Points in between: Pit stop in Los Alamos

It's really not a big deal to get from SF to LA. You've got multiple flights and highways to choose from and you can get there in minimal amount of time. But like going anywhere, the getting there can be where the real riches are found. Last week we pointed the car down the 101, chosen because it splits the difference between the speed and monotony of the 5 and the beauty and leisure of the 1.  Per usual, we filled up the hours in the car, reading aloud and listening to the blues station, but we hadn't planned anything along the route, other than fueling the car and ourselves as needed. So a bit of foodie providence found us stopping in Los Alamos, a little town located in Santa Barbara County, aka smack in the middle of wine country. As well as hosting the only surviving depot of the Pacific Coast Railway — Los Alamos was a stagecoach stop in 1876 but got its PCR depot in 1882 — it also contains several notable eateries.

After sussing out the slightly sleepy main street, we somewhat naively wandered into Bell Street Farm with our guitar cases in hand (having been burned hard once, the guitars always come in)  because a) it was open at 4pm and b) it had a sign that said picnic supplies.
"Yay the musicians arrived," a man in a cowboy had exclaimed as we walked in which is always the right thing to say to two people with guitar cases whether they are planning on playing or not. The man in the hat was owner Jamie Gluck, who opened Bell St slightly over a year ago in a former bank, after vacationing in Los Alamos for years. He handed us menus full of farm-to-table goodness (salads, soups, fresh baked bread, pulled chicken and port, cheese plates...you get the idea), insisted I try the wine he was pouring, and greeted everyone who walked in with equal cheer. We felt like we'd found the party.  While talking to Gluck and the other diners, we happily dined on a couple of exceedingly well-constructed sandwiches. We also met local wine-maker Angela Osborne of Grace Wine Company, who found her way from New Zealand to Los Alamos on a search for the best Grenache. A satisfying pit stop on all counts. If we weren't on the road and playing elsewhere that night, we would have stayed and tried more of the wine.

Nonetheless, before we left, Osborne told us where to find her wine in the East Bay. So last night, with cause to celebrate, we found our way to The Punchdown Wine Bar in downtown Oakland for a glass of her "Tribute to Grace" Grenache. Full of fruity, smokey goodness, it provided a fine toast. Here's to grace!

Vegetable Love: CSA's & Farmer's Market Week

Weekly delivery

Watermelon juice

I don't have room and, admittedly, attention, for a garden. But that has nothing to do with my love of fresh fruit and vegetables. In India, I loved how the vendors would pedal through the neighborhood streets selling papayas and pineapples, tomatoes and 'ladyfingers' from bike-born carts. I didn't love that there was really only one 'organic' farmer's market where a handful of farmers sold out their offerings in the first 15 minutes of the market's 'hours.' In Northern California, of course, I'm spoiled: Farmer's Markets every day of the week (and hey, it's National Farmer's Market Week), a high level of awareness for organics and a wealth of Community Supported Agriculture farms and services that make it ever-so easy for lazy and/or too-busy people like myself have the bounty of the season delivered each week. I'm a recent devotee of the CSA box subscription: fresh peppers, garlic, basil, watermelon and other surprises as the season dictates. Congruent with my allegiance to the CSA has been a refound infatuation for my juicer. Do you know how lovely fresh, and toast worthy Watermelon Juice is? Yeah!

Week's Gleanings: Quotables, Community Works, Gigs & Art-making

" I think an artist should work even harder than those who work 9 to 5 jobs. In these times, especially, the materialism and lifestyle attached to art, and music, and just about everything, has become so rampant, and has produced a lot of soulless, contentless work, I think more than ever we have to work harder." — Patti Smith, in Gibson Interview: Patti Smith on Rock and Roll, Poetry and Lullabies

A lot of practice and gig prep this week, and in between, making some new discoveries on the SF community & insight front....

Can I not say enough about Community Works Acupuncture? Thanks to Indie Abundance™ tour mate Chantelle, I got turned onto this GREAT resource for those iso affordable acupuncture. Thank you Ninah.

I went to the Ferry Building Farmer's Market today, very mellow on a weekday, stellar food per usual. It was one of those nearly everything-from-Santa Cruz days, including Farmhouse Culture sauerkraut. Yum.

Didn't Stefan Gustafson of Stefangus Design do a great job on the Indie Abundance Tour™ poster? We're psyched.

In the midst of staying sane amid a lot of activities, I've been re-appreciating sun salutations for all they contain this week, which led me to re-reading about obstacles, etc. The yogic view:

From Bo Forbes in Yoga Journal:

"According to the Yoga Sutra (Book II), there are five kleshas, or afflictions, that, like clever sorcerers, can knock you off balance or sidetrack you in your quest for spiritual evolution.

AVIDYA The inability to see things for what they are; this causes you to mistake transient, ego-related matters for permanent, soul-related ones.

ASMITA The tendency to overidentify with your ego; this keeps you from connecting with your soul.

RAGA The flame of desire that causes addiction to pleasure; this discourages you from leaving your comfort zone for more evolved territory.

DVESHA The aversion to pain; this creates a quicksandlike cycle of misery and self-hatred that sucks you under and suffocates your will to evolve.

ABHINIVESHA The fear of death or a clinging to life; this dilutes your focus and interferes with your ability to experience the spiritual freedom that is the goal of yoga"

If you're in NY this week...

New Yorker (NY vistitor) alert. If you're in the Big Apple/NY State this week I hope you'll go to the respective shows of some of my dearest friends. On Friday, check out poet/performer Karen's new show "The Old In & Out." Saturday, Jacqui and Art are playing as a quartet at The Turning Point in Piermont as part of their "You Don't Know Jacqu" tour. Good people with talent to spare! If I was on that coast, I'd be there. As it is, I'm in xmas-party/home-body mode, visiting Farmer's Markets (Happy Boy Farms was doling out cookies with their greens) to try out some Indian recipes I learned....

weekend highlights

The weekend was really busy so blogging went out the window. When I wasn't somewhere I was home trying to recover. Highlights:

• hanging out in the 'hood with friends and neighbors post work on Friday
• doing a shot with music pals at Cafe du Nord for Yoon Ki's show w/Pine Box Boys
• meeting someone with tattoos of Buddhist deities all over his body— and getting a preview of many of them in the club after the show

"How long did it take?" "every other day for a year."

Now that's commitment!!!! wish I had my camera

• Strawberries and snapdragons at Fillmore Farmer's Market
• Backyard brunch w/Renee and crew in Bernal Heights
• Laughing at it all with gravity7 in an ill-fated attempt to get to the Maker's Fair & bagging the traffic jam for food and a mini jam
  
• discovering California Honeydrops @ Sean Hayes show
• Clearing all the chaos all of the above engendered w/an actual full practice @ AYSF
• another brunch, this one with the Lower Haight crew
  
• remembering/rediscovering Indian/Indian-inspired music after a discussion about that country
  

meat & markets

I don't eat meat. I've never had a fast food hamburger, finding them repugnant from an early age (when the family went to the park&order A&W in Watsonville back in those way-back days I ordered the fries; later, @ McDonalds, it was the fish sandwich and hot apple pie. But good meat was prized by my family, and especially by my immigrant grandparents. At holidays, a special case was made for buying meat, particularly the prosciutto and other 'cold cuts' from what was the best market in their town: Petrini's. Buying the meat from Petrini's Market was a hallmark of holiday gatherings. My grandmother would walk down her driveway to get to the market for prosciutto until she was quite aged. In the late 80s, the market was sold and is now no more. My grandmother died. I stopped eating meat.
But that name and the signature "P" on the store's facade is indelible in my mind. When I think of Petrini's I think of my Croatian grandparents, drives up the coast at Christmas to their house, and eating the salty meat (along with vegetables from my grandmother's garden) which I don't miss so much as get nostalgic about for its associations.
And so this is how I found my new dentist. A friend recommended "Dr. Petrini" when I was asking around. I heard the name and simply had to go to that dentist. Today I walked up Sutter St. for my check-up thinking maybe nostalgia was a silly way to choose a dentist. Fortunately, Dr. Petrini knows as much about teeth grinders like me as his grandfather knew about picking meat (turns out the dentist gives training on teeth guard making!). Before sussing out my cavity-free but clench-weary teeth, he told me stories about how his grandfather hand-selected meat at the markets that used to populate the base of Potrero hill "They called it Butchertown then," Dr. Petrini said, "and it smelled terrible but everyone would go in and hand-stamp the sides of beef they wanted." And also, sadly, how his grandfather chose to sell the market when he realized he'd outlive his son.
The chefs at Zuni may have had grandparents like me and Dr. Petrini.
Post joyful Songsalive! gathering at Trieste, gigs and work, Jacqui, Art, Michael, Alex and me repaired to that hallmark restaurant, for beverages, and in some cases meat. "There's just something a burger can do that nothing else can," JN remarked, biting into her Zuni burger. I didn't dig in but I was happy for the crew, a Zuni burger being to a Big Mac, what Petrini's prosciutto was to Safeway's. It was a lovely night, the moon a sliver in the cold, cold air, the shows were happy, Zuni's piano was capped by a twinkling Christmas tree and I was with friends.
Life is good in the city of SF right now, I thought. Post dentist, I walked back to the office and smack into a Farmer's Market at Crocker Galleria where my meat-free, vegan-nearly-raw-self picked up some greens, beets and apples for the day ahead.

Saturdays in San Francisco

can be overwhelming given all that's going on today (the Blues Festival, LoveFest, etc). To help me finish up the first of four-part series for Edible San Francisco about sustainable living, I did some research at the Farmer's Market (the last of the tomatoes, the first of the pomegranites, and a visit to Cap'n Mike's Holy Smoke fish stand)
In between writing the article, I've been perusing the Open Studios catalog. Studio visits are spread over four weekends and there's no way I'd know what to prioritize w/o the guide. I circled some new-to-me folks as well as people I know including musician/painter Peter Whitehead and former IC colleague Stuart Sheldon.

listening to: Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter and The Raga Guide.