mary. “It’s just a decision—and afterwards you’re free.”

In Shelagh Stephenson’s 1996 play The Memory of Water, running through April 7 at Main Stage West theater, forgiveness does not come easily. Not for Mary (a grounded, moving Allison Rae Baker) or for her two estranged sisters, the high-strung Teresa (Bronwen Shears, all brittle nerves and frozen fire) and the serially lovesick Catherine (Shannon Rider, never better). It is only Mary, an unhappy doctor haunted by past mistakes and obsessed with a young memory-loss patient, who’s begun seeing her dead mother (a lovingly passive-aggressive Mary Gannon Graham) popping up dressed to the nines, dispensing hard motherly advice—despite having died of Alzheimer’s a few days before.

As the sisters come together to make funeral plans and divide up mom’s stuff, it’s clear that neither daughter remembers her mother exactly the same way. Death, it seems, has somewhat improved Vi’s mothering skills. In none of her daughters’ memories was she particularly attentive or supportive, and the result of her parenting—either outright neglectful or overly controlling and manipulative—is that all three sisters are now rip-roaring emotional messes.

Teresa, who owns a homeopathic remedy company with her reluctant husband Frank (a nicely understated Keith Baker) recites cookbook recipes to calm her rapidly unraveling nerves. She was the one who cared for Vi during her illness, and she clearly resents her sisters’ lack of empathy for her sacrifice. Catherine is only concerned about the state of her relationship with her current fling Xavier, the latest in a string of 78 failed hook-ups.

Once described as a cross between Chekhov and Neil Simon, The Memory of Water, nicely directed for MSW by John Craven, swings wildly between moments of genuine piercing pain and stretches of spot-on, laugh-out-loud comedy. Paul Huberty, as Mary’s married lover Mike, is hilarious, especially in a sequence where he tries desperately to unfreeze himself after being locked outside in the cold.

Stephenson’s lovely writing, tightly woven and focused, becomes a bit diluted in the final thirty minutes, losing some of its potency as the playwright piles on so many sudden revelations, secrets, and hidden betrayals that it all threatens to become shrill and overwrought. That said, the play works. The steady magnificence of the cast and the raw, clear-sighted honesty of Stephenson’s characters combine into a thought-provoking—and largely unforgettable—evening of theater.

Fresh Blood

Dining

Jessica Dur Taylor

-

Mar 27, 2013

0

When he was 11 years old, Angelo Chambrone started washing dishes and bussing tables in his parents’ restaurant, Sweet Lou’s, in Cotati. By the time he was 12, he’d been, as he puts it, “lured into the kitchen.” At 14, Chambrone was training new hires who had two decades on him.

Little wonder, then, that at an age when many people are still figuring out what they want to do when they grow up, Chambrone has already blazed his career path. The executive chef of Barolo in Calistoga is also, at 23, the youngest chef in all of the Napa Valley.

“I like to go to other restaurants,” Chambrone tells me on a recent afternoon, “prepared to get my ass kicked.” Though he’s seen an increase in Barolo’s business since taking over the burners and revamping the menu nearly a year ago, the self-described “old soul” still puts plenty of pressure on himself. His biggest critics are his three older brothers, who all sport the same tattoo of their family name. Their ancestors on both sides are from Calabria in southern Italy—”in the toe of the boot,” Chambrone says, pointing to the tattoo of his motherland on the flip side of his arm.

If all the ink isn’t proof enough, Chambrone’s fierce Italian pride is evident in his food. “My dad makes fun of me for being a purist,” he says, “but I just don’t want to cook or eat anything else.”

Potential diners, be grateful. Chambrone does as little as possible to his ingredients, allowing them—and not extra sauces or cream or butter, which he refuses to cook with—”to speak for themselves.” The olive oil aficionado makes his own ricotta salata, mozzarella, salami, gnocchi, and cavatelli—a drier fresh pasta that he describes as “toothsome”—in-house. “I cook seasonally and source locally,” he tells me, “not because it’s a fad, but because it’s the Italian way.”

Growing up, Chambrone, who was born and raised in Roseland in Santa Rosa, was the kind of picky kid “who always ordered the chicken.” He started working in seventh grade, and by high school was holding down a dizzying schedule of school, football and late nights at the restaurant. He graduated from Elsie Allen High School in June of 2007, the same month his parents closed Sweet Lou’s.

“The more I work, the more I stay sane,” testifies Chambrone, who’s shaken skillets at Healdsburg Bar & Grill, Rosso Pizzeria and Francis Ford Coppola Winery, where, together with his childhood friend and sous chef, Dominic Fabiani, he “helped build it into the empire it is today.”

These days, the chef duo (Chambrone and Fabiani have been working together since Sweet Lou’s) are happy to be cooking in Barolo’s small kitchen, just a fraction of the size of Coppola’s, where they served an average of 650 diners a day. “When you’re turning over that many people,” Chambrone says, “there’s not a whole lot of love or emotion being put into the food.”

When asked what else he enjoys doing, the still-picky Chambrone laughs and says, “Nothing. This is it.” He recently moved into a studio apartment just a 30-second walk from his restaurant, and in his spare time reads biographies of chefs.

Chambrone may be single-minded, but as I watch him turn asparagus, bread crumbs, lemon zest and Parmesan into a sumptuous plate-scraping dish, it’s clear that his most potent ingredient is, indeed, love.

Lobbying is Great!

News

Gabe Meline

-

Mar 27, 2013

0

Hey, did you read the front-page story in the Press Democrat about lobbyists? Man, they’re so great, these lobbyists! All you have to do is give them money, and they make sure you get even more money back! Just like a casino, but with people and stuff, instead of slot machines!

Like the article says: “Talk about getting a bang for the buck!”

And the online headline! ‘Sonoma County Says Money Spent on Lobbying Is a Good Investment‘! Well! I, as a lifelong resident of Sonoma County, have struggled for years to put into words exactly how my community feels about lobbyists! The Press Democrat‘s on-point investigative reporting has really blown the lid off this one!

What’s that, you say? The Press Democrat is owned by Darius Anderson, himself a high-powered Sacramento lobbyist? Who has said that lobbying is a “misunderstood” field, and has surely hoped to correct the misperception of lobbying as, oh, I don’t know, maybe a microcosm of everything that’s wrong with too much money in politics? Who is quoted in his own paper saying, about his own lobbying firm, “I think we’re well-connected. . . . I think we give great advice”? Whose firm, Platinum Advisors, made $8.6 million last year? Who has eight full paragraphs in his paper about his own rising “star” and about Platinum Advisors’ success in Orange County?

What a coincidence!

In short, we should all come together in these trying times and give our money to lobbyists, because they are great, says a newspaper owned by a lobbyist.

Hangin’ Tough

Music

Estefany Gonzalez

-

Mar 27, 2013

0

Seems like BottleRock won’t be the only music festival in Napa Valley this year. Between April 5–7, Napa offers yet another big music fest, except this one is so exclusive, attendees cannot buy tickets. ‘Live in the Vineyard’ is a three-day festival with performances from the Goo Goo Dolls, Tegan & Sara, New Kids On The Block and more, and the event pairs with top notch chefs for a night of sweet tunes, good food and an endless wine hangover.

So how does one get tickets to this shindig? Hopeful concertgoers must win their place at the festival by applying online at the event website. New Kids On The Block fans also have the chance to win tickets to the last day of the festival by tuning in to Mix 104.9 middays with Monika and being the ninth caller for select giveaways.

Chefs, wineries and small acoustic concerts are all part of the deal, and most bands will perform at the Uptown Theatre; the closeout concert with New Kids on the Block is held at Sutter Home Winery in order to accommodate the band’s fanbase, consisting of screaming teenagers thirtysomething moms. For more info., see liveinthevineyard.com. —Estefany Gonzalez

Loud Quiet Loud

Music

Gabe Meline

-

Mar 27, 2013

0

One hour ago, I stood in danger of being trampled by a throng of bodies, strangled by a microphone cord and kicked in the face by flailing feet.

In other words, it’s 1am, and I’ve just returned from seeing Iceage, a punk band made up of 20 year-olds from Copenhagen, Denmark.

With the exception of excellent local punk bands like Ceremony, No Sir, Creative Adult and a bevy of others playing in warehouses, basements and living rooms, the North Bay’s top music offerings for the next several months are of the decidedly calmer, quieter variety—and after all, everyone needs a breather.

To wit: the Green Music Center this week announced their second-season lineup, and it’s got plenty to dazzle classical music fans. The great Renee Fleming kicks off the season on Sept. 15, with Lang Lang and Izthak Perlman also part of the opening-week festivities. Hilary Hahn, Jessye Norman, Herbie Hancock, Richard Goode, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Mariza, Bryn Terfel, Garrick Ohlsson, Ruth Ann Swenson and more round out the concert headliners. Because of the center’s partnership with MasterCard, you’ll have to be a MasterCard holder to buy tickets on April 2; the general public onsale is April 22. (Remember, SSU students get 50 percent off.)

The Healdsburg Jazz Festival this year honors the great jazz bassist Charlie Haden in a two-day tribute, featuring six sets of don’t-miss jazz; collaborators include Geri Allen, Chris Potter, Lee Konitz, Ravi Coltrane, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Bill Frisell and Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. The Fred Hersch trio, Oliver Lake solo, the Azar Lawrence Quartet and a unique duo of Charles Lloyd and Jason Moran—who’ll be fresh from his jazz-and-live-skateboarding shows in San Francisco—are among the many other top-notch jazz acts in Healdsburg this June; tickets will be on sale within the week.

The rumors are true: the Last Day Saloon appears to be closing in May. The for-sale banner draped from the side of the Railroad Square venue says it all: “Owner Retiring.” Dave Daher, who has certainly earned his retirement, is selling the building through Sotheby’s; asking price is $2.15 million. After a retirement roast and party featuring Commander Cody, Bill Kirchen and special guests on April 28, the venue has a few select shows booked with Pride & Joy, John Courage and others until closing day on May 5.

The Lincoln Theater in Yountville has been quiet as of late, but country star Travis Tritt drops by on April 20, with a Napa Valley Youth Symphony Red Gala on May 25. Not to be outdone, on Sept. 21, Symphony Napa Valley holds an opening gala as well.

As for the tougher music fans out there who look forward to getting kicked in the face? Not to worry: Leftover Crack plays the Phoenix Theater on April 14.

Forum Fizzles

News

Kelly O'Mara

-

Mar 27, 2013

0

The 100 people protesting this past Wednesday night outside the Pickleweed Community Center—and the three cops patrolling the parking lot, with four more officers inside the meeting room—appeared prepared for a fight Wednesday night at Citizen Marin’s first-ever town hall meeting on Bay Area planning and affordable housing.

Instead, they got a nearly hour-long presentation from real estate financier, media activist and community organizer Bob Silvestri on the history of regional planning and housing development.

The Canal Alliance and Marin’s Action Coalition for Equity held up signs saying “I Just Look Illegal” and “End Apartheid in Marin,” protesting the neighborhood groups that have worked to stop affordable housing projects. Groups like Friends of Mill Valley and the Novato Community Alliance, both part of Citizen Marin, have come out against low-income developments in the past, citing concerns about high density. While many in the organizations have said they don’t associate with the extreme right, their rhetoric has often become nasty, and has divided communities.

But Silvestri, who called his politics “far to the left of President Obama,” gave a speech arguing that the “top-down, one-size-fits-all planning” of the One Bay Area Plan, which allocates housing requirements, isn’t going to solve Marin’s problems. Instead, he argued—to increasing applause and heckles from the audience as the night went on—that what Marin needs is senior housing, infill housing, second units and the ability for young, working-class families to buy into the community.

Worse, he said, forcing large developments into Marin would ruin small-town communities and do nothing but put money in the pockets of developers.

“We already have everything they’re trying to sell,” he said.

Instead of building more high-density, low-income projects next to freeways, he argued, the minimum wage should be raised, healthcare should be provided for free, and ground-up community priorities should be created for Marin’s towns. He posited further that Marin should opt out of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and create, with Napa and Sonoma, its own council of governments—an idea supported by Corte Madera’s withdrawal from ABAG last year.

While some in the audience cheered at the ideas, others saw Silvestri’s speech as nothing but a smokescreen.

[page]

“A lot of what you said makes sense, but a lot of your solutions are way down the road,” said Steve Bingham, of San Rafael.

As the night went on, the town hall forum became a public space for people to decry mortgage payments, question the existence of global warming, and yell at Silvestri that some of his proposals sounded like communist socialism. Toni Shroyer and Susan Kirsh, supporters of the anti-ABAG movement and moderators of the forum, battled with speakers for control of the microphone and encouraged hostile forum-goers to wrap it up.

As previously reported in the Bohemian, Marin tops the list of the least affordable markets in the United States, according to an annual study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The median county rent is $1,523.

Due to land-use restrictions, zoning policies and neighborhood opposition, Marin is lacking in below-market-rate units. This has forced up to 60 percent of the local workforce to live outside the county.

A one-person household is considered “low-income” in Marin at $62,200, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development; households making less have to pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent. And an American Community Survey from 2006-2010 examining age and ratio of income to the poverty level indicates that over half of Marin’s residents over 65 fall into this bracket. According to a housing inventory released by the county in 2008, Marin is home to only 1,032 low-income units designated for seniors and 196 units for people with disabilities, a rough ratio of just one unit rented per 17 who qualify.

While there was talk of lawsuits to fight ABAG and more forums in the future to discuss alternatives, many who came hoping to learn about affordable housing options felt discouraged. Few solutions or changes were tangible—and that wasn’t good enough, said a number of activists.

“Business as usual,” said Kiki LaPorte of Sustainable Fairfax, “is how we got to where we are now.”

Spring Fever

Arts

Christina Julian

-

Mar 27, 2013

0

With the giant BottleRock music festival coming in May, the Napa Valley Film Festival approaching its third year and new resorts on the rise, Napa Valley is well on its way to becoming a year-round arts destination. Spring has always brought the breaking of buds, but now art is also bursting into full bloom, with the onset of the third annual Arts in April.

Throughout the month, a bevy of weekly delights from Calistoga to Carneros highlights a different region’s offerings. The month-long showcase features more than 30 wineries presenting artsy affairs and tastings paired with events and exhibits at local galleries on the weekends.

Here’s a hint at some of the highlights.

The month kicks off with an opening reception for the “Napa Valley Collects” exhibit at the Napa Valley Museum, highlighting select works from Marc Chagall, Cy Twombly, Pablo Picasso, Robert Arneson, Joan Brown, Roy De Forest, Stephen De Staebler, Peter Voulkos and more, on loan from local vintners and friends. An opening reception with the collectors—think names like Coppola and Mondavi—gets underway on Thursday, April 4, from 6-8pm at the museum.

For many moons, St. Helena’s Markham Vineyards has been host to the ’60s rock photos of Rolling Stone magazine’s first chief photographer, Baron Wolman. But this April brings a brand-new Wolman exhibit, “The Groupies.” The collection debuted in London in December, and Markham marks the first (and possibly only) stop on the stateside tour.

The collection of photos is anything but tame, especially in St. Helena. Wolman is quick to classify the work more clearly: “It’s not X-rated, just on the edge.” “The Groupies” is indeed a probing photographic presentation of the women who hung out backstage with popular rock bands. While Wolman is far from bashful about his affinity for women, and even less so in his conjuring of excuses to photograph them, he maintains that his catalyst for the collection was less about backstage sexual encounters than a new subculture of chic style burgeoning at the time.

Wolman was so impressed with his subjects, who dressed for backstage “appearances” with aplomb, that he pitched the idea of a groupies exposé to Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner. The breadth of material was such that it morphed into a dedicated issue, centered around “The Groupies.” Wolman is reverential when he speaks about the experience; on his life as a photojournalist, he quips, “The big darkroom in the sky will go away, but the stories will remain.”

Wolman will be on hand in person on Saturday, April 13, from 11am-1pm, at Markham Vineyards. The event is free; RSVP required.

Other funky fare includes a live taping of the popular Judd’s Hill Winery video series “Wine Booty,” staring Judd Finkelstein and a man known only as the Pirate. Red carpet attire is encouraged, which in this realm means nautical wear (or black tie if you’re really angling to impress). In true Tinseltown form, attendees can bump elbows with the stars of the show and chow down on not only movie popcorn, but Hollywood’s famed Pink’s hot dogs, which are being flown in fresh for the event. Tickets are $25 per person and limited to 75 attendees. The taping takes place at the winery on April 26 from 5:30-8pm.

Stags’ Leap Winery, which serves up stellar views of the valley, showcases artist-in-resident Seth Carnes’ work in the Manor House. Carnes, who grew up in St. Helena but now resides in New York, enjoys the melding of digital and physical form; this is evidenced in some of his latest works, spawned from digital iPhone images that are developed, printed and melted onto wood blocks with solvents.

More traditional art forms are found at Calistoga’s Chateau Montelena, which just garnered a spot on the National Register of Historic Places—yet it’s probably most famous for taking home a top prize at the famous Paris tasting of 1976. April brings another draw with plein air artist Timothy Howe, whose arresting local landscapes are on display in the winery’s Estate Room.

Howe, a New Zealander, moved to the valley three years ago after 30 years in his native land and stints in Vancouver and Barcelona. Howe shoots photos which he then paints on canvas with heavy oil paint and a palette knife. He prefers oils to watercolor, which dry too quickly; “I can cheat a lot more this way,” Howe jokes. His work is available for viewing throughout the month, but those looking for face time with the man can hit the artist reception (with wine, cheese and canapés) on Saturday, April 6.

Throughout the month, staple studios feature special events and openings, including “Ekphrasis,” a photography and mixed media exhibit at the Calistoga Art Center, and “Awaken,” at Yountville’s Ma(i)sonry Napa Valley. Mid-month culinary arts cravings can be cured at Appellation St. Helena’s splish-splashy-spendy affair, bASH, at the Culinary Institute of America, where cooking wizards face off and the audience casts their votes.

Regardless of what type of art ultimately rocks your boat, this year’s Arts in April is sure to keep the scene afloat, all month long.