A brilliant concept whose time has come. I’ve been thinking for a while that a grocery specializing in healthy, prepared foods for take out would be a hit where I live in Sonoma County, California, and here it is in Rochester, my home town, located in the cool South Wedge neighborhood. Ken is the personable, hands-on owner and a chef of this prepared-food focused grocery. Trained in Boston and France. The eclectic, dynamic menu reflects the breadth of his skills. Also offering a selection of gifts and gift baskets, including Dolce Mia soaps.

Mission Statement and Program Outline

January 28, 2008
Introduction

California has become a powerhouse in high-school sailboat racing. Whereas competitive sailing scarcely existed at the high-school level in California twenty-five years ago, today many California high schools up and down the coast maintain sailing teams; and the young sailors on today’s teams are among the best in the country.

Consider that Sailing World’s Junior All Star List for 2007 (kids 14 to 17) was made up almost entirely of California sailors — 5 out of 7 kids were from California. In fact, since 2001 nearly half the sailors winning a position on this prestigious list were from California.

Why has California come to dominate a sport that was once the province of East Coast prep schools? The obvious answer is that our temperate weather allows us to practice year-round. But at origin of each successful program lies the initiative and commitment of adults. Without the vision and energy of Californian parents, many young Californians would never have had the opportunity to enjoy the athletic and intellectual thrill that is competitive sailboat racing.

A New Team

Though Sebastopol is just half an hour from an outstanding sailing venue — Doron Beach — offering good winds and topographical shelter and ready access, we have no sailing team. It is not for lack of interest, certainly. In discussing the prospect with parents I find that many would eagerly get their kids involved. It is not difficult to convince even non-sailors that the sport presents a unique opportunity for kids to enjoy more fully the rich and diverse offerings of our region.

Sailboat Racing as a Sport for Kids

Sailboat racing is both physically and intellectually challenging, and kids love it. From one perspective, it is a pillow fight on the water—wet, wild and giddy-making. Yet sailing is also often compared to chess—speed chess, most aptly, where clocks are hit and time matters very much.

Sailing is accommodating of different body sizes and shapes. No matter your size, or age for that matter, there is a boat and a team mate for you. If you are big, then you pair up with someone small. If you are small, you pair up with someone big. You don’t have to be strong, or tall, or small for that matter. Whatever your particular advantages, you can put them to work for you in sailboat racing.

Sailing is a co-ed sport. Not only are girls and boys commonly on the same team, they are commonly paired up in boats together, and that in itself is fun.

Kids discover in sailing a sport they can enjoy for the rest of their lives. As beginners, they sail the deftly-named Optimists—tiny bathtubs with single sails. As youths, they sail dinghies and high-performance skiffs. Then they move on to larger boats, ones they don’t have to jump around so much in. You only become too old for sailboat racing when you can no longer get into a boat. It is truly a life-long sport.

High-school sailors leaving our new team will graduate to college sailing. The best universities in the country recruit top high-school sailors heavily. Sailing is not only fun and rewarding; it is a great thing for a college-bound kid to have on his or her resume.

Program Outline

The Bohemian Sailing Team will be an independent, not-for-profit entity. It will not be associated with any particular high school. We will draw from the various communities of Sebastopol and vicinity.

As currently conceived, the Team will consist of boys and girls in grades 7-12. We will practice in Bodega Bay, in 2-person “dinghies”, of the type typically used in high-school sailing programs. We will have as many boats as we can raise funds for — no fewer than 8; as many as 20. If we have more interest than boats, preference will be given by necessity to children of parents whose efforts have helped to create, or maintain the team.

Two chase boats will coach and monitor the kids, making sure they are always safe and get help when they need it. We would hope to recruit an experienced adult racer to serve as head coach, with a volunteer assistant, which position might rotate among willing parents.

Our team will practice during the week, training against each other. On weekends we will travel to compete in open regattas or directly against other high-school teams.

Phase 1: Completed

Initial investigation into the use of Doron Beach as a location has been completed. It appears to be an outstanding venue. This needs to be confirmed.
Phase 2: Raise Funds

We need to set up the organization, and establish its status as a tax-free entity.

Most immediately, we need to raise money with which to buy boats and other equipment. We will begin with 8 to 12 boats, perhaps as many as 20, depending on funds available, plus two motor boats. We will need to either find a volunteer coach, or raise the funds to hire one.

How Can I Help?

There are many ways you can help. Most crucially and immediately, you can help us formally establish an organization and raise the necessary funds. Please contact Alex Mountjoy, the team’s founder and coordinator, for more information.

Gastronomical delights, fine wine, acrobatic and musical entertainment await you at Cirque du Gourmet on Saturday, May 10, from 5 to 10:30 p.m. at the Occidental CYO, at 2136 Bohemian Highway, in Occidental.

Wine tasting from local wineries will be enjoyed alongside freshly picked lettuces and local goat cheese. Garlic-tasting will complement the main courses prepared by local chefs Snap Gonnella, a former restaurateur, Cy Colbert, New Orleans cuisine specialist, and Pierre Bernier, a classically trained French chef.

More than $40,000 worth of auction items are up for grabs, including getaways, tickets, dining, wine, spa treatments, golfing, gifts for home and garden, art by local artists and students, and much more. The event is put on by the Harmony Ark Education Foundation to benefit various programs at Harmony and Salmon Creek schools.

Tickets are $55 in advance, which includes entertainment, appetizers, dinner and dessert, coffee, wine tasting, and champagne, and can be purchased at the Salmon Creek School office, Hand Goods in Occidental, and by mail (Harmony Ark, P.O. Box 1017, Occidental, CA 95465). For tickets or more information contact Alex Mountjoy at 707-874-2009 or go online to harmonyark.org/auction.

Pinot Noir likes the cooler temperatures of the Sebastopol hills, whereas Cabernet Sauvignon likes the hotter climate of Northwest Santa Rosa. 

From a friend of mine who’s a viticulturist for a major winery in the area I also learned recently that different grape vines require different amounts of water, which is in large part a function of which type of rootstock supports the “scion” or vine.   “Riparian” root stock spreads out from the base of the vine close to surface of the earth and requires steady irrigation.  By contrast, “Native American” rootstocks go deep and don’t require water. This is why you see unirrigated fields, often old-growth Zinfandel. Once established, wine grapes don’t necessarily need irrigation, if they were designed to survive without it.

A riparian rootstock, with its need for irrigation, has the advantage of allowing you to control the “product”, as they say in the business, meaning the growth and vitality of the vine and hence the quality of the grape through the moderation of water. With native American rootstocks, on the other hand, which don’t require irrigation,  a viticulturist loses this aspect of control.

Plantable vineyard land is currently in great demand in West Sonoma County.  Bare-land parcels of ten acres and up, in Sebastopol, Occidental and Northwest Santa Rosa, that have water and good soil and sun sell quickly.

565 Sebastopol Rd., Santa Rosa
Between West and Dutton
(707)526-7444

This is the authentic, quality, inexpensive hole-in-the wall tacqueria you’ve been searching for in West Sonoma County. Located at the front of a vast, decrepit shopping center, in what would have once been burger joint, el Favorito looks like a dive restaurant of no consequence.  But the fact alone that its hours are 9 A.M. to midnight suggests it is great.

“Maximum of 3 beers sold when eating in,” says a sign behind the register. The jukebox offers a selection of Spanish-language music. Drive-through available. Also in San Francisco.  By Salvador Lopez. 

© Alex Mountjoy 2007

Sebastopol
(707)829-3404

When I learned about Michael Alliger it was from a man with a Japanese Maple who described Michael’s first visit, how he contemplated the (small) tree from the yard, then went inside and studied it through the picture window, then came back outside and said, “Yes, I will trim your tree.”

Michael blends the detail of Bonsai with landscape pruning, bringing out the essence of the tree while containing it, allowing the plant to express itself while fitting it into the space provided.

He works with shrubs and small trees—ornamentals, crabapples, and of course Japanese Maples.  Twenty years ago he founded a school of pruning at Merritt College to pursue—and eventually cannonize—his specialty.

© Alex Mountjoy 2007

Gift Shop

Occidental, CA
(707)874-9407
www.renga-arts.com

We all see the potential in the things we save, like our 70’s record collection we are sure one day we will listen to again.  Some of us, like my father-in-law, have vast personal collections, which in his case includes typewriters from the ‘50s, old timepieces, and antique Boy Scout manuals.

Renga Arts is where these old articles come to life – altered and transformed into beautiful accoutrements, jewelry and object d’art.  Record albums become bowls, typewriter keys become bracelets, hardcover Boy Scout manuals become journals.  All items in the store are made from reclaimed, salvaged, or recycled materials, and all are of museum-store quality and ingenuity. With an eye for the unique, the hip and uber-stylish trends, Renga’s collection is hand-picked from a world of candidates by Sherri Huss and Joe Szuecs.

Hours 11-5, F,S,S,M

© Alex Mountjoy 2007

Outlet store: Highway 12 at Llano Rd.
Santa Rosa (but near Sebastopol)

(707)545-2832
www.williebird.com

“Willie cracks the corn for his turkeys.  He loves his turkeys,” says a clerk in the outlet store. Founded in 1963 by Willie Benedetti, and now the last independent turkey producer in the San Francisco Bay Area, Willie Bird ships its free-range, all-natural smoked poultry products all over the world: Smoked turkey legs to Japan for the American army, smoked chicken breast to Guam, turkey bacon to Hong Kong.  On the Monday before Thanksgiving, 5 tractor-trailers depart the Willie Bird shipping facility loaded with 8,000 mail order whole birds.

Suppliers to presidents, queens and Marthas, at home Willie Bird maintains a low-key outlet store on Highway 12. The prices are great and the array of turkey products is boggling:  Ground turkey, turkey hot Italian sausage, turkey apple breakfast sausage, turkey jerky, smoked turkey bacon, smoked peppered turkey bacon, smoked uncured turkey bacon, turkey steaks, smoked turkey spread….  

You can also find Willie Bird meats at the best markets in Northern California. A valuable holiday tip is to order whole birds through your local grocer, such as the Bohemian Market in Occidental, or Pacific Market in Sebastopol or Santa Rosa.  The prices are about what you’d pay at the outlet store and you’ll avoid the long lines. In summer, you can find Willie Bird smoked turkey legs at many local outdoor events, like the Santa Rosa Farmer’s Market and the Sonoma County Fair. 

Managed by the affable Beagle Brodsky.

Duncans Mills, CA
(707) 865-2461
www.studionouveau.com

Studio Nouveau in Duncans Mills, at the mouth of the Russian River, carries one of the largest selections of Liquid Metal jewelry by Miami Beach based designer Sergio Guttierez (http://www.liquidmetalbysg.com) in the world.  If the beautiful trip out this direction doesn’t figure in your near term plans, you can shop online at www.studionouveau.com

Elegant and seductive, these necklaces, chokers, bracelets, rings, earrings…and halters and skirts…made of soldered silver/nickel ball chain have a diamond-like ability to attract attention.  On the body they are brilliant, form-following and arresting.  Even the bracelets seem seem somehow revealing.  It is this captivating quality that is the singular magic of the line.

Studio Nouveau also offers personal and home accessories, candy and gifts.  By Andrea Record

© Alex Mountjoy 2007

Private Functions, Expert lessons   
Santa Rosa
(707)544-6810

At the Upper Fourth Jazz Club on a Friday afternoon, with very “jazzy” weather—the first showers of October coming down in heavy drops, with great holes of bright blue sky and the sun still shining strongly through one of them in the West—Chris Hayes was playing guitar, silhouetted against the windows, with his keyboardist Tim, just jamming and nodding appreciatively at each other whenever things took a really groovy turn, and I was sitting deep in a leather couch alone in front of the fireplace watching and listening to them and sipping my cocktail and thinking, “God, I’m enjoying life at this particular moment.  You guys are making my day.”

Chris was lead guitarist for Huey Lewis & The News for twenty years—He wrote Workin’ for a Livin’, among other tunes—and has been retired for a few, and is now raising a family in Northwest Santa Rosa.  Because he enjoys it, he plays private parties with his keyboardist and other friend-musicians who happen to be around.  He also teaches intermediate to expert levels.  His easy-going, modest demeanor (no gold records on the wall) and good humor make any association with him a pleasure.

Chris comes from a musical family, one of 7 children.  But as Huey says, he’s “the pick of the litter”. 

© Alex Mountjoy 2007