East Bay Magazine September/October 2021

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

September October 2021

Alex Madrigal, new host of KQED’s Forum

Autumn &Academics Harvesting Food for Thought

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ALEXIS MADRIGAL

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Lean in with your latte

Christian Chensvold is the founder of Trad-Man.com, a new site on spirituality, philosophy and the Wisdom Tradition.

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of its early owners who standardized the latte as a perennial menu item back in the ’50s—and like most American upsells, it justifies its price with a European-sounding name.

People not from California like to claim our state has no seasons. Maybe not in L.A., which is a permanent postcard, nor in San Francisco, which only has fog and no-fog settings. But in the East Bay, we have seasons—they’re subtle, but they’re there. That’s for you, Gertrude. How do you know it’s fall?

The East Bay’s seasonality is inevitably tied to the regular rhythms of the world-class university whose campanile looms over us like the gnomon of a sundial.

Is it time for fall? Well, in-person classes resumed at UC Berkeley last month, which means the Harvest Moon—Sept. 20—isn’t far behind. If that’s not indication enough that fall is coming, and you wish to be proactive about it, you have to literally lean-in to our new normal, which will help keep the world on its axis. Remember, it’s the tilt, not the orbit, that causes the seasons. To do your part, throw on a sweater and raise your latte in the opposite direction of the sun. And lean, sip, repeat.

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.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

NATHAN DUMLAO

L

ike most of our culture’s sentimental fascinations, there’s usually an antecedent to be found in some modernist tract or other.

Take our annual fixation on fall, for example. Today, let’s blame F. Scott Fitzgerald, who apparently wrote somewhere in The Great Gatsby, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

Of course, this is coming from the man who said that American lives have no second acts, which begs the question of what his autumnal restart entails.

Perhaps it’s just a chance to wear wool and sail the rising tide of pumpkin lattes—which, obviously, is the result of climate change.

Fun fact: Berkeley’s Caffe Mediterraneum asserts that it was one

CATCH Latte in mid-fall.

But in the East Bay, we have seasons— they’re subtle, but they’re there.

Do this until the earth tilts toward the Autumnal Equinox. Life may not start all over again, like Fitzgerald promised, but fall certainly will. And that’s enough for now.

—Daedalus Howell, Editor

Lou Fancher has been published

by WIRED.com, Diablo Magazine, Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, InDance, San Francisco Classical Voice, SF Weekly and elsewhere.

Mark Fernquest is a Mad Max fan from way back. If he isn’t attending a post-apocalyptic festival in the outer wasteland, he’s sure to be writing about the last one he went to.

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Journo On Air Alexis Madrigal brings a hyperlocal voice to KQED’s ‘Forum’

By Lou Fancher

S 8

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

with several interviews stacked up like airplanes poised for takeoff in the pre-Covid-19 era. In my gut, anxious butterflies flapping their wings in anticipation of my speaking with Madrigal temporarily pause, but remain. The hovering Lepidoptera remind me this is a guy who’s authored two well-received books; reported for Fusion, Wired and Fresh Air; and interviewed the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Steve Kerr, Stacey Abrams, Van Jones, Colson Whitehead and others. He covers everything from literature to technology, social media, politics,

»

KIRSTEN VOSS/COURTESY KQED

ix minutes before my interview with Alexis Madrigal—the Oaklandbased, renowned journalist and staff writer at The Atlantic who was named May 14 as co-host with Mina Kim of KQED’s public affairs radio program, Forum—our connectivity flounders.

“Hey Lou! I am stuck in line at a commercial nursery right now. Text me your number and I’ll call you as soon as I wrap up here,” Madrigal writes in an email.

In my mind, I foresee the implosion of a carefully structured afternoon

KIRSTEN VOSS/COURTESY KQED

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

9

‘The stronger institutions like KQED are, the better they’re able to combat free radicals disrupting the transmission of good information.’

—Alexis Madrigal

« science and energy, and recently

co-founded and led at The Atlantic the COVID Tracking Project, a 400-person, volunteer-driven initiative to compile and publish data about the outbreak.

But, I argue, he is at this moment, simply a man in need of backyard plants.

I text my number and wait. “Sorry— this errand has turned into a nightmare.

Call you as soon as I can,” comes his rapid reply.

I have a sudden flashback, combined with pandemic-style paranoia and PTSD thoughts due to 15 months of isolation and working remotely: The first time I interviewed Michael Krasny, Madrigal’s predecessor who retired in February 2021 after 28 years at KQED, a calendar mixup had his staff scouring the Bay Area to locate him. Eventually discovered having lunch with a friend, Krasny flipped his script with alacrity, apologized and immediately engaged in a long, pleasurable interview. Are

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landscape transactions and hosts hiding in the weeds eating lunch a kind of KQED gauntlet through which interviewers must pass to gain access to radio host talent? Is this a test to see if I have chops equal to a live radio host forced to improvise when a line drops?

After all, Madrigal once experienced having a featured guest “stuck in a mammogram” and tells me later that the gut-clenching fear of a line drop with his one remaining guest “added extra energy.” But no, replies to my questions submitted to Forum’s Kim, about how her 10am hour will differ from Madrigal’s 9am slot, have arrived promptly and by deadline.

Madrigal’s hour is aimed at hyperlocal stories. Kim’s hour comes with a mandate to explore current affairs “through the lens of race, justice and equality.” It is shared statewide, so listener calls come from parts of the state beyond the Bay Area.

“For now, the plan is for the 9am

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

hour to cover topics that have more local relevance and the 10am hour more statewide relevance,” Kim says. “But I’d like to think a lens of race, justice and equity is shared across both hours, since it’s part of the American experience, every newsworthy story and every cultural shift. In some ways, stating this explicitly as a lens is a way of making that point. The hours will sound a bit different, of course, because Alexis and I are different people. But we share a belief in the power of collaboration to achieve more for our listeners than either of us can do alone. I don’t know yet exactly where that will take the show, but I know the seeds are there for something great.”

Hours later, after our valiant, flailing efforts to conduct the interview while he simultaneously grappled with landscape commerce, Madrigal matches Kim’s enthusiasm.

“What I’ve said to Mina, and believe about Forum, is that in the best version of Forum, Mina and I are very tightly connected,” he says. “For me, coming not from live radio, and Mina, a seasoned and excellent live-radio host, I want to be with her, not sequestered.

One of the big draws of this job is learning from and working with her.”

Madrigal joins the Forum team with a boatload of ideas about perspective and content. Governing his approach are insights gleaned from the COVID Tracking Project: the public’s desire to believe or disbelieve certain information, the distribution of rebalanced social media power and the trouble it causes for slow-to-change institutions and agenda-aimed news

»

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« outlets. “The stronger institutions

like KQED are, the better they’re able to combat free radicals disrupting the transmission of good information.”

He avoids being prescriptive, but says that leading a story with what you know and what you don’t know is crucial. “When you get into reporting things that are likely to happen without qualifying it, you get into trouble.” He cites as one example the mask debates after public health authorities used tactical information—giving multiple reasons not to wear masks instead of simply saying they wanted the masks reserved for health care workers.

“Saying something to get someone to do something, instead of because it’s true and well supported by evidence, has bad repercussions.”

Even so, he believes journalists and radio hosts are abandoning folk wisdom that tells them they know what sources the public finds trustworthy.

He and others are turning to real-time data: evidence shows people are more likely to believe what their doctors tell them about the vaccine than what they hear from a random person on the street. “Eventually, we’ll come to a new equilibrium based on a solid information ecosystem,” he says.

He insists that rebuilding and supporting the work of local journalists, placing less emphasis on nationalized or right-versus-left positioning of stories and reducing broad-stroke narratives will provide more transparent, nuanced, relevant and salient information. As for content, his expansive interests fall into public health and health disparities, ’90s hip hop and West Coast rappers,

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housing inequities related to racism, radical anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, the history of the Aztecs—he mentions Fifth Sun, a new book retelling Aztec history by Camilla Townsend and based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people—and more. In 2021, on the cultural side he’s fascinated with how every generation does something new with the internet. “How it looks differs from the 1990s to today, with young people rapidly making memes that evolve,” he says. “Kids are making media. It’s totally thrilling to see that.”

Madrigal also hopes to bring to the partnership with Kim ideas about what the digital form of Forum might become. “Right now, it’s mostly just posting the episodes online,” he says.

“We need to go after resources to figure out what the digital presence of a show like this should look like.”

Mourning the demise of alternative weekly newspapers that offered extensive local events listings, he ponders a “local internet” world. A favorite Twitter suggestion he received is tied to having more local voices on the radio. The suggestion to visit the Bay Area’s roughly 100 cities is a natural fit for Madrigal’s interest in hearing from Port of Oakland longshore workers, construction workers in San Ramon, local journalists and business owners throughout the region and others.

A conversation with a new radio host is incomplete without asking about past favorite and future hopedfor interviews. “Probably the most personally meaningful one was at my first City Arts and Lectures, big-stage interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates,”

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Madrigal says. “He had just published Between the World and Me and was an incredibly sought-after figure, a beautiful writer. It was really terrifying and nerve-wracking; thousands of screaming fans. It was a moment I’ll tell my children about when they actually start to care about these things.” Another memory is of a story about prize-bull breeding. He dove into the metrics, found a rich voice and unexpectedly landed on one of those moments when the perfect voice and a compelling, effective story emerge to create meaningful news.

Most desired for a chat after June 21, when he is in the Forum chair at 9am, is Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green. “I have to go for a total hometown play,” Madrigal says. “He’s one of the most brilliant people to talk about basketball. I want to give him space to talk about his life.”

Former CDC Respiratory Disease Chief Nancy Messonnier runs a close second. Madrigal says she was “booted from talking in public and has more pieces of the pandemic puzzle to offer.”

Kim says she hopes people who call in or speak as guests on Forum feel it’s safe to be honest. “I know how hard it is to be vulnerable, and I am constantly floored and humbled by the courage of listeners who put themselves out there,” Madrigal, demonstrating his own kind of vulnerability and honesty, writes in an email a few hours after our conversation ends. “Great talking with you, Lou! Thanks for bearing with me as I navigated that intense professional landscaper supply store. That was brutal. And I’m so glad we got to spend that more relaxed time afterwards.” ❤

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Gustatory Guidance CORNUCOPIA OF COLOR Cherry tomatoes from Oya Organics in Hollister.

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Kitchen Table Advisors helps find the freshest fare

BY Lou Fancher

W

ith the fall harvest just a few action steps away from falling onto your family’s dinner plate, there’s no reason to miss out on the bounty of the Bay Area’s regional food shelf. Admittedly, the sheer abundance available can be overwhelming. The busy return to school, regulated work schedules and ongoing apprehension about

virus variants might send customers scurrying to the local big-chain grocery store or placing a digital order without ever testing the ripeness of produce by hand or chatting in-person with a local farmer or rancher about their pride and practice: growing and bringing fresh food to you and your family.

Fortunately for people in the East Bay, Kitchen Table Advisors expedites finding the freshest fare and extending

gustatory satisfaction with conscious and conscientious support for local farmers, ranchers and other food-andplant producers. KTA’s multi-racial, majority people of color and majority female team supports farmers and ranchers who collectively represent a more inclusive world of sustainable agricultural practices, as well as food and economic justice for children of immigrants, farmworkers, small

»

JACQUE RUPP

PACK María Ana Reyes and her daughter Yessenia, of Narci Organic Farms in Salinas, packing produce boxes for the Tera Farm organic farm box program.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

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‘The industrialized food system depletes land without providing adequate nourishment, all while disempowering farmers and ranchers who seek to create environmental and social change. This leads to higher failure rates for the producers who nourish us—especially women, BIPOC and immigrants.’

« business owners, organic farmers,

healthcare workers and other people involved in the direct-to-consumers food chain. KTA forms alliances on macro and micro scale with organizations and individuals similarly focused on farmer power, equitable land ownership and governance, regenerative land stewardship, greater access for BIPOC farmers and ranchers to financial capital, and more.

KTA’s website poses the question: “What’s wrong with our food system?”

The answer provided is unequivocal: “According to the USDA, 50 percent of small farms don’t survive beyond their first five years and, out of the survivors, only 25 percent make it to 15 years. The industrialized food system depletes land without providing adequate nourishment, all while disempowering farmers and ranchers who seek to create environmental and social change. This leads to higher failure rates for the producers who nourish us—especially womxn, BIPOC and immigrants.”

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If this message sounds heavy, and if a person simply seeks the best recommendation for where to buy fresh flowers from an urban market or the most immediate methods for stripping away cumbersome supply chain monsters—processors, packagers, shippers—KTA has answers for that, also. Enrolling in a communitysupported agriculture (CSA) subscription program provides one way to purchase local, seasonally fresh food directly from a farmer according to monthly or weekly delivery models.

Shopping at farmers markets and small business markets allows people to discover and form allegiances with urban and rural farmers.

KTA covers all that and more.

In addition to issue-oriented study results and science- and data-backed facts, KTA’s Love Local page offers a user-friendly, regional guide to CSA and subscription programs, farmers markets, home delivery options and online links to small businesses.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Subscribing to newsletters issued by the various organizations and cooperatives in close proximity to your home or across California—you can follow many of them that do not offer newsletters on social media—ensures that long-term support outlasts the fall harvest.

To get rolling, customers might visit any of a number of East Bay farmers’ markets located in these cities: Alamo, Sunday 9am to 2pm; Berkeley (Downtown), Saturday 10am to 3pm; Berkeley (N. Shattuck & Vine), Thursday 3–7pm; Berkeley (S. Adeline & 63rd), Tuesday 2–6:30pm (Oya Organics); Concord (Todos Santos Park), Tuesday 9am to 2pm & Thursday 4–8pm; Diablo Valley (Walnut Creek), Saturday 9am to 1pm; Fremont, Sunday 9am to 2pm; Kensington, Sunday 9am to 2pm; Oakland (Grand Lake), Saturday 9am to 2pm; Oakland (Temescal), Sunday 9am to 1pm. Check the days and times for seasonal updates/ alterations before heading out.

CSAs and other subscription programs in the East Bay include AIM Bounty Box, a weekly curated box featuring products from Blue House Farm and Sea to Sky Farm with pick-up in Oakland; Blue House Farm (Oakland); Bluma Farm, a floral CSA in Berkeley; Brisa Ranch (Oakland; add-on products available from Lunaria Flower Farm); FEED Cooperative FEED Bin, a Sonoma County–based farmer co-op providing product from Longer Table Farm, New Family Farm, True Grass Farms, Marin Roots Farm, Kibo Farm, Stony Point Strawberry Farm and Russian River Farm; Green Thumb Organics

»

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VERY BERRY Farmer Rigo Bucio of Bucio Organic Farm harvesting strawberries at his farm in Salinas.

« Farms (Berkeley); Happy Acre

Farm (Sunol, Livermore, Dublin, Pleasanton, Oakland); Lunaria Flower Farm (an herbal tea subscription program in Oakland); Oya Organics (Berkeley, Albany, Oakland); Mandela Produce, a CSA supporting BIPOC producers including Narci Organic Farms, Rojas Tepetitla Organic Farm and Catalán Family Farm, with pick-up locations in Oakland and San Leandro; Radical Family Farms (Oakland & Berkeley); Steadfast Herbs; Tera Farm, a customizable organic farm box featuring Narci Organic Farms, Los Pinos Organic, Oya Organics and Magaña Farms with pick-up locations in Oakland, Fremont, Berkeley and Castro Valley; and Urban Tilth, an organic-produce CSA that includes product from Narci Organic Farms with pick-up locations in Richmond,

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San Pablo and El Cerrito.

Many people in the Bay Area are familiar with home delivery organizations Good Eggs—featuring products from Fogline Farm, Blue House Farm, Oya Organics, Hikari Farms, Root Down Farm, JSM Organics, Sun Tracker Farm, Lunaria Flower Farm and Brisa Ranch—and Green Thumb Organics Farms, which delivers to Berkeley, Oakland and Richmond. But they might not know about the certified organic flowers, culinary herbs and plant starts available at Bluma Farms in Berkeley.

A stunning array of flowers and plants, grown on the 2.5-acre plot founder Joanna Letz created in 2014 in Sunol and the newer 1/4-acre urban rooftop garden in Berkeley designed with Letz

by Benjamin Fahrer, offer customers multiple options.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Letz, a Berkeley High alumni, studied history and human rights at Bard College. Captivated by farming apprenticeships and work performed while completing horticulture courses, Letz received a certificate in ecological horticulture at the UC Santa Cruz Farm & Garden Program and worked as the garden manager at Slide Ranch.

In just seven years, Bluma Farms grew enough to hire a harvest manager and part-time field crew member in 2021.

Bluma offers full-service wedding packages or custom orders for special occasions that include made-to-order wedding boutonnieres, corsages, flower crowns (adult or child), Ceremony Altar Arrangements, Floral Chair Decor, Greenery Garlands, Low Centerpieces, Focal Arrangements, Cake Flowers, Bud Vase arrangements and more. A swift perusal of Letz’s portfolio shows a keen, artistic eye for color, texture, size and composition, and an eclectic sensibility that broadcasts organic indulgence and unleashed grace—but never one-sizefits-all or self-aware opulence.

With a visit to the KTA website, people in the East Bay craving a fall harvest road trip will find a breadth of listings for CSAs, markets, local farmers and ranchers, and home-delivery options in San Francisco, Yolo, Solano, Sacramento, Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Salinas, San Mateo Coast, the Peninsula and the South Bay. Visit www.kitchentableadvisors.org.

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LITTLE RED SHED Ploughshares Nursery is a nonprofit business with a mission.

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Plant2 Nerds Good2 for

I PHOTOS BY MARK FERNQUEST

spent some of the best years of my life on Alameda Island, working there for 11 years and living on the West End, at the Woodstock Homes Housing Cooperative, for four.

Built in the 1940s to house the workers who built the Alameda Naval Air Station, Woodstock is located just outside the now-defunct military base. A sprawling neighborhood of wood-framed, semidetached units with large communal lawns and a network of paths running between the fenced backyards, it is delightfully dated, low-key and quaint.

While living in my two-bedroom unit there, I experimented with turning my

small yard into an urban farmstead, with the goal of producing a large amount of food in a small amount of space. As with every gardening endeavor I’ve embarked upon, I met with mixed results and learned many things along the way. I built a keyhole garden out of cinderblocks and installed two self-watering tomato grow boxes. I also planted some fruit trees in half wine barrels and set up a worm garden.

There were several nurseries on the island, but Ploughshares Nursery quickly became my go-to for most things gardenrelated. Located at 2701 Main St., across from the ferry terminal parking lot on the West End, Ploughshares was about a half

Alameda’s Ploughshares Nursery has a mission

BY Mark Fernquest

mile from my house. I often bicycled there through the base, meandering past ruins, empty lots, shade trees and old military houses.

Ploughshares takes up a fair bit of space, and its large, fenced yard is filled with a wide variety of plants, as well as the occasional satisfied cat. But it always was, and still is, more than just a nursery—it’s a nonprofit business with a mission.

Via email, Manager Jeff Bridge says, “We are an environmentally sustainable retail nursery with a focus on California native, drought-tolerant and edible plants.

We are also a nonprofit job-training program for residents of the Alameda

»

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

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Ploughshares takes up a fair bit of space, and its large, fenced yard is filled with a wide variety of plants, as well as the occasional satisfied cat.

But it always was, and still is, more than just a nursery—it’s a nonprofit business with a mission.

« Point Collaborative housing

community for formerly homeless families.” In fact, Ploughshares is an indelible fixture within the greater Alameda community. One hundred percent of its sales support housing and services for formerly homeless families and individuals living in the adjacent neighborhood on the old Alameda Naval Base.

Bridge—a low-key, knowledgeable guy—assisted me and answered my many questions back then, and little has changed. In response to my asking him how he became involved with Ploughshares, he responds, “I think it was the motto ‘make your garden part of the solution’ that excited me most. Buying plants at Ploughshares is part of the solution to homelessness and ecological collapse. Also, I was looking for work.” He adds, “We built this nursery up from a ‘so-so back lot’ in 10 years into the FREAKING AWESOME BACK LOT NURSERY it is today.”

22

Indeed, in the five-plus years since I moved on from Alameda to seek my fortune elsewhere, Ploughshares has stepped up its game. Its 5-star website is gorgeously designed and loaded with information. The nursery now advertises frequent discounts, offers free workshops on subjects ranging from sheet mulching to caring for succulents, hosts a seed-sharing library with the simple instructions: Borrow > Grow > Return, accepts donations— large and small—for its own Little Free Library and sends out a monthly newsletter.

As for business during the time of Covid, Jeff writes, “Business is always mysterious here, we are pioneering plant offerings and sticking with a mission which puts ethics and ideology first. Covid has been as wild and scary for Ploughshares as any other small business. I’m glad we were able to stay open and help people grow their garden when they were locked down at home.

Our parent organization really took

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

care of us during the worst of it, and nobody on staff fell ill.”

Now, more than ever, Ploughshares relies on the support of the surrounding community. “Just like the other small, independent nurseries, the Big Box stores kill us,” Jeff says. “We pay our staff good wages here, and we have to charge a little more for plants. I hope more people will support independent nurseries and especially non-profits which help fight homelessness.”

If YELP reviews are an indicator of happy customers, Ploughshares is doing something right—it’s 55 reviews average 4.5 stars each. Positive comments make mention of personalized service, plants that aren’t found at big box stores, reasonable prices and knowledgeable staff.

“We are part of the community here in Alameda; most of the school gardens have used our plants [and] we have educated a generation of new gardeners about growing food and using less resource intensive plants,” Jeff writes.

»

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« “Our plant selection has grown quite a bit, and our sales go up every year.

But our main goal is to help residents of our formerly homeless community to obtain job training and references.

When a local peep decides landscaping or gardening or environmental justice is going to be their career path in part because they worked here, then I get all red-faced and goofy-happy.”

Alas, my own West End urban farmstead adventure ended long ago. The windy microclimate in my backyard made it difficult to grow

24

many types of plants, though lemon cucumbers always did well. My beloved kitty cat, Shadow Cecilia, who made the garden her home, has moved on to the Happy Hunting Grounds. I still wonder what became of the wild opossum who used to nightly climb my back fence with her babies clinging tightly to her back. Nowadays I garden farther north, in sunny Sebastopol. But my gardening experience was indelibly affected by Bridge’s guidance and Ploughshares’ amazing plants.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

URBAN BLOOM Ploughshares’ sales support housing and services for formerly homeless families and individuals living on the old Alameda Naval Base.

And Jeff’s final, Zen words on the subject? “I’m a plant nerd. I think the world needs more plant nerds.”

Truer words were never spoken.

Ploughshares Nursery, 2701 Main Street, Alameda. Open Monday through Sunday, 10am to 5pm. 510.755.1102.

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A Taste

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for

Real Food Media supports food justice and sovereignty

BY Lou Fancher

O 26

from racial and ethnic discrimination, legislation that prosecutes sexual harassers, access to healthy foods and laws that break up agricultural monopoly giants that threaten their livelihoods.

All it will take is for people everywhere, especially people outside of the food-chain cycle who may be unaware of how broccoli or apples or grass-fed, organic beef lands on the

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

dinner table, to learn, ask questions, invest in real food and real farmers, support legislation, government representatives and activist coalitions that together value public health … and spread the word.

That is exactly the role of Real Food Media, a true 21st century-style organization co-led by a team of women that uses a hybrid of wide-ranging virtual and in-person communication

»

KATIE BLANCHARD

ver 21 million food workers and producers in the United States—many of them people who are Black, Brown, Indigenous, women, low-income and/or members of the LGBTQ+ community—are poised at the precipice of major gains.

What do they stand to gain?

Fair wages, reasonable work hours, protection from pesticides, relief

h KATIE BLANCHARD

CLIMATE TOOLKIT An Illustration from Real Food Media’s Tackling Climate Change Through Food, one of three organizing toolkits.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

27

Real Food aims to broaden the dire conversations about food sovereignty and food deserts by also celebrating the glorious food cultures of Black people, immigrants and second-generation Americans, and indigenous people. « tools to support food justice and

food sovereignty.

Founded by Anna Lappé, a national bestselling author and James Beard Leadership Award recipient, Real Food Media has a three-city base, in San Francisco, Chicago and Minneapolis.

Lappé’s most recent book is Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It. Real Food’s unique infrastructure evolved after Lappé relocated to the Bay Area from New York and co-director/ researcher/web designer Christina Bronsing-Lazalde moved from the East Coast to Chicago. The leadership team includes co-directors author/educator Tanya Kerssen of Minneapolis and Oakland-based activist-writer Tiffani Patton.

“We’re a small team and we’re all spread apart,” says Patton in an interview. “It has been challenging to only see your colleagues twice a year,

28

but it’s helped us to build partnerships in each area. That broadens our reach from San Francisco, which is really the hub.” Patton says there’s a lot of work Real Media supports in Minnesota that circles around the Midwest Farmers of Color Collective, formed in early 2020.

From single number origins, the MFCC today includes a blend of 40 urban and rural farms. In Chicago, one of Real Food’s partnerships is with the Heal Food Alliance, a multi-sector, multiracial coalition building collective that addresses labor rights, environmental protection and public health issues.

Patton says Chicago’s long history related to protective labor laws provides a solid framework for grassroots and larger food justice activism in the city and surrounding regions.

While food-industry experts report that nearly 800 million people go hungry worldwide and approximately 2 billion people suffer the health

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

consequences of consuming highly processed foods and sugary beverages, Real Food aims to broaden the dire conversations about food sovereignty and food deserts by also celebrating the glorious food cultures of Black people, immigrants and second-generation Americans, and indigenous people.

“You’re talking to a person who’s half Black and half Korean, so to me, multi-ethnic, multiracial food is such a part of American history,” Patton says.

“From the country’s earliest days, who was making that food in the kitchens of white people? It was largely Black people who brought knowledge of how to grow and prepare the food from Africa, just one example. Soul food is vegetable dishes, not just fried chicken.

But that was all erased from our history and stories about how women braided beans into their hair before they were taken from Africa and how they brought those seeds to America— those stories have only recently been recovered.”

Instead of thinking exclusively about Black people and indigenous cultures and what is lacking, she says the positives—what oppressed people are able to create out of injustice—is vital to food storytelling. “There are stories about people starting a farm or market, but also about how food connects us to our culture and to other people,” Patton says. “In Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice, the book edited by Hanna Garth and Ashanté M. Reese and featuring primarily essays by nonwhite scholars, there are examples of how the free meals offered by the Black Panther Party in the

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30

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

COURTESY OF TIFFANI PATTON

also a way to take care of the people.

The Food Chain Workers Alliance now, in current times, fights for PPE’s for workers and dignified working environments all along the food chain.”

On that food chain and sitting oppressively atop food workers are five behemoths: Monsanto, BASF, Dow, Dupont and Syngenta. Patton says the heavily consolidated, governmentfunded companies are not only “poisoning people” with pesticides, but are “damaging our soil health, water systems, livestock, everything.”

Food justice to Patton is when everyone has the right to get the food they want. They can obtain, produce, access and eat healthy food regardless of race, class, able-bodied-ness or not, religion, ethnicity or gender. “For that to happen, we have to break up food monopolies with too few corporations controlling too much,” she says. “We want to transfer power from the hands of the few to the hands of the many.

That means changing how the Farm Bill is structured: so much money goes to commodity crops like corn, soy and cotton, which aren’t even food. More of the money could go to farms that are growing real fruits and vegetables that people actually eat.”

Short of legislative action on the national level, consumers can direct their money consciously into the smaller-scale food system by shopping at local farmers markets and joining CSAs, voting in local elections for people who support local farmers and putting land ownership back into the hands of Black people, indigenous

LEAD Oakland-based activist and writer Tiffani Patton.

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‘You’re talking to a person who’s

half Black and half Korean, so to me, multi-ethnic, multiracial food is such a part of American history.’

—Tiffani Patton

tribes, women farmers and LGBTQ+ food producers. Learning about agroecology and knowing how food is grown and what food does to human bodies— both the benefits of healthy foods and damage due to highly-processed foods—will result in support for farmers that is beyond a one-size-fitsall mentality, according to Patton.

“We say that the people most impacted must be and should be at the forefront of this movement,” she says.

“At our organization, we’re not making the decisions about what direction someone will go. We aren’t going to lead the movement around a specific problem that someone else identifies.

We empower or support the people who do and should take the lead. If we can’t support them directly, we amplify what they’re saying. That means we’re using the privilege we have responsibly, ethically, to support others.”

32

During the pandemic, the team at Real Media initially found news about food workers being called “essential”— but expected to work without proper PPE and for below living wages—to be horrifying and depressing. Patton says, “It was demoralizing at first; but then inspiring to see the strength people had in demanding these things be provided.

People were forced to be resilient, but I think also about what are the options?

They have no choice but to be resilient.”

One of the most rewarding recent projects Real Media undertook— among others that include podcasts, films, op-ed articles, newsletters, a book club and more—was led by Patton’s colleague, Kerssen. “Tanya worked directly with folks at the University of Florida in Gainesville,” Patton says.

“They were looking at how they source their food on campus; at how workers are exploited: servers in the dining

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

hall, farmers in the fields and the prison laborers used by one food company to produce their food. They wanted to tell their story, so Tanya worked with them on a podcast—Episode 5—and a social media toolkit for messaging their audience. That work, and the relationships formed, were rewarding.”

Critical conversations moving forward will center on re-matriated land—a word Patton uses that is refused by male-bias spell check, which wants to reformulate it to read “re-patriated”—and food as a vital part of social justice reform. “We need to think about getting land back into the hands of indigenous people and Black and Brown people as well,” Patton says. “We need to show the connections between food and culture and community. There’s been a more widereaching awareness. It’s high time and I’m glad of it, as long as there’s still action that goes along with the conversation.” ❤

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Tarocco

Tops

is

The Mediterranean via the East Bay

BY Jeffrey Edalatpour

»

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

PHOTOS COURTESY OF R LTAROCCO

PLATED The mezze spread reflects Sequoia Del Hoyo’s main inspiration for Tarocco—the Mediterranean diet.

S

equoia Del Hoyo laughs at the suggestion that she’s building a mighty, GOOPlike lifestyle brand. In 2015, she and Chef Andrew Vennari opened Sequoia Diner together in Oakland’s Laurel District. The diner had a profound impact on what was formerly a rather sleepy neighborhood.

Within a year, people from all over the Bay Area lined up outside to try the revelatory brunch menu, which led with homemade jam, biscuits and Sequoia’s welcoming demeanor.

While her soon-to-be ex-husband Vennari curated hearty-yet-refined breakfasts, Del Hoyo made the diners feel right at home. If Malcolm Gladwell had lived nearby, he wouldn’t have failed to notice that the arrival of Sequoia Diner marked a tipping point.

35

«

TOSSED The Greek salad is predictably a favorite.

36

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Gladwell wrote in his 2000 bestseller, “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.”

One immediately felt something rare was at hand when they ate at the diner. Conscious of the Sequoia Diner’s success, several dynamic new restaurants have since opened on MacArthur Avenue in both the Laurel District and down the street in the Dimond District, including Bombera, Jo’s Modern Thai, Grand Lake Kitchen, La Perla and Degrees Plato.

During the pandemic last year, Del Hoyo and Vennari amicably separated, while also continuing to work—and raise their son—together.

They shifted their business model from a friendly eat-in restaurant to a to-go establishment. Which, honestly, no matter where one went, felt more like an awkward interaction in the hallway of a junior high school. Tarocco, Del Hoyo’s new catering business, originated in the thick of that pandemic mess.

“I had all of these customers from the diner, mainly women, who were reaching out to me saying that they were homeschooling and needed healthy meals delivered,” she says. She and Vennari had reduced the diner staff by 80%. “I was home with our three-year-old son, feeling lonely and that I wasn’t eating healthy food,” she says. After thinking about what she could realistically accomplish, Del Hoyo started by making four meals for a handful of people, with snacks and proteins. “Right off the bat, I had about 40 clients.” She realized that was more than she could handle on her own, so

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« she hired Chef Carlo Espinas.

Tarocco is named after a type of blood orange. Del Hoyo’s father is a Catalonian from Barcelona, and she says, “Catalans consider themselves more Mediterranean than Spanish.”

That Mediterranean diet is her main inspiration for creating the meals on Tarocco’s menu. Guided by the seven “elements of the Mediterranean lifestyle,” Del Hoyo and Espinas make “plant-forward” meals on Monday and Tuesday for Wednesday deliveries.

Espinas, who also recently took over the Lede restaurant from Cal Peternell, says they source seasonal ingredients.

When I spoke with Del Hoyo, her afternoon plan included a trip to the Grand Lake Farmers Market. Espinas says that Del Hoyo conceives of the week’s menu, does the shopping and then they collaborate and improvise to shape the final product. “Peppers are great right now,” Espinas says. “We recently made a roasted-pepper-andtomato sauce to make a shakshuka.”

They filled it with roasted eggplant and chickpeas. He says that since they’re not plating dishes in front of a diner, they have to think about food that will retain a meal kit’s freshness on its way out the door.

Del Hoyo’s culinary approach at Tarocco is also informed by her intolerance to gluten. “When I was 20 years old, someone suggested that I should avoid eating gluten and it totally changed my life,” she says. She’d suffered through eczema flare-ups, stomach issues and asthma because of Celiac disease. Del Hoyo went to Spain when she was in her 20s, only to discover that several members of her extended family

38

TOPPED Fresh mint is the perfect garnish for this seasonal salad.

Guided by the seven ‘elements of the Mediterranean lifestyle,’ Del Hoyo and Espinas make ‘plant-forward’ meals on Monday and Tuesday for Wednesday deliveries. were also Celiac. It confirmed for her that being gluten-intolerant was a real condition. “Everything at Tarocco is naturally gluten-free. I don’t like to use any fake products,” she says.

While Tarocco is plant-forward, Del Hoyo admits to being an omnivore.

“I love meat, and we use meat that’s hormone-free,” she says. Mytarocco.com lists the seven tenets that inform “the Mediterranean Lifestyle,” but it also is a reflection of the owner’s spirit. Mint green and saffron bars of color alternate with vivid photos of enticing dishes and Del Hoyo’s inspiring epigrams, such as, “Tarocco is an extension of myself, and I am all about you living your best life.”

She knows that on the outside someone could say she’s just making a meal. But

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

after many years in the hospitality business where she’s always attentive to customers’ needs and wants, she says that, “Tarocco’s really about making people feel good. I’m trying to do more than just feed them.”

On Instagram this week, Del Hoyo announced she was leaving the diner that bears her name. She says that it is “deeply sad” but adds, “I’m going to be doing Tarocco full time, which is really exciting.” Sequoia Diner is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. For now, she’ll still be in the kitchen on those days prepping Tarocco meals. “Now, I’m like, alright, let’s see what we can both do on our own.”

Tarocco delivers meals to Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville. www.mytarocco.com

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40 EAST BAY MAGAZINE

| EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

PHOTO BY BENJAMIN VOROS

TURN To everything there is a season.

Fall

FORWARD An autumnal meditation

BY Christian Chensvold

I BENJAMIN VOROS

once spent a summer at Cal in a French intensive, one of those language immersion courses where from the first moment the instructor never speaks English and just bombards the students relentlessly in a foreign tongue for 8 hours a day, then sends them home with homework.

It’s quite effective, and after 10 weeks every student knows quite a bit. In fact, probably a lot more than they think, if only they'd just get out of their own way.

That was decades ago, but recently for some inexplicable reason I began speaking to myself in French for hours at a time. I was able to express complex ideas and ever-shifting states of mind, and when I didn’t know a word, I guessed or invented an English cognate.

When I couldn’t figure out how to express something, I found another way. Or rather, another way found itself.

The only thing more baffling than why the whole thing started in the first place was the astonishing felicity with which I was able to do it. With no teacher, fellow student or francophone tourist to judge me, I let go and got in the zone, speaking spontaneously and creatively from the subconscious in a way I never could when I was trying to tiptoe my way through, self-consciously trying to avoid any error of grammar or pronunciation lest I inspire one of those famous French scowls of contempt.

Who knew such powers could lie latent in me for so long? And while it’s exhilarating to discover hidden

powers that will run on their own if only we will let them, it also brings chagrin, that delightful French word meaning embarrassment due to failure.

For we must concede that evidently we don’t really know ourselves and our capabilities. And so we go through life short-changing ourselves, wasting time, avoiding newness and risk, overesteeming the judgment of others and believing that certain things in life can never be ours when in reality the means for attaining them are right under our noses.

Harvest and education go hand in hand, for the month of September likely carries for most of us a sense of renewal. As the character Jordan says on that sweltering summer day in

»

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

41

Harvest and education go hand in hand, for the month of September likely carries for most of us a sense of renewal. As the character Jordan says on that sweltering summer day in ‘The Great Gatsby,’ ‘Don’t be morbid, life begins anew when things get crisp in the fall.’

« The Great Gatsby, "Don’t be morbid,

life begins anew when things get crisp in the fall.”

September is back-to-school month, and many of us probably remember it as a time of great anticipation of all the new people, experiences and knowledge that lay in store for us.

Especially those of us who logged in years of post-graduate work, the start of fall is a magical time for all bookworms, armchair scholars and everyone who smiles at the thought of rummaging through an abandoned corner of a university library and finding some dusty tome no one’s touched in a decade.

The month of September is ruled by the zodiac sign of Virgo, the virgin and thus the symbol for purity and rebirth.

It is a time of harvest, according to an alchemical text, when nature reaches fulfillment with the ripening of her fruits. Traditional depictions of the sign show a maiden with a sheaf of corn, emblem of the earth mother Demeter.

42

And although Virgo is a virgin, don’t take that too literally, for she actually represents the pregnancy of earth in autumn when fields are ripe for harvest.

Yet her “virgin” status, as with the Virgin Mary, associates her “with the birth of a god or hero whose origin is a virgin fertilized in some supernatural way.”

This leads us back to all those unpicked fruits we leave hanging on our own inner Tree Of Life, that we can reap if we break through our stubbornly narrow self-construct and harvest hidden sources of knowledge and power. Let’s look at a couple of examples of people stuck in a rut, passively waiting for the missing part in their life to be delivered by someone else, when they could simply tap their inner orchard and get it themselves.

Let’s start with Jack, who’s 40 and single and works a demanding job. He’s always dreamed of a wife to console him when he comes home with his feelings all bottled up, and to run his household,

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

since he believes himself incompetent in this department. He never learned to cook, and so he eats bad food that’s made him heavier than he’d like to be.

His apartment is a mess and he hates it, but he can’t seem to find the will to do anything about it. If only someone would come along and rescue him from his incompetencies, but until then he’ll just have to endure his misery.

Jill, on the other hand, is 30 and also logs in long and tedious hours at her job, and dreams of a Mr. Right who would liberate her from the dull routine, teach her things she never dreamed she could do and plan all kinds of activities and adventures. While waiting for this figment of her imagination to appear, she stays at home most nights watching movies about romantic adventures with heroines who ride horses, climb mountains, fly airplanes and scuba dive.

It should be clear that each needs to harvest for themselves what they believe can only come from another. Jack needs to become his own “wife” at an inner level and learn to nurture and care for himself, providing healthy food and an orderly home so that coming back from work is like entering a sanctuary and not a prison. He also needs to “talk” to himself, to acknowledge his feelings and give himself permission to feel them rather than letting them fester and build into resentment. Likewise, Jill needs to motivate herself to start learning skills and making solo travel plans and creating the vibrant life she believes is only possible if someone else hands it to her. By taking this initiative, each would then, according to the law of attraction, up the chances of finding that ideal mate a thousandfold, for they

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would have become a vastly more wellrounded person who gives off a completely different vibe. The Wizard Of Oz is a delightful dramatization of the mistaken search for something outside oneself that actually lies within, as the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion all learn that being dumb, emotionless and fearful are little more than misguided opinions about ourselves.

A scarecrow is another emblem of autumnal harvest, and so we return to the fields and the ancient wisdom, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” In James Allen’s book As A Man Thinketh, a pithy classic from 1903 still in print, the recurring theme is that each of us is the master-gardener of our soul and the director of our life. Metaphors of sowing and reaping occur throughout the text; the following selections should give a taste: “A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth.”

“Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.”

“Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruits of opportunity and circumstances. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit.”

And on that note, there’s not much else to say but bon appetit. ❤

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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

43

Next Stage The

Our fall arts preview

BY Lou Fancher

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

F

all brings more than just a chill to the East Bay air—it also brings a raft of world-class performers to local stages. With Covid in mind, many performing arts organizations are stepping up their safety protocols and carrying on with their seasons—though this is always subject to change.

Though by no means exhaustive, what follows is a healthy harvest of the many performances on offer in the East Bay this Fall.

CAL Performances

calperformances.org

California Shakespeare Theater For nearly a full year, California Shakespeare Theater put their usual productions on hiatus and shared their homebase outdoor Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda with other Bay Area arts and cultural institutions in a Season of Shared Light. In September, Artistic Director Eric Ting and the company plan to make a triumphal return with The Winter’s Tale, a contemporary adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare created by Ting and company Dramaturg Philippa Kelly. The story traverses a rigorous landscape: jealousy, brokenness, grief,

DARIO ACOSTA

A person could fill an entire fall arts calendar at CAL Performances alone—but please resist the urge, if only to spread support to other East Bay arts organizations in addition to the venerable UC Berkeley-based presenter!

With music, dance and theatrical productions in the 2021-22 season, highlights coming in October feature jazz trumpeter, singer and songwriter Bria Skonberg, a master horn blaster with a richly resonant voice; songwriting that displays a terrific sense of humor and supreme sensitivity to human conditions, such as love and longing and lust; and a top-tier band.

A few weeks later, Pilobolus celebrates its 50th anniversary, entrancing audiences worldwide with endless and otherworldly shape-shifting dance theater. Next on tap; pick up Afropop star and four-time Grammy Awardwinner Angélique Kidjo in late October as she partners with producer Jeff Bhasker (Rihanna, Kanye West, Drake, Jay-Z) to reimagine Talking Heads’ 1980 album Remain in Light. There’s no way to sit still at this show: Kidjo is all vibe and compelling rhythm.

Another show: Manual Cinema’s Frankenstein, a Cal Performances co-commission that has the blended company building a marvelously spooky scene combining live music, animated film, actors and puppets in Mary Shelley’s classical tale.

November brings Ballet Hispánico, Aaron Diehl Trio, Vienna Boys Choir, Kronos Quartet, Vân-Ánh Võ and Blood Moon Orchestra … and so very much more.

REPRISE Vocalist and trumpeter Bria Skonberg returns to the Cal Performances this Fall.

» SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

45

COURTESY OF ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO

LIGHT Cal Performances’ 2021–22 season artist-inresidence Angélique Kidjo performs Remain in Light in October.

« death, human strife and

wildlife—yes, bears—but also forgiveness, humor, exaggeration, wit and hope.

A rare-for-Shakespeare happy ending and Cal Shakes’ unlimited capacity for surprise and innovation make this the perfect fall romp—and a welcome respite from the woes and worries of the ongoing pandemic and its variants. calshakes.org

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Oakland Museum of California The Oakland Museum of California exhibit, “Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism,” is surely this fall’s not-to-be-missed art museum event. The exhibit offers a vast perspective as artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers project the

past, present and future of Black expression. Access the imaginative realms of author Octavia E. Butler, avantgarde jazz musician Sun Ra and filmmaker Kahlil. See up close a Dora Milaje costume from the movie Black Panther, along with photography and other historical objects from the groundbreaking film. Experience musician George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic’s Afrofuturistic

»

REOPENING SEPTEMBER 2021!

ART CLASSES

EXHIBITIONS

DIA DE LOS

MUERTOS More information: richmondartcenter.org

Artwork: Kate Godfrey Night Passage, 2021

35th Annual Emeryville Art Exhibition goes LIVE Oct 2 to Oct 31 A juried show of artists living or working in Emeryville, CA

EmeryArt’s 35th Annual is Happening… masked-up but culturally connected again!

Bay Street Emeryville 5690 Bay Street

SEE ‘Potentiality, Edification Series’ by artist Alun Be, 2017 (reproduction).

COURTESY OF ALUN BE

48

«

mothership vessel and more. Afrofuturism is part of everyday life, especially when visiting OMCA. While you’re there, check out the newly-renovated cafe featuring restaurateur Tanya Holland’s Town Fare cuisine, and explore the more ADAaccessible exterior spaces of the downtown museum’s newly renovated gardens and campus. museumca.org

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Alameda Comedy Club The Delta variant pushed comedy fans back outside after a gradual, laddered return to the club’s indoor main stage in April. Even so, the outdoor patio showroom is a terrific place for laughs—along with surprisingly sophisticated food and beverages, especially when compared to the limited

pizza-and-burgers menus and bottled generic beers at other comedy venues. Along with the weekly Drag Yourself To Brunch that features drag performers and a prix fixe menu—a deluxe waffle platter with bacon, sausage, salmon and fresh fruit and choice of a mimosa, Bloody Mary or non-alcoholic drink—as well as Open Mic Thursdays and Open Mic Music

»

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COURTESY OF NGAIO BEALUM

STAND-UP Comedian Ngaio Bealum is currently the cannabis expert on the Netflix show ‘Cooking on High.’

« Wednesdays, upcoming

shows include standup stars such as NPR/Spotify/Pandora 10-million-hits comedian Jackie Kashian’s Netflix show Cooking on High’s cannabis expert Ngaio Bealum; Eddie Brill, the 17-year warm-up comic for The Late Show with David Letterman in the club’s one-year anniversary special; and others TBA. www.alamedacomedy.com

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| EASTBAYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021

Big Wrap-up Finale: With the regular fall arts season subject to the wayward Delta Virus Variant— purposely written in caps here because the original Covid-19’s evil twin is playing out like a surreal evil character in a fall season—we’re beginning to feel as if we’re trapped forever, in a too-long, dystopian sci-fi

horror flick. That said, East Bay Magazine offers cautionary recommendations to check out the calendars of the following highly-regarded venues before making definite plans. State and county guidelines for indoor public gatherings shift rapidly and organizations take various precautions to protect the safety of the artists, staff and audiences. The good news is that after 2020, many arts organizations are nimble and able to rapidly convert an in-person production to a live-streamed event. Here is a by-no-means-comprehensive list of suggestions: Yoshi’s Oakland (www.yoshis. com); Litquake (San Francisco’s Virtual 2021 Literary Festival: https://tinyurl.com/kckhbfsp); Berkeley Repertory Theatre (www.berkeleyrep.org); Shotgun Players (www.shotgunplayers. org); AuroraTheatre Company (www.auroratheatre. org); TheatreFIRST (www. theatrefirst.com); Oakland Theater Project (www. oaklandtheaterproject.org); Oakland Symphony (www.oaklandsymphony.org); Berkeley Symphony (www. berkeleysymphony.org); UC Taube Theatre (www.theuctheatre. org) and your favorite galleries, clubs, literary hubs, independent bookstores, restaurants and public libraries and performance halls located throughout the Bay Area. ❤

2021 - 22 SEASON HIGHLIGHTS

Madeleine Peyroux & Paula Cole T h u r, O c t 1 4 , 2 0 2 1 a t 7: 3 0 P. M .

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Juilliard String Quartet

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

S u n , N o v 2 1 , 2 0 2 1 a t 3 P. M .

T h u r , F e b 1 7, 2 0 2 2 a t 7 : 3 0 P . M .

Vienna Boys Choir

Jordi Savall & Le Concert Des Nations

Christmas in Vienna

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Tous Les Matins Du Monde

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