LocalLocal newsnews at your at your ngertips everyevery weekweek fingertips $1.00 JustJust $1!.00!
Greyounds sports Greyounds sports section teaser section teaser Sports,Sports, Page XPage X
at the newsstand at the newsstand
$1 at$1the at newsstand the newsstand
TheHealdsburg HealdsburgTribune Tribune The Enterprise & Scimitar Enterprise & Scimitar
Visit for daily updates on local news views www.healdsburgtribune.com for daily updates on local news andand views Our 158th year,Visit Number 45 www.healdsburgtribune.com Healdsburg, California
Our 155th year, Number 00© ur 155th year, Number 00©
CITY TO HEAR FROM EIGHT CANNABIS APPLICANTS ON MONDAY
November 9, 2023
Healdsburg, California Healdsburg, California
Date, Date, 20202020
ANONYMOUS POSTCARD CLOUDS THE AIR OF PUBLIC INPUT By Christian Kallen
Scorecards
Assistant City Manager Andrew Sturmfels, who is guiding the city’s process, posted background documentation for every applicant on the city’s website late last week, including graded results from their application forms and interview scores. The application forms show that three primary categories were scored ➝ Cannabis Applicants, 6
Photo by Christian Kallen
The eight applicants in pursuit of two business licenses to operate a dispensary in Healdsburg will each state their case before the City Council, and the public, on Monday, Nov. 13. The meeting starts at 5pm in their chambers at 410 Grove St. The meeting will begin with a brief presentation by city staff. That will be followed by eight minutes for each of the eight applicants to make their verbal presentation to the council, plus additional time to respond to questions from the council members. Public comment will be held at the conclusion of all applicant presentations and council questions. Applicants and owners will not be allowed to speak during public comment. The public review should be the final step in the two-year process to provide for legal sale and distribution of cannabis in the city of Healdsburg. Although the council is expected to choose the two successful applicants, it is not obligated to do so—and a continuance to a later date for further consideration is always a possibility.
END OF THE RAINBOW The Clover Theater in Cloverdale, which closed on Oct. 17, still displays the unseen final bill on its marquee.
Dream Is Over for The Clover CLOVERDALE’S INDEPENDENT THEATER GOES LIGHTS-OUT By Christian Kallen
The only movie theater between Santa Rosa and Ukiah, located in a classic cinema dating from 1950, has gone dark. The Clover Theater, located on East First Street in downtown Cloverdale, ceased showing films in mid-October, as owner Ryan Hecht announced in an email to the theater’s owners and fans. He said that poor attendance “put the nail in the coffin” of the theater’s operating capital. In a follow-up email to the Tribune, Hecht wrote, “The Clover Theater was
Filmgoing Trends
operated for 10 years with the utmost love and care, personal pride, and integrity. I ran the theater to the best of my ability given the resources available to me in Cloverdale, a global pandemic that shuttered the business for more than 18 months, and a shifting film industry.” The theater, which was split into three screening rooms after Hecht purchased and remodeled it, features an old-fashioned move marquee above First Street, offering Cloverdale a sense of small-town America. Cloverdale is the northernmost city in Sonoma County, but its population of around 10,000 was evidently not enough to support the traditional experience of going to the movies.
Since the introduction of cable TV and streaming channels, the habits of film-lovers have shifted to the at-home experience, with visits to neighborhood cinemas sharply reduced. The trend was exacerbated with the COVID pandemic, which temporarily closed almost every theater in the county. The Clover closed during the pandemic in March, 2020, but reopened 18 months later, in October 2021. Healdsburg’s Raven Film Center also closed during the pandemic, but never reopened, announcing the Santa Rosa Entertainment Group’s departure from Healdsburg in September 2020. The multi-screen Reading Cinema, in Rohnert
SILKROAD ENSEMBLE PULLS INTO GREEN HALL COLLECTIVE’S ‘AMERICAN RAILROAD’ SHOW NOW LED BY RENAISSANCE ARTIST By Dave Gil de Rubio
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
VIRTUOSO Banjo player, vocalist and leader of Silkroad
Ensemble, Rhiannon Giddons comes to SSU in November to lead the group formed by Yo-Yo Ma in 2000.
The adjective “Renaissance” is often overused when describing someone proficient in a wide range of fields. In the case of Rhiannon Giddens, the term is drastically insufficient to describe the ride she’s been on since releasing her 2015 solo debut, Tomorrow
Park, also closed for good just over a week ago, on Nov. 1. The 16-screen complex also closed for a year during the pandemic, but reopened in March 2021 with social distancing protocols. “The closures of The Clover Theater and Rohnert Park Cinemas are a heartbreaking reality check for all who love movies,” said Kathryn Hecht in an email. “Both locations represent a former generation of cinema. These theaters were built decades ago to accommodate patrons of that time. Today, they are too big for contemporary audiences, too single-minded in their purpose, and their amenities are outdated. We mourn for them out of nostalgia, but the past does not serve
Is My Turn, following her successful run with oldtime string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. She appears locally on Saturday, Nov. 18, as artistic director of Silkroad Ensemble, a position previously held by the collective’s founder, Yo-Yo Ma. They will perform at the Green Music Center on the Sonoma State University campus to end a nine-city tour. Giddens has accomplished a great deal during the last five years. She released two albums with creative/romantic partner Francesco Turrisi, 2019’s There Is No Other and 2021’s Grammy Award-winning They’re Calling Me Home; wrapped up the second of two seasons playing a gospel-singing social worker on the television drama Nashville; wrote a pair of children’s books, Build a House and We Could Fly;
us except as a reminder of what’s essential for the future.”
Origin Story
Ryan and Kathryn Hecht have been credited as the co-founders of the current iteration of the theater, which they began working on after they left New York and moved to California. According to a contemporary article in the Healdsburg Tribune, the idea to resurrect the theater was born when Ryan Hect was “Googling movie theaters for sale,” saw the theater and was attracted by its mid-century marquee. “The duo had to pony up nearly $240,000 to upgrade the theater’s projectors, a project that culminated with a Kickstarter ➝ Clover Theater, 4
scored music for the Nashville Ballet (Lucy Negro, Redux); and was commissioned to write music for an opera for which she won a Pulitzer Prize for Music, 2020’s Omar. And that doesn’t include stints hosting a podcast, Aria Code with Rhiannon Giddens, and being named the artistic director of the cross-cultural music organization Silkroad Ensemble, overseeing a 12-part video series called The Banjo: Music, History and Heritage or being named the musical director of the 2023 Ojai Music Festival. And let’s not forget she just released the Jack Splashproduced You’re the One, her first solo album since 2017’s Freedom Highway. “I tend to work better when I’m also doing eight other things,” she said during a call from her home in Ireland. “I think I’m destined to go through life ➝ ‘American Railroad’, 4