SE E K BAY AREA
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LIFESTYLE
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MAGAZINE
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Welcome to the first issue of Seek Magazine! I am very pleased to present an all new Bay Area magazine that explores the lifestyle that is so unique to the Bay Area. Seek is published monthly in print and digital formats. Our goal is to share the best of the Bay Area from noteworthy destinations to culinary and cultural experiences, and to introduce this unique lifestyle to the area’s young new residents. We are passionate about showcasing the diversity of culture that makes the Bay Area a hub for creativity and innovation, inspiring and guiding people to achieve the dream of living here. Today, as a new month begins, so does a new chapter in the life of our fledgling publication. Enjoy this issue!
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CONTENTS
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THE JOY OF THE PASTA
By Margo True Photographs by Thomas. J Story
DETECTOR
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LIGHT UP THE STREETS By Karen Li Photographs by Karen Li
BAY MADE Photographs by Jeffery Cross
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FEATURES
LOCATOR
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SEA CHANGES
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By Peter Fish Photography by Corey Arnold
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A DOCK CALLED HOME By Miranda Crowell Photographs by Thomas. J Story
THE BAY LIGHTSã„‹
Photographs by Thomas J. Story
Discover the new lifestyle and enrich your life journal.
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THE JOY OF PASTA Berkeley chef Samin Nosrat shows us how to make fresh orecchiette. By Margo True | Photography by Thomas. J Story is as much a born teacher as a chef. “I’ve always loved to eat, but I love people more than I love food,” says Nosrat, who got her start at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse and puts on pop-up dinners at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. She also teaches cooking throughout the Bay Area. One of her students, writer Michael Pollan, made her a star of his new book, Cooked. Everything I know about cooking, I learned from Samin,” he recently said, only half-joking. Nosrat—who SAMIN NOSRAT
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inherited her love of food from her Persian family—has a gift for explaining basic skills in a clear, encouraging way. “My goal is to give students tools so they can feel free in the kitchen,” she says. Her current obsession is homemade orecchiette. When Nosrat saw women in Italy spinning dough into thimble, she thought: “I’ll never be able to do that. It has to be in your blood.” But, with her radiant confidence, she figured it out—and passed her secrets on to us.
GOOD INGREDIENTS = GOOD PASTA When you’re cooking with only a few ingredients, their quality makes a huge difference. Here are Nosrat’s choices.
CHILES Instead of red
chile flakes, which have a predictable heat, she buys whole dried chiles— mainly from Mexico, from smoky to fiery— and chops or crumbles them for these sauces. “I add them cautiously, then taste before adding more.” RICOTTA SALATA
Pietra del Sale, which is surprisingly fresh-tasting and creamy for an aged ricotta. SEMOLINA Bay
area brand Giusto’s Vita-Grain, milled from durum wheat. “I like how fine it is.”
EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL Santa Chiara brand,
from Liguria, Italy. “The coastal weather makes it buttery and mild, not super peppery.” GRAY SEA SALT From
Brittany, France. “It’s slightly coarser than kosher, a bit moist, and deliciiously minerally. My resolution this year: sel gris for everything.” CLAMS “I love the
flavor of littlenecks— they’re so clammy. Manilas are little, so they’re good for serving whole in the pasta.”
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LIGHT UP THE
STREETS
Written by Karen Li | Photography by Karen Li
The best neon signs in San Francisco would not be around forever; However, you can still see these beautiful sign arts in the most diverse neighborhood Tenderloin. While some neighborhoods have lost all but a few of their neon treasures, the Tenderloin still have clusters of signs that continue to fuction. We should capture all neon signs because the vintage fonts and design of these signs are an integral part of San Francisco’s creative, cultural, and commercial heritage.
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Dark Horse blend coffee Roast Co. coffee company, Oakland CA roastco.com
A dark and hefty blend, Dark Horse features chocolate liqueur with suggestions of vanilla extract. There’s a lot of the classic, rich roasty flavor in this cup without sacrificing sweetness or clarity for that overbearing bitterness that accompanies most traditional dark coffees.
2 Gourmet Sea Salt trio: French Grey, Black Hawaiian, Sherpa Pink Himalayan San Francisco Salt Company, San Francisco CA www. sfsalt.com
SF Salt company’s extensive line of natural sea salts are developed and packaged entirely in San Francisco. Natural salts are sourced from reliable suppliers from all over the world with a mission that aims to harness the power of the ocean to enhance your well-being, from the inside out. 12
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BAY MADE Photography by Jeffery Cross 4
TCHO chocolates TCHO, Berkeley, CA www.tcho.com
St. George’s Dry Rye Gin St. George’s Spirits, Alameda CA www.stgeorgespirits.com
Made with a base of 100% rye, the St. George Dry Rye has a marvelous malty signature, warm and spicy. The warmth from the rye is complemented by a small number of classic gin botanicals, including the obvious juniper berry, black peppercorn, caraway, coriander, grapefruit peel and lime peel.
TCHO is well known for their artistic, award winning packaging, and their delicious flavor wheel which represents the inherent flavors found in the cacao bean: chocolatey, bright, fruity, floral, earthy, and nutty. Following the West Coast code of honor, all ingredients are sourced according to certified organic and fair trade standards.
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Habanero Hot Sauce Formosa, San Jose CA formosasauce.com
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Formosa’s 100% natural hot sauce is made from a 30-year old Mexican recipe. Habanero peppers are the main ingredient in this smooth sauce, so you know it’s hot, but the addition of sweet tomatillos and acidic vinegar bring about a wonderful complexity. 13
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A DOCK CALLED HOME
By Miranda Crowell | Photography by Thomas. J Story
After struggling to find the perfect home in San Francisco’s tough market, one couple took to the water.
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AS SARAH AND KIMO BERTRAM prepared to move into their new
home, they weren’t thinking about packing or paint colors. They were thinking about the Titanic. “We worried that the place we’d sunk our savings into could just … sink,” says Kimo. But much to the couple’s relief, their floating house successfully made its way out of dry dock and was soon tethered to its permanent home in San Francisco’s Mission Creek, where the Bertrams now live with their 19-month-old daughter, Mary. The small community of floating homes feels more like a fishing village than an urban neighborhood—even in the shadow of new condo developments and construction cranes. “Every time you come home, it feels like you’ve left the city and entered a little sanctuary,” says Kimo. He and Sarah are just a short bike ride away from their jobs, in the hotel business and solar power industry, respectively. A two-line Craigslist posting drew the couple to the dock in 2010. They’d placed several losing bids on houses in the city and wanted a break from the hunt; a short-term rental on a houseboat seemed just the thing. The creaky wooden structure that they toured had noinsulation. It leaked. They offered to buy it on the spot. As self-described “water people” (Kimo surfs and Sarah grew up sailing), For two years, the couple shivered through life on the houseboat while planning and eventually building their new home.
“We never stopped to wonder, Does this make sense?” 16
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The architect they hired for the project, Robert Nebolon, hadn’t designed a floating home before but had worked on waterfront houses. That was close enough. “It’s hard to find an architect who does this kind of thing,” says Kimo, laughing. The Bertrams and Nebolon quickly agreed on a “shipping container modern” look for the home. Nebolon clad the exterior in prefinished metal siding, designed a factory-style “sawtooth” roof (a series of windowed ridges), and installed casement windows up to the ceiling so the place is bathed in light. For the interior, the couple mixed natural elements like knotty cypress floors and raw-edge teak furnishings with hits of color. “I wanted to feel connected to the city’s industrial past, but I didn’t want to feel like I was living in a warehouse,” Sarah says. The only limit to decorating was the hull’s dimensions— about 18 by 42 feet. “We had to come up with smart ways to pack the box,” says Nebolon. Benches flip open for stashing Mary’s toys, for example, and the couple’s bed rests on cabinets. Initially, they worried the weight of their furnishings would tip the home in one direction or another. But “unless we buy a grand piano, it’s no big deal,” says Sarah. “For the most part, it was like decorating any other house.”
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Visitors climb up the stairs to arrive in this open main room, which includes the kitchen, dining space, and a living area with big sliding doors.
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“Every time you come home, it feels like you’ve left the city and entered a little sanctuary.” Of course, living on a dock is not like living just anywhere. For the Bertrams, grocery shopping can mean driving their little boat over to the Ferry Building farmers’ market. Sea lions might show up when the couple barbecue on their deck. Most recently, they constructed a hot tub—in a boat. “Kimo convinced me we needed it to teach Mary to swim,” says Sarah. When the World Series was in town, the family drove the hot tub up the shoreline and listened to the game outside the stadium. Even more novel than a hot-tub boat is the community they’ve joined at the marina—the “ragtag Navy,” as Nebolon calls it. “There’s an engineer, a tech start-up guy, a retiree who fishes all day,” says Kimo. “What we have in common is a real connection to the water.” The group often gets together to maintain the dock, plant in the community garden, or host an aquatic version of a block party: “The other night, Kimo and I watched a brass band, with our neighbor playing trumpet, float down the creek on a vessel another friend made,” Sarah says. It was the kind of experience that reminded them why they’ll never leave. “We have no intention of moving,” says Kimo. “Ever.” DESIGN: Robert Nebolon Architects, Berkeley; rnarchitect.com BUILDER: W. B. Elmer & Co., Orinda, CA; wbelmer.com 19
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SEA CHANGE
By Peter Fish | Photography by Corey Arnold
Monterey Bay has gone from toxic soup to pristine waters supporting sea otters, whales, and a thriving kelp forest. And what we’re learning here might just save our oceans. 21
Stephen Palumbi surfs and plays in a rock band, but mainly he’s a marine biologist
so when he takes a visitor on the trail that winds from Hopkins Marine Station along the rocky shoreline of Monterey Bay, he mostly talks about the bay. Here’s where otters gather, and farther out, that’s where humpback whales tend to feed. As gulls squawk, Palumbi, the marine station’s director, points to a tawny crescent beach crowded with seals and newborn pups. “Seals, seabirds, otters, whales—the bay is better off than at any point in the last 150 years,” he says. A few generations ago this would have been counted a big surprise. Then, Monterey Bay was one of the most polluted places on the Pacific Coast—“an industrial hellhole,” he says. Now it’s a kind of paradise. And one with a remarkable lesson. The dire state of the world’s oceans can make even the most environmentally minded shut down. GARBAGE: We’re filling the oceans with trash, most famously in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the vast (twice as big as Texas, per some estimates) coagulation of plastic floating between California and Hawaii. OVERFISHING: We’ve taken 90 percent of large fish like shark and swordfish; 85 percent of the world’s fisheries are harvested at capacity or are in decline. HOT WATER: Because oceans are absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, marine temperatures are rising—bad news for species evolved to live in cooler waters. 22
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A glimpse of the region’s thriving kelp forest
ACID SEAS: Pollution and climate change can reduce the oxygen in oceans to deadly levels for marine life. They can also raise acidity, which destroys coral reefs; already 20 percent of the world’s reefs have died, with another 60 percent at grave risk. If it’s any consolation, even people who have built careers in conservation can feel overwhelmed. “I’m as subject to bad news as the next person,” says Julie Packard, executive director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the last 30 years. “I listen to the NPR reports on coral reefs and climate change—it’s hard. But the only thing that is going to lead to positive change is that we all get involved. Because really, what’s the alternative?” The one place on the planet where the oceans’ problems might be solved is the place Packard and Palumbi call home: the 120-mile indentation on the central California coast called Monterey Bay. It’s a special spot, the bay. Famously beautiful, its 455 square miles nurture one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, including dozens of species of marine mammals, still more of seabirds, hundreds of species of fish, and one of the largest kelp forests in the world. The bay’s most dramatic feature is not visible from shore: Monterey Bay Submarine Canyon, a chasm that in depth and complexity is the undersea equivalent of the Grand Canyon. Put it another way: If you were a marine scientist who wanted to study stuff that nobody had ever seen—and which might help you better understand the world’s oceans—Monterey Bay would be the place to do it. Today, the area hosts the largest concentration of marine science research and policy institutions in the world, nearly three dozen. With them comes one of the planet’s largest gatherings of world-class marine scientists, some 200 to 300, estimates Palumbi. This assemblage of marine knowledge is akin to Silicon Valley’s cluster of high-tech expertise, says Meg Caldwell, executive director of the Monterey-based Center for Ocean Solutions. “You have all these experts just a 20-minute drive away.” It all comes back, she adds, to the bay’s wealth of marine environments from deep sea to beaches to kelp forest. “Really, the biodiversity is phenomenal. It’s like having Africa’s Serengeti in our backyard.”
HOW DID IT GET BETTER? We’ve now stopped at a bend in the coastal trail, and Stephen Palumbi tells a story. It was 1947, and a college student named Merilyn Derby had just arrived at Hopkins to study marine biology. The day was sunny, the bay was inviting, and Derby grabbed a swimsuit and jumped in the water. It was cold, recounts Palumbi, but Merilyn expected that. What she didn’t expect came next. “Fish heads,” Palumbi says. “And fish tails. And guts. She jumped out of the water.” That was what Monterey Bay was like for decades: a befouled nightmare. But it wasn’t the bay he saw when he moved here from Harvard in 2002. “It was so beautiful,” he says. “I found myself asking, ‘How did such a big place get ruined? Then how did it get better?’ ” Palumbi began interviewing people like Derby for what became The Death & Life of Monterey Bay, his book (coauthored with Carolyn Sotka) published last year. He learned just how bad Monterey Bay had been. Start with 19th-century fur hunters, who decimated the bay’s sea otter
population. Without the otters, sea urchins (the otters’ favorite food) multiplied wildly, devouring the bay’s kelp forests—which led to the demise of the fish and other life that depended on kelp to survive. Next went the bay’s gray and humpback whales, hunted to near extinction, then the abalone. “A collapse of wildlife,” says Palumbi. Just one fish remained in abundance: sardines. When entrepreneurs realized the shiny silver fish could be caught and processed and sold to grocery stores, canneries sprang up along the bay shore. These supplied jobs and inspired one of local boy John Steinbeck’s most famous books, Canney Row. But as Derby discovered, their industrial waste turned the bay into toxic 23
Aquarium director Julie Packard’s next goal: Stem the tide of ocean trash.
“They were dumping 100,000 pounds of fish guts and tails and heads into the bay every day,” The bay’s decline was rapid and seemingly irrevocable. Yet, improbably, it did recover. In part, it healed itself. Once the sardines had been fished out, the canneries closed. Without the canneries, the water became cleaner. That allowed sea urchins and abalone to return; these, in turn, lured the few remaining sea otters up from Big Sur to feed on their favorite foods in Monterey Bay. With fewer sea urchins, the kelp forest sprang back.
THE NEED FOR HUMAN HELP Yet that wasn’t the entire story. Palumbi found that at crucial moments the bay has received human help. One heroine stands out: Julia Platt, a marine scientist (the first 24
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American woman to earn a doctorate in marine biology) who became mayor of Pacific Grove, California, in 1931. Her training made her understand just how badly the bay had declined. She fought the canneries, and when she lost that battle, turned her energy to establishing the first community-sponsore marine preserve in the country, just offshore from Pacific Grove. It was in this protected zone that, decades later, abalone first reappeared. “Instead of giving up,” says Palumbi, “she said, ‘What else can I do to leave the ocean better than it was before?’ ” Today, generations after Platt turned Pacific Grove City Council meetings into marine biology seminars to get her preserve established, research institutions dot the Monterey Bay coastline the way wineries
dot Napa Valley. Each facility tends to focus on specific kinds of scientific questions. Palumbi’s Hopkins Marine Station studies how marine organisms react to their environment. Long Marine Laboratory zeroes in on marine mammals. Some of the most cutting-edge research occurs at MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute), command center for a fleet of robotic vehicles that delve as far as 2 miles down into Monterey Canyon, “past cliffs and to the deep sea floor, the abyssal plain that goes all the way across the Pacific,” says MBARI researcher Jim Barry. The vehicles, he explains, give access to part of the planet that would otherwise be as hard to explore as the surface of Mars. Much of the current research is tied to the crises the Pacific faces. Because Monterey has been studied so thoroughly for so long, it’s an ideal place to determine how quickly climate change is affecting the ocean, by comparing what’s living here now with what lived here, say, 50 years ago. (The answer: more warm-water species now.)
Some research may help us manage or mitigate the effects of climate change on the oceans. Working in American Samoa, Palumbi discovered coral reefs that “can survive the hottest Pacific water we know about and still do quite well,” he says, “whereas other corals die at those temperatures.” The heat-resistant reefs are the ones that must be protected from development at all costs, he argues, because they’ll provide homes for fish even if the other reefs around them are dying. Bay researchers have also changed the way we eat. Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch is among the most effective consumer-awareness programs ever devised: Since its founding in 1999, its 40 million pocket guides and 1 million downloaded smartphone apps have advised North American consumers which fish to buy and which to avoid. And the aquarium successfully pushed for California’s recent ban on the shark fin trade: “A huge victory,” says Julie Packard. “Now we’re starting
to look at options on trash—legislation that sets targets for reducing marine plastic waste. I think we can have a huge impact on that.” change is affecting the ocean, by comparing what’s living here now with what lived here, say, 50 years ago. (The answer: more warm-water species now.) Some research may help us manage or mitigate the effects of climate change on the oceans. Working in American Samoa, Palumbi discovered coral reefs that “can survive the hottest Pacific water we know about and still do quite well,” he says, “whereas other corals die at those temperatures.” The heat-resistant reefs are the ones that must be protected from development at all costs, he argues, because they’ll provide homes for fish even if the other reefs around them are dying. Bay researchers have also changed the way we eat. Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch is among the most effective consumer-awareness programs ever devised: Since its
founding in 1999, its 40 million pocket guides and 1 million downloaded smartphone apps have advised North American consumers which fish to buy and which to avoid. And the aquarium successfully pushed for California’s recent ban on the shark fin trade: “A huge victory,” says Julie Packard. “Now we’re starting to look at options on trash—legislation that sets targets for reducing marine plastic waste. I think we can have a huge impact on that.”
THE BIGGEST IMPACT IS IN THE HEART Never discount the power of beauty. Monterey Bay was saved in large part because Julia Platt and her voters judged it beautiful enough to merit saving. Today the bay’s scientists and conservationists hope they can spark similar passion to save all the planet’s oceans. Says Packard, “Growing up, I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in rural California. So I had a real connection to the outdoors. Now I realize that when you’re talking about nature, you’re talking about the ocean—because most of nature is the ocean.” The trick, she continues, is to make people feel how vital the oceans are to their lives. “At first we thought the aquarium was going to be all about conveying facts to people, and they would understand them. Now we realize what’s important is the emotional impact—what you feel when you see our huge sunfish or the cathedral light of our kelp forest exhibit. The biggest impact is in the heart, not the head.” Palumbi is heading back on the trail toward Hopkins Marine Station. It’s later in the afternoon now. The bay sparkles. He talks about the ways Monterey Bay and the research done here can affect the rest of the world. “I tend to be an optimistic person,” he says. The changes the oceans are experiencing are grave, alterations not experienced in the last 50 million years. But, Palumbi says, we still have a chance, if we can halt the things we do that are damaging the atmosphere and so damaging the oceans. “I go all over the world and give talks about the problems the ocean faces,” he says. “And then I come back here. There are so many places where you can say, ‘Oh, this got bad, and then that got bad.’ 25
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“Monterey Bay is one of those rare and special places where the tape ran backward. Where you can see things get better. It helps to have a good example.�
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The Monterey Bay Aquarium
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GET A NERD’S EYE VIEW How to see the same creatures and ocean features the Monterey Bay scientist study—on land or out on the water. MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM
The best in the world, with mesmerizing exhibits of sea otters, jellyfish, and more. New this summer: Cindy’s Waterfront cafe from star chef Cindy Pawlcyn. montereybayaquarium.org MONTEREY BAY NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY EXPLORATION CENTER
explore a two-story version of the Monterey Submarine Canyon; the deck has a fine view of Santa Cruz Wharf and the bay. montereybay.noaa.gov ELKHORN SLOUGH NATIONAL ESTUARINE RESEARCH RESERVE
One of the largest tidal marshes in California, a haven for egrets, herons, and sea lions, all easily seen from reserve trails or a kayak. elkhornslough.org KAYAK TOURS
Nothing gets you closer to the bay’s marine life than a kayak. Outfitters include Monterey Bay Kayaks (monterey-
baykayaks.com), Kayak Connection (kayakconnection.com), and Adventures by the Sea (adventuresbythesea. com). MBARI
July 20 is the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s annual open house— the one day you can see its impressive fleet of robotic underwater vehicles. mbari.org. LONG MARINE LAB/ SEYMOUR MARINE DISCOVERY CENTER
This center in Santa Cruz has one of the world’s largest whale skeletons, plus guided tours on which you see the lab’s two on-site dolphins. seymourcenter.ucsc.edu WHALE-WATCHING
Humpback and blue whales frequent the bay from May into December; grays from December to April. Outfitters include Monterey Bay Whale Watch (gowhales.com) and Princess Monterey Whale Watching (monterey whalewatching.com)
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THE BAY LIGHTS
The Bay Light is a site-specific monumental light sculpture and generative art installation on the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, designed to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its opening. The installation by light artist Leo Villareal includes 25,000 individual white LEDs along 1.8 miles (2.9 km) of the cables on the north side of the suspension span of the bridge between Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco. The installation is controlled via a computer and displays changing patterns that are not meant to repeat. The opening ceremony was held on March 5, 2013. Initially intended as a temporary installation, which ended on March 5, 2015, the project was re-installed as a longstanding feature of the Bay Bridge with permanent fixtures that were re-lit on January 30, 2016. 30
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