An era ends
The landlord is sealing the building up to protect against graffiti and vandalism.
For 71 years, UC Berkeley students have been drinking beer and hanging out at Larry Blakes, but that all came to a shuddering halt on Friday, as the historic institution closed its doors for the last time and the landlord boarded it up.
I can’t quite understand this–the sidewalk in front of Blakes is full of students waiting to get in. They seem to be doing an enormous business, yet they defaulted on their lease and got evicted.
The restaurant business is tough, I know. I’m sad to see them close, and hope that the space is taken quickly by someone who can bring back the vitality that Blakes has brought to Telegraph Avenue since 1940.
Worst ad ever
Does anybody read these things before they post them?
Clybourne Park
Neighborhood association representative Karl (Richard Thieriot, right) explains the differences between the races to Francine (A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program graduate Omozé Idehenre) and Albert (A.C.T. core acting company member Gregory Wallace). Photo by Erik Tomasson.
Six of us went to ACT last Tuesday night to see their new production, Clybourne Park. I think we had six different takes on the play, although we are agreed that we liked it.
Remember A Raisin in the Sun? Late ’50’s, a family scrapes some money together and buys a house, but they will be the first and only black people in a lily-white development, and the new neighbors are hysterical? This play looks at that situation from the standpoint of the neighbors.
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(Now it’s Thursday night)
Okay, I’ve been trying to write this for 2 days and nothing has sounded right.
I think that’s because I’ve been trying to go the old plot synopsis route, and the plot really isn’t the point here–this isn’t a mystery or history, it’s an examination of how we talk about race, or perhaps just a window into the difficulties of communicating with each other.
There are two acts, one in 1959, one in the present. Each act has a group of people trying to communicate with each other, and nobody is really capable of either listening to anyone else or making anyone else listen to them.
Some of the white people don’t like black people. Some of the black people don’t like like white people. Some do. Some don’t give a damn.
People try all sorts of mean of communicating–PC speech, non-PC speech, stories, allegories, lectures, arguments, shouting, crying, whispering, tasteless jokes, hilarious comments, threats, cajoling, pleading, heartfelt expressions and utter bombast. None of it really works.
What does it all mean? I don’t know.
Clybourne Park will make you think, will make you examine your own attitudes towards race, towards communications, towards life in general. It will engage and engross you. The acting is first rate, with a 7 member ensemble cast.
Go see it, I think you’ll like it. And if you figure out what it all means, come back and tell us.
No News is Bad News
Too many Americans think that if they watch the news on Channel 5 or 2 or 7, or Fox or CNN, that they will know what is going on in the world. That just isn’t so.
The news we are presented is hugely USA-centric. A 5 car pile up on the freeway will get more airtime than a flood that covers 30% of Pakistan. Most Americans can’t find Malawi on a map, and you can go from one year to the next without hearing about that nation unless Madonna adopts a kid from there.
So it was with considerable pleasure that I saw this article:
Al Jazeera English Finds an Audience
By BRIAN STELTER
Published: January 31, 2011
White House officials have turned to Al Jazeera English among other television channels to monitor the mounting protests in Egypt. But most Americans lack the same ability to tune in to the broadcaster, which is based in Qatar, because cable and satellite companies in the United States have largely refused its requests to be carried
I like Al Jazeera–and no, they aren’t some fundamentalist Islamic mouthpiece. They don’t portray the USA as the great Satan. They don’t slant their news against Israel. In general, I find their coverage to be pretty fair minded, giving both sides to a story and not pushing a political point of view.
Many of the Al Jazeera journalists have been recruited from CNN and the BBC. They have good journalistic reputations, and intend to keep them.
The middle East is pretty important to us, and without Al Jazeera we have little way of learning what is really going on. Life would be easier if we could tune in on our local cable stations, and if enough people make a little noise perhaps that will happen.
But then we are up against:
During the Iraq war, the Arabic-language channel was criticized by Bush administration officials, and as recently as Friday the conservative Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly branded Al Jazeera as “anti-America.”
The Bush administration were the ones who promised we would find WMD’s in Iraq, their opinion of Al Jazeera was just as valid. We don’t need ignorant rabble-rousing demagogues like O’Reilly deciding what we can and cannot watch. His definition of anti-American is somewhat different than mine–I’m capable of listening to people with other points of view without needing to demonize them.
Meanwhile, Americans by the million are tuning in over the net. You can just click here and it will come up on your screen. There is an iPhone app which will stream Al Jazeera to your iPhone, too.
Go ahead. Expand your mind. See what’s happening in the rest of the world. It will do you good.
World Class Bad Service
Okay, so it won’t surprise you that I get lousy service from the B of A. If old Mr. Giannini were alive today, the incompetence and disinterest I regularly encounter there would make the top of his head fly off.
Today’s situation, though, was just more than I can stand without writing about it.
I don’t bank with the BofA, but Fat Slice Pizza does, so I have them set up on the computer so we can check balances and deposits and whatever else Gail needs. In checking from my iPhone, I must have entered the password wrong, then tried something else, and they blocked the account. I had to call them to get it straightened out.
First, I tried in the branch, thinking that the manager would have the secret phone numbers to get in quickly. Wrong-o. The voice system told her it would be a 7 minute wait, and after 20 minutes I gave up and left.
Tonight, I tried from home. Put the headphones into the telephone so I would be able to do things, and prepared to wait. I just wasn’t as prepared as I needed to be.
Call the number. Go through the usual rigamarole, enter the account number, repeat “agent” seven or thirteen times and finally it stops asking stupid questions and tell me I’ll get the next available operator–in approximately 8 minutes.
Remember that this is the number on **their** web page, and they have my account number and can read my phone number.
After 11 minutes, I get someone. He quickly figures out that this is a small business account (remembering that I got the phone number from their small business web page) , and tells me that he will have to transfer me. Of course.
This goes quickly–a woman comes right on, no wait. She need the account number again. I tell her. She can’t find it in her system, asks me what state I’m in–can’t they figure that out from the account number I’ve given them 3 times? Nope. So I tell her CA, and she says I need to talk to someone else, and she’ll transfer me. Of course.
The next number promises to connect me to the first available operator, and it will be no more than 4 minutes. TWENTY FIVE MINUTES LATER there is a real person on the line. What can possibly be the point of lying to the customer like this? They knew damned well how long the wait would be, do they think I’ll like them more if they lie?
The guy was helpful, but constrained by his stupid rules. We started with my account number, for the fourth time. I just love answering the same question over and over. Trying to make sure I wasn’t scamming the system, he wanted to know the amount of our last deposit, which I made this afternoon. I could remember that it was just over five grand, and that it ended in 4 cents, but he wanted the numbers in the middle. Eventually I convinced him that a scammer wouldn’t know the 4 cents part, and we proceeded to reset my password.
The whole process took almost 50 minutes, I spoke to three people, gave my account number 4 times, and have absolutely no respect for the Bank of America. It’s bad enough that they are so understaffed in their call centers that it takes forever to talk to anyone, but the incompetence displayed in the process of trying to talk to the right person compounded with the bald faced lying about the wait time is both dispiriting and insulting.
Then I had to call Mechanics Bank with a similar problem. They answered, with a real person, immediately. Took my account number ONCE and solved the problem in about 4 minutes. If only they had a branch on Telegraph Avenue….
RayKo Gallery
Last week I blogged about Pier 24–today I want to talk about the other great photography space in the Bay Area, RayKo Photo Center.
In San Francisco, at the corner of 3rd and Harrison, RayKo is a considerably more than just a gallery. It has rental darkrooms, teaching space, a used camera store and exhibition space, and seems like a hangout place for the photographic in-crowd in San Francisco.
At the moment, the exhibition they are showing is called “4xAfrica”. Four very different artists taking their own view on the mysterious continent.
Elaine Ling's massive studies of the baobab tree and the people it impacts.
Brendan Bannon makes an 11 year old camel herder into an angel
I find the shows at RayKo to be first rate, and the prices of the art are vastly more reasonable than you will find in the downtown galleries. If you like photography, wander on over to their website and get on the mailing list–you’ll be glad you did.
Chickenmania
We don’t think we really own our chickens, we just keep them as they pass through the cycle of life. They spend their days happily scratching for bugs and seeds, then a hawk or coyote comes to visit and they go to chicken heaven.
Which means, of course, that we have a frequent need for more chickens. This morning, I set off to the animal shelter to get some more.
There is a shelter organization in Fairfield which accepts large quantities of abandoned livestock when farms fail, and they send us email when they get a load of chickens. I don’t know the background, but they have a couple of hundred hens this week, and need homes for them.
The place is being run by a young couple who seem to work all the time and enjoy taking care of the animals as they pass through.
The lovely Grace, chicken herder par excellence
Catching chickens is an art, one which I don’t possess. But they are good at it, and soon enough I had six scraggly hens in the carrier and brought them home. We’ll fatten them up and they will live the good life here in Lafayette until they make their trip to chicken heaven.
The recession ain’t over yet
The design is hip, the food is good, the customers just aren't there
Thursday night we went to an opening at the RayKo gallery, then out to dinner in the City. As usual, I used Opentable to find a new/different place to eat, and we ended up at Circolo, in the Potrero Hill district south of downtown.
Circolo is a very modern, young, hip kind of place. The music is loud–although they turned it down for us. The food is “nuevo Asian”, whatever that means—lots of small plates, interesting combinations, an overall Latin flavor. The decor is great, tables downstairs and very cozy booths on the balcony.
What was sad was to see all the empty tables. We got there about 8:00 pm, perhaps it’s more of a nightspot/dancing/music place and wakes up at 11, but it sure was quiet.
I had the kabocha squash soup, and liked it more than I did the pumpkin soup the day before at Spruce. The chef told me it was actually very think just from the vegetable, and they then thinned it with chicken stock–no where near as rich as the other one.
Then, the Brussels sprouts:
Mike would hate this, but I thought it was great.
Roasted brussels sprouts, bacon, pears and fresno chiles. Not only was it great, but the portion was excellent. Which came in handy, because I ordered a flatbread which the waiter apparently forgot entirely.
Gail went for the burger–but this was no White Castle mini-burger:
That's what a burger should be
The burger was just great–thick, tasty, perfectly medium rare, ripe avocado, bacon, house made ketchup and mayo, seasoned fries. And too big for Gail to finish by her self, so I could help.
The service was very good, except for the forgotten flatbread part. They seated us in the balcony area because it would be quieter, even though it meant the waiter had to run up and down the stairs.
As much as I liked this place, it was disheartening to see the empty tables. The recession may be waning, but it isn’t over yet.
Yeomen of the Guard
Some days you get lucky.
Last night I was sitting at my computer, no plans for the evening, when the phone rang and a friend asked if I was free to go see Yeomen of the Guard put on by the Lamplighters at the Lesher Center. Gail has no interest at all in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas, so I put on a clean shirt and off I went. Gail had dinner with Iris at Nibblers, but that’s another story.
Yeomen is mildly anomalous as G&S operettas go, with more prose than singing in the exposition, not a fairy or magical twist anywhere and a relatively downbeat last scene. I’d recap the plot, but W.S. Gilbert liked to keep things moving–this thing has more plot than you can shake a stick at. Suffice it to say that there is mistaken identity, false identity, love requited and unrequited, backstabbing, crosses and double crosses, bad puns and final redemption.
What I was struck by much more than the plot were the lyrics. W. S. Gilbert was the wordy half of the partnership, largely remembered for his plots and characters, but truly brilliant as a lyricist. The opera, although in English, is presented with supertitles. At first I didn’t see why they would be necessary, but the rapid pace of the words combined with Gilbert’s penchant for coining his own vocabulary made the supertitles a real treat—reading them showed me what a wizard he was with rhyme and meter. I was reminded of the complex rhyme structures of Robert Service or Edgar Allan Poe, along with the wit and inventiveness of Stephen Sondheim.
As always with the Lamplighters, the singing is wonderful, the costumes are beautiful and the sets are, well, sort of interesting. I was especially impressed with Jennifer Ashworth, singing the role of Elsie Maynard. Lawrence Ewing, as Jack Point, the jester, does a masterful job of singing but doesn’t seem to have the same skills at reciting lines–I found it very difficult to understand a thing he said.
The lighting design leaves a bit to be desired–many of the players are in broad brimmed hats and their eyes end up heavily shaded and nearly invisible.
The Lamplighters have been around the Bay Area for 58 years now, keeping Gilbert and Sullivan alive for a couple of generations of aficionados; our friend Helen Studabaker was a lead soprano for them in her youth. This production will be in Walnut Creek tonight and tomorrow, and around the Bay for next 3 or 4 weeks. Go see it and have fun.
Out to lunch in the City
January is a slow time in the restaurant business. People are tired and broke after the holidays, so a little extra promotion is in order.
Opentable.com, where I make most of our reservations, has “dining about town” week, where many of their clients offer prix fixe meal to get customers in the doors. Bob Munson called us and suggested we all try Spruce for their dining about town lunch, and off we went.
Situated in a former Williams-Sonoma building in the Laurel Heights district of San Francisco, Spruce is a beautiful, warm, inviting establishment. The wall are covered in chocolate mohair, with faux ostrich chairs. ( I have no idea what “faux ostrich chairs” are, that’s what they say on their website. They felt good to sit in.) Design is critical in the modern restaurant, and they have left nothing to chance. I noticed a bus boy with a cordless iron pressing the tablecloth after he changed a table. Even the salt and pepper were super chic:
I've seen salt served in little bowls, but never the pepper, too. Design is everything.
The only real disappointment of the experience was the dining about town menu–there was only 1 choice. It wasn’t a bad choice, in fact that’s what I had. Pumpkin soup, followed by braised short ribs on polenta. Bob and I both ordered it, and enjoyed it. I thought the soup was pretty darned rich, more butter and cream than pumpkin really needs. That didn’t stop me from finishing it, I noticed. The short ribs were marvelous, and at $17.95 the meal was very reasonable.
First, though, I had the house made country paté. Not only was it excellent, but they actually served it with a sufficient amount of perfectly done warm toast. Getting the bread right is often the big problem with patés and cheeses, but not here.
Gail and Nancy, though, went off the reservation, or at least the special menu. Gail ordered the French Omelet. Don’t know what makes it French, but it was good.
One very French omelet
Nancy had the rabbit, wrapped in a sheet of pastry. She was surprised to find that the rabbit was ground, but still enjoyed her meal. As seems to be the norm for Spruce, the presentation was spectacular.
Rabbit wrapped in pasta sheets.
The big moneymaker for a restaurant is the wine, not the food. Bob found a California Syrah for $504, and an Austrailian red for over $1,100. I wonder how they arrive at a price like $504. I guess it looks more authoritative than $499. I’m sticking with iced tea and saving my money to actually go to Austrailia.
As you would expect, the service was smooth and professional. And our two lunches, theoretically $17.95 each, ended up costing $90 with tax and tip. Gail had a little wine, I had the paté, it adds up. Still, it was an excellent lunch and a fine experience being out with friends on a day of perfect weather in the City. Glad we went.
Totally Unauthorized 