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Confessions of a killer cop by Raheem F. Hosseini

John Tennis breaks his silence about the day he shot Joseph Mann Page 15 Sacramentoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S newS & entertainment weekly

Volume 29, iSSue 35

thurSday, december

14, 2017

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BUILDING A

HEALTHY S A C R A M E N T O

Inside the Circle BY E D G A R S A N C H E Z

aymond Garcia has been to hell and back. He spent 17 years in prison for an attempted murder in Los Angeles, plus three years for stabbing another convict. As a new inmate, he was tortured by ﬂashbacks of his childhood, one he didn’t enjoy because his parents were into gangs and drugs. Garcia attended healing circles, in which prisoners openly described the baggage they carried inside prison walls. He eventually became a circle facilitator, along the way earning a spiritual name, denoting he had overcome most of his hurts. Now, the newly released Garcia presides over healing circles in Sacramento for the public and ex-offenders. The setting is a dark room, where nine people recently sat in a circle. Some in the ring were parolees; others had never been to jail, except as visitors. After lighting a candle, Garcia led the group in an African chant before announcing: “My name is Raymond. My spiritual name is Nurturing Dragon King.” Garcia said his mother, a heroin addict, was slain when he was 3. His father, who abused alcohol, often beat him. “A lot of the things that happened in my dysfunctional family caused me to do stuff,” such as join a gang himself and “start hurting people,” Garcia, 37, said. The other guests then described their personal demons, from memories of violent upbringings to ongoing addictions. The participants get on-

the-spot “guidance” to help them resolve their trauma, using techniques from Self-Awareness & Recovery, a nonproﬁt funded in part by The California Endowment.

“I’M SCARED THE RUG COULD BE PULLED OUT FROM UNDER ME ... AND I’LL BE RETURNED TO PRISON.”

Raymond Garcia, Healing Circle facilitator with Self-Awareness Recovery

SAR, which also holds healing circles in prisons, was created by Daniel Silva, who spent 39 years behind bars, until his release several years ago. During the recent circle, tears ﬂowed. The youngest participant, a 16-year-old boy, weepingly confessed to hitting his older sister during a quarrel. Soon after, he said, he and his father fought. “My sister no longer talks to me,” the youth said. “My father talks to me off and on.” Ex-inmate Robert Williams counseled: “Go hug your dad and apologize. And apologize to your sister.”

Raymond Garcia has facilitated Healing Circles in and out of prison. Currently, he is a circle facilitator at the AntiRecidivism Coalition. He was released from prison in May. Photo by Edgar Sanchez

Garcia revealed his new crisis. “I’m scared the rug could be pulled out from under me ... and I’ll be returned to prison,” he told the circle. “I know you guys are going to watch my back.” Healing circles are held at 9:30 a.m. on Fridays at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, 1414 K St., Sacramento. Each session lasts two hours. Admission is free. The public is invited.

Your ZIP code shouldn’t predict how long you’ll live – but it does. Staying healthy requires much more than doctors and diets. Every day, our surroundings and activities affect how long – and how well – we’ll live. Health Happens in Neighborhoods. Health Happens in Schools. Health Happens with Prevention.

PAID WITH A GRANT FROM THE CALIFORNIA ENDOWMENT 2 | SN&R | 12.14.17

BUILDING HEALTHY COMMUNITIES In 2010, The California Endowment launched a 10-year, $1 billion plan to improve the health of 14 challenged communities across the state. Over the 10 years, residents, communitybased organizations and public institutions will work together to address the socioeconomic and environmental challenges contributing to the poor health of their communities.

For more info, visit Self Awareness and Recovery on Facebook.

www.SacBHC.org

EditoR’S NotE

dEcEMBER 14, 2017 | Vol. 29, iSSuE 35

27 08 Our Mission: To publish great newspapers that are successful and enduring. To create a quality work environment that encourages employees to grow professionally while respecting personal welfare. To have a positive impact on our communities and make them better places to live. Editor Eric Johnson News Editor Raheem F. Hosseini Arts & Culture Editor Rebecca Huval Associate Editor Mozes Zarate Staff Reporter Scott Thomas Anderson Calendar Editor Kate Gonzales Contributors Daniel Barnes, Ngaio Bealum, Alastair Bland, Rob Brezsny, Aaron Carnes, Jim Carnes, Willie Clark, John Flynn, Joey Garcia, Lovelle Harris, Jeff Hudson, Dave Kempa, Matt Kramer, Jim Lane, Michael Mott, Luis Gael Jimenez, Rachel Leibrock, Kate Paloy, Patti Roberts, Steph Rodriguez, Ann Martin Rolke, Shoka, Bev Sykes

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Daniel Bowen, Gypsy Andrews, Heather Brinkley, Kelly Hopkins, Mike Cleary, Lydia Comer, Tom Downing, Chris Fong, Ron Forsberg, Joanna GonzalezBrown, Julian Lang, Greg Meyers, Lloyd Rongley, Lolu Sholotan, Eric Umeda, Zang Yang

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STREETALK LETTERS NEwS + BEATs gREENLighT ScoREKEEpER FEATuRE SToRy ARTS & cuLTuRE DiSh STAgE FiLm muSic cALENDAR ASK joEy ThE 420 15 miNuTES

covER DESigN by SERENE LuSANo covER phoTo by AuSTiN STEELE 1124 Del Paso Boulevard, Sacramento, CA 95815 Phone (916) 498-1234 Fax (916) 498-7910 Website www.newsreview.com Got a News Tip? sactonewstips@newsreview.com Calendar Events www.newsreview.com/calendar Want to Advertise? Fax (916) 498-7910 or snradinfo@newsreview.com Classifieds (916) 498-1234, ext. 5 or classifieds@newsreview.com Job Opportunities jobs@newsreview.com Want to Subscribe to SN&R? sactosubs@newsreview.com Editorial Policies: opinions expressed in sn&r are those of the authors and not of chico community Publishing, inc. contact the editor for permissions to reprint articles, cartoons or other portions of the paper. sn&r is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or review materials. Email letters to snrletters@newsreview.com. All letters received become the property of the publisher. We reserve the right to print letters in condensed form and to edit them for libel. Advertising Policies: All advertising is subject to the newspaper’s standards of Acceptance. The advertiser and not the newspaper assumes the responsibility for the truthful content of their advertising message.

Meet the killer cop I had a family friend who was a police officer in the Bronx, my homeland, in the 1970s. He had worked out of the notorious precinct known as Fort Apache. At the time that I knew him best, he was a fugitive from the law, living under an assumed name in San Jose. Tommy Ryan (we called him Mike) was at that time the only New York City cop ever convicted of committing homicide while on duty. My mother, who went to church every day, knew that about Tommy, and still she welcomed him into her home at family gatherings, even on Christmas. She said she knew in her heart that he was not guilty. So did we all. If you Google Tommy “Nutsy” Ryan (not making this up) and read his story, you will likely come to the conclusion that he was, in fact, not guilty. You will also find that while in prison (he eventually turned himself in to protect those of us who were aiding and abetting him), he risked his life to save someone else’s. John Tennis’ story is nothing at all like Tommy Ryan’s, although the two men share certain characteristics. These are the kind of tough guys who don’t mind at all getting in the middle of a fight. Back in the day, when we went looking for someone to wear a badge and carry a gun, they were pretty much the only kind of people who were willing to step up. We were all surprised when Tennis reached out to us in the hopes that we would help him tell his story, and I, for one, was glad. I believe everyone needs to be held accountable for their actions. And I believe everyone deserves to have their story told. This one is important.

—Eric Johnson e r ic j@ ne wsr e v ie w.c o m

sn&r is printed at Bay Area news Group on recycled newsprint. circulation of sn&r is verified by the circulation Verification council. sn&r is a member of sacramento Metro chamber of commerce, cnPA, AAn and AWn.

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“It means the robots are WInnIng.”

asked at Patris studio and art gallery:

Worried about self-driving cars? Part 2

Brie Macgill artist

Yes. I’m afraid that driverless cars and artificial intelligence will lack the ability to make split second decisions that are necessary on the road … like in all the situations that can go wrong when a car cuts you off. Also, [it means] the robots are winning.

Jenny WilliaMs substitute teacher

It seems like you need somebody in the car to drive because there are so many possible malfunctions with computers. ...When you’re driving, your vision has a lot to do with what’s going on; and I just don’t know that a computer could see peripherally.

doug doPkins teacher

I’m somewhat worried about driverless cars. There are all sorts of legal ramifications like, who’s responsible for a driverless car? Is it the person who’s driving or the person who programmed it? How does that affect insurance? Also, can they be hacked? Those are my worries.

k ate childers retired programmer

I know about computer programming, and I could see some issues, but I haven’t seen a [major] problem yet ... With the regulations they’re under now, they don’t let [driverless cars] have free rein. But with the problems that I have seen them have, I know they’re not ready for that yet.

Patris

nathan r ayMond computer science student

Overall, no. I think the main flaw is that machines interacting with human error are prone to exacerbating that human error … I doubt autonomous cars will be sold to the general market before it’s generally safer than humans driving—and an autonomous car doesn’t get drunk.

art gallery owner

I am worried about driverless cars because there’s always room for mechanical failure. However, the way some people drive around here in Oak Park near 34th Street and Broadway, driverless cars might be a big safety improvement.

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Email lEttErs to sactolEttErs@nEwsrEviEw.com

Why our homeless feel despair Re “Will arrest for food” by Raheem F. Hosseini (Beats, November 23): Many factors contribute to homelessness. However, ultimately, for an adult to break the cycle, they must be capable of earning a wage (long-term shelter is not free). I live and work in Midtown and for the overwhelming majority of homeless I observe, reliable employment is largely an unattainable goal. Of the many hurdles the homeless face, this is akin to a thirty-foot-high brick wall. Molly ToM S a c ra m e nt o v i a s act ol et t er s @ n ew s r e v i e w . c o m

Hmong deserve better Re “Rewriting the new year” by Mozes Zarate (Arts & Culture, December 7): As a Hmong reader, this article lacked a lot of perspective which is disappointing

considering this is how my community is being displayed to the rest of Sacramento. We are such a crucial part to Sacramento’s livelihood, history and diversity—yet this piece was riddled with passive racism and bias against issues the Hmong community is facing.

It would’ve been awesome to see SN&R cover HmongStory40, which happened at the beginning of this year. It was a community-based, grassroots exhibit that was funded and built from the ground up by collaborative individuals in the Hmong community. We had free entrance to the public and guided tours for 2,500 SCUSD students. I mean, come on, that was an amazing feat of education and engagement—not just for youth, but also for elders who are often neglected because of the ageism in this society, along with people outside the Hmong community who wanted to know more about their neighbors. …. None of this was covered anywhere in Sacramento at all but an article like this comes out?? Do better SN&R. Write to a diverse audience. Let’s make Sacramento a thoughtful place. Pachia Vang S a c ra m e nt o v i a ne w s re v i e w . c o m

There is no God The Jerusalem controversy is just another example of how religion ruins everything. Trump, sucking up to his religious base, wants to move America’s embassy to Jerusalem to side with Jews and Christians against Muslims as to who God gave this land to. In the reality-based world, however, there is no God and Jerusalem is just another piece of dirt like anywhere else in the Middle East. How much are we going to spend on wars and crazy stuff because one group’s invisible friend doesn’t get along with another group’s invisible friend? What are the consequences of turning our backs on reality in favor of old stories that just are not true? I think more people should be focused on this world, this reality and what we can do to make this planet a better place to live. Reality matters, old stories don’t. Why don’t we focus on exploring the universe, electric

cars and curing cancer instead? Let’s do something useful with our limited existence. Marc Perkel

read more letters online at www.newsreview .com/sacramento.

gilr o y v ia sa c to le tte r s@ ne wsr e v ie w.c o m

Retraction Last week’s Scorekeeper falsely claimed that Joseph Marman, a disbarred attorney from Citrus Heights, had been convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol on multiple occasions. That is not the case. The article also falsely claimed that Marman had been convicted of tax fraud, that he refused a field sobriety test and that he misrepresented himself to a police officer. None of these things happened—that conduct belonged to a different disbarred attorney from Sacramento. We deeply regret the errors and apologize to Mr. Marman, and to our readers.

@SacNewsReview

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This housing project being built near P and 21st streets will bring much-needed living units to Midtown, though the future of similar projects is in jeopardy. Photo by @Surveillomax

Good-governance gag order Housing authority, Region Builders at loggerheads over ‘conflict of interest’ proposal by Scott thomaS anderSon

The local agency responsible for bringing more affordable housing to Sacramento is under fire from Region Builders, one of the most powerful developers’ associations around the Capitol. At issue is a policy proposal that housing officials say would keep big-time builders from exerting improper influence on Sacramento’s council members and supervisors. Region Builders calls the proposal an illegal, overly-bureaucratic growthkiller that will make the city’s housing 8 | SN&R | 12.14.17

crisis even worse. Elected officials will have to make their own decision on the policy at the start of 2018. Meanwhile, there is a dark cloud on the horizon that housing officials and developers generally agree about: If the U.S. House of Representatives’ version of the Republicans’ tax bill passes, most affordable housing projects in California will be dead in the water anyway.

sc o tta @ ne wsr e v ie w.c o m

Clash of The TiTans The latest dust-up in the region’s ongoing housing saga came in late October: The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency—a joint powers authority tasked with bringing low-income living units to the county—was updating its Multifamily Lending and Mortgage Bond policies. The MLMB programs offer interestfree tax incentives that help developers make affordable housing projects

pencil out. SHRA had been directed to revisit the program by the City Council. In January, the agency began holding workshops to get input from the public. By October, its staff had released an updated draft of proposed changes to the lending policy. In a section of the rules titled “Conflict of Interest / Communication with Governing Bodies,” the revamped policy reads, “Once a full application has been submitted and accepted, the applicant, including their team members, may not contact members of the Sacramento City Council, City staff, Board of Supervisors County staff, Housing Authority boards, SHRA commissioners or consultants retained by SHRA regarding the application.” The section adds, “SHRA staff may invite the applicant to meet with those listed above as part of the review process. Once underwriting is complete and staff recommendation for financing is finalized, the applicant is free to

State Capitol boyS’ Club See NeWS

RippiNg up the SoCial Safety Net See gReeNlight

WiNteR homeleSS bedS See SCoReKeepeR

beatS

contact the above-listed individuals or SHRA Executive Director La Shelle groups.” Dozier countered that the motive Region Builders, a politically muscular behind her agency’s proposed rule is trade association of developers, contracstraightforward. tors, architects and engineers, took “We’re always looking at our poliimmediate notice. Headed by Joshua cies to make sure they are transparent Wood, who has cultivated an image as and providing an equal playing field for as a lobbying force of nature and selfanyone applying for funding, so there’s annointed “smiling assassin,” Region not any undo influences or someone who Builders made headlines in 2013 by has an advantage over someone else,” publicly unmasking Seattle billionaire Dozier told SN&R. “I think it’s premature Chris Hansen as the secret Daddy for anyone to say we’re trying to block Warbucks of the effort to block constructheir right to have due process.” tion of the Golden 1 Center. Wood used bRoadeR thuNdeRheadS the levers of public information law in a way that would make most investigative Dozier hasn’t had a lot of time to journalists jealous, eventually proving that worry about Wood’s condemnation, Hansen—who wanted to bring the Kings though. That’s because if the House to the Pacific Northwest—had covertly version of the federal tax overhaul passes, funneled $100,000 to local activists circuthe whole debate could largely be moot. lating an anti-arena referendum. This big Unlike their counterparts in the Senate, reveal hit public perception like a torpedo, and House Republicans want to eliminate helping pave the way for the arena’s tax-exempt private activity bonds, a construction downtown. core part of strategies like Sacramento’s On October 25, Wood set his sights on MLMB program. Dozier told SN&R that SHRA, firing off a letter on behalf the head of almost every housof Region Builders to council ing authority in the nation, members, county superviincluding hers, is furiously sors and media. In it, making phone calls to Wood called the new Capitol Hill to try to ‘It’s ridiculous, it’s conflict of interest head off that possibilclause “a grotesque egregious and we’re ity as lawmakers overreach” and reconcile the Senate going to sue them if they go “clearly unconstiand House proposals. through with it.’ tutional.” He went “Those tax credits on to predict that are the main driver to Joshua Wood the move would only get affordable housing Region Builders intensify Sacramento’s done,” Dozier emphaaffordable housing sized. “If they go, it crisis. leaves a huge hole in local Wood stood by those funding that no other source statements in an interview with could fill.” SN&R this week, saying that SHRA is an That warning was strongly echoed by agency that’s so dysfunctional and selfNorth San Francisco Assemblyman David concerned that developers are often forced Chiu, who recently issued a statement to bypass it to get to elected officials in calling the tax plan from his Republican order to get things done. He characterized colleagues in the House “a catastrophe” the proposal as SHRA’s way of “silencing for affordable housing. its critics.” And, Wood stressed, there is a On this point, Wood and Region bigger issue at play. Builders agree. “It’s a normal part of the political “I think there is a lack of understandprocess,” Wood said of developers commu- ing about how affordable housing nicating with elected officials. “If a council financing actually works,” Wood said. “If member has questions about a development the Republicans in Congress make that project that’s being built in their district, change, it will take away one of the main now the developer can’t talk to that council tools in the toolbox to make those projects member in order to give them updates? a reality. Everyone deserves to have Now that elected official can’t make sure a place that they can afford to live in. their constituents’ voices are being heard? There’s a lot of waste in government—but That’s not a rational process. It’s ridicuthis is not waste.” Ω lous, it’s egregious and we’re going to sue them if they go through with it.”

the legaCy Last summer’s police shooting of Joseph Mann dominated headlines around Sacramento in 2016. This week, a deputy police chief said the controversy forced his department to begin a self-evaluation that is prompting a major expansion of less-lethal options for its officers. Appearing December 11 in front of the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission, Deputy Chief Dave Polletta said that evaluating his department’s less-lethal options could be distinguished by two eras—before and after 2017. In the former, Sacramento officers carried three pieces of gear considered non-lethal: batons, pepper spray and Tasers. Each option has its limitations and all of them require an officer to be fairly close to a person. In cases when a suspect is holding something that could be considered an edged weapon, officers have to keep a safe distance. Polletta told commissioners that, prior to 2017, the department had four primary less-lethal devices for such scenarios—bean-bag shotguns, pepper-ball guns, 44-millimeter sponge-round launchers and ballistic shields. However, they were only being carried by supervisors, which on a given shift is roughly four patrol sergeants and one lieutenant working across the entire city. “So, by the time an incident was happening and unfolding, if a watch commander needed to get from Valley-Hi to Del Paso, you can imagine the drive time,” Polletta said. “And the incident is over with.” In answer to a question from commissioner Basim Elkarra, the deputy chief later confirmed that this was the case during the July 11, 2016, officer-involved shooting of Mann on Del Paso Boulevard. Polletta also said that the Mann shooting, along with the officer-involved shooting of Flenaugh earlier that year, had lead to a shift in the department’s approach. “After the second incident, on Del Paso, we as a management team extensively reviewed these incidents and realized that we needed to change some things internally with how we deployed our less-lethal stuff,” Polletta acknowledged. In February 2017, the City Council approved an additional $800,000 for the Police Department’s budget, specifically to make the same array of less-lethal devices supervisors carry available to all patrol units. Polletta reported that the department has now made major purchases and already put 225 officers through the associated training to uses those devices. he ended his presentation on a reflective note. “I think as an organization we kind of failed to evolve with time,” he told commissioners. “And so maybe we should have been on this a couple of years ago, and not prompted by an incident or a couple of incidents. We should have had the foresight to expand these less lethal capabilities at those times.” (Scott Thomas Anderson)

tax tuRNCoat? More than 180 people massed outside of Republican Rep. Tom McClintock’s Roseville office Tuesday, shouting slogans and waving signs that demanded the Fourth District representative stand by his previous pledges to support middle class taxpayers. Throughout his long career as a conservative staple in California politics, McClintock has made speech after speech about lessening the tax burden the federal government puts on citizens. But as Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives attempt to reconcile their alternative tax overhauls into a bill that can be signed by the president, plenty of tax analysts predict a final plan that will give massive breaks to the wealthiest americans by shifting more tax demands onto every other walk of life. The large, vocal crowd at McClintock’s headquarters on the corner of Eureka Road and Douglas Boulevard were challenging McClintock to not support any reconciled bill that favors

corporate oligarchs over working class people. One protestor, Jo Ann Daugherty, traveled more than an hour from Jackson to make her voice heard. “I think this tax bill is horrible,” Daugherty told SN&R by phone from the December 12 protest. “They need to slow down and start listening. They’re rushing it because they think we’re idiots who don’t understand how bad this is going to hurt everyone.” By 1 p.m., as the crowd grew larger, there were no sightings of McClintock coming in or out of his office. Protestors reported a large number of passersby in cars honking and waving in support of their demonstration. As of press time, only one woman had walked up to the crowd in anger, waving her fist and screaming at people to “get a job.” (STA)

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No longer invited Backlash ripples through California politics after women denounce sexual harassment by LaureL rosenhaLL

An extended version of this story is available at www.newsreview.com/ sacramento. CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

With sexual harassment and assault allegations ricocheting through the state Capitol, two female lobbyists say they soon faced the consequences of speaking out—a state senator who suddenly wanted to avoid meeting with them. A client of theirs relayed that the senator wanted women excluded from a meeting at a nearby watering hole. The reason: The senator and some of his colleagues had decided that, with accusations of bad behavior mounting against their fellow legislators, it would be safer to simply stop having drinks with lobbyists who happen to be female. “If we are saying we need to change the culture, this is the opposite of that,” said lobbyist Jodi Hicks, whose client alerted her of the senator’s intent. Hicks is one of nearly 150 women who signed a letter in October condemning what they called the pervasive culture of sexual harassment in California politics. The movement known as “We Said Enough” began as a general outcry. It has since evolved into a series of specific and disturbing allegations that have toppled one lawmaker and have left two others fighting for their careers. And as women come forward with stories of being propositioned, groped and even assaulted by male colleagues in politics, an undercurrent of retaliation has begun rippling through the state. Men have threatened to sideline women from private meetings. Critics, hiding behind anonymous emails, are trying to shame some of the women speaking out. One lobbyist already has lost her job. Her attorney claims she was promptly dismissed after notifying her employer that she was a signatory to the letter. Together, the incidents point to the risk that this wave of activism could inadvertently exacerbate the Capitol’s “boys club” environment—a factor that likely contributed to the problem in the first place. More than three-quarters of state lawmakers are men, and though

C A L m a t t e rs

many women work as lobbyists, most of the partners at big firms are men. Three California legislators—all Democrats from the Los Angeles area— have been accused of sexual misconduct in recent weeks. Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra resigned after several female staffers said he had groped them. State Sen. Tony Mendoza lost his chairmanship of a powerful committee after people who worked for him said he repeatedly invited young female employees to come to his house or a hotel room late at night. Assemblyman Matt Dababneh is denying a lobbyist’s accusation that he trapped her in a bathroom and made her watch him masturbate. After Hicks heard from the client who said senators didn’t want women coming out for drinks, she says she and her business partner sprang into action behind the scenes: They called the senator and other legislators to make plain that discriminating against women lobbyists would worsen the Capitol’s sexism. Eventually, Hicks said, the senator apologized and assured them he would not bar women from the kinds of meetings he holds with men. The lobbyists, in turn, told him they would not reveal his name so long as the threatened ban never came to pass. Yet whispers endure about California lawmakers implementing a “Mike Pence” rule—a reference to the vice president’s custom of eating a meal with a woman or attending an event where alcohol is served only if his wife accompanies him. Two male lobbyists, who spoke on condition of anonymity to convey private conversations with legislators, said they’ve heard from male lawmakers who say they’ll no longer meet alone with any woman—whether a lobbyist, staff member or constituent. They see it as a way to guard their reputations. Others called that a needless overreaction. “Anybody who is behaving like a moral adult shouldn’t worry about

Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, at right, talks with colleagues in 2015. Photo Courtesy of mAx whittAker

that,” said Assemblywoman Laura “So much of the business of politics Friedman, a Democrat from Glendale is based on relationships,” Lopez said who is chairing the Assembly commitin an interview. “So if I am shunned tee tasked with updating sexual harassinformally, that really affects my business ment policies. and my ability to do my job.” She said she has not heard any discussion among her colleagues about male Joining Lopez’s press conference last lawmakers refusing to meet alone with week was a Democratic activist from the women. San Fernando Valley who also described Last week Dababneh, a Democratic being harassed by Dababneh. Jessica assemblyman from Woodland Hills, was Yas Barker, who worked for Dababneh accused of sexual misconduct early last in a congressional office before he was year while attending a party at a Las elected to the Assembly, said he routinely Vegas hotel. Lobbyist Pamela Lopez made comments about her appearance, said he trapped her in a bathboasted about his sexual prowroom and made her watch ess and showed off a desk him masturbate. drawer full of condoms. “So much of the Dababneh released Before the women business of politics is a statement calling went public, rumors based on relationships. So Lopez’s claim a had swirled in “falsehood” and political circles if I am shunned informally, saying he looks that they were that really affects my forward to clearing preparing to name business and my ability to do his name. The Dababneh. Barker my job.” Assembly has said she began to hired a law firm to feel the backlash Pamela Lopez investigate her claim, even before they California lobbyist and Speaker Anthony held their press conferRendon said in a statement ence. A message—sent that he will ask Dababneh through a platform for creating to resign if the investigation finds the anonymous emails—began circulating allegation is true. that defamed her and others speaking Lopez, a partner in a small lobbyout against harassment, saying “hypocing firm that represents firefighters risy, puritanism, and a witch hunt hit and Indian tribes, had described the Sacramento.” incident to reporters in October withLopez said she feels empowered now out naming the lawmaker involved. to speak out because of the collective She publicly accused Dababneh on action by so many women—and because December 4, almost two years after she is an owner of her lobbying firm. she alleges the incident took place. She She’s nervous about losing business, but said she did not report it for so long she doesn’t have to worry about a boss because she feared retaliation—public firing her. officials who would stop meeting with “I hope my clients see that I am one her, clients who could cut off business, tough lady and I’m not to be messed “slut-shaming” whispers in the Capitol with,” she said. “And that’s a good qualhallway. ity to have in a lobbyist.” Ω

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lost a family member in the climateI will say this for Donald Trump and change-enhanced Ventura fire. The the Republican Congress: They have tax plan will be a boon to oil and coal simplified politics. Over the last companies and remove or reduce solar several weeks, as the details of their and wind subsidies. so-called “tax reform” bills became I was thinking about it when clearer, so did American politics. It is no longer politics as usual. It is simply talking with Richard Alacala, office manager of the Oak Park clinic us, the 99 percent, versus them, the Transitions, which focuses on those top one percent. with opiate addiction. The American In a time of growing income opiate crisis, largely created by the inequality in America, this tax bill immoral actions of certain pharmawill dramatically slash taxes on the ceutical companies that have made rich. This tax bill will, according to billions on this epidemic, has led to the Joint Committee on Taxation, more than 50,000 fatal overdoses in increase the deficit by a trillion 2016. According to the Washington dollars, even if the economy Post, the Republican tax bill grows. This tax bill will will allow pharmaceutical make changes in the companies and others Affordable Care to lower their taxes Act that will result This is not just by establishing their in 13 million a tax bill. It’s an “intellectual properAmericans losing ties” in lower tax countheir healthcare assault on people who tries such as Ireland. insurance. This are not millionaires. I was thinking about tax bill opens up the Republican tax plan oil drilling in the when reading the Sunday 1.5 million acres of Sacramento Bee story on the the environmentally sorry shape of California’s dams. fragile Arctic National This is similar to the sorry shape Wildlife Refuge. And this tax bill of our roads, our bridges, our parks even has a “stick it to the blue states and basically our entire country’s that did not vote for Trump” proviinfrastructure. Why? Lack of funds. sion that allows corporations in these And the tax bill will likely make this high-tax states to deduct their state problem worse. taxes but does not allow individuals I was thinking about it when I read to do so. that as soon as the tax bill is passed, This is not just a tax bill. It’s House Speaker Paul Ryan intends to an assault on those who are not go after “entitlement reform, which millionaires. Over the past two weeks, is how you tackle the debt and the I have been thinking a lot about this deficit.” In other words, because we Republican tax plan. gave tax breaks to millionaires and I was thinking about the corporations, we’ve increased the Republican tax plan when I visited a deficit, so we need to cut programs Reno homeless youth drop-in center, such as Medicare and food stamps. where the director told me that This is class war, pure and simple. because, just as in Sacramento, there The wealthy are conducting a war, and are no funds for a permanent-housing the poor and middle class of America youth center, each night she has to are the casualties. Ω push the kids out the door to sleep on the streets. The temperature was in the 20s that night. Jeff vonKaenel is the president, CEO and majority I was thinking about it when I owner of the News & Review. heard that one our staff members had

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Confessions of a killer cop John Tennis breaks his silence about the day he and his partner killed Joseph Mann by Raheem F. hosseini raheem h@ n ew s r ev i ew . com

Dressed in a faded Superman T-shirt that flatters his muscular torso, John Tennis points out the spot where he and his partner shot and killed Joseph Mann on a steamy summer morning last year. It’s a crisp day in December along a resilient commercial stretch of North Sacramento, where unassuming bars and barbershops reside under washed-out signs, but Tennis tugs at his collar like a man who’s feeling the heat. For more than a quarter of a century, Tennis patrolled this neighborhood for the Sacramento Police Department. In October, his career ended ignominiously. The 56-year-old former patrolman revealed last month to SN&R that he was fired following an internal affairs investigation into the fatal shooting of Mann, who was armed with a knife, rumored to have a gun and reported to be acting strangely in front of a nearby apartment complex. The July 11, 2016, shooting—and the ensuing release of police video—plunged Tennis and partner Randy Lozoya into the scalding national debate about deadly law enforcement encounters caught on tape. For the first time since Ferguson exploded, one of those officers is telling his story. After their colleagues spent long minutes avoiding a confrontation with the agitated Mann, Tennis and Lozoya swooped in with lethal decisiveness. In a span of 44 seconds, they attempted to strike Mann with their patrol vehicle twice, hoofed across the boulevard and put 14 bullets into the mentally troubled 50-year-old. Tennis says he and his partner did what needed to be done.

“We don’t get trained to just follow someone at a safe distance and not act,” he says. “That’s the problem that went on for five minutes. And I didn’t get there and go, ‘Oh, I’m gonna end this.’ I got there in absolute fear that something tragic was going to happen.” Something tragic did happen, say Mann’s siblings. “You just jump out of your car and unload on him—that’s unacceptable,” says brother Robert Mann. “That’s not protecting and serving our community.” The forces that put John Tennis and Joseph Mann in each other’s path began a long time ago. Close in age, both men grew up in Sacramento around the same time. They both spun contented childhoods into criminal justice careers. Both led lives interrupted by substance abuse and personal bedevilments. Both sought help from the system. One of them got it. The other was Joseph Mann. Seated at a conference table inside SN&R, a couple blocks from where he and Mann met, Tennis rubs his dry palms together and takes a drag of recirculated air. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here, he says. A cop talking to the

Photo by serene lusano

press about a fatal shooting, one that’s still being litigated, his lawyer will probably have his head. But he feels the need to unburden himself. “I’m not this beast that I’m made out to be,” Tennis says. Joseph Mann’s loved ones say the same thing about Joe.

“Confessions of a killer cop”

Photographs of Joseph Mann collected by his family commemorate his life before his fatal police shooting.

con t i n u ed on page 16

12.14.17 | SN&R | 15

Robert Mann stands at the spot where his brother Joseph Mann died. Photos by austin steele

‘In the midst of chaos’

It was September 1997. Sliding on his belly in the wet grass, John Tennis lay head to head with the man he was trying to choke into submission. Tennis didn’t know the man was a suspected car thief, or why he had rabbited from East Del Paso Heights, leading officers on a reckless, high-speed pursuit to an apartment complex a few miles away. He wouldn’t learn the suspect’s name until after he was dead: Albert Thiel. Black male. Age 35. For the 36-year-old officer, the fatal encounter with Thiel would become a signature event. Here was a suspect high on drugs. Here were Tennis’ fellow officers, in his mind, unable to contain a scary situation. And here was Tennis coming to the rescue. John Tennis didn’t always want to be a cop. The second son of a postal carrier and a homemaker, Tennis came up middle-class in the suburbs of North Sacramento and then Carmichael. He remembers cowboy matinees in East Sacramento at the old con t i n u ed from page 15 16 | SN&R | 12.14.17

Alhambra Theatre, a chalk-pink Spanish cathedral of a movie house with a scarlet marquee and matching red carpet; solo bike rides to Citrus Heights, before it was a city, to stare at the pit of dirt that became Sunrise Mall; and, when he had his own wheels, getting pulled over more times than he’d care to admit. “I didn’t really like cops because I got stopped a lot when I was a kid,” Tennis shrugs. “I was one of them guys driving around too fast.” Tennis ran track at Hiram Johnson High School, but was an unenthusiastic student, he says. So one day, at the age of 18, he strode into an Army recruiter’s office and enlisted. “I told the recruiter, ‘Send me as far away from Sacramento as you can,’” Tennis remembers. “He said, ‘How about Italy?’ I said, ‘That works.’” The only people Tennis told of his decision were his folks, he says. Tennis says he deployed with a paratrooper unit in 1980 to Vincenzo, Italy, his home base for the next four years. (A Pentagon official referred a request for Tennis’ military records to the National

Archives and Records Administration.) A peacetime soldier, Tennis says he spent his tour skipping around Europe and the USSR during the dreg days of the Cold War, as only an American could. When Army intelligence warned him the Russians would read his mail and have him tailed once he was in their territory, Tennis started slipping pictures of Mao Zedong into correspondences written to “comrade” this and “comrade” that, he says. On the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, he recalls, he lost count of the bullet holes pockmarking the buildings. In Budapest, he says, he unsuccessfully tried to train with Soviet soldiers. He became enchanted with communist-controlled Hungary and Yugoslavia, where he remembers a woman on a train warning him of a coming war. Why, he asked. Everyone here hates everyone else, she told him. When Tennis returned stateside, he confronted an old quandary—what now? He had an associate’s degree, but didn’t see the point in more studying.

“Confessions of a killer cop”

He considered becoming a firefighter, but someone told him he was good with people and pointed him toward law enforcement. “I truly believe in making the world a better place, as corny as that sounds,” he says. “I didn’t think I’d get hired, to tell you the truth. But I just don’t like seeing people get victimized.” Sandy-haired with a rigid jaw and a raspy voice that he says he got from entering a burning house years ago, Tennis is the Type A sort of person the Police Department used to court, says Officer James Walker. Like Tennis, Walker has spent nearly three decades as a patrolman with Sac PD. He started shortly before Tennis and has known him his entire career. “Working with John off and on over the years, I always thought he was a great officer— fair and just and morally grounded,” Walker says. “From what I know of him, he’s not a bad guy.” Average in height, Tennis is hewn like an ox thanks to an exacting workout regimen, with a widescreen chest and knotted

Former police Officer John Tennis stands at the scene of the killing.

biceps and calves. Walker says that physicality makes Tennis good in a scrap, but that he prefers to listen, like that time they responded to a family row and Tennis let everyone air their grievances. “John would let people talk,” Walker says. Noting Tennis’ black ex-wife and his four biracial children, Walker adds: “He might look like a poster child for Germany in the 1940s, but he’s not.” But Walker can’t deny his former colleague’s propensity for finding himself in the middle of violent confrontations. Walker is careful to note that he doesn’t think Tennis sought out trouble. If anything, Walker says, Tennis is a victim of his devotion to tough, disadvantaged neighborhoods. “I’d describe it this way: There are those officers, they just have this crazy habit of being in the wrong place at the right time,” he says. “John chose to be in the midst of the chaos.”

‘He left the world’

Vernadine Murphy Mann already knew who was ringing her bell when she

answered the door. No one else had a talent for materializing out of thin air like her baby brother. “Hey sis. I’m here,” Joseph Mann said plainly. Joe looked a little rough around the edges. He needed a shave. His rumpled clothes begged for a dance with the spin cycle. Vern stifled her joy and let her brother inside. How long had he been gone this time? She would fix him up. A hot meal and a warm bath, just like when they were kids and their mom deputized Vern, the oldest, to co-parent Joe, the youngest. “With my brother Joe, it was maternal,” Vern says of their relationship. “I felt like he was my baby.” But she knew not to smother. Joe needed to get into the garage first, to visit his suitcase, the one that held his papers, some clothes, and the old photographs that reminded him who he was. Around the same time that John Tennis was asking the Army to ship him out of

Sacramento, the Mann family was on its way here. Wanting a fresh start in a new town, William Mann accepted an offer to join his insurance firm’s expansion west. In 1979, the Mann family made the cross-country exodus from Newburg, New York—a broken-asphalt burg with a backroom-deal reputation—to Sacramento—a sleepy government town ringed by sleepier suburbs and sweeping, undeveloped land. It proved a rough transition. Their second week in Sacramento, a neighbor in their apartment building fell asleep with a lit cigarette between his fingers. The entire complex—and everything the Manns owned—turned to a heap of ash and cinder on the corner of 13th and G streets. “We started with nothing,” says Robert Mann, who, like Joe, was in his early teens at the time. “That was just something that was the first challenge.” Separated by two years, Robert and Joe navigated the early challenges together. Their three older siblings were all grown

“Confessions of a killer cop”

and living adult lives. Because they were so close in age, Robert and Joe were given a nickname by the first wave of Mann children. “We called them ‘stair steps,’” Vern says. The brothers remained tight after their parents separated and Joe moved with his mother to Stockton to finish up high school. If the split phased him, Joe didn’t show it. He flourished as a popular upperclassman at the largely white and Latino Tokay High School in Lodi, a small agricultural town a half-hour drive north. “Most of his girlfriends [were] white,” Robert chuckles. “He was a ladies’ man, that’s for sure.” “Joe was a people person,” is how Vern puts it. “And he saw the good in everybody.” He also cultivated eclectic tastes. After graduating Tokay in 1983, he attended the University of the Pacific, where he spun jazz, rock and classical records as a college deejay called “The Character,” Robert says. When Vern was preparing to start a homebased childcare business, Joe drew up the interior design plans. He loved classic con t i n u ed on page 18

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cars, discussing politics and giving unsolicited stock tips, Robert says. Joe was also ambitious, his siblings say. While working as a checker at the Raley’s supermarket on Mack Road, Joe attended night school at local community colleges in Sacramento, eventually getting associates degrees in business and communications, Robert says. In 2001, Joe landed a position with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, where he worked as an office technician for the next five-anda-half years, a CDCR spokesman confirmed. These were the salad days for Joe, and he enjoyed them a little too much, Robert says. Thanks to a savvy home sale two years before the housing bubble popped, Joe was rolling in disposable income. He had a dashing Datsun 280ZX coupe and a new girlfriend who liked to travel—and to use narcotics. “She pulled him in,” Robert claims. “When you have an addiction and all this money in the bank, it doesn’t end well.” The family was slow to learn of Joe’s drug habit. A 2010 conviction for driving under the influence tipped them off. When Joe was forced to take a leave of absence from work, they knew something larger was at play. In his time of need, Joe went to be with the one person he was closest to—his mom. Robert says Joe moved to con t i n u ed from page 17

18 | SN&R | 12.14.17

Georgia knowing their aging mother didn’t have much time. For her part, Lucille Mann knew her youngest was struggling. In their separate ways, Joe and Lucille tried to keep each other tethered to the world for a while longer. “They were super close,” Robert says. “She was his whole world and he was her baby. And one thing I know is a mother’s love for her son is unconditional. No matter what he was experiencing or going through, she supported him. That’s just the way mothers are.” When Lucille died in 2011 at the age of 72, Joe returned to Sacramento. But something in him had been set adrift, his family members say. He couldn’t see his way back to shore. Nor could he conjure a purpose for trying to find a way back. “After my mom passed, he felt like he didn’t have that sense that everything was so important anymore,” Robert observes. “He left the world of the good community, so to speak, and got caught up in that other community.” Joe’s drug use deepened. His absences from the family grew. Vern couldn’t abide them. She’d get in her car and drive around aimlessly, hoping to lay eyes on her brother. Nearly a decade apart in age, Vern hoped their special bond would act as a homing beacon. In a roundabout way, it did. She didn’t always know where to find Joe, but he’d eventually turn up on her doorstep. “I feel he was coming just to let

me know he was OK,” Vern says. “Sometimes I miss that.” Two weeks before his death, Joe followed Vern into the garage and knelt down before his private time capsule. He popped the latches on his old suitcase and found the waxy celluloid reminders: Of him, primped for prom in a white tux, or standing shoulder to shoulder with Robert, or clasping his doting mother. In each photograph, that thousand-watt smile and the world on a string. Joe felt his sister standing there. There was still time. He closed the suitcase and went inside.

‘Don’t go for my gun’

The county coroner determined that Albert Thiel asphyxiated as a result of blunt force trauma to his neck. Specifically, the thyroid cartilage on the left side of his throat had been fractured, causing hemorrhaging that partially blocked his airway. “I said, ‘That was probably me,’ because I was the one holding him down,” Tennis says now. That admission never became part of the public record. In absolving Tennis and other officers of criminal wrongdoing, the district attorney’s office said it wasn’t clear what caused the fatal injury, attributing it to a likely “misadventure.” The DA’s report also determined that Tennis may have rescued his fellow officers from an uncertain fate by grappling

“Confessions of a killer cop”

just real,â&#x20AC;? Tennis says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The rule is, when you fight, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go for my gun.â&#x20AC;? As for whyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or even whetherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Tennis got fired, police Chief Daniel Hahn says heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prevented from discussing the personnel history of his officers, even former ones. Like Tennis, Hahn patrolled Del Paso Heights as a beat cop during the 1990s. Asked if he developed an impression of Tennis in those days, he says he did but demurs when asked to share it. Unlike Tennis, Hahn says heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never had cause to fire his weapon at a suspect. Neither has Walker. Both Hahn and Walker say itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s common for officers to draw their guns, but rare to pull the trigger. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Guys like John, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just one of those guys that â&#x20AC;Ś I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t explain it,â&#x20AC;? Walker says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The fact that Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been involved in that many thingsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I certainly havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. And most guys in the department havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.â&#x20AC;? Like other police officials contacted by SN&R, Hahn expressed surprise that Tennis was speaking publicly. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never seen such a thing before,â&#x20AC;? says Hahn, who took over the department months after the Mann shooting. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really strange.â&#x20AC;?

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With their matriarch gone and their dad getting older, the Mann children responded to Joeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s struggles the only way they knew how, with all hands on deck. The siblings and their adult children took Joe into their homes for long spells. Robert joined his brother at A.A. and N.A. meetings. Inside church basements where addicts talked about yielding to a higher power, the two discussed treatment options. Joe checked himself into the countyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mental Health Treatment Center on Stockton Boulevard, and checked out a private psychiatric facility, Heritage Oaks Hospital, on Auburn Boulevard. Joe was trying, Robert says. But the global economy had buckled. And the options were disappearing. In 2009, Sacramento County cut 50 psychiatric beds and pulled the plug on its only crisis-stabilization unit, a 23-hour observation unit that fielded 6,800 adult visits a year, according to a 2015 report from the Sierra Sacramento Valley Medical Society. Local emergency rooms were suddenly flooded with 1,600 new visits a month from people with nowhere else to go for mental health care. The medical society report called the ripple effects â&#x20AC;&#x153;staggering.â&#x20AC;? con t i n u ed on page 20

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with Thiel, who was high on crack cocaine and listed as more than 200 pounds on a 5-foot-8 frame. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thiel was a big and powerful man and officers could be injured or worse if they were not successful in apprehending Thiel,â&#x20AC;? the report stated. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was entirely reasonable for Tennis â&#x20AC;Ś to apprehend Thiel by trying to control the only part of Thielâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body available to him, the head and neck.â&#x20AC;? Thielâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s family filed a complaint that went to mediation, Tennis says. He says Thielâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mother asked the officers to show her what happened to her son. Inside of a conference room, Tennis says he complied. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We went down on the ground and showed her everything,â&#x20AC;? Tennis says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;My attorney decided to pay, whatever, $50,000 I think.â&#x20AC;? A few years later, Tennis was involved in more critical incidents. In 2000, he was sued for using excessive force during the arrest of a sex offender, court records show. The plaintiffâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attorney previously told SN&R he believed the case ended in a settlement, but didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t recall the details. That same year, Tennis says, he and another officer responded at night to a weapons call involving a man who had allegedly told a friend he wanted to kill a cop. At Branch Street and Harris Avenue, in a neighborhood of hunched roofs and chain-link fences, Tennis says, he spotted a male subject loading a gun near the side of a home. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think I said something like, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Freeze motherfucker,â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? Tennis recalls. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He saw me. He started running.â&#x20AC;? Tennis says he gave chase across a couple of residential blocks. He lost sight as the suspect scampered down a dark driveway. As Tennis rounded a parked car, he says, he saw the suspect about to clear a low fence. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coming up and spinning around with a gun in his hand and I fire six rounds off-handed. I hit him a couple of times and he collapses,â&#x20AC;? Tennis says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We roll him over and he had the gun right there. He lived. I think he walks funny, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know.â&#x20AC;? Tennis says he also fired his weapon at a suspected car thief who tried to run him down earlier in his career, in the mid-1990s. He says he struck the vehicle three times, but not the suspect. He says he considers it a â&#x20AC;&#x153;miracleâ&#x20AC;? that he hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been involved in more shootings, given the sector heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worked. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get me wrong. I got in a lot of fights up there, but it was

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The Manns weren’t spared. “When all these programs started disappearing, there was more time spent away from the family, more time spent wandering,” Robert says. Robert knew his brother was cloaking grief and shame. He saw the mask slip enough times to know Joe felt like a fraud in his own skin. His brother sought out people who didn’t know the old him. Joe found stranded addicts, shipwrecked in their own deteriorating vessels. With them, he had only the one thing in common: A grimy crystal over a hot torch. A sour wind that greases the lungs and hotwires the synapses. The hunger that left you emptier each time you fed it. Joe’s contacts with law enforcement mounted. He accrued six convictions in Sacramento Superior Court after his mother’s passing. Most were for petty theft or shoplifting. In 2015, he was convicted in separate cases of making criminal threats, a misdemeanor, and felony burglary, online court records show. Robert believes that last arrest occurred when Joe sneaked into an unlocked motel room on Richards Boulevard to steal a nap. “The few incidences where he went to jail were for small things—vagrancy, shoplifting,” Robert insists. “He was still a good dude. Even though he was struggling.” Sometimes Robert caught glimpses of the specter inside his brother—the one whose moods shifted without provocation, the one who muttered to himself. “Brother, come back when you’re OK,” Robert would tell him. Joe would listen, but his reappearances grew more infrequent. About a week before Joe was killed, Robert found his brother at their niece’s home in South Sac. Joe was doing chores outside in the airless heat. Robert’s face stretched into a grin. He missed his brother, but put it the way men do when they show their hearts to one another. “Hey man, why don’t you come back and hang out with me for a while?” he nudged. Joe swept a hand across his wet forehead and laughed his raspy laugh. “Yeah, yeah, eventually,” Joe deflected, “but I got things to do right now.” It was the last time Robert saw his brother alive.

‘They told me he was dead’

Officers Tennis and Lozoya were wrapping up a call near Rio Linda when they first learned police were dealing with an armed subject in North Sacramento. The veteran patrolmen had worked together often, but didn’t normally ride together. Two days earlier, in Dallas, a harrowing sniper attack killed five police officers. The ambush was sprung near the end of a rally protesting the scrutinized police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille. The piercing cracks that echoed between the tall buildings of downtown Dallas threw the city into a panic. Police used a remote-controlled bomb to kill the suspect, a con t i n u ed from page 19

20 | SN&R | 12.14.17

John Tennis and Raheem F. Hosseini discuss the shooting.

veteran of the Afghanistan conflict. Even with the Sacramento Police Department short-staffed, Tennis says, officers were told to buddy up that week in an abundance of caution. There was no escaping the nation’s shifting mood toward law enforcement’s treatment of black men, in particular. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Walter Scott. Sterling and Castille. The names of the dead kept multiplying. It was just after 9 a.m. Monday, July 11, 2016. Tennis picked up speed, heading southwest toward the call. Another name was about to join the list. Back on Lochbrae Road, two callers had alerted dispatchers to a man acting bizarrely, doing karate moves in front of an apartment complex and flipping a knife. The man kicked the air. He shouted strange things. He urinated on himself. One caller said he had a black gun tucked in his waistband. “He just pulled the gun out. He just pulled the gun out,” the caller repeated. “He said, ‘I am the law.’” No gun was ever found. As far as anyone could later prove, Joseph Mann was armed with a knife in one hand and a metallic coffee mug in the other. Tennis and Lozoya didn’t hear the 911 calls directly. The information they received was broadcast over their police band radio signal and translated onto their computer screen in bursts of text. Rumors of a martial arts background. Might have military training. Seen with a gun. “The first thing I start thinking was, this is one of those Iraqi vets with PTSD,” Tennis says. “He’s going off. This is going to go bad.”

“Confessions of a killer cop”

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Tennis wasn’t a stranger to things not going according to plan. Somewhere along the way, the rules of the job changed. The cops Tennis came up with, the rookies he trained, they all climbed the ranks while he remained on patrol. Twenty-six years on the street beat, chasing calls and fielding complaints. Never your own man, always someone’s grunt. That wasn’t by design. Tennis says he aced his department’s SWAT tryouts in ’99 but was passed over. He’d pissed off one too many lieutenants, he says, spoken his mind too often. Maybe he’d gotten into too many fights, drawn too many complaints. Tennis says he made his peace with it. He was Sisyphus, shouldering a boulder he knew he’d never summit. He could either curse his fate or embrace it. Tennis says he chose the latter. Del Paso Heights became his house beat. A hard neighborhood, yeah, but filled with decent, hardworking people. Tennis was there to protect them. But time is a persistent hammer. Fashions and philosophies change. Society evolves. Chiefs come and go. Every badge loses its luster. Every pawn meets its sacrifice. “Most people realize, when you’re out on patrol, that’s when

shit’s gonna happen. That’s when you’re gonna get in trouble,” Tennis says. “You’ve got to get out of that environment. It’s not survivable.” Tennis couldn’t take his own advice. He was drinking too much. Like many other cops, his marriage unraveled. In 2011, the same year that Mann’s mother died, Tennis was stripped of his gun when an El Dorado County judge hit him with a temporary restraining order. Tennis’ ex-wife had accused him of domestic violence and child abuse, charges that didn’t stick. The judge dismissed the restraining order and Tennis got his gun back when the department went to bat for him. In 2013, the department ordered Tennis into treatment after he admitted to abusing alcohol. But Tennis’ career was stalled. He got tired of humping out to calls, of getting yelled at, of the filth. “I’ve been thrown up on, shit on, comed on—I’m dead serious,” he says. “It can be very disgusting.” I ask Tennis if he ever felt burned out. “I got tired of it,” he admits. “Because my department is very, very big on putting you in a box.” Tennis says he learned to do things differently. He stopped running plates or pulling over suspicious vehicles. He backed off. He answered his calls and went home to his kids.

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“You just give them a different product,” he says. “You’re not doing things that are gonna raise an eyebrow or get you into a fight, you know what I mean? So, ‘Oh, gee, you got into another one.’ It’s not me.” In Tennis’ mind, he had changed. Hadn’t taken a drink in years. Even his mouth had mellowed. He kept a well-worn photo of his kids on him at all times and thought about how smart they were, how eager to make the world a better place. He glimpsed retirement just over the horizon and focused on coasting toward it. Then Joseph Mann entered his field of vision. As their car shunted down Del Paso Boulevard, Tennis and Lozoya watched a figure juke past a sergeant’s patrol SUV with an arm cocked down by his side, according to dash cam videos released last year. “Fuck this guy,” Lozoya said. “I’m gonna hit him,” Tennis said. “OK, go for it. Go for it,” Lozoya said. Their squad car swerves into a stubby crosswalk, narrowly missing Mann. Tennis stomps the brakes and peels into reverse, finding Mann standing on the sidewalk past a white-plaster compound with a gated parking lot. Tennis says his partner noticed a lady standing on a median in the middle of the street. “He started to head towards her,” Tennis says of Mann. “Randy and I are both convinced that, if we didn’t … take his mind off what he was doing, he would have stabbed and killed her. Absolutely convinced of that.” From the videos that the Police Department released, it appears that Mann only briefly approached the woman to escape getting hit by Tennis’ car. After another attempt to ram Mann off his feet, the car slams to a stop at the tree-andbush-lined median. One of the officers says, “We’ll get him.” The doors open. Mann’s momentum has carried him up a shaded sidewalk. Tennis and Lozoya briefly jog up the street parallel to Mann before closing the distance. Tennis is a few feet ahead of Lozoya, who levels his gun first. Tennis says he’s looking for an opening to talk, but didn’t find one. He acknowledges that he didn’t give Mann any verbal commands before he opened fire. “I really didn’t think it would have mattered at that point,” he says. “He stood there screaming at me. And when that hand came up, that’s when I shot him.” Mann points with the knife in his hand. He points again. The third time, he buckles forward. The cracks come in rapid succession. By the time it was done, Tennis’ sidearm had bucked eight times. Lozoya fired 10 rounds. Fourteen struck Mann, snapping into his chest, abdomen, groin, both legs and one ankle as he stooped over and crumpled to his side. Tennis says he doesn’t know who shot first but believes Lozoya fired last—a bullet that skipped off the sidewalk. con t i n u ed from page 21 22 | SN&R | 12.14.17

Tennis says he went over to a groaning Mann and kicked the knife away and grabbed his arm. He says he was still looking for the gun. Even though no gun was ever found, Tennis says he is convinced that Mann had one. “He probably tossed it,” Tennis says. “People do it all the time.” After the other officers approached, Tennis released Mann’s arm and turned around to see Lozoya on the ground with an injured leg. Tennis says his partner already had bum wheels when he dangled one outside the car as Tennis banged to a stop. Lozoya went to the hospital and Tennis went to the headquarters to speak to the union lawyer before proffering his statement. Sitting in the dim newspaper conference room with a neglected gas station soda at his elbow, Tennis tells me that it was at the stationhouse where he learned what he and Lozoya had done. “I was sitting there in a room and nobody was telling me how he was doing,” Tennis says. Who, I ask. “Joseph Mann,” he says. Tennis looks to the side and shifts his jaw. “Just give me a minute please.” He goes on. “They told me he was dead.”

‘Joe’s missing’

Vern says she doesn’t remember the call where her dad told her what happened to Joe. She just knows that she can no longer go inside the restaurant where she answered her phone. “I think it’s because I mentally shut down. I know it is, because you told me my baby brother is …” she says, not completing the thought. “This is a category that nobody wants to be in. And it’s thrust upon you.” Robert got the next phone call. He left work and rushed to police headquarters, seeking answers to impossible questions. He says the homicide detectives unbuttoned their lips just enough to tell him what would appear in a department press release later that day: His brother came at officers with a knife. They had no choice, so they shot him multiple times. Joseph Mann was responsible for his own demise. The explanation infuriated Robert. “I know that’s not my brother. My brother doesn’t carry guns. My brother doesn’t act erratic. My brother doesn’t harm anybody. Because I’ve been with my brother all 50 years of my life. I know who my brother is,” he says. “It was heartbreaking to me, because my first instinct was to act a fool.” Instead, Robert promised the detectives he would get to the bottom of things and left the station. Inside his car, his body shook without his permission. A few days later, a bystander’s cellphone recording surfaced. Then the Sacramento Bee got hold of the business surveillance video showing the actual shooting. Together, they contradicted aspects of the official account. Joseph Mann appeared to be the hunted instead of the hunter.

Under mounting community pressure, the Police Department made the unprecedented decision to release a trove of internal recordings documenting the incident. SN&R was the first to report that Tennis and Lozoya tried to run Mann over before shooting him. Mann’s story drew national attention. It joined a blossoming chronicle of questionable law enforcement killings. Tennis says he and Lozoya received “legitimate death threats” that caused their department to assign officers outside their homes. The repercussions came in slow waves. The police chief announced his retirement at the end of 2016. This January, the City Council passed a slate of accountability measures for the Police Department, instituting a video-release policy and creating a community-staffed police commission. A month later, the city settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Joseph Mann’s father for a little over $700,000. But the Mann family wasn’t satisfied. “They kind of pressured my dad into taking the little money that they gave him to try to close out the case as quickly as possible,” Robert says. “I was still upset, because I felt like nothing really had been accomplished. So what, you gave my dad a few dollars. But what about the accountability?” Behind the scenes, the Police Department was exploring a similar question. In October 2016, Tennis says, Internal Affairs opened its investigation into the Mann shooting. Tennis claims the three-month gap between the shooting and the start of the I.A. inquiry is unprecedented and shows that the department was politically motivated to get rid of him and Lozoya. Chief Hahn says there’s nothing unusual about the time frame, since I.A. only begins its work after the criminal investigation and an administrative use-of-force review are completed. “We want them to have all the evidence,” he says. When the ax started to swing over the summer, Tennis says it became a race for him and Lozoya to medically retire from duty before the department fired them. Lozoya with his bad legs crossed the finish line; Tennis with his respiratory problems didn’t. Tennis was already under the pall of a separate I.A. investigation, he says. Four months before the Mann shooting, Tennis says, he accidentally struck a 15-year-old assault suspect and a fellow officer with his patrol vehicle out by Grant High School. “Never happened before,” Tennis says. “And then some other things happened. Obviously I can’t go into that.” All Tennis will say is that those other things—and not the collision—are what

prompted his sergeant to file an internal affairs complaint against him. When a commanding officer files a complaint against an officer, it has a better chance of being substantiated than one coming from a civilian. It’s what cops refer to as getting “blue-sheeted.” “It was kind of an extreme call and there were some issues,” Tennis acknowledges. “I knew it was going to go somewhere. … When you’re blue-sheeted by a supervisor, you’re not gonna win.” After Mann’s death, however, Tennis says I.A. revised the complaint to say he had a pattern of hitting suspects with his car. Tennis says he was suspended for a month without pay. When he returned to duty at the end of May, Tennis says, he was called into his supervisor’s office. “I said, ‘Oh, you’re going to fire me today, aren’t you?’” Two officers Tennis says he knew escorted him to the internal affairs office. He glanced down at their hips. Had they always worn their guns inside the station? Then he noticed how they were pacing slightly behind and flanking him, in what’s called a bladed stance, which officers employ when dealing with subjects of volatile intent. Tennis told his fellow cops they didn’t have to treat him this way. “Do you honestly believe I’m gonna go postal?” he says he told them. “I got four kids.” In I.A., he was stripped of his badge and placed on administrative leave, a precursor to his termination. Then the two officers walked Tennis out of the station and off the premises. “And that was the end of that. It was pretty humiliating,” Tennis says. “It’s literally being treated like a criminal.” This past October, the Police Department announced that Tennis and Lozoya were no

longer employed by the agency. Citing a California law concerning peace officers’ personnel records, Hahn says he is prohibited from providing additional details. That hasn’t stopped Tennis from making the unusual decision to share some of those details himself. Tennis discloses that the official grounds for his termination were that he violated the Police Department’s general orders regarding use of force, discharging a firearm, professional conduct and the agency’s code of ethics—“whatever that means.” “Basically the department said I had no reason to do anything I did,” he says. “I had no reason to get out of my car. I had no reason to approach him. No one was in danger. The public wasn’t in danger. Officers weren’t in danger.” Looking down at his termination letter, Tennis reads the following: “‘Use of force was not necessary for self defense, [to] affect an arrest, prevent his escape or overcome his resistance.’” He looks up. “So what they’re saying is that I was 100 percent wrong, according to the general orders,” he says. If that’s the case, Tennis says he should be charged with a crime. “Am I a murderer? Or am I not a murderer?” In June, the surviving Mann siblings hired local civil rights attorney Mark Merin, who filed a new federal lawsuit seeking not money but answers. The city tried to argue that Joe’s two brothers and two sisters don’t have the same legal standing that their father did to sue. In September, the judge ruled that they do. The city is appealing that decision. “That’s where we are,” Merin says. Somewhere in there, Thanksgiving arrived. What was left of the Mann family gathered around an incomplete table, broke bread and muddled through. “Him being gone right now, it’s like there’s a hole,” Vern says. “There’s a spot gone right now. That’s Joe. Joe’s missing.” Seventeen months after his brother’s death, Robert says his family has no intention of stopping its crusade until Tennis and Lozoya face criminal charges. “From the very beginning, it was never about money,” he says. “I want them to be held accountable. I want them to be prosecuted. I’m not going to stop until they’re prosecuted.” Tennis makes a very different promise to his former employer. “I told them I am not going out the backdoor with your boot in my ass. I’m leaving the front door like I’ve earned,” he says of his employment claim against the department. “Because I hate to say this, but this is going to cost a lot of money. I’m going to get my job back.” Like it has done in every similar case for more than 30 years, the Sacramento County

district attorney’s office ruled the officerinvolved shooting a clean one. Tennis is free from criminal prosecution, but feels a prisoner of his tarnished reputation. His parents, who are in their 80s, canceled Christmas this year due to the enduring scrutiny over what their son did one summer morning a year ago. “They kind of had a breakdown over this,” he says. “That’s the kind of stuff that really upsets me.” The job and its bleak visions have always provided ample stress, but Tennis finds the dark moods gathering more frequently now. He gets mad at what he hears about himself on the television. He feels discarded by his department, and embittered that his name is now associated with all those reckless, rash and abusive cops who throw their cities into sorrowstricken turmoil. Tennis refuses to see himself as one of them. “I live for my children,” he says. “They’re trying to throw me in the same boat as those [shootings] you see that are bad, that anger me.” All those shifts spent in emergency rooms waiting with the despondent and mentally ill. All those times he’s gotten suspects McDonald’s before taking them to jail. All those uneventful contacts where nobody went to jail. And this is what he’ll be remembered for. Every once in a while, out in the world, Tennis says, he gets “the look.” He shrugs his long, slanted shoulders. He’s nursing a slight limp, the result, he says, of doing weighted sprints up the stairs of the Westfield Galleria at Roseville. He dismisses the injury and underlines it at the same time. It’s nothing, he says. He was pushing himself too hard, exhausting his body in the hopes of quieting his mind. Nightmares, he says. Gasping lungs, he says. Phantom thoughts haunt his sleep. A coffin darkens his heart. He flashes a thin smile. It’s nothing, he says again. Temporarily unburdened of his grievances, Tennis walks a little stiffly toward the door. I ask him one more question before he leaves. I ask him what he would say to Joseph Mann’s family. Tennis says he actually offered to meet with them right after the shooting, to show them he was a regular guy, a dad. The lawyers scuttled that idea. He says he wishes them peace, and a passage through their grief and anger. “I know when you lose a kid, you never get over that,” he says. “I know it’s a goddamned shame when you have a kid murdered—” Tennis stops and resets himself: “… killed by the cops.” It’s a momentary gaffe. An unfortunate mistake. The story of John Tennis is full of them. Ω

“Confessions of a killer cop”

12.14.17 | SN&R | 23

by Aaron Carnes

From left to right: host/producer Kelly Appel, comedians Shahera Hyatt and Aja Mae, and singer Aurora Love.

Photo by ElizabEth loPEz

24 | SN&R | 12.14.17

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A new live showcase creates a welcoming atmosphere for women The Ooley Theater is packed. Viewers sit in the aisles because all 45 seats in the small space are taken. The crowd of mostly women talk as if they all know each other. Some do, but a lot of folks are meeting for the first time and seem comfortable instantly striking up a friendship. They’re all here to see the second installment of the Fierce Femme Show, a variety show with only women, femme-identifying and nonbinary performers. In other words, no men. When the host and producer of the show, Kelly Appel, comes out onstage, everyone gets quiet. “Do you ever just stand there minding your own business,” she begins, “when suddenly you can’t tell if you just started your period or it was just a lot of vaginal discharge?” The crowd erupts in laughter, instantly. Even the men are cracking up. This joke, Appel tells me later when we sit down to talk, doesn’t always get the same reaction. “I did that at another showcase—it was a mix of men and women—and everyone was silent,” Appel says. “There was one woman that laughed. Everyone else was silent. I even heard one person go, ‘Ew.’” The crowd at the Fierce Femme Show may have been co-ed just like the other showcase, but the big difference was that at the other show, Appel was in the minority as a female comic. Fierce Femme changed the entire mood and energy of the space. There have only been two Fierce Femme shows so far, and December 16 will be its third performance. Originally, Appel conceived of the idea after seeing the all-femme music festival Sac LadyFest. “I just thought it was really cool to see something that you don’t see, where it’s just pretty much all women on a stage,” Appel says. “I was just like, ‘Why isn’t it something that’s all

kinds of performers?’ Because I know that there is a need for femmes to have a platform where they feel 100 percent comfortable making any kind of joke they want, performing any kind of talent they have, and that the environment always feels positive and loving.” So far, the show has featured comedians, musicians, burlesque dancers and one woman who read a poem describing her transition from male to female. Appel was going to book a fire dancer, but the pyrotechnic ballerina had to cancel last minute. There’s really no limit to the kinds of performers she’ll have on her stage. She’s also clear that it’s not a “women only” show. Performers include all femmeidentifying people and nonbinary folks. “Whether it’s a woman of color, whether it’s a trans woman, a nonbinary person, I just want to give them a space where it’s intended for them, and there’s not going to be any pressure or heckling or harassment that would make them feel unsafe in their bodies and expressions of themselves,” Appel says. “If you’re a femme-identifying person or nonbinary and you have a talent, I have a stage.” The power of giving the stage to women is pretty remarkable. Every performer, regardless of skill level—some brand new, others at it for several years—seemed to tap into their true selves instantaneously. Comedian Amber Whitford performed her first ever non-open-mic set at Fierce Femme Show and had a great set. “The audience was so welcoming and open,” Whitford said afterward. “Their energy made me feel adorable.” On the other end of the spectrum, Comedian Wendy Lewis has been doing comedy for four years. She was wellacquainted with the mostly male bills that populate the scene. “Not only do I feel like I have to get up there and make sure I’m funny, but I have to represent females in general, because that’s the stigma, that women aren’t generally thought of as being funny,” Lewis says. She says she had a blast at Fierce Femme. She was feeling so confident, she even did some material she wrote earlier that day.

“To be actually able to do what you do and not have pressure, and to be able to just be yourself and do what comes natural, it’s beautiful and it’s liberating,” Lewis says. “I feel like if more humans in general, not just us women, had a support system, we could feel like we could totally be OK.” Many of the performers at the first few Fierce Femme shows have been comedians because Appel came from the comedy world herself. Since starting in the scene a few years ago, she’d met a lot of talented women comics who were underrepresented onstage. That’s when she decided to create her own show.

“If you’re a femmeidentifying person or nonbinary and you have a talent, I have a stage.” KELLY APPEL producer, Fierce Femme Show

“The idea’s not necessarily to be exclusive of men, but to be inclusive of people that aren’t always on bills,” Appel says. “I saw it across the board on a lot of shows. It’s so much beyond me because I just saw a need for something, and a lot of people wanted it.” A key part of the show is that it isn’t exclusively a stand-up comic showcase. This helps to discourage the competitive nature of comedy as well as heckling, which is strictly forbidden. Pianist Miranda Goodman was one of the noncomic performers at the premiere show. She hadn’t played in front of a crowd in a long time. Goodman performed an extremely vulnerable improvised piece

expressing the unfiltered grief she felt of having learned her grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a week earlier. The crowd was moved and readily shifted from crazy joke mode to sharing a serious emotional moment with Goodman. “I felt a positive energy in the entire venue,” Goodman says. “It made me feel accepted, safe and respected knowing that everyone who attended were openminded folks.” So far, the show has gone better than Appel imagined, she says. The production is put together mostly by Appel, though her partner Alexander Cain helps out as well as her friend Bella Bennett. In the future, Appel aspires to get more hands involved. For Bennett, the experience of working on the show has been so powerful that she’s experimenting with a stand-up set. “It’s nice to see something new and something positive about women for once that doesn’t include our sexuality in just a negative way,” Bennett says. “It’s made me want to join in on that fun and sense of freedom.” Back to the period joke: Appel thinks it perfectly illustrates what’s so special about this space. In her few years of doing comedy, Appel has heard “women aren’t funny” from male comics several times and has been roasted by men who have followed her set. She says her period joke is viewed by these types of performers as evidence of women comics being inherently uninteresting. “To have a predominately female audience with all-female performers, you don’t get any of that, I don’t feel like there’s repercussions to your jokes,” Appel says. Most of the men in the audience have been open allies, but some come skeptical. Appel tells me about a 20-something jock from San Diego at the premiere. He seemed hesitant, assuming it would be a bunch of male-bashing. (It was not.) After the show, he had so much fun, Appel says, he couldn’t stop talking about it. “Any time you’re surrounded by a lot of feminine energy, everything feels a little more enlightened,” Appel says. “There’s no competitiveness because we’re all in it together.” Ω

Check out the Fierce Femme Show at 8 p.m. Saturday, December 16, at Ooley Theater, 2007 28th Street. No cover. Donations go toward Planned Parenthood. For more information, go to www.facebook.com/fiercefemmeshow.

12.14.17 | SN&R | 25

illustrations by maria ratinova

Cheese prayers answered

Export: offmenu.txt Photo: offmenu.psd

sweet baby cheesus, shift coffee

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For those of us who share an unabashed love of cheese, there’s a new grilled cheese spot that’ll feel like heaven. Inside Shift Coffee, a grilled cheese bar (Queso Kings) offers a range of sandwiches—from meaty, savory sammies to sweet cheesy treasures—all for $7. The Sweet Baby Cheesus is havarti, fontina and local mixed berry jam squished between Bella Bru Cafe’s French bread. The cheese pools around the crunchy, cinnamoncovered bread for a delightfully warm, gooey bite that combines sweet and savory. Celebrate the real reason for the season with the Sweet Baby Cheesus. 1616 Del Paso Boulevard; (916) 999-0601; www.shiftcoffee.com.

Web headline Web Byline 1

One line summary Wordcount: 375-400

—kate Gonzales

The food at Ecowas The savory monkey packs some heat. bread at The Patriot. photo by stephanie stiavetti

Captivating American fare The Patriot

photo by anne martin rolke

6241 Fair oaks boulevard in Carmichael; (916) 817-9917 Ecowas International Restaurant http://patriotrestaurant.com $$$ $$$

Good for: upscale date dining for the

610 W. el Camino avenue, (916) jeans-and-t-shirt crowd Notable dishes: roasted half chicken, savory monkey bread

Carmichael’s Milagro Center has become a hotbed for high-end fare, a fact that’s accentuated by the August opening of The Patriot, the culinary market’s new casual-yet-fine-dining restaurant. With a vast open layout, an admirably stocked (and gorgeous) bar and a menu that impresses without pretense, The Patriot is a timely addition to Carmichael’s up-and-coming dining scene. Some might even say it’s leading the charge, giving the east-of-Watt crowd a dining option on par with Hook & Ladder and Hawks Public House. With its menu grounded firmly in comforting new Americana sensibilities, The Patriot’s dishes span U.S. favorites from coast to coast: seafood to pizza to roaster-style meat. While I don’t normally appreciate a scattershot “everything under the sun” selection, I was surprised to find almost every option done very, very well. In fact, this is the first restaurant I’ve visited in a while where I’ve found it difficult to be critical. For appetizers, the savory monkey bread ($11) is a wonderful first bite; salty cheese is woven into a yeasted, doughnut-like dough, and served with bacon jam on the side. While I was pretty “meh” on the dry, clumped texture of the jam, the monkey bread itself was the most popular thing on the table. The Short Rib Poutine ($12) was a close second, with a gorgeously rich sauce ladled 26

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12.14.17

by STEPhanIE STIavETTI

over house french fries, the best I’ve eaten in a long time. This uber-hearty dish is the epitome of culinary comfort, though I would have liked to see more than two small pieces of actual short rib atop the fries. My first entree, the Roasted Half Chicken ($18), was balanced between moist and well-cooked, with a fat layer of crispy, salty skin that made me seriously consider ordering the other half of the bird. The accompanying Red Skin Mash had the creamy texture I’m always looking for in mashed potatoes, with the still-present potato skins giving it just the right amount of texture. The Prime Rib French Dip ($18), essentially two big fistfuls of thin-sliced prime rib piled into a crusty baguette, left me nearly breathless between its perfectly tender texture and generous slathering of horseradish aioli. My only complaint would be The Patriot’s “artisan pizza.” I was surprised to find our Pizza Margherita ($13) heavily brushed with garlic oil—not what I look for in a Margherita, which is supposed to shine with its minimalist approach. The crust had a somewhat spongy, pita-like texture. In fact, it felt more like a flatbread than a pizza. A quick whiff of slightly burnt oil wafted upward whenever I took a bite, along with an occasional phantom fennel flavor I couldn’t place, presumably due to someone not cleaning their knife before slicing the pizza. Overall, I had almost zero complaints about The Patriot. If you’re in Carmichael, I highly suggest you go there … now. And if you’re in Sac proper, rolling your eyes at a potential trek to the other side of the river, don’t be that guy or gal who misses out because you’re not willing to brave the 12.2 miles from Midtown for a stellar meal. Ω

Masters of masala Devi chai latte, tiferet coffee house Like most food that makes its way to America, chai has been co-opted by malpractitioners who make it overwhelmingly sweet. Not so at Tiferet Coffee House. It serves a delicious Devi chai latte ($4.75) that sits the sugar in the passenger seat and lets the spice take the wheel and park on the back of your tongue with a little heat. Topped with foamed milk that lasts until the last drop, it’s a worthwhile winter treat, especially since it supports the chatty Berhane family, who own and run the place with a warmth that can be lacking at the industrialchic coffee houses. 3020 H Street, (916) 321-9321.

—John flynn

Bitter winter chicory Feeling bitter about the holidays, or just overindulged with sweets? Chicories are your friends. These winter greens include radicchio, endive and puntarelle, and they add a slight bitterness to your life. Finely julienne endive for a chopped salad with citrus, pistachios and gorgonzola dolce. Or tear radicchio leaves and toss them with hot pasta, olive oil and garlic. You can also grill whole radicchio for a smoky addition to platters and salads. To be clear: Coffee with chicory does not include the leaves; it’s made with the roasted roots.

—ann Martin rolke

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Mariachi and indecisive paralysis by Shoka If the vegan section on Cantina Azteca’s dinner menu with nopales fajitas and potato spinach tacos isn’t enough of a draw to get vegan diners to this Carmichael restaurant, maybe the mariachi band that plays live on Friday nights can tip the scale. While there are only five vegan options, it turns out five may be sufficient to send vegans into an indecisive paralysis: The other three dishes include Azteca tacos (black bean tacos with purple cabbage, toasted corn, chia seeds), nopales

tacos and a veggie bowl. The taco and fajita plates come with belly-busting heaps of shredded lettuce, guacamole, black beans and rice. There’s also a veggie tostada and spinach and strawberry salad that could be veganized, plus Cantina Azteca has breakfast and lunch service with smoothies and juices that have “detox” and “immunity booster” in their names. Find Cantina Azteca and a guitarrón at 6400 Fair Oaks Boulevard in Carmichael and online at www.reyaztecabreakfast.com.

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Diner spinoff by John Flynn

Early risers: Jason Dass and Sean

Jimenez graduated from servers to supervisors at Black Bear Diner, handling the responsibilities that come with cranking out hearty homestyle meals. Then, at the end of November, they opened their own restaurant—Hot Off the Griddle (1583 West El Camino Avenue in Natomas)—less than three miles away from their old employer. “We got a lot of regulars from Black Bear,” Dass said. “We didn’t want to go anywhere really far where they couldn’t come see us anymore.” The quirky menu still resides on four sheets of printer paper stapled together, but features “XL meals” like the double portion of chicken fried steak with three eggs, house potatoes and two pancakes ($15.99). There’s also (slightly) less robust options like the housenamed eggs benedict ($11.99) that comes with spinach, avocado, a scratch-made fried green tomato and “BACON!”—as the fried pork is stylized across their menu, and 28 | SN&R | 12.14.17

deservedly so, considering it comes in thick, middle-cut slices that are applewood smoked. For lunch, options include a cobb salad ($11.99), a reuben sandwich with homemade corned beef ($11.99) and the Farmburger ($12.99), so named because they “throw the whole farm in it,” according to the menu. On a recent day in December, Dass and Jimenez checked in on customers, joked with their staff and busily bopped around their recently renovated restaurant with large front windows, a wide marble counter and stylish black-and-white photos taken by Jimenez’s wife. Both men have families and said that their 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. hours allow them to spend time with their loved ones. Jimenez said he’s aware of the Instagram tendencies of diners, so he makes social media-conscious choices like serving his burgers with the top bun off to reveal all the fixings. But so far, he said they’ve catered to a crowd of mostly seniors, a remark that gets a “Hey, watch that there, honey” then

a wink from an older waitress nicknamed “Buff,” whom they poached from Black Bear. “We did a lot, learned a lot over there,” Jimenez said. “But then we realized we can do this for ourselves.” Ramsay rejected: What does Gordon Ramsay, a foul-mouthed British celebrity chef, know about soul food? Apparently not enough to make Sandra Dee’s (601 15th Street) change much of its steeze. The restaurant recently participated in a mad-dash makeover reality show—24 Hours to Hell & Back— hosted by Ramsay, and the episode’s expected to air in 2018, according to the Sacramento Bee. Sandra Dee’s kept its new interior, but decided to ditch Ramsay’s stripped-down menu and stick with the stuff they’ve been serving in Alkali Flats for near two decades. Thank goodness their outstanding storefront mural remained untouched. Ω

Reviews

Now playiNg

A Christmas Carol

Holiday in Austen by Patti RobeRts

This is the 30th anniversary of the Sacramento Theatre Company’s musical adaptation. Matt Miller returns as the mean-spirited Scrooge (though he’s being upstaged nightly on TV by grumpy Trump). The songs are holding up well, and Dickens’ parable of compassion for the poor rings particularly true in a city where the homeless are so visible. Wed

7pm, Thu 7pm, Fri 8pm, Sat 2pm & 8pm, Sun 2pm. Through 12/24; $40-$20; Sacramento Theatre Company, 1419 H St.; (916) 443-6722; www. sactheatre.org. J.H.

A Moving Day

Dave Pierini and Buck Busfield’s original holiday play is a fitting finale for the original

When too many guests show up for tea time.

Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley

thu 2pm & 7pm, fri 8pm, sat 2pm & 8pm, sun 2pm & 7pm, tue 2pm & 7pm; through 12/30; $33-$42; capital stage, 2215 J street; (916) 995-5464; capstage.org.

Holiday family gatherings bring together presents, as well as pasts and futures. And that’s exactly what happens when the famous Bennet sisters celebrate the season in a new holiday play at Capital Stage. Miss Bennet is a sweet, sassy sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by modern-day playwrights Lauren Gunderson (who wrote Silent Sky—recently staged locally by Big Idea Theatre) and Margot Melcon. This adaptation features many of the familiar characters from Austen’s iconic novel, including the Bennet sisters: Elizabeth, Jane, Mary and Lydia, as well as Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley— and introduces us to a new character/suitor (since you can’t have an Austen storyline without a suitor), Arthur de Bourgh. The story cleverly incorporates a bit of modernday feminism by focusing on the bookish and oft-forgotten middle sister Mary—a self-proclaimed young spinster who loves books and knowledge and yearns for a bigger life outside the societal expectations of 18th century women. But have no fear—the playwrights skillfully preserve Austen’s wry wit and parlor-appropriate manners and language. The gist of the story is the awkward a-dork-able courtship between Mary (Elyse Sharp), who bemoans another holiday as the sad single sister, and the socially clumsy academic de Bourgh (Aaron Kitchin) who reluctantly has been pulled into the family dynamics. Sharp and Kitchin are so endearing as the nerds in love that, though the ending is obvious from the start, you can’t help but cheer them on through the hills and dales of parlor parleys. The courting couple is surrounded by equally talented cast members that bring the heart and soul to

Photo courtesy of caPital stage

familiar characters, even the bit-too-shrill youngest sister Lydia. Capital Stage’s production elements are pitch perfect—from the finely furnished parlor to the handsome costumes, and from the clever piano that provides mood music to the beautiful lighting that captures emotions. Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley is a delight and a most-welcome reprieve in this season of endless holiday theater retreads. Ω

foul

Silent Sky

B Street Theatre. It looks back fondly and looks

Big Idea Theatre shines a bright light on astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who reached for the sky in the early 1900s at a time when women were not recognized in academia. This production skillfully brings out joyful and humorous performances, all within a lovely backdrop of constellations.

forward with hope. Thu 8pm,

Fri 8pm, Sat 5pm & 9pm, Sun 2pm, Tue 6:30pm, Wed 2pm & 6:30pm; through 12/24; $27$39; B Street Theatre, 2711

B St.; (916) 443-5300; www. bstreettheatre.org. J.C.

It’s a Wonderful Life

This is a musical version of the Dickens classic with an outstanding cast and special effects. It’s worth seeing if only for the magnificent performance of Eric Catalan as George Bailey. Fri 7:30pm, Sat

Thu 8pm, Fri 8pm, Sat 8pm; through 12/16; $22 general, $16 students/seniors, $12 on Thursdays; Big Idea Theatre, 1616 Del Paso Blvd.; (916) 960-3036; www.big ideatheatre.org. P.R.

7:30pm, Sun 2pm. Through 12/17; $12-$25; Woodland

short reviews by Jeff hudson, Jim carnes, Bev sykes and Patti roberts.

Opera House, 340 2nd St. in Woodland; (530) 666-9617; www.woodlandoperahouse. org. B.S.

fair

gooD

Well-DoNe

5 suBliMe– DoN’t Miss

Photo courtesy of sPliNter grouP theatre

Last rites As 2017 wraps up, let’s pause to appreciate several artists whose annual holiday season concerts have brightened the local music scene for many years. This is the final season with Chanticleer for vocalist Eric Alatorre, whose remarkable bass voice (featured on 40 Chanticleer recordings) and incredible waxed mustache (10 inches tip-to-tip) have made him a favorite of this elite male choral ensemble for 28 years. You can hear Alatorre singing with Chanticleer Thursday, December 14 at 8 p.m. in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, 1017 Eleventh Street. Tickets are $35 to $75. Next Sunday will be your last opportunity to hear the American Bach Soloists (ABS, a polished baroque group from the Bay Area) perform their exquisite period instrument interpretation of the Handel oratorio Messiah at the Mondavi Center at UC Davis, at least for a while. Catch them if you can on Sunday, December 17 at 4 p.m. Tickets are $13.50 to $65. Fortunately, ABS will still be performing at the Davis Community Church in February, April and May. And of course, they will be doing Messiah again next year … but you’ll need to go to San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral to hear it. —Jeff Hudson

blue eyebrows! Now that’s actorly dedication.

Beowulf, broadly Sacramentans have embraced the British holiday custom of panto-style entertainment, which features campy comedy for kids, cross-dressing comedy for the grown-ups, silly songs and candy. The tradition continues with Beowulf, the Panto!—based (very loosely) on the epic poem written in Old English circa 1000 A.D. Performances December 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22 and 23 at 7pm, and December 16, 17 and 23 at 2pm. Through December 23; $15 general, $10 students/seniors, $5 under age 6; Black Box Theatre at the West Sacramento Community Center, 1075 W. Capitol Avenue in West Sacramento; www.SplinterGroupTheatre.com.

—Jeff Hudson

12.14.17

sN&R

Irresistible force

Star Wars: The Last Jedi They’re going streaking.

by Jim Lane

jiml@ ne wsr e v ie w.c o m

at the cost of the Resistance’s entire fleet of bombers. This puts him in the doghouse with Two years ago, J.J. Abrams gave us Star Wars: Gen. Organa and her second in command, Vice The Force Awakens, and it was the best Star Wars Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), as the decimated movie since The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Now, Resistance flees through hyperspace. writing and directing duties have passed to the Have I left anyone out? Oh yes, there’s the relatively inexperienced Rian Johnson. The result is Storm Trooper-turned-rebel Finn (John Boyega), Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and it’s … well, the recovered from his injuries and teaming best Star Wars movie since Rogue One. up with technician Rose Tico (Kelly Not that it isn’t plenty good Marie Tran) to disarm the device enough. At just over two and a half The Last Jedi that allows the First Order to hours, it’s the longest movie in track the rebels through may only be half a the franchise by a pretty good hyperspace. This sends them to stretch, but to the series faithful, barrel of fun, but the a decadent Vegas-style planet that’s not a bug. It’s a feature. barrel is so huge that in search of the galaxy’s greatStill, Johnson’s movie leaves us est system hacker, but they even half-full there’s sated, while The Force Awakens have to settle for a squalid little left us hungry for more. plenty of fun to be safecracker named DJ (Benicio The story opens moments had. Del Toro). after the end of the previous The Last Jedi may only be half a episode. The mysteriously Forcebarrel of fun, but the barrel is so huge sensitive Rey (Daisy Ridley) has that even half-full there’s plenty of fun to found the reclusive Luke Skywalker (Mark be had. Johnson’s script would have profited by Hamill) and handed him his old lightsaber. In one the judicious tightening Kasdan and Abrams have of Johnson’s touches of nifty humor, Luke gazes always excelled at, which might have made it less at the saber for a moment, then chucks it over his top-heavy with climaxes in the last act. And for shoulder and storms off, barking at Rey to get all its pleasures, the movie never quite captures lost. He’s not to be easily drawn back to the fight the gee-whiz thrill Abrams injected into The Force against the Dark Side and his nephew Ben Solo, Awakens, reminding us why Star Wars was such aka Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). rollicking fun in the first place. Meanwhile, back at the rebel fleet, General But we shouldn’t be too hard on Johnson. Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) tries to George Lucas himself was never able to recreate make an orderly retreat from First Order forces that thrill, and he had three chances. Ω (the First Order being the successor to the fallen Galactic Empire and ruled by Supreme Leader Snoke, played by mo-cap king Andy Serkis). The retreat turns into a rout, though hotshot flyboy Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), disobeying orders, pulls Poor Fair Good Very excellent Good off the destruction of the First Order’s flagship

1 2 3 4 5

30 | SN&R | 12.14.17

fiLm CLiPS

BY DANIEL BARNES & JIM LANE

Coco

A young Mexican boy (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) longs to be a musician, even though his music-hating family wants him to be a shoemaker. When a bizarre event transports him to the Land of the Dead, he goes in search of a deceased singer (Benjamin Bratt) who he’s sure is his own long-lost ancestor. The usual Pixar polish makes the movie vividly colorful, exquisitely textured and gorgeous to behold, but it keeps being dragged down by its shortcomings: an uninvolving story (by Jason Katz, Matthew Aldrich and directors Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina) and characters who are dull, uninteresting and bordering on ethnic caricatures. Also, for a movie about music, the songs (by Kristen Anderson-Lopez) are too bubble-gum bland to stay with you. J.L.

The Disaster Artist

In his 1994 masterpiece Ed Wood, director Tim Burton pulled off an amazing balancing act. His biopic about the director of low-budget, mid-century schlock somehow laughed around Wood and his ensemble of oddballs without laughing at them. James Franco’s The Disaster Artist, a behind-thescenes look at the making of Tommy Wisseau’s 2003 disaster turned cultural phenomenon The Room, occasionally executes a similar feat. It follows the evolving friendship between the mysteriously wealthy pseudo-vampire Tommy (James Franco) and struggling actor Greg Sestero (Dave Franco), tracking them from their first improvclass encounter through the process of shooting and screening their infamous magnum opus. The Disaster Artist clearly holds a weird level of affection for The Room, but stacking the cast with a This is the End-style comedy ensemble, only to have them sit around commenting on Wisseau’s follies like they were guests on a podcast, exposes the movie’s smugness. D.B.

Lady Bird

A high school senior at a Sacramento Catholic girls’ school (Saoirse Ronan) bridles at what she sees as the limitations of her hometown and the clueless smothering of her harried, take-charge mother (Laurie Metcalf). Written and directed by Sac native Greta Gerwig, and at least semi-autobiographical, this episodic coming-of-age movie seems ever on the verge of sliding into sketch comedy, but Gerwig’s emotional generosity toward all her characters keeps pulling it back; she salts her script with funny lines that sound more like people living funny lives than actors saying funny things. Ronan, well on her way to being one of the greatest film actresses of the 21st century, is the movie’s second-biggest asset after Gerwig herself, followed closely by Metcalf in perhaps the role of her career. J.L.

Last Flag Flying

In 2003, three former Vietnam War buddies (Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne) reunite after 30 years to escort the remains of Carell’s son, killed in Iraq, to his resting place in New Hampshire. Directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Linklater and Darryl Ponicsan (from Ponicsan’s novel) as a semi-sequel to Ponicsan’s novel The Last Detail and the 1973 movie made from it, this one has the turbulent mix of incisive drama and sardonic comedy that characterizes both the earlier movie and some of Linklater’s best pictures. The movie mulls over issues of friendship, patriotism, grief, family, guilt and memory; Linklater juggles the movie’s shifting moods expertly and draws moving, finely textured performances from his stars—especially Cranston and Cicely Tyson. J.L.

The Man Who Invented Christmas

The story of how Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) came to write A Christmas Carol in 1843 gets a terrible mangling at the hands of writer Susan Coyne and director Bharat Narulli. Dickens’ tale did indeed play a major role in shaping how the English-speaking world celebrates the holiday, and Dickens often spoke of his characters crowding him in

To look pensive, add a cigar.

Darkest Hour

Gary Oldman blubbers and bellows from under wads of makeup as Winston Churchill in this lifeless biopic by director Joe Wright (Atonement), portraying the embattled British prime minister during the tumultuous weeks between his 1940 appointment and the rescue mission at Dunkirk. Despite his abrasive nature and alcohol-soaked diet, Churchill was a compromise choice intended to unite Britain’s rival political parties against the Nazi threat, although his saber-rattling rhetoric quickly proved divisive. While Oldman chomps on the scenery in a sweat-stained awards grab, much of the action is filtered through his secretary (Lily James), whom Churchill treats with a borderline Weinstein-ian overfamiliarity (bad year to heroize handsy bosses in bathrobes). After Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Their Finest, this is the third 2017 release to touch on the Dunkirk evacuation, although Darkest Hour stops short at Churchill’s “we shall fight on the beaches” speech, as if to underline its own pointlessness. D.B. his study, badgering him to tell their stories (hence the presence here of Christopher Plummer as Ebenezer Scrooge himself). But Coyne and Narulli strike a false note virtually every minute, beginning with a ridiculous portrayal of the author’s 1842 American tour and running through the climactic Christmas tree in his parlor. The impression, despite Paki Smith’s sumptuous Victorian production design, is one of constant, cheesy falsehood and wasted opportunity. J.L.

Roman J. Israel, Esq.

One of the last true movie stars, Denzel Washington is so casually great that he often obliterates co-stars and overwhelms plots, and the lion’s share of his starring vehicles succeed as character studies first and as movies second, if at all. Case in point: Roman J. Israel, Esq., the latest film from Nightcrawler writer-director David Gilroy, and an only slightly less seedy look at the Los Angeles underbelly. Playing the title character, Washington simultaneously anchors and elevates this solid if obvious legal drama, showily disappearing into the title role of a sad-sack civil rights-era relic getting his first taste of temptation. Washington gets ample opportunity to layer his performance with subtly scene-stealing mannerisms, and as a character, Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a non-stop thrill ride of actor choices. As for Roman J. Israel, Esq., the film: It’s a decent morality play, although a step down from Nightcrawler. D.B.

The Star

The story of the Nativity, as seen through the eyes of the animals involved—the donkey Mary rode to Bethlehem (voiced by Steven Yuen), the camels carrying the Magi (Tyler Perry, Tracy Morgan, Oprah Winfrey), the sheep being watched by night, etc. It sounds like a clever idea, and director Timothy Reckart and writers Carlos Kotkin and Simon Moore get credit for good intentions. Their execution, alas, leaves something to be desired. The story is padded out with the kind of aimless animated slapstick that made the Madagascar and Nut Job franchises such

tough sledding, and it mixes uneasily with the Sunday School pieties about Mary and Joseph and the melodramatic menace of a pursuing assassin sent by King Herod (Christopher Plummer). It’s harmless enough, but not as inspiring as it aims to be. J.L.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Writer-director McDonagh previously gave us two smart and self-aware genre films with In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, but this feels more like the work of someone who spent his entire life locked in a dark room, only learning about human nature through the movies. Frances McDormand leads the cast as Mildred Hayes, a grieving mother still burning mad about her daughter’s unsolved murder. Mildred directs her righteous rage at the bumbling and racist police force led by cancerstricken Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), purchasing three billboards along the same lonely stretch of road where her daughter was raped and killed. From the lowest-commondenominator, hate-speech shock value of the dialogue to the third-act insertion of a rapist ex machina, Three Billboards … is genuinely loathsome. D.B.

Wonder

A boy with a congenital facial deformity and many plastic-surgery scars (Jacob Tremblay) enters public school for the first time at the age of 10, where he is met with a mixture of pity, confusion, fear and hostility. Adapted by Steven Conrad, Jack Thorne and director Stephen Chbosky from R.J. Palacio’s novel, the movie’s pro-tolerance, anti-bullying message is more than a little ham-handed, but it’s redeemed by Chbosky’s delicate direction and the honest performances he draws from everybody: Tremblay, certainly, but also Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson as his parents, Izbela Vidovic as his sister, Noah Jupe as his first friend at school, Mandy Patinkin as his principal. Jupe especially stands out in the movie’s best moment, when he remembers his own callous insensitivity. J.L.

12.14.17 | SN&R | 31

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32 | SN&R | 12.14.17

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A local musician gets advice from the singer of Seattle’s raucous Supersuckers by Eli JEnkins

When I was a young musician, the Supersuckers and their beer-soaked biker rock were integral to my formative years. Now that I’m a decade into pedaling my own brand of nuevo-blues across the states with my band Cities You Wish You Were From, the Supersuckers represent something more: a model for the road-worn but still relevant professional musician. Straddling the fence between raucous barroom-brawl rock and outlaw country, the Supersuckers are the definition of a working band. But the path’s been bumpy for the rock mainstay as they’ve performed for almost three decades. While Eddie Spaghetti (lead singer/bassist) is honest about the pitfalls, the moment they hit the stage, the struggle seems to fade—and the party begins. On December 15, they’re bringing something loud to the new Sacramento venue Holy Diver. Jenkins: The last couple years were pretty rough

with your throat cancer, then your Airstream trailer crashed on tour, and then I heard that your significant other had some health problems, too. How has that affected your touring and work life? Spaghetti: Well, it’s actually made me have to work

a lot harder. I’ve got to be on the road a lot more these days in order to keep up with all the bills, so it’s been rough for sure, but we maintain a positive attitude. We know that all is going to be well at the end of the day. Jenkins: You guys have been on tour pretty

regularly for years now and are known as a road warrior band. How’s the reception been on the West Coast tour? Spaghetti: We’re just about to get started on Friday,

so we’re hoping it’s going to be good ’cause we’re on tour with the BellRays, who are another quality

Photo courtesy of harmony Gerber/Photo Graffiti

Rock ’n’ roll with a dash of country—audible and visible.

1998

vintage rock ’n’ roll act such as ourselves, and I’m hoping that it’s going to be good. Jenkins: How did that pairing

come about? Spaghetti: We played a show with

[the BellRays] a few months back and enjoyed it so much that we just decided we should do some more together, and we planned it out for the end of the year. So, here we go. Jenkins: To people who haven’t

seen a Supersuckers show before, what should they expect? Spaghetti: A knock-down drag-out rock ’n’ roll

party in the streets. We tell people to wear their clean underwear because we’re gonna rock your pants right off. Jenkins: What advice would you give to other rock

bands trying to make a living? Spaghetti: I feel bad for anybody trying to start a

band nowadays. It’s a tough racket to get involved in … My advice is to have a solid plan B, I guess. Although, if you’re going to have a plan B, your plan A doesn’t usually work out. So, you’ve gotta have something special … To me, the craft is about writing songs. That’s really the job. Not that the world needs another song. You know, “Brown Sugar” has already been written so the world doesn’t really need another rock ’n’ roll song. But I’m driven to do it so … you’ve just gotta be driven.

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Jenkins: You guys have been around, more or less,

since the late ’80s. What does the future of the Supersuckers look like? Spaghetti: We’re actually working on new songs

right now. I think it might be the first record where we are able to successfully merge the country and the rock ’n’ roll into one sort of crazy product. … I’m sure it won’t break the charts or get us nominated for a Grammy or anything cool like that, but we’ll know it’s quality at the end of the day. Ω

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HAPPY HOUR 4:30-6PM • $3 BEERS, WINE & APPETIZERS catch the supersuckers on December 15 with openers the bellrays and the bombpops at holy Diver, 1517 21st street. Doors open at 7 p.m. tickets are $15 in advance or $18 at the door.

2502 J St. Sacramento, CA • 916.447.1855 Check Yelp for Daily $2 BEER Specials 12.14.17 | SN&R | 33

for the week of december 14

by kate gonzales

POst EVENts ONLiNE FOR FREE at

www.newsreview.com/sacramento

a toy and receive a raffle ticket for prizes from local vendors. All Toys go to Saint John’s Program for Real Change. 7pm, $10. Holy Diver, 1517 21st St.

PHiL KLiNE’s uNsiLENt NiGHt sacRaMENtO: See event highlight on page 35. 6pm, no cover. Fremont Park, 1515 Q St.

SUnDAY, 12/17 a MastER siNGERs cHRistMas: See 12/16 event listing. 7pm, $25. First United Methodist Church, 2100 J St.

DaVis cHORaLE: See event listing on 12/16. 4pm, admission by donation. Davis Community

Church, 412 C St. in Davis.

JaY-Z: Beyoncé’s husband comes to Sac. 8pm, $26-$218. Golden 1 Center, 500 David J Stern Walk.

tHE Rat PacK cHRistMas sHOW: The

sat

PHOTO COURTESY Of ALYSSE GAfKJEn

Brandi Carlile will perform an acoustic set at Mondavi Center.

country strong

RicK EstRiN & tHE NiGHtcats: The rock ’n’ roll band performs to celebrate its new release. 3pm, $10. Powerhouse Pub, 614 Sutter St. in Folsom.

WiNtER HOLiDaY cONcERt: RiverBells Sacramento ensemble performs holiday and swing music on handbells. 3pm, $2.50-$7.50. Guild Theater, 2828 35th St.

MOnDAY, 12/18 tREVOR MccORD: With the New Crowns, Fonty. 6pm, $5. The Silver Orange, 922 57th St.

Mondavi Center, 8 p.M., $21-$76 Over the past decade, Americana / rootsrocker Brandi Carlile has released six searing records, earnMusic ing a Grammy nomination and a cover by Adele. With her forever bandmates, twin brothers Phil and Tim Hanseroth, Carlile unleashes ruthless harmonies to tell timeless stories. She’s a self-described country girl who lives

Deanoholics, a top Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin tribute band, re-create the atmosphere of Las Vegas in 1960. 5pm, $22$25. Harlow’s, 2708 J St.

TUESDAY, 12/19 with her wife and daughter in the woods of the Northwest, and she delivers her poignant songs with a powerful voice and a heartfelt twang. While her latest album, The Firewatcher’s Daughter, rocks, this is an acoustic tour; either way her live shows are a sweet catharsis. One Shields Avenue in Davis, www.mondaviarts.org.

a MastER siNGERs cHRistMas: See event listing on 12/16. 7pm, $25. First United Methodist Church, 2100 J St.

BYZaNtiNE cHRistMas WitH caPPELLa ROMaNa: The world-renowned vocal ensemble performs chants in Greek, Arabic and English 7:30pm, $25-$49. Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, 1017 11th St.

fESTIVALS & HOLIDAYS THURSDAY, 12/14

fRIDAY, 12/15

suPERsucKERs: With the BellRays, the Bombpops, the Stoneberries. See an interview with Supersuckers on page 33. 7pm, $15-$18. Holy Diver, 1517 21st St.

BROaDWaY iN cONcERt: The Placer County Youth Orchestra and Six Players Theatre Company play hit songs from popular shows like Chicago, Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story and more. 7pm, $8-$10. Del Oro High School Performing Arts, 3301 Taylor Road in Loomis.

caPitOL FRiDaYs’ tWO-YEaR aNNiVERsaRY: The weekly voice of reggae, afrobeat and international music celebrates two years at Capitol Garage. 9:30pm, call for cover. Capitol Garage, 1500 K St.

tHE MaRK WOOD EXPERiENcE HOLiDaY EXtRaVaGaNZa: Mark Wood, original member and string master with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, performs alongside the Davis Senior High School Symphony Orchestra and Davis High Treble Choir. 8pm, $12.50-$49. Mondavi Center, 1 Shields Ave. in Davis.

SN&r

WiNtER sOuL: With Voiice, Danielle Shavonne,

Tirzahx, Toine, Daro, Joey Casanova. 6pm,

$10. Harlow’s, 2708 J St.

SATURDAY, 12/16 a MastER siNGERs cHRistMas: A holiday performance of spirituals, timeless carols and more. 7pm, $25. First United Methodist Church, 2100 J St.

BRaNDi caRLiLE: See event highlight

above. 8pm, $21-$76. Mondavi Center, 1 Shields Ave. in Davis.

cHucK RaGaN & FRiENDs: Folk singer-

12.14.17

songwriter with Dave Hause, Chris Shiflett

of Foo Fighters. All proceeds go to Cast Hope, a Chico-based nonprofit. 6:30pm, $15$20. Goldfield Trading Post, 1630 J St.

DaVis cHORaLE: Davis Chorale performs with the combined hand-bell choir from Davis Community Church and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis. Family-friendly concert under 60 minutes. 4pm, admission by donation. Brunelle Hall, 315 W. 14th St. in Davis.

KuRt tRaVis: The annual Ugly AF Sweater Fest is a mult-genre event with So Much Light, Andrés, The Seafloor Cinema, and an acoustic set by Kurt Travis and more. 6:30pm, $10. Cafe Colonial, 3520 Stockton Blvd.

LiFE iN 24 FRaMEs ROcK FOR tOts cONcERt: With Life in 24 Frames, Among the First, Jacob Paul & The Heartbeat, Paulie Onoff. Bring

uPcYcLEPOP: A four-day pop-up market, with artistically repurposed and recycled art, furniture, fashion, home design and more. Through 12/17. 1pm, no cover. Unleashed Spaces, 7300 Folsom Blvd.

fRIDAY, 12/15 cHRistMas aROuND tHE WORLD: Enjoy Christmas classics from around the world, including “Feliz Navidad” and “Mele Kalikimaka,” as well as Christmas desserts, coffee and sparkling apple cider. Wine will be available for purchase. 8pm, $25. Rotary Clubhouse of Folsom, 7150 Baldwin Dam Road in Folsom.

WiNtER WONDERLaND: A family event with holiday-themed hands-on activities, strolling Victorian carolers, photos with Santa and a flurry of “snow” falling each

snr c a le nd a r @ ne wsr e v ie w.c o m

Online listings will be considered for print. Print listings are edited for space and accuracy. Deadline for print listings is 5 p.m. Wednesday. Deadline for nightLife listings is midnight Sunday. Send photos and reference materials to Calendar Editor Kate Gonzales at snrcalendar@newsreview.com.

night at 7pm. 1pm, $7. Land Park Drive.

Fairytale Town, 3901

SATURDAY, 12/16 a taHOE PaRK cHRistMas: Christmas-themed carnival games, cookie decorating and photos with Santa and Mrs. Claus. 4pm, no cover. Tahoe Park, 4400 58th St.

cHRistMas aROuND tHE WORLD: See event

listing on 12/15. 8pm, $25. Rotary Clubhouse of Folsom, 7150 Baldwin Dam Road in Folsom.

HaNDMaDE HOLiDaYs: Beatnik Studios’ longest-running event features a curated marketplace of handmade goods, with live music, food, games and activities for all ages. 11am, $2. Beatnik Studios, 723 S St.

OaK PaRK FaMiLY cHRistMas: A community Christmas party, with free toys for kids up to 12 years old, photo opps with Santa, music, drawings for bicycles, gift baskets and more. There will also be blood pressure and other health screenings and health insurance sign-ups. Noon, no cover. Transitions Buprenorphine Clinic, 3647 40th St.

sacRaMENtO aFRicaN MaRKEtPLacE: Shop for holiday gifts like natural soaps and skincare items and African fashion and jewelry at the African Marketplace, every first and third Saturday. Noon, no cover. Sojourner Truth Museum, 2251 Florin Road.

sOL RisiNG cELEBRatiON: See event highlight on page 35. 4pm, admission by donation. Collective, 2574 21st St.

Sol

suGaR PLuM FaiRY tEa: A whimsical tea party, with treats and tea from Ettore’s Bakery and featuring characters of The Nutcracker. 4:30pm, $50. Sacramento Community Center Theater, 1400 L St.

WiNtER WONDERLaND: See event listing on 12/15. 1pm, $7. Park Drive.

Fairytale Town, 3901 Land

SUnDAY, 12/17 BaZaaR iN tHE BaRRiO: Local creators sell their arts and crafts for the holidays. 7am, no cover. Barrio Cafe Sacramento, 1188 35th Ave.

DaVis cRaFt aND ViNtaGE FaiR: Shop for holiday gifts or household items from vendors selling handmade, recycled and vintage treasures. There will be live music and food. 11am, no cover. Davis Central Park, C and 3rd streets in Davis.

GLOBaL LOcaL MERcaDO: Handmade arts and cultural goods by local and global vendors. Shop for vintage items and authentic, unique handmade gifts. 2pm, no cover. Sol Collective, 2574 21st St.

sacRaMENtO i-80 at MaDisON cOMic cON: A

family-friendly comic con. 11am, $6-$7. Crowne Plaza Sacramento Northeast, 5321 Date Ave.

fOOD & DRInK THURSDAY, 12/14 BaRKs iN tHE BREWERY: A brewery dog party, with games for pups and a free photo booth.

SATURDAY, 12/16

Sol Rising Celebration Sol collective, 4 P.m., BY donation

SPORTS & OUTDOORS

The city wouldn’t look the same without Sol Collective. For 12 years, the nonprofit has uplifted art and activism as a venue that spotlights local FESTIVALS musicians and spoken word artists, an exhibit space and a community classroom. Sol CollecPHOTO COURTESY OF SOL COLLECTIvE tive helps the community address issues like climate change and Black Lives Matter through Sac Activists Schools and offers alternatives to big box shopping through its Global Local Mercado (stop by Sunday, 12/17). Support this local treasure during the Sol Rising Celebration, a birthday party with music, food, family and a special announcement of its plans to expand. 2574 21st Street, www.solcollective.org.

Bring items like cat and dog food, blankets, toys and more to donate to the Front Street Animal Shelter. 5pm, no cover. Jackrabbit Brewing Co., 1323 Terminal St. in West Sacramento.

SATURDAY, 12/16

WEDNESDAY, 12/20 FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT: Enjoy free hot chocolate and cookies while watching the 2000 film, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. 4pm, no cover. North Sacramento Family Resource Center, 1217 Del Paso Blvd.

BRUNCH AF UGLY SWEATER PARTY: Don your ugly sweater and enjoy brunch and mimosas with DJs LIES, Shaun Slaughter and more. 11am, no cover. Highwater, 1910 Q St.

OLD SUGAR MILL HOLIDAY WEEKENDS: Barrel room demonstrations, musical performances, Food Truck Mania, wine and more. 12pm, no cover. Old Sugar Mill, 35265 Willow Ave. in Clarksburg.

SACRAMENTO SANTACON 2017: Put on your best ugly sweater, Santa, elf or reindeer costume and take part in a worldwide SantaCon pub craw in Old Sacramento. 12pm. Old Sacramento, 2nd and K streets.

SUNDAY, 12/17 PANCAKES & PJS BRUNCH DAY PARTY: Roll out of bed, eat some free pancakes, take photos with Santa with cheesy Christmas music played by Shaun Slaughter. You don’t even have to get dressed! 11am, no cover. LowBrau, 1050 20th St.

FILM THURSDAY, 12/14 CITY RISING: A documentary about gentrification in California, featuring a Sacramento community, followed by a panel discussion. 5pm, no cover. Crest Theatre, 1013 K St.

SATURDAY, 12/16 ELF MATINEE AND SINGALONG: A screening of Elf and a singalong. Arrive early for cookie decorating, hot cocoa, coffee and other treats. 1:30pm, no cover. Sierra 2 Center, 2791 24th St.

HOME ALONE: A favorite ’90s holiday film. 12pm, $7.50-$9.50. Crest Theatre, 1013 K St.

SUNDAY, 12/17 CORY’S CULT CLASSICS: A screening of The Shining, plus an acoustic performance by Strange Party. 6pm, no cover. Cafe Colonial, 3520 Stockton Blvd.

THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL: The wacky retelling of the classic Christmas story.

3pm, $7.50-$9.50. Crest Theatre, 1013 K St.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE: A screening of the political thriller, with an informative introduction and closing commentary.

12:30pm, no cover. Sacramento Public Library—Central, 828 I St.

COMEDY BLACKTOP COMEDY: Your F#$&! Up Relationship. Improv inspired by real relationship stories told by the audience. 8pm Friday, 12/15. $5$10. 3101 Sunset Blvd., Suite 6A in Rocklin.

HARLOW’S: A Good Trip with Shane Mauss. The Portland-based comedian performs. 7pm

Tuesday, 12/19. 2708 J St.

PUNCH LINE: Brian Scolaro. The actor and

comedian performs. Through 12/16. $17.50. Doug Loves Movies. Comedian Doug Benson of Super High Me hosts a podcast where he talks to a special guest about his first love—movies. 8pm Wednesday, 12/20. $20. 2100 Arden Way, Suite 225.

SACRAMENTO COMEDY SPOT: Comedy Spot Holiday Show. Stand-up comedy, sketches, live music and improv comes together in a celebration of the holiday season. 9pm Friday, 12/15. $12. Lady Business Presents: It’s a Wonderful Life. The members of Sacramento’s only all-female improv troupe tell stories of goodness, cheer and flubs of 2017 and create scenes around these stories. 8pm Saturday, 12/16. $8. 1050 20th St, Suite 130.

STATION 102 DRY BAR AND LOUNGE: XMYASS. Comedians include Johnny Casino, Danny Luna, Morty the Mortician and more. 7pm Saturday, 12/16. $10. 1100 Orlando Ave. in Roseville.

ON STAGE OOLEY THEATRE: Fierce Femme. A showcase of the talents of Sacramento’s femaleidentifying performers in the areas of comedy, music, dancing and more. See a longer preview of the event on page 24. Proceeds will benefit Planned Parenthood. 8pm Saturday, 12/16. No cover. 2007 28th St.

SACRAMENTO COMMUNITY CENTER THEATER: The Nutcracker. Join the Sacramento Ballet for a performance that retells this classic Christmas story. Through 12/23. $25$89. 1301 L St.

SACRAMENTO THEATRE COMPANY: A Christmas Carol. Returning after a five-year hiatus, this adaptation retells the classic Dickens novel. Through 12/24. $20-$40. 1419 H St.

SUTTER STREET THEATRE: Holiday in the Hills. A popular holiday musical with skits, music and dance, that takes place in historic Folsom at the end of the 19th century. Through 12/23. $15-$23. 717 Sutter St. in Folsom.

WOODLAND OPERA HOUSE: It’s A Wonderful Life. This quintessential Christmas story follows George Bailey, who gets help from his guardian angel on Christmas Eve. Through 12/17. $7-$25. 560 Main St. in Woodland.

ART ARTHOUSE ON R: Big Show of Small Treasures. An exhibit of little works by local artists. Through 1/8. No cover. 1021 R St.

BEATNIK STUDIOS: Dana & Satterlee’s

THURSDAY, 12/14

works made on small panels during a 20-day period. An artist lecture and reception will be held at 5pm Saturday, 12/16. Through 1/13. 405 Vernon St., Suite 100 in Roseville.

CROCKER ART MUSEUM: ArtMix | Bohemia. The Crocker’s own queen of Bohemia, Aimée Crocker, is the inspiration for a night of debauchery. Entertainment will include snake charmers, fortune tellers, belly dancers and more. 6pm Thursday, 12/14. $10. Richard Diebenkorn Beginnings, 19421955. An exhibit of the artist’s evolution through 100 paintings and drawings that precede his shift to figuration. Through 1/7. $5-$10. 216 O St.

KENNEDY ART GALLERY: Expose In Photography & Postcards on The Edge. A display of photography and postcards. Through 1/7. No cover. 1931 L St.

PENCE GALLERY: Kurt Fishback Portraits of Women Artists. An exhibit of photographs of 71 artists, including Ruth Rippon and Hung Liu, in their Sacramento studios. Through 1/14. No cover. 212 D St. in Davis.

CLASSES

THROWBACK TO THE ’80S: Bust out those neon fishnets and leg warmers for an ’80s skate night, with decorations and music from the decade. 6pm, $6-$12. Downtown Sacramento Ice Rink, 701 K St.

THURSDAY, 12/14 JOB COACH: A trained job coach will help with

FRIDAY, 12/15 YOGA AND SOCIAL JUSTICE RACE AND ETHNICITY: A conversation about social justice and how it relates to yoga. 6pm, no cover. The Yoga Seed, 1400 E St.

SATURDAY, 12/16 FOLSOM CHRISTMAS 5K: Celebrate the holidays

STAMMTISCH: A place for folks to enjoy drinks, snacks and practice German language skills. All levels welcome, but guests must know some German. 6pm, no cover. Sacramento Turn Verein, 3349 J St.

LIVING HOLIDAY ORNAMENTS WORKSHOP: Learn how to create air plant ornaments to give for a gift or to decorate your own tree. 6pm, $28. The Learnery at Sierra 2 Center, 2791 24th St.

TUESDAY, 12/19 RUN CREW—CHRISTMAS LIGHT RUN: Join Fleet Feet on a 3- to 4-mile run through the Fabulous 40s neighborhood to see the Christmas lights. 6pm, no cover. Fleet Feet, 2311 J St.

TAKE ACTION

SATURDAY, 12/16 KIDS IN THE KITCHEN: A hands-on cooking class for kids to get to make healthy snacks using recipes they can recreate at home. Recommended for ages 4 and up, registration required. 10:30am, no cover. Oak Park Sol, 3733 Broadway.

MEDITATION AND WRITING PRACTICE RETREAT: The retreat includes a dharma talk, a discussion and open-hearted, spontaneous writing in response to writer and Soto Zen teacher Susan Moon’s guidance. 9am, $25-$60. Sacramento Dharma Center, 3111 Wissemann Drive.

MONDAY, 12/18 SACTENANTS BIMONTHLY MEETING: Meetings for folks who want to organize around housing and homelessness, rent control, gentrification, land rights and more. 6pm, no cover. Organize Sacramento, 1714 Broadway.

SUNDAY, 12/17

TUESDAY, 12/19

SOAP ‘N’ SIP: Join an evening of soaping,

BLUNT TALK: A black women’s forum to discuss the war on drugs and what to expect in the coming year concerning cannabis legalization, policing and equity. An open, non-judgmental space to share experiences and knowledge. 7pm, no cover. Hacker Lab, 1715 I St.

OPEN MIC TO FIGHT CHILD LABOR: Community Impact Academy will host an open mic night to raise money for WE, which fights child labor. 6pm, no cover. Sol Collective, 2574 21st St.

WEDNESDAY, 12/20 BEING A REFUGEE AND RAISING BILINGUAL CHILDREN: Afghan-American journalist Fariba Nawa discusses her struggle to raise her

your resume, job-searching techniques, interview skills and more. Reservations required. 4pm, no cover. Sacramento Public Library, 6700 Auburn Blvd. in Citrus Heights.

FRIDAY, 12/15

with a 5K or 10K run in support of the Keaton Raphael Memorial, a nonprofit that supports children diagnosed with cancer and their families. 8am, $10-$165. Vista del Lago High School, 1970 Broadstone Parkway in Folsom.

Intersection at Beatnik Studios. The twoperson show features the collaborative and individual works by Kathy Dana and Donald Satterlee—artists and longtime friends. Through 1/25. No cover. 723 S St.

BLUE LINE ARTS: 20x20 Show. An exhibit of art-

children in a multilingual environment. 6pm, no cover. Arcade Library, 2443 Marconi Ave.

sipping, and socializing in this cold-process soapmaking class. Students will learn about the history of soapmaking, safety procedures and get a list of materials and ingredients needed. They’ll also take home two pounds of homemade soap. Beverages and refreshments served. 4pm, $65. Fruitridge Community Collaborative, 4625 44th St.

TUESDAY, 12/19 HOME BIRTH AND MIDWIFERY: If you’re curious about home birth, this information session covers safe home-based midwifery, including options for families on MediCal. 6:30pm, no cover. Colonial Heights Library, 4799 Stockton Blvd.

SATURDAY, 12/16

Unsilent Night Fremont Park, 6 P.m., no cover

It’s going to be a not-so-silent night in Midtown this weekend. Join a few hundred of your neighbors to create a one-of-aHOLIDAYS kind musical experience during Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night. Each participant will choose a playing device (boom box, smart phone with speakers or a pieced-together sound rig), download or burn one of four tracks onto a CD, then hit play together in Fremont Park to create a unique soundscape. It’s like caroling for the modern age—don’t miss it! 1515 Q Street, www.unsilentnight.com.

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNSILENT NIGHT

12.14.17 | SN&R | 35

thUrsday 12/14

Friday 12/15

satUrday 12/16

sUnday 12/17

Monday-wEdnEsday 12/18-20

Closed for a private event

Professional Voice Students performances, 6pm, no cover

Open-Mic Wednesdays, 6:30pm, W, no cover

Fridays Are a Drag Annual Holiday Show w/Jade Jolie, 8pm, call for cover

Spectacular Saturdays, 8pm, call for cover

Sunday Beer Bust, 4pm, no cover

Half-Off Mondays, 8pm, M, no cover; Trapacana, 10pm, W, no cover

Dylan Crawford, 9:30pm, no cover

Chad Wilkins, 9:30pm, no cover

Trivian, 6:30pm, M, no cover; Open-Mic, 7:30pm, W, no cover

Up to Snow Good with Cam and Theo, 9pm, $10 (bring a toy or food for drive)

Teknical, Black Boxx, 8:30pm, $7

Holiday Benefit Show w/SpaceWalker and more, 8pm, toy/diaper/wipes donation

Jezebelle’s Army Presents Festivus (Seinfeld-themed variety), 8pm, T, $10

The BoaRdwalk

Baby Bash, Wasted, 8:30pm, $20-$50

Gwamba, Evolution Revolver and more, 8:30pm, $10

The cenTeR foR The aRTs

Coco Montoya, 8pm, $25-$28

Brandi Carlile, 8pm, $33-$71 Sunday Funday, 3pm, call for cover

Every Damn Monday, 7pm, M, no cover; Noche Latina, 9pm, T, no cover

The acousTic den cafe

Katie Garibaldi, 7pm, no cover

Badlands

PopRockz ’90s Night, 9pm, no cover

10271 Fairway driVE, rosEVillE, (916) 412-8739 2003 k st., (916) 448-8790

BaR 101

101 Main st., rosEVillE, (916) 774-0505

Blue lamp

Polyorchids, Shotgun Sawyer and more, 8pm, $8

1400 alhaMbra blVd., (916) 455-3400 9426 GrEEnback ln., oranGEValE, (916) 358-9116

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Stand up, speak up Can we have an honest conversation whose behavior reflects that truth. Let’s about sexual harassment? ensure girls know how to stand up for Let’s begin with our history: The term themselves calmly and intelligently. Let’s “sexual harassment” was coined in 1975 stop teaching girls that they are damsels in response to the way men casually and in distress who should wait to be rescued carelessly sexualized women. Thankfully, from harm. We must also accept that the women’s liberation movement began when we refuse to speak out about sexual providing clear instruction for girls and harassment, we’re actually trying to avoid women years earlier. The nuns at my facing conflict. Conflict resolution is elementary school in Hayward, Calif. a skill and can be learned. A choice to told girls in my 7th grade class that if remain uneducated is a decision to stunt we walked by a construction site and personal and social transformation. were greeted by catcalls or salacious One last thing: We’re seeing a lot comments, we shouldn’t giggle or get into of successful men toppled by accusations an argument. Instead, we should respond of sexual harassment. Surprised? I’m not. as equals: Turn around and confront the Remember elementary and high man, saying, “Have some respect.” school? The education system most If the man balked, we should often rewards those who are continue to speak up. In naturally preoccupied with other words, we should detail, orderliness, and stand up for ourselves. control. Once further What a concept! habituated through Let’s raise girls who Fast forward rewards, that preocknow they are equal to my years as a cupation too often teacher in public and morphs into anxiety and whose behavior private schools in and control issues that reflects that truth. Sacramento, where create personal chaos, sexually inappropriate and even disorders. The comments or behavior by result is an individual boys and men were often who can’t stop thinking dismissed while teachers and about something (like propoadministrators diligently policed sitioning a co-worker for sex) or what girls wore. The drive to obscure can’t stop doing something (like grabbing the natural female form was—and still women in the workplace) even though he is—considered justified to protect a girl’s knows it’s detrimental to the women and virtue. But that’s just a fixation with to his career. Ω superficiality. Back in the 1970s, we wore mini skirts and hot pants (Daisy Dukes but in crushed velvet). The nuns and other Meditation of the Week teachers at the private religious school I attended didn’t criticize our clothing. If sexual harassment could be stopped “Here are the qualities I stand through clothing choices, nuns and other for: honesty, equality, kindness, modestly dressed women would never compassion, treating people be harassed. But ask an honest nun— the way you want to be treated Catholic, Buddhist, etc.—even nuns and and helping those in need. other plainly dressed women have been To me, those are traditional sexually harassed. values,” said Ellen DeGeneres. Here’s why: Sexual harassment is What do you stand for? enculturated behavior. Every one of us, through our own choices, teach men how to treat women and women how to treat Write, email or leave a message for men. If we want human interactions to Joey at the News & Review. Give change, we must stop trying to raise girls your name, telephone number who obediently follow rules but cannot (for verification purposes only) and question—all manage confrontation or conflict. We correspondence will be kept strictly confidential. should also stop teaching boys that bravWrite Joey, 1124 Del Paso Boulevard, Sacramento, CA ery means taking what you want. Let’s 95815; call (916) 498-1234, ext. 1360; or email raise girls who know they are equal and askjoey@newsreview.com.

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If they say yes, now you two have another thing in common.

Yeah. It happens. THC can ease anxiety, but it can also cause anxiety because drugs (and humans) are weird. Generally, anxiety caused by cannabis means you smoked too much. Try taking just a hit or two. Look for a strain lower in THC. Remember that the goal isn’t to get as high as possible, but to have a good time. Maybe find a strain that has a good CBD count. CBD is known to help with anxiety and to moderate the effects of THC. If none of these things work, just stop smoking. Weed isn’t always for everyone. You will be fine. Is it true Purple Kush is no longer the best? —Cloudy Claude Um, has Purple Kush ever been “the best?” It’s such a subjective measure. I remember when White Widow was all the rage. Then it was Trainwreck. Then it was OG Kush. Now it’s Cookies. Hell, I know some folks who love brown weed. It doesn’t matter. Just find some weed you like and enjoy it. Ω

Ngaio Bealum is a Sacramento comedian, activist and marijuana expert. Email him questions at ask420@newsreview.com.

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Do you have any advice for weed causing anxiety? I used to smoke and really enjoyed it. It helped me clear my head and be more creative, but now it gives me anxiety attacks. I’m just trying to figure it out, if you have any information to share on the subject, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

This is a very good question, especially since the holiday party season is upon us. Cannabis is an excellent party drug, seeing as how it is a mild euphoric and generally doesn’t make people violent or weepy. However, cannabis is a stinky drug, and while you or I may love the smell (whenever I walk into a spot that smells like weed, I immediately assume the function will be fun, mellow and full of good snacks), some people really, really can’t stand it. I would say it is the responsibility of the party-thrower to create a designated area for pot smoking to occur, preferably somewhere dry, warm and close to the food. If the party is a no-smoking affair, or there are young children present, it is perfectly acceptable to take a walk around the block. If you are hanging out with a new friend and you don’t know how they feel about pot, just ask. A simple, “I feel like it’s time to spark one up, wanna hit?” should be enough to get the joint, er, ball, rolling. If they say no, you can wait. If they say yes, now you two have another thing in common. We are on the West Coast, so pot isn’t really a big deal anymore, and I don’t think anyone is gonna judge you for being a stinky weedhead. Generally, using common sense, asking for permission when you are in someone else’s space and erring on the side of caution will If they say help you have a happy and stony holiday no, you can wait. season. Merry Chrishannakwannzikah!

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FRee will aStRology

by Matt KraMer

by rOb brezsny

FOR THE WEEk OF DECEMBER 14, 2017 ARIES (March 21-April 19): According to a Sufi

aphorism, you can’t be sure that you are in possession of the righteous truth unless a thousand people have called you a heretic. If that’s accurate, you still have a ways to go before you can be certified. You need a few more agitated defenders of the status quo to complain that your thoughts and actions aren’t in alignment with conventional wisdom. Go round them up! Ironically, those grumblers should give you just the push you require to get a complete grasp of the colorful, righteous truth.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I undertook a

diplomatic mission to the disputed borderlands where your nightmares built their hideout. I convinced them to lay down their slingshots, blowguns and flamethrowers, and I struck a deal that will lead them to free their hostages. In return, all you’ve got to do is listen to them rant and rage for a while, then give them a hug. Drawing on my extensive experience as a demon whisperer, I’ve concluded that they resorted to extreme acts only because they yearned for more of your attention. So grant them that small wish, please!

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Have you ever been

wounded by a person you cared for deeply? Most of us have. Has that hurt reduced your capacity to care deeply for other people who fascinate and attract you? Probably. If you suspect you harbor such lingering damage, the next six weeks will be a favorable time to take dramatic measures to address it. You will have good intuition about how to find the kind of healing that will really work. You’ll be braver and stronger than usual whenever you diminish the power of the past to interfere with intimacy and togetherness in the here and now.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “Your task is not to

seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” So said Helen Schuman in A Course in Miracles. Personally, I don’t agree with the first part of that advice. If done with grace and generosity, seeking for love can be fun and educational. It can inspire us to escape our limitations and expand our charm. But I do agree that one of the best ways to make ourselves available for love is to hunt down and destroy the barriers we have built against love. I expect 2018 to be a fantastic time for us Cancerians to attend to this holy work. Get started now!

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In the coming months,

you will have substantial potential to cultivate a deeper, richer sense of home. Here are tips on how to take maximum advantage. 1. Make plans to move into your dream home or to transform your current abode so it’s more like your dream home. 2. Obtain a new mirror that reflects your beauty in the best possible ways. 3. Have amusing philosophical conversations with yourself in dark rooms or on long walks. 4. Acquire a new stuffed animal or magic talisman to cuddle with. 5. Once a month, when the moon is full, literally dance with your own shadow. 6. Expand and refine your relationship with autoerotic pleasures. 7. Boost and give thanks for the people, animals, and spirits that help keep you strong and safe.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Deuces are wild.

Contradictions will turn out to be unpredictably useful. Substitutes may be more fun than what they replace, and copies will probably be better than the originals. Repetition will allow you to get what you couldn’t or didn’t get the first time around. Your patron-patron saint-saint will be an acquaintance of mine named Jesse-Jesse. She’s an ambidextrous, bisexual, double-jointed matchmaker with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Ireland. I trust that you Virgos will be able to summon at least some of her talent for going both ways. I suspect that you may be able to have your cake and eat it, too.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The reptilian part of

your brain keeps you alert, makes sure you do what’s necessary to survive and provides you with the aggressiveness and power you need to fulfill your agendas. Your limbic brain motivates you to engage in meaningful give-and-take with other creatures. It’s the source of your emotions and your urges to nurture. The neocortex

part of your grey matter is where you plan your life and think deep thoughts. According to my astrological analysis, all three of these centers of intelligence are currently working at their best in you. You may be as smart as you have ever been. How will you use your enhanced savvy?

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The classical

composer and pianist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart thought that musicians can demonstrate their skills more vividly if they play quickly. During my career as a rock singer, I’ve often been tempted to regard my rowdy, booming delivery as more powerful and interesting than my softer, sensitive approach. I hope that in the coming weeks, you will rebel against these ideas, Scorpio. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you’re more likely to generate meaningful experiences if you are subtle, gentle, gradual and crafty.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): At one

point in his career, the mythical Greek hero Hercules was compelled to carry out a series of twelve strenuous labors. Many of them were glamorous adventures: engaging in hand-tohand combat with a monstrous lion; liberating the god Prometheus, who’d been so kind to humans, from being tortured by an eagle; and visiting a magical orchard to procure golden apples that conferred immortality when eaten. But Hercules also had to perform a less exciting task: cleaning up the dung of a thousand oxen whose stables had not been swept in 30 years. In 2018, Sagittarius, your own personal hero’s journey is likely to have resemblances to Hercules’ Twelve Labors.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Humans have

used petroleum as a fuel since ancient times. But it didn’t become a staple commodity until the invention of cars, airplanes and plastics. Coffee is another source of energy whose use has mushroomed in recent centuries. The first European coffee shop appeared in Rome in 1645. Today there are over 25,000 Starbucks on the planet. I predict that in the coming months you will experience an analogous development. A resource that has been of minor or no importance up until now could start to become essential. Do you have a sense of what it is? Start sniffing around.

The champion Edward McGrath, who turned 100 on December 12, still recalls a battle he fought in 1952, as a teacher at Sacramento High School. In 1955, he took that battle all the way to California’s Third District Court of Appeals—and lost. But that wasn’t the end of the story. McGrath’s efforts helped inspire California Senator Albert S. Rodda to draft a measure ensuring collective-bargaining rights for public school teachers. These established efforts are particularly relevant in light of the recent contract negotiations between the Sacramento City Teachers Association and the Sac City Unified School District. Having traveled the world and engaged in a lifelong teaching career that took him from his native California to Syracuse, N.Y., where he earned his Ph.D., McGrath celebrated his birthday on December 1 at the Sacramento Fine Arts Center, which he has patronized for years.

First of all, how does it feel to be turning 100? Any plans for the occasion? If it’s nice and sunny, I’ll sit out in the sun.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I’m not totally

How much of your time was spent in Sacramento?

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In 1865, England’s

How do you feel about the impact your stand against the school administration had on the education system and teachers’ rights?

certain that events in 2018 will lift you to the Big Time or the Major League. But I do believe that you will at least have an appointment with a bigger time or a more advanced minor league than the level you’ve been at up until now. Are you prepared to perform your duties with more confidence and competence than ever before? Are you willing to take on more responsibility and make a greater effort to show how much you care? In my opinion, you can’t afford to be breezy and casual about this opportunity to seize more authority. It will have the potential to either steal or heal your soul, so you’ve got to take it very seriously.

Royal Geographical Society decided to call the world’s highest mountain “Everest,” borrowing the surname of Welsh surveyor George Everest. Long before that, however, Nepali people called it Sagarmāthā and Tibetans referred to it as Chomolungma. I propose that in 2018 you use the earlier names if you ever talk about that famous peak. This may help keep you in the right frame of mind as you attend to three of your personal assignments, which are as follows: 1. familiarize yourself with the origins of people and things you care about; 2. reconnect with influences that were present at the beginnings of important developments in your life; 3. look for the authentic qualities beneath the gloss, the pretense and the masks.

you can call rob brezsny for your expanded Weekly Horoscope: (900) 950-7700. $1.99 per minute. must be 18+. Touchtone phone required. Customer service (612) 373-9785. And don’t forget to check out rob’s website at www.realastrology.com.

I’ve been all over the world. I was born and educated in California—I graduated from Berkeley with honors ... A year later, I took a second degree. [When I began teaching] at Sacramento High School, there was only one high school. While I was there, they were building McClatchy.

From the early days, I belonged to the Teacher’s Association. Now, as many people would tell you, workers were supposed to have those, not teachers. It was in the air at that time. We founded [the union] here in Sacramento, which is the oldest one west of the Mississippi River. We had meetings and everything. It was the days of the early Franklin Roosevelt administration. People were organizing. We were always pushing on the Board of Education to advance salaries or do something. So there was a lot of [work]. I remember, so well, that the principal of the high school had to go into the war, so they brought over the vice principal from McClatchy—they had just organized—[to be] principal of Sac High.

PHOTO by JOn HermisOn

At the time, we had all graduated from universities and were interested in public affairs. We pushed at that time … to stop the principal that had been sent over to us—he was a local boy out of Colorado or something like that. The new principal wanted to push things with himself in front. So he eventually might be superintendent, or something. He did all kinds of strange things. Like go out and visit the football team at practice, and then when they had the Saturday games—the stadium was part of the junior college—it was a matter of [discussion with] the department chair. But he insisted on sitting with the team down on the [bench]. He was a more public figure and all that sort of thing. Before he left, he organized everything down to the last minute. So he had all the faculty [working on Thanksgiving]—and Thanksgiving is a legal holiday. Then he was going to scatter five to ten of us throughout. One of my cohorts had to take tickets and all that sort of thing. Strictly against the law! But he was off on a big thing. I had to, in the meantime, quit. He went on for several years. He was very much the creature of the board of education. We would come to the board of education meetings and stand there and propose something—that they ought to do this and they ought to do that and so on—so we were not popular.”

So you took a stand against the principal at that point? We said, “You can’t send teachers out to a nonpublic school in order to collect tickets, or watch the restrooms or anything like that.” They said, “No, that’s the teachers’ responsibility.” That went on for a couple years. It was during that time, however, that the board did adopt a single salary schedule and we were in back of that. We pushed for that. I think the classical education was okay at Sac High. Berkeley was coming up big time and Stanford and so on. The principal started deciding [what we should do]. Well, he began to get in trouble with the faculty. We would say no-no-no and he would say yes-yes-yes.

What do you enjoy doing now that you’re retired? I dabble in painting a little bit and investigate historic stuff. I like listening to classical music.

How was your birthday party at the Fine Arts Center? The party that we had Friday—a fellow came up to me and said, “I remember you. You taught me history in high school!”

Finally, I have to ask: What’s the secret of living to be 100? I don’t think there’s a secret! Try not to catch a cold, perhaps. Don’t come down with bronchitis. Ω

12.14.17 | SN&R | 55