East Bay Magazine Sept/Oct. 2020

THE MAGAZINE OF OAKLAND, BERKELEY AND THE WORLD THAT REVOLVES AROUND US

SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2020

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Sept & Oct 2020

THE MAGAZINE OF OAKLAND, BERKELEY AND THE WORLD THAT REVOLVES AROUND US

FROM THE EDITOR

FOR THE BOOKS

SNAP

BITE

Thanks for Being You, East Bay 6 Dorothea Lange Goes Digital at OMCA 8 NICHE

A Comics Company for Queer Prisoners P12

STREAM SCENE

Rockumentary Edition P18 COOL

How Community Fridges Fight Hunger P24

Nation’s Oldest Indie Black Bookstore P28 Diner Delights at Bette’s P32 VEEP TO KEEP

Our Own Kamala Harris P38 RRRR

Plastics and the Eco Pirate Fighting Back P43 NAME GAME

How to Share Your Unusual Moniker P49

PUBLISHER

CONTRIBUTORS

SENIOR DESIGNER

Rosemary Olson

Katherine Butler Katrina Fadrilan Amy Glynn Kary Hess D. Scot Miller Casey O’Brien Jonah Raskin Charlie Swanson Kelly Vance

Jackie Mujica

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Karen Klaber

EDITOR Daedalus Howell

DESIGN DIRECTOR Kara Brown

COPY EDITOR Mark Fernquest

ADVERTISING DIRECTORS Lori Lieneke Lisa Santos

ADVERTISING ACCOUNT MANAGERS

PRODUCTION OPERATIONS MANAGER

Danielle McCoy Ben Grambergu Mercedes Murolo Lynda Rael

Sean George

CEO/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Dan Pulcrano

ON THE COVER Photograph courtesy Andres Serrano. Logo calligraphy: Mark Davis

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Except as otherwise noted, entire contents ©2020 Metro Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

Queue

ThankQueue

THEN AND NOW Rockridge’s Cole Coffee pre-pandemic (left) and in a rare moment of quietude (right). Photos by C. Drin and Christine Lee.

Gratitude for East Bay ways

T

he crowds are smaller, but somehow the lines are just as long. This is one of the East Bay’s many quantum conundrums. At least when it comes to getting my favorite cuppa at Cole Coffee in Rockridge. Is it a wave or a particle, are they open or closed, do I want light or dark roast?

The phenomenon goes beyond mere caffeine addiction alone (though the house blend could certainly give cocaine a run for its money). It’s endemic to the will of the East Bay’s cafe culture itself—a gene for survival that transcends the pandemic and political pandemonium that defines our era. When the

Jeffrey Edalatpour’s writing about arts, food and culture has appeared in KQED Arts, Metro Silicon Valley, Interview Magazine, Berkeleyside.com, The Rumpus and SF Weekly.

Editor Daedalus Howell is the writerdirector of the feature film Pill Head and the author, most recently, of Quantum Deadline.

He’s also the editor of the North Bay Bohemian and the Marin Pacific Sun.

6

cockroaches finally inherit the earth there will still be a line at Cole Coffee.

Because there’s something deeper at play, something that reaches into the core of the human experience. It goes beyond mere habit or tradition but somehow defines them both. And it’s a defining characteristic of what it means to be an East Bay citizen.

What I think it is, and why the lines keep forming, is that East Bay people like to be around other East Bay people. Not too close—not too familiar—but close enough and familiar enough that even the most casual and loosest of acquaintances can exchange twinkling glances over their

Chelsea Kurnick writes journalism and poetry. She is on the Board of Directors of Positive Images LGBTQIA+ Center. Kurnick received a 2019 Discovered Award from Creative Sonoma.

Orion Letizi lives in Berkeley with his partner, author Christine Lee, four chickens and two beehives.

Casey O’Brien is an award-winning journalist with a focus on justice, equity and sustainability. She has been published in the

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

masks in the hearty affirmation that, indeed, we’re all still here.

East Bay people like knowing that the guy who only wears bike shorts or the woman with the kaleidoscopic hair or the beaded fellow who talks to the wall will still hold your place in line when you have to go back to your miracle of a parking spot to grab your forgotten phone. You need that phone. Everyone understands. And damn that’s a great spot. You get that phone. You need it so you can stand in line blissfully ignoring everyone in the quiet confidence that they will always be there for you. We get it, we got you, don’t talk to me. Glad you’re still here. — Daedalus Howell, Editor

Revelator, Sierra Magazine and Prism/the Daily Kos. Sara Ost is a writer, editor and business executive, in spite of her best efforts.

Among her exploits, she founded a media startup in a recession (and lived).

She splits her time between California and the Pacific Northwest.

As a journalist and world-renowned sommelier, Christopher Sawyer’s work has been featured in USAToday, MSN, NBC, ABC, CBS, Redbook, The Hollywood Reporter, Maxim, National Geographic Traveler, CNN and Esquire.

Andres Serrano is a photographer and artist perhaps best known for his controversial work “Piss Christ,” his memorable album art for Metallica and his photos of personalities for the New Yorker and other publications including the image of Kamala Harris on this issue’s cover.

A recent journalism grad, Jenny Shields has written for the San Francisco State University newspaper and Hoodline. com. She interned at Society19 and freelances for the North Bay Bohemian among other publications.

Spend.

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Love.

Every dollar you spend in Oakland, stays in Oakland. visitoakland.com/spendstaylove

Photography as

Social Activism

OMCA reveals digital archive of Dorothea Lange’s photos

BY Casey O’Brien

A

merican photographer Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” is widely seen as a defining portrait of the Great Depression; the woman it depicts, and her children, are etched into our collective image of that challenging time in American history.

But while that photo was shot not far from San Luis Obispo in Central California, Lange actually spent most of her career shooting in her own backyard: the East Bay. A longtime Berkeley resident, Lange captured the Great Depression, World War II and beyond in the Bay Area.

And now, for the first time, her personal archive is available online, for free. The Oakland Museum of

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Dorothea Lange’s iconic “Migrant Mother” from 1936.

California, the keeper of Lange’s collection, has unveiled an online digital archive with more than 600 of Lange’s photos, many of which have never been seen before. In the midst of another moment of crisis in the Bay Area, Lange’s documentary photography is a reminder of just how resilient we are.

Lange lived in Berkeley with her husband, Paul S. Taylor, an economics professor at U.C. Berkeley, for most of her adult life. Before she passed away

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

in 1965, she and Taylor made a plan for what to do with her enormous collection of photographs, field notes, negatives and even audio recordings, collected over decades of interviewing and photographing working class and poor Americans. Although at the time the Oakland Museum of California didn’t even have a final building to call home, Lange decided to take a leap of faith: she gifted the archive to her hometown museum. “[Lange and Taylor] were very interested in keeping it in the Bay Area, and they were intrigued by the description of the museum, that it would be a museum of the people and a community-oriented museum that would make the collection available to everybody, not just credentialed scholars,” said Drew Johnson, the museum’s curator of photography and digital culture.

Although the Smithsonian and many other national institutions were interested in housing Lange’s work, she wanted her photos to stay close to home.

Ever since the collection was gifted in 1965, OMCA has been trying to find ways to grant the public access to the photos. They’ve included them

»

vism

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 | EASTBAYMAG.COM |

“Shipyard Worker, Richmond California,” circa 1943.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE

9

“Japanese Children with Tags,” Hayward, California, 1942.

«

in exhibitions that have traveled all over the world, but they’ve never had the resources to fully digitize the collection. But with the help of a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, OMCA was able to create a website where Lange’s work can live, with accessibility and Lange’s commitment to public art in mind.

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“Some institutions have online databases, basically,” Johnson said.

“They just put a whole collection out there, and it’s just a searchable database. We wanted to do something more interpretive, more curated. We felt we didn’t have the resources to put all 50,000 of Lange’s images there, so we hit on this idea: a sort of curated

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

online exhibition … we’ve been able to put up more than 600 individually organized photos.”

The museum wanted the archive to feel extensive, but still be digestible. The photos are organized by time periods: The Great Depression, World War II and Postwar. Many of the photos were shot in Richmond, Oakland and San Francisco. Lange documented Japanese internment, homelessness in San Francisco, laborers in the Richmond dockyards and more. All of those photos are now available in the archive.

“Lange’s entire career was really spent in the Bay Area, and most of that was in the East Bay,” Johnson said. It’s OMCA’s hope that local Bay Area residents will be able to explore and learn about Lange through the archive, even though the physical museum remains closed. “We have tried to make this information broadly appealing and not just scholarly.”

Besides the photographs, the archive includes information about Lange’s process and career and the historical context for the works in the website.

As the Bay Area navigates a pandemic, racial injustice and raging wildfires, Johnson sees Lange’s work as even more crucial than ever.

“The theme of her work is the use of photography as a form of social activism … she had basic, fundamental empathy,” Johnson said.

The collection launched on Aug. 10 and is available at museumca.org/lange.

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Comic Relief

COVERED ‘Confined Before Covid-19.’ Courtesy of ABO Comix

“E

very time I go to the post office, it’s almost like Christmas morning,” Casper Cendre tells me, describing a mountain of envelopes decorated with beautiful drawings sent to him from prisons all over the U.S. Cendre is the director and cofounder of ABO Comix, a publisher and collective whose mission is to amplify the voices of LGBTQ prisoners through art. Since 2017, the Oakland-based group has collected and published comic art in anthologies that they distribute in and outside of prisons. Sales of these anthologies help to pay the contributors, who receive donations in their commissary funds.

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Oakland’s ABO Comix publishes art by and for queer prisoners

BY Chelsea Kurnick

Copies of ABO’s books are distributed to prison libraries for free.

Now in their fourth year, Cendre and the four other volunteers who currently comprise ABO correspond with more than 200 incarcerated artists. Cendre describes all of these creators as their very large, extended family. It’s palpable throughout our conversation how much love he feels for the people in their network.

“That feeling of mutual respect between two people on opposite sides of prison walls is something that so many people are lacking in their lives,” Cendre says.

ABO’s website features a page of anonymous testimonials from

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

prisoners’ letters which reinforce Cendre’s observation.

One person writes, “Thanks so much for the birthday card you sent me! Appreciated! It was the only one I received.”

Another writes, “I’ve been up almost an hour and now I’m sippin’ on a hot cup of coffee & eating a honey bun because you guys at ABO Comix made it possible for me to do so!”

Several call ABO their family.

This year, as the U.S. struggles to curb the spread of Covid-19, life inside prisons has become more challenging than usual. While the general public felt stifled by shelter-in-place orders, ABO Comix sent a mass mailer to

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DRAWN A page from ‘Confined Before Covid-19,’ by incarcerated artist Sky Rose.

Courtesy of ABO Comix

« everyone on their list asking for

submissions describing how the pandemic is impacting them behind bars.

“I just thought it was a really important project to have this historical documentation directly from the people who were experiencing it,” says Cendre, who received almost 50 contributions in a month.

In June, ABO released Confined Before

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Covid-19: A Pandemic Anthology by LGBTQ Prisoners.

Cendre says, “They don't have access to anything that they would normally have, which is in general very limited at the best of times.”

Cendre explains that every time a new case of Covid-19 is confirmed, most prisons go on lockdown for 14 days, quarantining everyone.

That said, between prisoners living together in small cells and corrections officers going in and out of the facilities, cases of infection continue to occur, often leading to indefinite lockdowns.

An artist named Kinoko writes in the anthology, “Prison Industries at Lovelock switched over to make masks for staff and first responders.”

Ironically, Cendre says that he has heard a lot of reports of prisons that aren’t taking the risk seriously, where people aren’t wearing masks or washing their hands regularly.

During lockdown, commissaries aren’t available and prisoners are sometimes given just one cold sack meal a day. Visitors aren’t permitted. Some

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

prisoners reported to ABO they were given free five-minute calling cards to stay in touch with loved ones, but phones themselves are few. Programs that bring outside instructors into prisons are canceled. Even prison libraries are closed.

“We got a couple reports from Texas prisons that over 30 of their guards in a lot of units had just up and quit,” says Cendre.

ABO received letters from several prisoners who are older and immunocompromised.

Cendre says, “They’re really scared because the prison has an outbreak and they’re terrified that they’re not going to come home, that this is going to become a death sentence for them.”

I talked with Cendre for a little over an hour, our conversation oscillating between heart-wrenching and exuberant as we shifted from talking about prisoners’ hardships to their art and the project’s impact.

“We updated our mascots from our logo, which are really adorable little monsters who are wreaking havoc on a prison,” Cendre says, describing the cover of Confined Before Covid-19. “We put one of them in a hazmat suit and gave one of them a mask and another a bottle of hand sanitizer.”

ABO sent free copies of the new collection to all contributors and put $50 in each of their commissary funds. They also added around $20 to the commissary funds of all noncontributors on their mailing list.

To date, ABO has been able to

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IN FRAME A page from ‘Confined Before Covid-19,’ by incarcerated artist Kinoko.

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donate $31,535 to LGBTQ prisioners since 2017. Funding comes from several avenues, including Patreon support, direct sales of merchandise, fundraiser parties (before Covid-19) and grants.

“I really love our Bay Area community for always having our backs and supporting us through these times,” Cendre says.

Oakland, which is home to several prison abolitionist organizations, has been instrumental in ABO’s organizationbuilding, philosophy and mission.

Cendre, who has lived in Oakland for six years, says he couldn’t imagine a better place. He describes Oakland’s queer community as selfless, compassionate and filled with people who are ready to put time and effort into projects that align with their politics.

ABO is fiscally sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center of San Francisco,

16

who assists them in writing grants. In 2019, ABO was granted about $25,000.

“A lot of that money was spent developing a comics curriculum to implement inside prisons,” Cendre says. “At some uncertain future date,” he adds, sighing.

When ABO first launched, it was planned as a one-off anthology. Io and Woof, the other two co-founders, are experienced comic artists and provided editorial feedback and mentorship to prisoners sending their work. Providing feedback to help artists hone their skills became a vital part of ABO’s work. Cendre says that, beyond being something healthy and productive to focus on, it also provides people with a portfolio and job experience.

“We write a lot of recommendations for parole boards,” Cendre says. “We help people with resumes and reentry support and all sorts of stuff.”

Io and Woof eventually stepped away from the collective. Cendre, who has been doing prison advocacy work since high school, wound up quitting two jobs in order to make ABO his full-time work.

He invested in an office space at Classic Cars West. The project is sustained through the immense dedication of its volunteers—not even Cendre currently takes a paycheck. Still, he sounds confident about the future of ABO and his ambition inspires confidence in those around him. There are a lot of exciting developments in the works for the collective.

“Very soon we’re going to start doing YouTube videos or a podcast,” he says. “Quite a few of our longtime contributors that we’ve been writing with for over four years are being

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

released because of Covid. So they’re coming home and we want to do some interviews with them.”

Cendre is also planning phone interviews with artists who are still on the inside.

Readers on either side of prison walls can look forward to a host of new books, as well. ABO will soon begin releasing graphic novels and omnibuses of individual artists’ work in addition to their annual anthologies.

For most prisoners, 2020 has been a devastatingly hard year, but ABO is providing hundreds with books that reflect their creativity and resilience.

One prisoner writes, “The content [of the anthology] is flawless. It shows A) our community is so brave and strongly unified that we support each other’s heart without judgment and B) our members are survivors. We are fuckin’ human, we cry and we cower but we fight.” ❤

PEN AND PANEL A page from ‘A Queer Prisoner’s Comix Anthology Edition III’ by incarcerated artist G. Wyatt.

Courtesy of ABO Comix

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GIRLS ON FILM Jane Wiedlin and Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go’s.

BY Chris Sawyer

18

ith so many live music shows on hold since the shelter-in-place began, watching old videos, full-length musicals and documentaries is a great way to add diversity to my entertainment choices. That was especially true when Showtime broadcast the SIP premiere Go-Go’s documentary on July 31.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

ATHENS, GA: INSIDE/OUT (1987) This fantastic film follows the rise

»

PHOTO BY MELANIE NISSEN/COURTESY OF SHOWTIME.

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Beyond conjuring up magic memories from my younger years, getting inside the heads of the five female members of the Go-Gos band, sharing laughs and rocking out with millions of other music fans across the nation (virtually, of course); this energetic celluloid gem reminded me of other fantastic music documentaries I’ve watched in the past. Here is a short list of music documentaries to seek out via Netflix or other online media sources to enjoy during #SIP2020 or anytime.

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ONE FOR THE ROAD A shot from the documentary A Shot of Whisky about the legendary Whisky a Go Go club on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.

Photo courtesy of Realise Films.

« of influential bands including the

B-52s, R.E.M., Flat Duo Jets and other talented artists that came out of the small college town of Athens in the “Peach State” of Georgia. I originally saw this documentary in the big barn at Hog Island Oyster Company in Tomales back in 1989. Beyond watching VHS recordings of live concert performances by famous bands back in my teen years, this was the music film that really moved me and made me respect that sowing seeds with college music can create bands that are still relevant today.

SOUND CITY (2013)

As an ode to the mastery of music and sound, Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters makes his directorial debut in this marvelous, thought-provoking movie focused on the legend of Sound City Studio in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles. From its humble beginning in 1969, the studio has been credited with producing and recording some of the greatest albums of all time. With Grohl as the narrator and guide, a steady stream of other noteworthy musicians who have all recorded albums in this

20

legendary studio—including members of Fleetwood Mac, Paul McCarthy and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails—give great insight into music. Although commercial recordings sadly ceased in 2011, the impact of this documentary led to the re-opening of this holy shrine of music in 2017.

A SHOT OF WHISKY (2015)

“Everybody wants to say they played there,” says guitarist Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, one of the many bands featured in this brilliant chronology of five decades of music at the legendary Whisky a Go Go club on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. After setting the trend for the short-skirt, go-go dance craze when the doors to this small, intimate 500-person club opened on Jan. 16, 1964, the venue quickly became the launching pad for Jim Morrison and the Doors (the opening band for lead acts in 1966), Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company, the Birds, Led Zeppelin, Steppenwolf, the Stooges and other great rock bands in the 1970s. The music genres went from punk to ska, and heavy metal to the alternative styles of music that are

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

currently hot today. It is particularly wonderful to follow the progression of these music trends through the eyes of Elmer Valentine, the co-founder of this famed venue, which was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

THE GO-GO’S (2020)

From playing at dive bars on the West Coast to performing at Madison Square Gardens in New York City after the Go-Go’s debut LP Beauty and the Beat reigned at the top of the charts for six straight weeks in 1982, this fabulous film, directed by Alison Ellwood (who also did the music docs, Laurel Canyon and History of The Eagles), details how this talented female group rose from the LA punk scene in the early 1980s to become the first multi-platinum selling, all-female band to play their own instruments and write their own catchy hit songs, soaring to #1 on the album charts. The end result is a magical balance of great music, stimulating conversation, and the real story behind one of the most successful female rock groups of all time. Also worth noting: the group’s new single, “Club Zero,” debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard charts in the first week after it was released—the same day the documentary premiered on July 31.

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At the time, music videos were at a primal stage of development in the United States, which meant most of the early programming featured bands playing songs in studio or live on stage. That changed rapidly when the second coming of the ‘British Invasion.’ « who was previously best known

as the guitarist for the Monkees, a television comedy series that ran from 1966 to 1968. Inspired by the innovative videos made for The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, Help and Magical Mystery Tour albums in the mid-1970s: Nesmith made his first video for his small hit “Rio” in 1976 and later teamed up with Warner Communications to developed a cutting-edge promotional project called “PopClips,” which was the first of its kind in America.

After Nesmith and MTV co-creators John Lack and Robert T. Pittman sold the concept to Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment in December of 1980, the early goal of the channel was pumping rock and roll music into households across the nation, all day and all night. As Lack explains in the opening sequence for this fantastic documentary, co-directed by Tyler Measom and Patrick Waldrop: “Besides sports and sex, there’s nothing that brought us together like music.” Challenge on.

Working with a minimal budget meant the team needed to be creative.

While collecting content, they hired a colorful set of young, perky, angstdriven VJs (video jockies): Martha

22

Quinn, Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, J.J. Jackson and Alan Hunter.

For art, they developed the iconic MTV logo out of cardboard cuttings destined for the trash, and acquired images of a rocket lifting off and an astronaut staking a flag on the moon from the NASA public-domain website. As a statement song to mark the official beginning, the first track they played was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles.

At the time, music videos were at a primal stage of development in the United States, which meant most of the early programming featured bands playing songs in studio or live on stage.

That changed rapidly when the second coming of the “British Invasion,” led by a new wave of polished videos from England that were crafted by talented directors, stylists and make-up artists, powered MTV’s first phase of success.

This exciting period included a wide range of colorful, provocative and thought-provoking images wrapped around catchy songs performed by bands including Duran Duran, A-Ha, Flock of Seagulls, Bananarama and the Culture Club from the UK, and Men at Work, INXS and Midnight Oil from Australia.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

To broaden the audience, MTV hired ex–Atlantic Records executive Les Garland, whose close contacts with global rock stars such as Mick Jagger, Peter Townsend, David Bowie, The Police and Pat Benatar led to a series of memorable clips with the famous tagline “I want my MTV.” In doing so, the name “MTV” went viral before viral was even a common word, and the demand for the cable station skyrocketed across the nation.

In 1984, a new wave of music styles emerged from this success. They included sexy videos from Wham, Madonna, Prince and Chris Isaak; artistic renderings of classic rock songs from Bruce Springsteen, ZZ Top, Tom Pretty & The Heartbreakers, Heart, Journey and the rebirth of Roy Orbison; instant hits from movie soundtracks; variations of the heavy metal sounds of Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard; and even Quiet Riot’s cover of the English rock band Slade’s 1973 hit “Cum On Feel the Noize.”

On the topic of #BlackLivesMatter, the film also discusses the controversy surrounding the station’s hesitation to merge Black artists and R&B with rock music. This eventually led to the momentous “World Premiere” of Michael Jackson’s dazzling video for his single “Billy Jean,” which set the stage for the success rap, hip-hop, jazz-rock fusion with Herbie Hancock, and the network’s highest rated show, Yo! MTV Raps, hosted by Fab five Freddie, Ed Lover and Dr. Dré. All in all, this is an amazing documentary that provides insight into one of the greatest musical experiments of all times, which lives on in many different forms today. ❤

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Check the Fridge Oakland Community Tackles Food Insecurity With Street Corner Fridges

BY Casey O’Brien

A

s of early August, over 130,000 people in the Bay Area had lost their jobs due to the Coronavirus shutdown. We’ve all seen the shuttered restaurants, cafes and shops in our neighborhoods. The long term impacts of the pandemic are numerous, but unemployment has exacerbated one issue in particular: hunger. There were already 870,000 food-insecure people in the Bay Area before the Covid-19 crisis (more than the entire population of San Francisco), and need has only grown. As food banks and food-justice organizations work to meet increased

24

need, some community members have taken it upon themselves to end food insecurity in their neighborhoods, one fridge at a time. Several groups, including a grassroots community organization and a grocery startup, have installed free fridges in the East Bay (and beyond), to feed those in need, anonymously, shamelessly and for free.

The concept of community fridges is simple but radical: people set up an empty fridge on the sidewalk, in a vacant lot or anywhere else they can get permission and access to an outlet.

Then, they fill it with food, cleaning it regularly and restocking it when

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

necessary. Community members are encouraged to add their own contributions to the fridge, but more importantly, to take anything they might need. The idea first gained traction in New York earlier this summer, as people across the boroughs began strategizing ways to meet the needs of the city’s massive foodinsecure population.

The unique advantages of community fridges—their accessibility, the choice they give to those in need and the ability of the community to sustain the fridge—appealed to Na’ama Moran, founder and CEO of

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As restaurants begin to allow outside dining, requests for commercial servicing have also picked up considerably, she said.

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ne very visible effect of Bay Area residents staying safe at home is the increase in trash and recyclables. As people order items to be delivered, that packaging goes into bins, dumpsters, compactors and trash rooms—which quickly begin to overflow. Not only is this unsightly, but it adds to the problems of sanitation and hygiene communities are facing. Food waste in particular attracts rodents, which bring with them their own possible contaminants.

This situation is especially acute for apartment complexes and multi-family buildings. Yet, said Nancy Fiame, co-founder of Bay Area Bin Support (BABS), “Everyone deserves a clean, healthy place to live.”

BABS can help solve this problem facing apartment managers and HOA boards.

The company’s services, customized for individual situations, include “pushing or pulling” bins and/or trash compactors to proper street pick-up positions, returning them after they’re emptied by city trucks, and ensuring areas are clean afterwards. BABS works to minimize overflow, monitor waste usage level, follows up on late or missed pick-ups, and communicates with clients about any waste collection issues on their properties. The family-owned company was the first of its kind in the Bay Area, and has grown to cover 18 Bay Area cities, servicing more than 400 clients.

Anthony L. Navarro Jr., property coordinator, Alameda County, EEN Property Management, Inc., has personal experience of the benefits of BABS’s services. “Knowing that all trash areas will be serviced on the correct day, and always left neat and tidy, brings me peace of mind that I did not have before BABS. Financially, we have saved thousands in various garbage fees, with overages and missed pickups now nonexistent,” he said.

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CHILL The idea isn’t to replace existing food programs but to expand access.

«

«

26

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

food available in each fridge and what the fridges are lacking. Information about the Town Fridge project is translated into at least 5 languages. The team plans to keep the fridges throughout the year and beyond the pandemic, saying, “We are in the process of creating the world we deserve every day.”

The idea behind community fridges isn’t to replace existing food programs, but to expand access for people who might not be able to get as much help as they need from government benefits or food pantries.

“Services are networks,” Moran said.

“Food pantries and soup kitchens are like nodes in that network, where people have to go to them to get food. The fridges get as close to the people in need as possible. A recent study found that 79 percent of food-insecure families were already receiving SNAP, demonstrating the need for more options for ending hunger. Some people may be embarrassed to visit a food pantry due to stigma, especially young people.”

There is no one perfect solution for hunger and food insecurity; it’s one of the most complex issues our community faces. But giving food-insecure people the means to get food with dignity is a great first step. Moran and organizers like her hope that community fridges will continue to pop up all over the Bay Area and beyond.

“I just want this project to grow. I hope that soon, there will be fridges everywhere, and anyone can help themselves,” she said. ❤

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHEETAH

the B2B grocery startup Cheetah (based in Pleasanton). Normally, Moran’s company serves primarily restaurants, but as some clients have shuttered during the crisis, Moran was left with inventory that she couldn’t use. She didn’t want it to go to waste, so she partnered with a local nonprofit, CityTeam, to set up a community fridge on Washington Street in Oakland and another in San Jose, both decorated

with murals by local artists and monitored and cleaned regularly.

Cheetah is in the process of opening a third fridge and plans on more locations.

“We were really excited about the fridges because they allow us to get to what we usually call in business ‘the end user,’ except these aren’t users, they’re people in need,” Moran said. “But they might not be comfortable going to a food pantry or a soup kitchen. Maybe they are far away, or they don’t have the means to get there. So we want to make sure food gets to people wherever and whenever they need it.”

Usually Cheetah’s fridges are stocked with milk, meat, produce, juice and bottled drinks, depending on availability. Cheetah isn’t the only community fridge project in Oakland, though—a grassroots group of volunteers called the Town Fridges has set up 8 fridges around Oakland which usually stock pantry staples, water, produce and even prepared meals. Currently, there are 3 fridges in West Oakland, 1 Downtown, 1 in North Oakland and 2 in East Oakland.

The Town Fridges usually avoid raw meat, but any other grocery item is game—and anyone can donate. Their guiding motto is “Scarcity is a myth.”

Organizers say “there is an abundance of food to share, and we keep us fed.”

No one person runs the Town Fridges project, and anyone can get involved, by volunteering to clean fridges and check their stock, or just by dropping off food.

On their Instagram, the team posts the

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Marcus Books REACHES MILESTONE The nation’s oldest independent Black bookstore celebrates its 60th anniversary amidst Black Lives Matter movement and global pandemic

BY Chelsea Kurnick

28

M

arcus Books, the oldest independent Black bookstore in the United States, turned 60 this year. Between global pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and the death of Marcus Books founder Dr. Raye Richardson at age 99, this has been a rollercoaster of a year for the Richardson family and their landmark shop and publishing press. Loud calls to support Black businesses have prompted increased attention on Marcus Books, a welcome shift at a time when Covid-19 has been decimating small businesses that rely on in-person interaction.

Covid-19 social distancing protocols meant that the store—which has hosted countless Black authors and icons, from Muhammad Ali to Toni Morrison— spent part of their milestone year unable to welcome customers into the shop. An online fundraiser started by loyal patron Folasade Adesanya, creator of The Black Syllabus, has garnered more than $259,000 for the store.

Blanche Richardson, co-owner of Marcus Books alongside her two living siblings, says the store has been through a lot during its history. Blanche’s parents

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

first opened it in 1960 in San Francisco as the Black Power movement was taking root nationally. Their first Oakland location opened in 1976.

Adesanya writes that, through their bookstore and their publishing press, the Richardson family “fiercely advocated for Black history, exchange, and knowledge of self. They published now canonical books (that had before their resurrection gone out of print) and work by independent authors, poets, and artists.”

The printing press is still active and housed in the same building as the

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This year’s Black Lives Matter protests have also prompted an increase in book sales by Black authors to white and other non-Black buyers. « bookstore on Martin Luther King Jr.

Way. Blanche’s brother Billy runs the presses and also makes stained glass art that can be seen throughout the store.

In a 2008 interview for Bookslut, Blanche described the ways Marcus Books supported the Civil Rights Movement.

“Marcus Books provided a forum for many Civil Rights and Black Power organizations,” Blanche said.

“We also provided meeting space for organizations to plan their strategies— marches, rallies and the like.”

She continued, “Marcus Books initiated dozens of forums and seminars on race relationships and the politics of Blackness. Our family—sometimes just our family—picketed every place there was to picket: hotels, car dealerships, retail businesses, housing developments.”

There’s a lot more at stake in keeping Marcus Books thriving than merely keeping one family in business. Keeping Black bookstores open also helps to sustain the larger ecosystem of Black publishing. If there are fewer venues that stock and sell works by Black writers, that can lead to fewer contracts for Black authors.

Adesanya writes, “Marcus Books is an institution where those who have written books, produced visual work and more can see themselves on a shelf,

30

wall or counter surrounded by other Black makers.”

In an appearance on The Tonight Show, Hamilton star and rapper Daveed Diggs, who grew up in Oakland, told host Jimmy Fallon about how impactful Marcus Books has been in his life.

Diggs said, “It’s a wonderful store and wonderful resource. As a writer and artist and thinker, growing up, it was a really important community space for me and my peers who grew up in a scene together. It really connected us to a history of art and activism in Oakland.”

This year’s Black Lives Matter protests have also prompted an increase in book sales by Black authors to white and other non-Black buyers—especially books on race and anti-racism. Marcus Books has seen increased sales to customers of all races.

“It is due, I feel, to the generous amount of local and national media— print, radio, TV, social media—we’ve been fortunate to get,” says Blanche.

“Our regular base—which includes some of everyone—continues to provide strong support.”

Most independent bookstores have been challenged for decades, first struggling to compete against large chain retailers and then Amazon.com.

Adesanya writes, “Between 1999 and

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

2014, the number of Black bookstores [in the U.S.] declined by 83%, from 325 to only 54.”

Blanche says, “We have experienced and survived quite a few challenges and still maintained a good standing in the national Black community. Despite the invasion of Barnes and Noble and online shopping, we are still standing.”

The success of the GoFundMe campaign is heartening. “[It] is not only a humbling inspiration, but a source of funding for the great projects we are planning, i.e. a magnificent website.”

While their website is under construction, customers from all over the U.S. can still shop at Marcus Books.

Locals can now come into the store as long as they are wearing a mask and adhere to Covid-19 protocols. To place orders for shipping or curbside pickup, shoppers may contact the store via email or phone.

“We are doing a tremendous amount of mail orders right now,” says Blanche.

Those orders have been keeping Blanche and her family incredibly busy.

So busy, in fact, she says she barely has time to read.

“Of course, it doesn’t stop me from accumulating more books,” Blanche says. “I have probably 30 new books stacked up begging to be read! The last and best I read this year was Deacon King Kong by James McBride. [It’s] a fabulous, intelligent, entertaining read.”

Marcus Books is located at 3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. https://www. facebook.com/marcus.books/. Orders and inquiries can be made by emailing info@marcusbooks.com or by calling 510.652.2344.

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Bette’s

Oceanview Diner Berkeley Favorite Keeps it Coming

BY Jeffrey Edalatpour

32

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

M

anfred Kroening is the tall, silver-haired Austrian who regularly greets customers at the front door of Bette’s Oceanview Diner.

He and his late wife Bette (along with Sue Conley who went on to co-found Cowgirl Creamery) opened the diner on Berkeley’s Fourth Street in 1982.

Fourth Street in the early 1980s was an unlikely neighborhood to start a homey, welcoming place for brunch.

The nearby warehouse tenants were glassblowers and metalworkers in what was then an industrial neighborhood.

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I’ve returned for more than a decade because I rely on the familiar faces to make me feel, momentarily, at home in a friend’s kitchen. « Speaking by telephone Kroening

34

brunch items for takeaway. Fourth Street is normally a bustling shopping district.

But without the retail shoppers and people who work in the neighborhood that comprise the regular customers, it didn’t make sense to reopen. And, as Lucie explains, “My parents really opened a restaurant to create community, to have contact with people.”

When Bette’s reopened on July 2, they had a plan in place for outdoor dining and had received a federal PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loan to help with payroll. Since then, Kroening says that the shoppers and the employees nearby haven’t returned to 4th Street in anywhere near the same numbers as before. Additionally, he’s having to improvise every day, making decisions about what food to order and what hours and days to open and close.

“It’s like starting all over again,” Kroening says. “It’s not what Bette and I thought when we opened up the restaurant, to deal with these kinds of problems.” But he is waiting to see if things change. “Every day is different.

You make too much. You make too

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

»

PHOTO BY JEFFREY EDALATPOUR

recalled that, “Back then, to work on Fourth Street, it was a bad zone at that time. Roaming dogs and upside-down shopping carts.” He felt that they were really taking a chance starting a business there. But they all thought, “Let’s try to work together and make a living.”

With its old-fashioned checkerboard floor, perfect French omelets and signature jukebox, Bette’s slowly but surely anchored diners’ affections to Fourth Street. When the city mandated shelter-in-place orders in March due to Covid-19, both Bette’s and its To Go storefront next door closed for three months. That felt like an eternity to customers, like me, who crave their daily sandwich specials, pizza slices and various homemade desserts. In a separate interview, Manfred and Bette’s daughter Lucie, who’s currently helping her father with the business, says the initial closure was only supposed to last two weeks.

At the time, the diner wasn’t set up for takeout and didn’t have systems in place for online ordering or for packaging

little.” He says that the staff can get depressed waiting for customers to show up. They wonder if anybody’s going to come.

He says, “It’s dead sometimes.”

It surprises me to learn from Lucie that the diner is doing better business than Bette’s To Go. For the last couple of months, one of my few pandemic outings each week has been to pick up lunch there. Bette’s To Go is my version of Cheers. I’ve returned for more than a decade because I rely on the familiar faces to make me feel, momentarily, at home in a friend’s kitchen. I order comfort food. A turkey sandwich on whole wheat, a side of couscous or potato salad, a lemon square and an iced tea. As I carry the paper bag away to a bench in the shade, I’m cheered up by the ritual and the routine. I’ve taken every friend I’ve ever had there, too, to share the food with them as if we were performing a pagan version of a holy communion.

Lucie says that in July Bette’s hired back approximately half of the staff, 17 people out of 42. But with outdoor

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REOPENED Owner Manfred Kroening was surprised by how many people told him how happy they were that the restaurant reopened.

« dining closing and then reopening

again, it was a complicated, confusing month. “We’re between 30 and 40 percent of our gross,” she says. And, despite the smoke from the fires, they did well last weekend.

For a restaurant that’s been operating for 38 years, the newfound sense of instability is a huge adjustment. “We were a very, very well-oiled machine prior to this,” Lucie says. “All of a sudden we don’t know how much food we’re going to sell, so we have to look at food costs again. You have to look at all these things that you didn’t have to think about.”

Kroening believes that, unlike Chinese and Mexican restaurants, Bette’s To Go doesn’t work as an online business. People aren’t making the trip out for “a hot dog, a slice of pizza or a

36

special sandwich.” What draws me back is an ineffable feeling that I can’t define until Kroening easily pins it down.

“Bette used to say, ‘It’s not only the meatloaf,’” Kroening says. “It’s really teamwork and cooperation. People who like it there and contribute to the atmosphere.” Under these difficult circumstances, he says, it’s really hard to hold onto that feeling. “And that’s why I’m still working there everyday.”

Despite the loss of revenue, Kroening says he doesn’t have any intention of closing or selling.

“Bette and I liked cooking and we just wanted to be together, and be working together. It was a simple thing,” he says. Bette grew up in New Jersey where eating at diners was part of the culture. “Everybody eats at diners.

Children. Old people. Couples. Single

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

people. We wanted to have a place that welcomes everybody.”

Understandably, Kroening is acutely aware of his wife’s absence this year.

“Bette was a really, really big part of this whole restaurant,” he says. “I don’t have her. I don’t have a partner who I can lean on. So it’s a lot of responsibility.

Sometimes I don’t sleep at night.”

When they reopened, he was surprised by how many people told him how happy they were and how much the place means to them. “They really missed coming and it was such a big part of Berkeley for 20, 25, 30 years,” he says. “They came with their children and now they have grandchildren. I really appreciate that and it makes me feel so special.”

Expressing concern for her 66-yearold father, Lucie says, “It’s pretty exhausting for him.” Both father and daughter are quick to acknowledge the help of “a great managing staff.” But the exhaustion he’s contending with comes from the daily ups and downs and the unknowable future. “So it’s one day at a time and one crisis at a time,” Lucie says.

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FAMILY Kamala Harris, left, with her sister, Maya, and mother, Shyamala, in Berkeley, Calif., in 1970

Oakland in Me The

Photo by Andres Serrano

Growing Up in the 60s and 70s East Bay, Kamala Harris is Ready for a Fight

On Her Way Sen. Kamala Harris.

BY Jenny Shields

K

amala Harris’ selection as Joe Biden’s running mate for the 2020 presidential election made history as the first Black woman on a major ticket. It’s historic for the East Bay as well. Only one person born in California, Richard Nixon, ever served as president or vice president—and he was a Southern Californian.

Her roots here run deep—as does the symbolism of Oakland as the most racially diverse city of its size or larger in the United States. The first sentence of her bestselling book, The Truths We Hold, mentions both Alameda County and Oakland. And her presidential campaign kicked off January 27, 2019 at Frank Ogawa Plaza.

In her autobiography, she describes preparing for a contentious 2012 phone call with JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon. “I

took off my earrings (the Oakland in me) and picked up the receiver.”

Kamala Devi Harris is the child of a Jamaican father, now-retired Stanford economics professor Donald Harris, and an Indian mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. They met in Berkeley while graduate students at the University of California.

She was born at Oakland’s Kaiser Foundation Hospital on Oct. 20, 1964, less than three weeks after Jack Weinberg was arrested for political activism at a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) table on the Berkeley campus. That event sparked the Free Speech Movement, an early flash point in the decade of national activism that followed.

Harris’ parents named her Kamala, Sanskrit for “lotus” and another name for the Hindu goddess of female empowerment, Lakshmi. Harris was the

eldest of two. Her younger sister, Maya is a former law school dean and public policy advocate who figures heavily in Kamala’s campaign. Maya is married to Tony West, who headed the Justice Department’s civil division in the Obama administration and is presently Uber’s chief legal officer.

Until recently, Harris was perhaps best known for being California’s first female and first Black attorney general. In 2016, she was elected as California’s junior senator and is the first Indian American and second African American woman in the U.S. Senate. She is now the third female vice presidential candidate from a major party (Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin are the other two).

Harris’ love for advocacy and politics comes from her parents, who were active in the Civil Rights Movement and brought her to protests as a baby. Her parents divorced when she was seven,

»

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

39

Harris got into politics at a young age and at 13 she and her sister staged a protest regarding children being allowed to play on the lawn. « and she and her sister were raised

by their mother on the top floor of a duplex on Berkeley’s Bancroft Way. Her neighborhood was predominantly Black and lower-middle class.

“It was a close-knit neighborhood of working families who were focused on doing a good job, paying the bills, and being there for one another.” Harris wrote in her autobiography.

Harris also speaks frequently about attending Berkeley's Thousand Oaks Elementary School during its second year of integration. She was bussed daily to the mostly white, affluent district.

Despite their parents’ separation at a young age, their mother supported her childrens’ multicultural identity.

She took them both to a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple.

When Harris visited India as a child she was impressed with her grandparents’ political heritage. Her grandfather had been involved in India’s struggle for independence “My grandfather felt very strongly about the importance of defending civil rights and fighting for equality and integrity,” Harris told the Los Angeles Times. “I just remember them always talking about the people who were corrupt versus the people who were real servants.”

Harris was politically aware at a young age and at age 12 she and

40 EAST BAY MAGAZINE

her sister staged a protest against a Montreal apartment complex rule prohibiting children from playing on the lawn. The Harrises moved back to the East Bay after Harris graduated high school in Canada. “Maya and I had just gotten home from school when [their mother] pulled out the pictures to show us—a one-level dark-gray house on a cul-de-sac with a shingled roof, a beautiful lawn in front, an outdoor space on the side for a barbecue.” “‘This is our house!’ I would tell my friends, proudly showing off the picture.

It was going to be our piece of the world,” Harris wrote.

After high school, Harris attended Howard University, where she studied political science and economics. At this historically Black college Harris rushed in a sorority, and after graduation she earned her law degree from UC’s Hastings Law School. While attending Hastings in San Francisco, Harris lived with her sister and her toddler niece.

Law school proved competitive, though Harris excelled.

After school, Harris worked as deputy district attorney in Oakland. In 1998, she was hired as a prosecutor in the San Francisco district attorney’s office, where she was appointed to head the Career Criminal Division. She ran for district attorney in 2004, defeating incumbent

| EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan. She was elected attorney general of California in 2010.

In 2014, Harris married attorney Douglas Emhoff and soon after prepared for her run for Senate, which she won in 2016. While running for Senate, Harris called for immigration and criminaljustice reforms as well as increasing the minimum wage and protecting women’s reproductive rights. While in the Senate, she garnered attention for using her prosecutorial interrogation skills on Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he testified on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

After a heated primary race for the Democratic presidential nomination—one in which Harris and Biden often locked horns—she was not an obvious shoo-in for the vice president slot. However, she did have some factors in her favor, including the support of the Obamas. The former president praised her selection, saying, “I’ve known Senator Harris for a long time. She is more than prepared for the job. She’s spent her career defending our Constitution and fighting for folks who need a fair shake.” She was also friends with Biden’s late son Beau Biden, an attorney general for the state of Delaware whose death from cancer is cited as a reason Biden ceded a 2016 Democratic presidential run to Hilary Clinton.

The 77-year-old Biden, if elected, may of course not seek a second term in office if he wins in November. In that scenario, Harris would be well positioned to seek the 2024 nomination Democratic presidential nomination.

She could make history yet again. ❤ Dan Pulcrano contributed to this article.

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

The

Plastic The Story

of

The Evolution of an Eco Pirate on Capitalism’s Amoral Seas

PHOTOS COURTESY OF STIV WILSON

BY Sara Ost

A

ctivist and filmmaker Stiv Wilson isn’t fighting to end plastic pollution. He’s fighting to end a system dependent on plastic. Can decades of work and a noteworthy cache of film awards make a drop of difference in an ocean of disposable everything?

A TICKET TO THE SHOW.

If you’ve ever been to the sagging Skates on the Bay restaurant in Berkeley, you know it’s a writer’s dream of a watering hole: A classic cocktail joint (of types both liquid and crustacean) on the waterfront, where the prices are Chicago-steakhouse comical, the service is more nostalgic than competent and the hipsters are in mercifully short supply. A few pebble skips away is the Berkeley Yacht Club and its members-only honor bar, reliably populated with colorful old salts downing rum drinks long after the barkeep has called it a night.

It’s here that Stiv Wilson, a gimleteyed environmental activist living on his sailboat, the Nurdle (yes, so

SEA CHANGE Wilson shows off a fresh catch from a Pacific Ocean plastic gyre.

named for the petrochemical industry pellets), in the Berkeley Marina, and I, a perennially uneasy executive and sometimes-editor, rediscover an intellectual kinship over soothing bay sunsets, one that has ebbed and flowed for well over a decade.

Once a green media founder, I’ve become a listless thirtysomething agency executive losing sleep over the acres of poly-whatever carpet our clients send to the landfill after an event. (Early in my tenure as a newlyminted C-suiter, I naively asked a young project manager what happens to all that fluffy acreage; surely we reuse it?

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43

SEA ME One of Wilson’s at-sea selfies.

« “Don’t get me started,” he said with

a sigh that was far beyond his years.)

Stiv—oceanic nomad, activist, writer, nonprofit leader, policy wonk and societal saddle burr par excellence—is also a former media founder working on his biggest endeavor yet. I’m selling the floor covering; he’s covering the reason why.

In the midst of these Skates sessions, he’s in the Philippines one month, Indonesia the next, producing what will become a multi-award-winning— and, fair warning—emotionally gutting documentary tracing the global lifecycle of plastic. There’s a loose affiliation with the folks who over a decade ago brought us the Conjunction Junction-y sensation The Story of Stuff, but the funding, creation and production of The Story of Plastic is its own Wilson animal, with nary a drop of agency saccharine to be found.

Remember those days? When we still wore those reduce, reuse, recycle

44

blinders? Before our home-stretch ice melts, before talk of a Green New Deal, before abdicating from the Paris Agreement, before Trump?

Before it was possibly, then probably, too little, too late.

Stiv takes half a week holed up in Nurdle with a novel to recover after each trip, but not on account of jet-lag (the man is a house, and appears to have the physical stamina of a Marine). What he and his crew encounter will surprise even the most informed citizen; to experience its degrading extent is an unqualified shock. Barefoot children sorting through hazardous waste; waterways clogged with Trader Joe’s packets of flaxseeds and kale chips; the cancerous, mass incineration of humanity’s insatiable consumption: “Look, we aren’t really talking about things being disposable,” Stiv says. “We’re talking about humans being disposable.”

Troubled waters ahead for this sailor: The suits-that-be who initially partner with Stiv for his formidable ability to get things done are experiencing not-insignificant anxiety around Stiv’s formidable ability to get things done.

You don’t help Ban the Bag in an American city for the first time or pass national legislation to end microbeads by being easy on the (Powerpoint) slides.

No matter: There’s a movement and a team of donors at his back. Stiv is quick to point out that the American romantic obsession with mavericks may seem sexy in the afterglow with a good cigarette, but in the thick of making real change, it’s as empty as a puff of smoke. He is adamant that we root out the desire to make lone-hero myths out of our causes.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

With every shoot, the story becomes more textured and terrifying. For this writer, The Story of Plastic exists in another universe from the previous decade, where viral videos about going green are now almost eerily chipper, reflecting their context in the late-aughts, kidglove approach consumer marketers seemed convinced could prevent the coming planetary catastrophe, if only we would buy enough sustainable cotton t-shirts or taste a vegan cupcake. “We’ve all learned what an externality is! Now go be a green consumer and drink some organic milk!”

Well, we do drink.

FAST FORWARD AND FLASHBACKS.

Stiv carefully turns over my question of whether he’s anti-establishment. “No, I don’t see it that way,” he says. “That’s the whole, intractable problem. That’s just all of us butting up against neoliberalism.

I’m not here to change the system; I’m here to make a new one.”

When I ask if we can hope to change things from the inside, I am really asking: Do we have a choice, anyway?

Do we give our good, green names to corporations destroying our chance at a hospitable future, in the hopes that any awareness is better than none at all? Stiv will be the first to tell you to get expert at, though never comfortable with, these complexities; at least in the world of policy, nothing gets done if you don’t.

What of the rest of us? The ecopublicist hawking mineral eye shadow for money who drives her gas-guzzler home at night and gorges on industrial candy fortified with that other

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« “mineral,” a food-grade petroleum

derivative that comes in a single-use bag. The vegetarian who raises several offspring and buys their mass-produced polyester school clothes on discount from TJ Maxx and picks a fight at the family BBQ over the same spatula being used to flip both the bloody burgers and the Impossible ones.

“Just the privilege of choosing to eat vegan, when I’ve seen fathers holding their infants during a nap in a methanesuffused waste dump; where my camera is worth more than he’ll make in his entire life? It’s completely the wrong conversation,” Stiv says.

This problem shows up as the film’s lone incongruity, where thoughtfullybuilt pacing and human-focused storytelling are ever-so-gently blemished by the interstitial scenes providing explainer animations. They feel sprinkled in, like pre-packaged sustainability seasoning for the bygone Western palate of 2007.

The heartache is that we’re a half century on from the facts beginning their mainstream spill, and I’m still pulling my family’s plastic flaxseed packets out of the recycling bin.

TO ERR IS HUMAN; TO ESCAPE PLASTIC, IMPOSSIBLE.

Stiv and I connected on Facebook around 2006, when everyone was following anything and “friending” anyone who had so-called common interests. (The end of civilization?

Discuss.) He was the co-founder and editor-in-chief at Wend Magazine.

“Wend wasn’t environmentalist,

46

LIFE AQUATIC Wilson has a Steve Zissou moment with his crew at the Berkeley Marina.

per se,” he says. “It was more about honoring outdoor adventure in a way that was accessible and authentic.

In capitalism, everything becomes commodified, even the outdoors. At that time it was all about elite athletes and if you had the latest Patagonia jacket. But you can’t be a skater, a surfer, a climber, an expeditioner, a sailor—any of these things—and not feel a connection to the earth. Just from an aesthetic standpoint alone, the ugly incongruency of things like consumerism and litter offended me.”

His transformation to a full-blown activist was cemented when he was invited to a Surfrider Foundation meeting many years ago. “I was living in Portland and my wife at the time, Molly Kramer, was a brilliant activist,” he says. “She happened to connect me to the foundation, and it just took off from there.”

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

Stiv says he knew he would never be elite at surfing, and besides, surfer culture wasn’t quite a fit. It was time to find something where he could make a dent. He recalls observing a disorganized but inspiring session at his first Surfrider meeting; he was fascinated by this “mythical plastic garbage patch.” Emboldened, at the second one, “I kind of just blew things up. I said: What if we just banned plastic bags in Portland?”

Being thrown into the deep end takes on a whole new meaning in the world of policy.

Stiv recounts dozens of collaborative efforts with hundreds of people across different states and eventually, countries; many were successful—some not—but that’s another article. In the end, among the most well-known campaigns, the Ban the Bag team won Portland.

The lessons? “People are motivated if something they love is in danger,” he says. “I learned this working on activism with the Great Lakes. It’s hard for someone in the Midwest to care about the ocean, because they’re not by the ocean. But everyone—and I speak for myself, too, as a Midwestern boy—loves the Lakes. No matter what: You cannot be afraid to fail; you have to collaborate; and most of all you have to focus on what people love. Love moves any human, anywhere.”

By 2010 (to his best recollection), Stiv had departed Wend to work on “the patch.”

Meanwhile, I was a rising editor in the early days of blogs, and I’d been an environmentalist since my youth. It was only a matter of time before my first funded venture, a green lifestyle media

brand, was born in 2007. In those days, green media was the right kind of hot, and a tight-knit collective of writers, editors and marketers emerged.

But back to “the patch.” The first thing to know is that there are actually five of them around the world. (Patch, for me, calls to mind Buzzfeed’s quiz, “What Kind of Pocket Are You?” Patches! So cute!). They’re more accurately known as gyres, for the second thing to know is that they’re not so much stay-in-their-lane floating platforms as loose, country-sized galaxies, relentlessly spreading every kind of lethal trash imaginable, from the toxically nanoscopic to the sorts of objects that might give David Geffen yacht envy.

If that thought horrifies, realize that what is happening in Southeast Asia— what The Story of Plastic documents—is far, far worse. The Western world made a happy business of sending much of its garbage to China; when China became tired of it, Southeast Asia became the next trash bin.

After 13 voyages and 35,000 nautical miles at sea in all with the group in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and signing on as the communications head at the 5Gyres Project, a nonprofit devoted to gyre plastic research and ocean advocacy, Stiv never stopped writing.

Thus, the new media brand promoting sustainable décor and nontoxic living also began featuring astonishing photojournalism. He used to wire me his stories from the middle of one ocean or another, tapping out each word patiently on his phone from his swaying cabin, occasionally finding a strong

enough connection to include an image. One could easily forgive the typos.

These reports from the field continue.

During the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, Stiv found a way to get to the Gulf at no expense to our investors; talked himself onto a BP helicopter; and talked himself out of a fight (I’m told) once he’d been busted midflight. The photos and essays that resulted remain some of the best environmental work I’ve ever published.

Though he is widely respected in both policy and ALL ABOARD Wilson stays on track for a selfie in Southeast Asia. progressive circles, Stiv is also a notorious contrarian—not the “Well, actually” underdog because I was an underdog as a basement dweller cliché you find kid. And when I went to the Philippines, claiming an advanced philosophy degree I knew I was going to tell this story—but in a fruitless whataboutism argument not from my perspective. The problem on Twitter, but the uncomfortably in a lot of storytelling is that it is wellprescient kind. Like anyone trying to meaning but it can serve to further change the world, his ego can at times entrench colonialism.” endearingly outstrip his height. As a Was growing up an underdog what longtime comrade, I know this tends to formed your moral fiber, I ask? mortify him; underneath the infamous “My code of ethics was truly formed indignation is a heroic and humble by skateboarding,” he says, and I can heart. “I don’t want to be seen as a hear the love in his voice. “At the time, hero, period,” he says. “It goes against it was a countercultural thing populated by misfits writing anti-establishment everything I believe. I feel for the

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He used to wire me his stories from the middle of one ocean or another, tapping out each word patiently on his phone from his swaying cabin, occasionally finding a strong enough connection to include an image. « philosophy in Thrasher Magazine. Now

it’s a more extreme sport, but when I was a kid it was more a philosophy and way of being that was not the norm.”

He continues: “It was all about trying, and it was so supportive. As long as you tried, that’s all that mattered. Not your background, not your clothes, not your looks. School sports were all about elevating the hero, but skateboarding was about helping everyone succeed.

I was so drawn to this. Being out in front can be inspiring, but it can also be narcissistic and alienating.

Skateboarding was like, safety in numbers, camaraderie, giving cover, because you need it. It was so different from this patriarchal, superstar, cool-atall-costs, demeaning culture we live in.”

FISH IN A BARREL.

At our standing Friday Skates sessions, Stiv makes a point never to order the fish, no matter if it’s been lovingly shepherded in wild eelgrass like some seawater analog to a prized Japanese steer. Our oceans are overfished, end of story. There’s also

48

the unpalatable truth that every time you eat fish, of course, you’re eating plastic.

Remember in the 2007 documentary King Corn, when our endearingly curious East Coast college protagonists move to corn country only to learn their very DNA is, well, corny?

“It’s like the myth your parents scared you with about gum staying in your stomach for years if you swallowed it, except this is actually true,” Stiv says.

He goes for the day’s pasta. I choose the oysters. Oysters are fine, right? (Not really.)

The film is made. It is wholly deserving of the accolades, reviews, awards—a dozen or so and counting at press time, including the esteemed 2020 John de Graaf Environmental Filmmaking Award.

From the Wall Street Journal: “Earth Day turns 50 on Wednesday amid a landfill’s worth of commemorative TV programming both on and around the date, including marathons on BBC America and National Geographic/ Disney. Much of it will be a celebration, either of nature or environmentalists.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

The Story of Plastic, however, will bring both parents and children up short, and not just by the extent of the pollution it examines, but where it ultimately puts the blame: on them.”

When you’re pissing off the WSJ, you’re definitely doing something right.

(The film does nothing of the sort; the blame is squarely placed on industry.)

More accurately, the Environmental Film Festival writes: “Unlike any other plastic documentary you’ve seen, The Story of Plastic presents a cohesive timeline of how we got to our current global plastic pollution crisis and how the oil and gas industry has successfully manipulated the narrative around it.”

When the credits roll after my first watch, I suddenly remember a dinner with a leading environmentalist investor in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood in 2012. “Are we fucked?” he asks me. “We’re fucked,” I say, and we slip from our chairs without another word; an ecological Irish goodbye, two ships passing in Planet Earth’s night.

As for The Story of Plastic, a consumerfriendly Pixarian promotional website soon follows.

The marketers still believe.

Does Stiv?

“My partner, Marissa, and I just had twin girls, and we named them Ocean and Forest—because these things are important,” he says. “There’s real meaning. There’s power. There’s hope—but hope is not a strategy. So I believe in elevating voices and building strategy, because I have to.”

And so do we. ❤

W

What’s IN A Name?

Finding a constellation of Orions … and the truth

BY Orion Letizi

I

have a weird name. It was weird by the standards of Sonoma County, where I grew up, and it’s weird by the considerably less conservative standards of Berkeley, where I live now. My name doesn’t match the assumptions people make about me based on my appearance, and nearly every time I need to tell someone my name, some version of this little skit plays out: Them: “What’s your name?”

Me: “Orion.”

Them: “Are you Irish?”

Me: “No. It’s a Greek name.”

Them: “You’re Greek?”

Me: “No, I’m Italian. And Swedish.”

Them (confused): “Uh, OK ... what’s your first name?”

Me: “That is my first name.”

Them (getting visibly annoyed): “Uh … how do you spell it?”

Me: “O-r-i-” Them (even more annoyed): “Wait, what?! ‘O-r-y’?” (this goes on for a bit…)

Them (exasperated): “OK, what’s your last name?”

Me: Letizi Them (head exploding in rage): !!!

The shorter version––when, for example, I’m at a cafe and don’t care if they get my name right––goes like this: Them: “What’s your name?”

Me: “Orion.”

Them: “Ryan?”

Me: “Yep.” I’m not the only one I know with a weird name, but I am the only one I

know with my particular weird name.

Some years ago, my friend Hiya Swanhauser wrote a story published in the SF Weekly about people with odd names. She interviewed me and asked about my name’s origin story. I told her, “my parents were hippies.”

I lived with that narrative for decades.

And it was partly true; my parents were indeed hippies. I was born at home in Pacifica in the 1970s and spent my first year off the grid in a far-flung Northern California town called (no kidding) Happy Camp. And I didn’t meet my grandparents until I was one year old. By then, I was named Orion.

That was the story, anyway. The story, though, brought out the truth.

One day, not long after Hiya’s article was published, I went to my

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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

49

« grandmother’s house to have dinner

with her and my father. When I walked in the door, they were both seated in the living room, my dad looking sheepish.

I knew something big was happening because my dad never looks sheepish.

It turns out my grandmother had read Hiya’s article and told my dad that he needed to tell me the true story of how I got my name. I sat down.

“You remember Chris, don’t you? My best friend, your mom’s first husband who had a brain tumor before you were born? Well, when we brought you as a baby to meet him for the first time… ” My father hesitated. This was difficult for him to tell. It is his truth, and now it had become my new story. My mother’s first husband, Chris, had a brain tumor and the surgery the doctors performed to remove it left him severely incapacitated. In their grief, they turned to each other for support.

“You see,” said my dad. “When Chris met you the first time, he announced, ‘You shall call him Orion.’ So, we did. It was Chris who named you.”

That was a big, new piece of the puzzle of my origin story––which my parents still haven’t fully filled in for me. Their current hedge, whenever I ask for more details, is that they don’t remember. That may be true, but it’s a deliberate forgetting––an erasure, not the natural blurriness of memory fading over time. It was a painful time for them and it’s painful for them to remember, so they choose to forget.

I don’t know what my father expected of me in telling this story. I do know his mother, my grandmother, forced his hand and told him I needed to hear the truth. I do know that this

50 EAST BAY MAGAZINE

isn’t the whole truth––I still don’t know when exactly I was named or any further details. I do know that it took my father great humility to tell it.

“Oh,” I said.

My story had changed with the truth.

I live out my life with a weird name.

There aren’t many other Orions in the world, certainly none in mine. The misspellings and misinterpretations on Starbucks coffee cups are myriad: Ron. Ryan. O’Ryan. I’ve given up correcting people if I don’t have to. But I’ve never

given out anything other than my name.

I’ve never been tempted to just simply say my name is David (my middle name) at Starbucks.

And this is because my name, despite its weirdness, is important to me. In Hiya’s SF Weekly article, she quotes me saying, “I’m not going to change my name. It’s sort of like an attribute of yourself, like your eye color or your ethnicity.” When I was married, my then-wife asked me if she should change her surname to mine. And I told her the same: “Keep your name. It’s your name.”

I’ve kept mine, even if it is misunderstood at almost every turn.

Even if it means I don’t fit in.

| EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

Recently, on Twitter, someone gathered together a bunch of people named Orion and we started a thread about our name. Our experiences were similar, almost identical, in how we navigated life with the name Orion.

The misspellings. The Starbucks cups.

It was the first time in my life I’ve been able to talk to someone else with the same experience with this name.

My partner asked me how that felt. I told her, “It felt good to fit. To feel less weird.” My name has been a symbol of “not fitting in”––and it started with my origin story; my parents met in atypical fashion, my first year was spent hidden from the world.

But here we are––the Orions have it.

We understand each other’s weirdness.

It is disruptive.

There is the story that Orion is a weird name. And there is the truth of all the Orions; that we are more than one.

In the climate of a pandemic and protests and fires, we are more than one.

There is the story that we are told, that no one else is out there to help, that we are on our own. But there is the truth, too, that we aren’t weird. The truth transforms the story. I was named by someone other than my parents. That is the new story. But the story never transforms the truth. The stories never transform facts––one is dependent on the other, but truth lives on.

Here is the thing: My truth is that my name is Orion. I won’t change my name. It is a unique name. It is the name of the Hunter. It is a constellation in the sky. It is a Japanese conglomerate that makes a wonderful concoction called Choco Pies. It is truth. ❤

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